I'm not religious. For years I was an atheist but I gave it up. I was getting no holidays.
John Cleese plays a precise and
haughty hotel manager! Only in a little throwaway sketch, but he's noticeably
good in this part... I'd imagine that the 'Hotel Splendide' is a higher class
of place than Fawlty Towers, though.
In a similar vein, there's a
sketch with Dawson as a diner in a swanky restaurant (a familiar comedy
situation of this time) arguing about hidden charges with Frank Thornton's
supercilious waiter - "You used the wrong fork with your salade
Nicoise, sir. Anything that lowers the tone of the Cafe Marcel has to be paid
for."
This week's guest artiste is a
very tanned Clodagh Rogers, not entirely flattered by being dressed and styled
in the period fashion. I dimly remember women's dresses being held up by hoops
like that when I was a small child, although Roger's ones are studded with
sequins...
Clodagh hasn't had a hit for a
few years and has recently been dropped by RCA. She performs her new single
'Saturday Sunday' (released by Pye, who won't keep her on after this). It isn't
going to set any charts alight. It's an undistinguished number, but oddly
underpinned by a period arrangement of fumping drums and slow bass, a la
Hotlegs' 'Neanderthal Man' or David Essex's 'Rock On'.
The Irving Davies Dancers have
been awarded a slot of their own this week, offering their interpretation of 'Gypsies,
Tramps and Thieves'.
Highlights of this routine include
a slow tambourine dance and the lead female dancer being wrapped in a red
sheet, which the men of the troupe then swing her around in. It's a bit more
disjointed than their very best numbers, with a lot of separately recorded
cutaways. But this emphasis on individual moments within the routine does give
us the splendidly camp moment when, on the line of "Every night the men
would come around to lay their money down", a chorus of three gypsy
temptresses give the viewer a knowing look...
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