Giscard O'Hitler - Anagram Man and Witty Lyricist

Back in the 1970s, most beards you saw on the telly belonged mainly to hippies or long-haired pop stars like Roy Wood. They didn’t often feature on the faces of reporters on current affairs programmes. Enter Richard Stilgoe. In our household, after the early BBC news bulletin we usually watched Nationwide over tea (or dinner, if you were posh). It was about fifty minutes long, incorporating the regional news ‘opt-outs’ followed by a mix of London studio and filmed segments from across the whole country. Think Inside Out meets The One Show.

Many of these items were light in nature, which appealed to my much younger self. Reporters like Bernard Falk and Martin Young seemed to specialise in such cheery trivia, but Richard Stilgoe added an extra dimension. It wasn’t just the hairy chin, although he used it to amusing vox-pop effect in 1974, the year of the beard.  In parallel with Esther Rantzen’s Saturday night show That’s Life, to which he also contributed, the Cambridge-educated man from Camberley took on Nationwide’s  regular consumer slot which I think became known as ‘Pigeonhole’, later ‘Watchdog’.

The other major string to his bow was a talent for humorous songs, which he often used to illustrate the featured topic to great effect. His ‘Statutory Right of Entry to Your House’ ditty became the stuff of BBC legend. Apparently in the early Sixties he had been the lead singer of a Liverpool beat group, performing at the Cavern Club. In one of those weird showbiz coincidences, his band-mates included his future Nationwide colleague Bernard Falk!

Successful writer-performers of humorous songs are thin on the ground. Benny Hill, Richard Digance, Tim Minchin and Victoria Wood spring to mind, while Bill Bailey brilliantly weaves music throughout his stand-up comedy routines. However, blending funny, satirical lyrics with original music for consumer programmes was in the Seventies pretty much Stilgoe’s domain.

Yet he wasn’t only about the music. Whether at the piano, in the studio or on the road, a knowing half-smile was never far from Stilgoe’s face on screen, and yet you could trust him. In 1977 he fronted a series of short films for Nationwide about DIY called, I think, ‘Odd-Jobbing with Stilgoe’. If memory serves, they were designed to give the layman confidence to have a go at more challenging tasks around the house himself (and in those days it probably wasn’t herself). As a totally useless teenager, I was quite interested and entertained but to this day I’ve never attempted to replace a window. I have changed a plug, though.

My 1979 diary records that I watched his eponymous BBC show but I can’t honestly remember what he did in it.  I probably didn’t watch the Beeb’s breakfast election results show in the same year but it could have been simply distilled into just two minutes of our Richard’s witty ditty which he must have written that morning. It wasn’t especially political but, with the arrival of Margaret Thatcher’s right-wing government and consequent industrial meltdown, the UK was crying out for genuine satire.

I’m not sure that BBC Scotland’s A Kick Up the Eighties was it, but as a comedy sketch show it was quite entertaining. Looking back it featured an impressive line-up of young talent, including Tracey Ullman, Robbie Coltrane and Rik Mayall (as Kevin Turvey) while Richard Stilgoe contributed humorous topical links. I must admit they jarred a bit with the sketches and he was dropped from subsequent series.

Indeed I don’t recall seeing him on television again, barring the occasional guest spot. I was too old to watch his children’s game show Finders Keepers in ’84. I remember being aware of his penchant for word puzzles. I was nowhere in his league but I could appreciate his brilliance at anagrams. I think he published a book of them.

What I didn’t expect was Stilgoe’s role in the success of musical ‘Starlight Express’. As lyricist he must have hoovered up awards and royalties and Andrew Lloyd Webber eventually drafted him in for ‘Phantom of the Opera’. Charles Hart may have re-written much of the ‘book’ but these supremely profitable shows must have set him up financially for life.

However, Richard must be as nice as he looks because he gave most of his earnings to charitable foundations at home and in India. I could even forgive his presidency of the hated Surrey county cricket club for that prodigious philanthropy, and his knighthood was well deserved. He wasn’t the funniest comedian, most credible investigative journalist or the greatest musician but as a witty wordsmith and entertaining presenter in the 1970s he had no peers.

Sue Johnston - Acting Royle-ty

It might appear a tad perverse to select as a Treasure someone who has made her name in three major dramas I’ve never been inclined to watch, but Sue Johnston is so much more than the product of Corrie, Brookside or Downton Abbey. Like her Royle Family co-star Liz Smith, she was a late starter to television, not making her debut ‘til the age of 38. She appeared in the very first episode of Brookside on Channel 4’s opening night back in ’82 but it wasn’t until the next decade that I saw her on the box.

It was probably in Medics, an ITV series which ran for five years, but which didn’t keep me hooked for long. To be honest the most memorable character was played by Tom Baker who, like Brian Blessed, is never known for understated performances. Alternatively it could have been the same year as a casino owner in A Touch of Frost or in Inspector Morse, although this was only a minor part alongside the likes of Diana Quick and a very youthful Sean Bean.

Sue was on the right side of the law five years later, this time in the Beeb’s Crime Traveller. Like Medics, I don’t recall this being a long-standing regular of mine but I was prepared to give it a go. It was obviously a vehicle for Michel French, straight after his stint on Eastenders and based on the unlikely premise that he and co-star Chloe Annett could secretly use her late dad’s time machine for solving crimes. Hmm. Johnston played French’s boss who disliked his methods but presumably not his results. Despite being written by Anthony Horowitz (Poirot, Foyle’s War and novels featuring Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, though sadly not in the same story) it wasn’t recommissioned but they were fairly entertaining cop capers.

Waking The Dead lasted much longer; eleven years, in fact. Sue Johnston played Grace Foley, an experienced psychological profiler who was the calm, rational, ‘people person’ partner of more headstrong Trevor Eve’s DCI Boyd in his Cold Case team. Besides a healthy dollop of mutual respect, there was much witty banter between the two, a key factor in the show’s enduring popularity throughout the Noughties.

Whilst born in nearby Warrington, Sue Johnston was brought up on Merseyside. Her Liverpool credentials were advanced from her time on Brookside but apparently her allegiance to Liverpool FC is life-long. This informed football support earned her a few spots on Fantasy Football League in the Nineties. It may have been a comedy showpiece for Frank Skinner and David Baddiel but the guests also had the opportunity to demonstrate some genuine sporting knowledge. Back in ’94, Sue was by no means fazed by the lads or fellow guest Eddie Large, but I can’t recall, come the end of the season, how successful she was as a manager.

In 2004, I became riveted by the first series of the celebrity family history series, Who Do You Think You Are? To some extent, it has suffered through familiarity leading if not to contempt but at least to repetition. After a few years, I started to tire of the samey tales from the trenches or Caribbean slavery. Some of the best have been rooted in very ordinary social realism of nineteenth-century Britain, and Sue Johnston’s personal genealogical journey to life on the railways and slums of Carlisle was both gripping and emotional. Sadly I can’t find it on YouTube but the actress was mesmerising merely playing herself.

More recently Sue has been lured by some meaty dramatic roles. In 2018 she was in Kiri, playing star Sarah Lancashire’s elderly mum and last year was again in granny mode in Channel 4’s hard-hitting reminder of the Stafford Hospital scandal, The Cure. She portrayed Bella, whose unnecessary death sparked the campaign which resulted in the eventual expose of incompetence and shocking outcomes of spending cuts in the NHS. The mini-series also introduced me to the worrying notion of Sue Johnston as someone who was actually quite old in real life.

However, it is in comedy that she has become best known in recent decades. There was her role in Jennifer Saunders’ not terribly funny Jam and Jerusalem and with another excellent ensemble cast in the feelgood TV movie family holiday to Lapland. Co-star and fellow-Scouser Stephen Graham has said: “For me to work with Sue Johnston is like playing football with Steven Gerrard” although since then he himself  has become the Mo Salah of TV actors.

But of course I will never forget her as Barbara in The Royle Family. She didn’t always get the funniest lines but she’s utterly brilliant as the downtrodden mum being whisked along by the crazily commonplace conversations in the living room or even in the car. The scripts may have become increasingly formulaic but the characters remained true. From her spot at the end of the sofa, Sue Johnston showed time and again why she is one of the finest character actors of our time.

Homer Simpson - Dumb but Loveable

Thirty years ago, if someone had submitted to me that an animated character from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire would have entered my pantheon of TV legends I’d have laughed in their face. As the fledgling BSkyB began to take its insidious grip on the nation’s sporting rights, and satellite dishes sprouted on buildings across the land, I was willing it to fail. When ‘Do the Bartman’ topped the charts in 1991 it represented to me everything that was wrong with the world. Bart’s hit single wasn’t funny, the protagonist’s video was simply annoying and so The Simpsons simply had to be crap. Didn’t it?

Working for the BBC, I felt affronted by its very existence. My colleagues’ office discussions of how hilarious this Sky One product was smacked of treachery, a betrayal of our employers’ trust. Yet why were such intelligent young research professionals falling under its spell? There was no way on earth I would subscribe to Sky but when in 1996 the Beeb signed up old series to broadcast at 6pm on BBC2 I tentatively sneaked a look. After all, it was now on ‘my’ channel so I couldn’t consider it an act of infidelity.

It soon became obvious that The Simpsons was no longer merely an all-pervasive vehicle for a porn-peddling media mogul bent on world domination. It was bloody hilarious! It wasn’t all about an incorrigible naughty child, either. There were dozens of rounded characters, the visual and verbal gags flew thick and fast and I’d never watched anything quite like it.

Brought up on Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Wacky Races and The Pink Panther Show, cartoon comedy had been an integral part of my childhood. But The Simpsons was not a kids’ show; it looked like it, with over-sized heads and four-fingered hands, but the humour was far more grown-up. Even Mum was won over and one evening made the perceptive comment that you forgot you were watching an animation. They were all bloody yellow, for heaven’s sake, yet the family traits and relationships were all too human. This was actually one of the most sophisticated sitcoms on the box.

That’s one adjective that couldn’t be applied to patriarch Homer Simpson. While Bart is engagingly devious, Marge the sweet and naïve homemaker and Lisa by far the smartest person in Springfield, Homer is as dumb as they come. His internal conversations with what passes for a brain are legendary.  It also speaks volumes about the USA that Homer is held up as an all-American hero. Fat, lazy, addicted to Duff beer, TV and junk food, this white, working-class stereotype really shouldn’t be such a popular icon. Yet, from his early somewhat unappealing character, Homer has risen to take the world by storm. 

Much of the credit must go to the man behind the voice, Dan Castellanata. For three decades he has brilliantly imbued this boorish oaf with such humanity that we forgive Homer his selfishness and incompetence, cheering his attempts to be a better dad and husband, even if he often struggles to remember baby Maggie’s name. Castellanata voices other characters, from Krusty the Clown to the Kennedy-esque corrupt Mayor Quimby, alcoholic Barny to Grampa Abe, but Homer is his greatest achievement.

The staccato catchphrase “D’oh!” was inducted into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001 and my personal vocabulary even earlier than that. He gets so many great lines, too. The hilarious homespun philosophy of Homer Simpson could fill volumes, although my favourites include:-

    “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try”;

  “For once maybe someone will call me ‘sir’ without adding ‘You're making a              scene’";

    “English? Who needs that? I’m never going to England”            

Actually Homer does get to travel overseas. Some of my favourite episodes revolve around Homer’s interaction with foreigners, especially if it’s on their own territory. These scenes invariably contain more laughs than a whole canon of Chevy Chase movies. While there may be dubious stereotyping, I feel reassured that whenever Homer is involved it’ll be Americans who come off the worst. 

In the world of animation, even one as firmly rooted in American suburbia as The Simpsons, we viewers have to expect the unexpected. In addition to the annual tradition of Halloween spook-taculars, Homer has been in space, won a Grammy, climbed a mountain single-handed and fought President Bush but so far he has never actually been elected to the White House. In this Trumpian era of celebrating ignorance, he’s way too intelligent for that!

Our favourite golden-headed father has also been responsible for all kinds of nuclear disasters. Creator Matt Groening ingeniously employed the world’s second stupidest man as a safety technician at Mr Burns’ notoriously insecure nuclear power plant. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, things going wrong around Homer are what the programmes are about. Whether he’s losing at Monopoly, being a rubbish member of the Mob or trying to build a barbecue we just love to see him running around like a headless chicken “Doh” ing for all he’s worth. And yet such circumstances make those moments of familial bliss all the more adorable, such as at Maggie’s birth or when Homer and Marge try to get all romantic, especially in the flashback episodes.

How on earth did a dimwit like Homer ever win the heart of Marge anyway? Of course, this has been handled in many storylines over the years, not all of them obeying the laws of continuity, but basically if you love dumb animals, you gotta love Homer. He may have evolved his features and voice over the years but basically he has the personality of a puppy: all boundless optimism and energy, living for the moment and undying love for anyone who’ll supply him with food and drink. OK, so that could just as easily apply to Moe’s Tavern or the popcorn seller at the ballgame, but Homer just wants what, deep down, we all crave: love, respect and getting one over on the neighbours.

I don’t tend to see many of the new episodes but In a world of coronavirus, political shenanigans or personal emotional turmoil, The Simpsons – and Dan Castellanata’s Homer in particular – will always provide enough laugh-out-loud scenes to make the world considerably brighter.