Hugh Dennis - Starting with Steve to Stopping the Week

Until he grew the seemingly obligatory beard a few years ago, Hugh Dennis never seemed to age. Like his long-time comedy partner Steve Punt, Hugh must have taken the elixir of youth. I recall when working for Radio 4 I would often see the pair in Broadcasting House, largely because the production office for The Now Show, the network’s topical comedy, was located by the lifts outside the old eighth-floor restaurant. Steve’s curly hair was often wild but Hugh’s was neat, his tall, gawky frame always relatively dapper.

I have had the pleasure of attending a recording of The Now Show, and also saw them live at, I think, Brentwood back in 1993. I tend to think of Dennis as the master of the dry quip, one eyebrow quizzically raised but that evening he split our sides with a wonderful physical routine playing ‘the rude ghost of Guildford’ which, while full of visual gags, does sound terribly Radio 4! 

But it was even earlier, in ’87 that, introduced as ‘Steve and Hugh’, the pair were launched on television supporting Jasper Carrott on Carrott Confidential. Dennis may still have been working in marketing when he and his fellow Cambridge graduate Punt wrote and performed some amusing set-pieces, their delivery honed by years at Footlights, The Comedy Store and other venues. Jasper retained their services for Canned Carrott, and I have been parroting their “Do you want fries with that?” line ever since. 

In the early Nineties, Hugh Dennis was enjoying not one, but two parallel comedy careers. He may not have been in the same class of impressionist as Steve Coogan, Rory Bremner et al but joined the cast of ITV’s Spittin’ Image for three years voicing characters as diverse as Gazza, Frank Bruno, David Owen and Saddam Hussein. At the same time, he and Steve Punt also teamed up with David Baddiel and Rob Newman on Radio 1’s innovative sketch show The Mary Whitehouse Experience. This swiftly transferred to BBC2, ensuring Hugh’s transformation into full-time entertainer. 

It became essential viewing for me and many of my contemporaries. Newman and Baddiel were the ‘edgier’ pair, pushing the boundaries a bit further. However, this made some of their routines and regular characters more memorable than the more mainstream Punt and Dennis. I remember travelling all the way across the Thames with my friend Jenny for the acclaimed live theatre tour’s Gravesend leg and not being disappointed. Unconstrained by BBC rules, Baddiel and Newman let rip with plenty of foul language but I don’t recall Punt and Dennis doing the same. It may just be my memory playing tricks but they didn’t need to change their winning formula for a live audience. The contrasts between the two partnerships were also what made TMWE such a great show. 

In the mid-Nineties Steve and Hugh were granted their own series, which revived a few of their Mary Whitehouse Experience characters besides introducing new ones. Looking back, I’m surprised how many of them and/or their catchphrases have stayed with me, although sometimes the memory mischievously confuses them with Armstrong and Miller! 

Pretty soon, TV viewers were confronted with the notion of Hugh Dennis being an individual, no longer joined at the hip to Steve Punt. Their Radio 4 work went from strength to strength but Hugh appeared regularly, albeit only in animated form, in Jack Dee’s Happy Hour and briefly on the bewildering yet brilliant Brass Eye. In ’98 he guested on Clive Anderson’s satirical panel show If I Ruled the World alongside Graeme Garden and another of my Nineties favourites, Tony Hawks. It was basically a piss-take on politics and politicians in general, somewhere between Have I Got News For You and Mock the Week and, were it not for Richard Osman creating the show for Hat Trick TV, would surely have fitted Radio 4 like a glove. 

It surprises me that Mock The Week has continued for fifteen years, including 176 episodes featuring our Mr Dennis. I’m not so naïve as to believe these topical shows are completely unrehearsed and unscripted but I may still chuckle at Hugh’s newsreel voiceovers or his ‘What they’re really saying’ one-liners, as also performed on 2014’s Sport Relief in a futile bid to make even Andy Murray look funny. 

Comic timing, of course, need not be restricted to stand-up; it comes in mighty handy for the acting profession. Hugh Dennis has, like so many other fine comedians, made the transition to other writers’ sitcoms. The first I watched was My Hero, in the early Noughties. It was really a vehicle for Ardal O’Hanlon, transferring his trademark wide-eyed dim innocence from Channel 4’s Father Ted to primetime BBC1 but Hugh played his girlfriend’s vain TV doctor and health centre boss, Piers throughout all six series. It was pretty tame stuff but for a while I quite liked it. 

Advance a few years and Hugh Dennis assumed star status in another Beeb comedy, Outnumbered. It took me a while to catch on but once seen I was hooked. Written by the prolific  Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, it turned into a twenty-first century powerhouse in an era bereft of classy sitcoms, meriting four big-audience Christmas specials. 

Dennis and Claire Skinner, apparently now real-life partners, were brilliant in the part-improvised episodes but the early scenes were utterly stolen by the six year-old Ramona Marquez. Of course the three children aged as the series progressed, yielding different problems faced by their long-suffering parents Pete and Sue and, even if like me you had no children of your own, you empathised with them completely. The adult stars were superb, of course, but the series was nothing without the gifted youngsters. Scrap all those hideous kids’ talent shows we are afflicted with, and repeat Outnumbered instead. 

Not content with ably supporting the likes of Carrott, Dee and O’Hanlon, Hugh Dennis has in recent years joined Lee Mack in the latter’s ever-likeable Not Going Out. I tune in only sporadically these days but when channel-hopping, I may sometimes alight on a repeated episode on Dave or Gold to remind me how smart Mack is and reliable Hugh is as a sidekick. 

But when it comes to jaw-dropping ‘straight’ comedy acting, surely nothing can surpass Fleabag. It took the tedium of Covid-19 lockdown shielding to entice me into binge-watching on iPlayer to see what all the fuss was about, but I was blown away. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a revelation in her self-penned series, and Andrew Scott stunning as ‘Hot Priest’, but there are all sorts of beautifully-observed secondary characters, too. We first encounter Hugh Dennis in the very first episode as a stereotypical unsympathetic bank manager but, being Fleabag, we later learn more about the character, notably in a poignant scene towards the end of, I think, episode four. 

I am quietly confident we will see (and hear) plenty more of Hugh Dennis. Such is his ubiquity in sitcoms, panel shows and advert voiceovers that I could very well despise him. But his winning but self-effacing personality and comic talent that ensure I don’t.

Goodness Gracious, Sanjeev Bhaskar....

I can’t believe it’s more than two decades since word-of-mouth recommendations enticed me to BBC2 for the new TV sketch comedy series, Goodness Gracious Me. I’d missed out on the Radio 4 original but, like millions of others, was immediately hooked. For all the outrageous subversion of Asian stereotypes like the competitive mothers, Bollywood stars and fake yogis, the humour was undeniably British, which is why it had such widespread appeal. Along with producer Anil Gupta, the co-writers were the then virtually unknown pair of Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar, who also performed alongside Nina Wadia and Kulvinder Ghir. 

While largely forgotten now, back in 1998, Ghir was the only one I’d recognised, as he’d been in dramas like Howard’s Way. However, it was Bhaskar and Syal who just about stood out from the excellent ensemble team. In particular, Sanjeev proved a master at so many characters, notably the middle-aged dad convinced that everything is “Indian!”. He also led the group of young Indians ‘going for an English’ which in my humble opinion comprises four of the funniest minutes of British television in the last thirty years.

Although it has been revived as one-offs since then, GGM ran for only three series on TV but very swiftly Syal and Bhaskar moved onto another ground-breaking comedy series The Kumars at No.42. Ostensibly a sitcom, it was also part-chat show because Sanjeev’s character (called Sanjeev!) was a budding TV presenter with a studio built on to the multi-generational family home in Wembley which welcomed all sorts of celebrities through the front door. Meera’s hunched granny got most of the funny lines, especially when flirting with male guests such as Donny Osmond and Nigel Havers. The interviews were usually improvised, to which the best guests responded with gusto. 

The Kumars also presented Sanjeev Bhaskar with a Comic Relief number one single and a live Top of the Pops appearance in 2003 when the group contributed to a Bhangra-tinged version of ‘Spirit in the Sky’. ‘Tis a pity that contemporary heartthrob Gareth Gates stole the lead vocals, but I suppose the enterprise would never have succeeded without the ‘Pop Idol’ runner-up. 

The success of these two series presented my Treasure with amusing guest slots on Have I Got News For You and Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. In 2010 he was also an amusing raconteur getting into the spirit of things in an early edition of Would I Lie to You? Although no larger-than-life personality, Sanjeev is just so likeable as an apparently humble bloke with an easy-going demeanour whom any mother would wish their daughter to marry. In 2005, millions of them would have their hopes dashed when he married Syal who was already forging a parallel career as screenwriter and best-selling novelist. 

Her book Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee was adapted into a three-part serial starring – surprise, surprise! - Meera and Sanjeev as a married couple in their thirties. It wasn’t a laugh-out-loud gagfest but a heart-warming tale of friendships laced with sadness, as any great drama should be. I was unimpressed by Bhaskar’s pilot episode introducing ITV’s Mumbai Calling but maybe I should have given it a second chance when it had a full series. 

Nonetheless I always feel cheered by his appearances in any comedy or drama. He has turned up in superior programmes such as Silent Witness and Love Soup but my current favourite is the police thriller Unforgotten. Whilst his DI character Sunny Khan plays second fiddle to Nicola Walker’s DCI, he is a vital cog in what over three series has become one of the best crime dramas of recent years. Based on cold case investigations, they’re long enough to lure you in and maintain your interest to the denouement, aided by a formidable array of supporting talent, from Tom Courtenay and Alex Jennings to Frances Tomelty and Mark Bonnar. 

I often find myself suffering pangs of guilt watching Sanjeev Bhaskar in such star-studded productions. Unforgotten’s Nicola Walker is the undoubted star, and deservedly so, and there are times when I wonder whether this erstwhile Hounslow schoolboy and marketing graduate is a tad out of his depth amidst a top-notch cast. And yet that is part of his charm. He seems comfortable in the skin of an unflashy Indian family man doing a good job for his boss and, especially if comic timing or an impeccable raised eyebrow or two are required, Sanjeev Bhaskar is your man. Indeed a role doesn’t demand to be of Asian descent; this actor can, in a typically understated way, make it his own. Goodness, gracious me!

Geoffrey Palmer - TV's Greatest Grump

When it comes to a lugubrious demeanour and laconic devil-may-care middle-class drawl, Geoffrey Palmer takes the biscuit. He is a shortbread, rich tea and Hob-Nob all wrapped up in one single, perfect package. Narrating BBC2’s tongue-in-cheek Noughties documentary series Grumpy Old Men was a role he was surely born to play. He is on record as saying: “I am not grumpy, I just look this way”, but that’s all you need in the acting business. If I’ve ever seen him crack a smile, that moment of magic is long forgotten. 

In the ‘60s he played a variety of senior cops, professors, lawyers and doctors, and such roles seemed to follow throughout his career. I probably first saw him, like so many familiar character actors, in series such as Z Cars and Doctor Who but it was as a physician that I definitely watched him in The Liver Birds, Fawlty Towers and, a few years earlier, Colditz. 

In the wartime drama, he may only have been a minor role but it was an important one, especially in the gut-wrenching 1972 episode when Michael Bryant’s prisoner character Wing Commander Marsh attempted to escape by feigning madness. Even my eleven year-old self was emotionally gripped when Marsh immersed himself so deeply that his mental health deteriorated for real.                                                            

Nevertheless it was in comedy roles that he made his name in the Seventies. For me the name Geoffrey Palmer first entered my vocabulary during the first run of The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin in ’76. I’ll never forget Leonard Rossiter’s tour-de-force in the lead role over three series but two other characters ran him close for laughs and catchphrases. John Barron’s stereotypical boss CJ didn’t get where he was today without belittling his employees, then there was Reggie’s brother-in-law Jimmy, played by Palmer. His Farage-like determination to lead Britain back to some kind of right-wing utopia was matched only by his staccato phrases and sheer incompetence, prompting his catchphrase “Bit of a cock-up on the  …front”. He also delivered one of the funniest monologues in sitcom history, a definite grumpy old man in the making. 

Rossiter died suddenly in 1984, but the character of Jimmy lived on, sort of. Reggie Perrin writer David Nobbs wrote Fairly Secret Army for Channel 4, so had to subtly change Jimmy to Harry, although his traits and politics were basically the same. It wasn’t as funny but Geoffrey Palmer was appropriately inept and stiff-upper-lipped. 

TV comedy in the Seventies and Eighties enjoyed a whole raft of supporting actors from which to call upon to play the stodgy officer-class stooge to funny men like Terry Scott, Eric Sykes, Richard Briers, Dick Emery, Benny Hill, Michael Crawford’s Frank Spencer and so on. Reginald Marsh, Geoffrey Chater, Richard Wattis, Allan Cuthbertson and Henry McGee were undoubted masters of the part but Geoffrey Palmer possessed a touch more star quality, even on the 1982 Kenny Everett Christmas Show. In particular, his cameo as General Haig in the climactic episode of Blackadder Goes Forth was absolutely spot-on. 

By this time, he was a regular in more significant sitcom roles. I don’t think he actually uttered “Cock-up on the catering front” in relation to his screen wife Ria’s notorious attempts at cooking but as the long–suffering Ben in Butterflies the fifty-something Geoffrey Palmer finally moved into new territory. As usual, Carla Lane’s star was a woman, the redoubtable Wendy Craig, but much of the humour came from Ben’s dry comments and his relationship with the two sons, including a young Nicholas Lyndhurst. 

I often found Carla Lane’s sitcoms uneasy viewing, with too many words and main characters I struggled to warm to. Maybe it was because I’m a bloke, maybe not, but nonetheless the first few series of Butterflies were essential viewing. Also in the ‘80s Geoffrey switched to ITV for a few series written by the prolific Renwick/Marshall partnership. You don’t have to have watched it to imagine him as the Foreign Secretary in Whoops Apocalypse then he was the newspaper editor shafted by the brash Robert Hardy in Hot Metal. I didn’t tune in every week but I remember feeling sorry for his character. 

For many, it’s his part opposite Judi Dench in As Time Goes By for which he’s most fondly remembered. The humour was a bit wistful and gentle for my liking but I know Mum liked it for those very reasons. Palmer was well into his seventies when the series ended in 2005 but the scenes always seemed to be him and Dench just sitting on a sofa reminiscing, so not exactly physically arduous. 

The wry deadpan delivery was ideal for situation or sketch comedy but that military bearing has also held him in good stead for crime drama over the decades. The parts always seemed alike, be they in The Professionals, Inspector Morse or Bergerac. In 2008 he had a cameo playing Lord Scarman visiting a mistrustful Gene Hunt’s cop shop in Ashes to Ashes but he seemed to be on auto-pilot, doing what he does so well. 

However, for all his memorable roles on screen, one of his most enduring contributions to television history came in the Eighties and Nineties when his face was hidden. From 1986 he became the voice of Audi in their TV adverts. Even now I can’t see the words ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ without hearing that lovely laconic voice. Thierry Henry may have injected some va-va-voom into the car commercial sector but it’s Geoffrey Palmer OBE whose vocal engine purrs to perfection.

Jacqueline Clarke - Sketch artiste supreme

 “It’s Friday, it’s five to five and it’s – CRACKERJACK!” During the winter months, this introduction would for us children of the Sixties and Seventies signal the start of the weekend. Whether uttered by Leslie Crowther, Michael Aspel or Ed Stewart, the BBC’s prime kids’ entertainment show was for several years an integral part of my TV diet, often consumed simultaneously with our weekly family fish and chips for tea. 

I never got to join the audience of screaming schoolchildren, Scouts and Brownies but I do remember someone in my junior school class bringing in a prized Crackerjack pencil. It was an object to be treated with utter respect and awe, handled with the same care as a Faberge egg. As for the programme itself, mostly broadcast live, it was a manic mix of silly comedy routines, games, sketches shoe-horning in contemporary pop songs and also guest appearances by the top bands of the day. 

Although I still remember Leslie Crowther, he left in 1968. For some reason, I have little recall of his replacement, Rod McLennan, but it’s the partnership of Peter Glaze and Don MacLean which for me is synonymous with Crackerjack. Indeed, Glaze played the bespectacled bumbling fool to perfection for two decades. But there were supporting cast members, too. A token female, such as Christine Holmes and Jan Hunt, each with a decent singing voice ,would be drafted in for sketches. In 1973 and ’74, Jacqueline Clarke was part of the ensemble, as at the start of this Crackerjack Christmas panto. More a comedienne than vocalist she was very much the equal, if not superior, of Glaze and MacLean in the acting department and her sketch comedy skills saw her in demand for several leading series in the Seventies. 

In particular Clarke was a long-time regular on Dave Allen’s show. This Saturday night staple is best remembered for the Irish comedian’s brilliant ‘sit-down’ monologues but these were punctuated by filmed sketches. My younger self far preferred these interludes to the ‘boring’ stories about religion, sex and politics and looked forward to seeing Allen in harness with the likes of Ronnie Brody and Michael Sharvell-Martin. Looking back on YouTube I’m quite shocked by the use of Jacqueline Clarke as sex object rather than more rounded characters but I guess that was the norm for the 1970s, especially when the stars were middle-aged men like Benny Hill, Dick Emery, Sid James or Ronnie Barker. However, whether dressed (or undressed) as ‘dolly bird’, nun or old toothless hag in the forest, Clarke was the ultimate professional on Dave Allen at Large. 

Moving into the ‘80s, Jacqueline popped up in various editions of Kelly Monteith (who I thought quite amusing at the time), Little and Large and even The Kenny Everett Show. By 1983 she was already in her forties, leaving the lace and suspenders stuff to younger models – or Kenny himself! I hadn’t realised until this week that she appeared in the ‘Boring’ episode of The Young Ones, as well as a 1974 Sykes, both of which I would have watched. 

While I mainly picture her in short, sharp sketch roles, Jacqueline Clarke did sometimes get to develop a character in a situation comedy series. I must have caught her in the mid-Seventies sitcom Second Time Around opposite Michael Craig and Patricia Brake, but probably not in David Jason’s A Sharp Intake of Breath, probably her biggest role in TV. 

However, for me she is stuck permanently in a ‘70s/’80s bubble. Later – much later – she guested in the BBC’s home for much-loved elderly actors, aka Last of the Summer Wine, and even appeared last year in Doc Martin. Nevertheless I’ll always remember Jacqueline Clarke as the archetypal supporting sketch artiste: unsung and under-rated.

Griff Rhys Jones - Tops with this Smith

I’ve already written about one Oxbridge-educated member of a successful TV comedy group who proceeded to enjoy a follow-up career making documentaries. But, if anything, Michael Palin has actually been eclipsed in recent years by Griff Rhys Jones. 

The latter has certain advantages. He’s closer to my age (albeit still seven years older), was like me once employed by the BBC, went to school in my home town of Brentwood and was born in my current city of residence, Cardiff. What’s not to like?

Also unlike Mr Palin, I have witnessed Griff on the West End stage, performing in An Absolute Turkey back in 1994. It still puzzles me why, despite the stellar comedy cast and Rhys-Jones’ Olivier award, I can recollect remarkably little about the show. 

By that time, he was a TV veteran. I first came across him in 1980 when he replaced Chris Langham in the established satirical comedy quartet of Not The Nine o’Clock News. Forty years later his racist chump of a cop might still strike a chilling chord in this era of Black Lives Matter protests. Back then we Exeter students just found it funny, despite the notorious reputation of the Met Police’s Special Patrol Group. 

The show ran for, I think, three seasons. Rowan Atkinson’s unique style was always the most eye-catching but occasionally Griff moved to the fore, such as in this word-mangling courtroom sketch (“A tissue a tissue….”). Of course, NTNOCN also launched the career of Mel Smith, with whom Griff forged an enduring writing, acting and production relationship. Their Talkback company made a whole raft of successful entertainment programmes, from Brass Eye and Alan Partridge to Da Ali G Show and Through The Keyhole. It also made their own comedy series beginning with Alas Smith and Jones. 

It wasn’t as topical as NTNOCN nor usually, to be honest, as funny, but there were a few decent sketches. However, the duo became most associated with their ‘head-to-heads’. With Griff playing the gormless, man-child on the right and Mel the only slightly more intelligent one sitting opposite, these scenes, whether they were discussing sperm donation or The Beatles, were for several years amongst the most amusing on the Beeb. 

In 1984 they also guested in the classic ‘Bambi’ episode of The Young Ones In what in retrospect was a veritable ‘Who’s Who?’ of eighties alternative comedy (including Ben Elton, Emma Thompson, Fry and Laurie), Griff portrayed a version of University Challenge host Bamber ‘Bambi’ Gascoigne trying to referee the contest between Scumbag vs Footlights colleges. This half-hour on BBC2 had everything, from Ade Edmondson literally losing his head, to Motorhead blasting out ‘Ace of Spades’ in the living room. And Griff Rhys Jones played the title character! 

A year later they found themselves contributing to musical history. Most people will be familiar with Queen’s legendary Live Aid set at Wembley, whether from personal experience or the recent Freddie Mercury biopic, but guess who performed the on-stage introduction? Yes, there were Mel and Griff in ill-fitting police uniforms, battling against the band’s deafening soundcheck, warning the crowd about the noise levels before Smith announced: “Her Majesty, Queen….” So began one of the most famous rock performances of all time. 

Griff starred with Mel in a few comedy films that decade but also appeared without him amongst a formidable cast, including David Jason and Ian Richardson, for ITV’s Porterhouse Blue. Tom Sharpe’s riotous novels were all the rage back then but being the perverse oddball that I am, they weren’t quite so hilarious in my eyes. I actually took against Jason’s mischievous porter Skullion but I don’t remember any opinion about Rhys Jones’ Cornelius Carrington. 

I have clearer recollections of some of his roles in TV commercials. He’s been in great demand over the years, flogging us anything from Vauxhall cars to Prudential pensions, but surely the highlights were his adverts for Holsten Pils beer “where the sugar turns to alcohol”. Griff would be spliced into scenes with black-and-white movie idols from Wayne to Bogart but it’s the one from 1987 co-starring Marilyn Monroe which stands out. 

There have been straight roles, too. I can’t find anything on YouTube but my diary records I watched him star in a Screen One film Ex in ’91 and just a few years ago, he gave a sensitive performance in the Beeb’s ensemble drama series Ordinary Lies as a middle-aged man suddenly confronted with a long-lost son. Like so many comedians Griff has demonstrated many times he doesn’t need loads of jokes to be a good actor. 

Which brings me back to another Palin-esque change of direction in the new millennium. In the early Noughties I was captivated by a new BBC2 series called Restoration. Each week, Griff introduced reports on, I think, three endangered buildings. With UK TV audiences now accustomed to voting for budding pop stars or moronic Big Brother housemates, viewers of this altogether more upmarket programme were invited to vote for the historic relic they felt most worthy of saving. In some respects, everyone was a winner, as the publicity generated often resulted in desperately-needed investment. Actually I happened to be at Hampton Court Palace when Griff was rehearsing a link for the 2004 grand final but I didn’t give him a wave. I doubt the US and Japanese tourists would have recognised him! 

Since then he has campaigned off-screen for the restoration of many Victorian buildings and has made documentaries on a huge range of other topics, from art treasures to mountains, great cities and literary heroes. Most were off my radar but I did witness several programmes featuring Griff on or around waterways.  I dipped a toe into his 2009 Rivers series and in 2006 watched the whole of the original travel series Three Men in a Boat. 

This featured Griff’s beautiful replica wooden skiff, in which he, Rory McGrath and Dara O’Briain rowed up the Thames in a recreation of Jerome K Jerome’s novel. Inevitably there were some amusing exchanges but some of the best bits came from their encounters with people and places along the route, and all seemed suitably starstruck on entering Dave Gilmour’s famous waterborne studio.

Griff Rhys Jones does have a genuine common touch, more even than the estimable ex-Python. Also, he is even more inclined to get his hands dirty – and feet wet – during the making of his documentaries. I’m pretty sure Michael never dared participate in the notorious Fastnet yacht race. 

Mel Smith is alas no longer with us but with Rowan Atkinson an increasingly bizarre right-wing grump and Pamela Stephenson Connolly a successful psychologist and writer in the USA, Griff Rhys Jones remains one of our greatest ex-Not the Nine O’Clock News relics and should he ever find his TV career waning I would definitely vote for Griff's restoration!