Comedy? It’s not black or white It’s not black or white
When I was a kid Love Thy Neighbour was on TV and the next day at school I’d be called all the names, but look at Red Dwarf now and it’s colour blind, just good telly.. it’s what we need
They are the stars of the cult sci-fi comedy that has always been ahead of its time… and not just because of its talking toaster and holographic personal assistants.
When British TV was still struggling to fairly reflect multicultural Britain, the hilarious Red Dwarf blazed a trail.
Half of the show’s four main cast members were black, yet during the show’s 74 episodes the colour of their skin wasn’t mentioned once.
It added up to iconic comedy without the stereotypes and thinly disguised slurs that were common at the time.
Its stars Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules – aka Dave Lister and Cat – went on to huge success, with Craig spending a decade on Coronation Street as cab driver Lloyd Mullaney, and Danny playing policeman Dwayne Myers in the crime drama Death in Paradise.
And now they have joined together again to celebrate the best black TV comedians in their new show Craig &
Danny: Funny, Black and on TV, which airs tonight as part of ITV’s Black History Month commemorations.
“In the 60s and 70s the atmosphere was a lot harsher, and the only way for black comics to get on TV was to make themselves the butt of the joke really,” recalls Craig, 56, who started as a stand-up aged 17.
He says TV’s first attempts to include black characters in comedy shows, such as 1970s sitcom Love Thy Neighbour, made his life “a complete misery” as he grew up as the only black boy in his school in Toxteth, Liverpool.
“You’d go to school the day after Love Thy Neighbour was on and they had all these phrases they could use, like n**-n**, golliwog, jungle bunny,” he says. “And I’d get called them in the schoolyard. The one insult the black guy had was, ‘ you white honky’. All the black people were going, ‘what’s a honky?’”
And while Craig’s journey to fame was relatively easy – he was a resident poet on shows like Wogan before his first acting role on Red Dwarf – he says “tokenism” among TV bosses meant many other talented black performers were less lucky. The actor, whose mother was Irish and father was Guyanese, says: “I ticked so many boxes, I was working class, northern, mixed race, so I fulfilled the quota for them.
“And for a long time, me, Lenny Henry and Gary Wilmot were the only black comedians on telly. They thought they had fulfilled their remit and so no other black comics got a look in.
“There has always been a fair amount of tokenism in this. I was lucky, but I found it difficult to bring others with me.”
The pair say that while much has changed since the first black comic was seen on our screens in the 1960s, TV bosses still need to do more to ensure programming truly represents Britain’s racial mix.
Danny, 60, who was a dancer before landing the part of Cat in Red Dwarf, said it was seeing Craig performing on Wogan that inspired him to keep trying to break into TV. Both his parents settled in London after coming to Britain
I literally couldn’t believe this black Liverpudlian kid was telling jokes about real life
DANNY JOHN-JULES ON LIBERATING EFFECT OF SEEING CRAIG ON TV
abroad the HMT Windrush in 1948. He said: “I literally couldn’t believe this 17-year-old black Liverpudlian kid was on there, telling jokes about real life that was happening in our communities right there and then. I could relate to his background, what he was saying I was seeing every day. I lived a few streets away from the Notting Hill front line and I’d been in a few police vans myself for a strip search. It was part of growing up.”
Craig and Danny believe both TV and comedians today could still learn from Red Dwarf.
Danny says: “We’ve been doing it for 32 years and the colour of our skin has never been noticed. Paul Jackson, the producer, was never interested in all that c**p. He didn’t need to do anything other than make good television. He couldn’t care less about our colour when he chose the cast.”
Craig agrees: “That’s what we need today. All this stuff about taking the knee, what a waste of time. It’s only a symbol. You have to go past the symbolism for real action to take place.
“Taking the knee doesn’t get you anything. It’s changing attitudes, it’s about not seeing in colour, and being creative when you’re casting your script, not automatically thinking that this character needs to be white, that character needs to be black.
“And a lot of black comics have to stop banging on about being black too. The material of many black comics is based just on their blackness.”
He adds: “I think we’re polarising as a country, and what we need is to come together and forget our differences. Comedy can be a huge force for good, it’s a major uniting force. Everyone likes to sit in front of the telly and have a good laugh. We need more of it.”
Craig & Danny: Funny, Black and on TV, ITV, 8pm tonight.