Few clues in hunt for the real TV game show king
The Man Called Monkhouse (Assembly Hall) Highly entertaining ★★★✩✩
ONE-MAN biodramas about dead comics are nothing new at the Fringe. This year Assembly Hall alone is hosting Oh Hello!, about Carry On star Charles Hawtrey, and this offering from Alex Lowe about writer, comedian, chat show host and TV game show king Bob Monkhouse.
The appeal is obvious. It gives audiences a chance to voyeuristically peek behind the public persona of stars whose real lives we could only guess at.
And, if we’re lucky, we can watch as a few skeletons they kept hidden in the cupboard are rattled. At least that’s the theory. One that is only partially achieved here in what is a highly entertaining show full of shiny, surface polish. And let’s face it nobody did shiny, surface polish better than perma-tanned Monkhouse, even if it did lead to him being labelled ‘ smarmy ‘, ‘insincere’ and ‘smug’.
Set in 1995, and featuring an uncanny approximation of Monkhouse’s every tic and nuance f rom the excellent Simon Cartwright, the wheel, or
Uncanny: Simon Cartwright as TV game show king Bob Monkhouse
rather two wheels, on which the show turns are the theft of two volumes of his jokes that thrust him back into the spotlight. That and an invitation to read the eulogy at a memorial service for long- dead writing partner Dennis Goodwin.
CUE remembrances of things past, as between gags (‘I phoned the wife the other night and said I was thinking about the last time we made love. She said “Who is this?”.’), we get glimpses of the man behind the mask.
There’s his workaholic determination to succeed; his lack of guilt (an extramarital affair with Diana Dors halted by her gangster boyfriend), and the newspaper stitch-up over his relationship with his disabled son that cut him to the quick.
The tagline for the show reads: ‘The tan. The cuff. The wink. The obsessive.’ And all are front and centre here.
But for the most part the real Bob Monkhouse remains elusive, the show scratching at the surface but rarely penetrating much further. Entertaining for all that though.
Assembly Hall until Aug 31