Keep Calm and Carry On Laughing

’Allo ’Allo by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft

Norwich Theatre Royal, 1996

On the face of it, World War II was no laughing matter – especially if, like the cast of ’Allo ’Allo, you were stuck in occupied France. On the other hand, in times of trial what better way is there to keep morale high than by having a really good giggle? Luckily for the nation’s sanity, the conflict produced some of the best comedy stars these islands have ever seen. Here are just a few of those who helped keep British spirits up during the darkest days of the war – and after.

Arthur Askey

With the stature and bounce of an irrepressible third-former, Big Hearted Arthur Askey had a quip for every occasion and a novelty song to finish every act. Irrepressible and enthusiastic, he became a national star through the hugely influential radio show Band Waggon wherein he was partnered by the antithetically tall, aloof and snooty Richard ‘Stinky’ Murdoch. Their weekly antics proved so popular that the show had to be moved from its Sunday evening slot as vicars protested it was affecting attendance in church. On film the pair starred in the wartime comedy The Ghost Train by Arnold (‘Private Godfrey’ in Dad’s Army) Ridley. A song about a busy bee was Askey’s biggest hit, and “Hello, playmates”, “Before your very eyes” and “Ay thang yow” among his catchphrases. He died as old as the century, unhappily after losing both legs to gangrene, in 1982.

Sid Field

Sid “What a performance!” Field was born in 1904, appropriately enough on April Fool’s Day, but it took him twenty years of touring to become an overnight success. The 1943 revue Strike a New Note was the show that finally brought the breakthrough, and two further highly successful successors later, Field was being hailed as the funniest man who ever lived. There was a sympathetic, gentle side to his small cast of characters that endeared him to an ecstatic public. In the seven brief years he spent at the top, Field was unequalled in his ability to make an audience fall in love with him while simultaneously weeping with laughter. When he died in 1950 at the age of 45, the nation felt it had lost a close friend.

Flanagan and Allen

Bud and Chesney were physical opposites whose characters complemented each other perfectly. Whether together as a pair or as part of the anarchically zany Crazy Gang, Flanagan and Allen could not only have them rolling in the aisles with mirth, but could bring a tear to the eye with a series of deceptively simple sentimental songs. These, penned in large part by Flanagan himself, sold millions: Underneath the Arches, Strolling, The Umbrella Man and Dreaming are just a few of the hits Britons sang to each other throughout the war, along with the classic Run Rabbit Run. At times near the knuckle in their stage act, they were almost unique in being particularly requested by their royal fans not to tone down the vulgarity in their Command Performances. Allen retired early for health reasons, but Flanagan went on for many more years both solo and in company with the Crazy Gang.

George Formby

George Formby looked like a startled rabbit, was not a great teller of jokes, and had a broad Wigan accent. On the other hand he could strum a mean ukelele, and it was this along with his cheerful optimistic demeanour and the endless supply of wry, slightly risqué songs that made his fame and fortune. He was not a threat to women so they wanted to be his mother, and not being a threat to men either, husbands and fathers could relax and laugh along at him. The titles of his wartime films are themselves sound bites of Britain at the time, redolent with cosiness: Let George Do It, Come On George (which could frankly do with a comma), Bell Bottom George and, borrowing the star’s catchphrase, Turned Out Nice Again. George Formby was good for morale because the message of his films was if someone like that could make a success of his life and end up with the girl, there must be hope for everyone.

Tommy Handley

Tommy Handley was the fast-talking patter-man around whom the comic absurdities of radio’s It’s That Man Again revolved. By 1944, a staggering forty per cent of the population were tuning in to ITMA, and no doubt joining in with its every catchphrase from “I don’t mind if I do” to the immortal Mrs Mopp’s “Can I do you now, sir?” Handley’s uncanny ability to ad-lib jokes about the day’s news also added topicality to the list of the show’s strengths and at the height of its popularity, the star was receiving around 40,000 fan letters a year. He died just three days before his 55th birthday in 1949.

Max Miller

The original Cheeky Chappie got his patter from the fast-talking street vendors of the East End, his suits from some nightmare bookie’s outfitters, and his jokes from two books, the ‘White’ and the ‘Blue’. Guess which was the most popular. Constantly chiding his audience, particularly the women, for laughing at the suggestive lines he had just fed them, he wooed, cajoled and transported his listeners like few others could. Vulgarity might have been his stock in trade, but so slickly was it delivered that, though he was banned from several venues for allegedly overstepping the mark, in 1937 the Royal Variety Show set the seal on his fortunes. A brash and breezy personality on stage, a stingy, more difficult man off, by the time he died in the early sixties, Max Miller had become the highest-paid variety artist Britain had ever seen. There’ll never be another.

Frank Randle

A hugely popular Northern comedian, Randle was earthy, grotesque, and unashamedly basic. With material usually centring around drink or sex or both, he would ramble comfortably with a pint of ale at his elbow, shocking and delighting his audience in equal parts. Often difficult to work with, he would sometimes forget to turn up for his own shows. Still, his audiences were prepared to wait. Southerners found him less sympathetic than his fellow North Countrymen, but his unique brand of rambling shambolic comedy proved particularly popular in the early years of the war, when similarly dazed and confused citizens were being forcibly flung into service life. The famous dentures came out for the last time in 1957.

Sir George Robey

In 1900 Robey had been one of the first music hall comedians to appear on film in a short called The Rats. By the time the war came he had made many more of them, becoming along the way one of the country’s most popular variety entertainers, the self-styled ‘Prime Minister of Mirth’. A dignified comic who influenced the later comedy stylings of the likes of Frankie Howerd, he would frequently exhort his audience “Pray temper your hilarity.” Although he liked to alternate between comedy, pantomime dames and more ambitious ‘straight’ roles, his finest hour on film came in 1944 as Falstaff in Olivier’s memorable Henry V. He was 75 years of age and, appropriately enough, it earned him a knighthood.

Tommy Trinder

“If it’s laughter you’re after, Trinder’s the name” was the less-than-modest opening to Tommy Trinder’s act, but he was so fast on his feet, glibly ad-libbing as he went, that he never had any trouble delivering what he promised. Punchy of style, grinning toothily with that implausibly long chin thrust aggressively forward, he was the smart-alec barrow-boy made good, one of that growing breed of common men wartime audiences took to their hearts as one of their own. Practically a permanent fixture in the West End, he made several films for Ealing Studios which might have been funnier if he hadn’t had to stick rigidly to the script. In later years he became both chairman of Fulham Football Club and compere of Sunday Night at the London Palladium, thereby neatly managing to indulge his favourite pastimes both on stage and off. By the end of the fifties he was Britain’s top TV star and his pre-eminence was confirmed by the film he made which took its title from his famous catchphrase “You lucky people!” He died in 1989 at the age of 80.

Robb Wilton

He said “I’ll punch your head.” I said “Whose?” He said “Yours.”

I said “Mine?” He said “Yes.” I said “Oh.”

He said “Want a fight?” I said “Who?” He said “You.”

I said “Me?” He said “Yes.” I said “No.”

So we then got to words…

Robb Wilton, who wrote all his own material, was as big a draw on radio as he had been in the music halls. Yet while the scripts and his delivery of them in a comfortable Liverpool accent were in a league all of their own, you really had to catch him live to see him at his best – worriedly sucking his little finger, or rubbing an anguished hand over his wrinkled little face.

Robb – real name Smith – Wilton hailed from Everton and began his stage career at the old Theatre Royal in Garston. He met his wife Florence Palmer on tour in 1903 and their marriage lasted happily until her death some fifty-three years later. “Without her I would never have made it to the top,” he said. They were acting in melodramas at the time, but when audience tastes began to change, it was Florence who encouraged Robb to try his luck in music hall. She gave him his first ideas, suggested characters, and appeared in sketches with him as required.

In his early days he was billed as ‘The Confidential Comedian’ which hints at his later stage persona, but so low down the playbill did he appear that “I shared a line with the bioscope”. Then while performing at the Leeds City Varieties (later to become famous as the venue for TV’s The Good Old Days) he was seen by Tom Sherwood, owner of the Opera House and the Empire chain of theatres in Wakefield. Recognising quality when he saw it, Sherwood arranged for Robb to headline a tour of twenty halls throughout the North East. The tour began at Stockton Hippodrome and before it was over the comic had landed his first London bookings.

His bungling authority figures were endearingly fallible in a peculiarly English way. His famous Fireman sketch (“Can you keep it going will we get there?”) was a staple of his act for many years, in an age when the same material could often last a comic their lifetime. During the war his Magistrate and Home Guard characterisations did much to boost morale, while in addition his distinctive monologues in verse with the sketchiest of piano accompaniments became his much-copied but never-equalled trademark.

After sixty years in the business Robb Wilton died, just before he could retire, in 1957.