Toni Palmer, Freddie Starr & Benny too

[ClownJulie]

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[Hayley]

I say Photocorner them at once!!

I need cheering up like Bill!

Hayley x x

Great to hear from you, Julie

[piemeplease]

Thank you as ever for sharing such great piccies Julie. I'm afraid my televisual slosh watching started with Tiswas and Crackerjack but I do remember sneakily watching Freddy Starr (parents disapproved).

Bill and Hayley I hope the holiday season does bring you both some festive cheer because I can't think of two people who deserve it more than you. You both bring a lot of happiness to a lot of people.

[PhotoCorner]

OK - hopefully they should be full size now!!

Julie xxx

[caroline2]

Gosh Julie; those pictures bring back some memories!! Shame political correctness had to come along and spoil things!

[BillShipton]

Thank you very much for putting those up for us, Julie. As you say, it brings back great memories of the days when TV was actually good at Christmas. Personally I found nothing very funny this year - though I dare say Phantom will start a Great Moments from the Vicar of Bloody Dibley thread soon. Absolutely no slapstick anywhere as far as I could tell. Pls the death of Charlie Drake. Thanks God for Gilly's Silly House is all I can say.

Bring back Bill Cotton (no, not the band leader) and real Light Entertainment. Saturday night reality shows are turning me into an alcoholic!

[ClownJulie]

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[matt2matt2002]

Many thanx Julie for posting all the pictures.
Those were the really great days of TV slapstick.
If only we could turn the clocks back!

Thanx again

[BillShipton]

"Drake was known for being a perfectionist and a difficult man to work with. He blew his chances of making it in America after walking off the all-powerful Ed Sullivan Show when producers would not allow him to perform a slapstick routine the way he wanted. "

Sounds like me!!

Julie xxx[/b][/i][/color]

Thought you were going to say, "It sounds like Bill!"

I believe he was difficult - he even insisted that people call him Mr Drake or Charles cos Charlie was the "character he played". Even so, he came up with some very inventive routines and cared a lot about physical comedy. And quite right too.

[ClownJulie]

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[piemeplease]

I used to love Benny Hill as a kid. Especially the sketches with the speeded up chase scenes. I also had a thing for Hills Angels lol.

Eric Morcambe, Tommy Cooper, Benny Hill and Charlie Drake were all geniuses. I do enjoy some of todays comedy but not in the simplistic yet very clever way that comedy used to be. Slapstick comedy has always been my favorite from the three stooges to Tiswas and everything in between.

[starbrightnight]

Thanks very much for these brilliant pictures, Julie. Freddy Starr's was one show I always used to watch, along with Benny Hill, in the hope of some slapstick. Toni Palmer was a particularly sexy stooge.

I remember a talent show that Freddy Starr was involved in where the winners got a good sploshing. One woman sang a well-known song of the time mentioning a lot of different colours - Colour me Gone? - while a couple of comedians including, I think,F.S. painted her with the appropriate colours - ending with a big bucket of gunge over the head. Great.

I used to watch Charlie Drake's slapstick scenes involving whitewash down the pants and over the head- really enjoying them, but wishing females could be involved. So it was wonderful for me when Splosh magazine, and yourself, came along and re-enacted such sketches with attractive women.

It is awful nowadays. Not even Noel's House Party - or even the Generation game! - gungings to watch.

[Hayley]

Hi

I never got to see much of Freddie Starr at the time cos my parents didn't like him. Have seen the Toni Palmer sketches since when Julie kindly lent them to Bill and I and I have to say I think they were excellent. Although it is a man sploshing a woman they are not humiliating in any way. I think it is cos the Hitler character is so ludicrous.

I think the paint sketch was a girl singing "I can sing a rainbow" and was in a later series (might even have been Russ Abbott) cos I saw that at the time, having left home. But I'm not the expert, Old Bill (and Clown Julie) is...

Delighted to say that the focus group found that Benny Hill was still funny and on those results if Benny Hill had been a new show it would have been commissioned (and expected to be a hit). Not only was it popular, people liked it the more it went on, something that apparently is how they measure potential top comedies.

God knows we do need something fun. This Christmas was the worst for TV by far.

Hayley

[ClownJulie]

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[Hayley]

Hi

To give you an idea of what a fun life we lead, we have spent an evening in the pub debating this....and a few other things. The conclusions we have come to are...

1) The I Can Sing a Rainbow sketch was definitely not Freddie Starr.
2) The girl in it was a plump bosomy girl who had previously been on Punchlines (with Lenny Bennett). We can't remember her name.
3) The man wasn't Les Dawson (from Sez Les) cos she was an LWT performer and the LD show (made by Yorjshire) had even less slapstick than Russ Abott's Madhouse.
4) Bill's memory says....The bloke was an artist in a smock who started ainting her delicately according to the lyrics of the song and ended up doing the same but with buckets of paint
5) The sounds quite similar to the Freddie Starr sketch so was probably written by the same guy. The creeping up style was the same (apparently).
6) Consequently we have decided it was a beret-wearing (to hide baldness) Russ Abbott.

We may be wrong. But we want proof.

Yes, we have benb drinking but what the hay...?

Bill and Hayleyxxxxx