Comedians Are Such Miserable People!"

[Guest Tim]

COMEDIANS ARE SUCH MISERABLE PEOPLE!

 

Benny Hill was a shy, retiring man off-stage, pacing nervously about, puffing at a cigarette, as he waited in a cold sweat to go on to make fun of milkmen and plumbers.

 

The great Max Miller was mean and sombre behind the curtain - so mean he was never seen to buy anybody a drink.

 

'And if you wanted to go to a really miserable party, you went with Frankie Howerd. He was certainly not, ’says Paul Sharratt, Australia's "Mr. Music Hall", who knew them all, 'the jovial sort of person people expected.'

 

Music Hall is dying a slow and painful death in the UK, strangled by with television and bingo. Great entertainment halls have closed.

 

As the same is happening in Australia, 61-year-old white-haired Sharratt tries desperately to keep it alive.

 

Wolverhampton-born Paul still gets huge applause for his trip down 45 years of music-hall memory lane. And roars of laughter for his Chelsea Pensioner skit. 'One old dear accosted me the other day after the show and said she'd seen me at the Tivoli in the Second World War, which would have made me about 114. I didn't disillusion her; she went away happy that there was still somebody alive as old as she was.'

 

Paul's Music Hall Follies - all top hat and tails and leggy showgirls - has been gracing television screens and outback and city halls in Australia for 20 years.

 

Local newspaper ads. herald its coming: "Mungindi Memorial Hall, March 2. Tickets at Moree Plains Shire Council." Paul has produced a Royal Command Performance for the Queen and Prince Philip, won 11 coveted Australian Logie awards for television production, and worked in 33 countries.

 

At home he has a collection of gramophone records that capture almost every star of the halls. And during his own performances, Paul brings them back to life - Flanagan and Allen, Eddie Cantor, Benny Hill and Max Miller. 'Old time music hall was at its greatest between the 1850s and the turn of the century. When I grew up, a night out at the Metropolitan or the Empire was a weekly treat.

 

'People flocked to hear Max Miller, who I worked with. In fact Max was a very mean, miserable man. I saw him in the bar one night, between shows, and said: "You've got this reputation of being a bit tight, Max." And he said: "If I go for a drink, I want a bit of peace. I'm not going to get peace if I get into a drinking session with people and they start telling me jokes I've already heard."

 

'Max had this tremendous presence on stage; he was extremely confident. A comic who could do an hour and 15 minutes solo. Always with exquisite timing. And always just naughty enough, but not naughty by standards these days.

 

'When they applauded, he just stood there, giving a little bow, accepting it. Then he went off to have a drink alone.'

 

Paul liked to work on occasions as Miller's straight man; as he did for Freddie Sales and Arthur English at Clacton and in the Crazy Gang Show. 'Working alongside a comedian is a bit sheltered; less risky. Yet people don't seem to realise the importance of the straight man.'

 

A carefully-honed, well timed script was vital. 'Yet it must never be obvious that it isn't spontaneous. Do you think Frankie Howerd was ad-lib?'

 

He lapsed into vintage Howerd..."Oooooh! Yerrrs! I know. Wahhh! Oh no! Re---ally!"

 

'I once saw his script and there it all was. Every exclamation, every seeming ad-lib. He followed it to the letter. Frankie would then come off stage and go into deep depression. He was awful to be with at a party. So was Phil Silvers, who was totally depressed all the time. Comedians are just not jovial people.'

 

When he goes on stage to host "Morning Melodies" on Queensland's Gold Coast this week, Paul expects his audience to be old enough to remember what great music hall was like; to comfortably feel 'overwhelmed by nostalgia.'

 

'There's still a market for it,' he insists, his eyes lively behind gold-rimmed glasses. 'I find it extraordinary they laugh so much at gags they've heard so many times before. Yet the generation coming up as a potential audience, has never heard of the Crazy Gang or Morecombe and Wise. It can't go on, can it?'

 

As a compere (a rare breed, he says) he finds it interesting that the TV couch-potato generation warms to being able to answer back to somebody on stage. 'They are used to just sitting there, turning the knob for TV on and turning it off. So it's new to them to have reaction between them and the performer.

 

'They have a go at me. But really, the audience down there is disadvantaged. You are on stage with the lights on you and you have a microphone. They are down there in the dark, shouting, without the advantage of a mike. You haven't got to be terribly smart to outwit them, slightly changing what they've said to suit yourself.

 

'But you've got to be sure they've sufficiently annoyed people around them before you make fools of them. I have misjudged it a few times and tried to outsmart somebody a bit too soon. I've found the audience was on their side...'

 

Paul had a serious heart attack last year and was rushed to intensive care on the night he was to begin a new musical show. He had done a preview show of his Music Hall Follies before he fell ill. The next night was the first time in 45 years he had not turned up to take his place on stage. Three weeks later, fully recovered, he was back. 'One of the effects of a heart attack,' he says, 'is that you become more emotional. I had a bit of a tear for awhile.'

 

He's soon off to America where he'll work in television as he does every year; and lunch with his old friend, Patrick MacNee of The Avengers.

 

'Patrick's 72 and working as hard as ever he did,' says Paul. 'He recently married a charming Hungarian. In America, if you are respected and old, you still get work.'