Alexander Harvey’s mouth hardened into a little line of petulance. These short answers may have been to the audience’s taste, but they made it difficult for him to impose his own rhythm on the interview. He decided to slow the proceedings down and reassert control with a longer question.
‘One thing I must ask you — we hear constantly about the issues of censorship and permissiveness.’ (He was trying to steer Barber into an area of serious discussion where the comedian would show himself up as trivial.) ‘Now, the traditions of the music hall are very robust, even vulgar — I suppose I’m thinking of people like Marie Lloyd, Max Miller. When you were in the double act with Wilkie Pole, your material was very clean, but now that a lot of the taboos are down and you are still working in the comedy field, how do you view sex?’
‘Through binoculars.’ Prompt again, right on cue. Alexander Harvey was being reduced to the level of a feed and the more he tried to take control, the more he set himself up.
He laughed insincerely and pressed on with his next question as if this badinage was all very well, but not really what the public had switched on to see. ‘Now, Lennie, there’s a cliche around that comedians are pretty pathetic people offstage.’
‘Some of them are pretty pathetic on-stage.’ The audience roared again.
‘I mean that, as in the example of Pagliacci,’ (hoping to show Barber up by abstruse reference) ‘clowns are essentially tragic figures — do you subscribe to this view?’
‘I don’t know. What’s the subscription?’ (Laughter.)
‘What I mean is that comedians yearn to be taken seriously. For instance, they’re supposed to have aspirations towards the legitimate theatre. Do you want to play Hamlet?’
‘What at?’ (Laughter.)
‘Ha, ha, very good. Perhaps we could move on to television. I mean, here you are, a comedian brought up through the tough school of the music hall, which is now dead, and here we are on today’s medium, television. It has been said that music hall died and television was the box they put it in — do you agree with that?’
‘What, that people on television are dead?’ (Laughter.)
‘No, no.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve been watching too many chat-shows.’ (Laughter and applause.)
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I was trying to ask a serious question.’ Harvey sounded as piqued as the local favourite beaten for the Women’s Institute Flower Arranging Trophy by a complete novice. ‘Let me try another tack. It always seems to me that it must be difficult for a comedian to have any dignity. I. . er. .’
Alexander Harvey paused for a second, apparently perplexed. He could see the Floor Manager beyond the circle of light gesturing at him. The man was circling his hand in the accepted ‘wind-up’ signal. Time to bring the chat to an end. What threw Alexander Harvey was that, though he had seen the signal any number of times, he had never actually seen it while he was talking. It was usually while some nonagenarian flautist was telling a rambling tale about Sir Thomas Beecham. But now it was being directed at him. His confusion came with the realization that he was the one who was being boring, that he was the one whom the director was no doubt vilifying in the control room. He stumbled in his sentence and then picked up momentum with an edge of bitchiness. ‘Um, Marty Feldman once said that comedy was an unnatural act — would you agree?’
‘Would I agree to an unnatural act? Is that a proposition?’ asked Lennie Barber coolly and perfectly. The audience erupted into laughter and applause. Barber’s riposte had struck a chord in all of them. Not only had it been rude to a man whom at bottom they hated; it had also reflected their own suspicions about his sexual identity.
Alexander Harvey, a fixedly indulgent smile on his face, hastily gestured at his guest, to make it look as if he was cueing the applause rather than letting it arise spontaneously. But the gesture was too late. There was no doubt that, at the end of the contest, Lennie Barber had won by a knockout.
Alexander Harvey linked ungraciously into the sketch, but he could no longer do any harm. Snide remarks about ‘the sort of comedy that used to be popular in the late thirties’ could not weaken Barber’s hold on his audience. And the omission of Charles Paris’ name from his introduction was unlikely to worry anyone except Frances (bound to be watching), Maurice Skellern (possibly ill with excitement at the thought of one of his clients actually being in work) and, of course, Charles himself.
After the interview, the sketch could not fail. The script was really pretty limp stuff, containing every old barbershop joke that ever groaned into life. But audiences like old jokes, and Lennie Barber was the hero of the hour. Apart from that, he rose above his material. Charles, as he went through his automation acting routine (Bepardon? — 1–2 — 3 — Bepardon?’) found his respect for the comedian soaring. Lennie Barber was right; he did know how comedy worked.
The set-up of the sketch was simple. Barber, in a hastily-assumed white coat, was the barber. Wilkie Pole was a gormless North Country youth who was about to meet his girl and wanted a quick hair-cut and shave ‘so’s I look me best, like, for me little girlie — 1–2 — (Bashful simper).’ Barber, having offered him ‘hair-cuts, hair-brushes, hair-combs, hair-oil, hair-tonic, hair-restorer — sounds like a German picnic, doesn’t it?’ sat him in the chair and proceeded to hack away at the special wig on his head, keeping up a running stream of gags the while. When the wig was reduced to a haystack he started on the shaving. He kept cutting his client’s chin (‘Only a little nick, sir’) and putting pieces of paper on the cuts. Pole left the shop with his face a mass of confetti and his hair in shreds.
The jokes were equally simple. For example, Barber would be stropping his razor. ‘Always get it very sharp, sir, got to be sharp. I test my razors by seeing if they can cut through a single hair. A single hair.’ (HE SUDDENLY WHIPS A PROP HARE OUT OF HIS. COAT AND SLASHED AT IT WITH THE RAZOR, WHICH HAS NO EFFECT.)
‘Not sharp enough.’ (HE CONTINUES STROPPING.)
Or again. .
BARBER: And now for the lather. . Only the finest shaving brush is used. Genuine ivory stem. Do you realize an elephant gave his life just so that you could look elegant for your girlie?
POLE: Ooh.
BARBER: Not to mention the badger.
POLE: The badger?
BARBER (PUSHING THE SHAVING BRUSH INTO HIS MOUTH): I told you not to mention the badger. And then of course there’s the shaving soap. I have a variety of shaving soaps. How would you like your shaving soap?
POLE: Oh, I’d like it scented.
BARBER: No, it’s much easier if you take it with you. But what you really need is my very own special soap. It’s a mixture of silver paint and sulphuric acid and it has two advantages — first, it means you can see your face in your chin so you don’t need a mirror. And second, you get some amazing dimples.
And third. . it make the lather go farther.
This last line was greeted by an enormous round of applause. It was one of the old Barber and Pole catch-phrases. That, along with ‘It helps the soap to cope,’ ‘Only a little nick, sir’ and ‘Bepardon?’ were all the trade-marks of the double act. And the audience clung to them like religion in an age of uncertainty. They responded ecstatically.
Even the hardware of a television studio failed to ruin the atmosphere. Because the moves and action of the sketch were so fixed, it had been possible to make the camera script very simple. The whole six minutes ran without break and no retakes were required.
There was no doubt about it. The show had been an enormous success.
Charles stood by the bar at the back of the scrum of television people getting drinks. He felt strange and needed the reassurance of a large Bell’s.
It was such a long time since he had felt that kind of warmth from an audience. Such a long time since he had appeared in anything more than modestly successful. To his annoyance, he felt rather emotional. It was a moving experience to feel the response of a wildly enthusiastic audience. It cut through all his layers of cynicism and left him exposed like a stage-struck teenager.