“I once played a club so rough, to enter it I had to go down three steps…physically and socially!” So joked New York comedian Rodney Dangerfield who, like every successful comic, had once played tough venues to gain experience, confidence…and a thick skin.
Although stand-up isn’t for the faint-hearted, since our first lockdown in 2020 I’ve missed every aspect of performing, even good-natured hecklers I can silence with an appropriate response that ensures 99% of the audience remain on my side!
We’ve recently lost two comedians for whom hecklers held no fear.
Liverpool-born Tom O’ Connor was a teacher before becoming one of our best-loved comics and New Yorker Jackie Mason had been a Rabbi.
It’s no coincidence that both their original occupations involved learning the skill of holding a crowd’s attention.
Two masters of that skill were Ronnie Corbett and Les Dawson, who featured in two episodes of the recent ITV series which unearthed ‘lost’ tapes and home videos of them spending time with their families.
Of greater interest to comedy fans and television historians was the third show in the series that pre-publicity promised would reveal a ‘lost’ Morecambe and Wise show that hadn’t been seen since ITV broadcast it in 1970 and had been found in Eric Morecambe’s attic.
Yet, astonishingly, instead of simply letting viewers watch the 30-minute show in its entirety, ITV decided to build one of their ‘Lost Tape’ shows around it.
So, what we actually saw were a bunch of Eric and Ernie’s ‘celebrity fans’ watching brief clips from the 1970 show, before telling us why they thought our greatest-ever double act were funny!
Their constant interruptions were intrusive and unnecessary, as viewers are quite capable of deciding what is or isn’t funny without the ‘help’ of ‘celebrity fans’, some of whom know as much about entertaining a family audience as Attila The Hun knew about competitive flower arranging.*
They resembled annoying hecklers so much that after 10 minutes I asked my partner, “What do you think of it so far?” to which she replied, mimicking a ventriloquist’s doll… “Ruggish!”
*He came last three years running at his village Spring Festival.