Saturday 4 December 2010

L'auteur

If you thought that the 70's were an oasis of uncritical creativity, the clip below should demonstrate that the mainstream was perfectly adept at calling out the inconsistencies of the avant-garde fringe:



I've actually got a lot of time for Benny Hill, who was a visual comedian par excellence. Alas, he was also a classic example of voodoo death. He died in 1992, a mere three years after he was forced off national television by the new wave of right-on public schoolboy/Oxbridge "alternative" comedians, who would brook no competition from the lingering remnants of the Army-surplus classless mass-entertainers who were given their opportunities by the ENSA entertainment units that patrolled the front in the war and post-war years.

After all, if your parents have busted their balls getting you into the right school and the right university, why should you have to give way to the sort of fortunate chancer who happened to be posted to the most opportune regiment in the Burmese jungle?

2 comments:

Gabe said...

It was Ben Elton, neither Oxbridge or public school who was the main attacker of Benny Hill (I actually remember his particular routines about this - incidentally there should be a generic name for a thing you remember watching on telly which is unavailable on YouTube)

I did find this though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jm8zlLdk7w

Phil Knight said...

Benny Hill was never in the Army either, so my fact-checking was quite poor on this one.

That said, I still prefer Hill to Elton. Then again, I prefer Budgie to The Stooges, so you shouldn't be taking me as some kind of arbiter of taste....