Respect: A Felix Dexter Special

Remember this proverb. It's very, very simple.

We have this in my country. We have it in your country also.

-You never know what you've got until it's gone.

-Yeah.

The comedian, actor and writer Felix Dexter died last month.

In my deal, innit? Star!

He was one of the trailblazers.

A comic genius.

Hey, hey, hey!

He went on stage, and he did it on his terms.

Please pay attention!

LAUGHTER

And the audience are falling about!

He never sought celebrity status,

but Felix was one of the best-respected performers in the business.

One love, one love!

London Underground!

Mash up Lucifer, vote yes!

-# Bong-ba-di-bong-bong-bong! #

-That's the one!

-The screen comes alive when he's on.

-He had that Richard Pryor thing

that he could say a really edgy joke without looking angry.

"Can we laugh at this?"

You have to be able to enunciate and pronunciate.

Absolute tosh!

He made comedy slick.

GUNSHOT

So sit back and enjoy this tribute to the one and only Felix Dexter.

At the age of seven,

Felix came to Britain with his mother from the island of St Kitts.

Most people who come to this country from the Caribbean,

their families are going to go to Brixton, St Paul's,

Handsworth, Moss Side, what have you and so on.

Felix ended up in Surrey.

I went to school, I was covered in those prefect badges,

you know, from head to toe. I looked like an armadillo, you know?

Although Felix told his friends very little about his background,

it's clear his childhood was far from typical.

Lots of black British people had the experience

of being the only black person at school or whatever, but normally

they would have that experience in a working-class context.

Felix was having that in a very middle-class context.

So that's going to make you a bit different.

Being in the geography lesson,

every time there was an issue about a tropical region,

it was always, "Aah, Felix, you should know this."

"You come from a hot country."

"Oh, yes, mate, it's very hot in Guildford, isn't it?"

Felix went to law school in London,

and was training to become a barrister

when he decided to give it all up...

..and try his hand at stand-up comedy.

Felix's mum - "Oh..."

A mild coronary would probably be an understatement.

"You're going to do what? Comedy?"

Once he's set his mind to do something, he's going to go ahead and do it.

CHEERING

Felix began performing in the '80s,

at the height of the alternative comedy scene.

He had a ten-minute open spot

and he absolutely stormed it.

He went straight from the ten minutes into a full 20.

He was that good.

APPLAUSE

What a right-on lot you are. That's beautiful.

It's nice, you're right on. You're my type of people

because I can feel it. You're anti-racist, you're anti-sexist,

you're right on. You're vegetarian.

You're the sort of people who probably say,

"Oh, no, no, don't say the word black, don't say black person,

"say high-melanin-content person."

# Baa baa, high-melanin-content sheep, have you any wool... #

He was a mainstay at The Comedy Store

and Jongleurs, and the bigger clubs that we all did all the time.

You had to get Felix in. Felix was the headline act.

He had a whole routine about wanting to have sex

but being turned down by a sleepy partner

and then trying to surreptitiously masturbate in the bed

and being banished to the spare room.

"Don't do that in here!"

His "Welcome To Scotland" look always worked, and it was funny.

When I got off the train in Dundee,

I got the "Welcome to Scotland" look. It goes like this.

LAUGHTER

As good as he was as a stand-up,

I could see in the early days little voices were coming in.

George, Anselm, come look, the next door people are going crazy in the street!

Mi always thought they was funny. Come watch them! Aaah!

And you'd think, "He really loves doing that."

You can see he's found a whole new area to move into.

Thank you.

By the early '90s,

Felix was a fixture on the alternative comedy scene.

But he was one of the only black faces.

The clubs were all white people, the acts were all white people.

There just weren't any black people in the audience.

So when a new black comedy circuit began to emerge,

centred around the Hackney Empire, Felix's comedy found its home.

She's sitting there with the man, she's not saying anything at all

because she knows the man has not given her authority to speak.

When we started the black comedy circuit,

there was always this rumour there was this other black guy

on the circuit and it wasn't Lenny Henry,

so we were like, "Who is this guy we're hearing about?"

The first time I saw Felix was at the Hackney Empire.

I walked out thinking, "I like this man.

"I'm going to remember him forever."

As the black comedy scene grew in popularity,

television executives began to sit up and take notice.

In 1991, a groundbreaking new comedy sketch show was launched.

-It's all been quite a shock.

-Quite.

Now, if you could just tell me in your own words how it happened.

It was a damp and moonless night.

My heart fluttered like a caged bird

as I walked through a deserted churchyard.

The Real McCoy was the first black sketch show

written by African-Caribbean people and performed by them.

Ladies, please don't take the weave seriously.

Everybody said, "OK, this is the turning point for black comedy."

You could be in a club, right,

and scratch this side, and the other side move.

The audience felt that they had found a show that told their story

and told their story funny. You know, it wasn't depressing,

it wasn't about "issues" or difficult, it was just funny.

Felix came on board in series three,

which in my opinion is when it really got its legs.

Everything he did was sort of magic.

I mean, he had the characters that he evolved.

You didn't really have to find anybody to work with him,

he kind of came in with the characters.

The Real McCoy was where Felix's character comedy really took flight.

The first one that I remember him introducing was the lawyer.

Ahem.

Erm, I'm Douglas, and this is my club.

When I heard about your programme,

I thought, absolutely marvellous idea, it really was.

And he just started to speak and the crowd went crazy.

Racism in Britain today, wonderful, wonderful, absolutely amazing.

But it is, yes, of course, a really big problem, enormous problem,

big, enormous, tremendously big problem, yes.

I think we had to do two or three takes

so it didn't sound like canned laughter.

I lapsed into the vernacular, you know,

blouson skirts, box bottoms...

Beat-down Babylon...

Go on, my brethren, and so on and so forth.

LAUGHTER

Rass cloth, I announced...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The nuances and little phrases that he could pull out

that would reduce the room to fits,

which would leave a white audience thinking, "Why is that funny?"

You know, and I think it gave him a freedom to be somebody that maybe

he wasn't able to really be in the clubs that we played.

Our mission is only one thing and what it is,

it is to mash up Lucifer!

Mash up Lucifer is what we have to do! Mash him up!

Yes, mash him to little bits. We have to mash him up,

make him go down on the ground, start bawling and crying!

"We Need To Mash Up Lucifer" - I just thought to myself, hilarious!

Some of the young ladies as well, I've got something to say to you.

I notice some of you, you're walking about, yo-yo-yo-you...

Yo-yo-your skirt is all-all-all hung out like that.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Tuck it up yourself!

I mean to say, what the hell is going on?

Then he starts wiping his brow

and I'm thinking, "The church people are going to be so upset with you.

"You've gone too far, you've gone too far."

He does take you to the point where you think, "Is he? Yes! Oh!"

And then you can just go, "Nn! Ah!"

And that's what makes a brilliant comedian. He challenges you,

he makes you laugh even though you don't think you should be laughing.

That's a great comedian.

Excuse me, excuse me.

I'd just like to say something.

My name is Nathaniel. I'm from Lagos and I'm studying accountancy.

Felix was never afraid to be subversive,

particularly with Nathaniel, the Nigerian accountant-cum-cab-driver.

And what I'd like to do is to teach some of you West Indians,

especially the Jamaicans...

..how to speak the Queen's mother's language.

How to speak the Queen's mother's language.

Here was a Caribbean man playing an African ridiculing West Indians,

so you know, this character was a one-off.

What I've noticed, you are mucking about with your Hs.

All the time. What you are doing,

if there is an H, if there is an H in front of the vowel,

you are taking it away.

And if there is not supposed to be one there, you are putting one in.

So what you are doing, in your own accent, you are saying things like,

"My friend Harchibald was in the 'ospital.

"They are keeping 'im hin hovernight for a hobservation.

"Because 'e's 'aving an hoperation.

"On 'is 'ernia."

It wasn't done with spite or even real ridicule,

it was done with a sense of, I suppose, love.

But as the nation embraced his many characters,

those closest to him knew very little of the private man.

It was always good to see him, have a bit of a chat,

do your act, and then he'd go.

I produced two national tours for him, I slept in his spare room

and I gigged with him for 20 years, and I still hardly knew him.

He would come and do the show and leave,

and sometimes you might say to him,

"So, Felix, I don't see you with anybody" - and he'd go, "Ha-ha! Hey!"

And you think, "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

He was just a kind of an island.

You create characters to hide away, you know,

I remember talking to a therapist years ago

when I first started, saying, "Characters are dodgy."

I said, "What do you mean?"

She said, "You want to hide in different characters."

I think he was a very classic example of that.

It's Floyd, it's Floyd, all right? Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice.

You see stupid written on my forehead?

You see stupid written on my forehead?

If you see stupid written on my forehead, you'd better rub it off

because I don't want to be sat here with stupid written on my forehead.

By the mid-'90s, Felix and his comic creations were hot property.

He was playing cameo roles on all the big comedy shows.

You must call yourself Mr Fry and Mr Laurie,

and then when you are more famous you can drop the Mister.

-Ronnie Biggs, it's not yes or no, is it?

-Well, yes, it is.

-Good.

Say what you like about Paul Simon and Malcolm McLaren,

they gave African music structure.

Before, of course, they met these producers,

there was all this drumming the whole time.

Drumming, drumming, drumming, drumming, drumming!

-# Bong-ba-di-bong-bong-bong! #

-That's the one!

Then, when he was offered a part in The Fast Show,

Felix met his comedy kindred spirits.

-Hey, wait!

-What happen, sir?

So can man look up on his brethren, eh?

We needed someone who could do

a very convincing urban slang.

-Last time I was in a dance class. Some crack.

-Right. Right!

My God. Ninja, man. Epic.

Paul and I, not being from the streets, shall we say,

we didn't presume to write the script ourselves,

so we needed to find someone who could write and could improvise.

So mi turn around, but when mi turn back,

I got a brethren there in my deal, innit? Star! Yard star!

Mi just look, "Ah, right, den!"

Rock stone! Rock stone!

No.

No. I can't keep up with this.

I don't know what the bloody hell you're on about. Not a bloody clue!

We actually developed a sort of professional relationship

from then on, because he asked me and Charlie

to script edit a pilot that he'd done of his own show.

# Felix Dexter on TV! #

-Leave it!

-Leave it!

The pilot took the characters from Felix's live act

and placed them in a sketch show.

Don't tell me I'm backside, right. I know I'm right!

We thought this was going to be a chance, and so did Felix, you know,

for him to showcase his characters on his own.

What is going on? Stop, stop, stop!

I cannot believe

what yo-yo-yo-you-yo-you're putting...

-You are putting the devil into this young girl.

-Not yet, he hasn't.

I'm sorry, I've got no choice,

-I've got to suck the devil out of her.

-What?

Boosey got balls!

The show went out in September 1995, but wasn't picked up as a series.

I personally believe there was disappointment

in that not working out for whatever reason.

On the back of doing his sketch show,

he did try and develop the lawyer character.

Respect, respect, respect.

A year later, Felix was given a second pilot.

Please take a seat, Mr Johnson.

It was a sitcom featuring Douglas,

a well-to-do lawyer all at sea in multicultural Britain.

Douglas is kind of him, I think.

Yeah, I think it is!

He was lampooning himself as much as anything else.

He was lampooning the black guy who doesn't actually eat

curried goat and rice every Saturday. Why should he?

Oh, um... Hello, brother.

Brother? What the hell are you talking about?

Since when is me and you family?

I'm most dreadfully sorry, it's just that as we are the same hue,

I thought there might be some cultural solidarity, at least.

Same hue? Cultural what?

Show me your damn ticket!

Like the sketch show, Douglas wasn't commissioned as a series.

I saw him at the BBC once and we were talking about it,

and he was so gracious, it was almost like he missed his bus,

he didn't get the bus.

It was almost like, "OK, never mind, let's just keep moving."

And I remember saying, "Felix, if you don't get it,

"then we might as well give up."

because if there is anyone of the black comedy circuit

that should have got their own show - Felix.

People have always recognised Felix

but whether they quite realised what he was capable of,

you know, some of the executives perhaps didn't realise that.

He was one of those performers who far too many people missed

through short-sightedness, through the status quo,

there's a million and one reasons why not enough people saw Felix Dexter,

and none of them was his.

When I was in school or in the barbershop,

the constant conversation piece

would be "Why hasn't Felix got his own show?"

When Jason worked with Felix a decade later,

he got the chance to ask him about it.

He could have played the race card in his answer to me,

but he didn't, and that made me respect him even more,

and that's one of the major things that I got from him

in terms of perseverance, you know -

no matter what obstacles are put in front of you,

keep going, keep going.

Was there any suggestion that she might have had...

The next few years were busy ones for Felix.

As well as touring his live show,

he took on a variety of acting roles for television.

You're a homosexual fellow?

How many ages hence will this our lofty scene be acted over?

Every man, away!

People are often surprised when it turns out a comedian can act,

but it's all in there.

Different voices that emerge through the stand-up, you know,

that is acting, that's what it is.

Felix also began to work in theatre.

He performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company

and at the Young Vic.

In 2004, he appeared in a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

along with a dozen other comedians.

You can imagine with a company

mainly made up of comedians, there's always the danger

that it turns into a bit of a kind of stand-up showdown.

I took my cue off him because he's the man who's been there,

he's done it, and I'm going,

"Oh, I can't play the fool if he's being very, very serious."

And I just remember that Felix would just always be

this very relaxed, very calm,

very wise kind of voice at the heart of it.

Always taking the work seriously,

and I knew him as an actor and not as a comedian.

In 2006, Felix rejoined his old friends Paul Whitehouse

and Charlie Higson on a radio show called Down The Line.

Quite a simple idea, really, it was just a spoof radio show

where all the characters that call in can vent their spleen.

-I'm going to help the environment, yeah?

-Yeah.

Can be politically incorrect...

-I had a very bad problem.

-Hmm?

-It was never diagnosed.

Right, dyslexia or something like that?

No, I was blind.

But they are all played by performers that we like.

-Felix Dexter.

-Felix Dexter, obviously,

is very good at doing the black characters.

-SLURRED:

-You cannot progress in your education

-unless you have the clarity of speech, right?

-No...

It's the most important thing in your...

We live in a multicultural society, so as well as acknowledging it,

we should also be able to laugh about it,

and Felix had already opened the door.

Listen mate, listen. I've got a lot of black mates, all right?

-Calm down.

-I couldn't care if you've got friends in Jamaica, in Brixton

and The Black And White Minstrels. You are parking in the wrong place.

Move the car, remove it for me.

Over the course of this series,

I've travelled the length and breadth of Britain

and I've met some diverse and fascinating characters.

Down The Line was reincarnated for television as Bellamy's People,

a spoof celebrity travelogue

fronted by an earnest young journalist, Gary Bellamy.

-Gary Bellamy!

-I knew that!

One love!

-Check over here, like.

-I like the pumas.

-Eh?

Are they panthers?

No, no, that's lion. Lion.

No, that's a panther, I think.

No, man, that's a black lion we are talking about.

You can't get black lions.

You arguing with me about what is a panther like? That's a lion!

The show was entirely unscripted,

and played to all of Felix's strengths.

-Really?

-Yes, check man in.

It was all completely spontaneous and improvised.

HE BARKS

That's an amazing skill, and to make these characters so different

and to give them all their own personalities

but also their own language.

On one side is Scylla, on the other side is Charybdis,

the whirlpool and the monster.

Only Argonaut reach through.

He knew these characters so well, he got inside them so well,

and he knew how their minds worked.

Choppy little custom buoy...

He could go on all day in one character,

and that was sometimes a problem. We had to stop him...

Say, "Felix, we've only got a half-hour show!"

It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm the gentleman you are going to...

-Oh! That's right, OK, nice to meet you too. Hello.

-So, in my opinion...

-No, we haven't started yet.

-Wait one second.

One of the stars of the show was Felix's character Julius Olufemwe...

-We need to put a microphone on you for this.

-OK.

..eternal student and rampant Anglophile.

-Hold on.

-We won't be able to hear you if you don't put that on.

Calm down! Calm down, stop it! Stop that!

So, Julius, why have you brought me here?

Well, you know, I've brought you here

to show you, in a sense, what are

the most important features of London if we carry on talking

about the thing that we must celebrate about England...

The thing about Julius is, he is more patriotic and more British

than any of the other characters in the show,

and he's always picking up Gary Bellamy, the host,

for not being British enough.

Nelson's Column, what a marvellous representation

-of all the best of English history.

-That's not Nelson's Column.

No, no, that's Nelson's Column.

No, Nelson's Column is in Trafalgar Square. We're in Pall Mall.

Please, please, it doesn't matter. It's virtually the same as him.

We were talking about what it meant to be British

and he was saying, "I think we've lost that,"

and I said, "What about the Jubilee?

"That was a very British, great thing."

And then it somehow got around

to Brian May playing on the roof of Buckingham Palace.

Brian May was on top of the Palace, playing God Save The Queen.

-What could be more British than that?

-How long was he doing that?

-For about two and a half minutes.

-There you go.

Winston Churchill would be disgusted with that.

Brian May should be playing for an hour! Three hour!

-But...

-Five hour!

'I'm laughing. He does not crack. He is that person'

and he just keeps going with it, you know, "For an hour, two hour".

What do you mean by people like us?

People of breeding, yes,

people who abhor the vulgar and the crass, you know?

But to be fair, surely, aren't you a bit of a fish out of water,

living in the countryside yourself?

No, I don't know what you mean.

If I come to you, BBC, say, "Give me TV show," you give me TV show?

No. No.

Mr Khan, the self-styled Muslim community leader

in Bellamy's People,

eventually became the subject of his own sitcom.

And when its creator Adil Ray was casting for the series,

Felix was top of the list.

-This is Omar. He is new.

-Excellent.

'I always felt that a black Muslim

'coming up against Mr Khan would be very funny,'

and he was the only person we didn't audition for.

Everyone else we auditioned for. Felix was the one guy,

called him up. "Got this thing, do you want to do it?" "Yes."

I don't think he even had an agent. He was like, "I'll do it."

Ah, salaam alaikum! I'm delighted to make the acquaintance

of such a prominent member of the local community.

What's wrong with him?

-He's from Somalia.

-Oh.

You're always certain that Felix will find the funny here,

he'll do something funny,

and it's sometimes very simple lines for Felix,

you know, "Salaam alaikum", which is the Muslim greeting,

but the way Felix would say it would just crack us up.

What are you doing here? You're not even on the bloody committee!

I'm taking the minutes of the meeting on the computer.

He's our technical wizard.

-Him?

-That's what I used to do back in Somalia.

You worked in IT?

No, he was a wizard.

'The way Felix played it was very clever

'because sometimes there were moments where you weren't sure'

whether Omar was deliberately winding Mr Khan up

or he was just, that was just Omar.

HIGH-PITCHED CHANT

During filming,

it became clear that Felix was having some health problems.

Felix did tell us he was ill, but he would tell us it was a back problem.

Looking back now, you kind of go,

"OK, now we know what the problem might have been."

When we were making the last series of Down The Line

in the spring of 2013,

we noticed that he was slightly under par,

that there wasn't the energy in the performances

and he didn't seem as mentally fast.

And we got him to do a couple of things again,

and he kept apologising, saying, "Oh, sorry,

"I've got a bit of a cold at the moment, I'm not feeling too good."

To a handful of close friends, Felix revealed the truth.

When he called me, I honestly thought

he was ringing to wind me up about Arsenal being top of the league.

I saw his name come up on my phone. "Felix, oh!"

I said, "Oh, hi, Felix, I know you've not been well

"because I heard about your back, so what's going on?" Blah, blah,

and that's when he said, "Well, you know, Judith, you know...

"..well, basically, I'm dying."

There was no wind-up, there was no punchline, and he said,

"I've got this multiple myeloma,"

and he'd had it for a long time.

By the time his friends learned about it,

Felix's cancer had reached its final stages.

I went to see him a few times,

and I did sort of broach the subject or the fact

that he was a guarded person

and we got...

..um, got very emotional.

Eddie and I went up to the hospice that he was in,

and as soon as we walked in, he went, "I should have told you.

"I'm so sorry. I should have told you. I'm so sorry."

And we were like, "No, come on, man."

We laughed hard, until I thought

the people at the hospice were going to say, "Look,

"there are dying people here, you're going to have to keep it down."

So for the first week, chatty, great,

second week, little bit less energy,

and by the third week, the third week was the last week,

and he reached out, and him reaching out to me was...

..was just really, really, touching.

On October the 18th this year, Felix died.

Although he was never a household name,

to his friends and fans, he was simply a legend.

He will go down in our history as one of our comic geniuses,

not a black comic genius, a comic genius.

He knew his craft to the bone.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Excuse me! Excuse me! Excuse me!

Can I please interrupt you? Can I please interrupt you?

You West Indians, what are you doing? I can't believe you.

He invited everyone to laugh,

you know, black, white, whatever, wherever you are from.

I think his legacy is, he was one of our finest character comedians.

I was raving last night, you know,

and well, you see, a whole heap of my spars come in my yard,

and, well, we mash up the place.

For me, he was good enough to be the star of the show,

but you know, he was still happy enough to play his position

and he wouldn't let that kind of get in the way of being professional

and doing a good job, because you know, his work speaks for itself.

-Baby love.

-Yeah.

-You feeling nice?

-I've...

-Give you a little stroke to your ear like that, right?

-Yeah.

And then start with the t'ing!

It's just a shame that...

..that he didn't get a chance to see this

and to see what people thought,

how people love him and how they'll miss him.

You've been lovely to me. I hope you've enjoyed me.

Thanks a lot for listening. Good night to you.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd