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.

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.

355: Gay Cowboys - The Last Roundup

“At Last the 1948 Show”, 1967
Marty Feldman as 1st Cowboy
Tim Brooke Taylor as 2nd Cowboy

(Two typical cowboys ride on, with the sound of bullets in the distance. While Marty Feldman speaks, Tim Brooke-Taylor is chewing gum and listening with determined and mean expression)


1st Cowboy: C'mon! Posses on our tail! Let's hightail outta here. Iffen we quick, we can cut across dead man's belly over there, (points with gun to emphasise each destination) through cold corpse canyon, cross broken bone mountain, through gallow creek gorge, over there to slaughter rock


2nd Cowboy: (in sissy tones, bursting into big cheerful grin) No! Let’s go the pretty way!
(makes limp wrist gesture with hand holding gun. Then Cowboys ride off)

The heightened grimness of the listed locales of course sets it up for the sissy deflation by Tim Brooke-Taylor. By now Tim Brooke Taylor was regularly playing pansies on Tv and radio.

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

“Cowboys Love Cowboys Best of All” by Sean Kelly and Peter Elbling

from “National Lampoon’s Disco Beaver” 1978
(Peter Elbling running around as a vampire is part of “Disco Beaver”’s running joke about Dragula, a gay vampire who converts his victim to homosexuality with a bite)

This wistful, rather sweet Country and Western song spins off the lonely situational homosexuality premise.
The last line alludes to Tom Robbins’ 1976 novel “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, and there was a spate of songs with same title from 1978-80)

Some cowboys they love rhinestones
Or whips, or guns, or ropes
Some cowboys love a drunken barroom brawl
But when it comes to sitting round the campfire on the prairie
That's when cowboys love cowboys best of all.

Yes, cowboys love cowboys
More than boots or beans or booze
And you all know that's the reason
Even cowgirls get the blues…

It employs none of the swishy, sissy, femme, or perverse stereotypes to be found in these parody gay cowboy songs:
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2008/05/115-goodies-cactus-in-my-y-fronts.html
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2008/05/116-ballad-of-ben-gay.html
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2008/05/117-big-bad-bruce.html

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

National Lampoon June 1978
“The Preacher Boys’ First Roundup (or, The Preacher Boys Last Roundup) featuring The Appearance, for the First Time Ever in Polite Fiction, of the Honorable Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde, Esq., on His Famed Tour of the American West” by Ted Mann
Illustration by Bob Larkin



The appearance of Wilde in this parody of western fiction is actually very straight. Mann largely presents him as Wilde, the lecturer on interior decoration, who has charmed all the local cowboys – which was indeed the historical case. There’s nothing faggy about Mann’s set-up at all. The illustration by Bob Larkin is another matter. That strange overgrown Little Lord Fauntleroy has no correlation to the eminently caricaturable Wilde. Larkin does see fit to grace us with a whole row of very effetely waving cowboys.

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

“South Park”, August 19, 1998
“Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls”
Written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone & Nancy Pimental

This is part of a larger satire on Hollywood. Earlier in the episode Cartman comprehensively denounces all independent films as being about “Gay cowboys eating pudding”
The others say this, is stupid, but when they go to see an independent film, lo it proves to be true that it is indeed about “Gay cowboys eating pudding” (and read your own innuendo into what “eating pudding” can mean).



Cowboy in Pink: Say, Tom. Do you have any pudding left?

TOM: (slightly fey) I ate all mine up, silly.

Cowboy in Pink: Well then, now what do we do?

Cowboy in Pink: Well, why don't we just explore our sexuality?

Tom: Oh good idea, lets.

(They throw their pudding bowls down, and grab each other)





The first cowboy is of course in pink – whether you want to read more into his facial hair is of course intentionally ambivalent. The second cowboy employs the word “silly”, which has effete/gay connotations in America, and is therefore regularly used by South Park’s stereotypes.
Being a cartoon means that they can get away with pretty much depicting a blowjob

Curiously, pretty much every gay cowboy joke I’ve found has been independent of any Village people allusions or inspiration. Which I suppose is a good thing.

336: Fairy Tales - I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again

I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, 7 November 1966

John Cleese: Today it’s story time. And you can help me make up the story
Cast: Goody-goody
JC: It’s all about a wicked baron
Cast: Ew, boring.
JC: And a lovely young fairy
Tim Brooke-Taylor (camp) Oh, what’s his name?
JC: (emphatic) A lovely young fairy Princess
TBT: Nyaaaa (then blows raspberry)


I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, 4 June 67

Narrator: And here is a fairy story by Hans Anderson
Tim Brooke-Taylor (camp): Don’t you mean Hans and his son
Narrator: I said a Fairy story
(oooohing and mmmming by cast)
Cleese: Cheeky!

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

As far as gags about “fairies” go this, this is as simple as you could imagine. What is noteworthy is these obvious jokes showstopping reception at the time.
“I’m Sorry I’ll Read that Again” was a BBC radio sketch programme that ran for the second half of the 1960s, and was a training ground for the writers and performers of “Monty Python’s Flying circus” and “The Goodies”. It consisted of lots of quick fire gags, puns, silliness, broad performances and as much innuendo as was permissible. The audience was always fairly appreciative, but when Tim Brooke-Taylor says “Oh, what’s his name” it brings the house down. There’s non-stop laughter for 10 seconds, and the cast are unable to deliver the next line except after a couple of attempts. For this contemporary audience this is pure comedy gold, something more daring than usual. That this is not a one-off is proven in the same 7 November 1966 episode, a sketch involving a becalmed ship has quick exchange:

John Cleese: A breeze, a breeze at last! I feel like a new man!
Tim Brooke-Taylor: How about me ducky?
CJ: Ah, we haven’t had a puff for weeks!

which again gets a disproportionately large and long laugh. So all I can guess is that jokes involving references to homosexuality are just now breaking into mass entertainment. The Satire Boom had died out a couple of years earlier so slightly more thoughtful or sophisticated jokes about homosexuality under the banner of social commentary had likewise vanished. BBC radio had been broadcasting “Round the Horne” since March 1965, so “Julian and Sandy” had been entertaining a large audience for the previous year and a half. In retrospect everyone knows Julian and Sandy are gay jokes, but at the time of broadcast it was only the gay minority of listeners who recognised them for what they were. The rest of the audience seems to have thought they were odd humorous characterisations of a piece with the rest of the programme. But now, for “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” jokes about “effeminacy in men” as previously banned by the BBC censor, are permissible and very very successful.

268: Fag Rock 3 - The Goodies

The Goodies
“Superstar”, 7 July 1973
Written by Bill Odie and Graeme Garden, with Tim Brooke-Taylor
“I don’t want your love” by Bill Oddie and Michael Gibbs

Barbara Mitchell as "Isabel Chintz"
John Peel as Jimmy Saville, the host of "Top of the Pops"

The Goodie’s comic satire of the contemporary music business. The first half isn’t germane to my purpose. Watch it if you like, I’m not the boss of you, see if I care, but you won’t get credit either way. The basic set-up is that The Goodies decide that popular music is becoming too sexual. The upshot of assorted auditions is that only Bill gets signed to an agent. The agent establishes Bill’s image as a virile famous pop star called “Randy Pandy” (a pun on the children’s character Andy Pandy, and the word randy, meaning horny). Fearing that the British public maybe in danger of getting bored with him, she decides he needs an image change, and that he will play the lead in a new rock musical, “St Augustine Superstar”.

ISABEL: You are gonna star in a new rock musical. And this is it: Saint Augustine - Superstar.
TBT: That sounds rather nice.
ISABEL: Don't you believe it. He's Saint Augustine.
TBT (horrified): Him!
ISABEL: Oh yes yes yes. He's pure, he's good and he's holy, but above all he's unbearably sexy.
TBT: No he's not.
BO: Yes he is!
TBT: Not.
ISABEL: He's got all the girls screaming for him...
BO: Yes! Yes!
ISABEL: So what does he do?
ISABEL: He goes into a monastery.
TBT, GG & BO: He WHAT?!
ISABEL: Yes, along with all the fellas, you see what I mean?
(She nudges Tim suggestively.)
GG: Oh, come off it. Saint Augustine wasn't a.... nancy.
ISABEL: He is in here. To an extent.
TBT: How much of an extent?
ISABEL: A large extent.
BO: Yeah, yeah, but what about me groupies, miss? I don't want...
ISABEL: Oh, don't worry, hun. This way you get everybody going for you. See, the butch fellas like you 'cause you're not after their sheilas, the sheilas like you 'cause they want to convert you, and you even score in the twilight zone.


Starts at 1:55


So in this parody, glam rock isn’t about sexual liberation, it’s only calculatedly marketing sexual ambivalence for commercial reasons. While you can make some sort of argument that there is a degree of social comment in all this about music and sexuality - that the music titillates its audience of young girls under cover of gay insinuations - really, it’s an opportunity to make jokes about behaving camply. Which is the major problem with many of The Goodies’ attempts at satire - their idea of what is funny is too similar to what the audience for an ITV sitcom would also find funny. It doesn’t go against the grain enough, and so as time moved on, The Goodies got left behind. Hell, we’re only watching it for historical reasons. Earlier in the same episode there are jokes about money-grubbing Jewish lawyers with comically large noses. It’s all that sort of level. In the same way, later on, it’s funny to call someone a “Superpoof”, but for somebody to think you’re a poof is deeply annoying, and hence also funny. Camp men showing their attraction is also amusing. Between the three different gays played by Tim, Graeme, and Bill, you get them dressed up in leather, furs, and shiny materials. And the need to put on gruff voices, and prove you’re not really poofs.
You also get a parody of “Jesus Christ Superstar”, the film version of which had come out only a couple of months earlier the same year. It’s more a parody of the “Top of the Pops” than the musical. So here’s Bill in outrageous costume, pouting, pawing with his limp wrist, skipping about on the stage, and then stripping down to his undergarments. The Mincing Monks are neither subtle as a joke nor as a performance (though they are played by The Fred Tomlinson Singers, for Monty Python trivia fans).
Youtube is not the finest medium, and so I can’t tell whether the final joke of Tim and Graeme, still dressed as gay men, being chased off by police and sailors, is because the mob fancies them, or because they want to beat them up in frustration and disgust.
There may be little bits cut out of this. Apparently the Australians censored this quite heavily. Gay jokes were not popular in Australia in the mid-70s. When Dick Emery went on tour, some parts of the Australian media said he was disgusting for playing a homosexual.

230: Funny He Never Married #2 with extra Orson Welles

Dean Martin Show, 17 September 1970
written by Marty Feldman and Barry Took

Here’s an oddity. Orson Welles and Dom Deluise performing “Funny He Never Married” on the Dean Martin Show. I’m guessing this is from Welles’s appearance in 1970, since the sketch was originally performed by Marty Feldman in 1968. Tim Brooke-Taylor was the other original performer, and he had worked with Orson Welles in several projects in 1969, which is how I imagine Welles came to know the piece. It’s mostly the same sketch, but slightly more drawn out, since the two are playing it as fusty old clubmen, giving slightly more consideration to what they’re saying, rather than playing it as two old gossips. This has some additional business about scents and flowers not in the original.

172: Gay Sports - Football 3

“The Goodies” – “Football Crazy”, 16 January 1982
Start at 8.10

From an episode mainly concerned about football hooliganism. Tim Brooke-Taylor starts off adopting an elder generation denunciation of modern players’ unmanliness and concern for their own appearance. But as Tim lists off how the players’ appeal on the field is more sexual than sporting, he finds himself succumbing to the “sporno” enticements of the game to the point of almost uncontrolled ecstasy.
Where the Pythons just slightly goosed-up contemporary football celebrations, “The Goodies” examine all the other homoerotic appeals of the game and its players, as Football becomes more and more as one with the entertainment/celebrity business.

161: Gay Ad - Butch Tobacco

from “The Goodies” April 9, 1972
starts at 4:46

Like the last “Goodies” gay ad, this offers much the same idea again. A generic commercial ideas of heterosexuality is deflated at the last moment. It’s the same idea as Beyond the Fringe’s “Bollard” sketch, only in reverse. There the models were presented as camp from the start, and so the twist was to see them pretending to be butch. Such an overly performed version of straightness easily topples into campness. It is homosexuals who fetishise and obsess over every detail of displayed manliness, motivated either out of paranoia so to hide their unmanly homosexuality, or to ape and accentuate a macho appeal. The stereotypical idea of the gay male model was exploited in Ralph Steadman’s cartoon. In the end it all becomes an idea of male attractiveness performed to other men which as in this instance literally excludes women. In these two “Goodies” sketches there’s also the possible idea that gays are silly, not just for their effeminate dress and manner, but also because it’s laughable that anyone would want to turn away such enticing, attractive willing nubile young ladies.
“Butch” is not an improbable name, since most ‘70s products aimed at straight men relied on blatantly, indeed even ludicrously, blockheaded appeals to machismo.

159: Gay Ad - Fairy Puff

from “The Goodies”, BBC 2, 8 November 1970
(transcript from http://www.goodiesruleok.com/newsletter.php?issue=10)

A girl (Maria O’Brien) is standing at a washing machine.

GIRL: Oh, wash days! Look at this pile of washing. I don't know what I'm going to do!

Tim Brooke-Taylor enters, wearing a shiny white suit and holding a box of Fairy Puff washing powder.

TIM: (with brash American accent) Hi there, kitten! I'm the Fairy Puff man. (Sings) Gets right to the dirt of the wash! That's me! Hey kitten, that dress you're wearing is grey, grey, grey, grey, grey!

GIRL: I know, but what can I do?

TIM: Here, kitten. Take that dress off and put it in this washing machine with Fairy Puff. (Sings) Gets right to the dirt of the wash!

The girl removes the dress and hands it to Tim.

TIM: Uh-uh, kitten, that underslip you're wearing is grey, grey, grey, grey, grey! Best take it off and we'll put it in as well.

The girl removes her slip and gives it to Tim.

TIM: (sings) Gets right to the dirt of the wash!

TIM: Oh-oh, kitten, those undies you're wearing are grey, grey, grey, grey, grey!

GIRL: I know, take them off and put them in the machine.

We see a head and shoulders shot of the girl as she removes her undies and gives them to Tim, who is leering at her.

GIRL: Now what are you going to do, hmmm?

TIM's leering changes to a look of uncertainty.

TIM (girly voice): I'm going to wash these clothes. I'm the Fairy Puff Man! (Sings): Gets right to the dirt of the wash! I'm a little Fairy Puff man, puff puff!

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

A bit of a damp squib this one. The overly macho pitchman suddenly becomes camp and effeminate when confronted by real female sexuality. While 70s humour is full of unclothed women, the trick is always to find some comic means of conceptual disavowal, so that it’s not merely smut. The sketch has been building to further and further female disrobing and nudity, maybe even the possibility of actual sex, but then at the very moment of climax the male recuses himself in what is a relatively new and shocking mode.
“Fairy Puff” is not an inappropriate name for an old-fashioned detergent, and it’s presented in such a way that the viewer shouldn’t automatically think “Fairy” + “Puff” = homosexual, but still accept the sketches rather suddenly and weedily presented conclusion.
This is a televised version of a sketch which first appeared on the radio series “I’m Sorry I Read That Again” (22 February 1970). The writers thought well enough of it that they included it in the premiere episode of their new TV series.

115: The Goodies - "A Cactus in My Y-Fronts"

“The Goodies – Almost Live”, 2 November 1976

Starts at 6.10

“The Midnight Cow Person” – Tim Brooke-Taylor

Another gay cowboy joke. “Midnight Cowperson” with its pre-Politcally Correct phrasing is a reference to the film “Midnight Cowboy”, in which Jon Voight played a hustler who make occasional forays into homosexuality.

This was originally performed on the 11 November 1973 episode of “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”. It was sung by its writer Bill Oddie (the short bearded one). That version has shtick missing from this, where cowboy yodelling becomes a chorus of camp “Ooooohs!”

The song is torn between two different sets of gay clichés and just silly jokes about sitting on a prickly pear and animal gags. The pear/ bottom gags, one could possibly see as deferring any real gags about sodomy or sexual interest. Its all about a comic painful incident rather than any real suggestion of S&M. The frilly pink comical cowboy outfit is slightly at odds with all the fetish gear mentioned in this song, but that’s just one of those confusions which comedy writers in the 70s have difficulty coming to grips with. Predatory or pouffy?

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

My name is Two Gun Pierre
I wear rose buds in my hair
And a chi-chi pink bandanna round my neck

I came down from Tennessee
With a cowboy on my knee
And a pair of leather chaps around my legs ... hold on boys!

I was down in Cripple Creek
I was dying for a leak
So I dropped my pants behind a cactus there

When I fastened up my belt
I can't tell ya how I felt
But I knew the meaning of a prickly pear ... ouch!!

Oh I've got a cactus in my y-fronts and a vulture round my head
I've just been kissed by a Tennessee miss and I wish that I were dead
I've a jockstrap made of leather and pants of PVC (ee - ee - ee - ee - ee - ee)
The cactus in my y-fronts make a loser out of me!

In Californ - i - a
Where the rustlers are so gay
I bought a gentle gee-gee name of Jacques

But he livened up a lot
When he felt my prickly spot
And that buckin' bronco broke my buckin' back!

So I walked up to Nevada
Where the gals try so much harder
And I met a beefy belle called Caroline

But when she felt my prickles
She cried "Oh Lord, that tickles!"
And now she's run off with a porcupine

Oh I've got a cactus in my y-fronts and a vulture round my head
I've just been kissed by a Tennessee miss and I wish that I were dead
Do you like my high heeled horseshoes, I got them from Paree (ee - ee - ee - ee - ee - ee)
The cactus in my y-fronts make a loser out of me!

Oh I've got a cactus in my y-fronts and a vulture round my head
I've just been kissed by a Tennessee miss and I wish that I were dead
I've got sequins on my saddle and I smell like a jasmine tree (ee - ee - ee - ee - ee - ee)
The cactus in my y-fronts make a loser out of me!

Well I'll be hornswaggled! What are you gonna be?!

59 - Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Tyalor: "Funny He Never married"

From “It’s Marty”, 1968 BBC comedy series.
Again, the BBC has deleted almost all archive recordings of this series. A compilation soundtrack record, “Marty”, was released at the time and this is one of the sketches on the LP, and was also a separate single release. Unfortunatley, I don't know the writer.
[transcript from http://www.churchofvirus.org/bbs/Printpage.php?board=63;threadid=36732]

Voice 1 is Tim Brooke Taylor. Voice 2 is Marty Feldman. Both doing old man voices

1. It was a good funeral ...
2. Yes, we give him a good send off ...
1. Yes ...
2. No man could want more ...
1. No, no ...
2. He was a good man, George. We won't see his like again.
1. Salt of the earth, was George. Yes he was ...
(pause)
2. Funny he never married.
1. Yes. ... who?
2. George.
1. Ah yes ...
2. I mean, it's not that he never had his chances (chortling)
2. Oh, when he was young ... a man like that ... could have had any he'd chosen. Good looking enough.
1. Yes, yes he was ... almost too good looking.
2. Almost too good looking. Them big blue eyes. Them dimples ... yes, and that school girl complexion of his ... could have had any girl he chose.
1. ...any girl he chose
2. ... man like that. Funny he never married.
1. Yes, funny that.
2. Still, still ... he had his compensations.
1. Yes I suppose he did.
2. Other interests. Scouting ...
1. He was very keen on scouting, wasn't he.
2. ... scouting. Even in his later years, he'd only have to see a troop of scouts go by and his eyes would light up.
1. Nostalgia ... I suppose.
2. I suppose, yes ...
(pause)
2. Funny he never married.
1. Yes, funny that, yes.
2. He was a funny chap in many ways, when you think about it.
1. He was quite, yes ...
2. The way he walked.
1. Ah yes ...
2. That was funny.
1. With his hips ...
2. And his voice ...
1. High pitched sort of voice.
2. Oh, almost to the point of falsetto, yes ... Oh that was funny, yes. He was funny, yes ... But kind, kind ...
1. Oh, he was very kind, yes.
2. Kind, kind, kind ... Almost too kind. He let his-self be taken advantage of ... I never knew him turn a stranger away from his door. There was always a bed in his house for any waif or stray ...
1. Yes, yes ...
2. Or soldier ...
1. Yes ...
2. Or sailor.
1. Especially sailors.
2. He liked sailors.
1. Never, never knew him turn a sailor away.
2. Never a sailor, no. Quite often they didn't even have to come to him.
1. Yes ...
2. No, he'd go out looking for them, he would. Never spared himself
1. No, no ...
2. Funny he never married. Man like that.
1. He'd have made a good husband.
2. Oh he would, oh, oh ...
1. A very good husband ...
2. A very good husband, there's no gainsaying that. He could cook...
1. He could sew ...
2. He could knit ...
1. Yes, yes ... He could arrange flowers.
2. Oh, oh his house, his house ... It was like a new pin ...
1. Like a shiny new pin.
2. New pin, new pin ...
1. Yes, yes it was ...
(pause)
2. Funny he never married. He was a happy man.
1. Yes, yes he was.
2. He was a happy man.
1. He was, he was ...
2. Yes, Yes. Never happier than when he was dressing up.
1. Theatrical streak, I suppose.
2. I suppose ...
1. Yes ...
2. How he loved that mother of pearl handbag.
1. Almost broke his heart, it did, when he left it on the bus.
2. He loved dressing up, yes.
1. Yes ...
2. All in all it's, er ... funny he never married.
1. Funny - You never married

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

A wonderfully blithe bit of gossip, recounting all the stereotypes about the confirmed bachelor. That the stereotypes are already well known is the joke, since the audience pick up on all the signifiers which the characters in the sketch miss. By this time the British public had been acquainted with the radio goings-on of Julian and Sandy on "Round the Horne". The fondness for scouts and sailors is one cliche that often gets exhumed, particularly in the case of East End gangster Ronnie Kray.

The manic pop-eyed Feldman rarely played gay in anyway.
Tim Brooke-Taylor, however, often did during this period.


(publicity photo, camping it up, left to right: David Hatch, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, and John Cleese)

Brooke-Taylor was one of the cast on “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” an energetic radio gagfest from the late 60s, featuring his fellow “Goodies”-to-be, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden, and a young John Cleese. The performers on ISIRTA had ready characterisations and Brook-Taylor would occasionally slip into a simpering camp voice for a throwaway gag. In 1969, he performed in the rent-a-face Euro-comedy “Twelve to One” as Willie Rushton’s gay husband. Besides being Sharon Tate’s last film, “Twelve to One” also featured Orson Welles. Either just before or after this film, Orson Welles made series of comic sketches about London, which Brooke-Taylor performed in. One of the sketches featured Welles in a gentleman’s outfitters with Brooke-Taylor as a camp shop assistant.