Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light Entertainment
Louis Barfe
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: 1843543818
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
With a cast of thousands, including Peter Cook, Ken Dodd, Dusty Springfield, Spike Milligan, Rolf Harris, Bruce Forsyth and Reeves and Mortimer, Turned Out Nice Again reveals a world of comedians and cavorters, dancing girls and crooners. From the early days of vaudeville, via the golden age of radio, live television spectaculars, the rise of the chat show and alternative comedy, Louis Barfe pulls back the curtain of variety to reveal the world of light entertainment in all its glory.
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important factor in industry and business. This was not in the sense of levelling down to a low common denominator, so much as producing objects or services to a consistently high standard at the lowest cost. At a holiday camp, everything the average working-class holidaymaker could possibly want in terms of food, drink and entertainment was available on site. After the Second World War, Butlin’s success enabled him to expand further, until he ran a total of nine camps, including Clacton,
promise you. Everybody laughed. Of course they laughed. But in the break, I went up to him. I said to the floor manager ‘I don’t care, that’s coming out, and Bob will do a retake saying “Can we see The African Queen?”’ This happened on two or three occasions.4 At the end of the series, Jon Scoffield – by now head of light entertainment – called Stewart in and informed him that Monkhouse had asked for a new producer. Stewart replied that they had a deal. Faced with the choice between ditching a
inclinations from an early age. Mike played clarinet and studied at the Royal Academy of Music at the same time as jazz musician John Dankworth, while Bernie played drums, which he studied at the Tottenham campus of the University of Life. Becoming eligible for his call-up at the tail end of the war, Mike Winters had tried to join the Merchant Navy, but been dismissed by the medical officer as unfit for service. Recommended by a pianist friend, the brothers joined the Canadian Legion, which was
He says ‘Ah, there’s the knock at the door.’ He goes to answer it, but there’s nobody there. I’m not surprised by that, because I didn’t hear a knock. He came back, another five minutes and ‘There it is . . . must be my hearing.’ We carry on, and then there is a knock, and Irving says ‘I’ll get it.’ Irving opens the door and it’s George Burns. He stands there and he says ‘I just thought you’d like a little magic.’ He’d conditioned me to expect the knocks. I hadn’t paid any notice to the fact that
the audience, it went through the roof. He was marvellous.7 Over a drink many years later, Morecambe brought the subject up and told Ammonds ‘John, I’ve never been more wrong. It’s the funniest thing we’ve ever done.’ As Ammonds admits, ‘Some younger producers would have wilted – once he’d said “Sod him, we don’t want him,” that would have been it, but I knew it was going to be a gem.’ It made Previn a celebrity among people who would never have listened to classical music if their lives