You can’t get the wood, you know*
When TV and the internet are awash with sitcoms and stand-up, who needs old comedy on audio or visual media? Terry Hyde investigates some recent donations to TASS**
IT’S my time of the month again, when I have to postpone music practice on my granite banjo, check the time on my bamboo pocket watch, don my bald wig and then go out with a photo of a £10 note in order to buy a new typewriter ribbon. I see that it has just started to rain, in the direction of down. On my way out, I trip over the cat at the top of our steps, but luckily the ground breaks my fall. In the shop I notice that from the waist down, the female shop assistant has been tattooed with false legs... facing the wrong way. I return with a photo of a typewriter ribbon and my change in cardboard coins. I sit at my desk, play a recording of a bottle of champagne being opened, take a sip from my waterproof glass and begin to write.
watching more than once? One in a hundred? One in a thousand? And yet Hollywood has done a brilliant marketing job in persuading customers that they should aspire to ‘owning’ a movie on DVD or Blu Ray. Some fans will even replace their original VHS purchase with the DVD and then again with the Blu Ray and then again with the ‘Director’s Cut’ and for the fifth time with the ‘Special Edition’. The words ‘licence’, ‘print’ and ‘money’ immediately spring to mind. And how about jokes? How many jokes are worth hearing more than once? One in a million? And yet, many of our top stand-up comedians have become millionaires through the sale of their shows on DVD. Maybe, fans buy these discs not to watch, but as a memento of the live show that they saw, or maybe they buy the DVD instead of going to the live show, given that the DVD will be only one third the price of a gig ticket. So, where does this leave the market for comedy on used DVD, CD, LP or even cassette tape?
At the time of writing, on Amazon there were for sale 33 used copies of the DVD of Jimmy Carr’s 2004 stand-up tour, with prices starting at 1p (plus postage). This either speaks volumes for Jimmy’s lasting appeal, or maybe it is a reflection of the recent revelations concerning his tax affairs. In contrast, used remastered CDs of Goon Shows that were first broadcast on the radio
28 How many movies are worth
nearly 60 years ago, attract premium prices, equivalent to four or five pounds per disc. Unfortunately, we have only one Goon Show in stock at the moment: ‘The Last Goon Show of All’ on LP and VHS (the BBC may eventually get around to releasing this show on DVD in a decade or five). If you are still wondering, the first paragraph of this article was inspired by Milligan’s surrealistic humour in The Goon Show. We also have nearly all of The Goons musical output (mostly written or co-written by Milligan) in the form of a 4-track 7” EP in original picture sleeve from 1962 and ‘The World of The Goons’ on Decca CD from 1990.
A very different, but equally long- lasting humour of similar vintage to The Goons, comes from Michael Flanders & Donald Swann in their live revue recordings; ‘At the drop of
a hat’ and ‘At the drop of another hat’ (both of which we have on LP) plus from the same shows, an EMI compilation CD from 2000. On first hearing, their comedy comes across as very English, very gentile, but Michael Flanders (the one with the beard) had a wicked sense of humour, eg ‘The purpose of satire is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth... and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again.’
invented the pop video - four years before Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. For his Christmas No. 1 in 1971, the self-penned ‘Ernie, The Fastest Milkman in the West’, Hill
It can be argued that Benny Hill
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