Bernard Manning Has Died

heaven needed a.....

....

It's a fookin' disgrace

..nope, can't think of any famous characteristics belonging to this ex-man.

anyone else?

What will Mancunian coppers do for their entertainment now?

his poor old mam....

(sorry had to be the first to say it)

i baked you a cake, but i embarrassed myself on national tv over it.

RIP

(Racist Idiot Pelican)

Hating Bernard Manning = anti-semitism

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6765093.stm

frank sinatra called him "the greatest ballad singer of the last fifty years".

rip.

I'll tell you what son, a lot of these fookin alternative comedians couldn't keel over and die of a heart attack if you fookin gave them a searchlight. Alternative comedian? Alternative to dying if you fookin ask me.

Ah fuck him...and his big fat corpse.

lock thread

First Simon Wiesenthal, then this. How could this happen.

murder?

He truly was the people's racist comedian.

I was kinda hoping he'd fallen from a 30th Floor window and landed on Jim Davidson...

If he hadn't played the Hacienda's launch night, who knows how the face of British music might have been changed

hmmmm... maybe people wouldn't have forgiven the Mondays quite so easily.

Remember him this way.

I'd like to remeber him tarred, feathered and possibly on fire...But that's not going to happen now. But I will settle for dead.

or even "remember"

Are there any Jews you don't want to see killed, stone monkey?

thought this was a joke thread until I saw it was started by Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy

I wonder if there's a right answer for that question...?

Tom Hibbert's Bernard Manning interview in Q to thread.

I'd like to remeber him tarred, feathered and possibly on fire...But that's not going to happen now. But I will settle for dead.

-- Stone Monkey, Monday, 18 June 2007 16:35 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

hahaha. brilliant.

while Manning's routine made little attempt to be topical, he could occasionally hint at subversion.

As when, soon after the Falklands war, he told his audience that two soldiers from the conflict were present.

As the jingoistic cheers rang out, Manning embarrassed the audience by adding: "They're Argentinians."

Tenner says that embarrassment wasn't the reaction of yer typical paid-up member of a Bernard Manning audience, and that subversion wasn't actually his aim.

For the first time ever I am too scared to look at the BBC comments box.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=6627&edition=1

This thread has made me laff.

Somewhere up in hellbunn, someone's smiling.

He was furious when two black waitresses who won damages from a Derby hotel because it failed to shield them from Manning's invective at a Round Table dinner accused him of calling them "wogs".

"It's a horrible, insulting word I've never used in my life," he complained, while maintaining that "niggers" and "coons" were historical terms with respectable roots.

Rip Bernard you were a very funny man who wasn't afraid to tell jokes on any subject good on you God bless you.

Lee Kimberley, Bradford

"hast thou any bisto?"
"ah sed fook off yur spanish cohnt"

Writer and broadcaster Barry Cryer said: "The thing about Bernard was that he looked funny, he sounded funny and he had excellent timing. It was just what he actually said that could be worrying."

probably fair comment. it's not just comedians who deny they're racist when their jokes obv. are but comedy seems to be where that issue is most complicated. it's a compelling argument tho just because the idea of someone using comedy to propel their genuine morose beliefs about people as opposed to reflecting/imitating life feels too simplistic and doesn't really make sense (you'd sooner be a politician no?). it seems this guy had friends of other races and cultures in any case.

still, it's a method that seems to be dying with the comics in this country most famous for practising it. i can't think of any comics younger than Jim Davidson who might really sympathise with that argument (and beyond it) at least.

Did he really once sing a medley of Smiths songs on television, or is this a complicated practical joke that everyone I know has been playing on me for many years now?

DV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5cS0bZiJ1Q

ha ha ha

Also, the idea that Manning had good comic timing is utter fiction. Just watch any of his clips on Youtube, he's all over the place, he stumbles punchlines, he doesn't pace his set. Roy Chubby Brown has amazing comic timing though, so just because you're a racist doesn't mean you can't pace yourself properly.

he had excellent timing, he just couldn't remember when to deploy it.

I've never seen an episode of The Comedians tbh, so he may have been the white Richard Pryor there, I dunno.

Mike Reid hated Bernard Manning for stealing his material during those days.

I've seen Mike Reid's act and that's bollocks.

Reid claimed that Manning would look at your cue cards before you went on stage and do your act before you did. Are you calling Mike Reid a liar?

thedragonflyproject (36 minutes ago) Marked as spam
You weren't the one for me, fatty. Burn in hell.

xpost

No, but I'm calling his act bollocks.

TBF he probly gave Bernard some tips on race hate.

stu4203 (11 minutes ago) Marked as spam
Whats black & annoyed?
The reincarnation of Bernard Manning

The Sun's frontpage headline:

RACIST IN PEACE

Well there's a pot-kettle-BLACK situation for you.

Manning played the opening night of the Hacienda: "I've played some fookin' shitholes in my time" etc.

No doubt his spirit lives on in Ricky Gervais with his ironic free pass.

manning was a friend of my (now dead) step-grandfather from the dim and distant past. he was in comedy in manchester going back to the forties. manning stayed in touch right up to the end, which is menschy. shame he was a bigot, but now he's dead the audiences who paid to see his act will all stop being racist, so everything's okay now.

Funny: They replayed his moment off Tiswas on the Tiswas Reunited prog over the weekend, where he was being lifted as a human bar with Big Daddy the wrestler, by "britain's strongest man' who promptly dropped them both.

Wonder why they didn't get Johnny Kwango or Clive Myers to lift him.

Reid claimed that Manning would look at your cue cards before you went on stage and do your act before you did.

... and get ten times as many laughs as you would have

Ben Elton's cue cards...

I watched that Tiswas Revisited as well. Looked to me as though Sally James and Spit The Dog could have done a better job of lifting him...

Is Spit The Dog still alive?

I assume emphysema eventually did for Cough the Cat

Spit The Dog is theoretically immortal.

Theoretically? He is one of the immortals!

hairybogroll (48 minutes ago) Marked as spam
big fat cunt was told to loose wait or die

too bad they didn't spell it dye :-(

paging lynne truss

I was more surprised at Benny Out Of Crossroads still being alive.

He might be alive but his agent must have died sometime back in the mid 80s

I noted the pecking order where Lenny Henry and Frank Bloody Carson got the big intro and applause but Bloke Out Of The Scaffold and Worst Doctor Who Ever were just supporting players.

Was Clive Webb on it?

I was hoping this was meant to say Bernard Fanning.

I assume emphysema eventually did for Cough the Cat

funny thing is, I had *absolutely no knowledge* of the existence of Cough the Cat until CJ mentioned him or her on a thread a year or two back, despite seeing Bob Carolgees on TV (with or without Spit) on innumerable occasions.

Roy Chubby Brown is playing the New Theatre in Oxford soon; the ads on the bus shelters have the legend "If easily offended, stay away!" which holds true for most comedians I would've thought.

Yeah, too often I was "Where's John Gorman then???"

blimey, Clive Webb...

Cough the Cat never really caught on

Darcus Howe: "So Bernard Manning asked me, straight up - I was the only black man in the place - where I was from, and I told him, Brixton. He smiled, and said he'd been there once, so he could be my daddy."

He wrote is own obit. It's a laff riot.

I was hoping this was meant to say Bernard Fanning.

LOL :)

and as I sense the affection from the mass of the British public, I know that I am the one having the last laugh.

hurr, no you aint.

Mark, have you actually looked at anything other than ILE today?

What are the odds on Ian Brady being the next celebrity to pop his clogs?

xpost yeah, why?

remember his appearance on Mrs Merton? he was arrogant and obnoxoious of course but he still managed to outsmart them really. Ahearne seemed angered by his behaviour afterwards, maybe frustrated that she didn't manage to show him up as perhaps intended (why would you invite him on otherwise? clearly she was not a fan). he didn't need other people to make him look a pillock tho innit.

What are the odds on Ian Brady being the next celebrity to pop his clogs?

ready with that Taking Sides Manning vs Brady thread then, Tom.

Brady and Manning: Pride of Manchester

The Manchester thing reminded me of Brady that and "I know that I am the one having the last laugh"

He wrote is own obit. It's a laff riot.

-- Ned Trifle II, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 10:37 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

LOL @ daily mail's sub US conservative media terminology "reviled by liberals". WTF.

surely that's a well used term traditionally here too

I haven't noticed, if so, EG I don't recall Thatcher running down "the liberals".

Not really tho. To me a liberal is someone just slightly to the left of a Tory.

I was going to add a comment on the mail's site, but I couldn't be arsed, which sez it all wrt my opinion on manning, I suppose.

remember his appearance on Mrs Merton? he was arrogant and obnoxoious of course but he still managed to outsmart them really. Ahearne seemed angered by his behaviour afterwards, maybe frustrated that she didn't manage to show him up as perhaps intended (why would you invite him on otherwise? clearly she was not a fan). he didn't need other people to make him look a pillock tho innit.

-- blueski, Tuesday, June 19, 2007 11:53 AM (Tuesday, June 19, 2007 11:53 AM) Bookmark Link

This the same Mrs Merton show in which she said that many non-whites in this country were born here and were therefore British and he said something along the lines of "Jesus was born in a stable but we don't call him a fuckin horse"?

In what way did he outsmart them?

Richard Wilson was the other guest on that wasn't he - he didn't try and be funny so much as just be all "yr an idiot", which probably worked in his favour

Anyone see Jim Bowen being interviewed about Manning by Gavin Esler on Newsnight? Good old Jim!

i found out yesterday, while working at an awards show, and my thumbs instinctively turned upwards in a fonzie-esque 'eyyyyyy' gesture.

i was woken at 8 this morning, after 2 hours' sleep, to hear the retards on the bbc breakfast telly reading out emails they'd received, all along the 'he was funny and he was brave, people are too sensitive' variety, and the woman earnestly inviting viewers to write in if they had an opinion. i'm bored shitless of opinions, and i'm glad he's dead.

i'm bored shitless of opinions, and I'm glad he's dead.

This is how Nazi Germany ended.

That was Eva Braun's last words, folks!

In what way did he outsmart them?

he didn't lose his cool unlike co-guest Richard Wilson (who looked pretty silly trying to reason with or get one up on him). he was probably annoyed that he'd been treated so badly by them afterwards (not much sympathy here of course) but he was probably still the least agitated person involved in the whole thing at the end of it. they got him on the show to embarrass him but it didn't really work - it's not as if it did his reputation any further harm really.

what did Jim Bowen say?

I expect he praised him in the same way Stan Boardman and pretty much all the stand-ups of their generation have done. A lot of them probably retain a big 'don't speak ill of the dead, at least not in public' thing that has been lost on generations since (not too bothered about this myself) - not that this matters much when most of them would agree with his attiude overall.

He kept calling Gavin Esler, Gavin, and to demonstrate that you can tell jokes about anyone and anything told him a Scottish joke:

"Look, Gavin, it's like this... I could say, for instance, that one day Gavin Esler dies and goes to heaven and you reach the gate, Gavin, and St. Peter says, 'Clear off, we're not making porridge for one'"

This is how Nazi Germany ended.

godwin inversion!!

From that daily mail page

A great comedian - shame there aren't more of them to put the PC brigade and the Metropolitan elite in their place. God Bless.

- John Bush, London, UK

Now that man should get a Knighthood - not Rushdie.

- Joe De Hoop, Brighton, Sussex

i guess it shows he was loved by some south of Watford too.

the Metropolitan elite

Who they?

He means YOU, Tom.

I thought he meant Jews

You can't give knighthoods to dead people, durr...

Unless he meant John Bush.

re. mrs merton -- would the characters in 'the royle family' like bernard manning?

He wasn't that popular, he hadn't been on the telly for years and his act hadn't changed either

but enough about eddie izzard...

um, wasn't Manning Jewish?

Anyway I never forgave him for publicly traducing Peter Cook (who was sitting next to him) on the Joan Rivers Show in the mid-eighties with remarks of the calibre of "You used to be very funny, Peter" and (to camera) "He's lost his timing. I work every night, you see."

I think he was Jewish, but I imagine John Bush, London, UK wasn't aware of that fact

I expect he praised him in the same way Stan Boardman and pretty much all the stand-ups of their generation have done

I was listening to Jim Davidson phoning into the Jeremy Vine Show earlier, saying that Manning wasn't racist because he didn't think he was racist, rather he just thought he was funny because he made people laugh.

So, yeah, we're rid of Manning, now for the rest of the fucktards that think asking a black audience memeber if they're enjoying their night out in the comedy club because it makes a difference from swinging from trees funny, the ones that kept Bernard Manning in a job for so many more years than was ever necessary.

(not that I'm defending the first half of Davidson's argument at all, but there's a glimmer of a point in the second part - if no-one laughed, surely he and his ilk would just give up?)

Manning left the country???

Anyway I never forgave him for publicly traducing Peter Cook (who was sitting next to him) on the Joan Rivers Show

(xp) I actually thought the subtext of that was "You used to be very funny Peter - what are you doing wasting your time with this shit". Which was fair comment.

I watched it at the time and it seemed much more snide rather than admonitory, but fair enough, Ms Rivers didn't exactly give PC much to do (sometimes having enough FUCK YOU money can work against a performer)...

Ailsa xpost: well, Andy Cameron's still going...

now for the rest of the fucktards that think asking a black audience memeber if they're enjoying their night out in the comedy club because it makes a difference from swinging from trees funny, the ones that kept Bernard Manning in a job for so many more years than was ever necessary.

you'd think black people would stop going to the gigs after that many years!

A bit like David Cameron liking the Smiths innit.

I just figured "metropolitan elite" referred to london cultural stranglehold over uk.

I'm wary of generalisation wrt uk/northern working class, b/c I AM ONE, but I remember Manning turning up on I think "OTT" which'll have been late '70's/early '80's and my mother leaping up to turn the TV over before he even opened his mouth, I asked her what it was all about - she was disgusted both by him and his act. We were a bit like the Royles, but a little more pretentious/upmarket, maybe.

I don't recall any of my aunties & uncles liking manning's steez either, they all thought he was repulsive. My father in law thinks chubby brown is funny, but thought manning was beyond the pale.

One thing that annoyed me reading that mail comments page was all those bellends making out that manning represented northern WC humour. I'm northern WC, so are most of my IRL friends. I think manning was a hateful, unfunny shit, or at least his act was that. I can't remember anyone I know ever, ever expressing any appreciation for the guy. What a load of fucking bollocks.

David Cameron, Andy Cameron - Which Cameron Makes You Laugh Most?

The Pash OTM

you guys are obsessed with Cameron

Well he did release two of the most memorable football songs ever

True Lies was a stinker tho

What Pash said.

Cameron made a football record? I thought the only ball game he knew was the Eton Wall game.

Also, re that tirade against Peter Cook. I didn't know pete was "in character"!!

Farewell and god bless to a real comedian. He only put into words what we wanted to hear, jokes about present day life. If that meant immigrants or sexual deviants then so be it, that is life.
A PC comedian is as funny as paint drying, we need to laugh about things to stop them from getting us down.

- John, Tendring, England

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=462884&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments

OTT discussion/reminiscences conspicuously absent from Tiswas Revisited prog.

CONSPIRACY OF JOHN

xxp
r these people living in 1990

It's a cop out to say that because you tell jokes about everyone equally your material should not be deemed as offensive. Like it or not Bernard Manning's humour did appeal more to the bigoted than anyone else although they would be the last to acknowledge their bigotry.

- Kathy Jones, Herts, England

OTT discussion/reminiscences conspicuously absent from Tiswas Revisited prog.

-- Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 13:03 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

Yes, I was wondering about that myself.

Manning's act was also really dated in race terms: lots of jokes about first generation black (Carribean, I suppose) immigrants, no material about asylum seekers or Poles. If you can't even be bothered to keep your racism up to date...

Indeed, he was past it years ago, like 15 years ago

It's like Freddie Starr surviving for 40 years on the same 40-year-old act, i.e. his Jagger will always be "Not Fade Away" and so on and so forth. His relative lack of exposure on TV (doing his act, as opposed to appearing on chat shows) probably worked in Manning's favour since he behaved exactly like the music hall acts of the pre-TV era, ceaselessly working the country with the same ten-minute act for decades.

you'd think black people would stop going to the gigs after that many years!

The thing Ailsa is referring to, IIRC, was a coppers' night out, so dude probably didn't have much choice. The unexpurgated version of it is... eye-opening, I daresay it's online somewhere

not as funny as the time the BNP booked that black DJ for one of their do's.

Manning's act was also really dated in race terms: lots of jokes about first generation black (Carribean, I suppose) immigrants, no material about asylum seekers or Poles. If you can't even be bothered to keep your racism up to date...

But he did update it. Didn't you read his own obituary?

Indeed, my act was an equally big success on the other side of the Atlantic, though I had to adapt his material for American audiences. So Irish jokes became Polish ones, such as: "This Polish man gets a job in Californian zoo. One day a workmate says to him, "For $2,000, would you have sex with the gorilla in that cage?"

"The Pole thinks for a minute and then says, "Yeah, all right. But on three conditions. First, that I don't have to kiss her. Second, that you don't tell any of my mates. And third, that you give me a fortnight to get the money together"."

I supposed the animal rights lobby would get me on that one.

Those pesky animal rights lobbys. Is there a comprehensive list of members of the PC Brigade?

xxxpost

Seriously who do all these people banging on about "the antidote to PC comedians" even have in mind?

"A good racist comedian will always whup a bad PC one"

(xxp) No no no, that's not an update, that's just substituting Irish=Thick UK bigotry for Polish=Thick US bigotry - both of which are out of date anyway (well, Irish=Thick is anyway). A modern Polish joke would more likely be about them working all hours for hardly any money...

... like, when I said (to Ailsa I think) about Celtic's useless Polish centre forward Maciej Zurawski, "He must the least hard working Pole in Britain". Y'see, I'm a racist comic who does keep up to date.

Hopefully this will see a return of John Thomsons's mid 90s comedy creation Bernard Right-On. "A Jew, a Pakistani, and a black fellow are drinking in a pub together. What a lovely example of an integrated community."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svLyyzBC_qI

bernard right-on

My bad, I misread 'adapt' as 'update', and thought it was funny that he was just reinforcing that his "I just make jokes about things that are funny" is really just "my jokes are based on stereotypes".

Obv.

The BBC Breakfast News woman seemed even more emotional than usual today - I just saw a bit where she was holding up his obituary thing in the Mail as if he'd suffered the greatest injustices ever.

Bernard Manning - the People's Racist

I thought that was Emily Parr

... no, my mistake, she is "The Racist of Hearts"

It's like Freddie Starr surviving for 40 years on the same 40-year-old act, i.e. his Jagger will always be "Not Fade Away" and so on and so forth.

to be fair it's not like jagger's moved far beyond the mid-sixties either.

Then again, faced with a choice of Bernard Manning and Jeremy Hardy...

He should really think about adding a Louis J routine to his act (xp)

What are Mick Jagger's views on veteran ostrich-straddling funnyman Bernie Clifton?

Tom Hibbert's Bernard Manning interview in Q to thread.

Your wish is my command... (Hopefully these will load ok)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1380/575444575_96602be481_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1318/575444583_36f308ae8c_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1395/575444595_165c91e0bd_o.jpg

He really was a charmer, wasn't he?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1304/575444605_386910e462_o.jpg

the writer there really comes across as a bit of a prick.

We British used to have a saying: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it". Since the election of New Labour in 1997, our country has been hijacked by a wicked Left wing attitude which, like all Left wing attitudes, involves control. Bernard Manning told jokes which were caricatures of people's behaviour. We all know that people's behaviour is determined by their age, sex, gender, race, culture, political beliefs, religion, etc. It is all of these elements that make us what we are. As soon as you behave in a way that makes you stand out from the crowd, you will be noticed and some people will make comments about it. Bernard Manning insulted people with humour. If you were on the receiving end, I can understand why you would not like it, but words were as far as he went. He did not commit gun crime, knife crime, drug crime, plant bombs, or kidnap people and execute them. The Left has sympathy with all of these criminals, but not Bernard.

- Mr. J. Smith, Birmingham, England

the writer there really comes across as being a bit of a prick.

The Left has to do something about it, not Bernard.

hahaha.

The otherwise inept compere at a Stepney comedy club the other night suggested we honour his memory with a minute's racism.

didn't he do a lot of sexist jokes as well?

He told jokes about 'em all Steve, and what's more they all came in his club, and they loved it. Each and every single one of them.

I also thought Dom was joking about the "RACIST IN PEACE" headline.

We British used to have a saying: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it". Since the election of New Labour in 1997, our country has been hijacked by a wicked Left wing attitude which, like all Left wing attitudes, involves control. Bernard Manning told jokes which were caricatures of people's behaviour. We all know that people's behaviour is determined by their age, sex, gender, race, culture, political beliefs, religion, etc. It is all of these elements that make us what we are. As soon as you behave in a way that makes you stand out from the crowd, you will be noticed and some people will make comments about it. Bernard Manning insulted people with humour. If you were on the receiving end, I can understand why you would not like it, but words were as far as he went. He did not commit gun crime, knife crime, drug crime, plant bombs, or kidnap people and execute them. The Left has sympathy with all of these criminals, but not Bernard.
- Mr. J. Smith, Birmingham, England

Is the BBC news site always crawling with people like that, or do they only come out of the woodwork when there's a flagpole for them to rally around?

Most of them are bored uni students taking the piss.

If only this were true

See also: Teletext letters pages

the one with all the kids calling themselves "Masked Purple Penguin" and stuff on the "teenage" bit on channel 4?

"We British used to have a saying: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it"."

Not true Mr Smith of Birmingham. Voltare said it and he was French.

- Lemongrass, London, England

froggy onion breath surrender monkey cheese eating bastards.

Nah, the "have your say" type stuff with people saying "let's have no more letters from the PC brigade about X" and going on about bringing back national service and Christmas being cancelled to avoid offending suicide bombers and stuff

and don't forget the 'black' binbags.

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

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.

The holy grail of comedy: making people laugh

It's an odd thing, stand-up comedy. You go to some bar or theatre or club you would never normally visit, sit with strangers, and watch another stranger try to make you laugh. One minute you're going about your business. The next you're falling about.

Being a punter at a stand-up gig is nothing like going to a rock concert, or a violin recital, or a play, all of which can drag any and every type of emotion from us. Comedy is alone in focusing on one physiological reaction: laughs.

But how do stand-ups make us laugh? Dylan Moran, a comedian who spends more time thinking about these matters than most, has a theory. "If someone has just come back from holiday," he explains, "and they show you some photographs, and say it was all wonderful, and that the sun wasn't too hot, you're bored out of your mind. Nothing could be more boring than other people's happiness. But if they tell you the hotel was crap, how the toilets leaked, how they all got sick - it's a wonderful story. Something bad will have happened to you in the past, but it didn't happen this time. It happened to them. And you can enjoy it."

Or, as Mel Brooks once said: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." For whatever reason - our maliciousness; our latent survival instincts; our terror of death - the misfortune of others is fecund comedic material. For this reason, most stand-up is licensed schadenfreude.

The young Welsh comic Steve Williams, though, thinks malice is a small part of the equation. His most successful material comes from what the audience shares, rather than what they don't. "Sex and relationships are the big ones," he says. "Those are the universal life experiences, and the biggest areas for any comic. There is always something funny about things that everyone does, whether it's buying a house, or going to Ikea, or cleaning the car."

"The job of the observational comic is to look at all those things that normal people gloss over, and to find the odd thing - the anomaly - in it. When you do that, you make people look again at their ordinary lives, and that's funny."

Not all comics are "observational", although all observe. There are political comedians and surrealists and one-line merchants. There are slapstick artists and anti-comedians. There is Jimmy Carr. But all turn the ordinary stuff of life into something altogether different, irregular, and, they hope, funny.

For Bill Hicks, however, comedy was not a perversion or a deconstruction of life. It was the thing itself. "If comedy is an escape from anything," he said, "it is an escape from illusions. The comic, by using the voice of reason, reminds us of our true reality, and in that moment of recognition, we laugh, and the 'reality of the daily grind' is shown for what it really is - unreal... a joke.... The audience is relieved to know they're not alone in thinking, 'this bullshit we see and hear all day makes no sense. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks so. And surely there must be an answer.' Good comedy helps people know they're not alone. Great comedy provides an answer."

Hicks was messianic about comedy, and pushed at the limits of his audiences' taste. A comic saying tasteless, unsayable things in front of an audience is part of his or her remit. They say what we can't. It was the basis of Bernard Manning's extraordinary career.

Analysing why one thing gets a laugh, and another doesn't, can be a mug's game. Sometimes, something's just funny. A laugh is the solution to an equation that stretches and baffles even the most accomplished comedians. The only way to know how a joke will go down is to stand up, tell it, and listen.

alexei sayle- horribly unfunny, now pompous to boot.

^^^ this.

Perhaps Sayle should return to his hilarious "fat ugly lesbian feminist" characters "Menstrual Cycles", some nice progressive 21st century humour there.

liked the vitriol at the start, very much tailed off after dylan moran was mentioned.

it's ok. middle class comedians are running racist comedy now.

if bernard wants to make racist jokes then let him i say.

as long as i have the right to say theyre stupid and ignorant and bigoted etc.

someone told me they dont see what the big problem is as he was just saying what a lot of people felt and said privately but im not sure if that makes it okay. although i suppose you could look at him as just being honest. which is honorable in a way, no?

I think that's a good article by Sayle - much better than Marcus Brigstocke's pointless and shallow preaching to the converted on commentisfree which could've and should've been a lot better by exploring things in the same way Sayle attempts above.

The last paragraph is v interesting as it might apply to someone who laughed at any of Manning's gags that constituted racism, xenophobia or some other form of bigotry. It could excuse them for that with no stmulus to pursue the reason behind that. That's why I like to analyse why things are/might be funny personally.

I do think there's a fair point to be made that what Hicks and Bruce are praised for is what Manning actually did.

i suppose you could look at him as just being honest. which is honorable in a way, no?

big brother eviction interview fallacy number one.

I do think there's a fair point to be made that what Hicks and Bruce are praised for is what Manning actually did.

they weren't racist and died quicker

Lenny Bruce called people "nigger" as part of his act.

were they black?

Yes.

Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? "Are there any niggers here tonight?" I know there's one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let's see, there's two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there's another kike— that's two kikes and three niggers. And there's a spic. Right? Hmm? There's another spic. Ooh, there's a wop; there's a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there's three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there's one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, "I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet," and if he'd just say "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" to every nigger he saw, "boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie," "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" 'til nigger didn't mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.

Lenny Bruce was killed by political correctness gone mad.

what about the idea that manning DID just take shots at everyone though? he was 'fair' on that level at least, right?

ive never been totally convinced by people that say that - that by disrespecting everyone equally youre actually taking the sting out of words, not really. youre usually just thriving off the buzz of using the words you know youre not meant to (and usually for some good reasons).

personally what annoyed me more about manning was that he didnt admit to being a racist. if youre gonna say all he did, fine, but at least own up to it. dont just try and wrap it up in some sort of comedy-gag equality 'oh i have a go at EVERYONE equaly' and all that...

he didnt pick on everyone equally at all. he never made jokes about raping babies

come on titchy he didn't make gags about "disabled kiddies" or periods.

well, i dont know. i never saw his comedy cos i feared it would make me feel a bit ill.

"he didnt pick on everyone equally at all. he never made jokes about raping babies"

are you being sarcastic?

serious question (allowing that manning was horrible etc)- is it allowable to make fun of any group in comedy, or is it ok just so long as you avoid the nasty words?

manning said that a comedian should never joke about a ladies bodily functions.

its a little less abrasive if you avoid the obvious words.

acrobat, didnt he make sexist jokes about women though?

yes but i saw this interview where he was getting all het up about i dunno jo brand or someone making jokes about tampons. fookin disgrace etc etc.

Generally agree with Alexei's article, except for:

those such as the full-time contrarians at Living Marxism who gave his biography a good review

What, it couldn't have been a good biography?

The "Have Your Say" comments are mostly written by bored BBC employees.

You're thinking of the Radio Times letters page.

you're thinking about jo brand's material.

"Periods, they're not as good as cakes, am I right girls?"

No, I'm confusing Jo Brand with a Watercooler thread, sorry.

Loose ILXors

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2106105,00.html

With the national fame came the notoriety - with Manning cheerfully praising Enoch Powell, and even Hitler, in various newspapers. "I am an admirer of Adolf Hitler," he told the Sunday People. "Not everything about him, of course. I deplore his gas chambers and Gestapo as much as anyone, but I admire him for the things he got right, which I reckon was about 50%."

bad punchline, that one.

Would Manning have been cool if he'd said it was all just an act?

I mean, this guy is funny because he's smart and he's just acting, but... http://www.thepublandlord.com/

Except that Al Murray's not funny either.

I'm not so sure it's Manning himself that I find so objectionable rather than people who continue(d) to legitimise his schtick by paying good money in their fucking droves to listen to it. He's a big fat figurehead for a load of problems.

(I mean, I do find him objectionable, but it's the fact that lots and lots of people champion him for it and he got to build a career from it, rather than him just being a sad fucker in a pub moaning about stuff, that's really depressing)

<i>Would Manning have been cool if he'd said it was all just an act?<i>

well he did say that - 'I get up on stage and I do an act," Bernard Manning once said. "It's not me, just as an actor playing a part in a film isn't the character. I don't go home to my grandkids and say, 'Fucking queers, niggers, they're all cunts.' It's my act, not me. It's all a joke."

Bernard Manning is funnier than Al Murray... and I'm talking about now

what about colin murray though? is he funnier than him?

None of these is as funny as Pete Murray.

bill murray

David Murray makes me laugh.

Get it together, folks, Chic Murray!

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.

Ruby Murray for me thanks.

"What use is happiness? It can't buy you money."

Is there any truth in the rumour that Brian Ferry is going to buy the Embassy Club and relaunch himself as a Bernard Manning tribute act?

i think brian ferry has been a brian ferry tribute act since 1987

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000365L0.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg

TS: Rangers chairman David Murray vs post-Ayler tenorman David Murray.

One blows a mean horn, the other blows all his money on shite players

... you decide who does what

Which one blows Coisty?

Hazel Irvine

interesting thread, this: just catching up with it now.

I do think there's a fair point to be made that what Hicks and Bruce are praised for is what Manning actually did

dom, can you elaborate here? there might be a fair point in there, but i dunno what it might be ;)

His funeral contained a missive pre-recorded, in which he tells how much he really did blacks, jews, etc etc, proclaims himself a proud racist, and so on.

Most surprising deathbed statement since F.Mercury!

Bernard was a comidien end of story,he took the pee out of EVERYONE I saw him live and he was so funny and at the end of his show he always sung a lovely song. Leave him alone. He is better then Billy Connelly and the disgusting Roy chubby Brown who only goes on about :womens parts: plus you can't understand a word he says...whoops am I being racist about the Geordies? Nowt wrong with Bernard

Touching eulogy from Trevor Phillips there.

"how much he really did blacks, jews,"

he never them?

Loved? Shagged? Hated? This is an important word to miss!

hate is the word.

[citation needed]

Oh, it was in the NOTW, along with a condemning editorial. from Editors.

What? One number one album and they get to have their say in a national newspaper?

This is all I can find about it:

http://www.pr-inside.com/entertainment-blog/2007/07/09/manning-confesses-he-is-a-racist/

Suppose he's bluffing?

Nah, he's definitely dead.

ABOUT THE RACIALISM

What the fuck is this shit?

“Farewell to thee, Mancunian Manning. May your soul rest in peace, with these heartfelt from your next door Indian family.”

Watching this thing on Channel 4 just now (missed the start of it), I had sort of forgotten, due to avoiding him for as long as possible, just how repulsive Manning actually was.

he had great timing thou.

xpost

sadly, i hadn't. but now the fucker's dead there seems to be no getting away from him. FUCK OFF, MANNING, YOU DEAD WANKER.

nah nah jokes, bruv. he was fucking shit.

This is the weirdest show ever.

And now Arnold Brown has turned up to give him smackdown. Wtf?

Ah, but Arnold Brown's never played the MGM Grand in Vegas. He's NOTHING!

(i.e. good fucking riddance Manning you repulsive bastard. Fuck you and everything you stand for)

What's making this even weirder is that it's filmed and edited like it was done on a budget of about £3k, making it look like something off Community TV or The Teachers' Channel.

OK, after that last confession ("hello, I am a bigoted fucker who sees nothing wrong in that at all"), I hope there is a hell and he's burning in it forever. What a hideous excuse for a man.

looked good for his age

The confession was very confused and complex. Needs a lot of unpacking.

So did he write that himself, or was he just being interviewed by a guy dressed as St Peter in a shitty fake beard, or.....

That show was so slow and so little content and with no idea what it was trying to say. The director was probably shit scared of Manning and let him 'direct' it.

Manning was such a cunt. In a way he reminded me of Brian Clough in The Damned United. But with racism.

I didn't even know Arnold Brown was still alive.

I did laugh at the "Unorthodox Jew" gag.

But other than that, whatta cunt.

Chris Rock at Live Earth to thread

This man should probably have been deprived of the oxygen of publicity, even though he's dead

Well, he's been deprived of the oxygen of breathing, so that will have to do.

it's not the shitbag man that's so depressing, it's the followers, seemed to be a lotta skin head types around him, young people too.

"they think it's fookin bombay"

amen, MG

Yeah, the sloping foreheads in that gig they filmed weren't a pleasant looking bunch. Plus, who the fuck laughs at the "can y'fookin' shoot me first" joke?