Tag Archives: Benny Hill

Comedy of the Good Old Days

On the 18th of September the Forum held its second meeting of the new season.

The speaker was Trevor Moody who travelled from Huddersfield to entertain the members with a video presentation titled Comedy of the Good Old Days.

This featured 13 extracts from comedy performances from the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s which Trevor described as the golden age of comedy. The oldest performance was George Formby singing When I’m Cleaning Windows in 1940. This was followed by many famous names such as Morecambe and Wise, Benny Hill, Dave Allan and Larry Grayson and extracts from situation comedies such as Dad’s Army,Some Mothers Do Have’em and Carry On Camping.

The most recent extract was a very old Spike Milligan receiving an award shortly before his death.

The Forum’s Deputy Chairman Duncan Verity proposed a Vote of Thanks to Trevor Moody for an entertaining presentation.

Monologues and Comic Verse

On the 26th of October the meeting was chaired by the Forum Vice Chairman Duncan Verity.

Speaker Finder John Spinner introduced our guest speaker Bill Baker, one of the presenters on Tempo FM, whose talk was titled Monologues and Comic Verse.  Bill related the history of the monologue from its popularity in the Victorian Music Hall, entertainment for serving soldiers in wartime and the folk clubs of the nineteen sixties to the present day where it regularly appears at funerals and weddings.

His interest developed from when he was involved in the production of a talking magazine for the blind which included a monologue in each issue.  Bill read a number of examples from various famous monologists (a term invented by Dame Thora Hird who performed many monologues herself).  The authors included Les Barker who was nominated for the post of Poet Laureate.  As his monologues are best performed in a Lancashire dialect it is understandable why he was rejected.  We also heard examples from Rob Wilton, Benny Hill and Pam Ayres.

Duncan Verity thanked Bill for a very entertaining morning.