All in the WORST POSSIBLE TASTE!
He hung Cliff Richard from a crane, had a bust-up with Bowie and made the filthiest jokes on TV. But as his shows are re-released, our critic salutes the demented genius of Kenny Everett
Hello, my little passion flowers... my little peeping Toms ... It’s 40 years since madcap DJ Kenny everett launched his racy Video Show on television, a rapid-fire ragbag of silly voices, pop superstars and filthy jokes.
The series for Thames TV has barely been seen since it sparked outrage at the beginning of the Thatcher era. But with all 35 episodes now being released on DVD, fans can relish the cavalcade of sketches that saw stars such as David Bowie and Freddie Mercury exposing themselves to ferocious ridicule . . . and loving it.
one skit features everett promising us ‘a real cliffhanger’. The camera pulls back and reveals Cliff Richard dangling 6ft up in the air — gagged, bound and hanging from a crane in the studio. With manic glee, the presenter takes a knotted rope and starts whipping Cliff’s legs and feet.
The following week, everett announces that Cliff is back and he is delighted to apologise to the star in person. once again the camera pans out... and this time Cliff is lying on the floor with gaffer tape round his face, wrists and ankles. ‘Come back next week,’ everett shrieks, ‘and I’ll apologise for this, too’ — and kicks him in the stomach. Cliff’s reward is to be allowed to sing his 1976 hit Devil Woman, which he does sitting on the bars of a cage, with an all-but-naked dancer hissing and spitting inside. If you’ve ever wondered why the Kenny everett Video Show doesn’t get repeated, not even on classic comedy channels such as Gold, there’s your answer. In the late Seventies, it was notorious for its red-hot sex and sexism . . . what everett lasciviously termed ‘the Naughty Bits’. each week the dance troupe Hot Gossip performed a steamy bump-and-grind routine to a raunchy rock number such as Honky Tonk Women by the Rolling Stones, choreographed by future Strictly judge Arlene Phillips. Future West end singer Sarah Brightman was among the group’s female dancers, whose moves included a lot of high kicks in ripped leotards. No wonder everett introduced Hot Gossip with steam billowing from his collar. After the routine he would march up to the
camera in an old lady’s wig and coat, with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a handbag, spoofing anti-smut campaigner Mary Whitehouse. As he hitched his huge inflated bosoms higher, he would rail against the ‘firm expanses of bare flesh’ and ‘provocative muscles concealed by skimpy underwear’ until his chest exploded in a cloud of talcum powder. everett could get away with this material partly because he had such an innocent face. Even when he was pretending to leer, he looked like a seven-year-old mucking around. Some of his gags revealed his sexual insecurities. ‘I’m puzzled by promiscuity,’ he admits on one early episode. ‘I don’t get it ... and that’s always been the problem.’ You can’t take him seriously, though — he’s dressed as a giant chicken. In fact, sex terrified him all his life. Born Maurice Cole in 1944 to strict Catholic parents on Merseyside, he cribed himself as ‘nerdy, needy, weedy, anxious and afraid’. His mother made matters worse by sending him to school in a bow tie. ‘Beating people up is a big thing in Liverpool,’ he once remarked.
He escaped into his favourite radio shows, especially the zany inventions of Spike Milligan and the Goons. Lunatic accents and disgusting noises made him laugh himself silly, but also created an imaginary world where he was safe.
THIS was a sensation he shared with another unhappy Fifties schoolboy, Prince Charles. ‘Just listening to all those Goon voices,’ Everett later said, ‘made me feel all warm and cosy.’
Desperate to deny his gay sexuality, he married at 25. By then he was a full-time DJ, starting his career on pirate radio. He spent hours every day composing and creating multitrack jingles in the studio, singing harmony with himself and adding a carnival of twangs, doings and bleeps to the mix.
His style became a sensation, much copied but never equalled. Every broadcast was a cult event.
His fame was cemented in the Seventies, first when he was sacked from Radio 1, apparently for claiming that Tory transport minister John Peyton’s wife, Mary, had been able to pass her driving test only by bribing the examiner.
In 1975 he helped Queen to reach Number One in the singles charts by playing Bohemian Rhapsody 14 times in one afternoon on his Capital Radio show. By then, he seemed able to say anything he liked on the radio, but the thought of making the leap to television appeared impossible.
The task of translating Everett’s wild, surreal antics to the small screen was entrusted to scriptwriter Barry Cryer, who brought in a comedy partner, Ray Cameron — Michael McIntyre’s father.
‘Ev was so imaginative,’ Cryer says. ‘He was an underrated genius. So many people in the business really loved him — and they fought to get on the show, really fought. Elton, Rod, everyone.’
And they were queueing up to be insulted. A typical introduction went: ‘Are you tired of watching fabulous, expensive, good-looking, talented superstars? So are we. Here’s B.A. Robertson.’
One common trick, used on Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues and Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music among others, was to offer them a face-toface interview but not allow them to speak a word.
Rocker Suzi Quatro got a little of her own back. She volunteered to let Everett hurl knives at her ... then stood off-screen and screamed, before reappearing smeared in blood. After this had happened three times, she walked up to him and kneed him in the groin.
Freddie Mercury, dressed in red leather trousers and a biker’s cap, stood and posed while Everett introduced him: ‘It’s a very important day in the social calendar of our great nation. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you the British contender in the upcoming Eurovision Violence Contest’ — at which Freddie slowly poured a can of lager over Everett’s shoes, before wrestling him to the ground. Like many of the physical skits on the Video Show, it looks both real and painful. David Bowie made two appearances on the show and, after the second, the camera found him kneeling on a rooftop in the studio, clutching a violin.
Everett barged up to him, dressed in a suit and bowler hat, and waving an umbrella menacingly. ‘Look at you in those trousers,’ he yelled at Bowie. ‘Look at you, you lilylivered mincer! Do you know, I was in the war, but I didn’t see you there.’ His voice rose to a scream: ‘I fought for people like you — and I never got one!’
Bowie then got up, smashed his violin and began chasing Everett round the roof, pirouetting like a ballet dancer and whacking the DJ’s backside with his bow.
The bowler-hatted character was a regular. Everett called him Angry of Mayfair. When he turned his back on the camera, the suit was cut away from shoulders to knees, revealing a bra and lacy suspenders.
Characters were one of the show’s mainstays. There was Marcel Wave, an incorrigibly randy Frenchman who was reduced to paroxysms of lust by the sight of a Hot Gossip girl or even the curves of a guitar.
There was Brother Lee Love, who appeared before a gospel choir wearing vast foam hands which he twiddled and pointed as he preached himself into a frenzy.
Then there was sneering rock-androll thug Sid Snot, who entered to a twanging bass guitar playing the theme from Peter Gunn, with a fistful of cigarettes that he would attempt to flick into his mouth as he delivered one-liners.
‘I was down the park the other day feeding the pigeons . . . to my cat.’
‘It’s been a great year for me. I went into the scrap business. Anybody who wanted a scrap, I gave them the business.’
Mostly, Sid just wanted to commit senseless acts of violence. One week he walked in with an axe, smashed up a chair, stared down the camera and left. Another week he took a sledgehammer to a china dog, then snarled: ‘Oi! Jim’ll Fix It — fix that!’
By 1983, Everett was such a success that film director Michael Winner thought it would be a great coup to invite him to address a rally of Young Conservatives, ten days before the general election.
Winner told him to bring his big foam hands. Everett did . . . and waving them wildly, he opened his speech by shouting: ‘Let’s bomb Russia!’ A stricken Margaret Thatcher joined him on the stage, wearing a frozen smile.
ALAS, it was evident the Prime Minister had never seen the Video Show. If she had, she might have spotted an American character called General Cheeseburger who rode around in a jeep, trying to start wars (‘bomb the b ***** ds’).
Offstage in every Thames show there was the raucous sound of the crew laughing. One distinctive bark of laughter cuts through — writer Barry Cryer, doubled over at Everett’s delivery. ‘It’s the only show I ever worked on,’ he says, ‘where no one told us to be quiet.’
After three years, the series ended, as most of Everett’s jobs did, in a row. He was snapped up by the BBC, who demanded new characters. He came up with the punk Gizzard Puke and porn starlet Cupid Stunt.
To watch these 40-year-old broadcasts now is to marvel at how many major names wanted to get in on the action. Everett’s friend Terry Wogan, a pal from Radio 2 days, did a double act with him as two Irishmen struggling with a crossword: ‘Five letters, “To egg on”, sure that’s a hard one Kenny . . . got it! To egg on — toast!’
And fellow presenter Michael Aspel played a gay barrister, flirting with Marcel Wave as the Frenchman stood in the dock brandishing a cigarette holder and a bottle of champagne: ‘Monsieur Wave, where were you on the night of August 17th last? Why do I ask? Because I was waiting and you never turned up.’
That was bold, especially as Everett hadn’t come out as gay until 1985. More than two decades after his death from Aids in 1995, his TV show is still outrageous and hilarious.
But, of course, he has to have the last word. He always did. ‘Well, kids, that’s it, hope you liked the show. If you didn’t, it’s too late. We’ve already got the money.’