FAREWELL then Gene Wilder.
I hadn’t realised until I listened and watched the radio and TV reports on the death of the US comic actor at the age of 83, quite how many great films he had appeared in.
I also didn’t realise he was that age. Having suffered from Alzheimer’s in later life, he had not appeared in films for many years.
And so for us, the watching public, he was still the frizzy-haired, rubber-faced, ageless performer with piercing blue eyes and
While most remember him as Willy Wonka, my abiding memory of Gene Wilder was as the neurotic Leopold Bloom opposite the equally hilarious Zero Mostel in The Producers.
My Dad had suggested I watch it when it appeared on TV and even before political correctness had been born, it was surprisingly edgy as well as being gloriously and outrageously funny.
Wilder subsequently teamed up again with The Producers’ creator Mel Brooks on Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles and then with stand-up comedian Richard Pryor in Silver Streak, Stir Crazy and Hear No Evil, See No Evil and, one I haven’t seen yet, Another You.
Until I saw a clip of Pryor’s expletive-fuelled stand-up routine, I didn’t know how much he had seriously toned down his approach for Hollywood.
But, like with Brooks, Pryor gelled with Wilder perfectly, their opposing personalities bouncing off each other brilliantly on the big screen.
I can also remember a scene, from, I think, The Woman In Red, a 1984 film that Gene Wilder wrote and starred in.
He had been captured by gangsters and was being taken up an escalator by the bad guys, to certain death.
An attractive woman in tight shiny trousers and her huge boyfriend were a couple of steps in front of him on the escalator.
Wilder grabbed her bum, the woman screamed and her boyfriend turned round to confront the groper.
Wilder stood innocently between his captors, but then starts to use his eyes to indicate the man on his right was the offender.
When that doesn’t work he uses his tongue, pointing out of the side of his mouth towards the burly thug.
The boyfriend spots it and punches the gangster back down the escalator, allowing Wilder to escape.
I don’t know why I should remember a scene like that. Probably because, like much of what Gene Wilder did, you couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it and making it absolutely hilarious.
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WHEN I turned on the TV this week there was a documentary on about sex workers presented by someone called Stacey Dooley.
I knew I had seen her before and remembered she appeared on Celebrity Mastermind earlier this year.
I had never heard of her at the time, thought she was probably a former Big Brother contestant and so Googled her.
It said she was an investigative journalist and documentary maker and I thought she would have a good chance of winning the show given she was up against an Eastenders actress and one from Casualty as well as boxing promoter Kellie Maloney.
But I was wrong.
In the general knowledge round Stacey Dooley was asked a question about a war in 1966 and her answer was the Second World War.
Then came the question: Moray and Conger are species of which long thin fish?
Her answer: Tadpole.
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MY initiation into Harrogate life continues apace. Last weekend I spent an enjoyable evening with Yorkshire’s ‘first couple’ of the legal world, Chrissie Lightfoot and Russell Davidson.
Tasting bubbly at the unique Champagne Concept in the spa town was followed by a trip to The Drum and Monkey, a fish restaurant which lives up to its great reputation.
It is now run by Sarah Carter, who I first knew when she worked in PR, but who certainly seems to have found her forte at an establishment that serves up succulent seafood and is currently holding its annual lobster festival.
Russell, a property lawyer who specialises in the sale of hotels, has recently taken up a new role with the law firm Shoosmiths while Chrissie appears to have cornered the market offering enterprising advice to lawyers.
She’s tethered the wild horse that social media can often prove, and got it working for her and calling her book The Naked Lawyer was a masterstroke.
Which lawyer would turn down reading that rather than The Precedent Library For The General Practitioner?
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READER Ian Price didn’t take kindly to my mild barb about Strictly Come Dancing last week.
“Don’t you be dissing Strictly, it’s brilliant! And (no disrespect) if you’re going to be running around in lycra, I’m staying in to watch the dancing!”
Each to his own.
Have a great weekend.