Comedy

Sad news reaches us at Culture House that Rik Mayall, one of the mainstays of my TV-addicted teenage years, has died at the age of 56. A virtuoso of all that was most grotesque and loathsome in man, Mayall made his name leading memorably in a number of game-changing sitcoms, including Channel 4's the Comic Strip Presents..., ITV's The New Statesman and BBC Two's The Young Ones and Bottom. The delight with Mayall was that the more odious his characters became the more mesmerising he got. Here are some highlights: 1. Richie, Bottom A lot of people didn't get Bottom. I loved it. It was like a cross between Beckett and Feydeau. And well before I knew who either Beckett or Feydeau were, its sweaty nihilism worked a treat on me. It still does: 2.

For those who are worried that five men in their 70s might struggle to bring the kind of energy befitting a sell-out show at the O2, have no fear. The Pythons have commissioned some ‘lovely dancers’ to give the show a little extra pizazz. When Mr S asked Michael Palin how rehearsals were going, he said they haven’t started yet for fear that the old timers might ‘peak too early’. ‘But we’ve got lovely dancers and lots happening on the screen - lots of glitter and dazzle - so it won’t be just old guys trying to get into costumes we fitted into 50 years ago.’ The dancers will also be taking the audience’s attention away from the fact that the Pythons aren’t as supple as they used to be.

Just to ring the changes, I’ve written about the BBC and political correctness for the mag this week. Yeah, yeah, I know – you haven’t heard enough about that subject. But one of the writers of the 1970s situation comedy It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum has complained that aunty isn’t showing the series any more as a consequence of political correctness. My suspicion is that it isn’t being reshown because it was humourless unmitigated crap, but there we are. The bigger issue, though, is the one raised by the excellent (for a Blairite) Dan Hodges. As it happens, I was invited onto this show and now wish I had accepted. The irony of it all seems entirely lost on the BBC. Thank god they’re going to get rid of the channel entirely.

Have you ever wanted to know how dictators stay in power? Try visiting a comedy club. I went to one the other night. The acts varied in quality. No one died on their backside, no one stormed it, the audience went away happy. But at a couple of points the thing happened, the thing that gives you a clue about dictators: the comedian picked on a member of the audience. In fairness they were both minor examples. One was the compère assessing how a line had gone down. Two guys in their fifties sitting at the side had laughed. ‘Wow, even you two liked that,’ said the compère. ‘Look at you, Waldorf and Statler there.’ Everyone laughed, including Waldorf and Statler, and the evening moved on.

In a comic-strip cartoon, beads of water apparently radiating outward from the head of one of the characters indicate embarrassment. Lines flying horizontally from a character, all in one direction and tailing off with distance, indicate rapid movement in the opposing direction. Every western child knows this; but were you to show the cartoon to a Tuareg nomad in the Sahara, these ciphers — which are really more a form of hieroglyph than a depiction of any recognisable object — would be meaningless. Likewise in a film, cutting between scenes  would totally confuse our Tuareg, who would wonder why we had apparently left one place and gone suddenly to another.

A female friend asked me to a burlesque night she had organised. She honestly thought I would enjoy it. ‘Come and see naked women who aren’t being exploited,’ she said. My friend said this because I sometimes hide from the world in the dark caves of Hackney, where ladies collect pounds in a pint glass and then turn around a pole with all the joie de vivre of a rusty weathervane in a light gale. On a wet weekday afternoon there are typically six or seven punters in these stews, who half-watch the show while drinking lager, munching crisps and thumbing through Loot or watching the cricket on the screen in the corner. I like these places. Flesh, alcohol, crisps, cricket, literature — the five pillars of civilised manhood, all accessible from one bar stool.

Continuing the domestic bliss/ tv theme, one programme I have not watched so far is The Wright Way. This is a situation comedy about somebody called Wright, as you might have imagined. It is written by the 1980s comedian Ben Elton. The show has already received a slagging from a couple of critics, largely for not being funny. I have yet to read a good review. It is on BBC One – and this, I think, is the point. Who else, other than the BBC, would commission a show from Ben Elton? Just as who would put Jeremy Hardy and Sandi Toksvig on air? Nobody, I suspect. I don’t dislike the work of these people because they are lefties, I dislike their work because it hasn’t ever been funny. (Although I suppose we should allow Ben some credit for his part in writing Blackadder.