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Was There Ever Really A "Golden Age" of Scottish Comedy ?


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Well, was there ?

I've read about and sometimes hear people taking about how the sixties and seventies were some kind of sublime by-gone era for Scottish comedians and the like. But was it ?

Looking up some of this old stuff I'm wondering what on earth they were on about. However I'm a moaning young cünt who wasn't there at the time and my generation has vastly different tastes. So what the hell do I know ?  

So, can anyone explain just what was the appeal back then for stuff like...

  • Glen Daly causing thousands of ears to bleed across Scotland with his nails down the blackboard voice, murdering old time music hall songs.
  • Andy Stewart and "The White Heather Club". Still frequently brought up by older Britnats who hate Scottish music, song and culture generally. Was it really that bad ?
  • That fücking cünt Andy Cameron.
  • Lex McLean's routines about "giving the wife a good slap".
  • Chic Murray's five hour long jokes about women with long noses which Billy Connolly says was hilarious. I didn't get it.
  • Anyone old enough to remember the once popular show "The One O'Clock Gang" from the sixties ? According to my Gran it was "so unbelievably awful that you couldn't help but watch it !".

On a positive note, my folks assure me that Jimmy Logan "was top notch" and that Fulton and Milroy's "Francie & Josie" was a great stage act to watch.

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Most of the Scottish comedy from the 60s and 70s is cringeworthy although in comparison to Are You Being Served and suchlike it doesn't look so bad.  Francie and Josie were quite funny but it's not comedy that travels well or even dates well.  The White Heather Club wasn't meant to be comedy I don't think.  I hated it.  Stanley Baxter was quite good at times but his Parliamo Glasgow routine became tired.

I think Scottish comedy in those days was dominated by a Scottish cringe, know your place, court jester type of act, relying on a stereotyped tartan, often drunk, image.  Billy Connolly was a breath of fresh air when he started although of course he sold out and became almost an establishment figure, allowing himself to be patronised - nevertheless he remains one of the funniest people I have ever heard..

 

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Outside Scotland in the 1970s, apart from a very occasional Stanley Baxter sketch, the Scottish act that really raised a smile was the troupe that Ally MacLeod took to Argentina in '78 ...

In the late-'80s early '90s Jerry Sadowitz was brilliant, pissed on Connelly in my unpopular opinion.

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17 minutes ago, DonnyTJS said:

Outside Scotland in the 1970s, apart from a very occasional Stanley Baxter sketch, the Scottish act that really raised a smile was the troupe that Ally MacLeod took to Argentina in '78 ...

In the late-'80s early '90s Jerry Sadowitz was brilliant, pissed on Connelly in my unpopular opinion.

Heard he was really good "back in the day". There's hardly any of his act online anywhere, apparently he always gets online footage or audio of his acts taken down very quickly.

Sadowitz concentrates more on performing conjuring tricks these days doesn't he ?

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Sadowitz alone can't constitute an Age, but he was very influential - it was a sort of anti-comedy, showing up the largely painful 'alternative comedy' of the time for the pussying about that it was. Take out the sweariness and the sleight of hand, and what's left is what Stuart Lee has turned into genius.

I didn't realize that he didn't let his stuff get out there - good for him, but sad for the rest of us. The TV he did for Channel 4 and BBC 2 back then was essential viewing, and I wondered why it hasn't been shared constantly on 'tinternet.

Edited by DonnyTJS
typo, is all.
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5 minutes ago, DonnyTJS said:

Sadowitz alone can't constitute an Age, but he was very influential - it was a sort of anti-comedy, showing up the largely painful 'alternative comedy' of the time for the pussying about that it was. Take out the sweariness and the sleight of hand, and what's left is what Stuart Lee has turned into genius.

I didn't realize that he didn't let his stuff get out there - good for him, but sad for the rest of us. The TV he did for Channel 4 and BBC 2 back then was essential viewing, and I wondered why it hasn't been shared constantly on 'tinternet.

Apart from that episode of Rab C Nesbit he has a cameo in, all I could find of Sadowitz on youtube is a brief clip of him from the eighties discussing Jimmy Saville.

I'd be interested to see his shows "The Pall Bearer's Revue" and "The People vs. Jerry Sadowitz" both of which were supposed to be "unique" viewing experiences ! 

Read this on his wikipedia page:

Quote

In 1991, Sadowitz was knocked unconscious by an irate audience member during a performance at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal, where he mocked French Canadians, starting with the greeting "Hello moose####ers! I tell you why I hate Canada, half of you speak French, and the other half let them."[30] The rarely quoted follow up line, which Sadowitz claims is what actually led to him being attacked was "Why don't you speak Indian? You might as well speak the language of the people you stole the country off of in the first place."

:lol:

 

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5 hours ago, ErsatzThistle said:

Well, was there ?

I've read about and sometimes hear people taking about how the sixties and seventies were some kind of sublime by-gone era for Scottish comedians and the like. But was it ?

Looking up some of this old stuff I'm wondering what on earth they were on about. However I'm a moaning young cünt who wasn't there at the time and my generation has vastly different tastes. So what the hell do I know ?  

So, can anyone explain just what was the appeal back then for stuff like...

  • Glen Daly causing thousands of ears to bleed across Scotland with his nails down the blackboard voice, murdering old time music hall songs.
  • Andy Stewart and "The White Heather Club". Still frequently brought up by older Britnats who hate Scottish music, song and culture generally. Was it really that bad ?
  • That fücking cünt Andy Cameron.
  • Lex McLean's routines about "giving the wife a good slap".
  • Chic Murray's five hour long jokes about women with long noses which Billy Connolly says was hilarious. I didn't get it.
  • Anyone old enough to remember the once popular show "The One O'Clock Gang" from the sixties ? According to my Gran it was "so unbelievably awful that you couldn't help but watch it !".

On a positive note, my folks assure me that Jimmy Logan "was top notch" and that Fulton and Milroy's "Francie & Josie" was a great stage act to watch.

I can indeed endorse the opinion of your gran re the One O' Clock Gang: Larry Marshall, Charlie sim, Dorothy Paul et al. It was so bad it was good.  Chic Murray was actually one of Les Dawson's heroes - his dry sense of humour a bit ahead of his time. Remember Lex McLean  - though I never saw him -  permanently displayed at the Pavilion. Cringed to the  WHC even though I was only 7 or 8 but the grandparents loved it,

Was Andy Cameron an effiing c.... just because he was a Rangers supporter?

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36 minutes ago, dipped flake said:

Chic Murray was brilliant, sadly passed just as he was getting known outside of Scotland

Chic Murray was a very funny man. A lot of his jokes were very clever but not amazingly funny. They were often a very clever play on words. If you look at a lot of his jokes now, you would think that they are mildly amusing but not hilarious. But if folk could go back and time and watch him telling the jokes, most folk, with a normal sense of humour, would be rolling about laughing. It was his personality and "the way he told em" that made him a very, very funny man.

Probably my all time favorite Scottish comedian.

 

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23 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

Chic Murray was a very funny man. A lot of his jokes were very clever but not amazingly funny. They were often a very clever play on words. If you look at a lot of his jokes now, you would think that they are mildly amusing but not hilarious. But if folk could go back and time and watch him telling the jokes, most folk, with a normal sense of humour, would be rolling about laughing. It was his personality and "the way he told em" that made him a very, very funny man.

Probably my all time favorite Scottish comedian.

 

He was indeed a great comedian. I'm old enough that when I first moved to Edinburgh he still owned a bar in Bruntsfield (the Novar, although everyone just called it Chic Murray's). His wife really ran it but there were occasional sightings of the man himself. Connolly, in his pomp, was brilliant too.

Sadowitz is on tour in the UK at the moment, included a date in Edinburgh. I've seen him umpteen times at the Festival in recent years too. He looked on the way to real fame and fortune about 30 years back when he got a show on Channel 4 but it didn't really work, (understandably) tame in comparison to his live act. I remember seeing a show of his at the Playhouse in the late 80s, filthy, offensive to just about everyone and everything, and very, very funny.

I'm not sure of the premise of the question really. Has there ever really been a golden age, other than in the mind of aging actor/comedians who, like all old folk, think things were better back in the 'good old days'? I suspect not, and most people know that. We don't have anyone of the calibre of Connolly or Murray (never liked Stanley Baxter) around at the moment, but then again most of those who were around back in the 60s and 70s were pretty awful too. Old footage of Beattie, Logan and the like tends to show that.

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As pointed out earlier, pretty much all Scottish comedy up the 70's was of the Uncle McTom variety.....people like Stanley Baxter playing the drunken King's Cross Jock that people south of the border expected to see.

I'll give you that Chic Murray was decent for his time. I always enjoyed his cameo in Gregorys Girl...:lol:

The early Connolly was great because at that time he was the complete opposite of the establishment figures like Baxter. Inevitably though, Connolly himself became the establishment.....pity.

Some great comic actors came into the public eye at the beginning of the 80's....Robbie Coltrane and  Richard Wislon in Tutti Frutti for instance.

We also became very good at self-parody....Scotland the What and Rab C. Nesbitt are good examples. I suppose that the brilliant Still Game carries on that tradition...:ok:

 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, Rossy said:

Some great comic actors came into the public eye at the beginning of the 80's....Robbie Coltrane and  Richard Wislon in Tutti Frutti for instance.

A Kick Up The 80s etc were good series. Launched the career of Rik Mayall too, who met his wife filming it in Glasgow I believe....

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Sadowitz is a genius, but yes, he does get stuff taken down (I've heard he checks online every single day). Something in the back of my head is telling.me it's something to do with him not wanting people to be able to analyse his magic tricks and steal them.

What sticks out for me is Absolutely. Such a great show, but nothing else out at the same. 

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I saw Hector Nicol at Kirky Rob Roy Social club back in the 80s - he was brilliant - as was Connolly at the Apollo back in the early 80s. SAw Connolly again in Blackpool around 1995 - still brilliant but not with the same edge.

I loved Scotch and Wry with Rikki Fulton - ok Stirling  -oot the motor - and his sketch as Rangers manager with Gerard Kelly - inspired.

but as far as TV is concerned - I think the Still Game guys taken it to another level.

 

 

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