The Audience with Billy Connolly

Hazel O’Connor: first appearance at 7.07

In 1980 Hazel O’Connor went from obscurity to starring in Breaking Glass. She wrote and song all the songs. They’re pretty good songs. 

She’d achieved huge success on her own terms, as a singer, actor and songwriter. You’d have bet she was going to be massive.

Unfortunately things didn’t go that way. A few hits here and there but her first year was her best year. 

This “Audience with...” was recorded in 1985, five years after Breaking Glass and the peak for pop-star involvement in social causes.

There were the concerts Live Aid and (“actually-I-prefer-the-B-sides”) Farm Aid, and the anti-apartheid song Sun City, the only charity single featuring Miles Davis and Joey Ramone. (Not the only charity single featuring Bono.) 

There was also Push and Shove, a single Hazel O’Connor made with Some Guy to protest the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (that time the French president ordered secret service agents to blow up a boat that was protesting against nuclear testing, even though it was harboured in another democracy, oh, and they killed someone). 

Here is the aforementioned Push and Shove.

Denis Law: first appearance at 3.00

Hold up, I’ve had a theory.

Scottish Independence has been fuelled not by the poll tax, or Trident or any of that, but by the Bosman ruling of 1995. 

When the Scottish and English have a common purpose they’re pretty happy together. There were few quarrels while we were Empire-building or Nazi-resisting. Once that ended we needed something else, and we found it in football.

The presence of Scottish players on English football teams provided that sense of Scots and English working together, particularly when those teams played other European opposition. While we had Denis Law, Alan Hansen and Graeme Souness the Union was safe.

Then in 1995 the Bosman ruling removed the restrictions on non-British players, and broke up the miniature Britains of Liverpool and Manchester United. 

Unfortunately there’s no polling data from Law’s time as a player, but here we have the trend from 1978. Ipsos MORI have annotated it with their “important” events.

And I have annotated it with mine.

Interestingly this doesn’t seem to happen the other way. The big ‘90s spike in support for independence coincides exactly with Paul Gascoigne’s time at Rangers. English players at Scottish clubs may come across as imperialist. 

Jan Francis: first appearance at 1.10 (on right)

Dependable mainstay of will-they-won’t-they humorous flirtations like Stay Lucky and Just Good Friends, Jan Francis also helped explain ‘80s financial innovations through a series of adverts where she interacts with smoothies and talks about “payment cards”. 

Clive James: first appearance at 4.29

So what does Clive James represent here? What’s he bringing? 

He brings with him the non-American Anglosphere: the enlivening of British culture by its non-British English speakers. We don’t really trust American entertainers who live in Britain  -- they must have failed back home -- but we love an Australian. 

There are a few versions of Clive James. As with the Parkinsons there’s a Manchester connection -- he presented So It Goes with Tony Wilson in the mid-70s. Here he is bothering to launch a satirical broadside against the NME, of all things.

By 1985 he’s closing in on most-famous Clive -- Clive James on Television, clips from Japanese quiz shows, Margarita Pracatan -- a fame he’d spend the rest of his life fighting, telling anyone who’d listen than you can be funny AND clever, damn it, and if society can’t work that out then society needs fixing.

And this is the nub of Clive James. An eternal loop of:

He’s obviously funny and clever. 

He is obviously anxious that you might not find him funny and clever.

Maybe (2) means that he ain’t (1) after all.

So you can never relax into his funny and cleverness because (2) keeps getting in the way. 

I was taking a look at Cultural Amnesia to find examples but there’s no need (I’ve included some as an appendix). Look at anything he’s ever written. 

In a recent Guardian column he casually links to an article from Der Spiegel (in German of course), is obliquely disparaging about the consensus around climate change and reminds us that he’s translated Dante. 

You just wish you could go back to 30 year old Clive, look him in the eye, put your hands on his shoulders and say: 

“Clive, you’re OK. No one thinks you’re stupid. No one thinks you’re provincial. Everyone knows you’re clever! Everyone knows you’re funny! Now, relax.”

A few quotes from Cultural Amnesia. 

In 1968 the West German publishing house that called itself Inter-Language Literary Associates produced a magnificent two-volume collection of Akhmatova’s works in verse and prose. I bought those books in London in 1978, when I was in my first stage of learning to read the language. (i.e. Russian.) I never got to the last stage, or anywhere near it: but I did reach the point where I could read an essay without too much help from the dictionary.

So much ancillary prose by and about Borges has been published since his death that it is a professional task to keep up with it all, but a casual student should find time to see Antiborges, a compilation of commentaries edited by Martin Lafforgue. (The contribution from Pedro Organbide, “Borges y su pensamiento politica,” is especially noteworthy.)

Michael Parkinson: first appearance at 1.58

Mary Parkinson: first appearance at 2.16

Billy Connolly was always being interviewed by Michael Parkinson. It was on Parkinson that he had his big breakthrough, telling an outrageous joke which made his name.

Here is that outrageous joke. (Spoiler: not outrageous.) 

That’s part of the reason they’re there. The main reason is because Michael wasn’t on BBC anymore and ITV could cross-promote the Parkinsons’ Sunday morning TV-AM programme.

There are three things which are vaguely interesting about Michael Parkinson. (Let’s face it, I’ve got nothing on Mary.)

You can choose in which order they are interesting.

Is he actually any good as an interviewer or did he get a few big guests early, which led to more big guests? (The Marc Maron effect)

His daughter-in-law is Fiona Allen, so he has both talked to Fred Astaire and shared a Christmas cracker with someone who worked at the Hacienda.

Barbara Dickson: first appearance at 1.10.

Quick, what’s the most important single of 1977? 

Wrong. 

(Unless you said “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” from the Evita concept album.) 

About fifteen people liked punk but because they’ve never shut up about it cultural history has waved it in. It was always going to be taken seriously: it’s a thing a few white hetero men like. 

Alongside your punks, your New Waves, your 2-Tones, you have the stuff that was (and still is) enormously popular and yet never gets thought about as part of cultural history. Specifically, you have the musicals of the Cameron Mackintosh / Lloyd Webber / Rice era. 

You know the songs - they’re the ones your Mum had on in the car on the way to school. Memory. The Music of the Night. I Dreamed a Dream.

They were often sung by Elaine Paige. If not, then Barbara Dickson.

First, the aforementioned “Another Suitcase...” 

And then, in the year this Audience was filmed, they came together for “I Knew Him So Well”. 

“I Knew Him...” may be the Hallelujah for the non-Mojo set. Everyone’s covered it. Whitney Houston. A couple of Spice Girls. Steps. 

Much parodied; never bettered. For how, pray, could this be bettered?

Terry Gilliam: first appearance at 22.02, over Roger Taylor's shoulder

In 1985 Terry Gilliam had just made Brazil but was not recognisable enough to get his own close-up.

There are those who are famous in the moment for a great success — a Paul Nicholas or Christopher Quinten — and there are those who attain in by sticking around a long time. Gilliam has managed to become really famous without ever doing any particular thing that has caught the public imagination.

Lots of people would end up seeing Brazil, but it took a long time for them to see it. 

BONUS FACT: Brazil is named after the song Aquarela do Brasil: quite a tune, especially for 1939.

Here’s Sinatra’s English language version.

Francis Wilson: first appearance at 10.34

Sir, I put it to you that Francis Wilson is the most famous British scientist of the 20th century.

His work will not be remembered -- weather forecasting, like ballet or bullfighting, is an ephemeral art -- but no scientist since Darwin was as famous in his day as Francis Wilson. Or, if not Wilson, then Ian McCaskill, Michael Fish, Bill Giles.

The 1980s were a strange time to be a meteorologist. Everyone watched the same handful of channels and this weather information, however vague, was all viewers had to go on. 

In no other era would these rain-mavens achieve such glamour. At no other time would a novelty song name-checking weather presenters have made headway. 

Sadly, those days have gone. More locally-relevant forecasts can be delivered to phones and computers, and the meteorologists are once again confined to the back room. A loss too for the compilers of TV "blooper" shows; because they broadcast live, and relied on technology, weather presenters were particularly vulnerable to it all going wrong. Here's Francis manfully struggling through.

Melvyn Bragg: first appearance at 3.30 (this picture from later)

Melyvn Bragg is best known for two things. His dominance of British cultural broadcasting, and his fear of a tinker's curse. 

They mentioned him on the Slate Culture Gabfest a few years ago. Something to do with a new Ted Hughes poem. One of the presenters has read the name and attempts an impression (audio here, at about 23.00; you don't gain much by listening to it, though I've thought about it every couple of weeks since I heard it):

Presenter: (In a strange, clipped voice) Thank you very much. I'm Melvyn Bragg.

Other presenter (an English woman): He's northern!

Presenter: (In cockney accent) I'm Melvyn Bragg, what!

I mean, honestly. Americans are tremendous, but they don't know a fucking thing about our culture. What should they know of Britain who don't Melvyn Bragg know? 

Bragg's greatest legacy is not In Our Time, the radio show where he speaks grumpily to a bunch of experts about some topic in the history of ideas; I must have listened to a couple of dozen episodes and while I feel terribly clever at the time the only thing I remember from any of them is that during the Don Quixote episode everyone insisted -- rather quixotically, I thought -- on pronouncing it "Don Kwiksot". 

No, his greatest gift is the body of emails he's sent out to the In Our Time mailing list. They're a magnificent insight into his life, normally dashed off before he pops down to the Groucho or House of Lords, and obviously receive no editorial oversight.

Here's an extract from March 2007. The sound you hear in the background is the penny dropping.

The real story is just before I got into Soho Square I was assailed by a young woman who said “it’s my lucky day” and she bent down and picked up a gold ring.  I think it’s gold.  It’s hallmarked anyway.  

So I said “oh, what a lucky day” and kept walking.  I was then pursued (it was only a matter of a few yards but I have to put a kick into this slot somehow) and she said “please take the ring so it’s your lucky day” and I said the usual stuff, as you would expect, “oh no, it’s yours, please no, I don’t want it, no thank you” and she said “I am Muslim and am not allowed to wear jewellery.  I am Yugoslav and can’t speak English (bit of a contradiction there), I have no job, no money, I sleep outside.”  

To which I replied (having, I think, realised that this ring was massively too light to be anything approaching gold), “well, why don’t I give you some money for the ring?”  

“That’s good,” she said.  No hesitation whatsoever.  So I (rather foolishly, come to think of it) pulled out my wallet and gave her £20.  

She looked very surprised and cheerful and I said “well, there we go” and she said “another please”!

Bemused and still in the euphoria of feeling that In Our Time went particularly well, I meekly obliged.  So, it’s a sunny day and the ring’s in my pocket and I’ve no idea what to do with it.  I think I shall place it on the pavement.

Best wishes

Melvyn Bragg

PS  She did look very down and out.  And no, I do not think I was in any way conned.

Jack Charlton: first appearance at 1.45

In 1985 Jack Charlton was 50 and still hadn't done the thing that would make him most famous; which isn't bad, considering he'd won the World Cup. He'd done some management too, but the World Cup is why he's in the audience. 

Here, at this point, his life is balanced between the route any sensible person would have predicted — managing a couple more half-decent football clubs (a West Ham, maybe), one in a lower division (a Leicester) then retirement and thanks for the memories — and what happened: Ireland manager, the most successful in their history; statue outside Cork airport; freedom of the city of Dublin; honorary Irish citizenship. In 1985 Jack Charlton was a has-been and yet-to-be.

There's nothing I like more than a good second act. When someone comes back from faded success to success in something slightly different. I love that. 

Hugh Laurie jumped from bit-parting his way through poor films, overshadowed by Stephen Fry, to being the biggest TV star in the world. Don’t tell me you predicted that.

Ian McShane and Bryan Cranston: veterans of successful family entertainments, transformed by Deadwood and Breaking Bad.

Sharon Osbourne in 2000 was the wife and manager of an old rock star. 

Victoria Beckham went from the indignity of duetting with Dane Bowers... 

To actual success and respect as a fashion designer. YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING. 

Tempting to look back and think that these people had something that was obvious all along, that their success was inevitable. No. If their talent and potential had been that obvious they wouldn't have been struggling: they would have been making money for someone. Sure, Hugh Laurie was always a decent enough actor, but not a brilliant one like Jim Carrey.  

There are people in mediocrity now who will be hugely successful in 5 years. Sportspeople who will have an amazing resurgence with a new team or coach. Journeymen footballers who will become legendary managers. Sidemen in pop bands who will break out into remarkable careers.

Go on, pick them.

Here are three. Thoughtless guesses which have as much chance of being right as anything else. Put your own in the comments.

A late career Oscar for Michelle Pfieffer.

Patrice Evra: first black manager to win the Premiership 

Brian Glover: first appearance at 1.27

Brian Glover is wildly underrated. He's remembered with affection, but insufficient awe. He may have been the first truly complete man.

By any measure he had a wonderful career. He was in some of the best ever British TV programmes: sitcoms (Porridge, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?); police dramas (The Sweeney, Dixon of Dock Green); institutions (Doctor Who, Coronation Street) He acted in, but also wrote for, Play for Today. He worked with Ken Loach, Lindsay Anderson and David Fincher. He turns up in An American Werewolf in London. On stage he worked with the RSC and National Theatre. And he had time to do fun stuff like the voice of the Now That's What I Call Music! pig.  

If that was all he had been, he would have been amazing. 

BUT he also taught French and English for 16 years.

AND he wrestled under the name Leon Arras (the man from Paris). In the age of MMA the below looks ludicrously staged and tame, but still. Wrestling!

We have a problem with strong men. Strength and intelligence are seen as a trade-off; physical weakness is worn with pride, as if conclusive proof of intellectualism.

If a man could overpower you, he must be an idiot.

Big, northern (for which we can say working class, as that's how he reads to a mainstream audience, despite the grammar school and university education) men are not allowed to be clever or talented. They might be granted a little folk wisdom or natural, undeveloped spark, but they must not be clever. For if they're clever too, then what are the middle classes for?

We are left with two responses to a man like Glover. We can reduce him to comedy Yorkshireman or we can celebrate him. 

Glover was comfortable with high and low culture, with the intellectual and the physical. He could discuss literature in English and French. He could make you laugh. He could beat you in a fight. 

Francis Rossi and Bernie Frost: first appearance at 2.27

So we all know (we British) that the one on the right is Francis Rossi from Status Quo, but the other guy took some time to identify. 

The first suggestion was Francis Magee of Eastenders and Game of Thrones, but his career started too late. 

Then Barrie Masters from Eddie and the Hot Rods was suggested. I went to their Facebook page.

Nope.

Maybe it was Andy Bown, the Quo's keyboard/bass player? I took it to the Quo army on Facebook.

Always, always trust the Quo Army. It's Bernie Frost.

Why was Rossi pictured with Bernie Frost and not Rick Parfitt? Rick was there too - we'll get to him soon enough. After they'd opened Live Aid Status Quo had a bit of a break and Rossi started working with Bernie Frost, his old writing partner. Here, I'll save you the trouble of typing their names into YouTube.

Nice enough, though the British public weren't interested in these kinds of songs fronted by two middle aged blokes with guitars: unless those blokes were Status Quo.

Nowadays it seems funny that Francis Rossi or a Rolling Stone would do solo projects, but at that point no one had worked out that 'member of '60s rock band' was one of the few remaining stable jobs available to British men; why shouldn't Francis try something new with an old friend?

Christopher Quinten: first appearance at 2.00

For a while I had this screenshot tagged as Paul Nicholas. Then the real Paul Nicholas showed up and I had to tag it NOT Paul Nicholas. 

Turns out it’s Christopher Quinten, best known for playing Brian Tilsley in Coronation Street. 

A weird thing when you don’t watch soap operas: you’re unaware of some of the most famous people in the country. Occasionally you notice a crossover star, a Grant Mitchell or Bet Lynch, but generally you're oblivious to dozens of actors working in the obscurity of massive exposure and attention.

Anyway, Quinten was apparently very famous indeed.

It's a hard road post-soap acting. You're well known, but difficult to cast. These days he seems to be some kind of party promoter and works as a host at Stringfellows.

Do you know any of the below? Ideas in the comments or @with_billy.

1) This laughing man. A sitcom star? That's Patricia Hodge in front.  

2) Guy behind Denis Law. Seems to be in the sports section of the audience.

3) This lady.

4) Is this June Whitfield? It looks a lot like her. But...

Angela Rippon: first appearance at 2.09

A journalist with a hand in many British institutions. The Morecambe and Wise appearances, sure, but also steering the Come Dancing ship and the first presenter of Top Gear.

She managed to break out of news-reading by embodying a particular English type: safe, sensible, but game for some fun; a good egg. 

I was startled to see she also wrote the Victoria Plum books. I knew of Victoria Plum. I knew of Angela Rippon. I did not know there was a connection. In 2035 30-somethings with fond memories of Mr Stink will feel a similar shock when watching An Audience with David Walliams. 

James Bond is one institution linking members of this audience. Rip-Off Britain is another, with at least half of the main presenters watching Connolly here.

Rip-Off Britain is the grumbling voice of Middle England, channeled through a highly experienced group of presenters. We may feel that the presenters are a bit too good for this kind of thing but it does reflect the concerns of its audience (British decline, outrage that someone, somewhere is taking advantage), an audience which doesn't correlate strongly with readers of this blog.

Doris Stokes: first appearance at 3.05

Thanks to my older friends for identifying Doris Stokes. She was the most famous medium in the world, playing on an apparent lack of showmanship to increase her believability.   

She was a fraud, of course, but that goes without saying: if she’d actually been magic there would have been a scientific revolution in the way we think about life, death and consciousness. You would have heard about it. I feel like a dick even pointing this out.

If you want to see her do her thing there’s a series of ten (ten!) videos on YouTube of a performance of hers at The Barbican. 

It's pretty much what you'd expect.

Rationalist thunderers proclaim a retreat from reason and the rise of nonsense. Worth remembering that 30 years ago Doris Stokes, a straight-up medium, was famous and taken reasonably seriously. From her we’ve gone through the self-mocking Mystic Meg to Derren Brown’s open trickery. Same act, different schtick. 

Charles Dance: first appearance: 1.07

After Janet Brown and Barbara Bach this is our third alumnus from James Bond films (he pops up in For Your Eyes Only). Say what you like about James Bond, it stands with Game of Thrones and the Harry Potter, Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films as a great collector of British charisma.

Now he is old he is beloved. His Tywin Lannister is one of the best things in Game of Thrones, and he’s responsible for the highlight of the series so far. 

But he needed to get old before he was liked. Here he would have been a posh young actor coming off a big mini-series (The Jewel in the Crown). Who’s going to root for that? 

His career followed a common trajectory: RSC, Bond, prestige-mini series, unsuitable Hollywood film (The Golden Child), awkward middle age then triumphant supporting turns. 

It’s very tempting to think that older actors like Dance are irreplaceable, from another age, capable of a menace and urbanity that younger generations cannot achieve.

Actually, we’re making this type all the time, we just can’t appreciate them while they’re young, handsome and annoying (/threatening). Ralph Fiennes is fighting his way through to public acceptance, helped greatly by increasing baldness. Jeremy Irons may have reached the final stage. Watch out for young Ben Whishaw.