Is that Les Dawson after a diet? No, it’s Frank Skinner in a dress
The funniest man who ever lived, according to everyone who ever met him, was a rotund little clergyman named Sydney Smith, equally devoted to God and good dinners.
he once quipped that his idea of heaven was eating paté de foie gras to the sound of celestial trumpets. Sydney was so entertaining that even Queen Victoria, famously hard to amuse, was reduced to helpless tears of hilarity by his chatter.
We’ll never know quite what made Sydney so funny. his audiences at dinner rarely wrote down his jokes: they were trying too hard to eat while laughing. And without his presence and his delivery, Sydney’s printed sermons seem clever but not uproarious.
Two giants of the music hall, Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd, presented the same problem in What A Performance! Pioneers Of Popular Entertainment (BBC4). Lacking film of them, and with only the roughest of sound recordings, we can’t grasp what made them such beloved comedians, at the turn of the 20th century.
The ideal answer, as presenter Frank Skinner sighed, would be to borrow a time machine and travel back to watch the music hall maestros at their peak. That would make a brilliant TV format, though perhaps Frank hadn’t thought through all the implications: why would anyone stay in and watch the box if we could fly back 120 years for a night out?
The next best thing is to recreate their acts, and Frank, with Radio 3 presenter Suzy Klein, set about doing that with gusto. he dressed up in a charwoman’s dress to deliver a Dan Leno monologue, and she did a saucy dance while singing one of Marie Lloyd’s most ribald numbers.
This was BBC4 so there was no big budget for the stage productions. There wasn’t even an audience, which meant that despite Frank and Suzy’s vigorous efforts, their performances felt flat — more like costume rehearsals on a wet Monday afternoon than fullblown knees-ups.
But the duo worked so hard, with such enthusiasm, that glimmers of the real thing shone through. Suzy brought out the melodic beauty of Marie Lloyd’s coarse songs: these were lovely tunes, and when I interviewed her last month she admitted that she had been practising them constantly at home . . . so much that her children now sang them in the bath, naughty lyrics and all.
Dolled up in drag, Frank looked like a skinny Les Dawson, and his version of Leno’s sweet, daft smile brought Stan Laurel to mind — no surprise, since both Les and Stanley were great admirers of the music hall king.
It might be great fun if this documentary, the first of a threepart series, encouraged the Beeb to revive their long-running variety format The Good Old Days, and have enthusiasts and celebs recreate classic acts and songs. They could call it Strictly Music hall. That’s if Frank can’t get his time machine working, of course.
Alex Polizzi was indulging in some time travel on Italian Islands (C5), as she revisited the scenes of a youthful summer romance, where she had once lost her heart to a boy called Luca.
The Aeolian isle of Filicudi, near Sicily, certainly looked the perfect place to fall in love. Going back, older if not wiser, can be a melancholy experience, but Alex seemed radiant at the memories it evoked. ‘I was very, very happy when I used to come here,’ she glowed, ‘ and I’m very, very happy now.’
We’re more used to seeing her scowl and fume as she grapples with failing businesses on shows like The Fixer. But this was a different Alex, relaxed and uncritical, as she tucked into local delicacies like almond spaghetti and Malvasia wine.
even the salted caper ice cream, which was quite clearly inedible, didn’t make her cross. She just giggled until she couldn’t hold her spoon.
She looked happiest of all on a sight- seeing boat, watching dolphins cavort in the bay, before the Mediterranean sun went down in a blaze of gold.
These celebrity travelogues are too often mechanical trudges, but Alex transmitted all her joy and made me want to visit Filicudi. I’ll give the caper ices a miss, though.