Max Wall

In a week when Bruce Forsyth reaches 80 there's the suggestion of a chilly downside to the celebrations. Because, like him or not, he is one of the last all round entertainers of the variety era. In 1957, when Forsyth was just 30 the late great charlatan John Osbourne wrote this in his preface to 'The Entertainer':

"The music hall is dying, and with it, a significant part of England. Some of the heart of England has gone; something that once belonged to everyone, for this was truly a folk art."

In a sense Osbourne was spot on; television and changing fashions were killing live variety as one by one the old halls - The Metropole, The Hackney Empire, Collins - converted to bingo, cinema, dancing... or were simply left to rot and demolished. But TV, in particular ITV, needed something to fill its schedules. Max Miller, so beloved of John Osbourne and a clear model for Archie Rice, was one of the golden age of variety's last great stars so was an obvious candidate for inclusion in ITV's early schedules. In one short series of 60 minute programmes he used up a lifetime's worth of material and, not long after, retired to his Brighton home to die in 1963. Tommy Trinder ("Yew lucky people!") saw his fame rocket when he became the first compere of Sunday Night At The London Palladium. It took just one lame anti-semitic joke on live television to sink his career and his replacement, a young Bruce Forsyth, went on to... well you know the rest.

Some artistes soldiered on playing cruises, Butlins, what remained of seaside summer shows and occasional TV spots. Others went legit as comedy actors. The famous stage drunk Freddie Frinton is best remembered by people of my age as the star of Meet The Wife, a fair to middling sitcom he made with Thora Hird. Of course, when I say 'people of my age' I'm not including the citizens of Germany, Austria and most of Scandinavia where for some bizarre reason an 18 minute sketch called Dinner For One, filmed by Granada TV in 1963, gets shown every new years eve to a vast loyal audience.

But the fact that Osbourne could write about the death of music hall 50 years ago and Brucie is still presenting a Saturday night BBC show with huge ratings indicates that if music hall has died then at least it's been after a long illness.



12 years after Max Miller's death I turned 16. For this first coming of age I didn't go on an underage drinking binge, I didn't go on a date (the opposite sex was, at this point, oblivious to my charms) and I didn't leave school to start work. Instead I went to the theatre. The show, Aspects Of Max Wall, featured another variety refugee. This was a revelation. Here was an all round entertainer who made upstarts like Bruce Forsyth and Roy Castle look like one trick ponies. A unique comedian, dancer, singer, actor, Wall's career up to this point had witnessed scandal, success, failure and bankruptcy of Archie Rice proportions. By now he was in his late 60s and for two hours gave a master class in how to make a packed theatre double up with laughter while clearly not giving a sod whether they laughed or not. He could go from sophisticated to svelt to utterly grotesque with the blink of an eye but - and this is crucial - he never descended into the mawkish pathos beloved of Norman Wisdoms or the relentlessly cheerful comedy by attrition of Ken Dodd. Someone this funny didn't need to tell you how tickled he was. He just got on with the job of making us laugh and if we didn't like it, well tough.

Over a decade later I began my own career on the comedy circuit (I'll save that for another time) and a common question amongst comedians and friends was "Who was the funniest comic you ever saw?" Certainly I worked alongside the good, the bad and (far too often) the over-rated but over 30 years on nothing has ever touched the magic of an elderly curmugeon reaching the end of a two hour set and as an afterthought mournfully muttering "I suppose I'd better do the stupid walking bit now, that's what you all came for."