The Stage

Brucie makes an awkward host

Published Monday 19 July 2010 at 15:38

Living with Brucie

C4, Wednesday, July 14, 9.00pm

Pete and Dud: The Lost Sketches

BBC2, Sunday, July 11, 10.05pm

by Harry Venning

Bruce Forsyth is a showbusiness legend. No argument. But who is the man behind the all too familiar public mask?

Living with Brucie, part of Channel 4’s Cutting Edge documentary series, asked the question but never really provided any insights or answers. In fact, it had all the cutting edge of a blancmanche.

What did we learn about Brucie after an hour in his company?

That he can be a bit irritable, plays golf, has porridge for breakfast (sprinkled with blueberries, raisins and cinnamon), follows a rigid fitness regime every morning, washes his own golf socks to protect their elasticity, supports the return of national service and, it became swiftly apparent, feels extremely uncomfortable in the presence of a documentary film crew.

Denied the familiar comfort of a script or audience, Forsyth contrives little routines with his maid, addresses the camera directly and frequently appeals for re-assurance from the director.

Fortunately there is help at hand in the angelic, serene and undeniably shapely form of Wilnelia, Miss World 1975 and the third Mrs Forsyth, who lends her husband sterling support whilst effortlessly stealing every scene she shares with him.

All credit to Brucie and his ego, he doesn’t seem to mind. Indeed, whenever the couple return to her homeland of Puerto Rico it is Wilnelia who enjoys the celebrity, whilst Brucie accepts the relative obscurity of being Mr Miss World.

Despite an age gap of 31 years, the couple have enjoyed a long and loving marriage, and to see them still fussing over and flirting with each other is rather sweet. Truth be told, the “off stage” Brucie portrayed in the documentary isn’t particularly endearing, but the presence of Wilnelia is testimony to qualities the film evidently failed to capture.

Back in the sixties the BBC infamously wiped the tapes containing the majority of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s groundbreaking TV comedy Not Only, But Also, leaving only the scripts and some sound recordings for posterity to pick over.

Enter Jonathan Ross, with a cast of contemporary comics, actors and Adrian Edmondson, to celebrate and perform Pete and Dud: The Lost Sketches.

A laudable exercise, and not an entirely unsuccessful one either. The writing certainly stood the test of time, displaying an elegance far removed from the smash and grab nature of modern sketch comedy. As Stephen Fry pointed out, Cook and Moore were more in the business of finely constructed one act plays.

The assembled cast were respectful of the material but not over-reverential, even attempting one of the Dagenham Dialogues, and nobody attempted anything resembling an impersonation, which was a blessing.

There was even an attempt to revive a lost musical number called Isn’t She a Sweetie which, frankly, deserved to stay lost.

What undermined the whole exercise was the inclusion of surviving archive footage of Cook and Moore in all their black and white brilliance. It had to be in there, of course, but it just served as a painful reminder of what we were missing.