THE HENRY FORD SCHOOL OF COMEDY
>> SATURDAY, JANUARY 01, 2011
The end of year "topical news quizzes" featuring the BBC cabal of rancid venomous left wing "comedians is also a major threat to festive good health. I caught a bit of the News Quiz I think it was, with Jeremy Hardy - that quintessential BBC personification of what is deemed "funny" - raging about the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems. The sheer hatred that spews forth from Hardy and his ilk seems to send the selected audiences into paroxysms of laughter which tells us all we need to know about them. But IF there was a comedian who mercilessly mocked Labour, who relentlessly attacked Obama, who verbally assaulted the EU, who patronised gays and who taunted Islam, I wonder how many invites would be received from the BBC? BBC humour is from the Henry Ford school of comedy, you can have anyone you want so long as it is left.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
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1327 Prehaps its the time of year but sometimes you do have to feel sorry for Hardy. He has been doing the same act since 1985 (which wasn't any good back then) and no one except for a few SWP'ies in the Beeb think he is the slightest bit funny. So with no other work left he appears on the same Radio 4 shows year in year out telling the same jokes. He is living on borrowed time and must know it.
ltwf1964 he's a mong much in the same vein as the other humourless fuktards the BBC keep wheeling out masquerading as "comedians" it's pathetic and way beyond satire
Barry What's worse is that the law seems to be on their side. The left, as represented by the BBC, gets to decide which 'minorities' are entitled to legal protection and which ones are not.
Charlie Can we have a poll for the biggest beeboid tosser of the year? I know there are a lot to choose from. Jeremy Hardy should have been on Martins “ BBC Twat of the year Poll ” He could have won.
AndyUk06 The BBC are not content with not showing old school comedians but have also launched extraordinary attacks on old school comedians. Anyone who hadn’t lived through the 1970s and 80s will often come away with the idea that TV back then was full of fat oafish comics, “attacking people” for their ethnic origins or their gender. The BBC will often claim that it is a culture of “sexism and racism” they are dstroying. But who are these foul neo-fascist funnymen? The BBC will not say. Quite possibly because they never really existed. What actually happened is that a lot of good comedians from working class backgrounds were driven off TV and replaced by people like Alan Davies: privately educated, middle class ‘rebels’ who impose their values on the medium, pretty much killing off comedy. Benny Hill was one such victim of this purge – wrongly denounced as a “sexist”. The brilliant Les Dawson was dropped by the BBC at the height of his popularity on suspicion of being old hat. The hugely successful Comedians series – including the great black comic Charlie Williams – which was seen as the breeding ground of the “sexist” mother-in-law joke. Though you wouldn’t expect Davies or Rory Bremner (educated expensively at Clifton Hall School and Wellington College respectively) to realise that rather than being a groundless stereotype, mother-in-law gags grew out of the need through poverty, for newly-weds to live with the brides’ parents. 'Alternative' comedy’s targets have included the “sexist” Carry On films (now reassessed and permissible again). Even the Two Ronnies were mocked by Oxbridge old boys Smith and Jones. Pretty much any established comedian was automatically suspected of thought crime and written off. In fact, only two mainstream comics did ‘racial’ material live - Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson. These were targets because they were working class Tories. Anyone who has seen Davies' act would know that he is an exceptionally gifted observational comic: bright, filthy, and absolutely non-PC. Racist? Not at all. The Independent once praised Davidson as the “true face of alternative comedy” concluding that Jim’s “brilliant comedy catches our national identity all too well.” Strangely both he and Manning managed to stay on TV into the Noughties – Bernard until he died, Jim until the tedious “homophobic” incident. Jim isn’t homophobic either. But you wouldn’t expect BBC pseudo-intellectuals to be conversant with the widespread use of insult in working class banter.
1327 Facscinating post Andy ! Thinking about it I don't think I have ever seen Jim Davidson tell a joke on the TV in recent years or seen more than about 5 seconds of his act. We are told he is a bad person but we aren't allowed to see why this is for ourselves.
Guest I think your argument would have far more power if it were more accurate. For example, both Benny Hill and The Comedians were broadcast on ITV, so to include their cancellation in an anti-BBC diatribe is a bit silly.
Guest Who Woah, diatribe and sillyness monitor alert! Yet again, with a plain strewn to the horizon with the rotting corpses of BBC bias, a vulture swoops in with... two corrections... and the impossible to resist snarks to get an extra 1/2 pint of shandy from the glee club pot tonight. Whilst factual accuracy does indeed round out an argument more, and should be corrected, such 'errors' are hardly terminal in this case, forming but a small fraction of the overall point. Assuming they are indeed errors. I have to say I too thought Benny was an ITV performer exclusively, but a quick gander on Google gets one to... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Hill 'He remained mostly with the BBC through to 1968, except for a few sojourns with ITV station ATV between 1957 and 1960 and again in 1967.' Maybe one is confusing the person with one of his shows? But yes indeed, more accuracy would indeed help the credibility of many professional, vastly, if uniquely, funded broadcast entities to be sure. Rather highlighted by those on this little, free, unfunded (on any basis) forum getting it right a lot more than Aunty's finest manage. Maybe its because those here are less constrained by trying to squeeze what is all the time into what some think things 'should be'?
AndyUk06 Thanks Guest Who, was about the counter with pretty much what you said, but you beat me to it. The point being that Benny Hill was/is being aired on BBC America with much success, but not in the UK. Why? Point taken about the comedians, but it is still a 100% relevant means of describing the joyless BBC mindset. The fact remains that the painfully PC and po-faced BBC has been unable to come up with any decent comedy in over 10 years. Early Doors and Gavin & Stacey are OK, but hardly in the same league as Steptoe, Only Fool & Horses, Porridge, Till Death Us Do Part et al. Roger & Val, Rev, Grandma's House? Do me a favour. Pathetic, played-out piffle compared to the classics listed above.
AndyUk06 You've actually got me thinking on this, albeit in a restricted post-alcohol way... I've often wondered why the likes of Benny Hill were sidelined, while the Pythons (say) are still revered to this day. It has be all about class, surely. Benny went to a bog standard comp in Hampshire, while the Pythons, who let's face it were not that funny, were bona fide Oxbridge types. I remember the sanctimonious Ben Elton denouncing Benny Hill, in his predictably shallow way, as a "dirty old man". Actually it was always the blokes in that show that were the losers- walking into lamposts, getting bald heads slapped, chased by angry women etc. I defy anyone not to laugh at any of the Chow Mein the Chinaman sketches! Benny Hill’s still pulls in the punters wherever it is broadcast. It was no. 1 on BBC America in 2005, though the BBC has shied away from repeating any of the shows here. Apparently there is too much “stigma” attached to his name. So what about David Walliams and Matt Lucas portaying elderly ladies as puking incontinents? Or Mitchell and Webb’s sketches that involve punching and killing women? All have been broadcast withouit protest.
RGH This reads like an editorial straight out of Izvestia (or Cuba's La Prensa)...the corruption of Lulas Workers Party, the personal vanity purchases (aircraft) and extensive trips abroad to every green, socialist occasion, make him a hero to the BBC coterie, but the bribery of the mass electorate (with its own money a la Brown) will be paid for in economic events within a very few years. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12103312
sue I absent-mindedly flicked over to BBC3 yesterday, during one of their "100 best" roundups. It was about excruciating celebrity moments, or annoying celebrities, or some such. They put these programmes on all the time when there’s nothing better to do - they can’t get the staff. They show a clip of something a celebrity has said or done, and various people comment, the idea being (I think) that these people represent you and I, and say more wittily and entertainingly what we are all thinking. However, the people who commented were much more annoying than the celebrities, and much uglier and possibly less witty, though both celebrities and commenters were equally obscure and no-one could ever have heard of any of them. Surely. Why am I telling you this? Oh yes, because a caption came on the screen each time someone said their bit, identifying the speaker. Ninety nine percent of them were described as : Comedian. Can anyone be called a comedian? I think so. From now on when anyone asks me what I do, that’s what I’m saying I am. It may have a whiff of sarcasm if I can get away with it.
thespecialone Yep saw a bit of that. I have to agree that I had never heard or seen any of the 'comedian' commentors on that programme. I cannot even remember their names now. I bet though that the majority, if not all of them, were from privately educated schools then university. They would have ticked the boxes for being 'right on' and their 'comedy' routines are 'edgy' (ie anti-Tory).
Techno Mystic I used to enjoy those programmes and their contributors but the banking crash changed my mood and I can't watch them now, they seem too smug and complacent. What we need in this country is some biting post-crash satire, but where is it? Production companies for all the channels seem to be well behind the curve now. The most biting satire is the Daily Mash site. Perhaps they will eventually move into TV. I don't even watch Peep Show anymore because it is just obsessed with trivialities (yes, I know that one is on Channel 4).
Timothy Montague-Mason The unbelievably talentless Russell Howard and Marcus Brigstocke have managed to become classed as 'comedians' with help from the BBC, so yes, any (left-winger) can become a 'comedian' at the BBC.
DP111 On topic on the loathsome BBC Here is a BBC Youtube of the recent bombing of a church in Egypt.. http://eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com/2011/01/egypt-suicide-bombing-of-christian.html Note the neutral tone of the BBC reporter. She also states that Egypt is plagued by "sectarian" violence, thus blaming both sides for the Bombing. Then we have the BBC reporter in Egypt who states that the identity of the bomber is unknown- it could be a Christian or even a Buddhist, he notes.
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