Losing it on the descent
For me, Frankie Howerd was one of those ‘Marmite’ comedians – you either loved or hated him. As I remember his career, he originally made his name in the British late Music Hall and early radio era (he even had his own comic strip in The Beano or some similar kids’ publication) but then went out of fashion. By the dawn of the 1960s he was regarded as decidedly ‘old hat’ and finished, that is until Peter Cook rescued him from oblivion by giving him spots at his Establishment club, after which he suddenly acquired ‘national treasure’ status with series like Up Pompeii! and chat show appearances, upon which he traded until his death in 1992.
Popular received opinion was that he was one of the greats and could work an audience like no other, but I never quite bought that. I never warmed to his ‘syrup’ (a suspiciously and very obvious quasi-ferret) and his fake ‘robustly hetero’ on-stage and screen image. In real life he was a rampant old-style and rather sad queen in the days before Larry Grayson, Lilly Savage and Julian Cleary made such overt campness fashionable (and crossed over into the mainstream) and only Howerd’s contemporary Danny La Rue had achieved mass appeal via his astute combination of overtly feminine pantomime dame outfits combined with sharp wit and a tinge of ”I’m a normal man, dearies, under all this slap!” irony to his patter.
Despite the above and my impression that Howerd made a little go a long, long way [mind you, good luck to him I say, we’ve all got to make a living], I would say that – in some small doses and particularly a smattering of revealing interviews in which he displayed surprisingly hidden depths beneath the crass public persona – I did enjoy his television performances.
Dear reader, you may ask where this is going – marginally, I’ve begun to wonder myself – but I can now do the ‘reveal’: one of Frankie Howerd’s well-worn and well-used catch phrases – usually uttered directly to an enraptured audience tittering at some insulting joke he’d just made about a fellow character – was “No, don’t mock the afflicted …”
It sprang to mind this morning when I came across the latest developments in the crises engulfing British Cycling, Team Sky Sir David Brailsford and Sir Bradley Wiggins (including, of course, allegations of sexism and bullying). As they say on Fleet Street, this one seems set to run and run.
See here for an article by Sean Ingle as appears of the website of The Guardian/The Observer today – CYCLING PROBLEMS CONTINUE
Meanwhile, I don’t know if anyone else has – like me – grown distinctly dissatisfied with the general performance of ‘Wiggo’ recently.
I’m referring to his ‘carefully chosen’ interview with Andrew Marr to explain his take on the dodgy [but just on the right side of legal] ‘asthma’ treatments he took before several of his greatest road tour triumphs; his cranky and boorish appearance on the celebrity ‘reality TV show’ The Jump from which he suddenly retired with a ‘broken leg’; and his ‘Bugger off and leave me alone!’ antics when door-stopped by camera crews outside his home over the latest Team Sky revelations and House of Commons committee non-appearance of the medic involved in the ‘strange package’ that he personally couriered out to Wiggins somewhere in Europe.
The other thing that annoys the hell out of me is the current Skoda car advertisement that Wiggins appears in on the telly at the moment.
Presumably recorded at a time when his stock was just about at its height – and before all the recent scandals – it has me metaphorically hurling abuse at the screen every time it appears.
See here – BRADLEY SKODA ADVERT
