Michael Bentine

Yes, those two Bentine programmes are a joy - he knows the material backwards and there's no sense of his manipulating the audience, just this joyous spilling out of his personality and his life. Read his autobiography The Long Bannana Skin for more.

***

I particularly love his mantra of "Lovely man, nice man," about someone in his anecdote to disarm you before the slapstick starts. There is some more serious stuff in the biog including his premonition of the death of Airy Neave, referred to in last night's programme. He simply chooses not to talk about the end of his first marriage - a different age of reticence.

Incidentally Bentine, once asked about why he left the Goons, said that his logical nonsense couldn't compete with Milligan's nonsensical logic. Or vice versa. Make of it what you will.

I first got to know Bentine through his Golden Silents programme so for me he's mixed up with the Goons AND Buster Keaton. And oh, the comfort (and reassuring stupidity) of Potty Time on TV in the seventies.

***

"Bentine must be unique, though, as the only genuinely funny comedian who combined comedy with right-wing opinions..."

I believe Arthur Askey was rightwing. And Ken Dodd has spoken on behalf of the Conservative Party in the past (I remember one of his lines: "Tell them you're British - play on their sympathies.").

This is probably a different discussion and I have no research to back it up but I wonder whether the experience of the standup comic (alone against the world, all success down to their own hard slog, facing a fickle audience each night) tended, in the days before alternative comedy, to encourage a rightwing outlook?

***

"Does Jimmy Edwards count as a comedian because I believe he stood as a Tory candidate once?"

And in Eric Sykes' autobiography there is stuff about him and Jimmy Edwards which might give you pause ... but part of me is tempted to say how much does it matter? To what extent is it on the surface in a comic's routine? If comedy is about embracing the paradoxical perhaps greater licence and indulgence is necessary. Not sure.

***

Er, have to say re Flying Pickets, the clue is kind of in the name ...

***

For those interested in this area, read Trevor Griffiths' play Comedians where four aspiring comics in a night class have to choose between tailoring their act for the agent who says "We can't all be Max Bygraves - but we can try" or sticking to the advice from their teacher. I don't have the play to hand but there is a great speech by the teacher (originally played by Jimmy Jewel onstage) about what a "comedian's joke" consists of as opposed to one which merely reinforces the status quo.