….as bum reviews go, it’s a step up from Greil Marcus’s “What is this shit?”
There’s something satisfying about reading a review which is a proper drubbing, and there can’t be many people more deserving of one than the preternaturally talentless comedy racist Leigh Francis.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/mar/11/leigh-francis-review-london-palladium
Another thing: I can’t imagine anything worse than having to sit through stuff like this for a living. Derek and his Jayne Mansfield duties was a breeze in comparison.
What about Clive and Winston’s bucket? Everything to do with this guy has looked shit. I never got “Bo, Selecta” or “Keith Lemon”, either. Just oafish rubbish. But obviously someone likes it. I DISKARD THEM.
I diskard Stewart Lee.
definitive student w anchor. Aged 55. Tony Hancock was dead by 44.
Unfortunate as if he’d made it to 48 he would have died at home
From memory, wasn’t John Peel’s definition of the “nadir of western civilisation” a Radio 1 Roadshow where one DJ and a womble competed to beat another DJ and a womble in a speedboat race?
Hated the Wombles. Why couldn’t they all drown? Where’s water when you need it? Too busy saving gay whales, no doubt.
“Now could that be construed as some radical’s views or some liberals’ wish?”
Actually Moose, according to my copy of the Observer Book of 70s Mammals, wombles are surprisingly strong swimmers, probably because spending the days picking up crisp packets builds up their upper body strength.
Fire up Woody Woodmansey’s U-Boat!
It’s done bugger all for mine.
No Wombles: no Katie Melua.
I’d save Chris Spedding…
And Steeleye Span and Clem Cattini.
I would have saved Robin Le Mesurier but alas he’s no longer with us.
Interesting – I had no idea that they were inside those other Womble costumes…
I think Steeleye just did a one-off appearance on TOTP.
Yup, had some linkage with Mike Batt and did a favour as they were on that week. The act after was Queen, so if there was more time between them Freddie could’ve been Uncle Bulgaria
In the context of 1970s TotP I don’t want to know what “did a favour” might mean.
Not as risqué as you think.
From Batt on Facebook.
STEELEYE SPAN BECOME THE WOMBLES FOR A DAY
A bit from my unpublished autobiog, found on FB memories:
I was working on “All Around My Hat” with Steeleye Span, at the time the “Superwomble” single was released. In those days, to be on Top Of The Pops you had to mime, (it was technically easier for the show if you did, and in any case we Wombles had no option, – we didn’t have mouths!) – but to satisfy the Musicians’ Union you had to remake the entire record the night before your appearance, – in other words you were not allowed to mime to the record itself, but you were allowed to mime to a specially made track for the show. I could spend two pages explaining why, but trust me, that’s how it was.
So I’m in Air Studios with Steeleye Span when the message comes through that the Wombles are on Top Of The Pops the following day, with no time to go and make a bloody backing track, – I was busy with Steeleye. So I ask Steeleye if they’d mind playing the TV remake of “Superwomble”, because the bloke from the Musicians’ Union was about to show up and “witness” that it was indeed being remade, and they sportingly agreed to do it. I taught them the track and we played it while the infamous Don Smith from the Musicians’ Union (known, as I have said earlier, as “Doctor Death” because of his miserable demeanour and intransigent attitude) watched from the control room. After the session, Don asked for everybody’s name. “Why do you want them?” I asked. “Because the people who play the track have to be the same people who are on the show tomorrow” says Don. This was a new one on me. But that’s what had to happen. Don left the studio and I sheepishly asked the guys if they’d wear the costumes the next day, and perform “Superwomble” on the show. Of course the whole thing would have to be a total secret – it wouldn’t have been cool for a serious band like Steeleye to be caught being the Wombles. They thought it was a fantastic idea, and so we arranged for them to meet the following evening, – the night of the show – at the Kensington Hilton Hotel, get into the costumes and be taken by blacked-out limo to the TV Centre in Wood Lane, five minutes away. We managed to get them in, do the show and then get them out again without anyone realising it had been them inside the Womble costumes.
This is a disgrace. Not only were the Wombles crap, they weren’t even the bloody Wombles.
I’ve no time for Mike Batt either, the little Tory twit. He can stick his nine million bicycles up his so-called Wimbledon Common.
He rescued Yes from oblivion, though. Oh wait …
Uncle Bulsara, p’raps?
I guess one can go even lower. Yesterday’s nadir is today’s so-so.
Rolling Stone wrote that McCartney’s Ram was ‘the nadir of rock’. Now look at it, or listen to it but then Rolling Stone has sunk pretty low these days.
Rolling Stone hasn’t been any good since they changed from the unstapled fold-over newsprint edition.
That’s the cut-off point for the NME as well.
Staples: The enemy of rock.
Proper paper: the enemy of roll. (It won’t roll, it’s too thick)
That would be a high point, if you removed your final 4 words. Or replaced them with “to death with an inflatable mallet.”
“…Round about 1975, the controller of Radio 1, who was very much into motor racing, took us to Mallory Park. It was a regular race meeting, but there was a Radio 1 dimension to it. There’s a huge lake that takes up much of the area in the middle of the track, and right on the edge of the lake there’s a couple of small islands, and they’d set up a mock medieval tent on the bigger of the two islands and this is where the élite went, and you could only get to it from a footbridge guarded by security people. Slade were there, and the Bay City Rollers were also there. Cars were hurtling around the track, and all these Rollers fans were dashing across, even during races I think, because the Bay City Rollers had been brought in by helicopter and were standing on top of this observation platform, waving to the fans on the other side of the road. The fans would run across the track, then down to the edge of the lagoon, and they’d see the Bay City Rollers about 20 yards away across this muddy water, reeds and stuff. Of course, these girls were all wearing Bay City Rollers chic – which wasn’t flattering – and they started wading through the water to get to their heroes. I was standing outside the hospitality tent talking to Johnny Walker, and I said. “Mark this well, ‘cos you‘ll never see the likes of this again in your life.”
The only security – and it seems barely credible – was provided by the BBC Sub-Aqua Club, so you’ve got all these people in frogman outfits with flippers and goggles standing on the bank, catching these girls, carrying them back through the mud and depositing them on the other bank and they’d just turn round and come back again. But Noddy Holder [of Slade] went over the bridge and walked through this crowd of people and they paid no attention to him at all, and he must have thought in this moment, “It’s all over, it’s the end for us.
So helicopters are going backwards and forwards, all these girls are struggling through the water and there’s frogmen hopping about, and in the meantime, on the main part of the lagoon, Tony Blackburn is hurtling backwards and forwards in a speedboat, waving to the crowds, in a speedboat driven by a Womble. And I just thought, as a kind of cultural event, this is almost without parallel in our century.”
Bloody hell, I clicked on the article, saw the headline over a picture of what looked like Eddie Izzard and thought the Guardian had made Nigel Farage its guest editor for the day
Leigh Francis was already very much a boat that left me on the island long before he did the ever-present ‘Bet 365’ adverts all over TV and Youtube. ‘Celebs’ who take the gambling industry shilling deserve every insult hurled at them.
See also: Peter Crouch.
He’ll have to, if people are hurling things.
Agree.
Celebs who shill for gambling sites or payday loan companies should be hanged, drawn and quartered
They should be dealt with severely.
Or play Russian Roulette
The Guardian obviously has form when it comes to imaginatively presented put-downs. Yesterday I was reminded that they once reviewed the new single of a genuine Pop Star as »The most pointless release in history«.
I suspect their reviewers aspire to the “edgy”, facetious journalism exemplified by the NME at their peak.
You have to remember it’s the Guardian: “The complete absence of gay whales on this record means it is essentially fascist”
Like I said – the NME at its peak, when the target reader was Rik from the Young Ones…
Well, Barry Manilow and the Black and White Minstrel Show could be relied upon to get a pasting.
Bokko!!!!
“Who shall help us now???”
By the way – it was a review of Peter Gabriel’s comeback single »The Barry Williams Show«…
I appreciate that it’s my fault – but I would never have got PG from the description “a genuine Pop Star”!
No wonder he went to bed for twenty years, poor lad
The Shock The Monkey hitmaker in a Melody Maker interview »If I fancy a glass of milk, I buy a cow.«