39. We are investing in people

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Also:  It's Saturday Night 2. An autograph before you go 3. A new kind of game show 4. A rising exasperation with the quantity of dirt 5. The whole thing suddenly fell apart 6. Synthetic propensity 7. It was destined to be an anti-climax 8. This is your show now 9. The awesome scale of our wastefulness 10. Hands up those who couldn't care less 11. Together We’ll Be Ok 12. Decide the shape of ITV in the 1980s 13. Alan is too commercial 14. It worked like a dream 15. Older men, doing school boy tricks 16. Killing the Golden Goose 17. People love us to be sexy 18. The manure is worth more than the cattle 19. They were big in the States and we noted that 20. I’m still aggressive and I’m still handing out the insults 21. A new style of lunatic humour 22. The Habitat-bean-bag-hessian-wallpaper brigade 23. Thoroughly sinful 24. All carrots should be scraped, sliced and cooked 25. Back then it was radical stuff 26. Whatever they do, we can do it better 27. You'll have to take us as you find us 28. Entertainment that keeps on the move 29. It's the public that has to pay 30. The last we saw of either of them was their sad faces 31. Just shoot the bastard 32. Britain could clearly be facing its darkest hour 33. Any enthusiasm we may have had for continuing discussions is waning 34. It was considered by LWT and then put in a bottom drawer 35. Watch the redoubtable Terry take off 36. I thought it might be terrible and I wouldn’t enjoy it at all 37. Kamikaze Mastermind 38. We haven’t moved into luxury 39. We are investing in people 40. Delivered impeccably 41. He has to allow you to do your bit 42. All the anticipation of the great emotive point 43. If you want Russ Abbot to do it, then you have to accept me and my ideas 44. Let’s get straight into this 45. Unedifying Greed 46. We’ve got the fucking lot! 47. Scope for humour and danger 48. Pure Megablast 49. There’s lots of killing, but not much else 50. I wanted to make sure it was going to be disastrous 51. Oh dear – Auntie’s playing bingo! 52. A Shrivelled Little Thing 53. I shouldn’t have accepted it 54. We would be the spoilsports 55. The Most Sexless Person In Television 56. They’d have strung me up if I hadn’t chosen him 57. Is there some way to play with the internal constituent parts? 58. The most important entertainment programme of my time 59. The plumply pretty female duo 60. The audience just sort of started to freeze on him 61. More pilots than British Airways 62. There's going to come a time when you'll have to go to the BBC 63. A slightly pretentious manifesto 64. Things Look Very Precarious 65. It’s no good doing all the same old people all the time 66. That’s just not funny Bobby, it's corny - just don’t do that 67. Well bottom’s not funny 68. We Are The Funnymen 69. The powers that be listened to Denis 70. Stretchers never go up stairs 71. I was in obscurity until this series 72. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me 73. There’s such a passion for nostalgia right now 74. I Heard A Seat In The Stalls Go ‘Gerdonk!' 75. This is your show, folks, and I do mean you 76. There’s good news for perplexed fans of 3-2-1! 77. Taking on Blind Date would be a real challenge 78. You wanna bet on it? 79. The yarns worked their tried and tested magic 80. The Charge-And-Shout Brigade 81. I sat for a moment in silence, then turned in my chair and left the stage 82. We just weren't allowed into UK terrestrial television 83. Beadle’s A Prick 84. The interviewer always has to know when it's best to keep his or her mouth shut 85. Can you come up with a good solution for the Murder Weekend mystery? 86. He's not a goody- goody hero 87. The Sexism, The Dolly Birds, The Catchphrases 88. The feel of Saturday night 89. 1990 Who would employ an ex-alky with lowered self-esteem 90. It were a right smack in the face 91. Look Straight Into My Eyes And Everything Will Be Alright, That's A Promise 92. That's the last thing I was expecting, Jim 93. The characters and situations are real 94. Oh Man, There Go All My Women Fans 95. A Double Order of Talent 96. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine 97. NTV brings you ... empty rooms! 98. You’re BBC, you shouldn’t be here 99. If this doesn’t work out, we’re both snookered! 100. The humour of Beadle comes through humiliating people! 101. To allow such bilge on TV is an insult to the audience 102. Like a cup of cold sick 103. A litre of gin, ecstasy and crack cocaine 104. A reliable tent pole for Saturday evenings 105. It is in the cutlery drawer 106. Welcome to the new Saturday night 107. Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game 108. The programme has done extremely badly and will be dropped after this series 109. Building the excitement and tension to a crescendo 110. He gives us our spirit of unity; we’d all like to strangle him 111. The worst programme currently on terrestrial television 112. I award the city state of Milton Keynes 100 credits! 113. There’s nothing that makes people scream, ‘Did you see that?’ 114. It was of a standard frankly well below what the public would want 115. Waxing An Ape Is My Ambition 116. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even 117. The penalty shoot-out is the greatest ever endgame 118. 200 black boxes are strapped to the back of a cross-section of the nation 119. Better For You, Better For All Of Us 120. I mean who on earth thought that was a good idea? 121. I’m sure the tune was in there somewhere 122. This Time, You Decide 123. King of trash, that’s me 124. It’s about rejection now 125. They lost what Popstars was all about 126. Win the ads 127. A name in search of a series 128. Getting grief from the papers 129. I’m so pleased to be back on television 130. Saturday nights haven't been this interesting for 10 years 131. It’s the Usual Nonsense 132. The trip of a lifetime Epilogue: Why Haven't You Written a Series of Articles on Tuesday Night Telly?

The eventual victor in the TV Times Magazine Top Ten Awards in the category of comedy was Russ Abbot. The loss in 1983 from his Madhouse gang of Michael Barrymore had little, or no impact on Abbot’s personal popularity, nor of that of his programme. Accompanied by Bella Emberg, Dustin Gee and Les Dennis, the funnyman embarked upon a nationwide tour in the autumn of 1983. Described in the programme as “one of the funniest men in Britain and certainly one of the hottest properties in entertainment,” Abbot would himself later concede “the 80s were very good to me”. “In just a handful of years, he has emerged as a brilliant talent,” gushed the programme notes, “a fine comedy actor and one of a brand new breed of comedians who are taking British showbusiness by storm. He has been acclaimed by the public as The Funniest Man on Television … and feted by showbusiness peers with the prestigious awards of Showbusiness Personality of the Year, from the Grand Order of Water Rats, the highly renowned charity organisation, and ITV Personality of the Year from the Variety Club of Great Britain.”

Having picked up the show from Freddie Starr, Russ Abbot’s Madhouse was a revelation. “If the star’s previous form is anything to go by, it should stand a good chance of winning plenty of laughs,” wrote TV Times as it previewed Russ’ first series in charge. “Viewers of Freddie Starr’s Variety Madhouse will remember lanky Russ in the guise of ‘Cooperman’ … David Bell, controller of entertainment at London Weekend Television, described the show as ‘a fictional situation comedy, without a plot, that takes place in a madhouse next door to a chip shop.’”

“Everybody was involved,” says Abbot. “If anybody had an idea which we thought we could use and make work then we would … (It) all stemmed from ideas on the rehearsal floor. Each show took about a week to record … you’d start on a Monday with a read through but that had changed by Monday afternoon. Changed by Tuesday morning and as long as we got it right by the tech run on the Thursday before we went into the studio it was great. But even then on the studio floor it changed with improvisation. But it was a great vehicle.” Intrinsic to the success of the Madhouse was Russ’ entourage, and from day one new stars were expected to emerge from the firmament. Michael Barrymore would be first to fly the coop, but back in 1980, the smart money was elsewhere: “Newcomer Dustin Gee looks like being to Russ Abbot’s Madhouse on Saturday, what Russ Abbot was toFreddie Starr’s Variety Madhouse. Gee is an anarchist impressionist, his favourite characters being John Cleese and Bamber Gascoigne. He says: ‘I don’t do a lot of research on my impressions. My method is just to believe completely that I am the person I am imitating. I only do people I like – which means I don’t do politicians.’”

By 1983 Russ Abbot’s Madhouse was regularly attaining audiences of 12 million. Abbot declared in 2001, “it was a hell of a bill … it was a great shop window … I think it would still run today”. While viewed as chaotic and dangerous, unlike most anarchic comedy of the time Russ Abbot’s Madhouse was, in fact, completely safe. Consisting entirely of sketches, the show’s regular characters sought not to reflect or comment upon modern society. Instead it took inspiration primarily from the well of popular fiction: Boggles was a spoof on the stiff upper lip RAF pilots of wartime fiction, while Cooperman was an attempt at a parody of the superhero genre. Other well-loved creations included Barratt Holmes, Fritz Crackers and most memorably, Jimmy McJimmy (or CU Jimmy as he later became known) The fast pace of the sketches meant that many of the characters were reduced to simple, repeatable, memorable catchphrases, and Abbot’s most popular creations found their way into schoolyard vernacular, securing the star’s, quite unique, cross-generational appeal.

“The characters grew,” says Abbot, “and the comedy came from within them because they became personas in themselves … Wilf Bumworthy was the chairman of the South Burnley Pigeon Fanciers club and people could relate to these characters. I don’t know how they related to Jimmy or to Cooperman, but then if you look at the film Superman: The Movie, Cooperman was a spoof on that. Basildon Bond was a spoof on the James Bond movies – so there was always a relation there. People could always relate to who these characters were … and we had mail … there were all sorts of letters even from the younger generation with pictures and cartoons of the characters drawn on the letter heading. Because that kind of programme – and Saturday nights – appealed right across the board to all ages – from eight to 80. So it was never geared at one particular audience or one particular avenue. It was there to please everybody.”

Critical reaction was far from positive, with Abbot’s popularity rankling with many who preferred their comedy a little more cutting, and for a time Abbot was held up as the epitome of everything wrong with comedy. In 1980 Miss M Jakeman complained: “Do those concerned with Russ Abbot’s Madhouse ever stop to consider how cruel their Hunchback of Notre Dame parody can be to those people who have to bear the affliction in real life? I know humour has to have a target, but this is like baiting an animal.”

Regardless, the plaudits kept coming and over the next few years Abbot would be voted top variety act in the 1990 British Comedy Awards, comedian of the decade, funniest man on the television in Europe, the funniest man on television in Britain (five times). Yet, in 1985 he would be forced to leave the station that had nurtured him. Intent on winning the Saturday evening ratings war, LWT was focussing on game shows to the financial detriment of all other types of programming. When Stanley Baxter left the company to return to the BBC in May that year, he commented, “[LWT] looked at the budget for the series I had already started to write and decided they could not afford it”. As David Docherty reports in his book on LWT Running The Show “two weeks later, Russ Abbot, whom LWT had nurtured into a major star, but who required the kind of resources which Baxter sought, also moved to the BBC. When the Baxter switch was announced to the press, Jim Moir, BBC’s head of variety, light entertainment group, sniffily commented ‘London Weekend seems to be investing most of their money in game shows. We are investing in people’”.

Next Monday: Delivered impeccably