Deadpan Alley

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 418, 27 June 1947, Page 13

Deadpan Alley

Who is Chester, what is he, That all our hucks commend him? Has he got what Handley’s got Or shall we up and rend him? HESTER, to answer our first questicn, is Cheerful Charlie Chester, who airs his Civvy Street Rag from 2YA on Monday nights. At present the Rag doesn’t seem to me to be in the same street as ITMA, but fashions change in residential localities and it is possible that if Cheerful Charlie holds out for another two years his Civvy Street will be an even better address than Tomtopia. At present he seems somewhat ill-at-ease in his rehab. suit. It is seldom possible, in a radio show, to come near to real humour. The radio comedian’s deadpan cannot be his fortune, and it is a long and difficult business to build up a comic personality on vocal mannerisms alone, So the majority of our radio shows depend, as Stand Easy is forced to do, almost entirely on wit. It may be good wit (some of Cheerful Charlie’s show was very bright), but it strikes no spark of human affection in the listener, Tommy Handley of course began in the same way, but by staying the course long enough he was able to build himself and his stooges into characters in their own right, and endow them with an illusion of humanity and more than an illusion of human frailty (or else why do we follow Chinstrap’s progress so cancernedly?) Chester fans feel confident that their Charlie will be another listener’s dream come true.