I read with interest Mr. Sillifant's list of celebrities, National, Internationsl and local. He asked about our lists. I don't intend to submit a definitive list, though I regard Pope John XXIII's 'agornimento', which so improved relations between Roman Catholics and other Christians, as ranking with Mikhail Gorbachov's 'Glasnost' as a major event of the Century, and the originators as worthy of any list of outstanding contributors to the well being of mankind. I endorse Mr. Sillifant's praise of Billy Graham. A journalist commenting on his style said 'He uses a pulpit the size and shape of a boxing ring and proceeds to knock the Devil for six.' I heard him preach at Harringay on the Ten Commandments. I shall not go phonetic, you will have to imagine the rich bible belt accent. 'The Bible says - thou shalt not steal - and I Billy say, if you, folks, attend to your own business during your working hours, you are stealing part of your wages from your boss.' I returned to work with a very bad conscience.
One section of society who rarely feature in such lists, although they are, professionally, so important, are our comedians and clowns. They save us from despair and administer the healing balm of laughter, a major factor in the preservation of our sanity. A fact rarely noticed, but I think significant, is the number of comedians who have served as private soldiers in the army. Billy Bennett, Norman Wisdom, Tommy Cooper, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe. Nicolai Poliakoff (Coco the clown) served in the ranks of four armies, Latvian, White Russian, and Red Russian as a conscript and the British army as a wartime volunteer. My explanation is that the private soldier is treated, most of the time, so oppressively , that self mockery is the only effective antidote. We used to sing a song to the tune of 'The Church'es one foundation', which went, and I use the initials of my own regiment, though it could be adapted to 'Infanteree', 'Artileree', or anything else - 'We are Fred Karno's army, we are the ASC, we cannot shoot, we cannot fight, no earthly use are we: and when we get to Berlin, the Kaiser he will cry: Mein Gott, Mein Gott, what a blooming rotten lot, to send to Germany.' Note that we assumed that we would, in the end, get to Berlin.
Someone in the back row is muttering 'Who the hell is Billy Bennett? He wore evening dress with a badly anchored starched shirt front, and brown boots. He billed himself as 'almost a gentleman' and did rather rude recitations such as 'Eskimo Nell'. Serving as a cookhouse orderly on the Western Front, he won a DCM for repelling a German raiding party by bombarding them with empty bottles.
A fertile source of comedy is the Piano. The first funny man to discover and mine this rich vein was Adrian Wettach ('Grock') who revealed the possibilities of skidding stools, lid slamming and grotesquely folding music stands. Victor Borge, Les Dawson and others have followed in his wake. Comedians of the Century? George Robey, Charles Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy. Rowan Atkinson, Les Dawson.
And finally, a cautionary tale for those who exploit their long memories by saying 'Fings aint what they used to be'. I had been praising, as a youth, contempary ballet dancers such as Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova. My parents exclaimed almost in unison 'You should have seen Pavlova and Nijinsky'. I had the presence of mind to ask what Grandpa said when they praised these agile Russians. My Mother replied 'You should have seen Taglioni'.