You’re awful, but I like you
QUESTION My family still uses Dick Emery’s catchphrase: ‘Ooh, you are awful. But I like you.’ What were the once popular, now forgotten, catchphrases from comedians of yesteryear?
The request for catchphrases from past comedians opens a treasury of famous and not so famous old-time comedians.
There are two types of catchphrases: those coined by a comedian and those written by a script- writer to be performed by an actor who is thereafter associated with them.
‘I’m free!’ will always be linked to John Inman playing Mr humphries in Are You Being Served? The entreaty ‘ Don’t panic!’ by Lance Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army made Clive Dunn famous.
During the war, the radio comedy show, ITMA, short for It’s That Man Again, starred comedian Tommy handley and gave rise to a wealth of catchphrases.
These include Mrs Mopp’s (Dorothy Summers) ‘Can I do you now, sir?’; Colonel Chinstrap’s (Jack Train) ‘I don’t mind if I do’; and the miserable Mona Lott’s (Joan harben) ‘It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going’.
But these performers were actors and not stand-up comics.
Those who coined their own catchphrases include Sandy Powell, whose radio performances in the Thirties were always prefaced with the question: ‘Can you hear me, Mother?’
In the same era, the great Max Miller started his cheeky tales with: ‘Now there’s a funny thing . . .’
Robb Wilton kicked off every performance with ‘The day war broke out . . .’; Tommy Trinder was famous for his cocky ‘You lucky people!’; and Jimmy Wheeler ended every performance with: ‘Aye, aye, that’s yer lot!’
After the war, Ken Platt was famous for his opening line: ‘I won’t take me coat off, I’m not stopping.’
Arthur english, a wonderful cockney comic, had several catchphrases, perhaps the best known of which was his farewell: ‘Play the music, open the cage!’
There’s the brilliant Sid Field’s ‘What a performance’, Jimmy edwards’s slightly lubricious ‘Whacko!’ and Ken Dodd had so many including ‘how wonderful to be here’ and ‘tattyfilarious’. As for women comedians, we have the brilliant Joyce Grenfell’s ‘ George, don’t do that!’ and hylda Baker’s ‘She knows, y’ know.’
Alfred Levy, Ilford, Essex. CLASSICS I warmly remember include Al Read: ‘ Right, monkey!’; Norman Vaughan, as he gave the thumbs up sign, ‘Swinging!’ followed by the thumbs down sign and ‘Dodgy!’; Duncan Norvelle with ‘ Chase me, chase me!’; and Albert Modley: ‘ eeeh! Isn’t it grand when you’re daft?’
Then there’s Beryl Reid (in a thick Brummie accent): ‘hello each!’; Jimmy Clitheroe: ‘ I’m all there with me cough drops’; and Jimmy Cricket: ‘And there’s more!’
Who could forget Leslie Phillips in The Navy Lark: ‘Left hand down a bit!’; hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams in Round The horne: ‘hello. My name’s Julian and this is my friend Sandy!’; Max Bygraves: ‘I’ve arrived and to prove it I’m here!; Billy Russell: ‘On be’alf of the working classes!’; Charlie Drake: ‘ hello, my darlings!’; Bernie Winters: ‘Choochie face’ and ‘I’ll smash yer face in!’; and Bernard Bresslaw as gormless Private Popplewell in The Army Game: ‘I only arsked!’
Last but not least was diminutive Arthur Askey, ‘hello playmates!’ and, while holding his nose and sinking out of view: ‘I thang you!’
Alan Wightman, Newport, South Wales.
QUESTION Why were trunk calls on the telephone so called?
I STARTeD my working life as a GPO engineering apprentice, so I can give some insight. The best analogy is to consider a tree where the nourishment to the branches and leaves all pass through the trunk.
For the early telephone system, the leaves can be seen as houses, offices and call boxes, while the branches were the distributing cables in a local area, all connected to the trunk. This in turn was connected to a central point.
A phone call to another city would have to pass through the trunk of the network while a call to the next town would only have to travel along a branch.
Cities were connected by what used to be known as trunk routes. Access was at a premium, hence the higher call charge. As the network grew, there were links between towns (branches).
In the days before STD (subscriber trunk dialling) when a long-distance call had to be placed via the operator, customer dialling extended to just the local area, which did not require an STD area code.
A shortcoming of the hard-wired system was revealed during World War II when whole areas could become isolated if a bomb damaged a trunk route. A more circuitous arrangement of trunk routes was gradually introduced.
These became redundant with the introduction of microwave links and capacity was greatly improved by the use of multiplexing, which allowed several calls to be passed over the same link simultaneously.
C. E. Sayers-Leavy, Broadstairs, Kent.
QUESTION How were Dalek voices created in early Doctor Who episodes?
FuRTheR to the earlier answer about the Dalek voices being created by a ring modulator, I would like to mention the contribution by the legendary Royce Mills, who played Nausius in up Pompeii! among many other wonderful roles.
he provided the voice of the Daleks from 1984 to 1988 in Resurrection Of The Daleks, Revelation Of The Daleks and Remembrance Of The Daleks.
he didn’t use a high-tech device to achieve this: he did it all by talking while simply holding his nose!
Phil Jones, Linford, Essex.
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