The Comics Story of Light Entertainment

My turn now, darling.

It's a funny thing but in the 21st century,

comedy is no longer a laughing matter

and is instead very big business indeed.

You can have a television show that's maybe not watched

by huge numbers but will sell massive, massive numbers on DVD.

With millions of pounds in ticket sales, DVD releases

and branded merchandise at stake,

comedians now stand to make a fortune if they manage

to hit the nation's funny bone.

-Comedy does pay you a lot of money if you get it right.

-Hello, Dave.

Comedy is more of a trade than pretty much anything else

in the entertainment world.

We asked 100 people which comedian will land on his feet and get his end away with a cracker...

A lot of young lads now want to be comedians

and say, "Oh, look at this", get any woman they want.

Got money, look good, clever,

on television week in and week out,

see the riches it brings, the financial gains, and they all want to be like them.

-Get him off, when's the raffle?

-Too much tittering,

naughty tittermongers here.

The psychology of a comic is complex,

a fragile mixture of insecurity and rampant ego.

I love being watched, I love being noticed,

I love being laughed at.

I am topping bills,

theatres, clubs, anywhere.

People think of me, I think, as a perfectionist.

50% of a comic's act is about looking in control.

The only thing I learnt, right, about child development,

is they crawl, then they walk,

then they talk, that's all you need to know.

It's basically a visit to the pub in reverse.

I had no act, I was terrible. I wouldn't have given me a job.

Comedians look to their audience for the love and approval they desperately need.

-I'm

-BLEEP

-and I don't give a

-BLEEP.

-Come on!

The biggest reward, and ask any comic, he'll tell you the same,

is to make a room full of people any age laugh.

But making people laugh comes at a price.

You can be hurt in there, wounded,

and nobody knows, you can't let them know.

There's functioning alcoholics on the circuit.

I'm in the dressing room before I go on, it's so lonely,

just waiting, you know, for the clock to go to 8 o'clock.

You have to keep fighting fit to do stand-up,

it's a young man's game.

All right!

But it wasn't always like this.

Comedians used to be the lowest of the low in the showbiz world.

In the music halls of the 1900s,

comedians didn't really exist, and the nearest equivalents

were novelty acts who sang songs or recited humorous monologues.

Comics were part of a variety bill,

they were, in fact, a speciality act, you know, you had a singer,

you had some comics, you had jugglers, acrobats,

speciality acts, ventriloquists.

Comedians were traditionally further down the bill -

there'd be a second stream comedian and even a top-rung comedian

would perhaps finish the first half or be the second to the top act.

But gradually some comedians,

people like Little Titch who became so popular that they, if you like,

legitimised the comedy industry,

they legitimised the comic as a star in his own right.

While Little Titch could be seen as the first comic to top musical bills

in the early 1900s,

by the 1930s, the Victorian style was long gone,

and the modern comic was born.

The first comic star was Brighton's cheeky chappie Max Miller,

who filled the theatres on his own, delighting audiences with his unique saucy style.

# I am known as the cheeky chappie

# The things I say are snappy

# That's why the fruity girls all fall for me... #

To see Max Miller was wonderful for me, although I didn't understand

a lot of his risque jokes, because I was very young at the time

they sent me there and although I'd appreciate his timing

and when he walked onto the stage,

when he walked on, I mean his opening line, he'd just walk on,

the spotlight here, and he would wear this terrible floral outfit -

it was like overdressed pyjamas he'd wear, and this homburg hat.

I know exactly what you're saying - "Why's he dressed like that?"

I tell you why. I am a commercial traveller and I am ready for bed.

The way he used to just lean on the footlights,

so that he would get nearer to his audience.

On the side, in the bar chair with a sewer cat and a whip.

Don't laugh, haven't I got a nice figure, lady?

No, I have, haven't I, ducky?

No, honest, no, well, when I am talking! It's rude to interfere.

I love the speed of his delivery and he is very bold,

he just kind of played the audience really well.

He's looking at them all the time, eyes going around the auditorium,

all the time, everybody feels he's talking to them.

I went to Blackpool, went round looking for rooms, knocked on a door,

and the old lady came, a nice lady,

a little bit and some more, not quite so much and then perhaps.

And that's all I want, just a little encouragement.

He was the first "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" comic.

He never actually said anything

really, really rude or filthy,

but he was a great man for innuendo.

I said, "Could you accommodate me?" She says, "I'm sorry, I'm full up."

I said, "Squeeze me in the little back room, couldn't you?"

She said, "I could, but I haven't got time now!"

Miller's act invariably involved teasing his audience with material

from his famous joke books,

the "white book", which contained only clean jokes,

and "the blue book", full of risque material

which gave rise to the expression "the blue joke".

I watched Max for lots and lots of times, I never heard him swear,

I never heard him tell an unpleasant joke.

It was all seaside postcard stuff.

I've got new ones on tonight, lady, new ones, all rubber.

Do you wear them, lady? You do, don't you, ducky?

You want to wear them, they're very unhealthy.

He was extremely well paid, Max,

and he was very close with his money as well.

And he lived in Brighton, that was his home, where he came from.

And Ted Ray was in a pub with him in Brighton one night, Ted was at the Brighton Hippodrome and he went

in to the pub next door and there was Max who'd been in to see the show,

he lived in Brighton, you know, and Max is telling everybody

about these houses that he owned in Brighton,

and he was never guilty of buying anybody a drink was Max, you know?

So Ted said to him, "I have got an idea, Max, you own all these houses,

"why don't you sell one and buy us a bloody drink."

And he said, "Very funny," and went home.

I even played golf with him, and he...

He was passing my dressing room and he saw the golf clubs there,

he said, "Do you play, Bruce, do you play?"

I said, "Yes, I do Max."

He said, "Fine. We'll have a game.

"What about Wednesday?" I said, "Wednesday is fine."

He said, "All right, we'll use your car."

You see, mean, dead mean, he was supposed to be,

he wanted to use my car.

He wasn't a club man,

I don't think he was a great drinker,

and he certainly wasn't rude, and wasn't a womaniser.

What an actor, eh?

Whilst Miller was the godfather of innuendo, Sid Field,

who was working at the same time, was the pioneer of character comedy.

I enjoyed going to Variety after I'd been to the Prince of Wales Theatre

to see Sid Field in, I think, Piccadilly Hayride

and I was so astounded by this man,

this man who could just have people falling, actually falling out of their seats with laughter.

-Put the ball down.

-Right.

That's right, now make the tee.

-Make the what?

-Make the tee.

I thought you wanted to play golf?

-Of course we're going to play golf.

-What are you talking about tea for?

Oh, no make the tee with sand.

-Phew, I am not drinking that stuff.

-What stuff?

Tea with sand, don't be foolhardy.

He was Hancock's favourite.

-Absolutely.

-I mean, an idol of Tony's.

So, you know, there's one man, that was discrimination,

who thought that Sid Fields was just about the funniest guy around.

A lot of comedians thought Frankie Howard was an admirer of Sid Field.

And most of the profession, when you talked to them they said,

"Yeah, Sid Field, yeah, of course."

-Where do the motor homes come from?

-China.

-What part of China?

Hong-k Kong-k!

Radio comedy and radio comedians

had boomed during the war as a way of lifting the nation's spirits,

but the popularity of television after the Coronation in 1953

had encouraged many to try the new medium.

TV, however,

presented fresh challenges to the comics who wanted to appear on it.

There were two things that happened almost together -

that was the advent of television and

the decease...ment of music hall.

So these comedians who had made their living year in, year out for 20,

30, 40 years, by doing tours of the music halls, now had nowhere to go.

There were no writers, no writers as such.

You know, I can remember having a battle with

Bernard Delfont when I directed a show

with Frankie Howerd at the Prince of Wales.

And he did, wouldn't believe

that I wanted money for directing and putting in the script.

He said, "We have never had to pay people here before for that."

I said, "Well, you're going to have to pay people in future

"because a new breed has arrived - they are the scriptwriters."

Some of our finest comedy scripts were written for Tony Hancock,

who, in the late '50s, was one of the few comics

to make a seamless transfer from radio to television.

The problem with television is that sometimes people

come on and say, "That's not him, doesn't look anything like him!"

Because in radio they had their own idea of what people looked like.

You didn't get his face on radio,

and you could see

on television, the vulnerability,

you just felt underneath all the pomposity

that, um...

all he really needed was a cuddle.

Ah. I wonder if the milkman's been.

I didn't hear him.

Only I would like a cup of tea.

A cup of tea.

I would like a nice cup of tea.

Hallo, bruv. Hello, Archie...

He understood that TV is an intimate medium,

it's not a loud medium or a brash medium.

It's small and it's private and it's almost conspiratorial,

and you get this wonderfully expressive face and small movements.

Oh, ho, ho, ho ah, oh, ah. Oh!

He was one of the first comedians

to appear on TV as a complete rounded personality and I think

he showed in that respect that

comedy can do everything that drama can and more.

Tony Hancock was not alone in having an instinctive understanding of TV.

Benny Hill's mastery of visual comedy led him to be given a series

of sketch shows by the BBC in 1957,

and he used them to explore and innovate,

parodying other TV programmes and creating visual effects

to produce exciting new comedy.

Benny was the pioneer of sketch shows on TV

because of their originality.

Some of the things he did were very near genius.

THUMPING IN TIME TO MUSIC

Hill's early ideas were so fresh and original,

many of his sketches have been copied over the years.

People forget, and I forget myself, that Benny Hill, his first stuff

before he went...

Before he went downhill, was very clever indeed.

Great Britain began transmitting TV programmes in the early '30s

and the problem confronting producers was not the camera,

but the microphone.

# I'm always stuck When I'm not with Susie

# I'm never knowing where I'm... # SOUNDS DISAPPEARS

# ..ie...

# She needs me, she... #

HE MOUTHS

# ..ing my... #

HE MOUTHS

# I'm...

# ..usie! #

He'd adapted this marvellous technique between mime

and visual comedy.

He was a tremendous...

..genius of the visual gag.

While Benny Hill was pioneering sketch comedy on TV,

a group of four Oxbridge students -

Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett,

were pushing the boundaries of live sketch revue on the West End stage.

Beyond The Fringe heralded the arrival of a new era

in British comedy.

Young men, scarcely boys, tossed aside youthful things

and grew up overnight in that grimmer game which is war,

a game where only one side was playing the game.

Young men flocked to join the few.

-Please, sir. I want to join the few.

-I'm sorry, there are far too many.

A huge West End hit in 1961, Beyond The Fringe

was seen to be ahead of its time

and shocked many with its unashamed attacks on figures of authority.

Dear Prime Minister,

I am an old-age pensioner

in Fife,

living on a fixed income

of some £2...10s a week.

And this was a show that went from the Edinburgh Festival to the West End, to Broadway.

The Queen saw it, Harold Macmillan even went and saw it

and Peter Cook adlibbed from the stage, you know,

while Harold Macmillan was watching Harold Macmillan.

The early '60s were all about satire and the opening of Peter Cook's Establishment Club in Soho

provided a smoky safe haven for this new breed of political comedy.

The club was a platform for cutting-edge comic talent,

as well as a showcase for the grittier American stand-ups.

It's now got to a point that for a cheap laugh, he just says "snot".

There's one thing that I can tell you something about snot -

and that is so unique -

that you say, "Is that the truth about snot?

"What a fool I've been.

"I can't believe after all these years - is that real, documented?"

Yes, that's the truth about snot.

And the Establishment was the only place that Lenny Bruce could perform in London.

The two times I saw him he was absolutely charming

and the second time was slightly ruined by somebody

-in the front who was obviously

-BLEEP

-and, kept heckling

and he was in one of his benign moods,

I don't know what he'd taken but he was very civil and carried on.

Finally the man got up in a very resentful way, and said,

-SLURRING HIS SPEECH:

-"Why don't you tell us an English joke?!"

And Lenny Bruce just looked at him and said, "You are an English joke."

This is BBC Television.

AIRCRAFT DROPPING BOMBS

Eventually, even the BBC woke up to the fact that comedy was changing,

and in 1962 bravely launched That Was The Week That Was,

a biting live late-night satirical show,

that was to cause a revolution.

The idea behind TW3, that it was going to be a topical programme,

the theory being that

every weekend is like a mini New Years' Eve

and you can look back over the week just as you look back over the year,

and either shrug your soldiers - shrug your shoulders! -

and be glad that it's over,

or you can regret that it's passed because you rather enjoyed it,

but it's got special quality, a punctuation mark at the week's end.

Oh, about this Aitchison thing, Jack.

It's Harold here. Harold Macmillan.

M-A-C...

LAUGHTER

I am calling from London.

Now, looky here, this thing

doesn't represent the views of your government, does it? Oh.

It emptied restaurants and it emptied pubs.

You went home or somewhere to watch That Was The Week That Was

because it was live.

And you saw cameras in shot and people walking about,

there was an immediacy about that which we hadn't seen on TV before.

And Ned Sherrin was just the master of it.

And it was unique.

I cannot tell new instant Wilson

from the old pipe-smoking Attlee.

I cannot tell new instant Wilson from old stab-in-the-back Wilson.

Private Eye came out about that time

and that was very important as well.

Suddenly, again it was the anti-establishment feel to it.

And it wasn't just anti-establishment, comedy was funny

because you were knocking people in bowler hats and accountants.

This was the first time in Britain that anyone had been so scathing

to such a mass audience about the people at the top of society.

Despite the success of satire,

mainstream comedy continued to thrive and had a new champion

in the goofy form of Ken Dodd, an old-school comic

who was enjoying huge success at a time when simply being Liverpudlian

was a passport to fame and fortune.

When Max Miller died,

the biggest tribute anyone made to him was,

"Variety died 15 years ago.

"They buried it today with Max Miller." They forgot Ken Dodd.

My auntie Nelly, big auntie Nelly, she was down on a beach, me big auntie Nelly,

and a man from Blackpool Corporation said, "Get off the beach.

"The tide's waiting to come in." Oh, she's big, big!

I always think of Ken Dodd as like a guy...

almost like with a machine gun.

And he has got this machine gun

and he fires off these jokes to you and in every direction.

We had a job stuffing the turkey, he kept flying off the perch.

In the end we had to buy one of those frozen turkeys, you know,

and me mother put it in the sink to thaw, and me Grandad came out.

He said, "I see me granny is having a wash in the sink again."

He really is a bridge back to a time that has almost been forgotten.

I mean, the sort of Edwardian music hall, he goes right back to that,

and it's a through line, and not much of this was preserved

on film or on record or whatever.

An awful lot of it is still inside Ken Dodd's head.

However brilliant they are, young stand-ups now don't quite

come over in quite the same way. You can't work out what it is.

Maybe it's the pure theatricality of people like Doddy,

but he is just giant.

It took years to make it big in showbusiness,

years working the northern clubs, and I've still got the ferret bites!

Ha, ha, ha!

What a thrill it is for a struggling artist like myself to stand

and hear encouraging words, "Get him off! What time's the raffle?"

Reacting to the changes in comedy taste during the 1970s, Benny Hill

introduced a more simplistic, bawdier style into his sketch shows,

a style that would make him a world star, but ultimately prove his undoing.

I think the Benny Hill Show was set apart from other shows at the time

because there was really nothing to compare with it.

There wasn't a show where he had a so-called bevy

of glamorous young ladies on the show for a start,

so he got that factor right.

And if something went down very well in one show, he would capitalise

and it would probably force him to do

very similar in a similar show, because he knew that the

actual format would work very well.

Benny recycled. It's quite amazing.

I worked with him quite early on, and then again

much later, and you suddenly thought...

..or when I watched things much later, you know, in colour,

when I'd worked with him in black and white, I thought,

"I can remember doing that sketch about 20 years ago!"

He was one of the funniest people on television early on.

I think the point was it got iterative and didn't go anywhere,

and we... you know, you can only so many times have the bicycle spoke

catch the girl's dress and whip it off and, you know...

The truth is it's funny the first time, the 15th time it becomes voyeuristic and salacious.

As mainstream humour went downmarket, another group

of university graduates was taking light entertainment in a whole new direction.

Inspired by the surrealism of Beyond The Fringe, and with an innovative

stream-of-consciousness approach, Monty Python's Flying Circus

pushed boundaries of what was considered acceptable

in both style and content.

It's very hard in anything to recapture how that felt at the time,

when Monty Python went out.

It went out and you really felt, "This is my show, this is for me,

"made by people who understand what makes me laugh.

"Not everyone gets it, but I really do get it and this is the funniest thing ever."

Hampstead wasn't good enough for you, was it?

You had to go poncing off to Barnsley.

You and your coal-mining friends.

-Coal mining is a wonderful thing, Father.

-Yeah.

But it's something you'll never understand. Just look at you.

Oh, Ken, be careful! You know what he's like after a few novels.

Right, come on, lad. Come on, out with it, what's wrong with me?

-You tit!

-I'll tell you what's wrong with you.

Your head is addled with novels and poems, you come home every evening reeling of Chateau Latour...

-Don't!

-Look what you've done to mother.

She's worn out meeting film stars, attending premiers and luncheons.

There's nowt wrong with gala luncheons, lad!

Sketch shows then were a combination

of variety and sketches

and they would have things like a guest star,

they would have music, they would have dance routines,

they would speak directly to the camera,

introduce their guest to the audience and Python did away with all of that.

-One of t'crossbeams has gone out of skew on t'treadle.

-Pardon?

HE REPEATS FASTER

I don't understand what you're saying.

One of the crossbeams has gone out of skew on the treadle.

But what on earth does that mean?

I don't know. I was told to say there was trouble at the mill,

that's all. Didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Our chief weapon is surprise, surprise and fear - fear and surprise.

Our two weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency.

Our three weapons are fear

and surprise and ruthless efficiency

and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Our four... No.

Amongst our weapons...

..are such elements as fear, surprise... I'll come in again.

Normally, a sketch would have a beginning, a middle and an end,

and possibly a punch-line.

Well, quite often, none of the sketches...in Python

had a beginning or an end, or a punch-line.

He's a chirpy little fellow, ain't he?

Ain't he a chirpy little fellow, eh?

Does he talk? Does he talk, eh?

Of course I can talk. I'm Minister for Overseas Development.

Mrs Thatcher's landslide victory in 1979

coincided with the arrival of an irreverent sketch show

and another turning point in the story of comedy.

A man was arrested today on suspicion of stealing the Queen's handbag.

He was later released after she failed to pick him out at an identity parade.

Not The Nine O'Clock News came along in the punk era, and in many ways

was a return to drums, bass and two guitars in comedy terms.

And Not The Nine O'Clock News was also topical and satirical

at a time when topical comedy had been in abeyance for a while, people hadn't been doing it.

A show like Not The Nine O'Clock News really is...

It's got all the topicality of TW3

and all the production values of Monty Python.

But Monty Python took weeks in filming.

They'd go to the Welsh mountains and the pub every night

and we didn't have that.

Can Gerald really speak as we would understand it?

Oh, yes, yes, I mean, he can speak a few actual words -

of course, it was extremely difficult to get him even to this stage.

When I first...

When I first captured Gerald in the Congo, '67 I think it was, I...

'68.

..'68, there was an awful lot of work to do.

It was enormously slow and difficult. I had to work with him

on a one-to-one basis...

But can I just butt in at this point, Tim,

I should point out I've done a considerable amount

of work on this project myself, and if I may say,

your teaching methods do leave a bit to be desired.

-A bit ungrateful, isn't it?

-Your diction is not really what I...

Sorry, can I put this into some sort of perspective?

When I caught Gerald in '68, he was completely wild.

Wild? I was absolutely livid!

With Not The Nine O'Clock News, comedy became cool.

Not The Nine O'Clock News really is the first example of the comedian as rock star.

You know, where these people had they wanted to, and Rowan did, but had the others wanted to do

a sell-out tour,

they could have made any amount of money they wanted to.

And that was a surprise, it had never really happened before.

As the '70s gave way to the '80s,

a revolution was happening in British comedy

that was to shake the establishment to its very foundations

and create a new breed of comic who would dominate

television schedules for a decade to come.

In the early '80s, a group of performers, writer-comedians

emerged who were perceived to have a certain political viewpoint

and certainly had an approach to comedy in the same way punk music

was a reaction against the concept album and the stadium tours,

bringing it back to some kids with a mic and simple instruments.

Alternative comedy, I think, at its core, is about that.

People often say to me, "Alexei,

"what is alternative, new-wave Marxist comedy?"

-And I say,

-"BLEEP

-off, ya nosey

-BLEEP!"

I was working at the King's Head in about 1980, and I started to see

posters for alternative comedy

and for the Strip Club and, for Alexei Sayle and they were called,

it was called alternative comedy so I'd have already gone a step ahead,

and they're all about, they are about five years younger

and just in that five years, everything turned around.

Before the days of alternative comedy,

there was talk about people paying their dues on the club circuit

and there was this vague idea if you wanted to be a comedian,

you started out when you were about 16

and you might end up on telly when you were 46 or something -

alternative comedy was a very can-do art form like that.

Every revolution starts somewhere, and this one began

above a strip club in Soho.

We put adverts in Jewish Chronicle, Grocers' Gazette, Evening Standard,

Evening News, Punch, and the advert ran

"Are you doing the wrong job in life? Do you want to become a star?

"Well, if you want to become a comedian then bring your talent

"to Britain's newest form of entertainment, the Comedy Store.

"We will invite the heads of media and we hope to make you a star."

And we had 150 replies.

I want to ask you tonight to bear with me.

-Can you hear me?

-No!

The Store Late Show, particularly on a Friday night, was appalling, but it was appalling whoever you were.

They just threw everything at everyone, so backstage,

you developed a siege mentality, you know, when it was really bad,

and the compere would go on like a sort of advance party

and then come back and report to the troops.

Now, obviously, you know, it's very hard for me

to talk about politics in this show, because I am a pathetic girlie,

and we don't know anything about it, so you know,

trouble brewing up in Iraq - that's not going to get the washing-up done or the beds made, is it? No.

The whole comedy ethos, the whole Comedy Store,

was launched on the basis of a non-racist and a non-sexist joke.

This drunk homosexual Pakistani squatter takes my mother-in-law to an Irish restaurant, see.

Some of them paid lip service to the fact that they were really trying to change people's political ideals,

or make people aware of certain social injustices -

they couldn't just say, "I'm trying to make people laugh and make a few bob."

One of the first big noises on the alternative comedy scene

was a short, fat, angry Marxist from Liverpool.

I thought Alexei was very frightening

when I first came across him,

because he was someone that seemed kind of very different from me

and had a kind of very different perspective on life.

I live in a tower block. One of the worst things about a tower block -

for a start, they spend about 20 grand on building the ... tower block,

they spend about 80 ... grand on a piece of sculpture to stick outside it, you know?

It wasn't just about Thatcher. In fact, loads of it,

Alexei Sayle's early stuff, was about the pomposity of middle-class people

who themselves thought they were very anti-Thatcher - you know, middle-class London types.

Stoke Newington at the moment, Stoke Newington is an intensely fashionable place at the moment.

At the moment, it's an intensely fashionable place, there's a big '60s revival going on -

there's whole families trying to live on eight quid a week.

He eventually did separate himself away from the others

and of course, he's always had this big thing about Ben Elton.

That he doesn't like Ben Elton and he doesn't make a secret of it.

Alexei Sayle's bitter feud with rival alternative comic Ben Elton

erupted when Sayle accused him of plagiarism.

There's a lot of things that were trendy last year.

For instance, I noticed not having a job became very fashionable all of a sudden, didn't it, like everybody

looking round for jobs, caught on like wildfire, cos people are like sheep,

you know, like, once one person's living below the poverty line, everybody wants to do the same.

He had borrowed somewhere in the middle between Rik and Alexei -

it was his main source, I would say.

But he so quickly developed into something that clearly wasn't either of those two things.

But at the time, it caused friction, and Alexei certainly felt

that he was being ripped off and cloned in some way.

Ben got very hurt, because he was a huge fan of Alexei's and felt hurt that it had been perceived that way.

I think some of the other performers took sides.

Elton became one of alternative comedy's first television stars, largely due to his appearances

on Channel 4's groundbreaking Saturday Live.

Saturday Live was the first big showcase on British TV for what was going on in,

for want of a better phrase, the world of alternative comedy.

You know, you must pay your licence, because if you don't, a great big trawling net comes and scoops you up

and dumps you in the audience for Little and Large,

or worse, Saturday Live, and then you'd be really bored out of your mind.

Yeah, having a go at myself! That shows how socialist I am, all right!

The producers would just go, often,

you know, completely unannounced, they would just go to the Store

or to Jongleurs - they would go to any of the big comedy venues - and they would just watch,

and if there was an act on they liked, they'd go up afterwards and say, "Come on the show."

Alternative comedy by then had been going for a few years.

But most of those comedians hadn't been given a big mainstream showcase on the TV.

We are on air, studio, we are now on air - can we find Mrs Posner on the floor, please?

-Is Mrs Posner on the floor? We are looking for Mrs Posner.

-Mrs Jackson...

-Yes.

-We are coming out of the adverts, everybody...

-We are out of the adverts now...

Although Saturday Live was the first to showcase the talents

of French and Saunders, at the end of the alternative '80s,

female comics were still struggling for recognition.

However, the '80s did provide us with two of our most popular and enduring female talents -

Victoria Wood and Jo Brand.

You have obviously noticed, haven't you, that I didn't grow up to be exactly what you would call anorexic.

Now, that is in fact completely wrong - I am anorexic,

because anorexic people look in the mirror and think they look fat.

And so do I, so I must be.

If you're a woman in a pub, trying to say something,

nobody listens to you, because first of all, a lot of women don't have the confidence to kind of...

take the floor, as it were, in a kind of pub-type setting.

And secondly, traditionally, women are always saying,

"I'm so rubbish at telling jokes, I always forget the punch line,"

and you know, cos we are all quite fluffy underneath.

I have got the builders in.

Two builders - there's two of them. There's Norman, he's the main one.

He makes all the important decisions, like whether they are going to stub their fags out

in the rubber plant or leave them floating in the toilet.

He's very stocky, is Norman, he's very hairy.

If a gibbon could whistle, it would be an attractive version of Norman.

And he's embraced the idea of the plunge neckline...and applied it to the back of his trousers.

My gender just gave me a very, very slight edge at the beginning

when I didn't have much else going for me.

I think, after a certain point, it really was an irrelevance,

because I have always believed that people either think you're funny or they don't think you're funny.

Just recently, I won a competition to spend a week at a health farm.

I think it was probably my slogan that clinched it -

"I would like to spend a week at a health farm, because...

"I am mentally ill at the moment."

I always used to sort of deliberately dress down in kind of all black with high necks and all that,

because I think as soon as you present yourself

as a sexual being to an audience,

they are sort of distracted by that.

I do think women are judged more harshly on their looks than men are.

When you think what some of the men who can stagger out on stage, if a woman was in that state,

they would be much more harshly criticised - I do think there's a double standard.

It's a terrible thing, pre-menstrual tension, because when women all work together, they all start to coincide

and they all get it all at the same time.

Do you remember that office block in the City of London where all the windows blew out?

We have always had this thing, haven't we, that women are sugar

and spice and all things nice, and men are puppy dogs' tails and turds,

and that's what it is.

I threw my bra away in the '70s and I burnt it, in fact, which heated

a small village in Cumbria for a couple of weeks.

Once you've put yourself up there to hear the whole kind of gamut of what the male race has to say

about your appearance, it doesn't do a lot for your self-confidence,

to be honest, so no, I would say once I started listening to all that,

I actually got less self-confidence, but I pretended to have more.

We don't all want to be Madonna, do we? No.

Some of us want to be Petula Clark, don't we?

And who else, yes? Michelle Pfeiff-feif-feifer.

She is nice. Who? Kylie Minogue?

No, I am sorry. To me, Kylie is too much petite-oh.

There is a point with skinny where it can tip over onto scrawny.

And I should know, because I am dangerously near it myself.

They always talk about people who are fat,

especially if somebody is a woman. People would bring in tiny clothes and say, "That won't fit you,"

and take them out again, so there's always a problem, because people thought more in straight lines

about what you were supposed to look like - I do think that's softened now

and I see lots more people of different shapes and sizes now on television

than you ever used to, but I certainly didn't fit into that slim, young, blonde box.

As old sexist attitudes became increasingly unacceptable by the end of the '80s,

one long-serving veteran found himself tragically out of step.

I always thought it was disgraceful when Benny Hill was fired by Thames Television.

His shows were...

practically all over the world - France, Germany...

He was Garbo's favourite comedian.

He must have been making millions for Thames.

And he was fired because of political correctness.

He didn't even know what political correctness meant.

He came to see me the next day.

He often used to pop down, because his flat was very near my office,

within walking distance, you know.

And he often used to pop in for a cup of tea or sometimes he would stay half an hour and go.

This day, he stayed for three hours, while I carried on working and chatting and drinking tea -

he was devastated.

Comedy had suddenly moved quite fast forward in the early '80s,

and I think putting on another series of Benny, presumably still, you know,

would have looked a bit old-fashioned, and I think that's why they dropped him.

In April 1992, three years after being sacked,

Benny Hill died alone watching television in his tiny one-bedroom flat.

His body wasn't discovered for two days.

In a strange coincidence, fellow comic veteran Frankie Howerd died the same weekend.

The most bizarre weekend, that was.

Frank died, I think, on a Friday, and journalists were looking

for Benny Hill, his contemporary.

It was a mutual admiration society.

I mean, comedians are like tigers circling each other in a cage,

but those two really reckoned each other. They couldn't find Benny,

he had been in hospital, there was an answering machine on or whatever, his agent didn't know.

Dennis Kirkland, his producer, they finally got on to, and he said, "Don't go looking for him,

"he's out of hospital and he's obviously resting up somewhere."

Dennis gave the journalists a quote, which was as 'twas from Benny, "Frankie Howerd, my great friend

"and a great comedian," and so on, this was printed as the words

of Benny Hill, who was already gone!

Benny Hill's lonely death illustrated once again the private sadness and torment of the comedian.

In showbusiness,

you get lots of highs,

which are wonderful, and sometimes you get lots of lows,

sometimes you get more lows than highs.

You can be hurt in there, wounded,

you know, and nobody knows.

You can't let them know. You don't want sympathy.

You just want to get on with your job and do your job and then come off.

After the smile, you go in the dressing room, you burst into tears and put your hands on your head.

There is an element of great melancholy in all great sort of art forms, and comedy is no different.

I think people hone in on comedy because the paradox is so clear, you know, that gap between private grief

and the hilarity of the people laughing in the stalls.

Spike Milligan had this depression, this terrible depression.

But people who are watching don't realise this, and why should they?

You are there to entertain people.

The onset of the '90s brought with it a new mood of optimism and light-heartedness in comedy.

Breaking free from the shackles of political correctness, comics revelled in a new-found freedom.

Comedy became a lot more surreal, mostly thanks to Vic and Bob

and nodded back to even the Goons and Monty Python,

and there was a lot more silliness, there was a lot of liberation in terms of how people could make jokes

about things that didn't matter.

-The things you say.

-What?

-They're unbelievable.

MUSIC: "Unbelievable" by EMF

If everyone in the '80s

was comedy with a message then comedy with no message

was probably going to be the next thing that came along.

And the other things couples pretend is that they never, ever fart.

"Fart, no, I never. No, not me. How do you do it?"

But then there comes a time when you are sleeping with your partner and you just have to, right?

It's either a fart or appendicitis.

What happened in the '90s

was there was a movement of people, and Baddiel and Skinner

were certainly part of it,

that said, "Well, screw that, I mean, I'll say what I want.

"If I want to say my mother-in-law is fat, I will say my mother-in-law is fat."

Lad culture was on the rise, and Frank Skinner was quick to cash in.

All right!

BLEEP!

Who are ya, who are ya?

Frank is an incredible gag man,

and Frank has got an ability, I would say beyond any other comedian

in this country, to come up with crafted jokes, really complicated puns, just off the top of his head.

I don't know anyone else who can do it. it's like a sort of almost an autistic kind of skill.

Anyone who ever read a Superman comic in the '70s

will remember one advert which was in every one, and it was an advert for X-ray specs.

It was a bloke with a big thick pair of glasses on, looking at his hand like that and going...

And he could see all the bones, all the skeleton in his hands, because he's got these X-ray specs on.

And when I was a kid, I used to look at this advert and think,

"You know, if I had got X-ray specs,

-"I wouldn't be looking at me

-BLEEP

-hand."

Frank was one of the first people

that seemed to have that kind of working-class background,

just a regular bloke, a guy that,

you know, likes to watch football, a guy that likes to have a pint.

I lived with a woman who wasn't very much into football, but she used to try and join in a bit, you know?

And one day I had the radio on, and the bloke on the radio said, "And now sport, and amazing news

"from West Bromwich Albion," and she said, "Ooh, West Brom-wich Albion!

"That's your team! I wonder what they're doing on the radio?"

And then he said, "And now weather. There's a warm front coming in from..."

I think he has gradually become easier with the idea of being more like who he really is.

I mean, who he is on camera, that is totally a part of him -

he is an end of the pier, Jack the Lad, very, very, very funny bloke.

He's also a really, really clever, kind of academically clever,

religious, deep-thinking, culturally informed person,

and at times, like maybe a lot of people in showbiz from his background, he has been worried

about showing that, in case it puts people off, in case people think he hasn't got the common touch any more.

But I think he is not as bothered with that as he used to be.

Meanwhile, the sketch show had evolved, becoming slicker, sharper and faster-paced.

Here, here, excuse me. Yes. Do you know the way to the nearest public bog?

Over there.

Right, thank you very much.

Carry on skipping.

THEY LAUGH See, you can't, can you?! Ha-ha-ha!

Harry Enfield was the first person to realise

that you could use a sketch show effectively like a comic on TV - it was like Viz on television.

Tim Nice-But-Dim, how do you do?

Hello, Dick Nice-But-Thick.

For the second series of Harry Enfield Television Programme,

Harry had a whole load of new characters,

and we had a press launch,

so Geoffrey Perkins, the producer,

cut together a sort of highlights thing to showcase the new characters.

We didn't have time to show all the full sketches,

so we just sort of did the funny bits that he felt set up each character.

And in a way, his kind of edit, some of it, we felt, was maybe funnier than the finished show,

because it was very fast, and we were really amazed at how quickly

you could pick up on a character.

So we thought, "Wouldn't that be great if you could do

"a show that was all highlights and take everything else out?"

This season, I will be mostly wearing yoghurt!

A lot of time in a sketch, the set-up is the funny bit

and the punch line tends to be disappointing.

If you know what the punch line is, how can you be disappointed?

You have got to put a vegetable in front of each word in the right order.

Look. This is how it goes, right?

Tomatoes, aubergine, potato, turnip, carrot, asparagus,

then you add one of your own and then it's back to tomatoes again.

Tomato, it's, aubergine, a,

potato, private, turnip, matter.

-You've got the hang of it.

-Don't be embarrassed, sir. It's just a little bit of fun.

Tomato, Ted,

aubergine, your,

potato,

wife's,

turnip, dead.

Sorry... I mean, tomato, sorry.

A lot of what we have done has been sort of dismissed almost as just catchphrases.

It's very useful having catchphrases.

They come from a lot of different places.

I mean, "suit you", for instance, from The Fast Show,

that was based on a porter at Hackney Council where Paul was working

in the '80s, and he spoke like that.

When Paul and his mates would come in, he would always say, "Good morning, sir. How are you today, sir?

"Were you out with a lady last night? Ooh, suit you, sir."

And he said it - "suit you", by the way, not "suits you".

And so Paul said, "Well, we have to do a character based on this."

Were you out with a lady last night, sir?

Yes, I was, as a matter of fact.

Did she want it, sir?

-I beg your pardon?

-The lady you were out with last night, sir,

did she want it, sir? Oh, suit you, sir, ooh!

I think we have all watched TV series where we think, "This is a series too far."

When we were putting The Fast Show together, one of our ideas was we might have a kind of revolving team,

and as we went on, we would get younger performers in to fill gaps

as the older ones died off, but it never quite turned into that, but I suppose after The Fast Show,

other people came along... Well, the League Of Gentlemen was probably the next big show after us.

-Hello, Dave.

-As the '90s progressed,

comedians dragged light entertainment to a much darker place.

What was clever about what they did was to mix all the sketches

so they formed a 30-minute whole story which was then linked up with the next one -

it was just a much more clever way of putting it all together, and I think much more satisfactory.

All the characters they had been doing were all in one place -

Royston Vasey, Roy Chubby Brown's real name.

Oh.

-Yes?

-Good morning.

-Can I help you at all?

-Yes, I wanted to buy a can of Coke.

-I can, I can't?

-A can of Coke.

-I can, I can't!

-You are a shop, aren't you?

-No, I am a lady.

-This is a shop.

-No, you misunderstand me.

It is a local shop for local people - there's nothing for you here.

The League Of Gentlemen is grotesque but knowingly grotesque.

They really, really go for it, and I think that's why it works.

Because they are not half-arsed about it at all.

And he will come and give strength to hands that tremble with weakness

and to legs that are lame.

The crippled will cast away their crutches, leap and dance,

jump up and down in praise of the Lord,

and receive all the blessings of heaven.

But it doesn't say they have to have six parking bays at Safeway's, does it?

They're always empty! I left the car for five minutes.

-I only nipped in for a bottle of Taboo. When I came out, the

-BLEEP

-clamped.

I said to the fella, would it have made a difference if I'd have had a stick and a limp?

Ramps outside libraries, and their toilets are massive!

Hymn number 168 -

Glad That I Live Am I.

If you now look at a sketch show that just is sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch,

you sort of feel slightly cheated of some sort of overview, as it were,

and I think they were the first people certainly of their generation to come up with something like that.

As we entered a new millennium,

our comedy appetites had changed.

We wanted sketch shows with an edge and our comics to be edgier still.

One man in particular had the irony and the attitude that a new audience demanded.

Gervais is...

probably the most famous comedian in the land, isn't he,

and he's got to be one of the most famous comedians in the world,

cos he is a big hit in America now as well. You know, you go to LA

and there are posters of Gervais everywhere, hilariously.

He is King Gervais, Lord Gervais.

It's that sort of laughing into your shirt again,

in the same way that Bernard Manning would do in a working man's club.

It's an interesting analogy. Ricky Gervais is the acceptable face of someone who can say that.

If Bernard Manning had gone on stage, probably would have been booed off.

It's possible, from a slightly more traditional viewpoint,

to watch what Ricky does and say, "Well, what's funny about it?

"It's just making me uncomfortable."

There's a kind of knowingness and an innocence at the same time,

and I think that that's what Ricky has - there is always a twinkle -

so I don't think that that line is ever crossed.

I think that Ricky again knows exactly where that line is.

Thora Hird,

she could walk, I've seen her walk.

She goes shopping in one of those things, all the way home,

right up to the front door, key in the door, straight in the stairlift,

feet haven't touched the ground yet, ooh,

up to the bathroom, oh, lowered into the bath.

-Never off her

-BLEEP!

-Give her an award, she's up there like a

-BLEEP

-greyhound.

On the Politics tour, there were moments where he'd try out a joke

and he would feel the audience were laughing for the wrong reasons -

they were actually laughing at the victims as opposed to the ideas

behind the joke, and he did cut quite a few of those out.

-So, I think he is quite aware of the game he is playing.

-It's a con. It's not irony at all.

They would love to be able to just go out and do that stuff anyway!

But, yeah, there is an idea...the idea of, "Ooh, I am being risky here,

"I shouldn't be saying this, aren't we naughty?"

But you scratch the surface of most of those people,

they probably mean it underneath.

But it's not all edgy and ironic. There's still room for the gentler approach of Peter Kay.

The last day of term, I used to love the last day of term

where you could either bring a game in, wear your own clothes for 10p and bring a game in like Ker-Plunk

or Tank Commander or Crossfire, or Mastermind with that Vietnamese lady on t'box, remember that?

Who was she?

Who was she?

He's got this ability, this skill to just...and hopefully,

I try and do the same,

is to make the characters real - when he's talking about his uncle

at a wedding, when he's talking about his auntie,

he brings them to life, he's got a skill of with a slight intonation, making those people appear real.

Sandra, your grandma's going.

Come and say bye-bye. It's ten to eight.

Going. Grandma is like Yoda from Star Wars -

she's about three foot tall

with her anorak on,

"Going now, am I, going now!"

"I am going to get home and get settled.

"Get curtains drawed.

"That disco is too loud for me.

"Give us a kiss, all the best."

Go on, Grandma, you get home.

You get home and get a shave.

If you went to his house, his bedroom - one wall was just a mass of video tapes, but he also had

three- or four-hour tapes that were just TV programmes and adverts, that he had sat as a young kid,

and remember, when other kids were out doing what they were doing, you know, going egging or something,

I don't know, or strangling cats or something, he was at home,

taping adverts, you know?

And he had reams and reams and reams of this stuff.

So, when he can hit you with a piece of nostalgia, it's not something that he can just snap,

you know, he has put the hours in to get that kind of talent.

Go to t'school disco on a Thursday night, have a bottle of 20-20 behind a skip.

He's just really, really bloody funny,

and we have all been there, we have all seen it, but we have not seen it in such big detail.

Peter never apologises for what he says and what he does and who he is,

ever, and you know you have got to admire that. He is not going to bring down a government.

But he is more likely to sell out an arena.

When new generations of comedians emerge,

they need to make an impact to be saying that which has gone before wasn't funny, this is what's funny.

Because it's in the nature of how comedies are kind of seized on as representing a time

that whatever the next one is, it won't be like the last. It's one of the joys of British comedy.

The impetus for people to do comedy still is the fact that they see someone on TV that makes them laugh

and they think, "I'd love to do that, I'd love to be that person on TV making people laugh."

Obviously the money is an added bonus.

There's no right or wrong. It's whatever works at that time with the audience - the audience decide.

Next time in our story,

we examine pop music's notoriously fickle relationship with light entertainment.

Good evening, and welcome to Top Of The Pops!

They had the greatest show on television,

as far as popular music and culture is concerned, and they threw it away!

I'm the one who's appeared on it more than anybody else,

but that's because I haven't died yet!

We're not doing it to make a statement. It is an extension of the merchandise -

comic, cereal packet, video, record - that's all it is.

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