Bernard Manning Has Died

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

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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.

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?