There's a curious sketch this edition in which George Cooper and Margery Mason
- in braces and pinny respectively - play Eric's parents. They live in an
archetypal North Country working class home, but with twenty ducks on the wall,
and the sketch starts with a pastiche of Eric Spear's Coronation Street
theme. Eric is dressed in an effete Southerner's costume of matching pink shirt
and necktie and brings Ernie home with him to meet his parents. Almost nothing
funny is extracted from the situation save for the usual interjections, but
there's an intriguing dramatic possibility in it. There is with the 'at home'
sketch this edition, too, when Eric answers the door to an eight month's
pregnant woman asking to see Ernie and Eric panics about the trouble he
believes that his friend has got himself into.
Three musical guests; the inevitable Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen, Kenneth McKellar and - more intriguingly - former Vernons Girl Samantha Jones. Like so many British female singers of the 1960s at least one of her singles became hailed as a Northern Soul favourite years later, but little of that comes over in this performance. She sings 'You've Got Your Troubles' in a big band style, as if she is trying to seduce the listener. This interpretation feels one remove away from the song's mood of shared gloom, as heard in The Fortunes' original rather morose performance of the song in 1963.
Three musical guests; the inevitable Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen, Kenneth McKellar and - more intriguingly - former Vernons Girl Samantha Jones. Like so many British female singers of the 1960s at least one of her singles became hailed as a Northern Soul favourite years later, but little of that comes over in this performance. She sings 'You've Got Your Troubles' in a big band style, as if she is trying to seduce the listener. This interpretation feels one remove away from the song's mood of shared gloom, as heard in The Fortunes' original rather morose performance of the song in 1963.
No comments:
Post a Comment