Kenny Everett

Kenny Everett

Kenny Everett (born Maurice Cole in Crosby, Merseyside, Liverpool, December 25, 1944, died April 4, 1995), was a popular British radio DJ and television entertainer.

Early life

Everett attended the local secondary modern school, St. Bede's Secondary Modern, which is now part of Sacred Heart Catholic College.

After schooling, he worked in a bakery and considered training to become a priest. However, having revealed a natural comic and broadcasting talent, he began a career in entertainment. He adopted his stage name from film-star Edward Everett Horton, a childhood hero.

Broadcasting career

Radio beginnings

Everett's first break (as Maurice Cole) came when he sent a tape to the BBC in 1962. The BBC gave him an interview and offered him a job as a presenter on the Light Programme, the forerunner to BBC Radio 2. He declined, however, in favour of the less constrained world of pirate radio, where he began his career as a DJ for Radio London. Kenny teamed up with Dave Cash for the 'Kenny & Cash Show' one of the most popular pirate radio programmes. His offbeat style and likeable personality quickly gained him attention, but in 1965 he was fired after some outspoken remarks about religion on air. Like most of the pirate stations, Radio London carried sponsored American evangelical shows, and Everett's disparaging remarks about The World Tomorrow caused its producers to threaten to withdraw their lucrative contract with the station.

Everett returned six months later, however, before being given his own show by Radio Luxembourg in 1966. Within a year, he had joined the BBC's new pop music station Radio 1 after previewing The Beatles' new album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and interviewing the band. Everett had struck up a friendship with The Beatles and accompanied them on their 1966 tour of the United States, sending back daily reports for Radio London. He also produced their 1968 and 1969 Christmas records.

At Radio 1 Everett continued to develop his own unique presentation style, featuring zany voices, characters, multi-tracked jingles and trailers, all of his own creation and compilation. It was ground-breaking radio material that has since been much copied.

In 1970, however, Everett again found himself fired, this time after suggesting on air that the British Transport Minister's wife had bribed her driving test examiner. Following an interview on the BBC Radio Solent children's show Albert's Gang, Kenny submitted weekly shows to the station that he had pre-recorded at home. This afforded the BBC the opportunity to vet the shows before broadcast. Everett was then heard on various BBC local radio stations before being reinstated at Radio 1 in 1972.

During this time, legislation had been passed allowing the licensing of commercial radio stations in the UK. One of the first, Capital Radio, began broadcasting to London and the Home Counties in 1973. Everett joined the station and was given his own show, where he further developed his distinctive ideas. From 1974 to 1980 he presented the station's breakfast show alongside Dave Cash, a friend and colleague from Radio London days.

"Bohemian Rhapsody"

During his time at Capital Radio, Everett was given a copy of a new single (which record companies felt was too long to be successful) from Queen by the group's lead singer, Freddie Mercury, a good friend, with the proviso that it was not to be played on the air. Everett loved the song and began to play it several times a night on his show (once claiming that "his finger slipped"), helping the song — "Bohemian Rhapsody" — to go quickly to number one in the UK. So greatly did Everett love this song he played it 14 times in one day when it was released. It went on to become a world-wide Top 40.

BBC Radio & back to Capital

In October 1981, Everett returned to BBC Radio, albeit this time on Radio 2, on Saturday lunchtime from 11am-1pm. This lasted until 1983, when he was once again dismissed after making a rude joke about Margaret Thatcher. He then returned to Capital Radio, presenting the same slot as he did on Radio 2.

After Capital had split its frequencies in 1988 he was heard on Capital Gold, with a line-up that included people like Tony Blackburn and David Hamilton. Everett presented the afternoon show and then moved to the mid-morning show. He left in 1994 when his health deteriorated to the point that he was unable to continue.

TV career

Early television work

Besides the radio programmes, he appeared in several television series. The first, in 1968, was a production for Granada Television called Nice Time, co-presented by Germaine Greer and Jonathan Routh. In 1970 he made a total of three series for London Weekend Television (LWT): The Kenny Everett Explosion, Making Whoopee and Ev; and he also took part (along with such talents as Willie Rushton and John Wells) in the 1972 BBC TV series Up Sunday.

(It is not currently clear to which of these efforts Everett was referring when, years later, he spoke dimissively of some early TV work: "We just used to turn up at the studio and try to be wacky").

The Kenny Everett Video Show (ITV Thames, 1978-1980) and The Kenny Everett Video Cassette (ITV Thames, 1981)

In 1978, London's Thames Television channel offered him a new venture, which became the very successful and ground-breaking Kenny Everett Video Show. This was a vehicle for Everett's characters and sketches (his fellow writers were Ray Cameron, Barry Cryer and Dick Vosburgh), interspersed with the latest pop hits, either performed by the artists themselves, or as backing tracks to dance routines by the supposedly risqué (for the time) dance troupe Hot Gossip (see also Sarah Brightman and Arlene Phillips).

In the pre-MTV era, this mixture of pop bands and comic sketches was a new format for television. It was so successful that pop and TV stars queued up to make cameo appearances, including Rod Stewart; Billy Connolly; Kate Bush; Cliff Richard; Freddie Mercury; Terry Wogan; and Suzi Quatro, to name just a few (see also "Friends" section below).

These shows were also unusual in that there was no studio audience or laughter track. The only reaction sounds were those of the writers, staff and crew at Thames' Teddington Studios in South West London. Everett would often ad lib and deviate from the script; his bloopers were sometimes left in the final cut and on several occasions he would pull the camera around the studio revealing the crew not quite sure what was going to happen next. There were also the stories of Captain Kremmen, a science fiction hero voiced by Everett and originally developed for his Capital Radio shows, who travelled the galaxy battling fictional alien menaces, along with his assistant Dr Gitfinger and his voluptuous sidekick Carla. In the first three series these segments were animations created by the Cosgrove-Hall partnership (responsible for the successful children's cartoon series Dangermouse, among many others.) In the fourth series ("Video Cassette") Kremmen was featured as live action, with Anna Dawson playing Carla, although the segments were now less successful short comedy skits, rather than the erstwhile stories.

Other characters included aging biker Sid Snot (remembered by fans for unsuccessfully attempting to flip cigarettes into his mouth - at one point Everett managed to catch one in his mouth, to the amusement of the studio crew); Marcel Wave, a lecherous Frenchman played by Everett wearing an absurdly false latex chin; and Angry of Mayfair, a middle-class City gent complaining of the risque content of the show, banging the camera with his umbrella, only to then be revealed as actually wearing women's underwear.

Everett's interest in (then primitive) video processing technology and electronic effects showed itself in such features as the appearances of a bobbing 'alien' entirely composed of a distorted video image of his own head ("Hello. I'm Spod, from Planet Thfnnnn. And this is all I do...").

The series ran for four seasons on ITV, and was a big ratings hit, being required viewing for any teenager of the time.

The Kenny Everett Television Show (BBC 1981-1987)

In 1981, Everett fell out with Thames regarding the management of his show, including the scheduling of the programme against the BBC's Top of the Pops on Thursday evenings (In one skit on his Thames show, he depicted the Thames management as being behind an ancient, cobweb-covered door marked "Office Of Saying 'No'"). TOTP was a ratings powerhouse at the time, and was effectively unbeatable in the days of three channel television in the UK. The BBC offered Everett a contract for a live audience sketch format comedy programme, and this partnership came to fruition at Christmas 1981, with a one-off special, followed by five series.

The writing team was bolstered by the addition of Andrew Marshall, David Renwick and Neil Shand, and the production standards were raised by the heavier investment from the corporation.

There were legal concerns when Thames attempted to block the transfer of Everett's characters to the BBC, claiming them as their copyright. This led to the creation of new characters such as the spooneristically named Cupid Stunt, a bearded American B-movie actress with pneumatic breasts (Everett made no attempt to cover his beard) who told (usually to a rapt cardboard cutout of Michael Parkinson) lurid and incredible tales of life on set with Burt Reynolds and other male stars of the era.

Cupid was originally to have been named Mary Hinge (another spoonerism referring to an intimately hirsute female body part), however this was vetoed by the BBC as too obvious. It remains unconfirmed as to how Cupid Stunt was then approved. Announcers were often encouraged to simply refer to her as Cupid, to prevent the possibility of mispronounciation. A new punk character known as Gizzard Puke was developed, as Thames were trying to prevent Sid Snot from moving to the BBC. In the event, Thames' action failed, and all the characters from the Video Show were released for use. Inept TV handyman Reg Prescott became another firm viewers' favourite, as each week he managed graphically and bloodily to injure himself with tools whilst attempting to demonstrate DIY tips.

Brazilian-born Cleo Rocos, a glamorously curvaceous co-star, featured heavily in all of the BBC series and became one of Everett's closest friends. She was often portrayed wearing little more than frilly underwear and high heels, and her figure was used to great comic effect as a focus for drooling, lascivious men.

Some fans feel that the move to the more traditional BBC watered down the anarchic spirit of his previous work. The corporation assumed much tighter control over both content and production, and it is felt that this removed some of the spontaneity which had become a hallmark of the Thames series. However, the series performed equally well in the ratings, and the characters and their catchphrases endure 20 years later.

Quiz shows

Everett hosted two short lived quiz shows late in his career, Brainstorm [1], and Gibberish [2].

Friends and guests

Everett was very popular with his peers, and many major stars of television, radio, and pop music counted him as a friend. This led to many celebrity guest appearances across all his television work. Cliff Richard happily lampooned his clean image many times, as did Lionel Blair. Terry Wogan - a long-time colleague from the early days at Radio 1 - made numerous appearances on both Thames and the BBC shows, as did Billy Connolly. Other stars who parodied themselves included Rod Stewart, ABBA, and Freddie Mercury.

Political controversy

In the 1983 electoral campaign, the Young Conservatives invited Kenny to their conference in an attempt to attract the youth vote. Egged on by film director Michael Winner, Kenny bounded onto the stage, wearing the enormously oversized foam rubber hands familiar from his mock-evangelical character Brother Lee Love. He shouted slogans like "Let's bomb Russia!" and "Let's kick Michael Foot's stick away!" (Michael Foot was the elderly leader of the Labour party.)

His appearance at the Conference and his support for the Conservatives (which dated back to the late 1960s when the Conservatives, then in opposition, criticised the Labour government's treatment of the 'pirate' stations) alienated many of his more politically left-leaning fans, though he later admitted that he was not terribly political, and greatly regretted the incident.

Bloodbath at the House of Death

Everett made one foray into film with 1984's Bloodbath at the House of Death, a spoof of Hammer horror films penned by Everett's usual writing partners Barry Cryer and Ray Cameron (who also directed the film). Vincent Price featured as the villain, credited only as the "Sinister Man", and a number of other popular comedians and actors also appeared, most notably Pamela Stephenson Connolly, Gareth Hunt, and Don Warrington. Several regulars from Everett's television series also appeared.

The film was not a great success, despite winning "Best Science-Fiction Film" at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film (tied with Videodrome), and Everett did not make a successful transition to film star.

Later career and death

The radio shows continued in the same vein and were as popular as ever, but by the late 1980s the TV show format had run its course, and Everett's personal life was becoming increasingly complicated. He had married the singer Lee 'Lady Lee' Middleton (Billy Fury's former girlfriend) in 1966 ("Kenny proposed to me under a magnolia tree in Fulham", she later recalled); but by 1979 they had separated, and Everett came out as gay. He launched himself into the London gay club scene, and could often be seen in London club Heaven (then a very popular clubbing destination) on Saturday nights. He was an active campaigner for gay rights ("I...FOUGHT...for people like you, and I never got one!" he once said to David Bowie.) He seemed never to fully come to terms with his sexuality however, and he suffered bouts of severe depression.

By the 1990s Everett's health was declining. He died of an AIDS-related illness on April 4, 1995, at the age of 50.

Miscellany

*Everett was the announcer on the original version of ATV's "big box game" Celebrity Squares which ran on ITV from 1976 to 1979.
* Everett also coined the term 'Beeb' to refer to the BBC. The term is still in popular use; the BBC have used 'the Beeb' themselves (previously using beeb.co.uk and named their digital channel for young children CBeebies).
* In July 1970, Everett suggested on-air that Mary Peyton, wife of the then Minister of Transport, had passed her advanced driving test by bribing the examiner.
* In 1982, he said "When England was a kingdom, we had a king. When we were an empire, we had an emperor. Now we're a country ... and we have Margaret Thatcher." This remark reportedly led to the non-renewal of his contract with BBC-2.
* In 1980, the band Fox regrouped to record the theme music for Everett's show, "Electro People".

Quotes and catchphrases

* "It's all done in the best PAH-SIBBLE taste!" -- regular punchline uttered by character 'Cupid Stunt', accompanied by her swapping her crossed legs over in the most vigorous way possible.
* "'Ello my leetle chickadees" (and variations, in heavy French accent) -- introductory remark uttered by character 'Marcel Wave'.
* "Round 'em up, put 'em in a field, and BOMB THE BASTARDS!" -- all-purpose solution to any perceived social problem, declared by 'Marvin Bombthebastards', a handgun-waving US General with immense shoulders (equipped with retractable cannon) and chest to support many medals.
* "Brother, Brother, Brother Lee Love!" -- gospel-style sung introduction to huge-handed US minister 'Brother Lee Love', whose frenetic sermons called for the 'congregation' to echo the last two syllables of some sentences, with amusing (and occasionally very rude) results.
* "I hate pornography ... I haven't even got a pornograph!" -- 'Angry of Mayfair'.
* 'This morning, I spilled coffee all over my wife's dressing gown! Serves me right for wearing it! -- 'Angry of Mayfair'.
* (Electronic rendition of Bach's choral prelude Wachet Auf) -- musical accompaniment to all sketches featuring 'Maurice Minor', parody of French mime artist Marcel Marceau.
* "Ello, I'm Gizzard Puke, and anyone who says punk's dead, will be."

External links

* Photos