Best Of British Variety Show

September 2008


FRANK Carson, Jimmy Cricket, Brotherhood Of Man, The Krankies, Paul Daniels and Cannon & Ball. In that order. For three hours.
I skipped the final twenty minutes -- your headliners weren’t so much the straw that broke the camel’s back as much as a mighty oak of clichés that beat it in to the ground.
They’ve been together 44 years and the routine hasn’t changed. Bobby pulls his braces, pretends a member of the audience is getting on his nerves, mucks around when Tommy tries to sing, they shout a lot...
By this time in the evening, notions of affection for veterans of British comedy or (more truthfully) the irony in a night of old school variety have long since ebbed away.
It had started nervously with a Union Jack backdrop and Land Of Hope & Glory booming through the p.a. Was this going to be one of those "why can’t we tell jokes about foreigners/immigrants/blacks/Asians/gays any more?" evenings?
Carson, our host, and looking well at 81 having lost nearly four stone (a porridge diet apparently), travelled closest to the bone but relied mostly on the daft.
"I bought some shoes and when I got them home they only had one lace. I took them back to the shop and they said ‘well it’s on the box -- Taiwan’."
Or one he told the Post for our website last week: "They’ve given the homeless a free bus pass. How do they know where to get off?"
No mother-in-law gags mind but a few about Paddy and Murphy and an Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman routine.
Jimmy Cricket, in signature hat, coat tails, dickie bow, fingerless gloves and wellies was another doing an act older than the venue. He’s stopped by the police, produces his licence, it’s a dog licence, but I'm driving a Rover... you get the idea.
It was depressing to see a man of his age miming Elvis as a lollipop man. And he had the gall to plug his half-price CD available in the foyer. He was just glad to be out of the nursing home gig circuit one imagines.
Unintentionally, The Brotherhood Of Man were the funniest turn of the night.
Particularly when they revised that dance (if that’s the right term) for their Eurovision winning tune Save Your Kisses For Me. As if they were sneaking out a little gas.
While the harmonies were in check, "the British ABBA" oozed more cheese than a volcanic mountain of Stilton. "Great to be here, ladies and gentlemen", "what a lovely audience ladies and gentlemen", "Oooh we don’t look old enough to have been together 36 years do we, ladies and gentlemen?..." etc.. Shut up and sing or run me through with a sabre.
Too many years on the ageing cabaret circuit, perhaps but they seemed to think we were all mentally decrepit.
And the dark-haired one, Nicky, like Ruth Madoc in a Brian May wig, seemed to be playing some sort of Welsh harlot character, inviting the lads back to her hotel for a smoke and drink and god knows what else. Maybe the old boys at those Warner hotels or on the retirement cruises find that exciting but the rest of us were perplexed and more than a little repulsed.
When they did sing it worked. But they ruined it by boasting - ‘we had a No. 1 with Angelo, Figaro and United We Stand, you know’. All right, time has passed. Get over it.
And just when you thought it was break time, they’re back for a Grease medley, with more geriatric flirting that brought a bit of sick up.
The Krankies, who have been crafting their adult routine for years on the student circuit, seemed to be most at ease. As much as a husband and his 61-year-old wife dressed as a naughty schoolboy can be. There’s panto nonsense we saw on Crackerjack in the 70s and hammy false laughter but it’s been updated with smut and for that they stole the show. Just.
"What did I say to you last night?," asks hubby Ian.
Replies ‘Jimmy’ "That we can’t do it because Cannon & Ball are next door."
And he spat in her face by mistake. One hopes, anyway.
Bolstered by a large dry white during an overdue interval and Paul Daniels shows he’s the most natural with the audience, comfortably filling in gaps between tricks that aren’t so well delivered -- a card trick from 60 feet away with no screens?
But he mixes hypnotism with magic and you can’t help but be impressed.
Cannon & Ball’s finale comes too late. By then we've had enough.
"Is that your second husband missus? He wouldn’t have been my first choice either," says Bobby.
It’s a rare moment of mirth during an otherwise annoying, I’ve heard it all before, is it home time yet? set.
I wasn’t the only ‘younger’ member of the audience here for the irony left slumped with head in hands waiting for the pain to subside.
The Best Of British Variety it wasn’t. Surely that line-up would include the departed Monkhouse and Manning and Reid. Offensive, just a little. Mostly it was outdated and tiresome.
The likes of which we’ll never see again.
For good reason.

Frank Carson

September 2008

Carson with the rest of the 'Best Of British Variety Tour'


EVERYTHING is an opportunity for a gag.
Unlike his late mate Bernard Manning, who would often resort to insecure boasting and sentimentality during his last interviews with EG, Frank Carson is relentlessly in search of the joke.
"Just before he died I rang him up and he said 'I'm on iron tablets'. I said 'I know' and he said 'How did you know?. I said 'Because every time I looked at you, you were facing North'."
Does he miss him?
"Everybody misses Bernard. The one thing I loved about him was, when he did the show after he was dead, do you remember that?"
Yes. It was a pre-recorded epitaph, Manning commentating on his own funeral for a TV documentary.
"He said 'bury me in a sound-proof coffin. I don't want to hear that b*****d Carson telling jokes!'"
You wouldn't pre-record your own epitaph for TV.
"No I don't think so. It wouldn't be nice. Bernard was a one-off."
He also spoke at the funeral of Mike Reid, the 70s comic and EastEnders actor who died not long after Manning last summer.
"I said: 'You've been a wonderful man, Mike, all your life, you've filled millions of homes with glee, comedian, singer, actor... but you were never as funny as me," he laughs.
"He would have loved that.
"He's was a great friend," he adds, his voice cracking just a little.
Carson, Manning and Reid were all graduates of the working men's clubs of the North who found fame on the 70s TV show The Comedians.
And Carson, who is 82 in November, is likely to go the same way as his buddies – working until he drops.
"People say 'why don't you retire?'. But everyone loves a laugh and I make them laugh," he says simply.
But what about the heart attacks?
"I don't know where that came from. I've never had a heart attack. What I had was a pacemaker. When I fart the garage doors opens."
He's off again.
Unlike Manning, who never cared about his bulk, Carson has shed three-and-a-half stone in the past few years.
"It was so easy I can't believe it."
How did he do it?
"Porridge."
You just ate porridge?
"No. You get a half pint of water and fill it full of porridge. There's no way you're going to eat all that I promise you. And I ate one meal at six o'clock. The weight just fell off.
"But you must not drink," he warns.
"You must give up the liquor. It's a terrible way to go through life not to have a nice pint of lager, or a glass of wine... it doesn't matter if it's red or white to me because I'm colour blind."
Carson will be going into hospital next Friday, the day after he's in Nottingham.
"Just for a couple of hours," he says.
"They're going to recharge my heart. The pacemaker's not pumping at the pace my heart is going at."
It'll be Bobby Ball ("a great friend") – his fellow performer on The Best Of British Variety Tour which comes to the Royal Concert Hall on Thursday – at his side for the appointment.
Cannon & Ball, The Krankies, Jimmy Cricket, Paul Daniels and the Brotherhood Of Man and Frank Carson kicked off the tour last month in Skeggy, trawled the usual end-of-pier venues before moving inland to cities and towns where this sort of pre-alternative comedy hasn't been seen outside social clubs in decades.
But many of the dates have sold out.
"It's a revelation to a lot of people in showbusiness," says Carson, who is the compere.
"That here's something that the general public want to see. It amazed me," he admits.
"At the start I thought it might be rather difficult to get people to come in to see a show with all oldies like us. I'm thrilled to bits."
Jimmy ("There's more") Cricket is the youngest of the crew at 62. Carson is the eldest. The combined ages of all the performers circles 700 years.
"None of us are using make-up but Readymix."
He's sounding older than the last time EG caught up with him three years ago when he was at Cabaret in Fletcher Gate. But he's still non-stop.
"Spike Milligan said 'what's the difference between Frank Carson and the M1?' You can turn off the M1," he laughs.
"Bobby (Ball) calls me Rebel Without A Pause."
Behind the Irishman's barmy exterior is a life-long charity worker. Which sounds a like a cliché but it's earned Carson the Roman Catholic Church's highest honour -- Knight of the Order of St. Gregory The Great.
"On the 20th May 1987 in the Vatican in the private room of John Paul II, who will in the next couple of years be canonised as a saint," he says proudly.
"It was lovely having my grandchild dangling in his arms, me shaking his hand – it was a great honour. But I don't use the title Frank Carson KSG."
There are just seven of his kind in the UK, he says.
"I have the full papal uniform that goes with it. It's worth £2,500. If the Pope came to this country I can precede him to the altar with a drawn sword as his bodyguard."
Wait for it...
"But I tell people it means that when I go to the Vatican I can use the Pope's washing machine. And get one of the nuns to give me a haircut."

The Best Of British Variety Tour comes to the Royal Concert Hall on Thursday, 7.30pm. There are some tickets still available priced £23-£25 available from the box office, call 0115 989 5555.