Need a comedy straight man to crack the jokes? Bob’s your uncle!
Has there ever been a comedy straight man in a double act who found a new partner and switched role to become the funny guy? Bob Mortimer has done just that — and I’m struggling to think of a precedent.
If you don’t know what the straight man’s role is, think of Ernie Wise’s face as Eric Morecambe slaps him round the chops. Ernie’s job was much more than setting up the laughs. He was the backbone of every routine. . . the maypole around which his brilliant pal cavorted.
That was Bob’s job, when he was one half of Reeves and Mortimer. He played the adoring acolyte, awe- struck by the confidence of Vic Reeves, in a partnership that took them through stand- up comedy, panel games and sitcoms.
It wasn’t until Bob struck out on his own that his sheer inventive energy was given full rein. He’s explosively funny, as anyone who has seen him on Taskmaster or Would I Lie To You? will know — effervescing with random connections and lunatic flights of fancy.
But no one could have predicted the way his double act with Paul Whitehouse would evolve. It began with gentle half hours of riverside banter between two dear chums. Two years on, as the duo head to Middlesbrough where Bob grew up, for
Christmas Fishing (BBC2), they’re like an old married couple — with Paul as the long-suffering husband and Bob as his madcap missus.
When they go fishing at sea, Bob hops with excitement to see a grey seal, and is prone to falling over at any moment. He’s left maudlin at the sight of his childhood home, but only momentarily, until he dashes off to play a Christmas prank . . . dressing up Ted the terrier in a santa suit.
Then he catches his fishing line in a tree, and makes up a rhyme about it, while dancing in waders. Bob Mortimer is 61.
Paul doesn’t even try to get laughs. What would be the point? He’ s happy to set up gags and chuckle as his companion takes t he jokes in wholly unexpected directions.
Bob’s still easily awe- struck. He was agog to meet local hero Chris Rea, a Boro rocker best known for his festive hit Driving Home For Christmas.
Cancer survivor Chris is grizzled, with a luxuriant topknot. I hesitate to suggest he was wearing a wig, or even that he uses dye, but it’s fair to say life has been much kinder to his hair than it has to the rest of him.
We love a schoolboy sense of humour in a bloke approaching his pension- book years. It’s tolerated less in actual schoolboys. Kenyah sandy was outstanding as Kingsley, a 12year-old with a short attention span and a tendency to play the clown in his seventies classroom, in Small Axe: Education (BBC1).
Director steve McQueen, in the last of this series, conveyed the ritual humiliation that passed too often for teaching in those days, as Kingsley was dismissed as a ‘ blockhead’ before being sent to a ‘special school’. His new classmates included sheila, an apparently autistic girl who couldn’t speak but made animal noises — another powerful performance, by Tabitha Byron.
The drama was rightly furious that black children were written off, but lacked an equal anger that any child could be condemned to rot because of profound learning difficulties.
Black community activists infiltrated the school, saw that Kingsley had been abandoned by the schools system and rescued him. By contrast, we didn’t even learn the mute girl’s full name, let alone discover what happened to her. she was left, quite literally, without a voice.