TOM LEHRER

Farewell Tom Lehrer (1928-2025) brilliant parodist and consummate performer of his own sharp, smart, witty – often wicked – songs like 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park', 'We'll All Go Together When We Go', 'The Vatican Rag' and the incomparable 'Elements' song.

Tom Lehrer spent his brief, yet remarkable music career writing and performing parody songs that entertained millions. Biting, intelligent and socially conscious, his songs were intimate commentaries on society and politics in the 1960s. 

 

I salute this genius word-and-tunesmith and his legacy of songs that chart the social mores and neuroses of the psychotic sixties...

HAPPY FAMILIES

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family ––– in another city."

– George Burns (1896-1996)

[Caricature by Dave Woodman]

MAKING A MOVE

Today's the day when we finally quit our temporary accommodation (if a year can truly be considered 'temporary') and move ourselves and the last of our stuff back into our old (but now greatly improved) flat.

Let's just hope we don't face any of the nightmares befalling this galaxy of stars that includes several of television's funniest funny men – among them Eric Sykes (who wrote and directed the film) and the much-loved and recently departed Richard Briars...

I hope that gave you a laugh or two and that you'll forgive me for the absence of blogging in the immediate future – at least while chaos and upheaval remain the order of the day!

PORT OUT, STARBOARD HOME...

And now the British film industry has lost one its great treasures, Lionel Jeffries. A superb and diverse character actor, he was wonderful in comedy, but equally at home in dramas: for example, he made a wildly demented Marquis of Queensbury in The Trials of Oscar Wilde.

His films, spanning almost forty years, included Up the Creek, Two-Way Stretch, The Wrong Arm of the Law, First Men in the Moon, The Colditz Story, Murder Ahoy! (managing to hold his own alongside that redoubtable scene-stealer, Margaret Rutherford), Rocket to the Moon, Camelot and, of course, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang...

He directed only a handful of films, among them The Amazing Mr Blunden and The Water Babies, but, if he had never done anything else in his prolific life, he would be remembered for his directorial debut (for which he also wrote the script): the utterly glorious, totally unforgettable, 1970 version of E Nesbit's The Railway Children.

Thank you, dear Mr Jeffries, for all the laughs and for one of the best endings any film ever had...

LIONEL JEFFRIES
(1926-2010)

WHAT A DRAG!

Someone recently sent me this photo from the colourful past of the wonderful Mr Stephen Fry...


Hmmm... Yes, well, it probably seemed a lot funnier at the time.

But it reminded me of seeing a performance by the equally droll Mr Eddie Izzard (left), shortly after he emerged from the cross-dressing closet.

As he walked on stage the atmosphere in the theater was electric. It was as if the entire audience was asking itself "How am I supposed to react?" This was understandable. After all, Izzard was no conventional drag artiste, this was very, very obviously a man dressed in perhaps not the most alluring choice of female garb and a tad too much make-up. The pressure of several hundred people trying not to laugh out loud was palpable.

Then Izzard brilliantly released the pent-up anxiety by converting it to expressible hilarity.

"I know what you're all thinking!" he began and then paused allowing us to think about what he thought we were thinking! There was the odd snigger and a couple of suppressed titters.

Then he went on: "You're thinking, 'That's extraordinary! There's a guy standing on stage --- with a cordless microphone!'"

The audience erupted with laughter and applause and, from then on, what he was wearing became totally an irrelevant.

There's probably a lesson there for all of us - though I'm not entirely sure what it is!