Early last month, Henry Naylor announced that the
comedy double act was facing extinction. Double acts,
he explained, were becoming increasingly rare due to
harsh financial realities. Talking to Time Out
magazine, he spelt it out for the rest of us. "Your
fee is split in half", he explained. "Double acts do
it for the love of doing it, not for the money." No,
for the money, Naylor can be seen whoring himself for
Barclaycard. So is there any truth in the rumour that
the double act is dead? Or was Naylor just trying to
get some attention for his new 'topical' Radio 2
programme? Comedy Lounge presents the following
evidence.
It is true that the double act - at least in the
traditional sense - is all but dead. The conventional
comedy pairing of the straight man (Tommy Cannon, Sid
Little, Ernie Wise) with the comic fool (Bobby Ball,
Eddie Large, Eric Morecambe) has long been out of
fashion. Obviously there are still comedy partnerships
today - Lee and Herring, Reeves and Mortimer,
Armstrong and Miller, Barratt and Fielding - but in
contrast to the yesteryear, modern comedy partnerships
are on a more equal footing. For a start, there is
substantially less evidence of the traditional
'straight man' role. In today's comedy alliance,
roles are shared. "At the end of the day, you just
want to be funny," explains Bruce MacKinnon, of Mat
and MacKinnon fame. "You want us to be funny. It's
not whether I say it or Matt says it, you just want it
to be funny." The reliance on contrived differences
between a pairing has also worn off, with acts like
The Mighty Boosh allowing both characters to be the
weird one without necessitating a straight role to
bounce the ideas off. Even so, the pairing was
initially a tense one. "We didn't know that we could
work together," Julian told us last year. "We were
very surprised. We thought we might cancel each other
out." The combination of crazed with lunatic is one
that strictly speaking should not have worked
according to the rules of the double act, but one
which has stood the test of time and has been awarded
with the Perrier Newcomer, a Perrier nomination and
the Barry at the Melbourne comedy festival. The rules
have been well and truly broken, and not before time.
Eric Idle's 1999 novel 'The Road To Mars' explored the
dynamics of a more traditional double act, set in the
late 2300s. Setting aside the flimsy plot and
mediocre story telling, the book does contain some
interesting ideas on the nature of comedy
partnerships. The double act concerned - Muscroft and
Ashby - are a stereotypical duo, down to the classic
comedy profile of the tall thin one and the short fat
one. The represent the classic struggle of the comedy
duo, the tension resulting from the pairing of two
opposites. Interestingly, the Boosh have developed
recurring characters of another double act, Flannagan
and Tucker. Poking fun at the old conventions of the
genre, and self consciously addressing the similarity
between their true selves, they sing a song about the
differences between each other - "I've got big eyes,"
sings Flannagan. "And I've got small eyes," answers
Tucker.
Lee and Herring are one double act who have
consciously made an issue of the differences between
each other, working it into the routine and
continuously pointing out the polarity between them.
In both the television and radio incarnations of their
Fist of Fun show, they built an entire routine out of
cynically pointing out the false differences between
them that they contrived "in order to become a
successful double act." They point out Herring's
upbeat optimism compared to Lee's downbeat pessimism,
Herring's bright clothing compared to Lee's head to
toe black ensemble, all the time yelling "How
different can we be?!"
Although it took Lee and Herring until This Morning
With Richard Not Judy to really develop the feeling of
a true partnership - and a true sense of friction
between them - when it worked, it was a joy to behold.
This, Lee feels, is what a double act "should be, men
- or women - bickering. Like French and Saunders - you
have a really good sense with them of a relationship,
of there being power struggles." Ironically, it was
when their partnership finally gelled that the BBC
lost interest.
Another modern double act that the BBC seem to have
more of a faith in are Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis.
Beginning their television careers as the best bit on
the Jasper Carrott show, they graduated to the big
time with what was arguably the most (commercially)
successful double act of the 1990s: Baddiel and
Newman. Appearing together as The Mary Whitehouse
Experience, Punt and Dennis's light was somewhat
dulled in the shadow of the monster created by the
other duo. But they have gone on to prove that, even
if they didn't hold the teeny bopper attractiveness
that managed to fill Wembley, they have a more
enduring talent. Together, Steve and Hugh hold that
rare and precious gift: they are an instinctively
natural double act. Steve intuitively represents the
straight man, the deliverer of feed lines, while Hugh
plays the clown, providing the punch-lines, to the
constant amusement of both. From The Imaginatively
Titled Punt And Dennis Show to The Now Show, they have
continually provided a working example of how the
double act can be: working in tune with each other,
rather than scoring points off each other, existing in
harmony, and supplying constant light entertainment.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Baddiel and Newman are of course the antithesis of
this kind of relationship. Many at the time blamed
the pressure of their popularity, and the constant
burden of being dubbed "the new rock and roll" for
their split in 1993. Obviously, being thrust into the
spot light to the extent that they were would have
leant a strain to any relationship, but the signs were
there well before the Wembley hysteria. Newman and
Baddiel were never a double act in the true sense -
what they really were was a couple of comedians who
happened to appear together a lot. This was made
perfectly clear through their solo television series
'Newman and Baddiel in Pieces' where they rarely
appeared on screen together, let alone performed with
any kind of connection. Their styles never gelled:
the laddish humour of Baddiel at the time clashed
horribly with the more introspective path Newman was
taking. It was always obvious to even the most
occasional viewer who was the author of which sketch,
something that is so much more difficult in a strong
writing partnership. Looking back, it's not
particularly surprising that they have never reunited.
The extreme relationship of the double act is
something beyond a friendship. The intensity of the
experience can lead to an incredibly strong bond. Not
contented to work together, David Baddiel and Frank
Skinner had to live together as well. Stephen Fry is
god father to not one but two of Hugh Laurie's
children. Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball discovered
eternal salvation together. It is a relationship that
Vic Reeves has compared to a marriage. "We're
inseparable," he has said of partner Bob Mortimer, "We
write together every day. We have to get on. You
hear rumours of some double acts who can't stand each
other. That can't be true. You couldn't do it."
Of course, moving from a platonic to a business
relationship, as the comedy act inevitably must, is
bound to add complications and outside pressures to
even the most stable relationship. The recent break
up of the sketch double act Hitchcocks Half Hour, just
as they seemed on the brink of wider recognition,
provided a horrible illustration of what can happen
when a friendship is strained to the limit. However,
their example is thankfully a rare occurrence and the
double act - with Noble and Silver, Oram and Meeten,
Mat and Mackinnan, Barratt and Fielding, Parsons and
Naylor, Ben and Arn, Armstrong and Miller, Lucas and
Walliams, Linehan and Matthews, Reeves and Mortimer,
Lee and Herring, Punt and Dennis, French and Saunders,
Mayall and Edmonson and The Chuckle Brothers still
going strong - looks set to carry on regardless.
