The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
The tale of Max Wall’s breeks shows just how fickle fame can be...
Younger colleagues hadn’t heard of music hall comedy star
How fleeting fame can be was brought home as the news came that Perth Theatre was selling off a little piece of its history.
Among the thousands of costumes being sold off from countless productions was a pair of trousers which belonged to the legendary comedian Max Wall.
I say legendary but among my colleagues – aged 40 and downwards – his name was met with a baffled shrug.
Could someone who was a household name in the not too distant past really have been erased from the public memory?
A clown whose act harked back to the early days of music hall – he was the son of comedy actor Jack Lorimer from Forfar – he enjoyed a lengthy career which stretched from the 1930s to the 1970s when he was reinvented as a serious actor, starring in plays by Beckett and Pinter.
He is best remembered (or not it would appear) for his ludicrously attired and strutting Professor Wallofski which John Cleese has acknowledged as influencing his own Ministry of Silly Walks sketch for Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Fame and fortune came to him – he played golf with royalty, owned three Rolls-Royces and had a mansion in Jersey – but away from the stage suffered the melancholy which has plagued many comedians.
Ernie Wise described him as “more depressive than optimistic” but when he died in the early 1980s he was regarded as a national treasure.
When he appeared at Perth Theatre has been lost in the mists of time but if he can so quickly be forgotten, what chance can there be for today’s reality “stars” to leave a lasting impression?
So when you hear tribute paid to a showbusiness character who has passed on with the claim “they will never be forgotten”, it may well prove to be a hollow epitaph.