In 1965, Julian and Sandy (played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams) began
to make their weekly appearance on the BBC radio comedy show Round the Horne. In whatever role they were inserted into the
narrative, they always announced themselves with the same mincing line: "Ooh ‘ello! I'm Julian and this is my friend
Sandy!"
The brilliance of the script (by Barry Took
and Marty Feldman) was its ability to smuggle outrageous references past the
BBC censors and into the consciousness of those who had ears to hear. When the pair turned up as lawyers,
Julian said, "We've got a criminal practice that takes up most of our
time". On another occasion, Sandy spoke of Julian’s piano-playing as “a
miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright".
These
were subversive jokes. Private homosexual acts were still punishable by
imprisonment. Most gay men had no choice but to stay in the closet. Did Julian
and Sandy promote a stereotype? Of course. But a camp manner and a language of
sexually charged double-entendres was the only style in which a gay identity
could be made visible, or (for the radio audience) audible. Portrayals of gay
life were either outrageously comic or suicidally grim. Normal was not yet an option.
Now a crack team of writers and actors are, for some reason,
recycling a dismal version of the same old stuff – gay with all the gaiety
knocked out of it. In Vicious, a new
ITV sitcom, revered classical actors Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi play a couple
who have been living together for 48 years, which means they must have met the
year Julian and Sandy made their first appearance. Coincidence? Probably. But if
we imagine them as Julian and Sandy grown old, they’ve also grown mean. Judging
from the first episode, they’ve sunk into a state of mutual loathing and are reduced
to addressing each other in carping put-downs.
In this case, context is all. Julian and Sandy were a force
for progress. They were part of the cultural climate that made it possible for
the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 to decriminalise homosexual acts in private.
Who was offended by Round the Horne?
Daily Mail readers, perhaps. Half a century later, I find myself harrumphing at
the telly – screaming queen jokes just aren’t that amusing any more – while the
Daily Mail declares the new show “an instant classic”.
I don't blame the actors. Actors have to work and must make the most of the script they're given. The writers are Mark Ravenshill, a respected playwright, and
Gary Janetti, who was executive producer of Will
and Grace. Both of them are gay, so I have to assume
they know what they’re doing. I don’t.
As a gay man, I am bewildered by this script and feel it warrants a three minute, slightly lame, sketch at most. I'm gratified to think that I'm not the only curmudgeon on the block. I have been instructed, by informed critics, that this is post modern humour.
ReplyDeleteGlad you agree, Richard. For a light touch on the new normal, I'm a fan of Miles Jupps’ Radio 4 comedy In and out of the kitchen. Perhaps food writer Damien and his partner Anthony are the true heirs of Julian and Sandy and a measure of how far we’ve come in fifty years.
ReplyDeleteAh, how the immortal lines of Julian and Sandy come flooding back. In the corps de ballet, for example: "J: He once done something with a bentwood chair that made Robert Helpman's eyes stand out like organ stops. S: It was his own fault for standing too close." Their position, at once risqué and risky, was perhaps summed up by a peerless line from the same sketch: "We started out in John Cranko's Nutcracker and worked our way up." Stuck here in Central Europe, I've not seen Vicious, but I feel myself already on the side of the curmudgeons.
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