ALAN YOUNG 75

Entertainment, light and dark Roger Wilmut is the author of two previous studies of post-World War Two British comedy, namely The Goon Show Companion and Tony Hancock: Artiste. His new book‘ is a ‘celebration’ and a history of what he describes as ‘a uni- que generation of comedy’. The past two decades of theatrical revues, televi- sion and radio broadcasts, films, books, and records which have been cre- ated principally by Cambridge- and Oxford-educated comedians (referred to throughout Mr Wilmut‘s book as the ‘Oxbridge Mafia’) are painstakingly chronicled, presented, and analysed. Much use has been made of original interviews with members of the ’Mafia’ themselves, together with extracts from transcripts and photographs of scenes from and ephemera associated with the numberous Oxbridge-manufactured shows which have caused frequently uncontrollable laughter and sometimes equally uncontrollable anger and shock. The end-product is an interesting, entertaining, and informative account of a significant cultural phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s. As acatalogue raisonnk of shows and artistes, From Fringe to Flying Cir- cus will be an indispensable guide for those who have raised this wave of comedy from the first era of mass television to something of a cult. There is a good deal of evidence in the book that the videotape market will enjoy a huge sales boom when the BBC releases its large, though incomplete, stock of recorded shows, such asThat Was the Week That Was (1962-3), Not So Much a Programme (19645), Not O n l y . . . But Also (1965-6 and 1970-l), Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-74), and The Goodies (1970-), to name only five of the series which have made the ’Oxbridge Mafia’ into popular comedians and cult heroes. The original teams from Beyond the Fringe - Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore - from 7W3 - David Frost, John Bird, Eleanor Bron, William Rushton, and others - fromMonty Python’s Flying Circus -John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Terry Gilliam, and, again, many others - and from The Goodies -Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, and Bill Oddie - all these well-known members of the ‘Mafia’ appear to have been generous in their discussions with Mr Wilmut andlor in their loans of script-material, photo- graphs, and other showbiz items with which the book is richly illustrated.

The accurate, even scholarly, record of the dozens of productions which have emanated from these inventive writers and performers may well satisfy the genuine devotee. From Fringe to Flying Circus has, however, a more serious and discriminating aim,’ which is to attempt to analyse and plot *Roger Wilmut, From Fringe to Flying Circus: Celebratinga Unique Generation of Comedy 2960-1 980. Preface by Bamber Gascoigne. Eyre Methuen, €7.95.

76 Critical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 4

major changes in styles and functions of popular light entertainment during the 1960s and 1970s. This aim gives Mr Wilmut‘s book critical and disquiet- ing dimensions which, in my view, moderates to some degree the celebrat- ory intention which is announced in the book‘s full title. Mr Wilmut has a neat phrase to characterise each of three popular shows which have dis- played different emphases in comedy during the period. Beyond the Fringe had a ‘sharp eye’; The Goodies ’uninhibited exuberance’; Monty Python’s Fly- ing Circus ‘brilliant inventiveness’. Such characterisations are not mutually exclusive. Doubtless most television viewers would agree that The Goodies has been the most good-natured of the longer-running series though, as From Fringe to Flying Circus relates, even this programme has had its prob- lems with public complaints and BBC censorship. The fast knockabout humour of The Goodies made it a very popular programme with younger viewers. On the whole, satire is used against fairly obvious anti-human targets, and there is often a good-spirited and healthy self-criticism in the programme, especially when one of the Goodies tries to gain power over the others. At times, it is true, the three Goodies mirror the class-system in Bri- tain, with Tim Brooke-Taylor as the over-patriotic, middle-class Tory, Graeme Garden as the clever, over-rational scientist, and Bill Oddie as the pathetic, over-sensitive worker exploited by both ‘elites’. Generally, how- ever, the Goodies work as a team against pompous, bureaucratic, or com- mercial threats to the quality of life for individuals in contemporary British society.

The satire of Beyond the Fringe (1960-6) was quite different in character and influence. This famous Cambridge revue, which became a tremendous success in Edinburgh, London, and New York, was to lead directly to the foundation in 1961 of the short-lived Establishment Club and the satirical magazinePrivate Eye, and, indeed, to the whole so-called ’satire boom’ of the 1960s, including W 3 . Although Kenneth Tynan described Beyond the Fringe as ’anti-reactionary without being progressive’, he also hailed it as a breakthrough in British satirical revue. There is obviously much disagree- ment among the original team of four about the satirical intentions and effects of the show. Peter Cook, who had seen some European political cabaret and had tried to emulate its satirical bite, thinks of Beyond the Fringe as satire. Jonathan Miller disagrees strongly; for him, Beyond the Fringe was entertainment first and foremost. Indeed, it is difficult to ignore his point that none of the four approached the world with that strong moral indigna- tion which is required to create genuine political satire: ‘We had no reason to - we were all very comfortably off, and doing very nicely’. It is probably true that Beyond the Fringe was a successful constituent of the general attack during the 1960s on previously taboo subjects for comic treatment, includ-

Entertainment, light and dark 77

ing named politicians and corrupt commercial operators, British sexual ‘hang-ups’ of all kinds, and, naturally, the mass-media. Paradoxically, it is possible to argue that many taboo subjects (or ‘sacred cows’, as Jonathan Miller calls them) became desanctified inevitably through continual expos- ure to the media, especially television: ’It‘s very hard for someone to be scared when they’re seen a lot of the time’.

Most viewers would agree, perhaps, that T w 3 did find several legitimate subjects for satirical treatment, though often the undergraduate origins of the programme lie not very far beneath a sophisticated surface. The magazinePrivate Eye, still going fairly strong after nearly twenty years, is the nearest thing in Britain to the vituperative spirit of European political satire. Its savage, often thinly substantiated attacks on everybody and everything drags it down into the realms of anarchism and nihilism, though the intellec- tural level of its satire is often unbelievably juvenile. As Roger Wilmut says, ’If more backing were given to some of Private Eye’s assertions - even at the risk of being boring- it is possible that it would give less appearance of thrashing about nihilistically in a quagmire of fourth-form abuse.’ When Private €ye was asked by Kenneth Tynan when it was going to get a point of view, the retort (by Richard Ingrams) was that Tynan must have meant, ‘When wasPrivate Eye going to get Tynan’s point of view? Extreme relativ- ism is indistinguishable from total nihilism or Iago-like cynicism. This is con- firmed by Ingrams’s silly assertion, ’In a certain sense I thinkprivate €ye has to be anti-everything and everybody if it is to have any point.’ The intention to produce shock for its own destructive sake seems to have been an element in all the shows from Beyond the Fringe through to TW3. Private €ye and Monty Python’s Flying Circus have taken rebellious adolescent behaviour to new and nastier levels. It is interesting, in this context, to learn that the anarchic Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, which appeared regularly in the television show Do Not Adjust Your Set was originally named the B o r n Dog Dada Band. The totally anarchic humour of this group of musicians has been recognised as a precursor of their own thinking by members of the Monty Python team, some of whom wrote for and performed inDo Not Adjust Your Set.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus has been ’brilliantly inventive‘, it is true. But in addition to developing the ’sharp eye‘ of Beyond the Fringe and the ‘unin- hibited exuberance’ of The Goodies, this very popular programme has also set out to see how far it can go in shocking its viewers, in breaking all taboos, in offending against all the canons of good taste. The reader of From Fringe to Flying Circus is reminded of many of the programme’s very funny sketches, and there is ample quotation from and description of its best scripts includ- ing as we should expect, Cleese and Chapman’s ‘Dead parrot’ sketch, Jones

78 Critical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 4

and Palin’s ‘Spanish Inquisition’ and ’Summarize Proust competition’, and Eric Idle’s ‘The man who speaks in anagrams’.. All of these demonstrate a capacity for brilliantly eccentric word-play and inventive form in comedy. Terry Gilliam’s surrealist-style cartoon sequences are often funny and, just as often, cruelly sadistic. In its final effect, Monty Python - and this includes the films, records, and books - is irresponsible and dangerously anarchic black comedy. As Roger Wilmut shows, the driving idea behind the final very unpleasant programme made for the BBC was to find out how shocked the studio audience could be. For this reason alone, it has been pleasing to read that more of the ‘Oxbridge Mafia, may follow the example of John Cleese andConnie Booth (of Fawlty Towers) and move into the healthier trad- ition of situation comedy. Roger Wilmut‘s ‘Half term report‘ which ends his book by making this prediction is good news. It makes an optimistic ending to an excellently compiled but often disturbing survey of twenty years on the shadier side of the British light entertainment industry.