Bill Cosby a delight

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33904, 25 July 1975, Page 10

Bill Cosby a delight

Maybe it was Bill Cosby’s' fifth-grade teacher, a strident; lady rumoured to have once; been a general in the Gaute-; malan Army, or his friend Rowland, who turned his eyelids inside out, who made Cosby the hard case that he is. Or perhaps it was his mother, who seemed to bawl at him most of the time, and his father, who said little, save to inquire after his mental health (“Are you crazy-?”)' who made the mobile, elastic, and clever Mr Cosby decide 1 to go public. He is a multitude of characters rolled into one. He works hard for his money, changing attitudes, poses, ■ faces, and voices as fast as I he makes them. For more than two hours, he enter•ained a full house at the Christchurch Town Hall last evening, barely stopping for breath. He is very funny. Not peculiar, or dirty, or nasty — just funny. It was difficult to believe that down the front of that sweater, with the smilie-

'with -an-Afro on it, there was not some sort of sophisticated noise-making equipment. It appears that at some 'time in his youth Mr Cosbyswallowed a machine-gun. ; i Mr Cosby set a precedent ; the moment he appeared on stage. He was on time. He played about with the subject ;of food poisoning (brought about, he said, by eating New 1 Zealand lamb) before getting down to the serious and amusing subject of being sick. i “Whoever made the toilet bowl took into consideration the number of people who would be throwing up,” he Lsaid. Together, we made three [old time movies. One in a 'submarine (“All you have to ' do is look up all the time”), the second about an aeroolane (“All you have to do ■Hs look down all the time”), ’ and the third about cowboys and Indians (“All you have !to do is look straight ahead all the time”). Getting into the movie was uthe difficult part; there was : i nothing to the acting side of •lit, he said.

The nearest Mr Cosby got |to meddling in politics was a few basic observations on Women’s Liberation. One of 'the problems with women was that femininity prevented them from blowing their noses the same as men, and they would never be liberated until they could. As women had noses the same size as men, he felt sure there was a special room somewhere where women went to have a good noseblow.

Bill Cosby’s sensitivity about the humorous side of human nature is remarkable, particularly his observations about the ways of children. He finished the evening with a discourse-with-actions on going to the dentist. It used to be a subject laboured by most comedians, but appears to have taken a second place to pornography and politics in recent years. With his amazing versatility, Mr Cosby injected (if that fs the word) new- life into the subject — and every jaw in the house ached to prove it. —F.T.