"Just Ordinary People"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 344, 25 January 1946, Page 9

"Just Ordinary People"

NE of the amazing things, when you come to think of it, is the popularity, in radio entertainment, of people who are neither handsome nor beautiful, and sometimes not particularly gifted in the musical sense ‘either. For example, George Formby. For example, Flanagan and Allen. For example (and this is what set me thinking of it) the Hulberts. Who would credit Jack, Claude, or Cicely with any extraordinary good looks, or maintain that they can even sing in tune? Yet theirs are among the mostloved records, and. you can always get a chuckle out of them even if you've heard them .doing the same thing a hundred times before in exactly the same way. I suppose the secret lies in the fact that they aren’t especially gifted with faces or voices; we recall Jack’s jutting chin, Claude’s receding ditto, Cicely’s homely features, we hear them singing rather on the flat side and making no attempt to take the high notes, and we arte lulled into a comfortable sense of superiority. We think, "After dil, they’re just ordinary people like me; you don’t have to be gifted to do that sort of thing-why, I could do it standing on my head!" Just try (even right side up) and the whole thing becomes a mystery once more; comedians are born, not made, and evidently the only successful way to become one is to choose your parents carefully. ss