Bernard Manning dead.

[Sponky]

I guess anyone using sarcasm in their acts is a waste as it just goes way over your head.

 

Gotcha, mis-read that one!

 

Up yours Monty, I have to say you remind me of Jim Davidson a lot.

[Stu Monty]

Gotcha, mis-read that one!

 

Up yours Monty, I have to agree you remind me of Jim Davidson a lot.

 

Sorry, it was quite funny though. That Davidson comment is way below the belt.

[Guest TK-421]

More of a John Virgo.

[Sponky]

He's not "making a point" though is he? He's being the smug, sarcy little cunt that he always is because he can't ever just disagree with someone in good grace. He has to belittle and mock people just because they take an opposite view.

 

:thumbsup: In a nutshell!

 

Sorry that was way below the belt!

[Remmie]

What Strontium Dog has said stu is spot on, B M might have told racist jokes, but that don't make him a member of the k k k.

 

Unfortunatly i never went to see bernard manning, something i regret now he's passed away. But ive been to see Cubby brown several times here at Blackpool where i live. He also tells jokes about everyone & everything. I find his act hilarious, from his jokes about immagrants to his silly little dances. Does that make me Racist?

 

I've a few Black mates, one of them my daughters calls 'Uncle'. Before you ask no my kids are not mixed race! HA.

 

Oh dear.

[kidney]

Q: What's black and doesn't work?

 

A: Bernand Manning's kidneys.

 

He died of kidney failure. The piss being taken out of him for once. Or something.

 

Not Funny :no :no

[Stouffer]

Not Funny :no :no

 

It was meant to be ironic actually.

[wiiksie]

Funniest story I heard today was on 5 live a bloke texted in to say that he had told his wife this morning that Bernard Manning had died. Her reply.

Serves him right for killing all those turkeys.

See thats funny. But Roy Chubby Brown?? Fucking hell people, sort it out.

[Thants]

But Roy Chubby Brown?? Fucking hell people, sort it out.

He makes me feel physically sick just looking at him as open mindedly, I watched about 20 mins of his video once. Fuck me, he's a dirty old unfunny bitter cunt.

 

Thats aimed at Chubby', not Weeksie. Although . . . .

[wiiksie]

He makes me feel physically sick just looking at him as open mindedly, I watched about 20 mins of his video once. Fuck me, he's a dirty old unfunny bitter cunt.

 

Thats aimed at Chubby', not Weeksie. Although . . . .

You cheeky so and so.

 

Shouldn't you be composing your masterpiece for the GF semi?

[Stouffer]

You cheeky so and so.

 

Shouldn't you be composing your masterpiece for the GF semi?

 

Tee hee, he said semi.

[Thants]

You cheeky so and so.

 

Shouldn't you be composing your masterpiece for the GF semi?

 

I spent too long over it last night. Cant decide whether to go orchestral.

[Duff Man]

Isn't the arguement that "he takes the piss out of everyone so that makes it okay" a bit weak? Racism's still racism, whether you take piss out of one race or ten.

[Da Bitch]

correct me if I'm wrong but there used to be a doll called a Golliwog which eventualy got binned because it was supposedly racist.

 

you are correct, you can still get them but they are called Gollys that reminds me back in the 80's at the time I was working at Hamleys ( in the preschool section) I was asked by a well dressed, well spoken Black american woman where she could find a gollywog & before I could say anything one of my colleagues ( who insidently had a chip on her shoulder...no make that a chip shop she had so many) butted in & said IT'S NOT A GOLLYWOG IT'S A GOLLY...& you should be ashamed of yourself for asking for one!! then she turned to me & said YOUR A RACIST for not correcting her :eek: I didn't get a bloody chance to, you opened that big ugly gob of yous before I could say a word !!. The customer was so disgusted she had a real go at her!!

[Strontium]

Isn't the arguement that "he takes the piss out of everyone so that makes it okay" a bit weak? Racism's still racism, whether you take piss out of one race or ten.

 

Well, if you take the piss out of everyone, it's not discrimination is it?

[RoboRiise]

RoboRiise's gonna get his BFH for dissing the Bowen :telloff:

 

Every word true though. Nothing in this game for two in a bed.

 

Aw man, Jim Bowen didn't say that did he? But he's on Bullseye and everything. Bollocks. I'm sorry I can't bring myself to frown upon Jim Bowen.

 

Read 'em and weep.

 

Incidentally, if you believe his explanation, I assume Robbie was copying Rigobert "eating the grass" too..? My dad would have been 65 this year, born and bred in Lancashire and that's certainly not what he would have understood by that term.

[Strontium]

I remember Jimmy Hill using the phrase "nigger in the woodpile" on MOTD once; I was a bit surprised that nobody pulled him up for it. I guess these oldies just belong to a different age. I hope I'm not that out of touch when I get as old as that.

[Duff Man]

Well, if you take the piss out of everyone, it's not discrimination is it?

 

That quote from Hamstrung seems like racism to me. Do you not think it is?

 

It's pretty sickening stuff though whatever way you dress it up. As someone else said he just seems like a bully to me.

[Best Believe It]

Alexei Sayle: Bernard Manning and the tragedy of comedy

 

Sour. Self-pitying. Cowardly. These are the defining characteristics of the stand-up comedian, argues Alexei Sayle. How else can we explain the misanthropic tendencies of performers like Bernard Manning?

 

Published: 20 June 2007 (The Independent)

 

On the day Bernard Manning's wife Vera - the woman he referred to as "the bedrock of my life" - died, Bernard hung his DJ in the back of the Roller (number plate, 1 LAF) and, as usual, drove off to do a gig. This is not to say that the man wasn't suffering in some way, but he simply would not have known what else to do with himself.

 

When he was rushed into hospital two weeks ago, he had to cancel an appearance at his Embassy Club - the first time in six decades as an entertainer that he'd done so. You could see this as professionalism, or perhaps more likely as the action of a desperate and lonely old man who could feel at least half alive only when he was performing in front of a room full of strangers.

 

I never met the man, nor wanted to, but have met and studied many like him, largely because his generation of old-time comedians present a frightening object lesson in the perils of what being a stand-up can do to you if you don't take care to ameliorate its more malevolent effects. Whenever I've spent time with those traditional gag merchants, the feeling I have come away with on each occasion is one of overwhelming sadness - sadness for all that talent squandered on such base material, and sadness for the audiences who allow themselves to be spoon-fed such foul stuff.

 

The impulse to become a comic is exactly the same, whether you are a modern kind of transvestite Geordie surrealist who has a 90-minute act solely about talking owls, or an anti-globalisation, counterculture ranter who will only perform in a non-hierarchical fashion whereby the audience is on the stage and he is below them on the ground, or Roy "Chubby" Brown. We stand-ups are people who share a lot more than we generally care to admit to.

 

First and foremost, we are not team players; with our lone-wolf-like nature, we do not want to share the glory with anybody else. The obverse of this is that we also have to bear all the rejection, humiliation and isolation alone. It is this aspect of the business that has formed the characters of men like Manning and all the other Jim Davidsons, Freddie Starrs etc. For them, the triumphs fade almost as soon as they happen - but the crowds who heckle and won't listen, the club chairmen who start the bingo in the middle of their act, the lousy digs and the long night drives; these are remembered forever and are what turn them into the sour, artistically cowardly, self-pitying and miserable individuals that they inevitably seem to become.

 

It is not the things that happen to you, though, but how you react to them that matters. And in my observation, more than anything else, what damages these older comedians is that they allow themselves to admit to no sort of internal psychological life, no sort of hurt beyond hatred of other comedians. In particular, they will never admit to ever having done or said anything wrong, ever, in their working lives. It is always somebody else's fault when their career takes a downturn. It is the fault of the pregnant showgirl, or the slimy, liberal (probably Jewish) documentary makers who secretly filmed them telling racist jokes to a howling audience of policemen, or the upcoming generation of alternative (probably Jewish) po-faced comedians who don't know what's funny.

 

To placate whatever frazzled part of their mind acts as a conscience, Manning and his kind always draw some arbitrary line that they swear they won't cross, like an alcoholic telling himself that his drinking is under control as long as he stays off the barley wine. I seem to remember Bernard stating that though he might use terms like "nigger" and "coon " in his act, he would never, ever tell a joke about "disabled kiddies". You could hear the self-regarding tremor in his voice as he said this, as if he was reluctantly admitting to being a humanitarian of similar stature to Nelson Mandela, Noam Chomsky or Aung San Suu Kyi. He always denied being a racist, claiming that he made fun of everybody, equally - " politicians, bald-headed people, people with glasses on, the lot. I have a go at everybody and that's what makes everybody roar with laughter." I notice he left "nigger, coon and Paki" out of his list, though. Those were the words people objected to him using; I can't remember much of a furore about his specky four-eyed barbs.

 

These comedians, as well as denying themselves any kind of emotional outlet, are not keen to cultivate any sort of intellectual capacity. They will profess to have no time for such poncey pastimes as literature, art, theatre or the cinema. This means that all they are left with is a vague interest in women, money and sport and an overwhelming and obsessive interest in what they regard as "being funny".

 

To be among a crowd of these guys, or to be trapped alone with one of them, is a terrifying experience. They are all completely incapable of sustaining a normal, warm, personal conversation, with its to and fro; instead they resort to telling a string of old jokes, or insults and put-downs disguised as gags, in the space where an exchange of ideas or confidences or information might usually fit. This means, of course, that the comedians control the encounter, but at the price of the person on the receiving end of the gags not wishing to repeat the experience, ever. Sometimes you glimpse the bright working-class kid they must once have been - even Bernard, the ambitious greengrocer's son, keen to get on, eager to please.

 

In the end, though, Manning was simply being himself, an unhappy man who was not capable of change. His proud boast was that his motto was "To thine own self be true", though he could not resist adding: "That's from fuckin' Shakespeare, that is."

 

Those who should really be ashamed of themselves are the revisionists who sought to rehabilitate him: those such as the full-time contrarians at Living Marxism who gave his biography a good review, or those critics and comedy completists looking for the latest reputation to restore, who asserted that his mixture of bile and old pub-gags was him being "ironic " or "postmodern", or that he was an expression of some kind of undiluted and authentic working-class culture. Bernard Manning wasn't any of these things; he was just a halfway decent comic with a horrible act.

[Harry Squatter]

Quality joke he told: "I went the opticians the other day, the optician said" - "Mr Manning you'll have to stop wanking" I said - "why will I go blind?" - he said "No everyone in the waiting room has been complaining about you"

[Stu Monty]

Well, if you take the piss out of everyone, it's not discrimination is it?

 

It is mate, it's just that you are discriminating against everyone based on different factors. Hating blacks isn't made okay because you also hate women, Jews, Arabs, the Irish and students.

 

I accept that he is definitely from a different age but, in my opinion, the way he eart his living was akin to a big public service announcement saying that racism is fine, carry on.

[Strontium]

He isn't saying racism is fine tho is he. Some people need to learn the difference between real life and an act.

 

I mean, you honestly think I go through my day behaving like I do on here?

[aws]

He isn't saying racism is fine tho is he. Some people need to learn the difference between real life and an act.

 

I mean, you honestly think I go through my day behaving like I do on here?

 

You mean you don't? I'm saddened.

[Stu Monty]

He isn't saying racism is fine tho is he. Some people need to learn the difference between real life and an act.

 

I mean, you honestly think I go through my day behaving like I do on here?

 

No. You'd be dead by now surely.

 

I understand what an act is but we quite obviously disagree on the fact that he actually didn't like black people being in this country and calling themselves English. Even if he didn't think that way, which I think he did, his lifetime achievement of cementing the predjudices of his audiences isn't one to be celebrated.

[Kopite]

Quality joke he told: "I went the opticians the other day, the optician said" - "Mr Manning you'll have to stop wanking" I said - "why will I go blind?" - he said "No everyone in the waiting room has been complaining about you"

 

I like the one where he told the audience he is half-Jewish and then said he had a relative who died at Auschwitz.

 

"He fell out of one of the watchtowers."