Peter Viney's Blog

Fawlty Towers and Tall Poppies

The tall poppy syndrome goes back to Herodotus Histories. It means cutting down anything that stands above the crowd. John Cleese is quite literally a tall poppy at 6 foot 4 inches (1.96 metres).

The BBC had just withdrawn the episode The Germans from online platforms. At the same time Little Britain was removed and Netflix were removing Gone With The Wind. These are said to be responses to the Black Lives Matter movement, following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

ASH SARKAR: Let’s be clear: wherever these demands to remove episodes came from, it wasn’t the Black Lives Matter movement. Not one sign, chant or t-shirt even mentioned a British comedy show. Much was said about Shukri Abdi, Belly Mujinga, Julian Cole, Sean Rigg, Mark Duggan and Smiley Culture – but not an awful lot about Basil Fawlty, and still less about Major Gowen. In addition, UKTV have yet to explain why the episode has been taken down, though many have assumed it’s to do with the racist rant Major Gowen goes on about the West Indies cricket team, which had been edited out on repeats for years. But Middle England never misses an opportunity to huff and puff itself into having a coronary, so here we are, seriously talking about a TV channel people only watch when they’re circling the drain and hoping to die before Countdown comes on.

I’m glad that Black Lives Matter wasn’t attacking TV comedy, but it is distressing that a discussion of racism gets such an offhand and cruelly ageist remark.

In contrast to our current government’s policies, Ash, OLD LIVES MATTER TOO. We visit a care home and they treasure Countdown. No, they don’t want to watch the comedy shows of 2020.

Fawlty Towers

Do not fear, Saturday brought this news:

BBC NEWS online: An episode of sitcom Fawlty Towers removed from a streaming site for containing “racial slurs” is to be reinstated.  John Cleese had attacked the decision to remove the episode as “stupid,” as well as taking a swipe at those who take a revisionist view of history in the context of the Black Lives Matter debate.

(Two days later, on Sunday, The Fawlty Towers Box Set is #1 in every category on amazon  uk)

FAWLTY TOWERS, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, is arguably the best TV sitcom of all time. I say arguably. I discussed it at length with one of its directors, Bob Spiers. Bob directed my Grapevine One ELT video comedies, and on a cold December shoot we spent much time in my car while cameras and lights were set, as I had a then rare CD player and we shared a love of The Traveling Wilburys. We also spent long sessions in the bar in Clifton in Bristol dissecting comedy (though we never went near the infamous statue of Edward Colston, nor knew about it). Bob reckoned Fawlty Towers was the second-greatest comedy of all time, and put Dad’s Army first. He also directed  The Miser’s Hoard episode of that, as well as episodes of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, The Comic Strip Presents, Are You Being Served, The Goodies and later directed Absolutely Fabulous, French & Saunders, Bottom and A Bit of Fry and Laurie. Bob knew his comedy. His point was that most sitcoms run far too long and peter out. Fawlty Towers wisely stopped at two exquisite series, but Dad’s Army retained quality for nine series with a large cast, and that is rare.

There are three possible offended parties in the offending episode, The German family, the major and Manuel.

Basil goose steps

I can’t think the portrayal of Germans is offensive. I’ve watched it with Germans and Poles and both found it funny, though I will say the Poles were crying with laughter at Basil’s line You started it! You invaded Poland!  The Germans are a pleasant family and Basil’s antics remind us that Britain still thought about World War Two incessantly.

The Major

Then there’s the Major, who had an altercation over Cricket when his companion had referred to the Indian team as ‘niggers’ and the Major is incensed, because the West Indians are niggers. Indians are wogs. I found it funny. The Major doesn’t know what day of the week it is. He’s stupid and represents the old Imperial attitudes. I went to a boy’s grammar school where teachers referred to us as ‘behaving like street Arabs’ as well as ‘Lazy Arabs’ and ‘Dirty Arabs’ and ‘Lounging around the playing field like sandboys.’ I was never quite sure what a sandboy was, but did see it in a comic referring to Pacific islanders. To me the Major personifies those old bastards. I identify with those he’s maligning, not with him.

JOHN CLEESE: The Major was an old fossil left over from decades before. We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them. If they can’t see that, if people are too stupid to see that, what can one say? A lot of the people in charge now at the BBC just want to hang onto their jobs. If a few people get excited they pacify them rather than standing their ground as they would have done 30 or 40 years ago.
The Age, Australia

It’s 19 seconds long. That’s all. It’s on YouTube.

The other is Manuel. Andrew Sachs’ Manuel is a great comic creation. A perfect clown, the classic “Little Man” beset by the world. Chaplinesque. He has a Spanish accent. When they showed it dubbed in Spain, he became Italian. He’s a funny foreign waiter whatever.

Andrew Sachs as Manuel

I discussed it in Spain (Madrid, significantly) and a Spanish woman told me she enjoyed the English version. I asked about Manuel, and she said it was funny because he’s from Barcelona, and Barcelona considers itself sophisticated and superior to the rest of Spain. She was at bilingual level and said it was like having a stupid English waiter with a daft rural accent who said he came from Tunbridge Wells. OK. But how about the response in Catalonia? I have no idea. All I can do is see whether comic English people in American TV and film offend me. No, they don’t. I do get mildly annoyed if they do a Dick Van Dyke and get the accent wrong, but otherwise I’m OK with a Canadian, Mike Myers, as Austin Powers and his ilk.

I find the American habit of casting Brits as villains amusing. Apparently, many American actors worry about image when playing the baddie, and the Brits cash in by taking the part. It IS a PC thing because some hyphenated Americans get stroppy about characterisations, and there is no hyphenated English-American. Like the Brits, Italian-Americans just go with it, happily playing Mafiosi stereotypes.

‘Allo ‘Allo

Manuel leads us to ‘Allo ‘Allo and French and German comedy characters. There’s a lot going on there. I love the resistance leaders and the British airmen’s exchange of accents … all in English, but she has to go into Advanced RP for them to understand her, while when they speak mangled English, they are speaking French. When they disguise themselves as Frenchmen, the English put on berets and wear strings of onions around their neck. french people might find that puzzling, but when I was a kid, once or twice a year the Johnny Onion Man would turn up from France on his bike festooned with strings of onions which were sold door to door. That must have been widespread, at least in Southern England.

Funny Englishmen too

Shakespeare was taking the micky out of the French, the Welsh, the Irish and the Scots. French and Spanish comedy does not avoid funny English people. Does it offend?

I’ll come back to Fawlty Towers. 

Little Britain

 The other “withdrawn” TV series is Little Britain. I watched it perplexed and I never laughed once. I never found it funny but I did with many others adopt the catchphrase Computer says no. After decades of writing small ELT sitcoms, I have a large collection and I bought Little Britain Series One on DVD to see if I could work out why I failed to find it funny.

David Walliams and Matt Lucas seem sanguine about its demise, saying they wouldn’t do something like that now. David Walliams did one of our favourite recent sitcoms, Big School and we have seen both of them play Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Walliams in the Michael Grandage Season with Sheridan Smith as Titania in 2013, and Lucas in the BBC production in 2016.I rate both of them, in spite of my dislike of Little Britain. Keep the word Tall Poppy in mind. David Walliams’ children’s books are mega sellers, and the TV versions adorn the Christmas TV prime time schedules. Walliams is a VERY tall poppy.

I just looked Little Britain up on Wiki and started scrolling through the long list of characters. Vicki Pollard takes us straight to the Colson Statue debate as a Bristolian chav. In retrospect, I DID find Vicki Pollard funny. But when you read the list of characters, I have to admire Walliams and Lucas who sprayed every conceivable sector of society with stereotypical portrayals. They hit every -IST on the list.

Desiree De Vere (David Walliams). I don’t think you can argue that one.

The main complaint about Little Britain was the bizarre black face character Desiree De Vere, played by Walliams. She’s massively fat, bald and enjoys naked wrestling with another fat character, Bubbles. She is an ex Miss Botswana. So the portrayal is potentially racist, fattist, homophobic and as a bald person I missed all that but was reduced to tears by the baldness as a joke. But hands up. That really is over the line.

Matt Lucas manages to get  a “Four” for offending four sectors in Daffyd Thomas, a gay Welsh character with offensive body piercings and SM clothing. Is that character, ‘the only gay in the village’ a key to their approach? He desperately wants to be controversial, but the other inhabitants of the village find him totally unremarkable.

In the end, the main feature of the show was that it was offensive to everybody. No sector spared … transvestites, gays, lesbians, the religious, techies, politicians, actors, teachers, counsellors, sports persons, psychiatrists, romantic novelists, Tories, chavs, the racist middle class women at the Women’s Institute, the Neighbourhood Watch, Scots, Irish, Americans, Russians, Thai brides, the police, black people, fat people.

It would be hard not to find a pressure group who might not complain about the series … but ‘blackface’ was the one that pinned it. Or was it?

It Ain’t Half Hot Mum

This has not been re-broadcast for years being withdrawn by the BBC in 2012, while other Perry & Croft comedies Dad’s Army (a few days don’t go by without an episode appearing on the broadcast schedule, often at prime time), Hi-de-Hi and You Rang My Lord have been broadcast. I have box sets of all of them.

DAVID CROFT: It’s without doubt the funniest series David Croft and I wrote. It’s also the show we’re not allowed to talk about.
Daily Express, 2012

Windsor Davis as the Sergeant Major, Michael Bates as Ranji

In 2012, the BBC announced:

The censors feel the undertone of racism and catty remarks about different races and religions has no place on BBC channels. When the series was aired in the Seventies it was a different time, and the notions and sympathies of modern cultural Britain were a long way away.

Both David Croft and Jimmy Perry had worked in Entertainment units (Concert Parties) in India in the closing stages of World War Two. The portrayal has accuracy … their troop included Kenneth Williams (who inspired ‘Gloria’ Beaumont) and Stanley Baxter (Gunner Mackintosh). The reason that It Ain’t Half Hot Mum has been banished from schedules is Rangi Ram, The Bearer. They cast Michael Bates in the role with brownface make-up. He was a lovely actor, and did it very well … BUT it was a white man playing an Indian, though not as offensively as Peter Sellers to me. It ran from 1974 to 1981.

In 1974 they might have had a small choice of genuine Indians for the role. By 1981 it should have been easy. Many Indian actors are quite willing to play comedy caricatures … look at Goodness Gracious Me or The Kumars at 42. Sanjeev Bhaskar could have done the character and it would possibly have avoided the chop by the BBC, but he was only eleven when it started airing. The character of Ranji was funny because he was so proud of being British and complained about the Indians, like the Char Wallah. I have discussed this one too. Some have said that Gunner Beaumont’s drag artist was potentially homophobic, or that Bombardier Solomon’s Jewish character was offensive. You’d have to try hard to be offended by either, I think.

A load of poofs … The Concert Party

YouTube lists some other possibles for its demise, focussing on Sergeant-Major Williams (Windsor Davies) using the word poof and I’ve never seen such a load of poofery in my life!  They say that was an insult to gays and homophobic. I’d argue that. We were called a bunch of poofs at school for being mildly reluctant to do cross-country runs in a raging thunderstorm, heavy snow or the hottest day recorded in England up to that time. We were called poofs, or cream puffs, because our reluctance was regarded as effeminate or namby-pamby (another words used by our sports masters). I would argue that it does not necessarily or exclusively mean ‘homosexual’ – though it is used to refer to homosexuals too. In fact while the Sergeant-Major regards the entire troop as poofs, he also directs it to the Oxford-educated pianist, Lardy-Da Gunner Graham and the rationale is that Gunner Graham has an RP accent. That’s enough for the Sergeant-Major. Also, the BBC never mentioned this aspect back in 2012.

I’d be sure that the brownface killed it. But quietly … I don’t recall a fuss. It just became an un-programme.

Benny Hill

There’s a story. The first time I ever saw a TV I was about five on my aunt’s houseboat on The Thames. It was Benny Hill. I have a certain local pride in Benny because he went to my school. Sort of.

In the war King Edward’s School in Southampton was evacuated to Bournemouth and shared premises with Bournemouth School for Boys on a shift system, and Benny Hill came with them from Southampton. I might have sat at a desk he had carved rude stuff on. Maybe it was Benny who started changing the titles of the school library books to A Tale of Two Titties. 

When we got a TV, around 1957, the Benny Hill Show was the top programme. He moved from the BBC to Thames Television in 1969 and stayed there until 1989. I was reliably informed that the Benny Hill Show was sold all over the world and was the biggest earner by a mile for Thames.

In 1987, Ben Elton attacked the programme on air and in Q magazine, stating that The Benny Hill Show was single-handedly responsible for the incidences of rape in England during the period in question, and also suggested the programme incited other acts of violence against women. Somewhat over the top. Much of Benny’s humour was classic seaside postcard stuff. His songs were always part of his act. Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West) was a #1 record in 1971.

‘Are you getting enough?’ was the advertising slogan used by the Milk Marketing Board to promote milk sales.

He said you wanted pasturised
Coz pasturised is best
She says Ernie I’ll be happy
If it comes up to me chest

British Seaside postcards often feature milkmen. Try Googling it. While the BBC were fast at banning Je t’aime and Lola, Benny Hill breezed through to the top spot with what we considered cheeky rather than disgusting.

Muttering campaigns about sexism centred on Benny and his ‘Hills Angels,’ scantily dressed women who chased him around. Everyone liked to speculate on bachelor Benny, who could be seen doing his own shopping on foot, carrier bags in hand, around Southampton. Members of Hills Angels have sold their tales to the tabloids. No one seems to have disliked him, and according to one I read, his only sexual interest involved both social distancing and naked girls. Work it out.

In 1989 Thames decided not to renew his contract. Without question he was the biggest star of the lot at the station, the Tallest Poppy.  He had just returned from a triumphant Cannes Festival. As coincidence will have it, he was cancelled by John Howard Davies, then Head of Light entertainment at Thames, but also the first director of Fawlty Towers. According to Wiki he said:

DAVIES: The audiences were going down, the programme was costing a vast amount of money, and he (Hill) was looking a little tired.

Worldwide sales were still extremely lucrative, even if they weren’t going up. But Davies had the power to cut down the tallest poppy and used it.  He later said:

DAVIES: It’s very dangerous to have a show on ITV that doesn’t appeal to women, because they hold the purse strings, in a sense.

Benny Hill was offered $6 million to continue with a US Network (that’s how weak the show’s sales were then), but decided to retire.

Mike Yarwood

Mike Yarwood got axed by Thames around the same time. His career as an impressionist had stalled because his political impressions of Wilson and Heath had gone into the mists of time but he was still doing them in 1985. He was probably “washed up” but he had been a very tall poppy. I once had a meeting at Thames and he was in the canteen, being ignored by all and sundry. The person I was with greeted him warmly and he came over, stared at me, smiled, shook my hand and said, ‘Wonderful to see you again! It’s been far too long.’ He was covering his bets – I was sitting with an influential person, so I might have been important. His eyes showed he hadn’t a clue who I might be. But if we had met, it would have been rude to have forgotten me. I just smiled and said, ‘Great to see you too.’ I was careful not to say “Mike” because then he would have had to reveal he had no idea of my name. I didn’t mention that I had met him many years earlier, when I was a stagehand, but we never spoke. I empathized with him. A lonely figure, as Benny Hill became.

The rant bit

This is where we come to the tall poppy syndrome. People in quite lowly positions, or in unrecognized positions in the media or in publishing can find themselves with surprising power over “tall poppies.” With a little PC whispering campaign, a collection of junior staff can bring down the star, in a way they can’t bring down their boss. The boss will also enjoy his power to snap off a household name.

John Cleese was behind two of the BBC’s most iconic programmes, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers. He’s also become curmudgeonly and does not tolerate arseholes gladly. That puts him in the firing line for me.

He added on Twitter:

 JOHN CLEESE: The BBC is now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrats. It used to have a large sprinkling of people who’d actually made programmes. Not any more. So BBC decisions are made by persons whose main concern is not losing their jobs. That’s why they’re so cowardly and gutless and contemptible.

ELT Publishing

I’ll have to be careful what I say, but it certainly happened to me. I was one of Oxford University Press’s best-selling authors for nearly three decades. We fell out. Mike Yarwood came back into my mind at an ELT conference in Dubai in 2010. I was there with Garnet Education to promote my Fast Track To Reading book. Karen and I had got involved with writing a course in American English for two years (which was aborted), then we were completely tied up with the eighty video scripts over ten levels for My Oxford English which kept us away from conferences. I’d been so invisible for four years that, yes, people did come up and say Didn’t you used to be Peter Viney? 

I wandered past the Pearson stand, and chatted to the reps and editors who I had met elsewhere in the world. I stopped for a chat at the Cambridge stand. I never wrote for them, but I’d met some of the people before. On to Macmillan who had copies of Survival English, my series for them. You see, if you’re an ELT rep, you look at the conference programme and ensure you have copies of books you’ve published by any of the speakers. You might sell a few, but it also aligns your publisher with the “names” at the conference. So over to OUP. Not one of my titles on display or even under the table. I was warmly greeted by a male editor I knew who came over and chatted. I’d met several of those standing there. Not one chose to speak to me.

I travelled a lot with OUP and enjoyed meals with editors and reps. I know full-well what was said about other successful OUP authors … particular ire was held for the authors of two hugely successful series (one pre-Streamline, one post-Streamline) who never or rarely travelled or promoted (that was from the reps), plus the authors of an ageing grammar book who moved to Ireland where authors were not taxed, and a famous academic author who it was alleged had his Post grad students write his books.

We were accused of sexism and racism at various times to our faces, and undoubtedly much more often behind our backs. The blurb for Grapevine publicity said that we had the “common touch” and I also know of those who said snootily, “Because they’re common.”

We used humour about men and women that is universal. I’ll stand by that today.

Racism was by default- not enough ethnic faces. I had this one at a lecture at the Institute of Education. It was galling because Bernie Hartley and I made a point of this back in 1978. OUP pointed out that cartoons were a somewhat dodgy area (though we lampooned Diana Ross and Mohamed Ali and had cartoons) so it was down to photos in the Everyday Conversations. These had to be done on the budget using OUP staff, not models, back then, and that’s just the staff they had. The balance was redressed in American Streamline, New American Streamline and our later books. Not entirely – we asked for a BAME actor for our first two videos and was told ‘no’ because Asian markets would not like it. We had Jaye Griffith for the next three.

I got on very well with reps, and would still count several as friends (and if they read this, dinner is on me this time if you’re ever in the area). Readers of my ELT “Dart Travis” novels Greek Affairs and Japanese Affairs have expressed surprise that the sales reps point of view comes out more than the authors.

Some editors were very good friends, especially in the early days, and everyone from the video department. Others I would class in the category that would disparage me and Karen as vociferously as I heard them disparage other authors.

Tall poppy syndrome.

So …

John Cleese
David Walliams
Matt Lucas
Benny Hill
Mike Yarwood

I don’t expect anyone had it in for a tall poppy with It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. That was just a victim of misjudged casting. A pity. It was good.