Comedy Spotlight - Bob Monkhouse

Bob Monkhouse  (Full name Robert Alan Monkhouse), was a British comedian whose career spanned over 50 years.

I, like most people my age, first came across Bob when he was presenting one of many game shows he hosted throughout the 1980s, I forget which one exactly as he presented so many in my lifetime.
At first, I was not aware he was a comedian, but what impressed me about him was his extremely amiable and easy going manner, as well as his quick witted quips. The first time I actually saw him as a comedy performer was in 1994, when he was one of many comedians who ITV devoted one of their "An audience with..." programs to, and then a year later, the BBC gave him a series titled "Bob Monkhouse: On the spot". Both these shows highlighted his quick wit and ability to make just about anything amusing, particularly so when he performed a routine he called "Bobs comedy connections", where he would ask the audience to give him two completely unrelated subjects and would then perform a 10 minute routine in which he would make up a series of gags which would connect the two subjects (something which I have yet to see ANY other comedian do half as well as Bob could).Bobs showbiz career began in his teenage years, however he didn't begin with comedy, instead, he began as an illustrator, doing artwork for various British comics such as The Beano and The Dandy, nether of which he received any artists credit for, as was the rather odd tradition of the time.
Later, Bob and his life long friend Denis Gifford formed their own publishing company, specialising in comic artwork, gag writing and rather oddly, erotic fiction.
After he completed his national service, Bob tricked his commanding officer into signing a letter stating he was a war hero and recommending that the person reading it should give him a job, which Bob then used to secure employment at the BBC, thus beginning the career which would serve him well for the next 50 years.
Initially, Bob worked as a gag writer and comedy performer for radio shows, but soon enough he began to diversify into writing material for other well known comedians of the 1950s, such as Arthur Askey, Max Miller and Bob Hope,  he also began making a name for himself on the club circuit as a double act with Denis.
Bob began presenting TV shows in the mid 50s, mainly game shows, where his wit quickly garnered him a reputation as a household name in his own right, and thus secured him more work on stage and screen.
The early 1960s marked the real beginning of Bobs comedy career, as Denis, taking Bob quite by surprise, decided to dissolve their partnership and move to America where he had managed to secure work as a gag writer for numerous American comedians (although Bob admitted in his autobiography that he had begun to tire of having to carry Denis, who, although a good gag writer, was not a very good comedian or comedy performer, as he lacked the wit and charisma required to be successful on the comedy circuit)

Bob began appearing in numerous films (The first "Carry on" film, "Carry on Sergeant" being one of the most notable) and on TV programs, although his presence on television didn't become secure until the mid 60s, when in 1967 he became the presenter of the hugely popular TV show "The Golden Shot" (again, Bob admitted in his autobiography that he, via a series of well placed negative comments to the producers, managed to get them to sack the original presenter Jackie Rae, and hire him, again, citing that Jackie was not really suitable for the job as he lacked the charisma and wit to engage with the audience both at home and in the studio). What followed from then was five years of uninterrupted work and huge success, however the good times began to turn bad.
Firstly, Bob had invested in a nightclub venture with an acquaintance of his, which seemed to be turning a decent profit, unfortunately though, Bobs faith was misplaced, as his "friend" ran off with a lot of the money and the nightclub ended up being an expensive white elephant that barely attracted customers.
Bob also engaged in a series of extra marital affairs during the 50s and early 60s, including an admitted single sexual encounter with a male-to-female transsexual (although Bob stated he was not aware of this until after he and the trans woman had had sex and Bob made a comment about her vagina seeming to be somewhat smaller than he was used to). Bobs most famous, and most dangerous bit on the side though was an affair with actress Diana Dors, who at the time as married to
small time gangster and all round bastard Dennis Hamilton. Bobs autobiography states that when Dennis eventually found out that Bob had been shagging his Mrs (via having people follow her and listening to her phone calls) he confronted Bob as he left a party in the early hours of one morning, producing a straight razor and saying he planned to "slit (bobs) eyeballs", to which Bob admits that purely out of terror he engaged in the only fist fight he had in his entire life, resulting in Hamilton receiving a knee to the groin and Bob dislocating his knee cap due to the sheer amount of force he put behind it.
The final nail in the coffin which saw Bob disappear from screens for a while came in 1972, when the producers of The Golden Shot came to believe that Bob was accepting bribes from companies to feature their products as prizes on the show, so he was "released" and replaced with black comedian Charley Williams. Bob stated years later that at no time had he accepted any bribes, and that the reason for his sacking was due to a misunderstanding when a friend of his, who happened to work for razor and knife manufacturer "Wilkinson Sword" was seen handing Bob an envelope which contained a rare book Bob had been looking for as a gift. It didn't help that a few weeks later some of the prizes featured on the show were Wilkinson Sword products, which Bob had seen and said he thought they would make a good prize for the show.

With work on TV suddenly drying up, Bob returned to stand up and gag writing, but also diversified into after dinner speaking. These projects did Bob well, but he really wanted to get back on TV, he didn't have to wait long as in 1974, the producers of The Golden Shot, who were unhappy with Charley Williams performance as host (and the subsequent massive drop in ratings), came and asked Bob to return to the show, Bob agreed, although his salary was drastically increased, and he was allowed to pursue other projects whilst working. Bob later wrote that he bore ATV (the company that produced the show) no ill will, but he was slightly miffed at the fact that he had been sacked without being given the chance to explain or defend himself from the accusations of bribery, and found it somewhat amusing that they came crawling back to him after he was told that he "wasn't important to the shows success".  The Golden Shot did enjoy renewed success after his return, but was eventually cancelled following the end of the 1975 season.

By the early 80s, Bob was still working as a writer and after dinner speaker, but had largely given up on stand up due to the proliferation of early 80s "alternative" comedians, whose material and routines he considered to be vulgar and no better than the extremely offensive "blue" comedians who dominated the club scene from the mid 70s through to the early 90s (throughout his career, Bob eschewed extreme racist and homophobic material, and very rarely used words such as "fuck" in his act). He also became an object of ridicule for some of the impressionists of the time, and suffered the humiliation of being branded as being "smug" and insincere whenever he made an appearance on TV, although he presented a few game shows in the 80s, including Family Fortunes and Bobs Full House, but had very little comedy related stuff going on on the telly.
Bob enjoyed a career renaissance in the mid 90s, when he found himself being booked for live shows on university campuses following his "Audience with...." appearance and a guest spot on "Have I got news for you". Following this, he also released a series of live stand up videos, which, unlike his TV appearances, featured much more "Adult" oriented material (such as frank discussions about his many sexual liaisons and various sexual problems he encountered as he got older), but still retained his signature quick wit and mastery of ad-lib material.
He returned to daytime TV by presenting a series of game shows, such as the £6400 question, Wipeout and Celebrity squares, and was a regular guest on chat and variety shows.

Bob only made national "scandal" headlines twice in his life, the first occasion in 1979 when he was accused of making and selling illegal copies of movies from his vast collection (Bob was an expert on early cinema, and had an extensive collection of silent movies and early TV programs on cine film, many of which had thought to be lost until the British Film Institute inventoried his collection after his death). The case went to court and he was eventually cleared, although he later wrote that he found the whole experience humiliating.
The second time Bob hit the headlines was when in 1995, a thief stole his archive of "gag books" containing a lot of his original material which he had written down since the beginning of his career. Bob offered a reward of £15,000 for their return, but no one came forward. The thief was eventually arrested and the books returned 18 months later.

Bob died in 2003 from prostate cancer, which he had been receiving treatment for but it was not successful as at the time, prostate cancer was not well understood and effective treatments had not been developed. Death didn't stop Bob from returning to TV screens though, as in 2007, Bob appeared in a series of adverts to promote "Male cancer awareness week", in which he made various quips about how prostate cancer kills more men than his wife's cooking. The campaign was a success and led to increased research and more effective treatments for the condition.

Comedy Spotlights - Dave Allen

Dave Allen (Real name David Tynan O'Mahony) was an Irish comedian who enjoyed much career success throughout the 1960s and 1970s, before seeing a re-emergence during the early 1990s.

I first encountered Dave Allen during his careers second wind in the early 90s, when ITV aired a show named simply "The Dave Allen Show".
Immediately his comedy style struck a chord with me, as opposed to the alternative comedians of the time whose comedy mostly seemed to revolve around juvenile fart gags, slapstick and explaining how bad they were at relationships, Dave would sit and tell clever and engaging anecdotes about everyday occurances, all while calmly smoking a cigarette and sipping from a glass of what everyone assumed was whisky (most of the time, it was actually ginger ale).

In many ways his style was similar to another favourite of mine, Bob Monkhouse, insofar as that his stories were witty and were not prone to flights of fantasy or absurdity,  but at the same time they, like the comedy stylings of Monkhouse and Billy Connolly, were based on ordinary, every day observations.

It was only in later years, starting with the BBCs airing of "The Unique Dave Allen", that I learned something of this mans career, which stretched back to well before I was born, and was still as funny now as it had been back in the days when Dave was the BBCs number 1 comedy draw, and, somewhat different to the stuff I was used to from 1990s BBC comedy, which centred mainly on quick sketch style comedy such as "The Fast show" and "Harry Enfield & Chums".


Allen began his television career with an appearance on "New Faces" in 1959, which quickly saw him being snapped up to host pop music programs, due to his good looks, quick wit and his sense of dress. Prior to this, Dave had been a regular on the club scene and for a time worked at Butlins where he fleshed out his own style.
His big break did not come courtesy of the BBC however, instead, his first exposure to full time TV comedy came courtesy of Australian television, where while on tour there in 1963 he accepted a request to be the front man for a live American style chat show, his exposure and popularity soared as the show, titled "Tonight with Dave Allen" proved to be a big hit.
6 months into the gig however, he earned a ban from Australian TV when during an interview with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, he repeatedly ignored the producers signal to wind up the chat for a commercial break, eventually shouting at the producer to "go off and masturbate somewhere".
This of course wasnt well received by TV executives and the show was pulled form the schedules, however after a few weeks, the ban was quietly repealed as Daves popularity amongst viewers showed that they weren't really bothered about him swearing on television.

He returned to the UK in 1964, and after working almost continuously on the stage and making occasional TV appearances, he eventually secured a place on the Val Doonican show, which led to him getting his own show, which had a similar format to his Australian TV outing, in 1967.

The BBC came calling in 1968 and saw Dave begin the first major and continuously successful part of his career in Britain in the form of "The Dave Allen Show". In a change to his usual routine, the program saw him begin the format which would remain virtually unchanged for the rest of his career, as the Dave Allen show was a mix of sketch comedy sandwiched in with his familiar story telling, here the sketches would always relate to the monologue bits in some fashion.

For this portion of his career, his monologues would usually comprise of material relating to his life and upbringing as a catholic in Ireland, more often than not poking fun at the rituals and dogma of the catholic church, but also on its bizarre effects on peoples lives. Dave, who identified as an Atheist for most of his life, attracted much anger from christian viewers, who regarded his material to be offensive and blasphemous, doubly so during the sketch comedy elements where he would often dress as various religious figures such as priests and even on occasion as the pope himself, and would perform ridiculous and farcical routines mocking the church and all its trappings.
Much of Allens material from the late 60s through to the late 70s was based around religion in some form, not always Catholicism either, he also mocked Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Protestants mercilessly, prompting round after round of complaints to the BBC, who staunchly defended him, mainly because they received very high viewing figures off the back of his shows.
Religion was not his only source material though, he would also point out the absurdities of politics, including many jabs at controversial subjects such as apartheid, he would comment on the battle of the sexes, the concept of marriage and having children, on peoples working lives and sexual problems, he would comment on social inequality, social taboos and idiosyncrasies relating to stereotypes.
As many have pointed out, and many comedians that emerged during the 1980s have admitted, Dave Allen inspired many of the 1980s "Alternative" comedians insofar as he, unlike many of the popular "Club circuit" comedians of the time, such as Bernard Manning etc, eschewed racist, sexist and just downright offensive material.

During the 1980s, Dave began to fade from the spotlight, being seen as somewhat of a relic of a bygone age when people such as Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, Lenny Henry etc were all beginning to be popular amongst the youth audience, however Dave still continued to work for the BBC on a semi regular basis, producing comedy shows such as a series simply titled "Dave Allen", but also he began to act in more serious roles, namely in the works of playwright Alan Bennett.
Dave finally fell out with the BBC when in 1990, the 10pm airing of one of his shows on BBC 1 attracted a hitherto unheard of number of complaints from viewers about the amount of offensive language featured in the show, mostly his liberal use of the word "fuck". Dave laughed the complaints off, however the BBC, who had stood with him throughout the myriad complaints about his material over the years, had changed somewhat during the late 1980s, becoming far more politically correct and concerned about not causing offence in any way to any of their viewers (this policy has led to the BBC making some of the most bizarre choices over the years). Thus, they chastised the man who had brought in many viewers and been behind a lot of the most successful comedy shows the BBC had produced up to that point. The incident was even brought up in parliament and MPs debated over the use of swear words on television and whether there should be tighter censorship rulings.
Dave left the BBC in disgust later that year, going into semi-retirement, returning to screens briefly in 1993 to front a series for ITV which was similar to his usual monologue/sketch comedy, however after this his appearances on television become sporadic, however it did mark a change in his material, which became more observational based comedy, concentrating on social commentary about how the world was changing and how he was finding things becoming increasingly difficult as he got older.
He eventually returned to the BBC in 1996 for a 6 episode series titled "The Unique Dave Allen" in which he spoke about his life and career in comedy whilst linking to sketches and routines from his earlier work with the BBC, although he ruled out a full time return to TV as by this time, he was in his 60s and had had enough of the atmosphere in TV land.
He made various one off appearances in TV specials and on chat shows throughout the remainder of the 1990s and in the early noughties, as well as making a few live stage appearances, but by this time, many people had never heard of him and, mainly due to Daves dislike of "repeats", had never seen any of his earlier material, so he was seen as something of a strange curiosity in the comedy world.

Dave Allen died peacefully in his sleep in 2005, leaving behind his wife of 18 months, 3 children from his first marriage, and, 3 months after his death, his wife gave birth to his third child.