Nana's favourite comedians

[lauraxsynthesis]

I'm spending this weekend looking after my grandmother-in-law who is 92 and has dementia. She's from Margate and saw "all the comedians" at the Winter Gardens there. Morecambe and Wise were very good and also "very nice". She met them and they said they liked Margate and fish and chips. I looked up the gig and found Eric got married in Margate. She also liked Sid Field, The Crazy Gang, Joyce Grenfell, Harry Worth, Tommy Cooper and Harry Secombe. Neither of us like Norman Wisdom, but unlike me she dislikes Max Miller - "too noisy". When I showed her videos she also thought Josie Long was too noisy, Richard Herring wasn't funny - "why are they laughing?" and she took an immediate dislike to Limmy's voice when I put on one of his improv stories.

I asked if she saw Rolf Harris - "Oh, I don't like him." She's not going to be consciously aware he was a wrong 'un, but I concurred he was bad.

[Pink Gregory]

my godmother used to have exactly one Victor Borge tape

this is all I can really give you

my nan always had good things to say about Lee Mack, less so about Lee Evans (too much swearing).  So that's her opinion on the Lees.

[Twilkes]

Show her the Roy Jay video, this is the closest we have to laboratory conditions.

A middle aged relative has very little sense of humour, and hated Tommy Cooper because 'he keeps getting it wrong'. Similar distaste for Bob Dylan.

[lauraxsynthesis]

Show her the Roy Jay video, this is the closest we have to laboratory conditions.

Results complete. I debated whether to show her the video without introduction, but first I asked,

Me: "Do you remember Roy Jay?"
Nana: (Smiling and happy) "Oh yes!"
Me: "Was he funny?"
Nana: "Yes!"

I put on the video. She struggled to believe it was Bob Monkhouse introducing - maybe because he was so young? Couldn't get to the bottom of it. RJ came on...
"Why does he look like that?" She clearly doesn't remember this act at all. She carries on watching, smiling but not because she's enjoying it. "He's terrible, isn't he?!"

We agree it's shit and give up within 2 minutes.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I remember being about 12 round my uncles and noisily pressing play on the Ferguson only for it to spin up half way through Bottom Live.

'I think you better turn that off' my dad said.
'nah I like those two!' exclaimed my octogenarian grandmother.

It was a bit of a shock. When I was made to stay there the TV was all Casualty plus Cilla and Barrymore.

[king_tubby]

Last Christmas my mum casually mentioned she'd seen Beyond The Fringe when she was a teenager.

[non capisco]

Last Christmas my mum casually mentioned she'd seen Beyond The Fringe when she was a teenager.

I only found out my mum had seen Jimi Hendrix when she was winding up my dad talking about dates she'd been on before she met him.

"Oh, Gareth, he was a dreamboat. He took to me see whatsisname, the guitar guy, y'know *mimes playing guitar with teeth*"

[George White]

I only found out my mum had seen Jimi Hendrix when she was winding up my dad talking about dates she'd been on before she met him.

"Oh, Gareth, he was a dreamboat. He took to me see whatsisname, the guitar guy, y'know *mimes playing guitar with teeth*"

My dad saw Ian Dury and the Blockheads live at the Stardust (which notoriously burnt down soon after).
My mam saw the early 80s version of Dr. Feelgood.

My mam HATED Morecambe and Wise. Every Christmas, she'd be fuming.

[Steve Faeces]

I lived with my nan growing up and she was a big Max Bygraves fan. I found his records fucking hilarious as a kid but he has no real cultural cache now and I've lost all her old records sadly.

[kalowski]

My family's comedy favourites...
Grandmother: Keeping Up Appearances
Dad: Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder
Mum: Every Which Way But Loose

[PlanktonSideburns]

Love the idea of sitting with your nan watching their favourite comedy bits, some of yours. Hope my grandkids can be arsed to do the same with me

[Gulftastic]

My 83 year old Mam loved Morecambe and Wise. The Elton John Xmas episode is one of my first tv memories. She also liked Frank Spencer. The show I remember her laughing the most at is probably 'A Fine Romance'. She thought Judy Dench was the bees knees.

She took against 'Shelley' for some reason I never really understood. Wouldn't have it on.

[Red82]

I used to watch Laurel and Hardy with one of my Nans.

[George White]

My gran loved Norman Wisdom, and saw him live in Dublin several times.
She also loved Brendan Grace, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, and despite being a virulent homophobe, John Inman/Mr. Humphries.
My maternal gran (who I never knew) loved  Sykes.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I only found out my mum had seen Jimi Hendrix when she was winding up my dad talking about dates she'd been on before she met him.

"Oh, Gareth, he was a dreamboat. He took to me see whatsisname, the guitar guy, y'know *mimes playing guitar with teeth*"

Only gig I really know my parents went to was Van Morrison at the nec and he spat the dummy and fucked off. Seems a lot of primary school parents happened to be at that one.

[Icehaven]

Last Christmas my mum casually mentioned she'd seen Beyond The Fringe when she was a teenager.

And the very next day, she gave it away.

[seepage]

the only thing that got a laugh out of my mum was Spike Milligan's Q series

[Gurke and Hare]

When I was about 15 I went to a Ben Elton gig (the show that became the Motorvation album) with my mum, which she loved.

[badaids]

She also liked Sid Field, The Crazy Gang, Joyce Grenfell, Harry Worth, Tommy Cooper and Harry Secombe.

Lovely to see that among all this comedy nobility your Nana remains a hardcore football casual of Wimbledon FC.

[majava]

My family's comedy favourites...
Grandmother: Keeping Up Appearances
Dad: Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder
Mum: Every Which Way But Loose

Every time we visited my nan and pop they were watching Keeping Up Appearances. They had the whole series on VHS, recorded off the tv by someone in England who then sent them to Australia (along with a few months' worth of Eastenders/Coronation St omnibuses).

[lauraxsynthesis]

Nana and I spent all yesterday watching about 100 episodes of Midsomer Murders on a channel that only shows that, it seems. One had Keith Allen, John Thomson and Hannah Waddingham in it. This morning it's nonstop old Columbo. At some point today her favourite programme is on - Last of the Summer Wine. I don't think I've ever seen one of those all the way through. I hope it's Compo in the bath!

[chip]

My Nan got one of Ken Dodd's tickle sticks at a show.

[dissolute ocelot]

My mum never had a discernible sense of humour but she liked Keeping Up Appearances. Which kind of makes me wonder if she was watching it as a serious documentary on awful people. She was much happier if people were getting murdered.

My dad was the bigger comedy fan (my parents divorced when I was young). We watched The Two Ronnies as a family, and later I remember watching Bob Monkhouse's chatshow on TV with him in the 80s, and he had Billy Connolly records.

I never knew either of my grandmothers well enough, only thing I can remember watching at my nan's was the Space Shuttle, not the one that blew up, nobody laughed at that. I don't think any of my grandparents grew up in areas known for their light entertainment, although I imagine Corby must have had some touring bagpipe acts.

[lauraxsynthesis]

Last Christmas my mum casually mentioned she'd seen Beyond The Fringe when she was a teenager.

That is AWESOME. Did she say if anyone in the audience was shocked by the pisstake of the PM or the War stuff etc?

[Small Man Big Horse]

This feels quite surreal to me as one Grandmother died when I was 12 and one when I was about 20, and 29 years on from the latter I have absolutely no idea if any of them liked any comedians or sitcoms. Somewhat cruelly Christmas has always been a day when the tv is switched off and we struggle to find things to talk about, while visits to my grandparents as kids felt like formal affairs, there'd be some game playing and my sister and I were shoved in front of Harold Lloyd when the adults wanted to talk in private, but I've no memory of actually watching tv with them.

[Bad Ambassador]

Mum and Dad saw One Over the Eight, written by Cook and starring Kenneth Williams, in the West End.

When Dad was at university, he managed to book Dave Allen as cabaret, and he was excellent and flirted with my mum, although Dad - a six-two rugby player - was standing right next to him.

He landed John Cleese the next year, but he was very stiff and unsuited to stand-up.

[Pranet]

The only watching comedy with a grandparent memory I have is Les Dawson at the piano saying something like "every day is one day closer to death" or similar and Nan saying "Yes that's true". I would have been something like 6 years old at the time.

[flotemysost]

Grandparent-wise I only ever knew my dad's dad; he'd stay with us every Christmas, which basically meant a week of sitting around watching TV. All the standard kinda festive programming seemed like a safe bet - the Two Ronnies, Dad's Army, Morecambe and Wise, Fawlty Towers, etc.

My dad's inner rebellious teen/contrarian little bitch would sometimes come out though, and he'd put on something a bit more modern in the interests of "mixing things up" - knowing it wouldn't be remotely to his dad's taste - so we also awkwardly sat through stuff like In Bruges (barrage of four-letter words in the opening minutes) and The History Boys (gay). My grandad, being the impeccably modest and polite chap that he was, never said anything other than a concise "not my cup of tea, ah well!" afterwards, but I could tell he was wincing.

My mum and dad both have pretty catholic tastes in comedy, and it seems to be something they kept up with since becoming parents; when I was younger my mum always used to quote stuff like the League of Gentlemen and The Fast Show at me before I even really knew what they were. It's funny because her taste in music largely stops (chronology-wise) around the time she had kids in the mid-late 80s; I suppose the TV was on most of the time when we were growing up, and maybe "talky" radio was easier to have on in the background than "music" radio, so perhaps comedy was just easier to keep abreast of, I dunno.

[JarrowMonkey]

My Nana liked Bobby Thompson, AKA 'The Little Waster', i found him as funny as toothache, but she also liked Dave Allen, so that was a good intro to someone I'd never been interested in, about the time of his BBC series in the late 80's / early 90's

[king_tubby]

That is AWESOME. Did she say if anyone in the audience was shocked by the pisstake of the PM or the War stuff etc?

No, she just said it was very funny. I'll ask her about it again this Christmas.