John Barry Humphreys 17^th February 1934 – 22^nd April 2023.

As with Covid Island Discs, I will occasionally publish a comedy sketch when something significant happens in the world of comedy. Sadly, usually the most significant events are related to deaths of a famous comedians. On the 22^nd of April 2023, the famous Aussie comedian Barry Humphreys (aka Dame Edna Everage) passed away after complications developed from a hip replacement. During his long life he made many people laugh as his alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. Below is a compilation of Dame Edna doing her thing on various talk shows. If you grab a bingo card you can also play spot the famous celebrity sitting next to Dame Edna. Sadly, too many of them, like dear Olivia Newton John are also no longer with us.

There is an interesting back story to this character which I discovered when I saw an interview with the great Ian Hislop of Private Eye and Have I got News for you fame. The wikipedia entry for Harry Enfield and Chums states the following under the subheading Tim Nice-but-Dim Esq.

The character was initially created by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, who are both Old Ardinians. They wrote the character as an antidote to contemporary portrayals of ex-public schoolboys as sharp-minded, high-achieving young men, and instead chose to base the character on former school contemporaries who had plenty of money and good manners but were light of intellect. Tim's catchphrase is "What an absolutely, thoroughly, bloody nice bloke!" A notable scene was him going to the school reunion of another school.

One of the great things about Monty Python was they often captured the strange foibles of our humanity by writing them large in their brilliant comedy movies. "Life Of Brian" was no exception. While this movie was controversial at the time, because a substantial number of people saw it as antichristian, the movie was full of little titbits of humour that mocks the way we all sometimes behave as fallen humans. I particularly enjoy this little sketch as it reminds me of an unhelpful habit, which often seems to plague the more left wing among us, of splitting off from one another. The most painful example of this, at the time of writing this post, is the MP Dianne Abbott publicly announcing that she thinks Keir Starmer (the current leader of the UK labour party as of May 2022) should resign if it is found that his takeout dinner with Hartlepool campaigners broke the law in relation to the lockdown rules that were place in the UK at the time the takeout occurred (April 2021). While I guess her comments are technically fair, given the constant infighting in the labour party between the more left and central wings of the party, it does often feel as though both factions of the party would rather the Tories were in power than the labour party of which they are a part if it is the wrong faction of the party.

This compilation of sketches parodies certain modern work environments where everyone competes for patronage from the alpha male that occupies some senior position in their company. As with so many workplaces, there is always the poor Declan who never can find a path into the in crowd no matter what juicy information titbit he brings his boss.

Armstrong and Miller in their comedy series often ran the same sketches for several weeks in a row developing the theme each time as this compilation demonstrates. However, this series of sketches has quite an amusing punchline to it which is the subject of next week's comedy post

So last week I posted a compilation of sketches by Armstrong and Miller which captured the sometimes strange dynamics that occur in "high powered" workplaces full of alpha male (and sometimes female) middle managers and their underlings all vying for patronage from their boss. The Armstrong and Miller show often ran the same sketch each week developing it little by little each time. If you want to see how the striding man character developed during their comedy series then look at last week's post

The sketch below is the final instalment of the Striding Man and I guess the moral of the story is no matter how successful you are inside your workplace, there is always a chance it could all come crashing down in a moment. I guess this even applies to CEOs who can find themselves fired by their boards. Having said that, I think most CEOs know that even if they get fired they will walk away with a gigantic severance payment and into another CEO role in another large company such is the old boys revolving network that seems to exist at that level.

So just under a year ago I opened my comedy section with a series of sketches from the late great Dave Allen. Therefore it seems appropriate to bring this little series to a close with the late great Allen capturing his thoughts on air travel a theme which of course has been the butt of much comedy over many years.

Bonus Clip

When I was a young child my late father used to have a single record from the American Comedian Shelly Berman. One of the sketches on this record was the one posted below. As children my brother and I used to listen to this record again and again. After leaving Australia in 1997, I did not hear the sketch again until a few years ago when I looked it up on Youtube. Hearing it again brought back lots of pleasant memories and made me feel very nostalgic for a past age that is now long gone. A time even before modern jet engines as this sketch was old even when I was a boy. Sadly in the Youtube version below, the sketch is cut off before it finishes.

When I started this comedy list I decided I would work on the project for exactly one year. As such this is the final posting for my comedy section. I thought this sketch was worth leaving to the end as it is a very funny take on one of the greatest bands of all time: The Beatles. Obviously the Beatles feature heavily in my Covid Island Discs collection so this sketch seems an appropriate one to bridge the my two collections of comedy and music. Hope these collections bring as much joy to you as they do to me.