HOME-GROWN COMEDY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 492, 26 November 1948, Page 15

HOME-GROWN COMEDY

Local Humorist in New 2ZB Serial

ONSIDERING the smallness of its population, New Zealand has produced a reasonable number of musicians, singers and other entertainers — but singularly few comedians, Visitors from overseas have expressed surprise that almost every item. of humour that is broadcast in New Zealand is on imported recordings. It has been suggested that the majority of New Zealanders are too bashful to be intentionally funny in public, yet, as Stuart Campbell, editor of the London Sunday Pictorial, remarked to The Listener some time ago, there must be in all the cities and towns natural comedians needing only experience and encouragement to become good entertainers, Such encouragement is, of course, always offered by the NZBS if the material is promising. Listeners to 2ZB will be interested to hear that a Wellingtonian, John Morris (who was one of the station’s original broadcasters, and became known before the war as Crazy Clarrie in various quiz and comedy sessions) is to present a novel type of programme at 8.45 pm. on Tuesday, November 30, Morris is somewhat unusual in that, unlike a good many professional furiny men, he writes

his own scripts. His method is to take a series of ordinary everyday events, familiar to every family man, give them a comic twist, peg them to a central character called the Admiral (a. precocious tomcat) and present them in suave and pedantic tones vaguely reminiscent of Gillie Potter. In a sketch called A Man is No Better Than His Family Tee, scheduled for Tuesday evening, Morris will, touch lightly on his Aunt Sarah who turns off the radio in the most exciting part of a serial, and turns it on again to hear the commercial announcement. He will explain how his Uncle Ben, not noticing that a horse was attached to a rope he filched from a neighbouring farmer, subsequently spent so long learning various trades that on his reappearance in society he displayed a permanent distaste for-any kind of work. And he will suggest that far too much fuss was made of The Lost Week-end in comparison with the case of his Uncle Clarence who still cannot account for the months of April and May last. These are just a few of the characters listeners will meet in this programme, one of a series which will probably be heard from other commercial stations later.