Little & Large Xmas special 1980. Extraordinary.

[jenna appleseed]

Cartoon little & Large mess with the BBC globe in a UFO
https://twitter.com/PoppyDog08/status/1249720542950719488

eta: new page syd

[Jittlebags]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-52410413

[petril]

Fans applauded Eddie Large's funeral procession

nice touch from the fans who, four months ago, voted for his execution

[Tony Yeboah]

I'm reading Jon Plowman's book and he tells a story that Jonathan Powell decided to give Little and Large the boot. Jim Moir told them they were not getting a new deal. There was already a series in the can so the BBC put it out earlier than normal, at Saturday teatime, and it did great ratings because loads of kids watched it. Cue another meeting with the boys where they were asked to come back. Their manager agreed, as long as the BBC DOUBLED their fees. And his demand was more or less met.

[Satchmo Distel]

I wonder if they were really kids' entertainers like the Chuckle Bothers and we are trying to judge them by an inappropriate yardstick as if they were trying to be Morecambe and Wise?

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Well, M+W writer Eddie Braben * did* used to write for them, back in their ITV days ( real, actual true fact, there). They developed their act up and down the working men's clubs of the land ( they may even have done some " blue" material ( I don't mean they may have performed some cover versions from that Joni Mitchell album. Well, they might have done. Syd starts singing " This Flight Tonight", before Eddie butts in, giving it the Deputy Dawg)). I don't think they ever really wanted to be kid's entertainers.

[Tony Yeboah]

Awww https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/syd-little-coping-eddie-larges-22416786

[non capisco]

Awww https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/syd-little-coping-eddie-larges-22416786

Bullied from beyond the grave. He'll never get to finish playing that song.

[Satchmo Distel]

He isn't pretending to be just standing there while Eddie's ghost does all the work. He is just standing there.

[Glebe]

Aw. Take care Syd mate.

[Alberon]

Eddie tries to drown Syd in ectoplasm.

[Brundle-Fly]

"Floats back through a wall in amazement!"

[Glebe]

Never forget.

[Satchmo Distel]

It sounds implausible to me. Eddie could be spending eternity shagging Lena Zavaroni and Marti Caine in heaven but instead he spends his time talking to a 79 year old waste of space who was a professional ball and chain for decades, holding down his talent when he could have been the next Mike Yarwood.

[Brundle-Fly]

No word of a lie, I had a dream last night (wait, come back!) where I was watching some Marvel superhero movie, and when it came to Stan Lee's predictable cameo, Syd Little was in his place, sporting a fake grey moustache and the trademark tinted glasses but with really thick lenses. Even in the dream, I remarked that this was a stroke of genius to use him now Stan Lee has gone. Syd is available, he's sometimes called 'Supersonic', they look vaguely similar and even their initials are the same.

I woke up at 4am and had to write this nonsense down so I could post it on here first thing to the only people who would understand.

[Glebe]

I remarked that this was a stroke of genius to use him now Stan Lee has gone. Syd is available, he's sometimes called 'Supersonic', they look vaguely similar and even their initials are the same.

Fantastic Brundle.

[Tony Yeboah]

Nowt for Syd in the will https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/12272138/eddie-large-44k-dying-coronavirus/

[Brundle-Fly]

Nowt for Syd in the will https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/12272138/eddie-large-44k-dying-coronavirus/

It's horrible that the general public are made privy to such personal information.

[Glebe]

Nice to see Eddie get a nod in this year's BAFTA Memorium.

[Alberon]

But did they have to use a picture that had Syd with a cloth over his head?

I mean, no-one would mistake which one was Eddie. Not even someone who has never heard of Little and Large.

[DrGreggles]

But did they have to use a picture that had Syd with a cloth over his head?

No photos of Syd exist.
Syd asked for one for his dying mother, so Eddie had them all destroyed.
Then punched Syd in the cock.

[Tony Yeboah]

Legendary https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/eddie-larges-legendary-final-performance-22463234

[Rolf Lundgren]

This should be of interest to quite a few on here:

Little & Large In Conversation: An Audience with Little & Large @ Slapstick Festival 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVrcMQTZvwQ

[Glebe]

Ooh, nice find Rolf. Will give that a proper watch later.

[Rolf Lundgren]

Ooh, nice find Rolf. Will give that a proper watch later.

Just finished it myself and it's very interesting with some great insights into the world of club comics and all nicely steered by Matthew Sweet.

- Both of them seem to point the finger at their downfall to younger comedians. They don't say it bitterly but more an acceptance that comedy is a young person's game and there's always someone fresher who will come along. Bizarrely they both mention Monty Python and The Goodies as part of this new wave that washed them away. It's very odd considering that they're contemporaries and their primetime career went on into 1991.

- It's frustratingly scant on their success in the 80s and The Little and Large Show with more of an emphasis on the early days. Both of them clearly regard their pomp to be the 70s (Syd specifically names 1977 - the year before The Little and Large Show began). I would have loved to known how it ended at the BBC, why they were so successful and their own thoughts about the way comedy was changing.

- Eddie retells a great observation by Ken Dodd that it was The Comedians TV show that finished off the old breed of club comedians as all the comics who swapped jokes with each other effectively began to run out of material once it was televised. Changing attitudes and the rise of alternative comedy surely also had an impact but I'd never thought of the self-sabotage that The Comedians were enacting on themselves.

- Eddie's ability as a natural entertainer comes to the fore. Yes, the material is not always great but the quick wit remained and could always work a crowd. It's quite touching when he tells the story of the doctor telling him to stop performing.

[George White]

USE OF THE HOUSE OF FOOLS THEME IN THE SUPERMARKET SKETCH!!

[Jake Thingray]

Bizarrely they both mention Monty Python and The Goodies as part of this new wave that washed them away. It's very odd considering that they're contemporaries and their primetime career went on into 1991.

That's true, but as Eddie was surprised that the Vietnam war was still underway in 1965, a decade before it ended, their time zones are a bit skewed, as shown by Syd, characteristically and unintentionally, quoting bits from the awful Goon Show later; as can be seen from back issues of The Stage, old school showbiz regarded Python as something only people who'd been to public school and university liked, and in the field of "madcap comedy", t'Goons would never be bettered, as they came up through the Variety circuit, had been in the forces, were patronised by the Royals, and went tee-hee-nicky-nacky-noo-w*gs. Perhaps the Pythons and the Goodies were just cited by L&L as a synonym for sketch-based humour by former students, there are far worse examples of the Light Ent crowd misappropriating the generation after them, such as Jim Davidson repeatedly believing that the name of Dominic Holland, only a middle-range attraction at his peak and today less well known than his son, represents the hordes of lefties keeping him off telly.

From press cuttings, it's also true that in 1977 at least, L&L were talked about as the successors to Morecambe and Wise, something the Daily Heil can shoulder some of the blame for. Regarding that year's Silver Jubilee Royal Variety Gala Performance, it's again true that, as they complain, when it was shown on as NBC as America Salutes The Queen they were edited out, a fate also endured by the Brotherhood of Man and Pam Ayres. Tommy Cooper was retained, but half of his act was cut.

[Annie Labuntur]

t'Goons would never be bettered, as they came up through the Variety circuit, had been in the forces, were patronised by the Royals, and went tee-hee-nicky-nacky-noo-w*gs.

The Goons might have said tee hee and wigs, but nicky nacky noo was Ken Dodd, not them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taIiq2OeYTk  Please amend your archives.

[Glebe]

- Both of them seem to point the finger at their downfall to younger comedians. They don't say it bitterly but more an acceptance that comedy is a young person's game and there's always someone fresher who will come along. Bizarrely they both mention Monty Python and The Goodies as part of this new wave that washed them away. It's very odd considering that they're contemporaries and their primetime career went on into 1991.

Yeah odd targets considering Flying Circus had finished before their own telly success, and The Goodies bowed out in '82.

[Jake Thingray]

It was a slight step forward from how The Stage and the Tory press were still, long into the 1980's, routinely categorising university-educated, especially Oxbridge, sketch performers as "satirists". Apologies if it seems like I'm trying too hard to defend the silly sods, but perhaps they didn't want to refer to "alternative comedy", in order to avoid the bitterness of some of the end of the pier crowd.