457: Gay Boxing 3: I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again

I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again – 19 Apr 1970
Written by Graham Garden and Bill Oddie

http://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/comedy/Im-Sorry-Ill-Read-That-Again/710-Harder-They-Fall-April-19-1970-show-9360.html

You can play the episode online or download a copy at the link above.
“The Harder They Fall, the More They Hurt Themselves” runs for the last 10 minutes of the programme

Prior to this sketch, Terry Southern had executed several variations on the idea of a gay boxer in the film and book versions of his “The Magic Christian”

The radio sketch programme “I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again” drew its humour from silliness, puns, running gags and characters, sarcastic topical comments, and mild sexiness. This was matched by the enthusiastic performances of its cast, which were equalled and sometimes overpowered by the responses of an overenthusiastic audience. Each show usually ended with a longer 10 minute sketch parody.

“The Harder They Fall, the More They Hurt Themselves” is a parody of boxing match has as its centrepiece John Cleese’s camp old queen of a rookie boxer, Butch aka “Sugar Puff Robinson”. This is an obvious play on the name of the famous boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, as sugar puffs are a breakfast cereal, but in English slang “puff” or “poof” or “poufffe” was a then-popular term for “homosexual”.

5 years have passed since Julian and Sandy on “Round the Horne”. Julian and Sandy employed the private slang of Polari, and the writers and cast were unsure as to what they would be able to get past the BBC censors. So even as people were laughing at those sketches, they may not necessarily have been entirely sure what they laughing at, but were just caught up in the entertaining hysteria. The gags in this episode of “I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again” aren’t intended to go over anyone’s head or appear to worry much about the censor. Cleese’s character makes numerous sly sexually appreciative comments about wrestler’s glistening bodies and his camp innuendoes (“You can call me anytime”) get strong laughs. Broad acting, broad gags, broad laughs.

Bill Oddie as boxing trainer: All I want is a raw youth I can get to work on.

Cleese: Mm, don’t we all. Oh, I say. Quiet, plebs. Hello boys. I’m butch. Sorry -“Butch”.

There’s a heavy dose of effeminacy gags about and wearing women’s clothing: “If you touch my earrings I’ll wince”

Mention of a fighter’s purse (his prize money) gets a “Goody, it’ll go with my huge handbag”

Graham Garden as the promoter: Jack will be your second

Cleese: Don’t you believe it!

In this extended sketch, Cleese takes the camping-it-up spotlight from Tim Brooke Taylor, who as noted all over this blog, was the go-to-performer for mincing about for this generation of Oxbridge comedians.

Cleese’s comment “I’m as rugged as the next man” elicits a quick fey fairy cameo from Tim as The Next Man, and then a quick spat as to who saw all the men first.

Tim BRooke Taylor now admits, “The one thing I do regret is the large number of gay jokes. At the time it was liberal to be able to do ‘poofter’ jokes at last – ‘Round the Horne’ did them brilliantly. But it went on too long and I remember thinking, ‘if I do this in a ‘whoops’ voice it will get a laugh.’ I’m happy to say I gave that route up eventually.” – “The Clue Bible” by Jem Roberts.

449: Peter Cook and Dudley Moore - The Masked Phantom

Goodbye Again, 1968

Peter Cook as Reporter
Dudley Moore as the Masked Phantom

In which the aggressive wrestler is really a camp, artistically-inclined sissy. Basically, it’s an opportunity for Dudley Moore to camp it up once again - and at rather too long a length.

--------------------------------

REPORTER: Good evening. Tonight in Worldnewspectoramaprobe, we examine the controversial sport of wrestling. Last week, I went down to the Shoreditch gymnasium to see the Masked Phantom in training. . .

(Cut to the Shoreditch gymnasium)

REPORTER: Well, here I am at the Shoreditch gymnasium, and we're about to see a practice bout between the Masked Phantom, who is just over here behind me, and looking very confident - a very fit, compact and agile fighter. His opponent tonight is an extremely dour and tough northerner from Scunthorpe, the Scunthorpe Strangler. I'm just going to try and get a word with them before the fight begins. . .

(The bell rings. The wrestlers start fighting)

REPORTER: I think I'll probably leave now, and let them get on with it . . .

(The Scunthorpe Strangler picks up REPORTER, and hurls him out of the ring. The Masked Phantom wins the ensuing bout, and joins REPORTER for an interview)

REPORTER: Speculation has been raging up and down the country as to the true identity of this ferocious fighter. Tonight, for the first time in the history of the universe, the Masked Phantom rips off the mask and reveals his true identity.

(The Masked Phantom removes his mask, revealing the familiar features of Phantom)

PHANTOM: (very camp) Hello.

REPORTER: Good evening, Phantom.

PHANTOM: I wish you'd call me Tom.

REPORTER: Tom, wrestling's a pretty rugged sport. What made you go into it?

PHANTOM: I think really to prove myself as a man, you know. The whole Sir Francis Chichester, Round The Horn bit, you know.

REPORTER: I understand - to prove yourself as a man. Are these fights in any way ever fixed?

PHANTOM: (increasingly effete) Well, I can't speak for my colleagues in the profession, but speaking purely personally, you know, I go in that ring to be champ. I go in there to win. I become like some ferocious beast, you know - like some savage monster. I pull that mask over my head and something goes pop in my mind. And then something comes over me.

REPORTER: The mask, presumably?

PHANTOM: Right first time, cheeky chops. Whereas in real life, look at me now. Gentle, sensitive person - wouldn't hurt a fly.

REPORTER: Well, we have a chance to test the sincerity of the Phantom's words, as I happen to have a fly with me here in the studio, which I'm going to place in front of him and judge his reactions. Phantom, a fly for you.

(REPORTER takes a small box .from his pocket, and passes it to Phantom)

PHANTOM: A fly for you and a fig for me.

(Phantom opens the box)

PHANTOM: What a beauty! What a lovely creature! I think you're very cruel, keeping him cooped in here like that. (to the fly) Off you go, Ferdinand! (to REPORTER) Honestly, you are awful!

REPORTER: Proof positive, I think, of the Phantom's sincerity.

PHANTOM: If I may interrupt here, excuse me, but as Goethe, the great German poet said, die Liebe ist Alle - all you need is love, baby.

REPORTER: You mention Goethe. What are your favourite kind of books?

PHANTOM: Er, leather bound ones, mainly. You know, I love old things. Any old thing appeals to me. It's what they say about me down the gym, anyway.

REPORTER: Have you any interests outside the ring?

PHANTOM: My goodness gracious me, yes I have! Oh, yes! The people look at me and, you know, all they see is a great hunk of flesh. You know, I get branded as a wrestler, whereas in fact I'm interested in anything you care to mention - ceramics, pottery, sculpture, music, dancing, theatre. You name it, and I love it.

REPORTER: You mention theatre. What sort of roles do you see yourself in?

PHANTOM: Ooh, you're going to get me going, aren't you? Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I know I'm stretching my neck out, but I love Shakespeare. You know, whatever anybody says about him, I adore that man. I'd love to have a go at his King Lear, for instance.

REPORTER: You see yourself as King Lear?

PHANTOM: Well, shall I say I feel it here within me, you know. But all I need is a good director to coax it our. I think, oh what's his name? Come on, mutton head! REPORTER Brook! REPORTER Brook could get a wonderful Lear out of me. He could get a wonderful anything, you know. I only wish I'd put myself up for Oedipus.

REPORTER: You're interested in the Greek theatre, too?

PHANTOM: (ecstatic) The Greek theatre! I've loved the Greek theatre ever since “Never On A Sunday”. All that music and dancing, the philosophy - I love it!

REPORTER: Have you been to Greece recently?

PHANTOM: I only put a little body oil on before the show. Does it show?

REPORTER: I meant the country.

PHANTOM: Oh, I thought you meant grease! I'm sorry! I'm miles away!

REPORTER: Outside all your interests such as the theatre and ceramics, I understand you're also something of a singer.

PHANTOM: Yes, I've waxed my first disc, actually, just recently.

REPORTER: And I believe that, rather unusually, you accompany yourself on your own body.

PHANTOM: Yes, I call it deep singing. It's actually just an extension of Paganini's dictum. You know, the great violinist, Paganini.

REPORTER: Yes.

PHANTOM: He used to say, 'Whenever I make love to a lady, I like to think I'm playing the violin.'

REPORTER: I wonder if you could give an example of your singing now?

PHANTOM: I'd be delighted. I'll just whip my cosie off.

REPORTER: Right. Here, accompanying himself on his own body, in “O For The Wings of A Dove”, the Masked Phantom.

PHANTOM: Don't laugh, now.

(sings) O for the wings, for the wings of a dove

Far away, far away would I roam

(speaks, to REPORTER) I feel a bit thin without the backing behind, but that's the sort of thing.

REPORTER: I think it's very promising, and I'm sure we all wish the Masked Phantom an immense hit with his first record.

PHANTOM: You're very sweet, thank you.

439: 12 + 1

“12 + 1”
Directed by Nicolas Gessner and Luciano Lucignani
Written by Marc Behm, Nicolas Gessner, and Dennis Norden

Jackie: Tim Brooke-Taylor
Bennet: Willie Rushton

“12 + 1” aka “The Thirteen Chairs” (1969) is a dreadful film. The story is the chase for jewels that have been hidden in one of twelve chairs that have been sold off to disparate buyers. The original story is from the satirical Russian novel “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov which is an excellent book and you should read it if you get the opportunity. The book has been adapted for the cinema numerous times but almost all drop the specific satirical aspect, and just use it as a string on which to hang various comic encounters. This film is better known for being Sharon Tate’s last film before her murder and starring a ragbag of American (Orson Welles), English (Terry-Thomas) and European (Vittorio Gassman) stars in brief appearances than for any positive or distinguishing characteristics as a comedy. The online version below looks as though it’s been filmed through someone’s filthy net curtains so that doesn’t aid the viewing experience, but even if you discount that, no comedy can survive having half of its actors dubbed, the photography and editing looking as though been done using sellotape, and if the script wasn’t garbage to begin with then having been translated backwards and forwards repeatedly has only aided the process of decomposition. There’s a section in which Orson Welles looks as though he may be enjoying himself playing dress-up in a theatre, but that’s largely immaterial here.
6.24 – 10.56
The only remaining interest then is in the gay couple played by Willie Rushton and Tim Brooke-Taylor. So: gay antique dealer. That’s already a gay stereotype with some history. A gay couple is a bit of a novelty at this time though. In line with other 1969 films about gay lifestyles such as “The Boys in the Band” and “Staircase” this is a bitchy relationship, just on the point of disintegrating nastily. Rushton is emotional (a man pleading for the affections of another is the joke here), and wearing tighter white trousers than he otherwise would in real life. Tim Brooke-Taylor, who has already had some experience over the last 5-6 years of playing gay comedy characters in “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, “At Last the 1948 Show”, and “Marty Feldman”, finally gets to bring his camp stylings to the big screen. His head held with nose high in the air, and with a swishing mincing step, Brooke-Taylor is the selfish queen dealing out bitchy quips. Unfortunately, I lack the fashion expertise to describe what Jackie’s wearing in the first scene, but it’s certainly nothing a straight man would attempt. You’ll notice Rosie, his new “partner”, is a fashion designer with his oh-so groovy swinging boutique.

Jackie then becomes the film’s antagonist, a rival to find the jewels, and keeps popping up throughout the rest of the film chasing and being chased for the chairs in the film’s pursuit of slapstick. Throughout the film, Jackie has an eye for attractive or masculine men, making appreciative little “mmm”s, and constantly jealous of the interest men show other women.

0.00 – 1.10, 5.30- 6.20
These are Jackie’s scenes during the longer segment in a grand guignol theatre run by Orson Welles’s character. The better scene (to wit,. he’s actually doing something) is when Jackie escapes and intrudes upon the play then in performance with some outstanding prissy swanning about and effete cocktail bar mannerisms – this then degenerates into just a load of crappy slapstick

7.10 – 9.24
Here we a get slightly more extended instance of eying up another man with some camp insinuations. His gleeful cantering across the lawn with the two chairs isn’t too bad either. There then follows extended farcical chasing with an inevitable tumble into a swimming pool.

5.12 – 5.19 – Jackie’s pleasure at being saved by a handsome man
5.54 – 6.20 : a cry if “Hello Cheeky” when being revived

If you have just spent the last 8-10 minutes watching rather fuzzy excerpts of Tim Brooke-Taylor camping it up in this stinker, why? Historical it may be, hysterical it’s not.

430: Jules Feiffer 1: Hostileman 1

Playboy, January 1967
Jules Feiffer

Jules Feiffer first began to publish his distinctive cartoon strips in “The Village Voice” in 1956 and the newspaper would remain one of his primary venues for 30 or more years. At first Feiffer gave the strip to the paper for free as a means of advertising his work. One of the first big paying venues to hire Feiffer for other work was “Playboy” in 1958. Feiffer's work in “Playboy” has largely been forgotten but it’s just as good as the “Village Voice” strips and “Playboy” let him experiment with longer pieces, drama and stories .

Feiffer’s cartoon work stands out because he used the strip format for monologues and two-handers exploring sexual and political relations. Comic strip characters don’t usually exist solely to express contemporary dissatisfaction, resentment, neediness, conflicted emotions, neuroses and ideologies. Yet for all the crippling personal doubt, inadequacy and demonstrations of impotence in all its forms, Feiffer’s characters never seem to have any doubts about their sexuality. Similarly, for all the insults that get thrown about by his arguing partners, “faggot” or “queer” never crop up either. Homosexuality as an individual condition or a social phenomenon doesn’t make much appearance in his “Village Voice” strips.

One of the recurring features by Feiffer in the 1960s is his strip “Hostileman” in “Playboy” which ran for 6 instalments from 1964 to 1969. It features Bernard Mergendeiler, the generic adequate everyman from many of Feiffers’ Village Voice strips. Usually Bernard is pushed around and is incapable of expressing his needs or his resulting anger. In a parody of Captain Marvel who becomes a superhero by uttering the magic word “Shazam”, when the emasculated Bernard says “Hurt”, expressing his repressed desire for revenge, he is transformed into his secret identity of “Hostileman” and is able to gain the upper hand over his opponent, usually a girlfriend or his mother.

This one is inspired by the post-1965 new popularity of “camp” as the new style, which in the context of Feiffer-world is just a new way of making Bernard feel inferior. So you get “Chic Man” aka Tony In and his coterie of clones. The new mandates of fashion come from obvious homosexuals, which goes hand-in-hand with the fact that homosexuality and homosexuals are now slightly more conspicuous socially as the topic of assorted social analyses in magazines in “Life” and “Time” and an increase in sly homophobic digs in columns in newspapers like “The New York Times”. Note that “chic man” and co all have blond hair or platinum blond Caesar cuts, which is an American cliché of the time. There’s a profusion of wrists limp to the point of being perpendicular, and the tight striped suits are de mode.

Somewhat daring is the sequence at the top of page 4 in which Bernard gets cruised in a lavatory, a relatively early instance of acknowledging and joking about this aspect of gay life. Not one of those things people talk about. Near-contemporary sixties satirical types like Lenny Bruce and Barry Humphries treat the matter of cottaging via the aspect of the injustice of police entrapment. Here, there’s no distance, it’s just a preening winsome gay man having a bit of a leer. Note too the kicked back heel in the upper right column as he looks back into the toilet.

397: No Way To Treat A Lady

No Way to Treat A Lady (1968)
Directed by Jack Smight
Screenplay by John Gay, based on the novel by William Goldman

Starts at 33.55

This is a black comedy, a forerunner of those 1970s Vincent Price theatricalised serial murder films.

A serial killer, Christopher Gill (played by Rod Steiger), strangles older women to death then draws a lipstick kiss on their foreheads. Gill is a theatre director who kills because of his mother fixation. To compound this he regularly phones the detective investigating the murders to taunt and mislead him and laud his own genius.

The main reason to watch this film is Steiger’s performance which is outré to say the least. Gill commits his murders by getting the old ladies to invite him into their homes, by putting on a series of disguises: priest, plumber, cop, hairdresser. So there are his oddball performances in these disguises. He then puts on other accents when on the phone to the detective. And then there’s his performance when Gill is just being himself. Steiger’s character/characters never quite manage to form a total. The character never settles into a groove and so is either all over the shop like a mad woman’s piss or deliberately unsettling. The tone never quite finds itself.

Half of this film follows Steiger. The other half follows the investigating detective, his developing relationship with one of the witnesses played by Lee Remmick, and his life with his ultra-stereotypically jewish mother. Oh, and there’s even a dwarf making a confession thrown in at one point.

Yes, it’s an odd film. But not flamboyant in such a way that one could describe it as a traditional camp classic. It’s shot in a slightly grubby manner more appropriate to a film about The Boston Strangler, say, with no showy cameos unless you count Steiger’s various impersonations. The only camp is in the scene where Gill pretends to be a gay hairdresser offering a free wig to his prospective murder victim.

Steiger’s impersonation involves a blond wig with large sunglasses and a fastidious suit – there does seem to be some sort of cliché in the 60s that gay men were dyed blond. Of course there’s a mincing walk and prissy hands. His character here is called Dorian Smith – Dorian for the Oscar Wilde allusion, and Smith for the slight gay lisp, hence also a number of effeminate “Sweetheart”s in his conversation. When he talks it’s with twitching, pursed lips, particularly immobilising the lower lip even as he speaks – which deserves some credit – and indeed the camera zooms in on his face. His speech is drawling, but emphatic i.e. “Just. Absolutely. Dreadful”. Or else everything is “lovely”, “sweet”, “marvellous”.

Then there’s this little monologue:
“Honestly, the whole world is falling into crazy little pieces. It’s getting so you can’t trust anyone anymore. I had a friend, a very close friend, I mean we lived together for three years, so you know, sweetheart, I mean we Were Close, you see. Well, I found out he was a very mean and a very spiteful person. So just yesterday I had to kick him. That’s all: Just. Kick. Him. Out”.

The character has little bitchy moment as his victim argues with him about the wig, and then latter when he realise he won’t be able to murder her, to make his escape he gets a real strop on. As he storms out his prospective murder victim’s the sister calls him “You homo!” To which he waspily replies :”That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person” and slams the door behind him.

Steiger had played at least one tortured closet homosexual role before, but this is not in the same dramatic hemisphere. This is just blowing up clichés on the big screen outrageously. Who’s in on the joke maybe another matter. Though to most of the audience at the time it would have been a novelty to see them on the big screen, as this sort of thing hadn’t made its way on to the TV.

356: Camp Comedy Cash-In Records

When I posted about the 1966 single, “Boy Wonder I Love You”, I wondered as to whether people picked up on the odd suggestion of rabid homosexual fannishness it proposes at one point.

Well here some other records from the same period that go a lot further
What both the LP “These are The Hits, You Silly Savage!” and the single “Kay, Why?” are capitalising on is the new trend for camp humour on both sides of the Atlantic, growing throughout 1965 – 1966. Before 1965 camp comedy meant a humorous incident that took place in the army, the scouts or at little league (although this quote from a review of Kenneth Williams by Ken Tynan from April 1961 may or may not have been titivated for collection in 1967, but is proof that camp had a refuge in the theatre all along). What it’s also worth pointing out is that for some time tv and film critics and audiences were ambivalent, not entirely sure who camp humour was aimed at. Is it something that mainstream audiences can participate in, merely the latest exploitation, or is there still some secret homo code that deliberately excludes the uninitiated? Straight audiences in the UK enjoyed “Julian and Sandy”, not necessarily aware of how gay all the Polari words were. Contemporary reviews of the film of “The Loved One” were often unsure as to whether the film was pandering to a gay in-crowd or was intended for a mainstream audience. But judging from audience reaction, by late 1966, suggestions of homosexuality and “camp” were enough to get big comic rewards. At this time Alan Bennett can get a big laugh from his sophisticated BBC2 audience just by acknowledging the word “Camp”, let alone camping it up, and radio show “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” gets showstopping guffaws from a few camp mannerisms and puns, because presenting camp characters is the cutting edge of humour.


“These are The Hits, You Silly Savage!” by Teddy and Darrel
from Mira, a LA-based studio
Dec 1966/Jan 1967?

If you really, really want, you can listen to the tracks here:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/11/the_hits_of_196.html

“Teddy and Darrel” were Theodore Charach and Darrell Dee. Theodore Charach appears as the narrator and one of the characters in the 1967 documentary “Mondo Hollywood” 1967. This may or may not be related to the fact that the film was music directed by Mike Curb, who was also the producer of this LP. Besides narrating, Charach also performs various novelty horror songs in the film, after openly admitting that he’s looking for a schtick (which I think explains “These are The Hits, You Silly Savage”). Charach would appear to have a natural thick-tongued lisp (a la Percy Dovetonsils), and an overly dramatic declamatory manner, so camping it up on this LP only requires so much effort.

To put any amount of effort into producing any LP would suggest those involved think they have some commercial possibility, that this campness is something au courant to which they can hitch their delusional wagon. It’s all put on in such a way that it’s more of a novelty intended for a straight audience.
When I describe this album of consisting of a load of lisping, purring, and camping through a selection of recent hits, with additional comments, and the occasional thrown in rough-trade appreciation, then it’s exactly what you think it’s going to be. In practical terms, camping it up means Charach doesn’t even have to try to sing, just camply speak his way through the lyrics in a slightly high sissy voice with impromptu side comments. When he’s really camping it up I think he sounds more like Peter Lorre having a psychotic fit (hence possibly the attempt at horror novelty songs). Those songs which have become gay bar standards get the best results, so you can at least give Teddy and Darrel some credit for spotting potential this early on. Unusual, is that in the last track, “Hold On, I’m Coming” degenerates into a sequence of groaning and panting predating “Je t’aime” by a couple of years, and a final acknowledgement of the sexual component which has been only semi-suppressed through out this entire enterprise since unlike the English there’s not much actual innuendo or double-entendre.
“Silly” has been a word with unmanly connotations in America for a very long time. “Savage” too when used in a camp manner seems to crop up repeatedly. So “Silly Savage” gets reused a couple of years later as a band name by “Ben Gay & The Silly Savages”, 1973


1967 – “Kay, Why?” single by The Brothers Butch


This novelty I suspect is intended more for a gay audience. Well, how much is a straight audience willing to listen to a song which is a sequence of hardly disguised allusions to the practicals of sodomy?
“Kay, Why?”, yep, as the cover makes clear, alludes to KY Jelly, and then a lyrics which include “you made a mess/ slip through my fingers/ little squeeze / come again/ get to the bottom/ can’t get through”. Choruses of camp oohing. Just prior to piano solo, there’s a spoken part where encouragement sounds more like someone like sexually coaching a virgin – with the follow-up “Didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”
It's some escalation on the genial world of “Julian and Sandy”, more of an unacknowledged precursor to the single-entendres of Julian Clary.
Comparing these bitching, passive-aggressive London queens to Julian and Sandy, I think they sound more like Mick Jagger actually


Oh, and during a Christmas episode broadcast on 25 December 1967 The Monkees highlight the phrase “gay apparel” with a flash of limp wrists during a performance “Deck the Halls”. No laughter but then to highlight it too much, might have been to alert Network Standards.

302: Cocksuckers & Bloodsuckers - Gay Vampires 2

Blacula, 1972
Directed by William Crain, written by Raymond Koenig and Joan Torres

William Marshall as Blacula
Ted Harris as Bobby McCoy
Rick Metzler as Billy Schaffer


Starts at 9:11


Finishes at 6:10

I cheat slightly. There are two gay characters in this film, and yes, they do become vampires, but we’re interested in their portrayal as homosexuals, since once they’re vampirised they’re just shambling ravenous indiscriminate monsters like all the other converts. They are not “gay vampires” who might go swishing around lisping “I want to ttthhhuck your blood”. “Blacula”, an early blaxploitation film, is a fairly serious vampire film, but I include the pair here, since they are obviously intended only as comic relief before the film gets started.
That they’re in a blaxploitation film suggests a few questions which I’m not qualified to answer. Blaxplotation films are usually about presenting a certain type of black masculinity. White people and society are usually the subject of criticism, if not absolute denigration, as the villainous oppressors, with sexual deviance often used as an indication of whites’ perverted characters. These two gay men aren’t villains, only fools. But I do wonder whether the white gay guy is a ploy to stall any criticism from the black community because of portraying a black gay character.
That they’re an inter-racial couple is the most striking thing at first. There’s a gay inter-racial couple in “Dirty Harry” (1971) but the audience only sees them for about 45 seconds and then only through the scope of a sniper’s rifle. So an early appearance of a black and white couple, and we also get stereotypes of white and black gay behaviour.
What we witness are embodiments of contemporary stereotypes for the early 1970s. Though subtle it’s not. Words like “camp” and “queen” are casually used. They cast coy glances at each other. Both have expressive hands like fluttering birds, otherwise their wrists are limp hanging from rigidly outstretched elbows, emphasised by the one’s use of his prop of a long cigarette holder. The white one’s not played terribly well, but it’s not too effeminate nor too drawling, so at least he manages to be sort of casual. The black one is interesting because it’s possibly one of the earliest instances of some of the clichés of the black homosexual. His sassy manner, calling people “honey” and “baby”, even crying out “Owww!” while snapping his fingers. The male purse is what the audience would expect of a gay man at the time. Besides all this, the two fit the fussy antique dealers/interior decorators cliché. At least they’re young and hip, since the stereotype is usually of antique dealers as late-middle-aged queens. It’s also made fairly obvious that they’re more than just business partners. They’re shameless, in various ways, mincing and swishing about when they enter the warehouse scene, but not actually screaming stereotypes.
But then to top it off, they become hysterical girls when hurt, with the black one nursing indulging in a slew of bitchy reproaches. Thus distracted Blacula consequently has them for breakfast.

278: Bonzo Dog Band - Trouser Press

(Disregard the images in the video)
“Trouser Press” by Roger Ruskin Spear
From "The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse" (1968) by The Bonzo Dog Band

The Bonzo Dog Band were one of the delights of my late teens. (Balls to U2 and INXS. So very heartfelt, and so very loud: Woah, woah, feelings, with the amp turned to eleven). Intelligent nonsense and parody will always win over turgid rock n’roll sincerity, in my book. (My book is ‘Ulysses’, if you must know.) Every one of their records (five in 1969 -1972) is just crammed with gags, throwaway weird effects, songs that demolish whole genres of music. There’s so much happening in just this one silly little song. However, it’s the spoken word bits which must attract our attention today.

One, two, three, kick!
Come on everybody, clap your hands
Ooooh, you're looking good
Are you having a good time? I sure am
Do you like soul music?
Well, do the Trouser Press, baby!
You’re so savage, Roger!
Ecstasy, Bruce, ecstasy!

This rather effeminate camping about is in contrast to the raucous noise of the main part of the song. These bits are spoken by Joel Druckman, a temporary member of the Bonzos. He was also American, which may go a little way to explaining “Ecstasy, Bruce, ecstasy”, since as I’ve pointed out on several occasions Americans will not be dissuaded that “Bruce” is an innately Gay name. "You're so savage" also seems to be a 1960s West-coast gay stereotype too. The Bonzos weren’t averse to little liner note gags about “Hairstyles by Maison Poov”.
Viv Stanshall’s early performances made for a decidedly camp stage presence, posing on stage in attitudes which don’t just grab your attention but hold it hostage (he had studied under Lindsay Kemp), essaying assorted upperclass drawls. Vide his rather fey Elvis impression when performing “Death Cab for Cutie” on the Beatles’s film of “Magical Mystery Tour”
While I must go and try figure out everything that’s happening in “Rusty (Champion Thrust)” – “Marty and Frank were just full of this Gay Front. They just wouldn’t stop talking about it. What’s with this Gay Front? I mean I only just got the front painted up. Jezuz, aint that gay enough?”

277: The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist

in “Evergreen Review”, December 1966
Written by Michael O’Donoghue
Illustrated by Frank Springer

Michael O’Donoghue was the great, wonderful marvellous revelation of my first explorations into “National Lampoon” magazine. To say I could almost love him, given his offensive propensities, might seem an extreme, let alone unlikely, reaction. Yet his erudition, his mastery of linguistic style, his surrealism, his accurate satirisation of current culture, and also his penchant for savage black humour exposing the worst of human nature up to and including genocide, all make him a one-man equivalent of Monty Python at its best. There isn’t a collection of his best work. You either have to collect the original magazines, or the earliest “National Lampoon” best of anthologies. They’re worth it. He’s certainly worth it.

Anyway, O’Donoghue first made his name with his collaboration “The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist”. It was a comic strip, drawn by professional comics artist Frank Springer, appearing in “Evergreen Review” in the mid 1960s. “Phoebe Zeit-Geist” was an unlikely experiment for “Evergreen Review”, a respected alternative literary journal which first featured the postwar European avant-garde and then became a venue for the new Beat writers. Cartoons were beneath anyone’s critical radar, but an early advert for the magazine in the style of Charles Atlas was O’Donoghue’s first collaboration with the comics artist Frank Springer.

O’Donoghue was a huge devotee of Terry Southern and William Burroughs, and his work extends their brand of pinpoint accurate irony and bad taste. “Phoebe Zeitgeist” was a cartoon strip in the tradition of “The Perils of Pauline” damsel in distress. In each instalment, the titular heroine is menaced by some new villainy. But, as in Terry Southern’s novel, “Candy”, these menaces are usually exercises in sexual perversity. Instalments will feature necrophiles cultist, sadists, shoe fetishists, lesbians, torture and humiliation, mad scientists, and Norman Mailer. It’s inevitable that homosexuals will have to feature at some point.

The comic strip became a cult hit, and was much spoken about for often conflicting reasons. Springer executed Southern’s detailed scenarios with matching dedication, and it therefore had a following with genuine comics fans. Some readers objected to the idea of any comics in their beloved highbrow journal (and “Evergreen Review” also ran “Barbarella” at exactly the same time). Some objected to its deliberately provocative content, its sexual imagery, its violence against women, its racist stereotypes. O’Donoghue’s fascination with Nazis, meant that one issue was banned in Germany because it featured banned Nazi imagery, which only made for further publicity. And let’s not overlook the fact that it was chock full of drawings of a naked women in weird sexual situations, which could appeal to some people, I suppose.

“Evergreen Review” wasn’t afraid to feature homosexual content. It had featured serious works with gay content by the Beats, John Rechy, excerpts from “Last Exit to Brooklyn”, explorations of contemporary homosexual life as a previously unexplored underclass. With this comic effort we get fashion-obsessed bitches, camp, petulant, and violently misogynist. Fey, petty or peevish expressions. Hands splayed out, ear-rings, ID bracelets, and note the rather fetishised trousers. Preening and effeminately house-pround, possessed of a trivial manner wholly incommensurate with the effective running of a submarine. Yet they’re not transvestites, or wearing make-up, so it is a thought-out execution of clichés, which is what one would expect of O’Donoghue. Think of them as untrammelled characters from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”.

As to what I really think of the sailors? Several people have said this one has made them feel a bit uncomfortable. I’ve been doing this for so long I’ve almost got over most feelings of offence. I look at it and I can see how the high cultural furnishings of Captain Nemo’s submarine might make you think there was an interior designer knocking about the place. And then there’s all the ancient clichés about sailors and homosexuality. So I can see that O’Donoghue’s shown some ingenuity in bringing it altogether to create yet another surprising scenario in which to humiliate his heroine.

Then the two characters are only making brief appearances, and at least he’s got them doing something in every panel. And honestly, is their behaviour much different from “The Boys in the Band”, a couple of years later? It’s a cliché that’s stuck for a reason. A large part of the debate over Gay Pride that crops up in the gay media every bloody year is embarrassment over the “bad homosexuals” who someone always perceives as letting the side down in some way. Or to put it another way: I am gay, You are queer, They are faggots. Straight-acting is a matter of perception.

I just found an old SNL sketch, “The Gloria Brigade” from 1992, and it’s so slow, and the performances are so weak that I find that more insulting, because they don’t think they need to try. That some hack work about gay stereotypes is enough to make people laugh, says more about ideas of gays as a source of humour. So, yes, the two sailors make me wince a little, but it is over 40 years. The clip of a camp young Oliver Reed is occasionally dragged out for laughs, but it was from 1960 when homosexuality was illegal, and any mention had usually be censored from TV, film, radio and theatre. So some outdated stereotype is part of the process of social relaxation about taboos. But in the specific case of “Phoebe Zeitgeist”, everything is attacked, subverted and degraded. If gays were left out, it would mean that they were beyond the pale. Not because our sensibilities are too soft for attack, but because at this time, we would have been censored from the picture. Although there is the underlying assumption that gays naturally fit into this indecent world.

It’s an irony of the 1960s that almost every instance of a gay comedic character or some piece of sustained comedy involving homosexuals originates from a writer or comedian we can assume to be liberal and positively-inclined towards gays and their rights. Homophobes at this time wouldn’t feature them in their jokes, because their attitudes would be that homosexuals were too offensive even to make jokes about.

And finally, as villains, the pair foreshadow the trend of the late 1960s when it seemed like every other stylish thriller/crime caper featured some sort of camp or gay character: Modesty Blaise, Kaleidoscope, Deadfall, The Italian Job, Anderson Tapes, Kremlin Letter (besides the non-gay but camp villains of Batman and The Monkees). It adds a little titillation of perversity and outré mannerisms to plain criminality.

276: Monty Python - camping it up

1965 was the breakout year for “camping it up” and “camping about”. Camp, as both an aesthetic and a particular word, had existed prior to 1965, but it was not a readily identifiable part of the public’s frame of reference. 1964 had seen the publication of Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” which was gradually disseminated through all the trendier magazines, intellectual journals and upmarket rags. 1965 saw the appearance of several mass-market entertainments which allowed critics the opportunity to throw around their new-found familiarity with camp, at ease that the general public would know what they meant, and which also meant they didn’t have to use words which directly referenced homosexuality. In England, there was the success of “Julian and Sandy”, and, in America, there was the film of “The Loved One”. It’s worth noting that in all three cases, homosexuals are complicit in these products, are already part of the in-crowd offering camp to the heterosexual audience. Sontag was a lesbian. The two actors of Julian and Sandy, Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick were gay. “The Loved One”’s director Tony Richardson was bisexual, the co-writer was Christopher Isherwood, and half the cast (Gielgud, Liberace, Tab Hunter, Roddy McDowell) were gay, before you even figure in the main writer, Terry Southern’s fascination with homosexuals as a font of funny.

Anway, the point is that it is soon assumed that camp is gay and gay is camp. And that there is a certain sort of behaviour that sticks out like a sore thumb. Camp men are fashion designers, interior decorators, antique dealers, and vice versa indivisibly.

Monty Python takes a different path. Their use of camp mannerisms is always surprising. Monty Python’s camp men can be and do anything. Surprise is part of the comedy. Unusual variations, such as the camp judges. Eventually camp men in unexpected professions will also become a cliché, as Alan Coren will offer us camp policemen, camp undertakers, camp Biggles. But Monty Python usually does with without the innuendo which others make such a large part of camp comedy.


7 December 1969
Starts at 0.50


16 November 1972
Here you do get camp hairdressers, but performances as part of the larger comic contrast about Mount Everest. A bathetic drop into effete trivial fashionability after the sketch’s misleading opening pretence of rugged manliness. Admittedly as hairdressers, it’s not much more than saying “bitch” a lot



“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” 1975
Compare this eruption of campness in mediaeval times with Hugh Paddick’s turn in “Up the Chastity Belt”

269: Fag Rock 4 - Jesus Christ Superstar

"Jesus Christ Superstar" – Herod’s Song (1973)
Directed by Norman Jewison
Script by Norman Jewison and Melvyn Bragg
Music by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Lyrics by Tim Rice


And since the last post mentioned “Jesus Christ Superstar”, here’s a little something that’s pertinent to the discussion.

It’s not so much the song but the production which is stylised and comedically camp (particularly since Mostel is such a weak singer, it’s hard to get a real sense of the song, which sounds more like a 1920s jazz effort than yer actual glam rock). Cabaret and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are suffused with a decadent, camp aesthetic, so that is an intrinsic part of the material. The camp extravagance of costumes and mannerisms here (which strike me as being more turn of the decade) is only one section of this musical, and is therefore intended to be a vamp in a comic camp style. It’s a difference in intent and its framing within the work as a whole.

241: Gay Actors 4: How to Irritate People

How to Irritate People (1968)
Written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman, with Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Taylor


starts at 2:00

Graham Chapman
Michael Palin

Here, to greater or lesser degrees, just before the arrival of the behemoth that is “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, you get Graham Chapman and Michael Palin camping it up. Suits you? Suits me. Palin is blithely boyish, with a grin locked into his features. Chapman, yer actual homosexual, gives a bravura performance, over-the top and chewing the scenery, flouncy hands, with a pop-eyed and strained-face not dissimilar to Kenneth Williams or others of his ilk. Chapman starts off bouncily emphatic, then determinedly coy, with the punchline delivered as a sudden vertical ascent into a shriek of Annapurnan offense. In real life Chapman was fairly butch (pipe-smoking, mountain-climbing) and apparently didn’t have much time for snidey queens.
If only to show what the contemporary popular impression of theatrical homosexuality was that this parodies, here’s a lengthy quotation from Ken Tynan’s 1961 review of Kenneth Williams in “One Over the Eight”. Barely a month or so after this review, “Beyond the Fringe” opened, heralding a new sort of humour. Although “Beyond the Fringe” wasn’t averse to including comedy its homosexuals
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-beyond-fringe.html

As long ago as 1929 George Jean Nathan was complaining about the influence on the American theatre of the pixie mannerisms imported by English actors. 'What we need,' he said 'are (sic) more actors like Jack Dempsey, who tried the stage a little while ago. Jack may not be much at am actor, but his worst enemy certainly cannot accuse him of belonging too the court of Titania.'
Nathan took pains to define exactly what he was attacking: 'It isn't that the actors are biologically queer. It's that they possess or have acquired an air of effeminacy that, however hard or adroitly they try to conceal it, shows itself sooner or later during the course of a dramatic performance. . . .'
He was referring, of course, to the phenomenon we know as 'camp', In the province of comedy, with which I am presently concerned, its distinguishing feature is a marked inclination towards the dainty, the coy and the exuberantly fussy. The ability to camp (let us drop those misleadingly inverted commas) is a useful, even a vital, part of comic technique, but it is not the whole of it; and in recent years, I disrespectfully submit, we have had excess of it, our appetite has sickened, and English high comedy has very nearly died.
Consider One Over the Eight, which exemplifies the atrophy of latterday English revue.
The expressions most frequently seen on the faces of the cast are two in number. The men register: 'How naughty I am!'; and the women: 'How naughty you are!' The atmosphere of arrested adolescence is over-powering. The dance routines are at once inventive and dull; boys in tight trousers smile and spin, sometimes accompanied by spinning girls, who might smile more convincingly if their clothes were more attractive. The star, Kenneth Williams, has a matchless repertory of squirms, leers, ogles and severe, reproving glares, and must be accounted the petit-maitre of contemporary camp. As such, I salute him; but I wish there were more to English comedy than this.

60 - Julian and Sandy, 1965-1968

Written by Marty Feldman and Barry Took.
Performed by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick


(l-r: Hugh Paddick, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Horne, Betty Marsden and Douglas Smith)



In my last post about Marty Feldman, I wrote that was the only time he’d played gay. What I totally overlooked, is that Feldman was responsible for writing two of the most famous British gay characters ever. With his writing partner Barry Took, Feldman was responsible for all the scripts on the radio comedy series “Round the Horne”. The series consisted of broad puns, unusual innuendoes and double-entendres, and weirdly comic scenarios, with the actors’ extravagant characterisations and catchphrases all orbiting around the imperturbably stolid host, Kenneth Horne. The show ran for four seasons, on Sunday afternoons, from 1965 to 1968, and won audiences of up to 15 million people. Aside from parodies and running comedy serials within the show, there were a wide range of regular characters. The two most famous are Julian (performed by Hugh Paddick) and Sandy (performed by Kenneth Williams) who appeared in almost every episode. Besides being two camp gay men on radio for a mass audience, the sketches introduced an unwitting British public to the gay slang Polari.

The daring in the appearance of these sketches was that previously there had been an outright ban on gay characters on comedy radio shows. In 1949 the “Green Book” set BBC policy for variety writers and producers. One of its commandments was that there was “an absolute ban upon jokes about effeminacy in men”. This is a mild code, since no gay man could be really masculine, but it meant that not even the horrid word homosexual had to be used in banning them. And so any obvious representations of gay men in comedy were forbidden. Any humorous jokes about gay men had to be sufficiently ingenious that it would escape the notice of some BBC official or other.

Aside from the actors' vigorous performances, the sketches stood out for their use of strange words with apparently hidden meanings. The audiences were not to know that these words were in fact Polari. Bona, butch, eke, lallies, dolly, omi-polone, were thrown about with abandon. But as the sketches were a regular feature, repetition of Polari words and phrases meant the audience gradually grew to decipher them, even if they remained ignorant of their gay origin. The writers and performers however were not. Feldman had worked in travelling sideshows and in the theatre, so was aware of the various slangs. Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams were gay, and therefore were already fluent in Polari. Indeed, Williams would often drop into the tones of Sandy to liven up a quiz show appearance or an interview.

The sketches usually involved Horne visiting some new commercial venture - Bona Books, Bona Pets, Bona Drag, Bona Law, etc. As Horne entered, Julian (Hugh Paddick) would say "Ooh hello! I'm Julian and this is my friend Sandy!" Sandy (Williams) then often following with “Why Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eke”. The pair were bright and chirpy, offering a torrent of polari and barely concealed innuendo to the bemused Horne’s questions. The importance of the urbane Horne cannot be overlooked, since he effectively represented the public and therefore made the outrageous pair palatable for popular radio.

The characters were originally conceived as two ageing old out of work actors, but the producer thought the characters were too sad and suggested making them younger "chorus boy" types. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore would also explore the comedy inherent in out-of-work gay actors having to get by as domestics for hire in their show “Behind the Fridge”.

Instead of being posh, nancy-boys, the two were gossipy queens, slightly bitchy, speaking in a camp East End demotic laced with Polari. At this late date they are old stereotypes but at the time they were fresh and new, the first of thir kind to be seen by the British public. How many at the time knew the characters were gay, and how many though they were just odd funny men, is a question that may now be unanswerable. The audience of the time would appear to have loved the two characters. They were not held up to ridicule or made the butt of cheap homophobic jokes. The exuberance of the performances was funny itself without the audience necessarily being in on secret gay codes.

In a 1975 radio show, Kenneth Williams said he had started to use homosexual humour on the Kenneth Horne shows, his aim had been to disarm prejudiced heterosexuals who were scared of homosexuals. By bringing humour to the matter he hoped people would begin to show more tolerance. But he attacked those who with limp wrists and a few crude double entendres made cheap laughs and ridiculed homosexuals in the process. (Reported in “Gay News”)

While gay men had been big fans of Julian and Sandy in the 60s and early 70s, the change in gay self- identity meant that the two characters were strongly repudiated in the mid 70s, lumped in with the likes of Larry Grayson and Mr Humphries perpetuating unflattering stereotypes. Gay Lib and its struggle for positive images of gay men meant that reissues of old Julian and Sandy sketches on LPs received hostile reviews in “Gay News”. The Round the Horne Society was refused affiliation with the C.H.E (Campaign for Homosexual Equality) because its celebration of comic poofs was embarrassing to the cause.

This website has transcripts of some of the "Julian and Sandy" sketches

Here is a good place to find out more about Polari

7 - Alan Bennett

in “On the Margin”, 9 November 1966
Alan Bennett as “Antique shop proprietor”
John Sergeant as “Customer”

SERGEANT: Well, actually, I was looking for something rather along the lines of a teapot stand. It's a birthday present for my wife. I bought her a teapot for her Christmas present, so I thought I'd follow it up with a teapot stand.
BENNETT: Oo! The last of the big spenders. Teapot stand. . .Well . . . (moves to Welsh dresser) you could stand a teapot on here very nicely.
SERGEANT: Yes - but it's a little bit bigger than what I had in mind, really.
BENNETT: Oo! It is big. . . it is big. . . but only an expert would have spotted it. But you know, if you'd be advised, you can't go wrong with these, you know (still fingering Welsh dresser) because these are going to rocket. The Americans are buying them up, you know. If you had six or seven of these tucked away, you'd never starve. I mean, you wouldn't have room to eat, but you'd never starve.
SERGEANT: How much do they run to?
BENNETT: Well, I'll have to look in my little book. I wouldn't want it to go to anybody who wasn't going to cosset it - but I think you're a cosseter, aren't you? Now then - it's seventy-five pounds, but I could stretch it and let you have it for seventy-four guineas.
SERGEANT: I prefer to pay less, really.
BENNETT: Do you know, it's funny you should say that, love, because most people prefer to pay less, whereas I prefer to charge more, you know. I think it's just a matter of taste.
SERGEANT: This is nice. (Touching a table)
BENNETT: Oh, I can see I'm going to have to watch you - you really have the eye, don't you? Can you keep a secret?
SERGEANT: What?
BENNETT (taps table): Wedgwood.
SERGEANT: But I thought that Wedgwood only did pottery?
BENNETT: That's the secret. It's a very unique piece. There's only one other in existence, and it's on trust for the nation. It's fifty-five pounds, and if you pass that up, you want your bottom smacking.
SERGEANT (pointing at old money box): That's not an antique. They had these when I was a boy.
BENNETT: Oo, you said it, dear, not me. (Picks up chamber pot filled with hyacinths) Have you ever thought of going in for these? I like to think that this is Worcester.
SERGEANT: What is it?
BENNETT: Well, it's an eighteenth-century breakfast cup, is that. I mean, in the eighteenth century they used to have these great big breakfasts - I mean, none of your two prunes and a Weetabix - so they had such big cups. (Picks up an old policeman's truncheon) Do you know what they're using these for nowadays?
SERGEANT: Well I know one thing - it's not teapot stands.
BENNETT: Oo, get in the knife box, you're too sharp to live.
SERGEANT: I was reading in one of the Sunday newspapers that the latest trend is this 'camp' thing. Have you anything 'camp'?
BENNETT: Now he tells us!
SERGEANT: Have you any camp teapot stands?
BENNETT: Do you know, if you'd come in here a week ago, I was knee deep in camp teapot stands. I've had teapot stands in this shop as camp as a row of pink tents.
SERGEANT: Really?
BENNETT: I tell a lie - as camp as a row of pink frilly tents.

This is a bit different, since Bennett is an actual gay man writing and performing the role of a camp gay man. Although I don’t think Bennett came out as such until the ’90s. This character was revisited in further sketches in Alan Bennett’s only TV comedy series “On the Margin”. Apparently no footage of any of them now exists since the entire series was wiped by the BBC. In later years Alan Bennett would dust off some of his old sketches for performances in charity shows. Whether this was one of them I don’t know. Although in a parody of the Secret Policeman’s Ball from “Janet Lives with Mel and Griff” (1988) the line “Alan Bennett revisits his uncanny impression of a Northern Woofter” may either refer to these sketches or else be a less than charitable comment on Bennett himself.

John Sergeant is indeed the John Sergeant who went on to a long career as a BBC political correspondent.

This sketch predates the Monty Python's camp judges use of “Get back in the witness box. You’re too sharp to live”. Was it a common phrase, or just the Pythons remembering its previous use and recasting it? Also, is this the first appearance of the phrase “camp as a row of tents”?

And for those unfamiliar with the prices: 20 shillings made 1 pound; 1 guinea was 1 pound and 1 shilling. So, 74 guineas is £77 and 14 shillings. See how worthless this information is.

4 - Queens of England

A compilation of queens from the early 70s:

Carry On Girls” (1973) Jimmy Logan as Cecil Gaybody

“Close order swanning about” from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode #22, 24 November 1970

“Camp Judges” (Eric Idle and Michael Palin) from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode 21, 17 November 1970

"Carry On Abroad" (1972)- Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and John Clive

“Clarence” (“Hello, Honky-tonk”) and “Hettie” characters played by Dick Emery

There is a minor fashion issue to raise: both "Clarence" and "Cecil Gaybody" are wearing godawfully ugly peaked hats. In "Doctor in Trouble" (1970), Graham Chapman plays a bitchy gay photographer who never appears with his peaked cap. Joe Orton wears his cap. Was "the hat" some sort of signal? A sub-military butch touch, which then goes horribly wrong, all floppy and purple? Or am I just being overly-attentive?