The Rest Is History - 28. The Kings of Comedy

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

Comedian Al Murray joins Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook to discuss the history of comedy as well as the funny side of history. Has comedy changed through time? When and why are we not allowed to laugh at events? Al Murray has made a living out of making people laugh, while also frequently placing history at the heart of his humour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. First as tragedy, second as farce. And today we're looking at the farcical angle of things, both the history of comedy and the way in which history itself has been made the subject of comedy. Hello and welcome to The Rest Is History with me, Tom Holland, and my straight man, the Ernie Wise, to my Eric Morecambe, Dominic Sandbrook. Dominic, how are you? I'm very well, thank you, Tom. I prefer to think of myself as... I mean, what are we? We're basically Laurel and Hardy, aren't we? Somebody said that on Twitter, that we would be perfect for playing Laurel and Hardy, so I'll take that.

Ernie Wise, I'm not so sure. Silent comedy on podcasts, I don't know, maybe not so good. And you know, Dominic, what we really need is the help of a man who has made a living out of making people laugh, often with a keen eye on history. I'm here, I'm here.

Can you think of anyone? I'm here. Yeah, I mean... Apart from yourself. Apart from yourself. It's the obvious man. Al Murray, known also as his alter ego, the pub landlord. And increasingly these days, as one half of the podcasting double act fronting, we have ways of making you talk about the Second World War with some other bloke whose name slips me.

Al, welcome to a podcast. Must be unusual experience for you being on a podcast. Well, it's very peculiar being, I mean, as it were, on the receiving end. Being the butt of the joke on this occasion, I suppose. Thanks for having me. I've heard several of your... The one about the outbreak of the origins of the First World War, though. God, I had things to yell at my iPhone listening to that.

No, no no no no that was all good oh yeah absolutely good stuff oh i mean as marxist interpretations go dominic oh very good very good so where should we start tom i think we i'll tell you what let's start with um the the funny the first funny book I ever read about history, Al, was 1066 and all that. And that's actually, for a lot of people, that's the sort of... the ur-text of sort of funny history

or history as funny. Is it still funny, do you think? Well, yes, I think it probably is. I mean, after... I'm exactly the same. That was the first funny history book that was sort of given to me. I had R.J. Unstead's Looking at History, which was a sort of picture book with, you know,

with Mott and Bailey castles in it and Roman underfloor heating and all the sort of kind of the imaginative framework that I still have about the Middle Ages middle ages and before although we don't call it that anymore do we anyway um uh and and i had that and i had 1066 and all that an awful lot of the uh stuff i read in 1066 and all that i probably encountered before i then studied it properly so my understanding the civil war pretty much comes from uh sellers and yeatman rather than rather than you know brilliant people like uh blair worden i mean i i very much or christopher hill or whoever i very much am the roundheads were the were terrible people the right idea and the cavaliers were

nice people with the wrong idea you know and that that good king bad king good thing bad thing a breakdown of history was was then how i was taught it which is after all why the book's so bloody funny is it's uh there was a fag paper between it and o-level history the way it was taught and i remember when i got to do my degree being set a tutorial question one week of was king john a bad king you think yeah what the hell is going on well of course well of course he was but richard the lionheart was a worse king but but um but you know that that the reason that book's funny i mean it's it's it's homer simpson it's funny because it's true you know that that book absolutely strikes

hard at the way history certainly was taught and i don't think it's taught like that anymore you know there's primary sources now all that's the stuff that my daughters have bothered themselves with. But we growing up with that book and that and that parodied outlook and seeing that, you know, that after all, for historians, history is a playpen that they they lob toys at each other. And why can't it be for everyone else and and least of all humorists yeah i i remember the um the wave of egg kings that's that's how the dark ages were summed up yeah and um no matter how i try and purge that from my mind i do find it very difficult not to think it's like and william of orange anglo-saxon history william of orange is drawn as an orange isn't he and i can never get that out of my head when thinking about william some of it's very very direct um but why not so the um the the whole good thing and bad

thing i mean basically that's what the british empire seems to be at the moment it's people on twitter debating was the british empire a good thing or a bad thing and it doesn't really seem to have changed although um you it's you mentioned the First World War right at the beginning, listening to Dominic with his nonsense Marxist spiel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Am I right? It's quite a while since I read 1066 and all that, but doesn't it finish just before the First World War?

Because America becomes top nation and then history comes to a full stop. Yes, it does. I mean, so it's Fukuyama, I mean, but for the 1910s, isn't it? History has ended. I mean, yes, but I think there is a sequel. I don't remember because the... Yeah, there is, isn't there, Al?

And who wrote that? Well, there's a new sequel. There's one that... Go on, promote yourself. Well, all right. I mean, shameless book plugging on this podcast would really be out of line it's unheard of uh uh yes i wrote a book last year during during lockdown which in itself was an extremely i found very very challenging as a as a comic writer because after all when you write

a the difference between writing a stand-up show and writing a book is with a stand-up show you you'll i'll sit here in my office and write some or in a car, usually on my way somewhere. And then I'll go on stage and I'll try it. And when you write a live stand-up show, you co-write it with the audience anyway. They're the co-writer. They're the, you know, they're the Crofty or Perry or whatever. They're the other person going, no, that doesn't work. Yes, that works.

Extend that idea and build on it. But you can't do that with a book. And also the other thing with the stand-up show is you sign off on it you never sign off on it so if i take a touring show out i'll do 200 nights and it's always different every night because you're always permanently tweaking and always fixing and always able to streamline it whereas when you write a book you hand it over and that's it and you can't do anything about it apart from the you know um grammar being wrong or is that joke the right way around that you get back sometimes from an editor so so all right yes i i what's it called the last hundred years give and take and all that which i was commissioned to write and my vanity

demanded that i write in all that book. I don't know how good an idea it was, but getting to grips with the 20th century and trying to make it funny felt like something... Well, no, it actually felt like entirely possible, actually. Really? Yeah. Because I guess the reason that 1066 and all that finishes with the first world

war is is that you couldn't have made that too close because when's it written it was written in 1930s i think so it would be too close in a way yeah um well i do i do wind the book down in sort of 1999 because i i i when i went when i went to university to study history in 1987 the curriculum began in 1964 or ended depending on you know history began or ended depending on your point of view no further back is history so the watershed moment was 1964 so which at the time when i was 19 felt like an eternity the 23 years whatever it was but now actually 23 years ago is you know is is only the is only the late 90s when my eldest daughter was born it feels like it feels like the paint hasn't dried on it yet so i did

shy away quite considerably from writing about the last 20 years because it's all too close and also you know as a as a as a responsible historian it's impossible to draw conclusions about the events of the 2010s yet isn't it gentlemen i mean we need to leave that to our antecedents you know that in the in the in the next century it, gentlemen? I mean, we need to leave that to our antecedents, you know, in the next century. It's their job to beat us. Well, we've had exactly this conversation on this podcast about when history, when you start writing history.

And my take on it was it's about 20, 30 years before you get some sense of the dust settling. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you can't... Trump, for instance, he might be the easy bit. You know, he might be John the Baptist. Yes, I mean, you know, you can't Trump, for instance, he might be he might be the easy bit. You know, he might be that he might be John the Baptist. Yes, exactly. In the in the historical process. And so to sort of try and contain him in a way historically, I think would be would be folly. You know, but with but with Sellers and Yateman, not not about the First World War, I'm guessing it's not just because it's so close, but because it was so traumatic. Yeah, I imagine so, yeah.

And so, Al, I mean, you know, your podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Yes. There's a hint, you know, it's a joke. It's a pun. And the theme of comedy and the Second World War, I mean, actually, when you look at it, a surprising amount has been done.

So there's Spike Milligan, who fought in it, right? Series of kind of brilliant books about it. Then you have Dad's Army and then Alo Alo. And there is a quite, you know, considering the trauma, the suffering, the violence, the horrors of the Second World War. There is quite a surprising amount of comedy about it, isn't there? Well, I think there's a surprisingly small amount about it if you it's the other way around there's the you know it's the as the as the sort of historical elephant in the room the second world war is the it's the all roads lead to it forwards and back i think um and i mean it's interesting i mean hello hello is a case

of point because that's after all is is about a piece of television it's a parody of secret army rather than of the second world war and then if but which which after all was trading on its own uh 70s second world war tropes and ideas and then aloha lowe's lampooning that and then digging into them even further which i think which i think's a quite you know is that is that post-modern i don't know if we i don't know if we're allowed to don't know if we would have been allowed to call it that in the 80s when it was on but but i i mean you know milligan's war memoirs are written uh when he when he starts getting old and he starts reminiscing and he starts trying to digest and deal with his experiences because after all the end with that his war his war culminates

as it were it's all experience culminates with... He has a nervous breakdown, battle fatigue, is taken out of the line, and then the last three books of his memoirs are him piecing himself together to go home. And so, clearly, he was trying to deal with that. But the goon show, which is the thing where he busts open and... He's the most important comic voice

in British comedy post-war. is the thing where he bust open and read, you know, he's the most important comic voice, um, uh, in British comedy post-war. I think without, without any doubt, he, he breaks everything wide open. He changes everything.

He's using stuff from America that other people haven't quite got their heads round yet, like the Marx brothers. And he comes to the fifties and the goon show is this extraordinary surrealist satire about the war about class about um posh chaps skimming off honest folk um you know grit the fact that grip pipe thin who's the who's this incredible smoothie he talks like that played by sellers he's always trying to do over the essentially the blue collar characters in it or colonel blood knock who's

an incompetent uh a posh military officer it's about the war the goon show is about the war but he's hiding in plain sight because he's presenting it as a sort of surrealist bonkers a set of adventures and i think that that's the interesting thing about milligan is is that way before he writes a book about the war way before he tackles it he's dealing with it he's um I couldn't process you say that a lot of this stuff though is more deeply rooted so it goes back to things like the wipers times and the humor and the trenches in the first world war where people also made jokes about the generals and the officers and yeah I mean I don't but I don't know what Milligan knew about that but yes absolutely I mean you know any any war is going to generate

humor or any any you know and and then we of course we then get into arguments about how appropriate any laughing about anything in particular is and and which are questions of taste after all rather than anything else but the wipe yes the wipers time is a fantastic example and also of you know technology being available to people to express their humour. And that's why we know about the Wipers Times, because they wrote it down. And so often humour is a liminal thing that exists in the ether and disappears and is momentary. And so it's very hard to pin down actually what's making people laugh when. Let's dig into that question for a second yeah about taste and what's appropriate so because i mean these are questions we'll get

cancelled we need to be but these are questions not just for for comics they're questions for historians or writers or anybody engaging with the human experience in any way so let's take yeah the the super controversial subject of the of the moment slavery could you imagine um doing something funny or a comedy set i mean it seems so horrific that you kind of recoil instinctively from the idea but could it be done well i don't know it has been done it has been done i yeah well go on well it's been done in in up pompeii which i know is is you know set up 2 000 years ago but frankie howard is a slave and the thing about that is that it's it's very culturally literate because that's the form that roman comedies took there were kind of you

know the the sassy slave who provides the commentary on the masters. And when did that run? 70s, I think. 70s, yeah. And it was regarded, I guess, as completely unproblematic. But that's because it's a different kind of slavery, isn't it? Would it be now? Yeah, but people are much more sensitive now about slavery, I think, than they were. And I wonder whether having your kind of lead comic actor as a slave,

would that be as unproblematic as it was in the 70s? I don't know. I mean, you'd probably have a better sense of that than... Well, I mean, I wouldn't take it to BBC One right now. No. No. Maybe Channel 5. The thing is, well, the thing is, is that these are, you know,

I mean, I think what's very interesting is is these are questions of taste after all. And tastes change. And I mean, there is this forever argument. I mean, it's interesting that you're framing like this because because 10 years ago there was an argument that comedy is about pushing boundaries. You know, you've got to be edgy you've got to break boundaries and you know and and those arguments were wheeled out in defense um uh of of uh people during the during the russell brown jonathan ross saxgate debacle that that argument was wheeled out by quite serious people comedy's job is to push the boundaries but well every now and again somebody go not those boundaries yeah yeah yeah but not those boundaries. Yeah. Yeah, but not those boundaries, thank you very much. We'd rather not.

And, you know, Milligan, of course. Milligan spent ten years inserting rude names into the Goon Show and having them removed if the censor at the BBC spotted them. And, you know, characters called Hugh Hampton, Hugh Hampton, Hampton Wick, it's a bloke with a big dick. You know, he spent a great deal of time doing that because those were the boundaries and those were the boundaries he was kicking up against

at the time, you know. And I think so much of this, there's a tangle between what are basically, they're questions of taste, but they get elevated to questions of principle. And very often that can be that that's that could be quite a tricky uh set of waters to navigate though what i will say is as a as a practicing comedian these things aren't half as don't or don't strike me as half as urgent or

worrying as they do if i read an article about them you know that uh that there's there's people just getting on with it and then there's the stuff being written about it which after all is the liminal world i'm talking here's a question for you al about you talk about taste changing and the boundaries changing now that would seem to imply that what we think is funny changes does it well of course it does um uh for instance uh there's a fool uh from called roland le petator who was on the payroll of henry ii right and he received 30 acres from the king near ipswich in suffolk for his farting act that's funny he would leap whistle and fart um he was uh he was to make an and instead of being given uh his spurs,

he was enrolled into the King's sergeant service. And instead of being given a pound of pepper or a pair of spurs, his duty was to do every day, every Christmas day at court, a leap, a whistle and a fart act. Only at Christmas Day? What did he do the rest of the year? Sultum, well, I don't know. He had his feet up, got his bowels ready. Sult the rest of the year? Saltum. Well, I don't know. He had his feet up.

He got his bowels ready. Saltum siffletum et petum. And so tastes change. But they have, though, because that's something that a lot of people would find funny. I mean, we're laughing about it now. Maybe that's the universal thing. But, you know, I mean, you only have to look at a Shakespeare comedy to wonder what on earth is funny about this. There's a lot of Greek comedies, you know, which, after all, are comedy in the literal sense,

where there's a mistaken identity and with hilarious consequences. And I think, of course, tastes change. It'd be silly to expect them not to but how on the um the the jester yes and indeed the um the the the privates in in um at ypres yeah joking about their officers and the slave in roman comedy yeah well these are status positions of these are questions of status yeah absolutely there's real edge there isn't there because actually the edge comes if you're in real trouble so a slave laughing at the master um you know even even a private soldier laughing at the officer there's real jeopardy there in a way that there wouldn't be today

with an edgy or what it is is or what it is is is or not or what it is is it's a priced in way of of of accommodating your systems of authority and how they work and when you look at the i mean if you look at the shakespearean idea of the gesture that we have that there's a someone who can speak truth to the king because because they get granted license somehow and that it's interesting because in in roman tradition because but roman republican tradition they're much more interested in freaks and things rather than rather than a king who has a jester a king who has a fool and what's what's really interesting is the way the jester and the fool thing develops is it's it is the the only patron that the fool has is the king so he's in mute he's removed divorced from other forms of

patronage so he can speak the truth so you know that if you're Henry VIII's fool the Duke of Norfolk can't get at you by bribing you you speak truth to the king and what is truth in this instance well there's two types of fool um that that we see in england and it's kind of universal in in societies with kings two types of fool and it's a lot to do with christian theology and you're going to so you know don't encourage him out tell him he emerges from his torpor oh great tom was asleep basically well and a lot of it what it it comes down to is the idea of innocence and theological innocence. And if you are someone who has what we would probably call a learning disability now, if you're someone who can't get to the grips with the world as it's seen, so theology in the early Middle Ages and through to the Tudors,

you're regarded as innocent before God because you don't know what's going on. And this turns into the idea of the two types of fool. There's naturals who are people who have some sort of mental disability. And then there's artificials who are people who pretend to have some sort of disability. And it's the it's the the ones who get their heads chopped off are the artificials because in the end they have no defense before god or their king or their patron because that if they speak out of line everyone goes we we know perfectly well you're not innocent you're putting it on this is your this is your act and they're the guys who get into trouble whereas the innocents tend not to you know you look at look at Will Will Summer, who was Henry VIII's fool.

He's also then he's then in the court of Edward VI. He goes through to Queen Mary's court as well and I think lives until Elizabeth. Now, if we look at the 1066 and all that version of the politic Tudor politics at that time, you know, if you're in with Henry VIII, you can't be in with, you time if you're in with Henry VIII you can't be in with if you're in with Edward you can't be in with Mary, you can't possibly be in a manageable presence within the court of Tudor England like that but he runs

right through because he's innocent and because he performs a function and you see that there's also a blurred line where basically you have people who are He performs a function. And you see. You see. There's also a blurred line where basically you have people who are companions to royalty who quite clearly have some sort of mental disability because they're not troubled by the burdens of power and the court and all that sort of stuff. And you can just have have them as your pal and and fools occupy this really interesting strange liminal space and and all the way through english court records you see them on the payroll they eat on their own they don't eat with the jesters that they're separate from the jest or

for the minstrels rather and minstrels start out as servants and then realize that that they're if you're a servant who can play the lute you're worth twice a servant who can't and so you end up with this sort of weird hodgepodge of court followers and at the heart of it is the fool and there's the moment in the 16th century where they sort of break out and when the

theatre comes along and there's essentially a technological moment where theatre establishes itself as a piece of technology and fools start There's essentially a technological moment where theatre establishes itself as a piece of technology. And fools start doing both. And there's Richard Tarleton, who is not only a court fool, but also a professional fool and one of the Queen's men. And he's basically the beginning of the end of the idea of the Lear-like fool and the transition into comedian, full-on comedian. And he tours the country.

He has an international reputation as a touring comic and is also one of the 12 Queen's Men. And there's this... So comedians relied on royal patronage and then it flips into they have a public constituency and people to play to. And all the while, there is this idea that they're telling the truth and they're allowed to tell the truth because they don't understand the real world and theology. They're not going to go to hell for what they say, as it were.

Well, I think that's a brilliant notion on which to take the liminality, the hell. But before you do, there's a great story. And this goes all the way back to the second emperor, Quinn, in 209 to 27 BC. He announces that he's going to lacquer the Great Wall of China. Right. And the story is the court is all looking at each other. You're going to tell him, no, I'm not going to tell him what a terrible idea. And there's a fool called Twisty Pole who steps forward and says, that's a brilliant idea, boss. But the problem is, is how are we going to get it to dry?

We're going to have to build a great big drying house over it. And the emperor goes, oh, yeah, obviously. What a terrible idea. And so the courtiers don't have to confront him. And that's what the fool is for. And do you think that was used, the fool was always used as that sort of safety valve? Dominic. Yeah.

Dominic, we've got to have a break. I just was riding roughshod over your back. No, we've had a great wall of China, Jake. That is just riding roughshod over your back. No, no, we've had a great wall of China, Jake. That is the perfect note on which to go for a break. Oh, go on then, go on then. Have your break, have your break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman,

and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. hello welcome back to the rest is history we're talking comedy comics um before the break i uh i cut down it was rude he had some question or other dominic what was your question so my question

was about fools as safety valves al Al was talking about fools as this. So they're in a position that nobody else is in. And do the courtiers knowingly use them to deliver the undeliverable message and so on? Well, yes, you'd have your own. I mean, one of the interesting things about Will Summer is he's poached from some other duke you know uh uh after the fool that precedes will summer um is a guy called sexton that that was thomas woolsey's fool and when woolsey falls from grace one of the one of the conditions that he's left left uh to live out his remaining days in peace is that he hands over his fool so he surrenders sexton to the king who's not happy about it

and then eventually as sexton gets old someone says there's this great fool um in this household you should you should the king should have him so there's a circuit of it everyone's doing this but but i mean this is a very hard i mean in answer your question it's a very that you posited just before as a safety valve it's a hardwired idea this in in certainly it definitely deep in western european culture erasmus says they can as he says of renaissance fools they can speak truth and even open insults and be heard with positive pleasure indeed the words that would cost a wise man his life are surprisingly enjoyable when uttered by a clown for truth has a genuine power to please if it manages not to give offense but this is something the gods have granted only to fools nice so al since tom was

so rude i'm going to ask a second question yeah and this is to and this is to follow up on that a little bit he's much more he's much more pushy than his brother is he he's more pushy than his brother i cut well that's interesting no i'm not honestly getting onto the strategic level here i don't think so all right listen now something that came up in my mind while you were just talking was a few years ago, Jonathan Coe wrote an essay in the London Review of Books talking about satire. And he was talking about Britain sinking, giggling into the sea, which is this sort of, this image of us awash with satire.

But basically, satire being... Now, Jonathan Coe, the novelist Jonathan Coe, thought of satire not as a safety valve and not as a healthy thing, but as an unhealthy thing. That we were too busy being slightly complacent and laughing at ourselves. He thought our obsession with satire had produced Boris Johnson and Brexit and bad government

and that we should be as a society more angry and we and things like have i got news for you he thought as positively bad for us what's your take that's interesting well i think that's interesting because i think um one of the big problems with with with the s word has been a a failure to define terms when people talk about it you'll very often see i mean we talked about the goon show earlier i would contend that that's a satire that the goon the goon show is satire surrealist satire but it's satire but but milligan being a blue collar irishman um uh at the time no one saw it for what it was and then of course you get the satire boom in the 60s,

which is called that with a capital S. And because they're all people who should have ended up in the foreign office or in academia, it's seen as some sort of extraordinary break, an incredible moment that we all live in the shadow of forever since. And I think the problem with that narrative is that is that jokes about the news and jokes about politicians aren't necessarily satire you know tom sharp i thought i think wrote satire um but no one would no one

would include him in a in a sort of satirical lineage now they would talk about have i got news for you as satire and i don't think it is i think it's a topical news program topical news comedy program i don't think it's satirical because it does it does it prick at our underlying assumptions does it say is it saying you get the politicians you deserve or is it the part of the process of delivering us the politicians we deserve which i I think is what Jonathan means. I think I think, you know, I think what he means is there's too much levity rather than too much satire. It's how I how I how I'd read that because that, you know, I mean, one of the one of the one of the problems in broadcasting, of course, because I mean, I've just written on the last the last series of spitting image and uh you know the interesting about interesting thing about spitting images we all have very rosy uh tinted spectacle view of it

when it first started and you watch the first series and it's all over the shop because it's a brand new program in an in a in a literally a new medium of trying to do this through puppetry and impressions and all that and they And they just about get away with it and they do it on shock, you know, because it's so extraordinary to see. And maybe, I mean, after all, satire, it's juvenile, isn't it, Tom? And the thing about juvenile is it's all been censored

because it's filth, isn't it? Well, juvenile is, yeah, I mean, incredibly filthy. What do we mean by, I mean, and this brings me back to my, what do we mean by satire, you know? Because in juvenile cases, it's lots of really filthy, filthy jokes, isn't it? And, well, they're not even jokes. And very, very bitter, very, very bitter commentary. I mean, juvenile would definitely get cancelled now because he detests immigrants.

He's always going on about how awful immigrants are. he he detests immigrants he's always going on about how awful immigrants are yeah um and he goes he he hates women he's misogynist i mean in almost every he basically hates everyone and everything yeah and and i think this you know would would it's kind of tough it's tough to read um certainly for our sensibilities now yeah and i think i know what i think think I know what Jonathan's driving at, but I think you've got to ask yourself whether things are satire or not. I mean, I think Jonathan's books are satire

in a way that Have I Got News For You probably isn't. Isn't it also the fact that the giggling, sinking giggling into the sea, isn't that also Peter Cook? Yeah. the fact that the the giggling sinking giggling into the sea isn't that also um peter cook and and the um you were talking about how um uh the goon show is a satire on on the second world war yeah so famously is beyond the fringe with the you know we need an actor gesture at this point a futile gesture and all that and and that presumably dominic you'd know but better than anyone i mean that was genuinely shocking when someone did, when they did that.

Was it or not? I'm always unsure about this. I think some people were shocked, just like some people were shocked by that was the week that was. But it's a sort of a performance of being shocked, I think, often. Well, I agree. I agree with that. I think that, because after all, very often humour and its locus is really, really important.

Jimmy Carr, a while ago, I mean, it's quite a while back, this, he got into trouble for telling a joke that he had heard at Headley Court. And Headley Court was the rehab place for injured British soldiers. And there were lots of guys from Afghanistan there. And a bloke there said to him, you know, whatever else happens, we're going to get a great Paralympic team for 2012 out of this, aren't we? Ha ha ha. Right.

And that was an injured soldier's joke told in an injured soldier setting. And Jimmy, Jimmy lobbed it in as a sort of as a as a as a shocking bar. But he got into trouble for it. But that's that's that's because he really he moved the locus of the joke. You know, he tried to, you know, take a seedling seedling and plant it in the wrong garden, if you see what I mean. And I think that we need a futile gesture from you, Perkins, is probably, if you were an airman during the war, they were probably all saying that to each other, that that's the black humour that informs extremely difficult situations. You know, squatty humour is extremely dark. It's the fact that they were doing it in an unexpected environment. And after all, they're nice chaps who really ought to have been in the foreign office and been Oxford dons. It's as much to do with the shock of the people deciding to behave like this, deciding to joke about this rather than the jokes themselves.

And, you know, so much so much framing and context colours people's reactions as much as the material very often the material goes by the by i mean ricky ricka gervais says you know people often hear the words in a joke they don't think for a moment what the joke's about they they just hear the things in it and don't think what's this actually about and i think you know there's a famous famous account of a guy when the when when beyond Fringe transferred to New York who stood up at the end of one sketch and said, you're a bunch of absolute rotters, and then sat back down again and enjoyed the rest of the show.

So outrageous performance, it's as performative as laughing sometimes. Being in on a joke or being out on a joke, they're as important as each other. What's your take on that? We've got jokes. Hold on, hold on. I want to ask my question, don't do this again okay no no we we i've got firm instructions that we've got to do some of the questions from the listeners

so dominic you're just you're just so domineering i know this all the time i'm just bullying i bulldog with his question the thing is i can't stop talking and tom can never get a word in edgeways i've actually got a message from the producer saying possible i've actually got a message from the producer saying... It's just impossible. I've actually got a message from the producer, Tom, saying ask your question. So I'm going to ask my question. My question is this. God's sake, and now I'm being undermined by the producer.

Yeah, I've been waiting for this moment. You see what I have to put up with, Al? Did this happen on the other podcast? No. They gave up. They gave up trying to control us long ago. It's too late now. Go on, Dominic. Give us your fascinating question. So it's a good question. It's too late now. Go on, Dominic. Give us your fascinating question.

So it's a good question. It's a question about comedy that was once funny and is now dated. Should it be, as it were, cancelled? I.e., should it be preceded by a warning or should it just simply not be broadcast? And since you're a big Spike Milligan fan, Spike Milligan is a very good example of this because, of course, he did routines

or he played characters in the 1970s, Blacking Up, for example, that now, if the BBC broadcast it, there would be howls of outrage. So how should broadcasters and people like that deal with this sort of issue? Well, I mean, what they could do is commission some new stuff so they don't need to fill their schedules with boring old things from the old days. I mean, I think is, you know, as someone actually as someone actually concerned with making comedy that that strikes me as the solution to the problem. And after all, jokes about now, I mean, Barry Humphrey's famously says the moment you die, you're no longer funny. You know that you're you that you live the comedy lives right

in the present moment and of course it's not funny if it's from 30 years ago 40 years ago of course not because aside from the aside from those racist aspects all the frames of reference will be um uh shot anyway you know uh and i think it's remarkable when things are funny from the olden days. But lots of things are funny. I mean, I watched Fawlty Towers with my son the other day, and he found that funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty funny, but there's been a bit of that sliced out because people... Yeah, you're right, you're right, the major.

Again, have done the thing where they miss the subject of the joke and they hear the words, and sometimes that's enough for people that they, no, I'm sorry, can't be around that, we can't joke about that in that way anymore. OK, we have a question from the brilliantly named keir hardly you like that that's very good that's the funniest thing on this program so far entirely functional love the show love the show and also love we have ways of making you talk despite my very limited understanding of military history so that's for you al well um and he says are some things taboo because of our prevailing attitudes now so that's what we've been talking about but what i wonder is is there a kind of churn that certain things are always held to be

sacred or unsayable or whatever and that that then kind of automatically generates comedy because the moment you're not it's kind of like getting the giggles at a funeral or something. Not being allowed to laugh about something kind of almost automatically makes you want to laugh about it. Well, yes. That's a kind of part of the cycle of what goes on. Absolutely. You know, and after all, after all, saying the unsayable is an awfully good way of claiming you're saying the unsayable is an awfully good way of selling tickets or making a name for yourself. Let's not forget that comedy, like any other art form,

exists in a raw world of commerce. We were talking about royal patronage earlier. Now the king doesn't pay for comedians. Everyone pays for their own personal gestures. We live like kings now. We each have the gestures we prefer, the fools we prefer the opinions of who tell us the truths we want to hear so yeah and that but there is relentless there's there's endless churn i mean there wasn't there you know in in my career there was a when i first started out you had to be political and if you

weren't there was something really quite wrong with you and then and then sort of vic and bob who for my money were very much channeling a kind of milligan-esque goonish streak um and satirical as well but of course because they're not posh no one would ever call it that um uh they they said no actually you can you can you can muck about if you want and it changed and the and the fashion changed. And then there was a solid, pretty solid decade in the early part of this century where if you didn't do jokes about rape, you were some sort of coward, you know, in terms of edge. And all that sort of thing. These things just, they just change.

The moment something's taboo, comics, because after all, a lot of them are driven by mischief, if nothing else, are drawn to these taboo subjects magnetically. And sometimes they're not. Sometimes you just think, well, an audience won't stomach this. And after all, it's a it's a pas de deux with an audience, the whole thing. And I'll we're all here to have a good time, aren't we? Rather than be confronted about the truth all the time, which is, one of the what one of the means to the ends and there's a very often a confusion between means and ends in comedy anyway the end is to make people laugh and you get there any way you can there's no right way or or perhaps the end of comedy is to uh instill in people a general sense of a historical period this at any rate is the argument of robert mantel who asks

how much do you think comedy shapes popular views of history for example how much of our view of the first world war is black adder or of roman judea is python um he says it feels like comic takes often have a broader reach and more staying power than serious dramas well that's a very good that's interesting isn't it that's an excellent question and um and i think what's really interesting about that i think is that it's black out of four that's the one that that um i don't think anyone looks at black at the second series of black out of queen elizabeth and thinks oh that's what elizabethan england was like i don't think there's any any feeling of verisimilitude in in in that and i don't think the georgian i don't know that's three that's the last thing people have with the Prince Regents, isn't it?

Well, yeah, for my money, I think it's as good as any other history I've read or seen of that period. It's quite differing to the Prince Regents, isn't it? It is actually, yeah. But then, because Blackadder 4 occupies this... I mean, it's very interesting that

the First World War was kind of in living memory when they made it but it was also firmly in living myth by then like any proper big historical event in this country all sorts of established things that were true about it

Gary Sheffield who's the guy at Wolverhampton who wrote Forgotten Victory he's made all sorts of and he's written Hague's biography. And he's, you know, loath to call him a revisionist of First World War history. But he finds, he says, you know, Blackadder, the problem is when you're trying to teach

First World War history is getting past Blackadder. You know, Stephen Fry saying we'll move, you know, the general melt ship will move forward an inch tomorrow and then we'll move back an inch today or whatever it is. And that that's what people really do think happened. And it can seem like a straw man that, oh, well, they saw Blackadder. So that's what people think of the First World War. But, you know, you and I both know history. History does not belong to the people who write history books.

They have they have 10 percent of the ownership of what of what history is history so often exists in in so much discourse that that it's the story you tell about yourselves as a country as much as as much as anything else or the kind of person you are reflects the kind of history you like and your view of world history is what kind of person you are and your values and all that sort of stuff and i I think Blackadder is such a powerful programme for shaping people's ideas of the First World War. And it wouldn't have been as powerful without the end. I was just about to say that, Thomas.

No, no, no. It's the last five minutes. Because it's a comedy programme daring to do something that most sitcoms never did, which is kill off all the characters. And I worked with the director who made that series. And he said that was one of those decisions where he said, this is what we should do. And it went right to the top of the BBC.

We can't do that. It's a comedy program. Don't be ridiculous. And they did it anyway. And then, of course, everyone in the brass at the BBC high-fived themselves for their brilliant creative decision but yes i mean yeah comedy is comedy is an excellent i mean i think you know i mean i'd much rather watch life of brian than gladiator to to get a sniff of what roman uh the roman empire might have been like well it's it's interesting that that um the uh the life of brian which i think is actually very like hello hello it's it's it's a parody of of a drama rather than of say you know i mean it's a parody of sort of stuff yeah and all that kind of stuff but it um we did we did an episode last week on empires yeah and um we got asked again and again kind of variations of what have the romans ever

done for us and on the whole debate about you know our empire's good things or bad things that is the line that always gets brought up and also whenever there's any kind of political factionalism it's always Judean people's front and those two lines have the kind of sticking power of you know any great drama they sum up incredible historical complexities in a kind of convenient shorthand that can then yes they're debated they're like they're like a meme on twitter you know that they sum the thing up bosh they you know and comedians live for a thing that um that lands that lands uh uh lands like that um you know if you can if you can just get one thing through like that you you've i mean the i mean i still think what i love about life of brian is that you know python's output up to them had been up to then a bit of them sort of you know

breaking breaking genres and uh and uh writing sketches without punch lines and and generally just showing what brilliant um comic minds they were thank you very much and then they what they do is they then feed a subject an actual subject into their uh mincer and out comes life of brian which is the most coherent thing with incredibly you know ideas hidden hidden in plain sight and all that sort of stuff that i think is really just a fantastic yeah and and the discussion of religion and holy grail as well yeah yeah holy grail as well yeah yeah holy grail which is incredible in kind of the structuring you know because we've done an episode on arthur as well and basically the whole theme of that was how it you know it's made up

from all kinds of different bits and the way in which holy grail just completely destructs deconstructs the whole thing and exactly that kind of it's brilliant yeah yeah yeah and it shows the best film about demonstrates that comedy can can you know, if you get it right, of course, you know, can shed as much light as any drama ever could. You know, a serious drama about King Arthur, whatever. But a comedy film that sort of finds it, you know, the Holy Hand Grenade is an incredibly funny idea. The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is an incredibly funny idea. Al, let me ask you this. Is there an extent to which though, I mean, you obviously think a lot about the recent history

of comedy and the history of comedy generally. But when we tell the recent history of comedy, is there a danger that we sometimes overemphasise things that comedians find funny? Or things that, as it were, cultural elites find funny? Rather than things that... You bet! So let me give you an example. If you were to compare the viewing figures

of The Young Ones, which obviously was very influential, and Heidi High, I mean, they're chalk and cheese. Heidi High was colossally more popular and arguably tells you more about what early 80s Britain found funny. Now, that may be distasteful to a lot of people because they think, well, Heidi High is rubbish and mainstream and Young Ones is much edgier and more interesting.

But wasn't the guy, Gladys Pugh, the one she was in love with? Yeah, Simon Cadell. The guy who runs the company. Simon Cadell. Yeah, he was a RAF pilot, wasn't he? So he was from the war. I think he was a... No, no, no.

Simon Cadell wasn't, no. He was a contemporary of Giles Brandreth, who was a friend of his. No no he know there simon goodell wasn't no he was a he was a contemporary of uh giles brandreth who's a friend of his no but the character he played the character yeah the character is a failed i think he's cambridge don or something isn't he he leaves academia to run a holiday camp yeah oh maybe that's i mean what what i'd say to you dominic is i like them both of course i mean i'm not saying you can't like them both but but but but yes well maybe but the story that we tell tends to emphasise edginess and pushing boundaries.

A novelty. Yes, shock of the new rather than the shock of the old, you know, which is that David Edgerton argument about technology, you know, that scooters designed in the 1930s are all over the world still,

but no one's interested in them. They're nowhere near as fascinating as anything. Well, I think, well, you know, I mean, I think if you watch the young ones now, and I haven't seen it in ages, and I remember that show being like bashed over the head with a sort of Technicolor laugh hammer. It was the most extraordinary thing to watch when I was 15 and is entirely responsible for me being interested

in comedy as much as as much as any other thing i think it might look as dated now as as it doesn't it doesn't i watched it i watched it last week oddly i watched the first series and you have nothing better to do than watch old series of the young ones it was so good i i well i suddenly discovered that i'd inadvertently been paying for brit box i obviously pressed the wrong button at some point so i thought well i might as well get something out of it so i'll just and i suddenly i was thinking exactly that what were the young ones as funny as i remembered it actually they were funnier and they were more scabrous and they were more shocking and they seemed so there was more going on than you might have noticed as

a yes yeah yes a lot more i thought it really held up although i think that i loved i loved hidey-hide as well i think i expect if i watched hidey-hide there'd be more going on than i realized as a kid too that there was a lot going on relationships and tensions and all that sort of stuff that you wouldn't wouldn't spot you know well i know i think you're i think dominic i think i think that's an a really good a really good question um and you're absolutely Dominic, I think that's a really good question. And you're absolutely right. I mean, the thing that's changed in broadcasting, of course,

is that we're talking about a time when there were four channels, max. And so you either watched Heidi High or you watched one at my TV. Yeah, but here's an interesting thing. Tom and I had a podcast about the 90s, and we were talking about the fragmentation of culture. So the 90s being the last point where you had a collective culture, popular culture. Yeah. And have we lost a collective comedic culture? Well, that's a that's a really interesting thing. in broadcasting that's happened in the last 30 years. I mean, and also that Dennis Norton said that when he started writing comedy after the war, it was dead easy to get going and to make an audience laugh because everyone had been through the same thing.

Everyone had been through the Second World War. So to they all had they all had an opinion on it and they all had some shared experience but they also had a big the big shared experience you know uh and so you could with assurance know that you if you wrote a joke about rationing uh that it would land with everyone one way or another that they'd all have some reaction to it and i think interestingly maybe we're about to enter a period of um uh uh that's a bit similar to that because we have all been through the same thing i mean obviously obviously what a lot of comics will think right whatever i do uh you know if there's an edinburgh fringes here there'll be a whole lot of people going, I'm absolutely not going to talk about bloody lockdown. I'm not going to mention it. I'm going to write about something else, something, anything else, because audiences were sick of lockdown.

They won't want to talk about it. But it may be that there needs to be a great, you know, safety valve letting out of letting off of steam that needs to happen comedically. I don't know. And I think i think but i think yes we definitely are much more it's much more comically diverse although we i mean you know the the one of the standard narratives that's doing the range you can't talk you can't joke about anything anymore the stuff you can joke about now that you couldn't joke about uh you know 20 years ago 40 years ago, 60 years ago, the explosion in subject matter and actually a loosening of stuff. There's only one or two things you can't joke about anymore, boys and girls, you know, is actually what it comes down to.

And the sheer range of subject matter approaches and angles and methods and styles it's like it's it's an infinite explosion but isn't that isn't that sort of sort of damaging to an extent that a society maybe needs to laugh at the same jokes laugh at the same things i mean obviously you're we're never going to get back to that world of the more common wise christ Christmas special where 30 million people have watched the same. But I think that's like looking at the 50s as a golden age of the nuclear family. That's the anomaly. There's only been a short period.

There's only 10 years, really, where radio comedy was enormous before TV came along, the 50s, when everyone listened to the same radio program. And then everyone watched the same TV program. And now, you know, everyone's on YouTube. I mean, so much of this is technological anyway. Back when there was Music Hall, not everyone was laughing at the same stuff because there was no means of transmission to create that idea of national jokes that we all understood. Actually, Al, there were much more regional jokes.

People wouldn't understand the jokes in London and Liverpool and Manchester. Or even each other. You know, Charlie Chaplin, when he's called as a witness in the Lake District before he goes to America, they think he's French because they can't understand what he's saying.

Al, Al, your mention of Dennis Norton. Yes. Can I just give a shout out to my friend Jamie Muir, whose dad, Frank Muir, wrote Dennis Norton. Yes. Can I just give a shout out to my friend Jamie Muir, whose dad, Frank Muir, wrote Dennis Norton. And together they wrote what must surely be the greatest line from any comedy about history. Carry on, Cleo. In for me.

In for me. In for me. In for me. They've all got it in for me. So that's for you, Jamie, if you're listening to this. I think we need to pull the curtain down here. We've, I guess, entertained you all enough. Al, thanks so much.

That was absolutely brilliant. We will be back next week. I can't remember what we're talking about. Oh, we're talking about Americanisation, aren't we, Dorman? We are. Yeah, we are. We're talking about how the world became American. And is it becoming un-American?

And is it becoming un-American? So we will see you then. Al, we are. We're talking about how the world became American. And is it becoming un-American? And is it becoming un-American? So we will see you then. Al, thanks so much. A total pleasure. Thanks, Al. Thanks, gents. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.