A Comedian Dies

by Simon Brett

  Though that was the basic outline of his scale of values, there were other variables which made predictions of his treatment of a guest difficult. For instance, Hollywood cast a special glow. Any performer, however terrible, who had appeared in some black-and-white ‘B’ feature in the forties and who could drop the names of a couple of superannuated directors, immediately shot up the league. Being American also improved the credit rating. And being old was an enormous asset. The older the better. Old people gave Alexander Harvey the opportunity to show (a) How good he was with old people; (b) How well he (or in fact one of his researchers) had researched his guest’s career; and (c) How important Alexander Harvey was to have such venerable figures chatting to him in such a convivial manner.

  So to receive optimum treatment on the Alexander Harvey Show a guest should be a hundred-year-old American opera singer who had made a lot of Hollywood films in the course of a long and anecdote-littered career.

  Exactly where all this left Lennie Barber, Charles was not certain, but everything pointed to a patronizing roasting. The only plus point the comedian had on the Alexander Harvey scale was age, and he didn’t really have that in sufficient quantity. Lennie Barber was only sixty-two and Alexander Harvey came into his own with octogenarians and nonagenarians. And, Charles discovered from the dishy researcher, Barber also suffered a big minus – he had been someone else’s idea. It should have been mentioned that theideal hundred-year-old opera singer must have been suggested for the show by Alexander Harvey himself.

  Charles lurked round the back of the set as the interview started and watched events on a black-and-white monitor. It was clear from his first words that Alexander Harvey was in a carving-up mood. His introduction was couched in a camp sneer. He gave exactly the sort of information that Barber would have hated. ‘ . . . whom you may remember from the forties and fifties when he was very successful in the apprentice days of television. Unfortunately, with the death of Wilkie Pole, the act was over and public taste seemed to change. However, we are delighted to say that he is still a working comedian and it’s a great privilege for me to welcome tonight – Mr. Lennie Barber!’

  From his vantage point Charles could see both sides of Barber’s entry. The reeling approach behind the flats (for the benefit of the producer’s coronary and the dishy researcher’s hot flushes) and the upright dignified appearance on camera (for the benefit of the viewing public).

  The studio audience’s applause was surprisingly warm. In spite of the changes time had wrought, they still found Lennie Barber comfortingly familiar, like cups of Ovaltine and ration books and tram tickets and suspender belts, a link with a simpler time.

  But it was clear as Alexander Harvey came in over the applause that he was out for blood. ‘Now, Lennie, you’re a comedian, you have been one all your life, you must have thought a lot about the nature of comedy, so tell me . . .’ He paused ingenuously. It was clever. He was going to get the comedian to talk about the nature of comedy, knowing that analysis of humour reduces intelligent people to incoherent wafflers and brilliant comedians to unfunny bores. This was an ideal start for the Alexander Harvey method. His victim was bound to go on at inordinate length, until an incisive interruption from Harvey would point up his long-windedness. The question was poised delicately in the air. ‘What makes a joke funny?’

  ‘An audience laughing at it,’ Lennie Barber replied immediately, and by doing so, proved that he had just made a joke. The audience laughed. The line itself wasn’t funny, but Barber’s speed of delivery and obvious contempt for the question, coupled with Harvey’s expression of surprise, made it a very funny moment.

  Alexander Harvey was disconcerted to the point of looking at the notes on his clipboard (something which usually happened much later into one of his interviews). He had to come in quickly with another question. The longer the break after Barber’s reply, the longer the comedian’s triumph. But Harvey was a professional and he shaped his next question skilfully. He asked something which would make Barber define his own success or failure. ‘You’ve been a comedian all your life and comedy is a notoriously insecure profession. One day you’re on top, the next nobody wants to know about you. When in your career did you feel really confident that you had made it?’

  ‘Tuesday nights mostly.’ Again the response was perfectly timed and the audience picked up the sexual innuendo instantly.

  Alexander Harvey’s mouth hardened into a little line of petulance. These short answers may have been to the audience’s taste, but they made it difficult for him to impose his own rhythm on the interview. He decided to slow the proceedings down and reassert control with a longer question.

  ‘One thing I must ask you – we hear constantly about the issues of censorship and permissiveness.’ (He was trying to steer Barber into an area of serious discussion where the comedian would show himself up as trivial.) ‘Now, the traditions of the music hall are very robust, even vulgar – I suppose I’m thinking of people like Marie Lloyd, Max Miller. When you were in the double act with Wilkie Pole, your material was very clean, but now that a lot of the taboos are down and you are still working in the comedy field, how do you view sex?’

  ‘Through binoculars.’ Prompt again, right on cue. Alexander Harvey was being reduced to the level of a feed and the more he tried to take control, the more he set himself up.

  He laughed insincerely and pressed on with his next question as if this badinage was all very well, but not really what the public had switched on to see. ‘Now, Lennie, there’s a cliché around that comedians are pretty pathetic people offstage.’

  ‘Some of them are pretty pathetic on-stage.’ The audience roared again.

  ‘I mean that, as in the example of Pagliacci,’ (hoping to show Barber up by abstruse reference) ‘clowns are essentially tragic figures – do you subscribe to this view?’

  ‘I don’t know. What’s the subscription?’ (Laughter.)

  ‘What I mean is that comedians yearn to be taken seriously. For instance, they’re supposed to have aspirations towards the legitimate theatre. Do you want to play Hamlet?’

  ‘What at?’ (Laughter.)

  ‘Ha, ha, very good. Perhaps we could move on to television. I mean, here you are, a comedian brought up through the tough school of the music hall, which is now dead, and here we are on today’s medium, television. It has been said that music hall died and television was the box they put it in – do you agree with that?’

  ‘What, that people on television are dead?’ (Laughter.)

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been watching too many chat-shows.’ (Laughter and applause.)

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry. I was trying to ask a serious question.’ Harvey sounded as piqued as the local favourite beaten for the Women’s Institute Flower Arranging Trophy by a complete novice. ‘Let me try another tack. It always seems to me that it must be difficult for a comedian to have any dignity. I . . . er . . .’

  Alexander Harvey paused for a second, apparently perplexed. He could see the Floor Manager beyond the circle of light gesturing at him. The man was circling his hand in the accepted ‘wind-up’ signal. Time to bring the chat to an end. What threw Alexander Harvey was that, though he had seen the signal any number of times, he had never actually seen it while he was talking. It was usually while some nonagenarian flautist was telling a rambling tale about Sir Thomas Beecham. But now it was being directed at him. His confusion came with the realization that he was the one who was being boring, that he was the one whom the director was no doubt vilifying in the control room. He stumbled in his sentence and then picked up momentum with an edge of bitchiness. ‘Um, Marty Feldman once said that comedy was an unnatural act – would you agree?’

  ‘Would I agree to an unnatural act? Is that a proposition?’ asked Lennie Barber coolly and perfectly. The audience erupted into laughter and applause. Barber’s riposte had struck a chord in all of them. Not only had it been rude to a man whom at bottom they hated; it had also reflected thei
r own suspicions about his sexual identity.

  Alexander Harvey, a fixedly indulgent smile on his face, hastily gestured at his guest, to make it look as if he was cueing the applause rather than letting it arise spontaneously. But the gesture was too late. There was no doubt that, at the end of the contest, Lennie Barber had won by a knockout.

  Alexander Harvey linked ungraciously into the sketch, but he could no longer do any harm. Snide remarks about ‘the sort of comedy that used to be popular in the late thirties’ could not weaken Barber’s hold on his audience. And the omission of Charles Paris’ name from his introduction was unlikely to worry anyone except Frances (bound to be watching), Maurice Skellern (possibly ill with excitement at the thought of one of his clients actually being in work) and, of course, Charles himself.

  After the interview, the sketch could not fail. The script was really pretty limp stuff, containing every old barbershop joke that ever groaned into life. But audiences like old jokes, and Lennie Barber was the hero of the hour. Apart from that, he rose above his material. Charles, as he went through his automation acting routine (Bepardon? – 1 – 2 – 3 – Bepardon?’) found his respect for the comedian soaring. Lennie Barber was right; he did know how comedy worked.

  The set-up of the sketch was simple. Barber, in a hastily-assumed white coat, was the barber. Wilkie Pole was a gormless North Country youth who was about to meet his girl and wanted a quick hair-cut and shave ‘so’s I look me best, like, for me little girlie – 1 – 2 – (Bashful simper).’ Barber, having offered him ‘hair-cuts, hair-brushes, hair-combs, hair-oil, hair-tonic, hair-restorer – sounds like a German picnic, doesn’t it?,’ sat him in the chair and proceeded to hack away at the special wig on his head, keeping up a running stream of gags the while. When the wig was reduced to a haystack he started on the shaving. He kept cutting his client’s chin (‘Only a little nick, sir’) and putting pieces of paper on the cuts. Pole left the shop with his face a mass of confetti and his hair in shreds.

  The jokes were equally simple. For example, Barber would be stropping his razor. ‘Always get it very sharp, sir, got to be sharp. I test my razors by seeing if they can cut through a single hair. A single hair.’ (HE SUDDENLY WHIPS A PROP HARE OUT OF HIS. COAT AND SLASHED AT IT WITH THE RAZOR, WHICH HAS NO EFFECT.)

  ‘Not sharp enough.’ (HE CONTINUES STROPPING.)

  Or again . . .

  BARBER: And now for the lather . . . Only the finest shaving brush is used. Genuine ivory stem. Do you realize an elephant gave his life just so that you could look elegant for your girlie?

  POLE: Ooh.

  BARBER: Not to mention the badger.

  POLE: The badger?

  BARBER (PUSHING THE SHAVING BRUSH INTO HIS MOUTH): I told you not to mention the badger. And then of course there’s the shaving soap. I have a variety of shaving soaps. How would you like your shaving soap?

  POLE: Oh, I’d like it scented.

  BARBER: No, it’s much easier if you take it with you. But what you really need is my very own special soap. It’s a mixture of silver paint and sulphuric acid and it has two advantages – first, it means you can see your face in your chin so you don’t need a mirror. And second, you get some amazing dimples.

  And third . . . it make the lather go farther.

  This last line was greeted by an enormous round of applause. It was one of the old Barber and Pole catch-phrases. That, along with ‘It helps the soap to cope,’ ‘Only a little nick, sir’ and ‘Bepardon?’ were all the trade-marks of the double act. And the audience clung to them like religion in an age of uncertainty. They responded ecstatically.

  Even the hardware of a television studio failed to ruin the atmosphere. Because the moves and action of the sketch were so fixed, it had been possible to make the camera script very simple. The whole six minutes ran without break and no retakes were required.

  There was no doubt about it. The show had been an enormous success.

  Charles stood by the bar at the back of the scrum of television people getting drinks. He felt strange and needed the reassurance of a large Bell’s.

  It was such a long time since he had felt that kind of warmth from an audience. Such a long time since he had appeared in anything more than modestly successful. To his annoyance, he felt rather emotional. It was a moving experience to feel the response of a wildly enthusiastic audience. It cut through all his layers of cynicism and left him exposed like a stage-struck teenager.

  ‘Drink, drink, old boy. Really terrific show. There’s the beginning of something here, or the old nose for success has got its sinuses blocked.’ Walter Proud’s bonhomous arm was flung round his shoulders. ‘Sid. Sid.’ The producer waved at the barman. ‘What’s it to be, Charles?’

  ‘Large Bell’s, please.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Should have remembered. That’s a large Bell’s, Sid, and my usual, a large gin with . . .’ But the barman’s attention was elsewhere. ‘Look, I think I was first. Excuse me, Charles, I must just . . .’ Walter dived into the mêlée.

  ‘Not bad. Thank you.’ Charles turned to see Lennie Barber behind him and took the brusque words as a great compliment. The comedian was not given to sycophancy.

  ‘I’m very grateful to you for all your help, Lennie. As I said, it’s a completely new field for me. I’ve found it fascinating. And may I say how marvellous I thought you were with Alexander Harvey. And in the sketch . . . really great.’ Oh dear, is there nothing that one performer can say to another that doesn’t sound insincere?

  ‘He’s nothing, that Harvey, after you’ve played a second house in Liverpool.’

  The subject of their conversation approached with a smile sculpted onto his face and a hand outstretched. ‘Lovely show. Delighted with it. I hope I set them all up for you all right,’ he added jocularly, as if his discomfiture had been part of a subtle master plan.

  Lennie Barber looked at Alexander Harvey seriously before replying. Then, as if he had thought it out in some detail, he said, ‘You weren’t that good actually, lad. Tell you what, you do three or four years round the clubs and you might turn into a reasonable feed.’

  A visible effort of will kept the smile in place on the face of the country’s most popular chat-show host. While he searched his mental quiver for a barb with sufficient poison on it to use in reply, he was interrupted by the arrival behind him of a neat forty-year-old man in a grey suit.

  ‘Very nice show, Alex,’ congratulated the newcomer. ‘Thought it went very well.’

  ‘Oh thanks,’ said a rather deflated Alexander Harvey.

  At that moment Walter Proud bustled up with Charles’ Bell’s and his own gin. He greeted the man in the grey suit effusively. ‘Nigel, great to see you. How goes it?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ said the man in the grey suit.

  ‘You haven’t got a drink. What is it? Still the Campari?’

  ‘That’d be very nice, thank you.’

  ‘What about you, Alex? Lennie? Actually, Nigel, when I’ve got the drinks, I’d like to bend your ear for a moment about a couple of ideas.’

  ‘Fine, line.’ The man grinned vaguely as Walter disappeared into the bar scrum, then turned sharply to Alexander Harvey. ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Walter Proud. Used to be at the BBC.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve met him somewhere. He’s not with us at the moment, is he?’

  ‘Yes, three months’ contract. Meant to be coming up with ideas. Tonight was one of his.’ Alexander Harvey grimaced.

  ‘I see. I’ve got to go and talk to Paul over there. Excuse me.’ The man in the grey suit flicked Charles and Barber a professional smile and moved away with Alexander Harvey in tow.

  Charles looked at the comedian quizzically. ‘He’s Nigel Frisch, Director of Programmes here and one very important person.’

  Walter emerged from the scrum of drinks. ‘Oh, where did they go to?’ He handed a very large Scotch to Barber, who pointed to the other side of the bar. ‘I’ll take the drinks over. You know, Lennie, I’m
really excited by what happened tonight. I think we’re on to something. I think we can get a show going, built round the old Barber and Pole routines – I mean, not just old stuff, get in some young writers, you know, give it a bit of edge, kind of revue format – we’d be on to a winner. It wouldn’t be just the nostalgia appeal, though that’s there. I reckon if you can present the public with a package that’s got nostalgia and is modem at the same time, then you’ve got to be on to a winner. Lennie Barber, I think you could be on the verge of the biggest comeback there ever was. Well, what do you say?’

  Lennie Barber shrugged without changing his expression. ‘I say “Oh yeah?”’

  ‘Yeah. Certainly.’

  ‘Show me the contract and I might believe you.’

  ‘Well, at least sound a bit excited about it.’

  ‘If I got excited every time I heard a producer say I was on the verge of a comeback, I’d have dropped dead years ago. Once you’ve been an overnight success more than a couple of dozen times the novelty wears off.’

  ‘This time it’s for real. This one’s going to be big.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Barber spoke as to a child. ‘You go and take those drinks over to your important friends.’ As Walter moved away, the comedian downed his Scotch in a single gulp.

  ‘Get you another one, Lennie?’

  ‘No, Charles. I haven’t got the cash with me to buy you one.’

  ‘Well, I can get it now, or lend you the money or –’

  ‘Don’t like being in debt, sorry. No, I’ll go and join that little group over there round the director. Since I’m going to appear on the bugger’s expense claim whether he buys me a drink or not, I think he can get me one.’