The Old Steam Curiosity Company

 Recently I had a little show on in Newry. I never have shows on any more, which is a shame as I used to like having shows on. It was for Newry Council, who were opening a new stage in Slieve Gullion. It was a daytime gig and, as it's for Newry council, I was advised it was quite a "conservative" audience: children, young mums, newly weds, the blue rinse brigade (who obviously no longer have blue rinses, and, in fact, have complex and expensive haircuts and wear designer jeans).  It was the Sweeney Todd section of my Old Curiosity Show I produced with Amadan Productions during the pandemic, and as such contains a lengthy bit of business involving implied sodomy with a headless corpse. 

What? I said "implied". 

Anyway, that was considered too blue for the narrow Newry crew, so I replaced it with, I shit you not, a bit of back-and-forth where one character mistakes "yogurt" for "yoga". By all accounts it tore the place up. Wrote it in ten minutes. Amazing. 

I've written here about the early influence of MAD magazine, and my peculiar childhood obsession with the rash of late 70's sitcoms about disillusioned middle-aged men ("Sorry", "All In The Family" "It Takes a Worried Man", and, to an extent, "Shelley", though recent viewings of "Shelley", make him seem less a cool, sharp, intellectual, running rings round middle-management bores and his Gorgon landlady, and more a lazy, rude prick, scoring points off people who aren't as clever as him. It's like the scene where Jack Nicholson humiliates a waitress in "Five Easy Pieces", spread out over nine series. He doesn't deserve the wistful, elegiac theme tune.) 

But there was another, long forgotten TV show I adored: The Steam Video Company. The irony of that title now: equating "steam" with laughable antiquity, and video technology with the cutting edge, is crisp and delicious now. A Betamax Spitfire. A Crystal-Set Walkman. A Clockwork Space Hopper. Bakelite Leg-warmers. 

I mean, I could go on. Chain-mail Spangles. White Dog Poo in Space. 

Bodywarmers. We used wear clothes called Bodywarmers. Nobody thought that was funny then. I suppose Pedal Pushers, Bodies and Boob Tubes are quite odd names too. A thong was an Australian sandal once. 

It was a sketch show that parodied, for the most part, horror films, and delighted in the guying of familiar literary and cinematic conventions, while lumping huge whacks out of the fourth wall as it did so. It was contemporaneous with "Alternative Comedy" (it was late for it, in fact, it came out in 1984, which seems far too late - I imagined I was a child when I saw it, but must have been 12 or 13) but the players in the company were defiantly old skool: veteran comic Barry Cryer, venerable tonic water pimp, William Franklyn, Anna Dawson (who was married to a Black and White Minstrel), Bob Todd, (who would, only a year later, be pilloried by Half Man Half Biscuit on "99% of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd") Jimmy Mulville, the only one under thirty, later a co-founder of Hat Trick Productions with Rory Fucking McGrath, and Madeline Smith, who is, of course, a goddess. That's a combined age of 282 years! You wouldn't get that on BBC3. I expect. Who knows what's on BBC3?  

It was written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, themselves fairly old hands, having written for The Burkiss Way, News Huddlines, Les Dawson, and The Two Ronnies. It was an incredible well-spring of talent, gushing forth for a single series on ITV, that no one but me watched. You can't buy it in the shops now. There's no call for it. It's on Youtube, in bits. Episode 2, part 2 has the following comment from "Superleonards" from six years ago: "I'm really enjoying bless this house I have spoke with Sally Geeson and Robin Stewart at nec birmingham a few years ago nice people." 

That's the caliber of fan: Superleonards and I. 

So is it any good? Well, its of its time. There are things in it that would not be in it now, and should not have been in it then. Barry Cryer probably regretted the black face rendition of "Ole Man River". And Jimmy Mulville batting his eyelashes, as he retrieves what William Franklyn thinks is Maddie Smith's hankie, is probably not his finest hour. I mean, this stuff was rife and horrifically casual at the time, but this seems surprisingly "seventies" for 1984. And it's so hacky. A visual gag where Maddie is cupping her breasts with her hands in the shower, and Anna asks her for the soap and, as she hands it over, reveals the hands on her breasts are not her own, would have been tired had she had done it ten years earlier. Which she probably did. Many of the jokes have an odds and sods sort of feel, as if they were make-weight rejects from "Oh, Get On With It". Bits of orphan nonsense that were just knocking about. 

But. It's also great. No one has more fun with an aside to camera than William Franklyn, whose catchphrase "Tempting, isn't it?" I've been using for years, to the bafflement of all. Franklyn, the leading man here, was 59 when he made this, and yet attacks each ludicrous role with the ferocious gusto of an aging juvenile. He is dry, urbane, cool and unhinged. The other running joke in the series is Bob Todd, and the sneering disgust with which he is greeted in yet another shoddy disguise. "Bob Todd!" they spit, as he appears pretending to be a pig, with pink pointy ears and a gas mask. "Bob Fucking Todd!" The fucking is implied, but it's there all right. 

It's post-modern music hall, witty, literate and with a streak of vulgarity a mile wide. Exactly the sort of description I would give The Old Curiosity Show. Except when shown in excerpt form to the good citizens of Newry, when sodomy is substituted by yogurt and yoga. Actually, I could do another ten minutes combining all three - time to strop the old quill...