Andrew Roberts - The Double Act A History of British Comedy Duos

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Andrew Roberts 2018

The right of Andrew Roberts to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9029 5

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The first double act that I saw starred a short pompous man who wore the sort of round glasses associated with shopkeepers in the later Ealing comedies. Hello boys and girls, he exclaimed, full of enthusiasm, only for his panegyric about a recent trip to the zoo to be ruined by a rude interruption from a younger man with the ready smile of a door-to-door salesman. The would-be lecturer was decidedly put out by the intervention of this individual, but it did not prevent him from being in the others company on a weekly basis. The second featured a charming yet very formidable middle-aged lady who swore whenever she heard mention of a colour while her twin brother blew raspberries at the name of a food.

The acts in question were, of course, Don Maclean and Peter Glaze on Crackerjack, and Hattie Jacques and Eric Sykes on Sykes, each displaying one fundamental essence of comic duo; one could not be envisaged without the presence of the other. Another is the difference in status, nature or appearance, a comic trope that literally harks back millennia. In Aristophanes The Frogs Dionysus is superior in status; Xanthius is his slave but yet the latter enters the play riding a donkey while his master is having to walk while (unconvincingly) disguised as Heracles Hows that for arrogance and being spoiled rotten? complains the god.

To prevent this book from approaching the length of War and Peace, the starting point is the late nineteenth century, when the comedy double act was being forged from the influences of music hall and even minstrel shows. The cross-talk and the use of song pervaded well into the twentieth century with the participants often trapped by economic circumstance (Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen) or institutionalisation (those comic duos who used an armed forces scenario). One very common theme is that the straight man represents the forces of English life who bully the shorter, more vulnerable-looking comic for their own good, be he an army NCO, a government official or the forces of business, be they large or small. The act might appear in the guise of a sketch, which itself was the foundation of the situation comedy, while in legitimate theatre, two best friends would be discovering that a farce is what occurs to you on the worst day of your lives. In a farcical comedy, the laughter so often derives from the audiences relief that the pragmatists trials are not theirs.

The narrative ends in the late 1980s, the last days of Terry and June and when the older Variety tradition, whether screened on television or in a seaside resort that was last repainted when Shane Fenton & The Fentones were in the Hit Parade, was starting to look tired. By that stage the divide between alternative and traditional was starting to dissolve, but as comedy is apparently about breaking rules, is appealing to some, others would derive greater entertainment from a 1965 Public Information Film about tyre repair.

On a somewhat more regretful note, the issues of space mean that Hinge and Bracket, Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough, Les Dennis and Dustin Gee, Hope and Keen and so many more acts will have to await a further tome. The focus is on pairings that may be reasonably said to be comedic in form and content although I have included one unintentionally funny action-adventure duo and this sadly means excluding Stan and Hilda Ogden and Jack and Vera Duckworth. It also means there was no space for Fanny and Johnny Craddock who were a double act of public notoriety if not public renown. Another challenge is possibly that of what may best be described as comedy orthodoxy; if you want to start a fevered online debate, merely post an opinion and the ensuing rants will frequently last for months. The remake of The Wicker Man (Neil LaBute, 2006) would have enjoyed far more success had it eschewed irate bees attacking Nicolas Cage and set the narrative in a Comedy Club somewhere near Portsmouth.

What this book will explore are the influences on the British comedy double act. Such acts hail from diverse backgrounds but their common denominators are the manner in which they simultaneously perform to each other and the audience without any extraneous effort. On occasions their legacies are of shadow and ephemera, which might be playbills for variety shows with advertisements for the Azena Danse Salon Sheffields most Luxurious Ballroom with the Seaside Atmosphere or an edition of the TV Times which features Reg Varneys favoured recipe for sponge cake or comedy acts proclaiming that they may be booked via a FLAXman or PRImrose Hill telephone number. A comedy duo could seek to extend the medium of radio, especially when engaged on a quest of the ultimate answer, while television situation comedy represented a bridge between the Variety sketch and drama. In the post-war years it both established a new interpretation of the double act and brought the names of the writers to the fore. The impact of the Cambridge Footlights, the Edinburgh Fringe and alternative comedy will be discussed, as will the impact of cinema. Films so often have the power to function as stories, dreams and shows, and how they become as potent in our imagination as the rooms in which we spent our childhoods (Thomson, 2014: 8). To many Britons, this can apply to a pair of out-of-work actors who went on holiday by mistake as it does to a tall bald headmaster who is attempting to mask his growing hysteria as his authority is challenged by a short and unspeakably determined headmistress of another establishment. The latter picture was, of course, The Happiest Days of Your Life (Frank Launder, 1950), and even if Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford were never again teamed on screen, the memories abide of a film comedy that was quite perfect. Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg worked together for only two years; they will forever be Steed and Mrs Peel.

This book does not claim to be the definitive guide; it is rather a starting point written by one who owes a debt to the comedians. It is also a tribute to the works of entertainment historians who inspire as much as they inform and divert: John Fisher, Benny Green, Roy Hudd, Andy Medhurst, Eric Midwinter and Roger Wilmut. My sincere thanks go to Patrick Barlow, Kenneth Cope, Barry Cryer, Dick Fiddy, Chris Gidney, Syd Little, Don Maclean, Gary Morecambe and Brian Murphy for their time and patience in enduing my questions.