We’re in mourning for brightest star of TV’s golden age
BACK in those squashed-up-on-the-sofa days before media became mass and television become multi-channel, Bruce Forsyth WAS entertainment.
Millions of us grew up secure in our response to “Nice to see you”, “Nothing for a pair”, and “What do points make?”.
I know it’s possibly an illusion, but life certainly seemed a cosier, comfier place when you’d just had sausage and chips for your tea on a Saturday night and the whole family – Mum, Dad, brothers, sisters, Nan, Grandad – and a box of Quality Street were lined up in front of Brucie on the telly.
He was a point of our shared culture. He was fun and funny. He knew sometimes his audience were laughing with him, sometimes at him – it was all part of the act. And he brought us into the joke, into the game show and made us part of it.
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At the beginning of this century, there were many who had written Brucie off as a relic from simpler times, but then he came back and did it all over again. With Strictly Come Dancing he showed he could still bring families together on a Saturday night. And with all due respect to Claudia and Tess, that show is a shell without him.
Because Bruce was from that old school of entertainers who grew up with the skills of performing in theatre variety shows, but with the intelligence to translate it to TV.
The last time I interviewed him we spoke about how blessed he felt to have had such a long and successful career. And then he spoke at length about his brother John, an RAF pilot whose body was never found after his plane fell out of the sky during a training exercise in 1943. He was just 21. “We never got over it,” Bruce said. “Now, I live for the day and take every day as it comes.”
We, your viewers, will always be grateful you lived so long and gave us so many laughs along the way, Brucie.
Nice to have seen you...