It ain’t alright to be 70s snob
ONE of the great strengths of 1970s telly was that it wasn’t full of smug gits moaning about how bad TV had been in the 1950s.
The parade of virtue-signalling creeps on It Was Alright In The 70s boils the blood quicker than a cartoon cannibal’s cooking pot.
This C4 show aims to do for nostalgia what the RMT do to Southern Rail commuters, year after ruddy year.
It takes genuine greats – Dave Allen, Rising Damp, The Two Ronnies – and attempts to stick the boot in. It’s like Gogglebox for right-on snobs, seasoned with the stench of hypocrisy.
Clips of sketch show women stripped down to rather splendid stockings and suspenders naturally generated the required tut-tutting.
Semi-clad women are completely unacceptable on today’s TV…unless you’re a semi-pornographic twerking pop star…or you’re posing for lingering bikini shots in ITV’s jungle shower.
Ironically, we see far more naked women on screen these days, the difference being they’re mostly on mortuary slabs in crime dramas.
C4 unearth programmes no one’s ever heard of, like the rapidly axed BBC comedy Battle of The Sexes, just to generate fake outrage.
In one sketch, a marriage guidance counsellor got so wound up by a moaning wife that he swiped her with a frying pan, Vic and Bob-style.
“Appalling”, squawked the talking heads. Yet it never seemed to bother Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday, 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN TAKING THE RISE: Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby with Don Warrington as Philip and Frances de la Tour who played Miss Jones them when current fave Jo Brand joked “the way to a man’s heart is through his breast- pocket with a knife”.
Rising Damp’s Rigsby was racist, we were told. Hiss, boo. But we knew that. He was also outwitted every week by Philip, his posh black lodger. That was the point.
It Ain’t Half Hot Mum was wonderful. The Croft & Perry comedy, based on a wartime Royal Artillery concert party in India, ran for eight hit series.
BBC bores banned repeats because white actor Michael Bates played Indian Rangi Ram.
So it was refreshing to see Asian commentators defending him. Bates was born in Jhansi; Hindustani was his first language. He was more Indian than the show’s Asian stars who were from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The only comfort to be had is the certain knowledge that everything today’s trendies cherish will eventually get the same treatment.
Little Britain’s incontinent old lady… Frankie Boyle mocking the disabled… they’ve got it coming. In spades.
THEY say it’s wrong to laugh at funny foreign names. If so, Phil Wang wouldn’t have an act. He’s “Phil by name, Wang by… second name”. AMBER Riley, Royal Variety…Oti Mabuse, right, Strictly…The Walking Dead mid-season finale. DAVID Blaine always looks knackered. Imagine how tired he’d be if he’d filmed more than one show in the last three years. THE definition of low expectations: robbing Billy Mitchell. WELL done Matt Terry. The Bromley waiter was odds-on favourite to win The X Factor ever since they shafted Gifty back in October.
Seeing Madness on the final was more surprising…
Cowell’s show is all about the god-like power of music biz managers.
Cynical mentors tell their acts how to dress and which tired hits to cover. It’s how pop used to be decades ago. But Madness are different. They come from a time when that old top-down order was out-manoeuvred and bands who wrote their own songs and created BBC Music Awards – the Beeb’s Xmas turkey comes early… James O’Brien – TV’s most punchable man (sorry, Piers)…Abdul Haqq, Muslims Like Us – no one else would. their own image set the tone.
There are still promising performers in that mould, acts like The Spitfires and Louise Distras. The tragedy is there’s no space on TV for them, no modern day Whistle Test or Revolver. X Factor’s nose-diving ratings suggest we’re losing patience with its nonsense. In the time this show eats up finding a one-hit wonder you could watch the entire Sopranos box-set. Twice.
You can count the lasting stars Cowell has created on Captain Hook’s bad hand. Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan wouldn’t even have passed his audition stage.