To Hill and Back.

I had planned to give cyberlife a rest until 2007 to concentrate instead on the real world - namely Father Christmas, peace on earth and goodwill to all men (sic) - but something forced me to put down my creme de coconut shandy and crawl back to the keyboard - I have been proved right!
Now, first of all, I am rarely, if ever, proved right. Secondly, it is not always the best thing since big bosoms to be proved right. I'm sure the world wasn't overly chuffed when Churchill proved to be right about what he thought were Hitler's travel plans for 1939-45. It wasn't an all round result in the long term for Jesus, healthwise, when he had his suspicions about Judas confirmed. Sometimes, however, being proved right makes life just about worth living.
I have just watched a programme called "Is Benny Hill Still Funny?" I thought it would only be on for a few seconds - time enough for someone to shout to camera "Of course he bloody is. The man was one of our finest ever comics. Now get back to your mince pies!" It went on a bit longer than that but by the end I felt vindicated for watching as I believe it backed up a number of beliefs I have held for some time.
Those beliefs? 1. Thatcher's decade - the 1980s - was truly dreadful, almost everything it produced was awful, superficial, ephemoral, without value, selfish and uncaring and it will take hundreds of years to recover from it, if we ever do.
2. Some things are either funny or they're not and there is no such thing as "alternative comedy".
3. Fashion is for the brain dead.
4. Ben Elton is a cunt (sorry, I hate that word but it is the only one in the English language which adequately describes him).
All that justification from one programme. Not bad.
The idea behind the show was to get together a gaggle of young trendies who claimed never to have heard of Benny Hill and let them see some of the great man's sketches to see if they raised a laugh or two. They did! So much so that the market researchers who conducted the test said the results were sufficiently good that if commissioning editors had put the show before them as a pilot they would have been able to tell them they had a hit on their hands.
The findings proved that the dark days of the '80s were well and truly over and people had come out into the light again. Audiences in the '60s and '70s had roared with laughter at the comedy genius but then came the '80s when the politically correct brigade and the rise of "alternative comedy" forced Thames Television to unceremoniously scrap The Benny Hill Show. It was deemed sexist (because there were flashes of girls' suspenders, knickers and cleavages - Christ, give me strength), racist (because there was a character from China who could not pronounce the letters "n" or "l" etc - and "Wossy" can't pronounce his "r"s. Does that make anyone who laughs at his speech Wossist?) and dated (because people were still laughing at it after 20 years - because it's FUNNY!). The young, mixed sex and mixed colour audience watching tonight's show found BH neither sexist nor racist and the fact that they all laughed out loud surely means they didn't think him dated.
I have nothing against "alternative comedy", as it is dubbed - Eddie Izzard is one of my comedy heroes and I love The Young Ones, Alexi Sayle etc - but it is the bloody label I hate. What IS the alternative to comedy? Depression? Something is either funny or it isn't. I once met a trendy, metroseuxual-type twat at a party who was droning on and on about how "brilliant" The League of Gentleman was. The Jack Hawkins film was "brilliant", I admitted, but the catchphrase black comedy was merely "passable". When I dared to expand the conversation to ask who his early comic heroes were he said: "Oh, I don't find anyone pre-1980 funny." Seriously! He liked The League because it was "trendy" to like it. He no doubt likes Little Britain for the same reason. I should have told him putting a loaded gun to your head and pulling the trigger was all the rage these days. Wanker!
Back to the "Is Benny Hill Still Funny?" programme, we had Ben Elton piping up that he thought Benny Hill was one of our finest comics. You've got to admit, Elton's got some neck! He was among the most vocal in the '80s who decried Benny Hill. Sadly for him, the programme makers screened a sketch he did nastily taking the piss out of Ben and his humour. They also showed an interview in which this little "cunt" actually implied that the traditional closing scene of the Benny Hill Show, in which Benny is chased by scantily clad women, was inciting men to commit rape in parks! Elton made a career out of being right-on, politically to the left and PC. We all know what happened when Lloyd-Webber flashed a fistful of moolah at him? I wouldn't trust Elton to piss accurately into a river from the bank. If he said he was a man I would insist on a DNA test. The nicest thing anyone could ever say about Elton was said by the great Billy Bragg. Referring to Elton's about-turn from left-wing politics and ideals, Billy said: "To be fair, Ben was never really comfortable with it."
Like Elton, however, the right-on fashion ebbed away and people could get back to the real world of enjoying what was funny and not what some wanker had told them was funny.
My colon is now knotted, my eyes are bleeding and the dogs are hiding under the bed, expecting the inevitable explosion, so I must stop.
In short, the whole bloody '80s and everything they spawned can go back to the town which gave birth to them. Good riddance.