T
The Byre
- Original Poster
- #1
Desolation Row
Sixty-five years ago and without much warning, the World changed. It happened because one man changed the way we think and we seem to be forgetting him. And that should worry me.
The Arab Spring didn’t worry me. Yet another lunatic, hiding in a hole in the ground, stating that he will fight on (presumably from his hole) doesn’t worry me and the new neo-Nazis in Germany calling themselves Alternative fuer Deutschland do not worry me.
We are all going to have to live with less. Instead of going for growth by reducing restrictions, such as lunatic European bureaucracy and import tariffs to the Third World and mad restrictions on places of work, such as a 100% local monopolies for German and French chimney sweeps and most European civil servants enjoying eye-wateringly high pensions and early retirement, we are all going to have to make do with less.
All the main leaders of the Western World seem to come from the same brood - some sort of over-privileged species of human-like moronic life form.
The Euro is in Turmoil (a little village in Dorset, by the sounds of it, probably not too far from the small town of Jeopardy) and we even had riots in England. The last few US presidents were totally out of their depth, the next one is a loony, Japan’s PM has had to clear his desk after displays of incompetence on a grand scale and the German Chancellor is up to her neck in it, after failing to give clear leadership on the issues of debt and power. As for Spain, Italy and France, if their leaders turned up for work, wearing red noses and revolving trousers, we would all just assume that this was just an inevitable step in that downward spiral that they call ‘leadership style.’
And yet, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think that any of all that is as important as what happened in London in 1951.
Willium: 1951 and all’s well - mate!
Yes, it was 1951, or as we like to call it, just after ten-to-eight.
Willium: Just after ten-to-eight and all’s well - mate!
Forty-five years ago, we dropped what was left of the gold standard when Nixon allowed the dollar to float free, fifty-five years ago, the Berlin Wall was built, but sixty-five years ago, we started the long process that would change the very way we think. We actually got about half-way there, but then stopped and now we are drifting backwards to the old materialism that plagued society before the War.
In 1951, a programme began on the old electric-type wireless called ‘Crazy People’ which became The Goon Show. By the time I was able to walk, talk and set fire to the house, I was listening to The Goon Show. In the school playground, little boys tried to sound like Bluebottle. This was remarkably easy, as most of us sounded like Bluebottle anyway!
“Yehehe! You have fluted my plunes!” we cried and when the dreaded ‘Lurgi’ struck Britain, little boys in playgrounds up and down the country, waved their arms about and shouted “Yacka-boo! Yacka-boo!”
Even today, if you come down with a minor ailment, you may speak of falling victim to Lurgi.
In the early 60s, the whole thing was rebroadcast on the televisual set, using some remarkably good puppets, inspired by drawings by the master himself, Mr Spike Milligner, the famous printing error and the madness that was Lurgi struck Britain once again.
Every week, without fail, we tuned in to hear the latest adventures of Neddie Seagoon, The Famous Eccles, Bluebottle, the ancient Henry Crun, the ancient, yet naughty Minnie Bannister, Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, Count Jim (knees) Moriarty and Major Denis Bloodnok.
The show was broadcast and repeated, right across the World and in America in particular, where it spawned The Firesign Theatre and later Saturday Night Live, that defined the way liberal America thinks. Inspired by the idea of having a piece of paper with the time written down on it, comedy and drama took new turns.
The Goon Show ran like electricity through the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, whose previous members didn’t really amount to much, though they did count WS Gilbert to ‘Dickie’ Murdoch, as well as many actors, famous at the time, but whose names mean nothing to us today. The Goon Show changed all that. Humour was now freed of the bonds of logic, set-piece jokes and punch lines and a group of undergrads took a show that they called ‘A Clump of Plinths’ to the Edinburgh Festival. This became the London and New York show ‘The Cambridge Circus’ and later was turned into the legendary radio programme ‘I’m Sorry, I’ll Read that Again!’ or I.S.I.R.T.A. to its friends.
Since then, membership of the club has been a pathway to show business success for dozens and dozens of performers (in recent years, a rather lack-lustre bunch) but it was John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor, David Hatch, Chris Stuart-Clark, Jo Kendall and Jonathan Lynn that kicked the door down.
The Cambridge Circus and (as the song goes) I.S.I.R.T.A. already featured all the favourites that were later to be credited to other shows, like the ‘We were poor at our house’ sketch and the three old men sketch -
“The young soldier today is not the same chap he was when I was a lad. I mean, where was he in 1914? Where was he? Nowhere!”
“Nowhere! I mean, when I was a boy, I joined up, went off to war and got killed.”
“Exactly! I had my leg blown oooff in the war, had to get a wooden one.”
“Really, I had my hair blown oooff in the war. Had to get a wooden wig!”
“Wondered why you had to comb yer hair with a chisel!”
“Really. I had everything blown oooff. I’m completely wooden, ye know!”
“Exactly! But you tell that to any of these youngsters today and they just laugh in yer face!”
I.S.I.R.T.A. gave rise to ‘At Last, the 1948 Show’ on ITV and ‘Twice a Fortnight’ on the BBC. ‘At Last, the 1948 Show’ was copied in the US to become ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’ and most of the 1948 cast moved to the BBC to launch Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
“But all we were ever doing really, was copying Spike like mad!” said John Cleese in a later interview.
From the Beatles to Pink Floyd, inspiration was sewn into the very fabric of our existence on Sunday afternoon. Young brains, told that you could have a piece of paper “wot has got eight o’clock writted on it” were wired differently. The madness of white-hot creativity lasted for twenty years and continued to echo for another twenty.
Disciples of the madness told us that yellow matter custard was dripping from a dead dog’s eye, that we'll bask in the shadow of yesterday's triumph and sail on the steel breeze and asked ‘Who for his greed and who for his hunger? And who shall I say is calling?’
And then we started going around in circles. Art, film, music, it’s all now just a repeat of what went before. “Maybe I'm mistaken expecting you to fight, or maybe I'm just crazy, I don't know wrong from right.”
Were you poor at your house? No? Well you soon will be!
Here we are, telling our children that they have to work even harder, pay even more for their education, earn even less when they are finished and retire even later. And if they have the audacity to lob a fire bomb or two through a shop window and steal an iPod, we shall lock them up even longer.
And, as we lock them away, brimming with smug self-righteousness, remember - ‘we are all just prisoners here, of our own device.’
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlour is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
- and that worries me.
Sixty-five years ago and without much warning, the World changed. It happened because one man changed the way we think and we seem to be forgetting him. And that should worry me.
The Arab Spring didn’t worry me. Yet another lunatic, hiding in a hole in the ground, stating that he will fight on (presumably from his hole) doesn’t worry me and the new neo-Nazis in Germany calling themselves Alternative fuer Deutschland do not worry me.
We are all going to have to live with less. Instead of going for growth by reducing restrictions, such as lunatic European bureaucracy and import tariffs to the Third World and mad restrictions on places of work, such as a 100% local monopolies for German and French chimney sweeps and most European civil servants enjoying eye-wateringly high pensions and early retirement, we are all going to have to make do with less.
All the main leaders of the Western World seem to come from the same brood - some sort of over-privileged species of human-like moronic life form.
The Euro is in Turmoil (a little village in Dorset, by the sounds of it, probably not too far from the small town of Jeopardy) and we even had riots in England. The last few US presidents were totally out of their depth, the next one is a loony, Japan’s PM has had to clear his desk after displays of incompetence on a grand scale and the German Chancellor is up to her neck in it, after failing to give clear leadership on the issues of debt and power. As for Spain, Italy and France, if their leaders turned up for work, wearing red noses and revolving trousers, we would all just assume that this was just an inevitable step in that downward spiral that they call ‘leadership style.’
And yet, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think that any of all that is as important as what happened in London in 1951.
Willium: 1951 and all’s well - mate!
Yes, it was 1951, or as we like to call it, just after ten-to-eight.
Willium: Just after ten-to-eight and all’s well - mate!
Forty-five years ago, we dropped what was left of the gold standard when Nixon allowed the dollar to float free, fifty-five years ago, the Berlin Wall was built, but sixty-five years ago, we started the long process that would change the very way we think. We actually got about half-way there, but then stopped and now we are drifting backwards to the old materialism that plagued society before the War.
In 1951, a programme began on the old electric-type wireless called ‘Crazy People’ which became The Goon Show. By the time I was able to walk, talk and set fire to the house, I was listening to The Goon Show. In the school playground, little boys tried to sound like Bluebottle. This was remarkably easy, as most of us sounded like Bluebottle anyway!
“Yehehe! You have fluted my plunes!” we cried and when the dreaded ‘Lurgi’ struck Britain, little boys in playgrounds up and down the country, waved their arms about and shouted “Yacka-boo! Yacka-boo!”
Even today, if you come down with a minor ailment, you may speak of falling victim to Lurgi.
In the early 60s, the whole thing was rebroadcast on the televisual set, using some remarkably good puppets, inspired by drawings by the master himself, Mr Spike Milligner, the famous printing error and the madness that was Lurgi struck Britain once again.
Every week, without fail, we tuned in to hear the latest adventures of Neddie Seagoon, The Famous Eccles, Bluebottle, the ancient Henry Crun, the ancient, yet naughty Minnie Bannister, Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, Count Jim (knees) Moriarty and Major Denis Bloodnok.
The show was broadcast and repeated, right across the World and in America in particular, where it spawned The Firesign Theatre and later Saturday Night Live, that defined the way liberal America thinks. Inspired by the idea of having a piece of paper with the time written down on it, comedy and drama took new turns.
The Goon Show ran like electricity through the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, whose previous members didn’t really amount to much, though they did count WS Gilbert to ‘Dickie’ Murdoch, as well as many actors, famous at the time, but whose names mean nothing to us today. The Goon Show changed all that. Humour was now freed of the bonds of logic, set-piece jokes and punch lines and a group of undergrads took a show that they called ‘A Clump of Plinths’ to the Edinburgh Festival. This became the London and New York show ‘The Cambridge Circus’ and later was turned into the legendary radio programme ‘I’m Sorry, I’ll Read that Again!’ or I.S.I.R.T.A. to its friends.
Since then, membership of the club has been a pathway to show business success for dozens and dozens of performers (in recent years, a rather lack-lustre bunch) but it was John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor, David Hatch, Chris Stuart-Clark, Jo Kendall and Jonathan Lynn that kicked the door down.
The Cambridge Circus and (as the song goes) I.S.I.R.T.A. already featured all the favourites that were later to be credited to other shows, like the ‘We were poor at our house’ sketch and the three old men sketch -
“The young soldier today is not the same chap he was when I was a lad. I mean, where was he in 1914? Where was he? Nowhere!”
“Nowhere! I mean, when I was a boy, I joined up, went off to war and got killed.”
“Exactly! I had my leg blown oooff in the war, had to get a wooden one.”
“Really, I had my hair blown oooff in the war. Had to get a wooden wig!”
“Wondered why you had to comb yer hair with a chisel!”
“Really. I had everything blown oooff. I’m completely wooden, ye know!”
“Exactly! But you tell that to any of these youngsters today and they just laugh in yer face!”
I.S.I.R.T.A. gave rise to ‘At Last, the 1948 Show’ on ITV and ‘Twice a Fortnight’ on the BBC. ‘At Last, the 1948 Show’ was copied in the US to become ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’ and most of the 1948 cast moved to the BBC to launch Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
“But all we were ever doing really, was copying Spike like mad!” said John Cleese in a later interview.
From the Beatles to Pink Floyd, inspiration was sewn into the very fabric of our existence on Sunday afternoon. Young brains, told that you could have a piece of paper “wot has got eight o’clock writted on it” were wired differently. The madness of white-hot creativity lasted for twenty years and continued to echo for another twenty.
Disciples of the madness told us that yellow matter custard was dripping from a dead dog’s eye, that we'll bask in the shadow of yesterday's triumph and sail on the steel breeze and asked ‘Who for his greed and who for his hunger? And who shall I say is calling?’
And then we started going around in circles. Art, film, music, it’s all now just a repeat of what went before. “Maybe I'm mistaken expecting you to fight, or maybe I'm just crazy, I don't know wrong from right.”
Were you poor at your house? No? Well you soon will be!
Here we are, telling our children that they have to work even harder, pay even more for their education, earn even less when they are finished and retire even later. And if they have the audacity to lob a fire bomb or two through a shop window and steal an iPod, we shall lock them up even longer.
And, as we lock them away, brimming with smug self-righteousness, remember - ‘we are all just prisoners here, of our own device.’
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlour is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
- and that worries me.
