Music and humour have been cosy partners for a long time.  Mozart, for example, used it in his Divertimento in F for 2 horns and string quartet in 1787 to satirise contemporary composers and performers of popular music.  At the time it was considered a musical joke and, at best, it brought a wry smile to lips instead of the guffaws and falling-abouts one associates with a good joke.

You really have to advance to the last two centuries to find some form of meaningful relationship between laughter and music.  The emergence of the film industry probably had a great influence on this.  Who can suppress a smile when listening to the music that introduces the Laurel and Hardy comedies; that bouncy, jaunty juxtaposition of discordant notes has always proved a harbinger of good, if slightly farcical, times. 

Then there are comics like Danny Kaye and his unfailing ability to get into the most awful scrapes.  In the 1947 film comedy ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ he dreams of escaping from his mundane occupation as a writer of cheap novelettes by fantasising he is someone else.  And so he mimics a conductor plus some of the musical instruments in The Little Fiddle or Symphony for Unstrung Tongue thereby transporting us to a surreal  sphere of musical dreamland. 

But Mr Kaye is only one of many who have amused us over the years.  We are fortunate in having excellent comedians/musicians of the calibre of Flanders and Swann, Victor Borge, Peter Sellers, Elsa Lanchaster, Tom Lehrer, Anna Russell and a host of others.

Elsa Lanchester was famous in vaudeville circles for singing bawdy songs – perhaps too bawdy at times to broadcast and not earn the ire of the CBAA.  Tom Lehrer, alas, belongs in the same category as Anna Russell – funny in a school-marmy (is it school-parpy in the case of Lehrer?) way where the humour is usually sign-posted and brings forth an element of nausea as the results become predictable.  Their type of brassy humour is mostly force-fed and can sometimes create a teacher and pupil mentality.  Lehrer is a bit wittier than Russell but they both rely heavily on the battering-ram technique of sledging humour into our consciousness. 

Flanders and Swann are a different kettle of fish.  Their lyrics are genuinely funny.  Here are two intellectuals who complement each other in both music and humour.  I get the feeling that they started their career forcing themselves to relieve the boredom in their lives by fusing their talents into a saleable commodity as entertainers in London’s West End.  Listen to how they meander their way through The Gasman Cometh and how what was originally a household item that needed fixing becomes an SOS for a gasman.  Or there’s the hilarious Hippopotamus song with the Mud Glorious Mud chorus.  We also have their association with Ian Wallace and the musical menagerie of Rhinoceri, Warthogs and Elephants.  All tastefully served with a generous helping of rib-tickling!

Victor Borge is another musician who found a niche in comedy but his type of humour embraces insulting his audience (who don’t seem to mind one bit) while entertaining them.  Dame Edna applies the same technique but her musicality is less endearing.  It’s probably the Danish in Borge but he always has his audience eating out of his hands.  That is because he manipulates them to the point where they can’t have enough of what he has to offer.  And clever stuff it is too.  In fact, he is so clever that the subtleties he introduces take some time to sink in.  Especially when he asks the audience to request a tune and someone shouts ‘Trees’ and he immediately plays How Much is that Doggie in the Window!  Pure and spontaneous genius.

And finally, there’s Peter Sellers.  Here was a comedian of almost manic-depressive demeanour.  I am not so sure that his comedy was original but it was delivered with such intensity and conviction that he eclipsed any other music comedian of his era.  Of course, his comedy was very Goonish, mad-cap and revolved around his ability to mimic and regale in improbable situations.  Take his Welcome to Bal-Ham which is a satirical look at the travelogue.  He has so many voices in this that one can only marvel at his ability to switch from one to t’other in the blink of an eye.  There’s his narrator’s voice, his bard voice at the finale, his Elsie voice as a waitress in the El Morocco Tea-Room and his Eccles voice when he (I presume he is a he) is asked how he installs the bristles into a tooth-brush.  “I do it manually,” he replies. “That is to say once a year!”

That’s all Folks!

Featured image : The late, great American comedian Danny Kaye