Professor's lectures fail to inspire

Press, 24 October 1978, Page 15

Professor' s lectures fail to inspire

By

JOHN COLLINS

Perhaps it’s because the last fortnight has been unusually depressing — the days spent wandering the beaches in search of coal and driftwood for the fire, the nights spent boiling and reboiling iay favourite leather, belt to make a little broth in order to ease the young-j sters’ cries of hunger — but) I’ve now watched three; globs of “The Fred Dagg; Lectures On Leisure,” and)

I’ve yet to force a smile! across these wan and wizened cheeks. I’m not suggesting that he) should do his number dressed’ in a white three-piece and occasionally jerking his arm) up and his buttocks out in) fashionable John Travolta combination of a Hitlei 1 salute and an attack of) cholic; but I am struck as) Fred ambles on to the set by) how, well, er, dated he seems.) Though never a big Dagg; fan — people have assured me that it is the fact that; I am English and not able to I grasp essential local humour!

that prevents me from breaking up at such incisive lines as “Well, er, g’day” and “This .would be right” — I can !still remember John Clarke’s superb send-up of the weather-girl South Pacific [Television inflicted on us .when it first began, and a> short skit he did on a cur-) ) rent-affairs programme,) 'standing in a stream washing; 1 a piece of meat in a bucket) (to demonstrate the new meat-

hygiene regulations. Com-; pared with these, Professor; I Dagg’s latest efforts seem! | very flat and uninspired. i 1 In fact, if you listen care-) fully as he speaks, some-) (where close behind him you! (can just pick out the sound) lof pot boiling. I Fred apart, Sunday was not) without humour, though. Fori ithat very tiny minority who! enjoy faked programmes; ) about diseased sheep there.) (was a repeat of the “Country) iCalendar” answer to “War! ;0f the Worlds,” the now-! (notorious leg-pull about foot-) land-mouth disease; and. for l

those who share my view that “Barney Miller” was the funniest thing on television for years, a new series called “Fish” began. I missed the repeat of “Country Calendar,” but re-) turning to the living room to find my wife sobbing on the floor covered in Valbezan was enough to tell me that the repeat was as powerful as the first showing — though I thought her decision to burn the cat was going a bit too far. I saw “Fish”: and Abe Vigoda as the , manicdepressive who hasn’t been manic for quite some time now, was as funny and convincing as in the “Barney Miller” series. The “Listener” doesn’t say who wrote the scripts, blit I presume it’s the same people. Where, considering the generally abysmal level of American television comedy, they sprang from, I just could not guess.

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