Bob Monkhouse - Game Show host with the Golden Touch

Thirty years ago any thought of Bob Monkhouse being a TV Treasure would have been anathema to me, absolutely laughable. He’d have been a more appropriate candidate for room 101, followed by burial in a deep pit and capped with concrete. He was a notable Tory party and Thatcher supporter, too. But even a veteran game show host is entitled to re-evaluation and by the time he died in 2003 I realised there had been more to him than a fake tan and well-rehearsed salute. It took quite a while. 

Like most of his generation of entertainers, Monkhouse cut his teeth in radio both as performer and gag-writer. Like Bruce Forsyth he was a skilled and lively comic host of TV variety shows in the Fifties and Sixties and I remember in 1973 watching  Carry On Sergeant and being surprised to see the owner of that distinctive ‘beauty spot’ co-starring in the very first ‘Carry On’ film alongside the likes of Charles Hawtrey, Terry Scott and Kenneths Connor and Williams. 

By that time, Bob was very familiar to me. We weren’t big on game shows in our household but the exception was ITV’s The Golden Shot.  Almost from as long as I can remember it formed part of our regular Sunday afternoon viewing, following The Big Match football and the escapist adventure slot featuring the likes of The Persuaders or Department S. I believe it was broadcast live – it certainly looked like it! – but Monkhouse was always the unflappably professional and genial host amidst the guests, ‘Bernie the Bolt’ and the mini-skirted assistant, Anne Aston. The best shots were rewarded and luckily no humans were harmed during the making of this programme. 

By the mid-Seventies, Sunday afternoons were more the preserve of pesky English essays and French vocab learning but I did occasionally watch Bob’s next venture, Celebrity Squares although the teenage Mike found it all tediously self-congratulatory. I’ve never been into Family Fortunes, another one of Bob’s, but when the Beeb lured him away from his old commercial stomping ground, we did make a weekly date with his bingo-based show Bob’s Full House. The presenter wasn’t the main attraction. Indeed I would happily have strapped him to the set of The Golden Shot and let the crossbow-firers do their worst. He was also the target of many Eighties comedians and young impressionists like Rory Bremner, quick to lampoon the smarmy smile and dubious sincerity of Monkhouse and his ilk. 

But things were changing. I paid little attention to his BBC revival of Opportunity Knocks but did tune in to a few of his chat shows with fellow comics, old and new, on The Bob Monkhouse Show. Then in the Nineties, old-school variety entertainers became cool again. It was now OK to laugh with, not at, comedians like Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd (who died within a day of each other in ’92) and even Ben Elton handed Ronnie Corbett a regular slot on his eponymous show. 

Bob was suddenly everywhere on the TV. In 1993 he appeared on the late-night chat show trying to get a word in edgeways against the host of Danny Baker After All which Dad and I quite enjoyed, then was the very first guest on Room 101 and granted An Audience With Bob Monkhouse by ITV. With his quick wit and ear for a one-liner, he was also a perfect team captain and host for BBC2’s new comedy panel show Gag Tag which was usually a good source of laughs for me. The BBC also milked the comedian’s well-deserved reputation for ad-libs in 1995’s Saturday night series Bob Monkhouse on the Spot, in which audience members supposedly provided subject matter from which the star could dish up the humour. 

There were guest appearances on existing shows, too. Like Brucie, Bob won new fans thanks to a few stints on Have I Got News For You?  His apparent right-wing tendencies might have jarred with the likes of Ian Hislop and Ken Livingstone but you wouldn’t have known, old pro that he was. Monkhouse couldn’t completely escape his gameshow past, either. His primetime CV was further expanded by presenting National Lottery Live. As stated earlier, I’ve never been a fan of his ‘shiny floor’ persona but the ten-minute slots were easier to digest, despite the contrived catchphrase, “I may be a sinner but make me a winner”. 

Bob was finding a new lease of broadcasting life into his seventies when diagnosed with prostate cancer. To his credit, he spoke widely about the condition which two years later claimed his life. Indeed he apparently spoke about it four years after his death. Like many, I marvelled at what I thought was Monkhouse’s pre-recorded prostate cancer charity advert in 2007. In fact, it was only the product of technical wizardry and a ‘soundalike’ actor but it actually served as a reminder of what an entertaining trooper Bob Monkhouse had been.