Thursday 25 July 2019

A Comedy On This Day: Sez Les (26 July 1974)


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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