Stop Messing About is the resurrection of the 1969 radio show which starred Kenneth Williams, the outrageously camp comedian probably best known for his performances in the Carry On films, together with Hugh Paddick and Joan Sims his stable-mates from the radio show Round the Horne, with Kenneth Horne. All these names invoke memories of the comedy shows of the late 50s and 60s, double entendres ruled and innuendo was king. The play follows faithfully the recoding of the first two shows of Stop Messing About and is set in a BBC recording studio in the late 60s, just as it was back then with giant microphones and flashing ’Applause’ signs to guide the studio audience as to exactly when and where to show their appreciation.
Robin Sebastian is eerily like Kenneth Williams, right down to the flared nostrils and has his voice and mannerisms exactly so much so I felt I would like him to come out of character just to see what he was really like! As it was when the show was recorded, firstly he came on to do a warm up routine (in those days even big stars had to do their own warm up) telling a string of "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" stories in the way that only Kenneth Williams could and get away with it.
The humour is definitely unsubtle and rather like stepping into a saucy seaside postcard, full of sailors being "taken down below" and soldiers "looking at their privates". Smutty it certainly is but I remember listening to these shows in my childhood where it was considered family entertainment and political correctness hadn’t yet reared its ugly head.
Nigel Harrison plays Hugh Paddick, Kenneth’s urbane sidekick, whose cupboard full of voices could be brought into play as Sir Inigo Parchmutter, a crusty old judge or a six shooter with mother of pearl chasing round his butt (we’re in the realms of the ridiculous here) in a spaghetti western. India Fisher as Joan Sims completes the trio and she’s every bit as curvaceous, cute and flirtatious as the original. Charles Armstrong is the announcer Douglas Smith, whose plummy voices connects the sketches although he gets some good laughs of his own.
The show is funny but sometimes loses pace and the second half definitely has more zip. A pity for the couple of people that I noticed we lost at half time, perhaps due to assaulted sensibilities or difficulty in working out the word play jokes as in a parody of a grim war film where someone says "there’s a tent - we could loiter within it." All very clever and I enjoyed my trip down memory lane when our family would cluster around our Radio Rentals radiogram with its enormous dial to tune into the light programme and laugh along with the studio audience; even if most of the time I didn’t understand what was funny!
Jacquie Vowles