Six Dates with Barker: 1899 - The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town
This is a spare post I’ve been keeping for emergencies as once again we’re in Resignation Week and the entire country has a banging hangover so I’m in no position to get the post I was writing in order.
I am delighted to have found this show down the back of the internet since although the whole series is available commercially, I’m too mean to buy it. Six Dates with Barker (1971) is a set of six plays by different writers but all featuring Ronnie Barker in various roles and set at different dates. I haven’t seen the others because The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town made a particular appeal to me; it also happens that the date for the play is 1899.
It was written by Spike Milligan and is therefore naturally insane. He intended it for his fellow Goons Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, and himself: however in the event Sellers was unavailable and so it found its way into this anthology series. Fans of the Goon Show will know that the show made several journeys from radio onto television. In mmy humble opinion this play most resembles The Case of the Mukkinese Battle-Horn (1956), which I also love dearly and which has the advantage of not featuring Harry Secombe, whose voice goes through me. The Mukkinese Battle Horn and The Phantom Raspberry Blower have exactly the same surreal, satirical, punning and ludicrous humour as The Goon Show, and it’s very much in the same tradition. In fact there are two versions of The Phantom Raspberry Blower: this, the earlier one, and a redone version which appeared on The Two Ronnies’ show a few years later. I have seen the other version some time ago and remember not liking it as much as this. Judging by the internet reviews both versions have their fans and detractors.
The premise is that a killer is stalking the streets of Victorian London and killing or hospitalising his victims by blowing a raspberry at them. It is a parody of Jack the Ripper. The parody actually starts even before the titles with the words ‘Chopper Films Presents,’ a parody of course of Hammer Films. Being set right at the turn of the twentieth century it also satirises much of Victorian society including a whole set of policeman all disguised as Queen Victoria.
There is further surrealism and punning humour as you would expect. A suspect identified in a photograph by an arrow turns out to have an actual arrow suspended from him head pointing at him. An identity parade is assembled but rather than get the other members from the public they get them from Harrods. The detective doing the investigation walks out of interrogating someone, goes to feed the ducks, and all the time we hear the interview continuing as the lady he is talking to remains in his office. A victim of the Phantom Raspberry Blower finds a moustache tattoed on her face as a result. The detective has a nervous breakdown in the middle of the show and as a result spends quite a lot of it in an asylum dressed as Napoleon. There is a recurring visual pun on the sound of the raspberries blown by the Phantom Raspberry Blower and the appearance of real raspberries in one form or another.
In production terms there are some very familiar faces as well as both Ronnies, although they’re all well disguised for the period. Ronnie Barker carries most of the roles with ease. Cleverly there are certain scenes done to look as if they are old footage, which then turn out not to be when you recognise Ronnie Barker in the scene. Honestly I’m still not sure if some genuinely old footage has been used. If you watched the rest of it with the colour turned down you could think it was old footage, so good are the production values, if a little surreal.
My only real criticism of this is that it is wildly politically incorrect. There is a completely unnecessarily anti-Semitic depiction of Disraeli and also a scene featuring black face. In what is otherwise a fun romp through crime-ridden Vistorian London these things rather deflate the moment.
Otherwise this is a very fun play written by a master of comedy which is also excellently produced. Highly recommended.
This time the resignation is of the odious Nigel Farage who thinks to save himself from various investigations by resigning his seat in the Commons and immediately standing for the same seat.
I am delighted that one by one the other major parties have announced that they will not be standing candidates in the resulting by-election because they will have nothing to do with Farages games. I love the way they’re refusing to stand against him: it’s a remarkable achievement by Farage to unite all five major parties against him. The result is at the time of writing the only candidate standing against Farage is Count Binface. We all love Count Binface and this means he has been tacitly endorsed by all the other major parties.
It also means both candidates are unserious novelty candidates.
So let’s have the Count destroying a journalist shall we?
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