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Kenny Everett: The Complete Naughty Bits featuring: Kenny Everett, Cliff Richard, Bernard Manning, Michael Aspel, Lionel Blair, Terry Wogan, David Essex, and Arlene Phillips' Hot Gossip 114 minutes (15) 1978-88 Fremantle DVD Region 0 retail RATING: 7/10 reviewed by Gary Couzens |
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Kenny Everett died in 1995, and his last TV series was shown in 1988, which means that
an entire generation has grown up to whom his name will mean virtually nothing. So, as
a service to younger readers and non-Brits: born on Christmas Day 1944, Everett's career
began in pirate radio before moving to the BBC. From the beginning, his radio shows,
like the later TV work, were peopled with a set of zany characters and an inventive,
surreal sense of humour. The Kenny Everett Video Show ran on ITV from 1978 to
1981, followed by The Kenny Everett Television Show on the BBC. A hit single,
Snot Rap (sung in the persona of punk Sid Snot) followed, then a disastrous venture
into feature films with Bloodbath At The House Of Death. One further TV series
followed in 1988, but it was far below the quality of his earlier work. Kenny Everett is hardly in fashion nowadays. The lapse of quality in his later work (possibly brought about by the illness, AIDS, which eventually killed him) and his right-wing politics (shouting, "Let's bomb Russia! Let's throw Michael Foot's [senior British politician, onetime leader of the Labour Party] stick away!" at a Tory party conference) lost him many friends. There's no doubt that he spoke as recklessly as he lived, often losing jobs due to ill-considered remarks. But there was certainly a talent there. You have to acknowledge the input of co-writers Ray Cameron and Barry Cryer. But the combination of regular characters, then-cutting-edge video trickery, madcap post-Python humour, the animated exploits of space-age superhero Captain Kremmen and the steamy dance routines of Hot Gossip are still fresh. So pretend it's 25 years ago, and reunite yourself with Angry of Mayfair, Sid Snot, Brother Lee Love the gospel preacher with the unfeasibly large hands, pervy Frenchman Marcel Wave, and many more. Only starlet Cupid Stunt, who always acted in the best possible taste, is inexplicably absent.
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