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This programme contains some strong language | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
CHATTER | 0:00:14 | 0:00:16 | |
We were all slightly mystified | 0:00:26 | 0:00:28 | |
by what was going to happen on the evening. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
There was a certain element of Scooby-Doo about it, | 0:00:30 | 0:00:34 | |
a certain element of, | 0:00:34 | 0:00:35 | |
"You'll be wondering why I've invited you all here," | 0:00:35 | 0:00:37 | |
especially cos it's not somewhere you'd associate with Bob. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:41 | |
My goodness, we felt so lucky to be there. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
We really did. Sitting there, in that very intimate environment. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:53 | |
Bob was very keen for me to come down that night, which is... | 0:00:55 | 0:01:01 | |
It's a source of great pride. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:02 | |
Bob had asked for people to come along who he wanted to be there, | 0:01:05 | 0:01:10 | |
and I was one of them, so I was kind of a bit honoured by that, actually. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
I think I did know that he'd been ill. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
Obviously we didn't know it was his last-ever time that he would be | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
performing for an invited audience, but it felt very exclusive. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
And he said, "I'm doing this thing at the Albany, | 0:01:30 | 0:01:32 | |
"would you like to come down?" | 0:01:32 | 0:01:34 | |
And I thought, "I appear to be mates with Bob Monkhouse!" | 0:01:34 | 0:01:38 | |
You knew from the moment you entered the room | 0:01:41 | 0:01:43 | |
that you're about to witness something special. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:46 | |
I always like the sound of a chatty audience. | 0:01:57 | 0:02:00 | |
If they're chatting among themselves, they're less inhibited, | 0:02:00 | 0:02:03 | |
they're communicating, | 0:02:03 | 0:02:05 | |
they're having a good time. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:06 | |
They're also getting well-oiled. They've got a drink each, | 0:02:06 | 0:02:09 | |
which is always good for an audience, | 0:02:09 | 0:02:11 | |
to feel that they're less inhibited | 0:02:11 | 0:02:14 | |
because of booze. Not too much. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:17 | |
They get another little break. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:18 | |
See, I heard my name mentioned then, | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
you see. The ears twitch. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:23 | |
So, really, this is the moment where I feel...many people, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:27 | |
many comedians I know, are racked with insecurity and fear. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:31 | |
I'm so stupid I don't understand that anything could go wrong. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:34 | |
I'm filled with anticipatory glee. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:36 | |
I can't wait to get out there, | 0:02:36 | 0:02:38 | |
so, if you'll excuse me, I'll get out there. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
Bob Monkhouse! | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:02:42 | 0:02:43 | |
That's a lovely welcome. Thank you very much indeed for that. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
Oh! | 0:03:00 | 0:03:02 | |
I think... Hey, I've done my time! | 0:03:02 | 0:03:04 | |
That's a hell of a welcome. Thank you very much, Dominic, | 0:03:06 | 0:03:10 | |
for that introduction. I think of all the introductions I've ever had | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
in my life, that was the most recent. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
Sincerely, Dominic. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:17 | |
As you know, this cellar is a Fred West franchise... | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
Oh, God... Hi, Kevin! | 0:03:26 | 0:03:28 | |
That's as vile as I get. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
I guess it's cos of my age. I am feeling my age lately. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:35 | |
I haven't gotten one of those stairlifts, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
I haven't got one of those yet, or a walk-in bath... | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
..but my bed has one of those inventions | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
that gradually brings you to an upright position. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
Viagra. You know. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:49 | |
I stayed overnight last night in a London hotel. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:55 | |
If you're like me, when you get to a hotel room, is it your domain? | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
For me, it's paid for, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
this is where I live, this is my kingdom for the period I'm in it. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
I like to sleep in the nude, and, er... | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, do you? | 0:04:08 | 0:04:10 | |
And I'm lying there, naked, on the bed, | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
and the chambermaid walks in. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
Finally. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:17 | |
I think sleeping in the nude is a perfectly natural... | 0:04:25 | 0:04:29 | |
I can't... Well, maybe you shouldn't do it on those long flights. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
And I'm not a good flyer, anyway. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:38 | |
I can never get over when you get to the airport, | 0:04:40 | 0:04:43 | |
and they have luggage shops in the airport. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:47 | |
Who arrives at the airport with his arms full of underwear? | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
"Oh, thank God, cases!" | 0:04:50 | 0:04:51 | |
When he starts, it's just, erm... | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
Every joke lands. | 0:04:57 | 0:04:58 | |
You can tell the craft, the timing. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
I think one of the things that Bob was always accused of | 0:05:01 | 0:05:04 | |
was it was almost too immaculate. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
I don't think that can be a real thing. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:09 | |
When you see it in the flesh, you think, | 0:05:09 | 0:05:11 | |
"Oh, God, this is why he's still doing it." He was quite brilliant. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
Uh, there's an interview with Les Dennis, | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
who says, er, | 0:05:17 | 0:05:19 | |
that he wants to spend more time on his own. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:21 | |
So I guess he's going on tour again. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:23 | |
Oh, The Naked Chef. He's done a great job, hasn't he, Jamie Oliver, | 0:05:29 | 0:05:34 | |
of encouraging out-of-work students to become chefs? | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
I think he deserves every kind of... | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
Last night, apparently - | 0:05:39 | 0:05:41 | |
it doesn't say where, Clarence House or somewhere - | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
he prepared a four-course meal | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
and he says, "The Prince really tucked into the mousse," | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
but I imagine that was later, after he'd gone. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:53 | |
And... Ulrika is quoted. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
It says, "Despite what they say, Prince Edward is all man." | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
He was in the military, wasn't he? | 0:06:06 | 0:06:08 | |
It says here, | 0:06:08 | 0:06:10 | |
"Prince Edward was, sometime... was in the Hussars." | 0:06:10 | 0:06:14 | |
It doesn't say "Hussars" he was in, it just says... | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
That's all it says. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
This is not the seven-o'clock-on-a-Saturday-night Bob Monkhouse. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
This was... But then again, you know, he knew his audience. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:28 | |
He wasn't performing in front of kids, | 0:06:28 | 0:06:30 | |
he was performing in front of other people who do stand-up for a living. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:36 | |
There's that initial...almost worry, that you think, | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
"I don't really want him to go too far. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
"I don't want Uncle Bob to turn into Nasty Uncle Bob." | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
Then, of course, you realise he's way too good to do that. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
He knows exactly what he can get away with. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare is here, | 0:06:51 | 0:06:53 | |
the only seaside "peer" upon which Danny La Rue has never performed. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:57 | |
OK, had to slip in an old one, there, and I do like it. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:04 | |
They're going over the fact he gave £2,000 to Monica Coghlan, | 0:07:04 | 0:07:08 | |
who was a prostitute. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:09 | |
If you give £2,000 to a woman and have no sex, | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
that is not actually prostitution, that is alimony. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:14 | |
And I have never paid for sex in my life, by the way, | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
never in my life have I paid for sex. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:23 | |
I've left some screaming tarts behind me in a fury! | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
I don't understand prostitution anyway. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:31 | |
What man wants to go to bed with a woman who has nothing but | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
total contempt for him and is only doing it for the money? | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
You can get that at home. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:38 | |
Monica Lewinsky arrived in London tonight. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:46 | |
Last night, actually, | 0:07:46 | 0:07:47 | |
She's 31 tomorrow. 31 years old. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
Gosh, seems like only yesterday she was crawling around on all fours | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
in the Oval Office. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:54 | |
So that is the way... | 0:07:57 | 0:07:58 | |
For those of you... There are professional comedians here, | 0:07:58 | 0:08:02 | |
and I'm very flattered and delighted that they are. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
Of course none of those headlines are in here, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:06 | |
they're all bits of paper I've stuck in here. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
Les Dennis, "number one", see? | 0:08:11 | 0:08:12 | |
There's absolutely no need to strain yourself, is there, really? | 0:08:15 | 0:08:18 | |
I think he knew that he didn't have a natural sort of stand-up persona | 0:08:18 | 0:08:22 | |
and he had to work at it, a bit like the Geoff Boycott | 0:08:22 | 0:08:27 | |
of stand-up, in a way. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:29 | |
"I'm going to practise more than anybody else." | 0:08:29 | 0:08:32 | |
I've had my great days, I suppose. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
I like to think of myself as one of those Superman characters, | 0:08:37 | 0:08:39 | |
I love the movies that show all the comic-book characters. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
My wife calls me Spider-Man. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
Even at my age, Spider-Man. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
That's because I can't get out of the bath unassisted. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
We had our, erm... | 0:08:58 | 0:09:00 | |
We had our 29th wedding anniversary last year, we'll be 30 this year. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:07 | |
I took her to Le Gavroche, you know, somewhere really posh. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:11 | |
It was horrible. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:13 | |
The head waiter was so snooty. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:15 | |
Ruined our evening. He came over... | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
I said, "I'd like the crab, toasted," | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
and he raised a glass of white wine to my wife and said, | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
"Your health, your health." | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
Which... Which ruined the... And then we went out in Barbados | 0:09:26 | 0:09:30 | |
and I took my wife shark-fishing, which was very... | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 | |
She didn't know she was shark-fishing. Thought she was water-skiing. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:39 | |
A joke is like this beautiful piece of precision engineering, | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
the perfect miniature three-act play - | 0:09:43 | 0:09:45 | |
beginning, middle, punchline - and Bob had this wonderful way of | 0:09:45 | 0:09:50 | |
just casting a look or establishing a sense of knowing with the audience, | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
just to really sell those key points of the gag, but without SELLING it. | 0:09:54 | 0:10:00 | |
He knew how to make those connections so subtly | 0:10:00 | 0:10:02 | |
and make the material work so beautifully. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
A Rolls-Royce of gag-tellers. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:06 | |
This is the Albany Comedy Club, by the way. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:10 | |
Not just comedy - they have a stripper in here every night. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
They take the label off and call it vodka. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:15 | |
When in doubt, wait, and then wait some more. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
I have had a sex life, just in case... | 0:10:25 | 0:10:28 | |
Don't look at me with too much pity. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:31 | |
As a lad, I was fat and plain and pimply. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
I couldn't strike up a conversation with a girl of my own age, | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
and I devised... It sounds ludicrous now, but I thought it would work - | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
there used to be a bar on the way through to a dance hall, | 0:10:41 | 0:10:44 | |
where I lived in Beckenham, Kent. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:46 | |
You probably know I come from Kent. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:48 | |
I hear people mention the word, they mutter it as they see me. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:51 | |
And I managed to get a set of six industrial-strength magnets, | 0:10:56 | 0:11:03 | |
very powerful little magnets, like little, heavy Polo mints, | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
and I sewed them in a semicircle around the fly of my trousers, | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
and I posed on a stool not unlike this one, thus, | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
hoping that a girl might pass by on her way into the dance hall | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
wearing a lot of rings on her fingers. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
Entering my field of magnetic attraction, you understand, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
her hand would, inadvertently and uncontrollably, fly into my fly, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:26 | |
as it were, and we could strike up an elegant conversation based upon... | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
Not a bad scheme. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:32 | |
Well, I must have been looking that way when this short man with braces on his teeth came by... | 0:11:32 | 0:11:38 | |
He still writes. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:42 | |
'He was a wonderful stand-up comedian.' | 0:11:47 | 0:11:49 | |
And even on that night, | 0:11:49 | 0:11:51 | |
even allowing for the fact he was tired and he was ill, | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
his technique is still fantastic, his timing is fantastic. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:57 | |
The devices he has to delay a punchline, just little things, | 0:11:57 | 0:12:02 | |
there's one bit where he just licks his eyebrow, like that, | 0:12:02 | 0:12:06 | |
and it's just clever. They're all deliberate as well. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
You know, as a stand-up yourself, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
you know these are deliberate things, not just tics or gestures. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:13 | |
I had an affair with a lady optician once, who drove me mad in bed. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:16 | |
She kept saying, "Is it better like this or better like that? | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
"Is it better like..." | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
Guys used to come back from overseas with infections, you know, | 0:12:24 | 0:12:28 | |
social inconveniences... | 0:12:28 | 0:12:30 | |
and they would say to their ladies, "I swear to God, | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
"I haven't been with another woman, I swear to God I haven't. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
"I must have got it off a toilet seat." | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
This was the story. Whenever guys came back from overseas, | 0:12:38 | 0:12:40 | |
"I must have got this infection from a toilet seat." | 0:12:40 | 0:12:42 | |
And I always wondered whether you could do that. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:45 | |
And I said to the doctor, | 0:12:45 | 0:12:46 | |
"Is it possible that an innocent man such as myself | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
"could get a social infection from a toilet seat?" | 0:12:49 | 0:12:51 | |
You know what he said? | 0:12:51 | 0:12:53 | |
"Yes. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:55 | |
"Yes, if you sit down before the other fella's got up, yes." | 0:12:55 | 0:12:59 | |
You need eyes in the back of your head, ladies and gentlemen. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
His timing, technical ability, for him as a comedian, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
is just really lovely to watch, cos he's very slick. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:14 | |
I don't mean that in a smooth, smarmy way, I mean, he's just slick. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:18 | |
Funny thing is, | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
there are a number of guys and a couple of gals here tonight | 0:13:21 | 0:13:25 | |
who are funny for money. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:26 | |
Generally speaking, it's a lonely path to walk. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
Got to find your own way to it. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:31 | |
I found my way to get exposure on TV was to get myself a vehicle, | 0:13:31 | 0:13:35 | |
a game show. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
There are disadvantages. People think that's all you do. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
They think you're just a game-show host. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
For about 20 years, that's all I did on television, | 0:13:42 | 0:13:44 | |
and people see me coming and they go, | 0:13:44 | 0:13:48 | |
"It's Monkhouse. That's bleedin' Monkhouse. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
"He's got prizes..." | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
"I'll keep him talking, you look for his van." | 0:13:58 | 0:14:00 | |
And then I'd ask the time, they'd get it right, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:03 | |
they'd expect a bloody food mixer. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:05 | |
Only certain shows were difficult to do. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:09 | |
The National Lottery was a bugger to do, | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
because people didn't tune in to hear jokes, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:13 | |
they tuned in to see the National Lottery, see if they've won, | 0:14:13 | 0:14:16 | |
so they had no sense of humour when they tuned in the National Lottery. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
I'm there doing 17 minutes live on a Saturday or a Wednesday, | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
presenting the National Lottery. A thankless task, I'll tell you that. | 0:14:22 | 0:14:25 | |
I'm doing gags that deeply offend people. | 0:14:25 | 0:14:28 | |
I said, in Eastbourne they'd opened a new branch of Next, | 0:14:28 | 0:14:31 | |
and it was a funeral parlour. Well... | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
Jammed switchboard, right away. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:39 | |
I had a gag about dyslexia and the producer said to me, | 0:14:39 | 0:14:42 | |
"Oh, my God, you've done a gag about dyslexia." | 0:14:42 | 0:14:45 | |
He said, "We're going to get letters." I said, "No, we're not." | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
"Some bugger's going to get 'em, but not us!" | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
We were in Sicily, and they have a national lottery there, | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
and it was really weird, because the guy came on doing the news, | 0:15:06 | 0:15:09 | |
" 'Ello, is ze news from Sicily 'ere. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
"Very important - a man shot in broad daylight. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
"This is tomorrow by 9.30. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:20 | |
"And the national lottery, | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
"the winning ticket is 22, 33, 9, 44, 51, and... | 0:15:26 | 0:15:33 | |
"I don't know, 62. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
"Congratulations yet again, Don Vincenzo." | 0:15:36 | 0:15:38 | |
So you see, this was my living for 55 years. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:47 | |
And I am a gag merchant, but my heroes have always been comedians. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:52 | |
They've got to be people that you admire without reservation, | 0:15:52 | 0:15:56 | |
and I grew up watching the great comics of variety theatre. | 0:15:56 | 0:16:00 | |
And you know, Max Miller - you can't see him on film, it doesn't happen - | 0:16:00 | 0:16:04 | |
his eyes actually twinkled, those blue eyes actually... | 0:16:04 | 0:16:07 | |
they were hypnotic. And the great ones, | 0:16:07 | 0:16:11 | |
Max Wall, Jimmy James, and eventually Morecambe and Wise, | 0:16:11 | 0:16:15 | |
set up a world of their own comedy and said, | 0:16:15 | 0:16:17 | |
"You can come in if you want to, but, otherwise, we don't need you." | 0:16:17 | 0:16:21 | |
You had to go into their world that they'd invented. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
That was The Goons and that's, of course, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
The League Of Gentlemen and that was Monty Python. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:29 | |
Wonderful gift to be able to do that, to create a world of illusion, | 0:16:29 | 0:16:33 | |
of fantasy, and hypnotise your audience | 0:16:33 | 0:16:37 | |
so that they can't do without you. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:39 | |
Absolutely amazing to be sat there. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
A, to see him in the flesh, | 0:16:41 | 0:16:42 | |
but then for him to acknowledge our programme | 0:16:42 | 0:16:44 | |
that had only very recently been on the TV - it was quite new in 2003 - | 0:16:44 | 0:16:49 | |
and for him to think... I couldn't believe he'd seen it | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
and was referencing it in the same sphere as The Goons. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
It was a real honour to have him acknowledge it like that. | 0:16:55 | 0:16:59 | |
It was fantastic. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:00 | |
Sort of validated our version of the way we package our comedy. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:04 | |
Of course, it wasn't what he did, | 0:17:04 | 0:17:05 | |
but it was lovely for him to notice, you know? | 0:17:05 | 0:17:08 | |
When The Goons were hot on radio, every child was imitating them, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:12 | |
but so was every teacher. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:13 | |
So was every bluestocking, every don. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
It was amazing. So was Prince Charles. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
What do you want for a comedy infection greater than that? | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
Just marvellous. So I'm going to talk a little bit, | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
if you'll stay with me, about some of the great comedians | 0:17:26 | 0:17:30 | |
of my generation and the generation before. | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
But I grew up with a lot of them. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:35 | |
It segued into something totally unexpected, which was him, | 0:17:35 | 0:17:40 | |
not reminiscing, but explaining his relationship | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
with a lot of very famous people. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:46 | |
People say, well, Benny Hill was a terrible gag-writer. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
He didn't write gags, he remembered jokes. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:51 | |
A really smart-looking guy, | 0:17:51 | 0:17:54 | |
with his thick, wavy hair, and he really always had a lovely face. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
And the girls really loved him. | 0:17:57 | 0:17:59 | |
"We were in the West End together," he said - | 0:17:59 | 0:18:01 | |
cos he still had this West Country sound - | 0:18:01 | 0:18:03 | |
"We're going to open in the West End, going to be a smash hit." | 0:18:03 | 0:18:05 | |
Well, it was Westbourne Grove. It wasn't exactly the West End. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:08 | |
We were in a revue called Spotlight, at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre on | 0:18:08 | 0:18:13 | |
November the 7th, 1947, | 0:18:13 | 0:18:15 | |
and we did three nights and the agents came in to watch us. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:19 | |
And Benny was awful. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:20 | |
He had this terrible spot, which was really embarrassing, | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
cos he hated being himself. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:24 | |
He really hated talking in his own voice. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
So he used to rock from side to side, and talk like that, | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
and try to be posh. | 0:18:30 | 0:18:32 | |
And he had a red tie, so if a gag died he could go, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
"Oh! Thought me tongue was hanging out"... | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
..which, as an insurance line, loses something, I think, over the years. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:44 | |
And he just happened overnight, | 0:18:45 | 0:18:47 | |
and came up with such fertile ideas | 0:18:47 | 0:18:49 | |
for doing something on television no-one had ever done before, | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
split screen, all kinds of notions he could use which were televisual. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:56 | |
He just left me behind. We used to have a thing of being rivals on TV, | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
I would make jokes about him, call him Benny Hell or Belly Hill | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
or whatever, and he'd say Boob Monkhouse. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
But pretty soon we dropped that, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:07 | |
because he was just going to be so big. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:09 | |
I could see he was going to be big. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:10 | |
He was carrying me if he did those jokes about me, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:12 | |
so he dropped doing it and I understood. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:14 | |
You could never get to know Benny. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:16 | |
You could know him, and he was a dear, good friend, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
and generous and kind | 0:19:20 | 0:19:21 | |
in that he would go round his cast with a little plastic bag, | 0:19:21 | 0:19:24 | |
handing out oranges and apples to the girls. And, er... | 0:19:24 | 0:19:28 | |
..and he didn't ask much of life. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:31 | |
The cheques used to come in from the office of Richard Stone | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
and he would put them behind a plaster devil | 0:19:34 | 0:19:36 | |
that he kept on the mantelpiece, | 0:19:36 | 0:19:37 | |
and when it looked like the plaster devil was going to fall over | 0:19:37 | 0:19:40 | |
and break, he'd send the cheques in. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:41 | |
Otherwise he didn't even look at them. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
He didn't care about money at all. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:44 | |
He cared about being very thrifty. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:47 | |
All his furniture was stuff that he'd been given | 0:19:47 | 0:19:50 | |
for opening furniture shops, and he drank plonk. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:52 | |
He watched two TV sets at the same time, both of which he got free. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:57 | |
He used to buy tins of stuff rescued from a dock where | 0:19:57 | 0:20:01 | |
the labels had been washed off. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
He didn't know what it was, but he could get them for a penny each. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:06 | |
An old penny, an old 1d, yeah. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:08 | |
He would open them up - and you didn't know what you'd find inside - | 0:20:08 | 0:20:10 | |
and he would make great meals out of it. He was a good cook. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
He had a cold-water flat in Maida Vale. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:14 | |
You had to crawl up five floors to get to it. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:16 | |
He was extraordinarily parsimonious, | 0:20:16 | 0:20:18 | |
but at the same time he had a sweet, sweet nature | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
and he would go off during his free time | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
to two middle-aged ladies that he knew | 0:20:24 | 0:20:26 | |
and clean their homes, and do domestic work, voluntarily. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:30 | |
Now, you don't get stranger than that. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:33 | |
It wasn't a case of him saying, "Oh, I remember when..." | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
This was just... It was stuff that people didn't know, | 0:20:39 | 0:20:43 | |
because they hadn't seen him do this. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:45 | |
We saw him in game-show mode, you know. | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
We didn't know about this. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:49 | |
We didn't know he'd worked with all those brilliant people. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
I hope you're happy with my going through these names. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:54 | |
Peter Sellers. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:56 | |
Peter and I were together... | 0:20:56 | 0:20:58 | |
He was very fat and spoilt and awkward, | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
with thick, thick, wavy hair, | 0:21:03 | 0:21:05 | |
and he used to play the drums. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:06 | |
We were on the bill together at the Camberwell Palace, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:09 | |
which was a variety theatre. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:11 | |
And he did a rotten act. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:12 | |
Six minutes of drumming, which numbed the audience. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
It was awful. He was in heaven. His eyes were glazed. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:19 | |
And then he would get up and put a notice down | 0:21:19 | 0:21:21 | |
on the front of the stage that'd say, | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
"Mr Sellers is deaf, please applaud loudly," | 0:21:24 | 0:21:26 | |
which never got a laugh, | 0:21:26 | 0:21:27 | |
cos the audience is going, "What does that say?" | 0:21:27 | 0:21:29 | |
A dreadful thing to do. And then he would say, "My suit is too big. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:32 | |
"I had it made in Leeds. I'm a much bigger man there." I couldn't believe the stuff. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:36 | |
Then he did these brilliant impressions. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:37 | |
He was a master impressionist. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:39 | |
Wonderful voices. He did George Sanders, | 0:21:39 | 0:21:41 | |
who became Grytpype-Thynne in The Goon Show, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:43 | |
and he did Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, stars of the time. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
A brilliant George Formby, who was his hero. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:49 | |
Ha, wonderful. So I persuaded him to give up the drums. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:53 | |
It took a week. And I rewrote the jokes to make his impressions funny. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:57 | |
I really worked hard on him. | 0:21:57 | 0:21:59 | |
So by the end of the week, Friday, a guy called Alf Braden, | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
who was a talent scout for Van Damm's Windmill Theatre, | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
came round to see me, to book me for the Windmill. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:06 | |
Didn't like me - booked bloody Peter! | 0:22:06 | 0:22:08 | |
It was fantastic to hear about his time with Peter Sellers, | 0:22:08 | 0:22:11 | |
early time with Peter Sellers. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:12 | |
I was fascinated with how much he hated the mother. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:15 | |
The thing about Peter is he was obsessed with women, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:17 | |
but there was only one woman in his life, really. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:19 | |
That was his mother, Peg, who was a brute, and really unpleasant. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
And ugly, too. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:23 | |
I could never believe... Yeah, really, no kidding! | 0:22:23 | 0:22:27 | |
If you took her for a walk in the woods, she'd find truffles. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:29 | |
It was so savage, it was great. I thought, "What did she do to you?" | 0:22:31 | 0:22:35 | |
I could never believe that she was an act! | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
Apparently, she used... Long before, when Peter was a kid, | 0:22:38 | 0:22:42 | |
she used to swim about in a tank of water on the stage | 0:22:42 | 0:22:44 | |
in a skimpy bathing costume eating bananas. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:48 | |
Yakapoo! So, Peter wasn't happy with that life at all. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:52 | |
And by the time I met him, he'd been in the RAF, | 0:22:54 | 0:22:56 | |
he was a little older than me, er... | 0:22:56 | 0:22:58 | |
I had a machine! | 0:22:59 | 0:23:00 | |
I don't know, somebody told me about it, or I read about it, | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
called a Pickersgill Recorder. | 0:23:04 | 0:23:05 | |
No-one had ever heard of a personal recorder. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
But a guy called Pickersgill, engineering firm | 0:23:08 | 0:23:10 | |
in the North somewhere, made this thing, a great heavy turntable, | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
and you put an aluminium disc on it, covered with black wax, | 0:23:13 | 0:23:17 | |
and you put this thing on it and talked into a moving coil mic. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
And you recorded your voice on this disc. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
Which would be playable back, not with a regular needle, | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
with a thorn needle, and I could do auditions this way. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:28 | |
So, I recorded a whole lot of material, sent it to the BBC. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:31 | |
Got a couple of dates from this. Peter heard about it. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:33 | |
Now, he was a gadget man. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:34 | |
He said, "I want it. I'll pay you for it." | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
I said, "It cost me 80 quid and I had to wait six months for it." | 0:23:36 | 0:23:39 | |
In those days, you couldn't get things manufactured quickly. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:42 | |
"I'll give you 20% profit on it." "All right, what's that?" "£100." | 0:23:42 | 0:23:45 | |
Maths not good but I like that amount of money. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:47 | |
So, he came round with his father, | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
who Spike Milligan once described as a man who's been dead a long time | 0:23:49 | 0:23:52 | |
but nobody's interested in telling him. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:54 | |
A musician with a charisma bypass. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:58 | |
He was crushed by this dreadful mother, Peg. | 0:23:58 | 0:24:01 | |
You know, goes in for an ugly contest and they say, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:06 | |
"No professionals." Anyway... | 0:24:06 | 0:24:07 | |
It rains and water gushes out of her mouth, one of those jokes. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:14 | |
So... | 0:24:14 | 0:24:17 | |
So, Daddy comes around, Daddy comes round, collects the machine from me, | 0:24:17 | 0:24:21 | |
doesn't give me the money, takes the machine away. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:23 | |
Next thing I get is a call from Peg. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:26 | |
"You're not getting that money." | 0:24:26 | 0:24:28 | |
"Excuse me?" "Peter is not paying you a penny." | 0:24:28 | 0:24:30 | |
It was broken. The machine was broken. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
"It was fine when it left me." | 0:24:32 | 0:24:33 | |
"It's broken and we're not paying for it." | 0:24:33 | 0:24:35 | |
Next thing I know, a guy called Dennis Main Wilson, who's a producer | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
at the BBC, lovely guy, says, "We're getting some great discs | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
"from Peter Sellers, they're wonderful. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:43 | |
"They're being made at Strutton Ground | 0:24:43 | 0:24:45 | |
"in Jimmy Grafton's pub, | 0:24:45 | 0:24:46 | |
"with Michael Bentine and Spike Milligan | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
"and Harry Secombe and Johnny Vyvyan, | 0:24:49 | 0:24:51 | |
"and they're making these great discs, and we think they've sold it | 0:24:51 | 0:24:54 | |
"to the BBC as a radio show called Crazy People. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
"They want to call it The Goon Show. | 0:24:57 | 0:24:58 | |
"But at the BBC, they're saying, 'What is this Go On Show?'" | 0:24:58 | 0:25:01 | |
So, they didn't know what it was. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
And I realised that the machine was still working. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:06 | |
So, I got very peevish about it. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:08 | |
I realised at that point that Peter...was bonkers. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:13 | |
It seemed to me that he was saying things that he hadn't said before | 0:25:13 | 0:25:16 | |
or hadn't said for a long, long time. | 0:25:16 | 0:25:18 | |
When he started talking about his idols. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:20 | |
When he started talking about Peter Sellers. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:24 | |
And how much he'd helped Peter Sellers. | 0:25:24 | 0:25:26 | |
These are all things that we didn't know. | 0:25:26 | 0:25:28 | |
We were going to have a double wedding, him and Anne Levy, | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
and me and my first wife. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:32 | |
But Peter's terrible tempers, he used to go transparent. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:36 | |
I mean, you could see through his skin, he got so angry. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:38 | |
His eyes went crazy and he'd fall down | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
and drum his heels on the floor. | 0:25:41 | 0:25:43 | |
And you know the story about BE, I'm sure. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
He fell completely for a charlatan, | 0:25:46 | 0:25:48 | |
a guy who said he was a clairvoyant called Maurice Woodruff, | 0:25:48 | 0:25:52 | |
a total phoney. And Peter wouldn't do anything unless Maurice Woodruff | 0:25:52 | 0:25:56 | |
said, "That's OK to do." | 0:25:56 | 0:25:57 | |
Well, Woodruff got in cahoots with Peter's agent. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:00 | |
Lovely man called Dennis Selinger. | 0:26:00 | 0:26:02 | |
But whenever Dennis wanted Peter to do a date, or a show, or a film, | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
he'd call Maurice Woodruff and say, "Tell them to do this." | 0:26:05 | 0:26:09 | |
And Woodruff would do it. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:10 | |
He'd say, "I just had a tremendous message through. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:14 | |
"There is somebody with the initials BE. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:16 | |
"Whatever BE says, do it." He meant Blake Edwards. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:19 | |
And Blake Edwards had a movie that he wanted Peter to make. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
He'd done the deal with Dennis Selinger. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:24 | |
Now, in the week between meeting Blake Edwards, | 0:26:24 | 0:26:26 | |
Peter runs into Britt Ekland. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:28 | |
Marries her. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:32 | |
Goes off on a honeymoon with amyl nitrate. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:36 | |
That was the first of his major heart attacks. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:38 | |
He died at the age of 54. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:39 | |
He must have had seven heart attacks and he was eight times dead, | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
clinically, on the table. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
And I'm talking about heroes of mine. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:47 | |
I felt that the more he talked about other people, | 0:26:47 | 0:26:52 | |
a little bit out of school stories, he somehow, because it's him, | 0:26:52 | 0:26:57 | |
he has a cheekiness and a charm with him | 0:26:57 | 0:26:59 | |
that he can get away with it. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:01 | |
There was, I think, a moment, probably everybody was like, | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
"Hang on, this has changed, this is different. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:07 | |
"This is not the..." We were waiting for all the gags | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
that were going to come and it wasn't like that. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:11 | |
I know Peter Sellers was a genius. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:14 | |
The trouble with genius is you call a comedian a genius, | 0:27:15 | 0:27:18 | |
you're implying he's mad. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:19 | |
Peter was mad. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:21 | |
Dickie Henderson wasn't. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:25 | |
He was the most practical pro I've ever met in my life. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:28 | |
His dad was a good comic. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:30 | |
His dad used to come into the wings, hang a bowler hat on a nail, | 0:27:30 | 0:27:34 | |
walk on stage, do 20 minutes, walk off, that was it. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:37 | |
Do that twice nightly, that's a living. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:39 | |
Dickie grew up in the shadow of his father. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:42 | |
That's what you do. It's not inspiration. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:44 | |
"I'm not looking to be a major sensation. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:47 | |
"I'll do what my dad does. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:49 | |
"That's what they want? I'll slice them off that much sausage. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:52 | |
"And tomorrow night, that much sausage again." | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
Now, Dickie and I did a series called I'm Bob, He's Dickie. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
A big spectacular, six big one-hours for ATV. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
And I must have gone mad. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:04 | |
Because I said to Dickie, whom I loved, "You know, | 0:28:04 | 0:28:07 | |
"when I do a television show, I get about 50% of the available audience. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:13 | |
"And when you do a show, you get about 50% of the available audience. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:17 | |
"So, if we do a show together, | 0:28:17 | 0:28:19 | |
"we should get 100% of the available audience." | 0:28:19 | 0:28:22 | |
And Dickie said, "Dream your dream. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
"If we get 100% of the available audience, | 0:28:25 | 0:28:28 | |
"you can buy me a very large gin and tonic | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
"or I'll buy you an even bigger one." | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
Now we do the shows. | 0:28:34 | 0:28:36 | |
The ratings come in, they are invisible to the naked eye. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:39 | |
They are under the underfelt, we are a disaster! | 0:28:41 | 0:28:45 | |
And I said, "We're getting zero here." | 0:28:46 | 0:28:48 | |
And Dickie said, "Understand this, Bob. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:50 | |
"Half the available audience hates you..." | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
"The other half hates me, the bar is this way." | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
We should have been cherishing all the time we had with him, | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
whatever he was doing, | 0:29:07 | 0:29:09 | |
bit like Les Dawson on Blankety Blank, same thing. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:12 | |
He had done so much, and so much writing, | 0:29:13 | 0:29:17 | |
a prolific writer of gags for so many other comedians. | 0:29:17 | 0:29:20 | |
That was a fascinating early life that he had, constantly. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
Like Barry Cryer, working and writing for everybody. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:26 | |
When he talks about, you know, whimsically throws in his time | 0:29:26 | 0:29:29 | |
with Tommy Cooper, it's incredible to think of the greats | 0:29:29 | 0:29:32 | |
that he's just been around and absorbed from. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:34 | |
I was asked about Tommy Cooper. | 0:29:34 | 0:29:36 | |
In 1950, I'm in a show called Sauce Piquante | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
at the Cambridge Theatre in London and it's a weird show. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:41 | |
It ran three and a half hours. Had to be chopped. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:44 | |
Norman Wisdom was the surprise hit of the show. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:46 | |
He had 19 entrances which were then cut to three, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:49 | |
which he bitterly remembers now. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:50 | |
He's a very angry man still about that. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
Jesus, he's angry! | 0:29:53 | 0:29:55 | |
And in that show came Tommy Cooper, | 0:29:56 | 0:29:58 | |
who'd been a big success at the Windmill, and he came to the show. | 0:29:58 | 0:30:01 | |
When I first met him, he was about 6ft 6, | 0:30:01 | 0:30:04 | |
he had come out of the Guards, huge man, and he was bare to the waist. | 0:30:04 | 0:30:08 | |
He had his shirt off and he's in this crowded dressing room. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:10 | |
Me and Wisdom, he gives me a stick of Leichner, dark make-up. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
He says, "Do me a favour, write B-A-C-K across my shoulder blades." | 0:30:14 | 0:30:19 | |
So, I write B-A-C-K across his shoulder blades | 0:30:19 | 0:30:22 | |
and he puts his shirt on, saying, "That should end the confusion." | 0:30:22 | 0:30:25 | |
So, I have met a lunatic. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:29 | |
We were in London, once, Tom and I. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
And I was at Euston station, I was going to get a taxi and he said, | 0:30:33 | 0:30:36 | |
"Oh, no, you don't bother with that, go on the Tube." | 0:30:36 | 0:30:39 | |
I said, "Well, you know, people recognise you, Tom, | 0:30:39 | 0:30:42 | |
"and they might clock me and that could be a bit of a nuisance." | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
He said, "No, not in London." And he was quite right. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:48 | |
Because if you do that in Birmingham or Manchester or Carlisle, | 0:30:48 | 0:30:51 | |
people are going to clock you, but in London they'd ignore you. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:54 | |
I never understood this. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:55 | |
So, we went on the Tube and we were sitting there chatting | 0:30:55 | 0:30:59 | |
on the underground and this beggar came on - | 0:30:59 | 0:31:02 | |
disgusting-looking man, filthy, dirty, horrible man | 0:31:02 | 0:31:05 | |
with an awful mongrel under his arm going, "Rrrrr!" | 0:31:05 | 0:31:09 | |
I mean, really revolting sight. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:11 | |
And "need food" or something around his neck, horrible. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:15 | |
And he's going along the underground | 0:31:17 | 0:31:19 | |
and he's picking up money from people, | 0:31:19 | 0:31:21 | |
with "Rrr", the dog, and he gets to us, | 0:31:21 | 0:31:24 | |
and Tommy's talking to me about something quite important. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
And he looks up and this guy says, "I'm starving." | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
And Tommy said, | 0:31:31 | 0:31:33 | |
"Eat your fucking dog." | 0:31:33 | 0:31:34 | |
I never admired him more. | 0:31:42 | 0:31:44 | |
It was rendered more poignant by the fact that we knew he was ill, | 0:31:45 | 0:31:50 | |
without a doubt. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:51 | |
We knew it was unlikely that this time the following year | 0:31:51 | 0:31:55 | |
he'd still be with us. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:57 | |
Even though he touched on it, I don't think it was... | 0:31:57 | 0:32:01 | |
I don't think it was delivered or taken with great sadness. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:08 | |
We were all just enjoying this little pocket of time | 0:32:08 | 0:32:13 | |
in this tiny room with this legend. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:15 | |
One or two people have been kind enough to ask about my health, | 0:32:15 | 0:32:18 | |
which I greatly appreciate. I'm all right. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
A couple of years ago, I found my visits to the loo | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
in a seated position were becoming less and less productive, | 0:32:23 | 0:32:26 | |
and so I thought this is not just good old constipation, | 0:32:26 | 0:32:31 | |
which is fun, fun, fun, but it's worse than that. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:36 | |
So, they said, "You've got some kind of virus in the muscle | 0:32:36 | 0:32:40 | |
"and you've got some kind of arthritis." | 0:32:40 | 0:32:44 | |
And then it got worse, so they took me into... | 0:32:44 | 0:32:46 | |
..the Princess Grace Hospital in London, in Euston Road, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:52 | |
to give me an enema, and it didn't work. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:54 | |
So, they took me to Princess Grace again and it didn't work. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:57 | |
I was in Princess Grace more frequently | 0:32:57 | 0:32:59 | |
than Prince Rainier ever was. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:01 | |
They gave me a depth bomb called Picolax, | 0:33:05 | 0:33:09 | |
with which they tried to raise the Titanic, I have to say. | 0:33:09 | 0:33:12 | |
And I took this damn Picolax and they said, | 0:33:13 | 0:33:16 | |
"It'll work in exactly 60 minutes." | 0:33:16 | 0:33:19 | |
Nothing happened for about 12 hours | 0:33:19 | 0:33:21 | |
and then I gave birth to the Mississippi Delta. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:25 | |
And so, the following night, | 0:33:25 | 0:33:26 | |
there was a great mass of clay that was within me. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:30 | |
I don't know how many of you know this. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:32 | |
Are you familiar with the phrase "faecal impaction"? | 0:33:32 | 0:33:35 | |
I said, "Yeah, I saw it, Michael Douglas, Glenn Close." | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
But it's a build-up of waste matter that won't come out of you. | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
So, it came out of me, and I thought, | 0:33:45 | 0:33:47 | |
"That's it, I'm better now." | 0:33:47 | 0:33:48 | |
No, I wasn't, I was trembling and in great pain, so somebody accidentally | 0:33:48 | 0:33:52 | |
took my PSA measure, which is a measure of cancer in the blood. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:55 | |
PSA, prostate-specific antigens. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:58 | |
And they found that... Normally, I'm sure for every guy here, | 0:33:58 | 0:34:01 | |
and it's a male thing, it could be between two and ten. | 0:34:01 | 0:34:06 | |
Ten would be not so hot. 12 is bad. | 0:34:06 | 0:34:08 | |
I was 606, so they said, "Well, you're dying of cancer." | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
Oh, wow. So, you ask the inevitable question, "How long have I got?" | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
And the oncologist said, "Ten." | 0:34:16 | 0:34:18 | |
And I said, "Ten months, ten weeks?" And he said, "Nine..." | 0:34:18 | 0:34:21 | |
I thought, "That is a brilliantly dark joke!" | 0:34:27 | 0:34:32 | |
It was lovely to hear, "I'm all right now, I'm fine." | 0:34:32 | 0:34:35 | |
And it sort of set you at ease. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:38 | |
But you were fully aware that he had had a tussle with it | 0:34:38 | 0:34:42 | |
and it's a horrible thing to have to be making jokes about. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:46 | |
I'm still alive. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:47 | |
This is two years later nearly and it's working fine. | 0:34:47 | 0:34:50 | |
So, I'm all right. | 0:34:50 | 0:34:52 | |
I walk a little stiffly but you do. I'm 75, for Christ's sake. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:56 | |
Of course you're going to be a little awkward. | 0:34:56 | 0:34:58 | |
But, I mean, I will live as long as I can possibly live | 0:34:58 | 0:35:01 | |
and the medication is working, | 0:35:01 | 0:35:02 | |
so that takes care of that particular problem. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:04 | |
Now, I have never lost my admiration for this man. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:09 | |
And I've never lost my regret, | 0:35:09 | 0:35:11 | |
as I'm sure you have never lost your regret, | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
that he withdrew from show business as a professional on the scale | 0:35:14 | 0:35:17 | |
on which he originally performed. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:19 | |
It's a genuine privilege to me that he's come along at my invitation, | 0:35:19 | 0:35:24 | |
because he very seldom appears in public any more. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
And I'm so delighted that he wants to talk to me in front of you. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, would you welcome one of my heroes, | 0:35:30 | 0:35:34 | |
Mike Yarwood? | 0:35:34 | 0:35:35 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:35:35 | 0:35:38 | |
I feel like Dave Allen up here at the moment. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:07 | |
My God, Jesus, I've got to stop the stuff! | 0:36:11 | 0:36:14 | |
Anyway. So, how are you, Bob? | 0:36:14 | 0:36:16 | |
I'm great, Mike. | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
I can't believe it's so long ago | 0:36:18 | 0:36:19 | |
that I was playing cabaret at the Garrick Lee. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:22 | |
Garrick Lee, yes. | 0:36:22 | 0:36:23 | |
-You came in the door and stood there watching me do my act. -Yes. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:27 | |
Because you knew that we were together that summer season | 0:36:27 | 0:36:30 | |
for six months. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:31 | |
Oh, God, yes, right into the illuminations at Blackpool. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:34 | |
That's right, we opened in May, and finished off the illuminations | 0:36:34 | 0:36:37 | |
in November 1965, on the Central Pier. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:41 | |
-I still have the poster. -Yeah, me too. | 0:36:41 | 0:36:44 | |
And you were wonderful. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:46 | |
At that time, you had just zapped the viewing audience | 0:36:46 | 0:36:51 | |
with your impressions of Harold Wilson, | 0:36:51 | 0:36:53 | |
and no-one had ever done a politician before. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:55 | |
Well, no, they hadn't actually. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:56 | |
John Bird had done it on TW3. | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
But I was doing it live on the road, if you like. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:03 | |
And he wasn't, he was just doing it on That Was The Week That Was. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:08 | |
But the big trick for me in those days was Steptoe And Son. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:12 | |
Yeah. And it's still running today, so you could still do it. | 0:37:12 | 0:37:16 | |
I used to do Steptoe And Son together. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:18 | |
"You dirty little man." "Cor blimey, Harold!" | 0:37:18 | 0:37:22 | |
"Don't put me in an old folks' home, Harold, please, don't." | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
"Oh, God, you disgust me!" | 0:37:30 | 0:37:32 | |
And that was my big finish. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:37 | |
Harold Wilson was sort of tucked away somewhere else in the act. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:41 | |
What I did with...like for instance Harold Wilson | 0:37:41 | 0:37:44 | |
is rather than just say, "Well, here we go, | 0:37:44 | 0:37:46 | |
"this is what Harold Wilson sounds like, I THINK, | 0:37:46 | 0:37:49 | |
"tell me what you think," I would then put in little bits of business. | 0:37:49 | 0:37:53 | |
IMITATES: And get into this sort of a posture, like... | 0:37:53 | 0:37:58 | |
"I doubt if I could sit on this if I were alive." | 0:37:58 | 0:38:01 | |
-And then he'd have a laugh. -HE LAUGHS | 0:38:04 | 0:38:07 | |
"Oh, Mary, have you heard this? | 0:38:10 | 0:38:11 | |
"Bob Monkhouse is still working." | 0:38:13 | 0:38:14 | |
And silliness. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:19 | |
And I never really wanted to put any... | 0:38:19 | 0:38:21 | |
there didn't need to be narrative, really. Just silliness. | 0:38:21 | 0:38:25 | |
I love silly humour. | 0:38:25 | 0:38:26 | |
And I thought, "Let's make Harold Wilson silly | 0:38:26 | 0:38:29 | |
"and let's make a lot of our characters silly." | 0:38:29 | 0:38:31 | |
Doing comedians is different because you've got to really be funny, | 0:38:31 | 0:38:35 | |
because if you're going to do Bob Monkhouse, | 0:38:35 | 0:38:37 | |
he's funny, so you must be funny, or...well, you know... | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
Oh, you nailed me! | 0:38:47 | 0:38:49 | |
-AS MONKHOUSE: -I sat over there earlier, enraptured, Bob, at your... | 0:38:53 | 0:38:57 | |
not just as a comic but a raconteur. | 0:38:57 | 0:38:59 | |
Or was it a racketeer? I'm not sure which. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:03 | |
It always killed me because you used to do... | 0:39:05 | 0:39:07 | |
-AS FRANKIE HOWERD: -Oh, God, don't look. Poor soul, I'm dribbling. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
Oh, no, don't titter! | 0:39:10 | 0:39:12 | |
You used to do impressions of me in routines | 0:39:16 | 0:39:18 | |
that were written by David Renwick | 0:39:18 | 0:39:20 | |
and they were so brilliant and I used to score so well with them | 0:39:20 | 0:39:23 | |
that a week later people would say to me, "I saw you last week, | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
"you were marvellous on television." And they thought, | 0:39:26 | 0:39:28 | |
because they couldn't remember the details, that it was you. | 0:39:28 | 0:39:31 | |
-But you know the story, I'm sorry, Bob. -No, go ahead. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:33 | |
The story about Max Bygraves. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:35 | |
I was doing an impression of Bob on one of his shows and I was doing | 0:39:35 | 0:39:38 | |
the smallest books in the world, | 0:39:38 | 0:39:40 | |
like Famous Jewish Cricketers, and... | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
..Australian Etiquette, that kind of thing. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:49 | |
And one of them was, | 0:39:50 | 0:39:52 | |
I was doing Bob Monkhouse. "The smallest book in the world. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:55 | |
"Do you know what the smallest book in the world is? | 0:39:55 | 0:39:57 | |
"The Wit Of Max Bygraves." | 0:39:57 | 0:39:59 | |
And a couple of weeks later, I was doing the Royal Variety, | 0:39:59 | 0:40:02 | |
if I may show-drop... | 0:40:02 | 0:40:04 | |
Yeah, it needs dropping, doesn't it? | 0:40:05 | 0:40:07 | |
Sorry, I keep doing that. Just nerves. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:14 | |
And I'd done The Wit Of Max Bygraves as Bob | 0:40:14 | 0:40:16 | |
and Max Bygraves came up to me in the dressing room | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
at the Royal Albert Hall and said, "Here, I saw the show last week. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:23 | |
"What about all this The Wit Of Max Bygraves, | 0:40:23 | 0:40:26 | |
"the smallest book in the world? | 0:40:26 | 0:40:27 | |
"I thought we were supposed to be mates." | 0:40:27 | 0:40:30 | |
I said, "Well, I was doing Bob Monkhouse." | 0:40:30 | 0:40:32 | |
He said, "What the hell's that got to do with it?" | 0:40:32 | 0:40:35 | |
I said, "Well, it's the sort of joke Bob would do, | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
"not the sort of joke I would do about you." | 0:40:39 | 0:40:42 | |
I thought, "I'm getting away with this." | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
And he said, "Well, I've got to hand it to you, | 0:40:50 | 0:40:52 | |
"that's one hell of a get-out." | 0:40:52 | 0:40:54 | |
"What I'll do, I'll ring Monkhouse and give him a bollocking." | 0:40:54 | 0:40:57 | |
That's wonderful! | 0:41:00 | 0:41:02 | |
I have admired Mike Yarwood for as long as I can remember | 0:41:02 | 0:41:07 | |
and to see him walk out with Bob Monkhouse, | 0:41:07 | 0:41:12 | |
well, we couldn't believe our luck. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:14 | |
Mike Yarwood came out and the first couple of minutes, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:17 | |
the first thing he's doing is more or less exact, | 0:41:17 | 0:41:19 | |
he's doing a couple of voices or whatever, because | 0:41:19 | 0:41:21 | |
that's his comfort zone, but then when he drops that | 0:41:21 | 0:41:25 | |
and starts to talk about how his life is at that point... | 0:41:25 | 0:41:30 | |
Every comedian here in the audience experiences the high of | 0:41:30 | 0:41:37 | |
getting the buzz out of an audience that loves what they do. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:40 | |
-Oh, yes. -Don't you miss that, Mike? | 0:41:40 | 0:41:42 | |
Yes, I do, of course. Of course I do. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:45 | |
I've heard laughter here tonight since I came on stage | 0:41:45 | 0:41:49 | |
and there's nothing to beat it, really. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
I think what I had to do with myself was actually rethink. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:57 | |
What I was doing with the shows, | 0:41:57 | 0:41:59 | |
cos they finished in 1987 and I started getting a little bit... | 0:41:59 | 0:42:03 | |
not too finicky about the scripts and thinking, | 0:42:03 | 0:42:06 | |
"As long as I look like the people, as long as it looks good, | 0:42:06 | 0:42:09 | |
"as long as I look like Reagan or I look like Bob Monkhouse or whoever, | 0:42:09 | 0:42:13 | |
"it doesn't matter whether it's funny or not." | 0:42:13 | 0:42:15 | |
And the laughs stopped. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
I went out on the road | 0:42:18 | 0:42:19 | |
and I could see the colour of the seats in the theatre. | 0:42:19 | 0:42:23 | |
Whereas at one time I could never tell you the colour of the seats | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
because it was packed. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:27 | |
And that went in the '80s. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:29 | |
Oh, yes, I was playing... I went down to Bournemouth in 1984 | 0:42:29 | 0:42:33 | |
-and it was 30 and 40 people in the first house. -I didn't know that! | 0:42:33 | 0:42:37 | |
And that's what made me think, "What the hell? | 0:42:37 | 0:42:39 | |
"I don't want to do this. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:41 | |
"I don't want to sort of hang around when I'm not as good as I was | 0:42:41 | 0:42:46 | |
"and I'm not as sharp as I was. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:48 | |
"I need to take a long break. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
At least two years, anyway, I thought. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
But the trouble is it's like a parking space. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:55 | |
You mustn't move your car unless you have to, because when you get back | 0:42:55 | 0:42:58 | |
-somebody else has parked there. -Yes. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:00 | |
And I stayed away and when I got back, | 0:43:00 | 0:43:02 | |
I'd been more or less replaced, if you like. | 0:43:02 | 0:43:06 | |
It would be very easy to take things out of context, | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
look at Mike Yarwood's show in 1972 or something, | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
and he could do Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, Brian Clough, | 0:43:12 | 0:43:15 | |
a couple of other people, probably not as well, | 0:43:15 | 0:43:17 | |
if you look back at it now, as we thought at the time, I don't know. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:21 | |
And it'd be very easy to dismiss it but that would be as daft | 0:43:21 | 0:43:24 | |
as sort of saying Isaac Newton was a rubbish scientist | 0:43:24 | 0:43:28 | |
because not all his theories of motion were right. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:31 | |
At the time, at the time, it was... | 0:43:31 | 0:43:34 | |
With what they had to go on, | 0:43:34 | 0:43:37 | |
they were brilliant. You've got to sort of see it in the context | 0:43:37 | 0:43:40 | |
of the times and Mike Yarwood was, | 0:43:40 | 0:43:42 | |
I don't know if I'm right in saying this, he was certainly | 0:43:42 | 0:43:44 | |
the first superstar impressionist on television, | 0:43:44 | 0:43:47 | |
and so he was coming from nowhere. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:49 | |
He had no-one to copy or anything. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:51 | |
It seems a daft thing to say about impressionists | 0:43:51 | 0:43:53 | |
but he was just trying it himself, and so... | 0:43:53 | 0:43:56 | |
..it was tremendously innovative and I loved it, | 0:43:57 | 0:44:00 | |
absolutely loved it when I was a kid. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
But you were loading in new voices all the time. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:05 | |
Well, not that many. We did quite a few. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:08 | |
On my last show I did nine new characters | 0:44:08 | 0:44:10 | |
but that was the point, you see. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:12 | |
It was like I was doing people for the sake of it, | 0:44:12 | 0:44:16 | |
just to fill in every show, seven shows, ten shows, | 0:44:16 | 0:44:19 | |
plus a Christmas special. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:20 | |
And you find yourself then doing it for the sake of it | 0:44:20 | 0:44:25 | |
and I don't do anybody of today's ilk. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:29 | |
I don't do Tony Blair, I've never even tried to. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
And so all of those new characters that we're seeing people do now, | 0:44:33 | 0:44:40 | |
like Jon, and others, they are... they're a no-go area to me. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:43 | |
I don't bother. I don't think I really want to do it again. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:47 | |
No, I understand that. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:49 | |
What I miss is your comedy. | 0:44:49 | 0:44:51 | |
I mean, the fact that the impressions perhaps became outdated | 0:44:51 | 0:44:54 | |
or less familiar is not as important to me | 0:44:54 | 0:44:57 | |
as the fact that you can get up when you do, | 0:44:57 | 0:44:59 | |
as you did at your daughter's wedding, | 0:44:59 | 0:45:01 | |
as you did at my This Is Your Life, | 0:45:01 | 0:45:03 | |
and you simply ad-lib and you are brilliant. | 0:45:03 | 0:45:05 | |
You are as funny as any of the people you've ever imitated, | 0:45:05 | 0:45:08 | |
from Eric Morecambe to Harry Worth. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:10 | |
You just are...wonderfully a funny man. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:12 | |
-Why can't we have that comedy from you? -Well, it's not up to me. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
I would certainly... I'm not... | 0:45:15 | 0:45:17 | |
When I said I don't really enjoy doing the impressions any more, | 0:45:17 | 0:45:20 | |
I mean in the context that I did them then. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:24 | |
That type of show, | 0:45:24 | 0:45:26 | |
which is being done anyway now. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:27 | |
We've got Dead Ringers, we've got Alistair, | 0:45:27 | 0:45:30 | |
we've got Rory Bremner, and so... | 0:45:30 | 0:45:32 | |
..for me to come back now, | 0:45:33 | 0:45:35 | |
I need to come back with something different, I think. | 0:45:35 | 0:45:37 | |
Not a game show but something that might help me... | 0:45:37 | 0:45:40 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:45:40 | 0:45:42 | |
No, I wouldn't see you doing a game show. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:44 | |
No! | 0:45:44 | 0:45:46 | |
When was the crunch point, Mike? | 0:45:46 | 0:45:48 | |
Because we know that you've been very frank about alcoholism | 0:45:48 | 0:45:52 | |
and you've helped a lot of people who suffer from that disease, | 0:45:52 | 0:45:55 | |
but what was the point at which you said, | 0:45:55 | 0:45:57 | |
"No, I can't walk out there any more"? When was that? | 0:45:57 | 0:46:01 | |
Because we've all...every comedian here has faced that point where you go, | 0:46:03 | 0:46:06 | |
"I don't think I can do it tonight." | 0:46:06 | 0:46:08 | |
Yeah. It was on the way... | 0:46:08 | 0:46:10 | |
in the car, going to a... | 0:46:10 | 0:46:13 | |
There is a sort of dark humour to this. | 0:46:13 | 0:46:16 | |
I got an anxiety attack in the car - | 0:46:16 | 0:46:18 | |
being driven, I wasn't driving myself - | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
to do a radio show with Dr Anthony Clare, | 0:46:20 | 0:46:23 | |
The Psychiatrist's Chair, | 0:46:23 | 0:46:25 | |
and I got a panic, an anxiety attack. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
-LAUGHTER -Yes! | 0:46:28 | 0:46:30 | |
Please laugh, because I think it's funny as well. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:46:33 | 0:46:34 | |
And I said to the driver, he'd been driving for me for years, | 0:46:34 | 0:46:38 | |
he was like a mate as well. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:39 | |
"Lou," I said, "you've got to turn around." | 0:46:39 | 0:46:42 | |
He said, "What's the matter?" I said, "I just feel bloody awful." | 0:46:42 | 0:46:45 | |
Really like this. | 0:46:45 | 0:46:47 | |
"You've got to turn round, I can't do this." | 0:46:47 | 0:46:49 | |
So he turned and he said, "OK, boy," | 0:46:49 | 0:46:51 | |
Welshman, lovely Welshman, he said, "All right, boyo, we'll turn round." | 0:46:51 | 0:46:54 | |
And we went back and as soon as we started to drive home, I felt fine. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:58 | |
It was almost like saying, "Turn around and we'll go back again. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:01 | |
"No, it'll come back again," you know. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:03 | |
But the point was that I was going to see this psychiatrist | 0:47:03 | 0:47:07 | |
who could've helped me anyway, | 0:47:07 | 0:47:09 | |
and I could have walked away with, instead of a fee, | 0:47:09 | 0:47:12 | |
a prescription. | 0:47:12 | 0:47:13 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:47:13 | 0:47:15 | |
So that was really the first time I thought, | 0:47:15 | 0:47:18 | |
"Hey, you really can't do this." | 0:47:18 | 0:47:20 | |
Because so many shows got cancelled. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
I mean, there were other shows, Bob. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:24 | |
And I was so lucky because it didn't get into the newspapers | 0:47:24 | 0:47:28 | |
on most occasions. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:30 | |
He spoke about those subjects so honestly, | 0:47:30 | 0:47:33 | |
and I think the warmth and grace of being with his great friend Bob, | 0:47:33 | 0:47:37 | |
it brought out a wonderful honesty to that conversation. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:41 | |
Once again, we were so lucky to see that, too. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:44 | |
These two men who were on TV all your... | 0:47:44 | 0:47:48 | |
growing up, you know, you were watching them, | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
that they were vulnerable. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:53 | |
And it was real life and they were sharing it with everybody, | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
and that's where the evening... it turned into... | 0:47:56 | 0:48:00 | |
actually you could have heard a pin drop. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:02 | |
It went very, very quiet. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:03 | |
You have made attempts to come back. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:05 | |
I mean, your John Major at the Royal Variety Performance was one. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:08 | |
Yes, but I had throat trouble that night, | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
plus I never did him very well anyway. It looked OK. | 0:48:11 | 0:48:14 | |
But you've also made other attempts to overcome this reluctance to perform. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:19 | |
You've been back in the studio a few times. | 0:48:19 | 0:48:21 | |
Oh, yeah, coming here tonight, | 0:48:21 | 0:48:23 | |
when you asked me to come here, I thought, | 0:48:23 | 0:48:26 | |
well, I don't socialise much, I am a semi-recluse. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
I don't go out that very often, but I do love to go out. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:33 | |
I've got my daughters, I've got my little grandson, three months old. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:37 | |
I've got all of that in my life, which is absolutely beautiful, | 0:48:37 | 0:48:40 | |
but to me, this is like a lovely evening out for me | 0:48:40 | 0:48:43 | |
and I'll get up tomorrow morning and I'll think, | 0:48:43 | 0:48:45 | |
"I went out last night," and I'll tell my kids, | 0:48:45 | 0:48:47 | |
"I went out last night." "Where did you go?" | 0:48:47 | 0:48:49 | |
"I went and recorded an interview with Bob Monkhouse." | 0:48:49 | 0:48:52 | |
Cos I don't go out, just... | 0:48:52 | 0:48:54 | |
I don't go in pubs any more. | 0:48:54 | 0:48:55 | |
So, you know, this is a lovely way to spend an evening, Bob. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
So it is a quiet life? | 0:48:58 | 0:49:00 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:49:00 | 0:49:02 | |
I don't see any better note on which to conclude this, Mike. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
I think that's wonderful. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:17 | |
-You speak with contentment... -Yes. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:19 | |
-..and it's wonderful to see. -Yes. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:21 | |
And a great many of us, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:23 | |
myself included, I guess, | 0:49:23 | 0:49:25 | |
go on seeking some kind of other contentment as a performer. | 0:49:25 | 0:49:30 | |
You've found an answer. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:31 | |
-Are you happy, Mike? -Yes, I am very happy. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:34 | |
And it's not particularly good money for this show but I'm happy. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:38 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:49:41 | 0:49:43 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, | 0:49:47 | 0:49:49 | |
my grateful thanks to my dear friend and great hero, Mike Yarwood. | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING | 0:49:52 | 0:49:55 | |
Thank you, Mike, thank you. | 0:50:05 | 0:50:07 | |
That was really from the heart. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
If there's any questions that anyone wants to ask that might produce | 0:50:18 | 0:50:21 | |
a productive answer of any kind from me, I'll be happy to try it. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:24 | |
I see a hand up. Thank you. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:26 | |
Are there any tricks of the trade you're prepared to share with us? | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
Oh, yeah. I learned from so many people who preceded me | 0:50:29 | 0:50:32 | |
with tricks of the trade. There were tricks, I still use them. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:36 | |
You absorb them, not through imitation - | 0:50:36 | 0:50:38 | |
though that's perfectly legitimate - | 0:50:38 | 0:50:41 | |
you see something that works, you go, "Wow, that works." | 0:50:41 | 0:50:43 | |
Somehow the next night you're doing it. | 0:50:43 | 0:50:46 | |
Arthur Askey, the tiny, wonderful comedian that I first saw in 1937, | 0:50:46 | 0:50:50 | |
when I was, what, nine years old, eight years old. | 0:50:50 | 0:50:53 | |
I saw him do things that I never forgot, | 0:50:53 | 0:50:56 | |
so that if he had a gag, and you know this happens to every comedian, | 0:50:56 | 0:51:00 | |
you've got a piece of material you know is worth applause but | 0:51:00 | 0:51:03 | |
that crowd is not going to applaud it because they're not yet ready, | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
they're not hot enough. So Arthur used to do a check step back, | 0:51:06 | 0:51:09 | |
as if he was leaving, just psychologically. | 0:51:09 | 0:51:11 | |
It wasn't really leaving, nobody thought that, | 0:51:11 | 0:51:14 | |
but he'd do a step back and he'd clap, and the clap, | 0:51:14 | 0:51:16 | |
that sound would start someone else going, | 0:51:16 | 0:51:19 | |
and that would multiply and he'd get a round of applause on that gag. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:23 | |
Just through the technique of the moving back and a "ha-ha", | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
the little triumphant laugh - "That's a belter." | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
Has your sharp-suited, smooth image ever hindered the comedy? | 0:51:29 | 0:51:34 | |
I wanted to be Bob Hope, really, | 0:51:34 | 0:51:36 | |
who's left us at the age of 100 and two months. | 0:51:36 | 0:51:40 | |
He was my role model. | 0:51:40 | 0:51:42 | |
I thought, that's slick, that's smart, but he runs himself down. | 0:51:42 | 0:51:46 | |
He comes out looking smooth and sharp, | 0:51:46 | 0:51:48 | |
but then he tells the crowd that he's not good with women, | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
he's cowardly and he's cheap. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:53 | |
The men relax, the women don't believe the lie. | 0:51:53 | 0:51:56 | |
LIGHT LAUGHTER | 0:51:56 | 0:51:58 | |
They go along with the illusion. | 0:51:58 | 0:52:00 | |
So I always thought that, right from the start, | 0:52:00 | 0:52:02 | |
I should wear a good suit, good tie, | 0:52:02 | 0:52:04 | |
good...you know, pay the audience that compliment, | 0:52:04 | 0:52:07 | |
because I hadn't anything else to offer. | 0:52:07 | 0:52:09 | |
You can see that model, there is an element of Bob Hope to him, | 0:52:09 | 0:52:12 | |
even in his sort of flirting with his film career, as well, | 0:52:12 | 0:52:15 | |
which was fascinating to see some of his film appearances. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:17 | |
He's really good. | 0:52:17 | 0:52:19 | |
-Sir? -How do you cope with hecklers? | 0:52:19 | 0:52:21 | |
-Hecklers? -Yeah. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:23 | |
So if somebody starts heckling you, sometimes they can be deadly. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:27 | |
Frank Skinner had one of the greatest, you probably know it. | 0:52:27 | 0:52:30 | |
He was taking one of those tremendous pauses that Frank takes | 0:52:30 | 0:52:34 | |
in some club in Rugeley. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:36 | |
There was a blind guy in the front row with a guide dog and white stick, | 0:52:36 | 0:52:41 | |
and the guy... Frank's paused, | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
and the guy says, "Fuck off, you're not funny, fuck off." | 0:52:44 | 0:52:47 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:52:47 | 0:52:49 | |
And Frank stands there, there's a long silence, and the guy says, | 0:52:49 | 0:52:52 | |
"Has he fucked off?" | 0:52:52 | 0:52:54 | |
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE | 0:52:54 | 0:52:57 | |
Roy Castle had a great one. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:00 | |
He was playing Friday night at the Dudley Hippodrome, | 0:53:00 | 0:53:03 | |
which was dire and you had about 15 people in if you were lucky. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:07 | |
And a guy up on one side of the balcony goes, | 0:53:07 | 0:53:10 | |
"Could somebody switch the light off, please? | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
"I'd like to have a doze." | 0:53:13 | 0:53:15 | |
Roy stands there silently, and a man on the other side goes, | 0:53:17 | 0:53:19 | |
"Don't do that, I'm bloody reading." | 0:53:19 | 0:53:21 | |
But Paul Daniels has the greatest story, if I may risk boring you. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
He's playing La Ronde, Billingham... | 0:53:29 | 0:53:31 | |
Ha-ha! Remember that bloody date? | 0:53:33 | 0:53:35 | |
And he comes out to... | 0:53:37 | 0:53:39 | |
The whole place has been bought out by a private society | 0:53:39 | 0:53:42 | |
and Paul's coming on, you know, "I'm on in five minutes," | 0:53:42 | 0:53:45 | |
and the guy who's the secretary to the club goes out | 0:53:45 | 0:53:49 | |
and his cheeks are wet. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:52 | |
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you that Big Bill, | 0:53:52 | 0:53:56 | |
"Big Bill Campbell..." HE SOBS | 0:53:56 | 0:53:59 | |
"our chairman, | 0:53:59 | 0:54:01 | |
"on his way tonight, he suffered a fatal heart attack. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:06 | |
"We all loved Big Bill, but he's gone." | 0:54:07 | 0:54:10 | |
"He's dead." | 0:54:12 | 0:54:14 | |
"And I'm sorry to bring you this news..." He's crying, "Oh, God." | 0:54:15 | 0:54:19 | |
Strong men were weeping, women fainted. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:22 | |
The man was adored by all 500 people, they were just in pieces. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:26 | |
"Oh, ladies and gentlemen, we'll have a couple of minutes' silence | 0:54:26 | 0:54:30 | |
"for Big Bill." | 0:54:30 | 0:54:32 | |
HE SOBS | 0:54:35 | 0:54:37 | |
"All right, now here's your entertainment - Paul Daniels." | 0:54:39 | 0:54:42 | |
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
Wait, there's more. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:48 | |
Paul walks out | 0:54:48 | 0:54:50 | |
and the god of comedy must've leaned down from the clouds | 0:54:50 | 0:54:53 | |
and just touched him on the head. | 0:54:53 | 0:54:55 | |
Paul walks out and he says, "Ladies and gentlemen, | 0:54:55 | 0:54:58 | |
"I've no desire to entertain you tonight whatsoever, | 0:54:58 | 0:55:02 | |
"and I'm sure you've no desire to hear me entertain you. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:05 | |
"It's a question of just being brave, isn't it? | 0:55:05 | 0:55:08 | |
"And ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to entertain you, | 0:55:08 | 0:55:11 | |
"I'll tell you why, because, | 0:55:11 | 0:55:13 | |
"Big Bill, this one's for you." | 0:55:13 | 0:55:16 | |
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE | 0:55:16 | 0:55:18 | |
Bob's respect for other comedians is his legacy now. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:27 | |
All of us who liked him | 0:55:27 | 0:55:29 | |
have spent so much time telling people how much he liked us | 0:55:29 | 0:55:32 | |
and how much he helped us, that by osmosis, | 0:55:32 | 0:55:34 | |
people who don't know him now know that Bob was one of us, | 0:55:34 | 0:55:37 | |
technically. They know that if Bob had been 30 years younger, | 0:55:37 | 0:55:41 | |
he would have been at The Comedy Store | 0:55:41 | 0:55:43 | |
rather than Blazers in Windsor. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:45 | |
At a time when a lot of other comics would be disparaging against | 0:55:45 | 0:55:49 | |
young comedians and everything, he was very, very welcoming and stuff, | 0:55:49 | 0:55:52 | |
and would learn from us, the same way that we learned from him. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:56 | |
He actually is actively interested in what new, | 0:55:56 | 0:55:58 | |
funny people are doing and he likes it. | 0:55:58 | 0:56:00 | |
I, on the other hand, try to keep the door well and truly shut. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:04 | |
I don't want to... I'm sort of terrified of seeing anybody | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
better than me so I just look away. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
But it's lovely that some people are so | 0:56:10 | 0:56:12 | |
open and kind-hearted as to do the other. | 0:56:12 | 0:56:16 | |
There's a real sense of privilege at being invited, | 0:56:16 | 0:56:18 | |
because the people he invited were comics like me | 0:56:18 | 0:56:21 | |
that were good comics, | 0:56:21 | 0:56:23 | |
and at a certain level, but none of us were A-list stars, | 0:56:23 | 0:56:26 | |
none of us were superstars. | 0:56:26 | 0:56:28 | |
None of us were Billy Connolly. | 0:56:28 | 0:56:29 | |
You know, David Walliams wasn't David Walliams then. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:32 | |
When I see any comic in a suit, I think of Bob Monkhouse first, | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
cos that to me... even John Bishop, | 0:56:35 | 0:56:37 | |
I think there's an element of just the immaculateness of John, | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
and I think there's something in... that delivery. | 0:56:40 | 0:56:43 | |
Yes, he's completely different of course but in a weird way | 0:56:43 | 0:56:46 | |
I feel like there's an element of the neatness and the slickness | 0:56:46 | 0:56:49 | |
and the sort of easy manner that I think does... You know, | 0:56:49 | 0:56:53 | |
you wouldn't be doing bad if you were taking from Bob Monkhouse | 0:56:53 | 0:56:56 | |
as part of your stand-up. | 0:56:56 | 0:56:58 | |
You've been a wonderful audience. | 0:56:58 | 0:57:00 | |
Thank you very much for coming here tonight. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:03 | |
The affection and respect you've shown Mike has | 0:57:03 | 0:57:06 | |
lifted my heart. Thank you very much. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:08 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:57:08 | 0:57:09 | |
God bless you all. | 0:57:09 | 0:57:11 | |
CHEERING | 0:57:15 | 0:57:17 | |
Thank you. Oh, oh-oh! | 0:57:18 | 0:57:20 | |
Oh, can't get better than that. Thank you. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:23 | |
Thank you very much. Thank you. | 0:57:23 | 0:57:26 | |
Thank you. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:28 | |
That's wonderful, thank you. | 0:57:30 | 0:57:33 | |
WHISTLING | 0:57:33 | 0:57:35 | |
I think when I heard that Bob Monkhouse had died, | 0:57:40 | 0:57:44 | |
I think it was December time... | 0:57:44 | 0:57:46 | |
..that was a surprise, because he did almost give a suggestion | 0:57:48 | 0:57:52 | |
that the drugs were working, | 0:57:52 | 0:57:53 | |
and "Hey, it's been a couple of years, I'm OK, | 0:57:53 | 0:57:55 | |
"I'm going to get through it." | 0:57:55 | 0:57:57 | |
Not so much "I'm going to get through it", but you know. | 0:57:57 | 0:58:00 | |
I was surprised it was so soon, but then, of course, | 0:58:00 | 0:58:02 | |
I thought about it for a minute and, no, I wasn't surprised in the end | 0:58:02 | 0:58:06 | |
because of course that's exactly what he was saying all the way through it. | 0:58:06 | 0:58:09 | |
And I think that was | 0:58:09 | 0:58:11 | |
his very last, last show, and he knew it was. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:14 | |
We didn't know that. Now we do. | 0:58:14 | 0:58:17 | |
Since then, the night has sort of assumed legendary status, | 0:58:17 | 0:58:21 | |
it's almost become like the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club. | 0:58:21 | 0:58:25 | |
It's like the fact... Not a month goes by without somebody saying to me | 0:58:25 | 0:58:28 | |
either "I saw it on the documentary" or "Were you there?" | 0:58:28 | 0:58:30 | |
or "Tell me about the night" or "Why were you invited?" | 0:58:30 | 0:58:33 | |
Really, what did feel like a proper privilege, even then, | 0:58:33 | 0:58:36 | |
just to see him, cos this is one of the greats, | 0:58:36 | 0:58:38 | |
and it felt like that when you watched it cos it was like, | 0:58:38 | 0:58:41 | |
that's him doing jokes, not doing a game show. | 0:58:41 | 0:58:43 | |
And that was where we were back in the world he knew, I think, best. | 0:58:43 | 0:58:47 | |
He was clearly loving it. | 0:58:47 | 0:58:49 | |
He was alive. It was great. | 0:58:49 | 0:58:52 |