40M Englishmen can be wrong

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 13

40M Englishmen can be wrong

By

A. K. GRANT

Turning the powerful searchlight of my critical powers upon “The Larry Grayson Show” I must say that I was both staggered and nauseated to come across a programme which consisted of absolutely nothing but penile double entendre. The result of watching “The Larry Grayson Show” is that I am resolved never to make a joke about a certain masculine appendage again. Don’t get me wrong; I am all in favour of camp

humour and believe Kenneth Williams to be one of the funniest comedians alive. But Grayson’s style of comedy is what one might call base camp, depending upon an endless series of jokes about vicars whose weathercocks have dropped off and poetry admirers who have a soft spot for a Longfellow.

You can’t call it camp humour because there isn’t anything funny about it. The extraordinary thing about Grayson is that in

Bntain he is now the No. 1 comic, having shot ahead of Bruce Forsyth. This says something about the state of Britain, although I am not sure what. The British have always loved a cheeky chappie, witness Max Miller, but Miller’s double entendres were robustly dirty, where Grayson’s are merely queasy. The fact that Grayson can be so successful proves, if proof were needed, that not only has the sun set on the British Empire, but the

lights are going out all over British comedy. Grayson’s only comic technique, apart from the knowing aside, which I must admit occasionally does work, is to stare blankly at the camera whenever anybody says anything sufficiently obvious to support a tired old double meaning. This means that the

programme consists in equal parts of feeds supplying Grayson with pathetic double entendres, and of Grayson staring blankly

at the camera while they sink in.

Not that many of them do sink in; they are too feeble for that. Most of them float scummily on the surface of consciousness like lint on the surface of the water the sheets have just been washed in.

Grayson’s show is certainly all of a piece. His chief guests were a pop group called “Our Kid,” consisting of four pretty, chubby small boys with winsome faces and piping trebles. They must have brought a tear to the wrinkled cheek of many an ageing pederast.

The worst moment in the programme was at the end, where Grayson tearfully assured us that he loved us alk I realise this shows how sexually insecure I am, but the thought of being loved by Larry Grayson makes me feel distinctly odd-

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