Re: Bernard Manning's auto-obituary

On Jun 20, 11:27 am, "DAB sounds worse than FM" <dab.is@dead> wrote:
Andy Pandy wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" <dab.is@dead> wrote in message
news:h06ei.5268$_l6.3075@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I don't think the Commission for Racial Equality will be holding a
wake for me, either. Nor will the Lesbian and Gay Rights lot or the
feminists. They were always banging on about how I was sexist or
anti- gay.

It was their campaigning that kept me off mainstream television for
years, while filling the airwaves with a bunch of fifth-rate
so-called comics who were about as funny as a dose of bird flu and
whose acts had all the humour of a funeral parlour.

Amen to that.

Yes, and unlike other comics of his type, he never sold out in order
to get on telly, or to be accepted by the establishment.

In their obsession with turning comedy into a branch of Left-wing
politics, they forgot that the only point of jokes is to make people
laugh. And that was what I was good at, whether I was on the cabaret
circuit in Manchester or at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Well, at
least I won't be seeing any of the po-faced, politically-correct
brigade where I'm going. I had quite enough of them in my lifetime.

What they never understood was that I was an equal opportunities
comedian. Unlike them, with all their little checklists and taboos
and easy targets, I never discriminated against anyone or anything.
I was quite happy to get a laugh out of any situation. All that
mattered to me was whether the gag was funny or not.

That's the single point that all of his detractors completely ignore.

Yup - the PC comics are basically hypocrites - they think it's
perfectly OK to take the piss out of some groups in society, and
often with far more venom than Bernard ever did, but other groups are
sacred cows and must never have jokes made at their expense. Bernard
simply took the piss out of everybody, including himself.

Indeed.





"I had a distant German relative who died at Auschwitz. He fell out
of one of the watchtowers." Now that's humour, precisely because
it's close to the edge, unlike so many of the tired, comfortable,
right-on lines about George Bush in which modern comics indulge,
massaging the consciences of their middle-class audiences instead
of giving them raw entertainment.

Oh, I can see the other obituaries already: "Bernard Manning, racist
bigot", the smug types will say when they hear of my departure.

But that's not what the great British public, especially in
Lancashire and the rest of the North, will say. They knew that I
was a funny bloke. That's why they kept flocking back to my own
cabaret club, even when I was barred from the airwaves.

And I was never a racist. That's just an easy, catch-all term of
abuse bandied around by the media elite against anyone who does not
follow their agenda. It was just meaningless. When told by some
toffee-nosed southerner that I was prejudiced, I used to say: "Have
you actually seen my act?" They would then admit they hadn't.

"Then you don't know what you're talking about. You're the one who
is prejudiced because you are pre-judging me."

Absolutely.

The first time I went to see him I was expecting a stream of racist
jokes, but in his whole act there were only two mildly racist jokes.
He spent far more time taking the piss out of his team Man City.

"A season ticket holder at my team Manchester City was complaining about the
view from his seat ... it was facing the pitch" (something like that anyway)

In text that looks like a crap joke, but it was just the way he delivered
them that made it funny.

There was far less bigotry in his act than in Jo Brand's for instance.

Yep.





If they'd ever bothered to turn up at one of my shows, they'd have
soon discovered I told gags about everyone, including all sorts of
politicians and the Royal Family. In fact the Queen once told me
with a smile, after a Royal Command Performance, how much she liked
my act. If it was good enough for her, it should have been good
enough for anyone.

Racist? Rubbish. Did these selfrighteous critics know that Clive
Lloyd, the great West Indian cricket captain, asked me to perform as
part of his testimonial? Or that I did a fund-raising event for the
Lancashire and India wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer and another for
the black boxing champ John Conteh?

Funnily enough I've not seen that mentioned in any of the news
reports about his death on TV.

Yes - just about how CH4 took him to India where they didn't get his
humour, which isn't surprising, it is very British humour. He did
have many British Asian fans.

Yeah, I remember that C4 documentary, and I remember the girl who was a
journalist for one of the daily papers that went there and she was basically
trying to question him to see if he'd "slip up" and reveal his "true" racist
persona, but it didn't happen.

For goodness sake, I was multi-racial myself, a descendant of Jewish
immigrants from Sevastopol. Throughout my life, a sign with the
Jewish greeting Shalom hung by the door of my home in North
Manchester.

And yet he told gags about Jews, which basically shows that, as he
says, he told jokes because they were funny.

RIP Bernard, comedy will never be as good without you.

No - it would be hard to see how a new BM could ever get established,
even private clubs are scared of putting anyone who might offend on
stage. Unless they are only offending groups whom it's OK to
offend....

A good example of this was how Radio 4 described him, which was about as
nasty as you could get for someone who's just died, and I don't think they
see the irony in that nearly all of the shows that they advertise as being
comedy are almost completely devoid of any humour whatsoever.

I tried to listen to that David Baddiel show on R4 once, Heresy. Utter
***.

"David Baddiel presents the programme which dares to commit heresy.
Panellists including Vicky Coren, Armando Ianucci, Guardian film
critic Peter Bradshaw argue that some of our most deeply held received
opinions are plain wrong.
In front of a studio audience, who will join in the debate, the panel
will use their wit and wisdom to dispute some of the following
assumptions, that tv is dumbing down, New Labour is all spin, that we
are on the brink of environmental catastrophe, that Christmas has
nothing to do with Christ anymore, that most food is bad for you
(unless its organic), that pop culture promotes violence and that we
should never negotiate with terrorists."

.

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