Dusty Ayres
Commodore
From The Telegraph:
British public tired of British commedians & comedyAs John Cleese's Basil Fawlty once exclaimed through gritted teeth, while giving Manuel another clip round the ear: "You can't get the staff, you see; it's a nightmare!"
Now that Russell Brand has resigned from his Radio 2 programme and Jonathan Ross remains suspended for crassness beyond the call of duty, the pair will have plenty of time to watch re-runs of Fawlty Towers.
Plenty of time to remind themselves just why Andrew Sachs - who stooped to conquer our affections as Manuel - is held in such protective esteem by the public, more than three decades after Fawlty Towers first aired. And maybe they'll begin to wonder along with the rest of us: what on earth happened to comedy in this country?
Fawlty Towers was as innocent as it was beautifully scripted, while the antics of Brand and Ross were as grubby as they were mindlessly improvised. The contrast feels shaming and peculiarly telling about the decline of the great British sense of humour.
As a comedy critic, I often encounter material on the stand-up circuit that leaves me stunned by its inhuman coldness, its relish for tawdry detail, its sheer nastiness. "Rape" has become a comedy word; paedophilia is a regular staple. I'll never forget being told by one household-name comic that he was dying for Madeleine McCann to be found because he had the perfect joke ready for the occasion.
You might argue that it's the failure of arbiters of taste like me that has helped get us into this mess; we're all too scared of being lumped in with the po-faced likes of Mary Whitehouse to protest. Maybe we should hang our heads in shame but I'd counter that some comedians are now so powerful that words of condemnation - unless delivered en masse - can't hurt them, and if anything, can give them added kudos. At some point along the way "safe" became the dirtiest word in showbiz and "edgy" became the holy grail.
Back in 1975, when Fawlty Towers first aired, family-friendly fare was in abundance. There was Dad's Army, Porridge, Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Are You Being Served? and, of course, The Good Life. Just round the corner lay those other suburban classics, George and Mildred, Terry and June and Butterflies. Happy days. But we shouldn't get too carried away. In the midst of all that were Dudley Moore and Peter Cook as Derek and Clive - the latter pontificating, to mention one notorious instance, about getting aroused at the sight of the deceased Pope. And Monty Python's The Life of Brian (1979) caused a stink that easily eclipses the Brand/Ross debacle.