“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.
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