The Mike Reid Show is basically what Tara Palmer-Tomkinson thought she was walking into on her sadly infamous appearance on The Frank Skinner Show, and not, as she had believed, The Frank Butcher Show. The personas of Reid and Butcher and inseparable, other than the former not having run down Martine McCutcheon on New Year’s Eve, so if Mike Reid’s hosting a show, then Frank Butcher is too. This is the same variety vehicle they gave everyone for about forty years — The (Host’s Name) Show — opening monologue, sketches, celebrity guests and musical performances, though in this, we’ve the most aggressive performer to have ever been given one. You’d think a man who seems like he should be bare knuckle boxing in an empty swimming pool would despise song and dance, but those deep into Reid lore will know that, like all club comics, he dabbled in the charts, with novelty singles Ugly Duckling and Freezin’ Cold in 89 Twoso. Even so, he never embraced that side so overtly, so spectacularly, as in The Mike Reid Show.
I was as shocked as you when I stumbled on this; a series so consigned to the skip of history, Reid makes no mention of it in his autobiography. It’s essentially a one-and-done, but spreading out its six episodes and a pilot — guest starring future EastEnders missus Babs — across three years. Series proper begins a year after the 1976 test-run, and I’m jumping in with episode three, opening on dramatic spotlights, and Mike descending glittery steps in a dickie bow, not unlike the revolving one he wore when showing up at Pat’s backdoor in the nip. During more physical gags, a big medallion will fly out from the suit’s inner breast. Pre-dating Runaround, Reid’s yet to hit the final evolution of the look, missing the yellow-tinted glasses and oak finish tan, and still clinging onto a full head of hair. All these shows have to kick off with the monologue, running through gags about “foreign birds” and touching on the peculiarity of language; “there’s no black friars in Black Friar, all the chip shop owners are white!” Though this is firmly his domain, there’s a sense he’s on his best behaviour, with no jokes about fingering, nor miming himself having a tommy tank.
No matter how I try, I can’t wrap my head around Reid being eight years younger here than I am now. I would’ve have left sixth form before this Reid even started big school. I’d have watched Andi and Emma, while he had Theakston and Ball. I won’t have it. Yet, if I went back in time to the day he was born, baby Mike Reid would still be threatening me with a clip round the ear. His routines feel like being lectured to in a post-death abyss, black suit lost against a black background, with only face, hands, and white collar and cuffs visible, as though Red Dwarf recast the ship’s computer again. Your eyes are drawn to the movement of his great big mitts, exactly resembling when someone feeds their hands through your arms from the back and gesticulates wildly while you pretend to read the news.
The last time we saw Reidy doing sketches was Pussy in Boots, but first he had a crack here, gritting his teeth during a card game in an visually nauseating living room. Wallpaper, curtains, cardigans; all disgusting, in a decade whose entire colour pallet was ‘some sick under sawdust on a wooden floor’. Another sketch sees Reid at a health farm, with a hairy health and safety moment, climbing a rickety wooden ladder to straddle a chandelier and retrieve a hidden sandwich, dangling about fifteen feet above a rock-solid studio floor. This easily could’ve been pre-courser to Davro in the stocks, left hanging for a long, single take, while co-stars sneak about below for their own hidden stashes; a loaf in the fireplace, a parsnip disguised as a candle; and confuse each other for ghosts. Eventually, he has to clamber back down, manoeuvring himself (in a dressing gown, mind you) off the chandelier and back onto one of those ladders kept only from doing the splits by a fraying piece of string. You know Mike Reid wasn’t killed in an accident in 1976, but you’re still half expecting to see a foot go the wrong way, his head crack open, and the screen to suddenly cut to black.
There’s a weekly song from regular cast member, Patsy Ann Scott, who’s second billed, but is most notable (in the Millardverse) for going on to marry Eddie Large, staying together until his death. Perhaps, as she does Reidy, Patsy once serenaded the big man with Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing. Joining Reid for a chat, he politely offers her “a Michael” (a mic) and slips an arm around her as they break into Nat King Cole’s Almost Like Being in Love while making goo-goo eyes at each other. Wonder if Syd ever wound Eddie up by sticking this on in the tour bus? But it’s unnatural, watching a man we’ve only ever seen telling jokes about Indian ladies’ fannies and geezers with a right fahkin pipe down their trousers, now being all classy, sat nicely on a stool enunciating every word through a smile — and not his usual ‘chimp whose territory has been threatened’ one either. It’s like when your mum uses her posh phone voice, and the cockney beast within must be fighting to get out during every number; dry slaps and “shut it, you wilf!” bubbling beneath the surface as he tells himself “keep it together, old son…”
Consequently, the show’s overwhelming vibe is of catching an authority figure’s private side you weren’t meant to see, like walking into double maths of a Monday morning with a “nice seeing you at the orgy last night, sir, you were at it like a piston!” Mike Reid in a tuxedo, eyes closed and arm outstretched as he belts out a showtune; you might as well’ve taken a VHS labelled ‘yellow fun’ from your parents’ bedside drawer and pressed play. This man, however, is a pro, and when it goes big band, it is Frank, but Sinatra rather than Butcher. It’s the bridging stand-up sections where he’s most him, with jokes about Streisand’s big nose and fellas who died and went to ‘eaven and ‘ell, aided by unbelievably truculent mimes, thrusting imaginary sausages into his mouth like he’s trying to smash out his own teeth. And then he’s in a collar so wide, it’s basically a skate park, medallion and chest hair on show, for a solo number of Ella Fitzgerald’s It’s a Lovely Day Today, strolling round the piano, sharing a little wink with the bass player, pinkie gracefully encircled round the bottom of the mic, miming the pitter patter of raindrops with his big fingers; a point at the camera on the final tinkling note, before shaking the pianist’s hand.
But Dear God, the lurching tone. Pure jokester Reid, telling a gag about being a teenager and hoping girls he’d cum in on a Saturday night didn’t get pregnant, and then — POW! — a pianist playing Rachmaninov — SOCK! — Reid accidentally sawing a woman’s leg off in a sketch — OOF! — a brown leather armchair, and “we hope you like the selection of songs from the pen of Cole Porter.” This is the classy end of variety, a hundred miles from Bernie Clifton, with breathless choreography and 1940’s Hollywood wipes, and not just the lead-in to a skit where Reid gives one of the male dancers a biff up the hooter for being a bleedin’ fairycake. To confirm, the camera pulls back, putting that armchair centre of frame, and there he is, lit cigarette between two fingers, glass of scotch and an ashtray, mournfully crooning Just One of Those Things — “goodbye and amen, here’s hoping we meet now and again” — taking a drag between lines, with a close-up of him stubbing it out at the finish.
Hard cut to a weedy dancer with a cowboy hat slung behind his neck slamming a bullwhip against the floor so camply it seems like a bit from Dick Emery. A Western-infused dance medley, Reid joins for the closer with Night and Day, imploring us to end his torment, and “let me spend your life making love to you.” Can I get back to you on that? I imagine his lovemaking style is rather like an untethered bureau being thrown around in the back of a removal van. Though the earnest singing has outweighed the comedy by some margin, one couldn’t rightly call it Yarwooding, as this is just an entertainer fully living up to their job description. Surprisingly, given the noted lack of racial epithets, is seeing Johnny Speight as one of three credited writers.
The next episode’s opening routine seems ill-rehearsed, rife with pauses and stumbling, and despite airing in March, sets up a sketch in a Christmas grotto, with Reid playing his own father, in the expected six minutes of beard-pulling, shouting, and calling Santa “winkle.” Other sketches see Reid as a cockney vicar, using the Chalky voice as “one of our imported locals,” and at a fancy dinner where Felix Bowness is a waiter, and a young woman goes cross-eyed at whatever Reid’s doing under the table. But the absolute centrepiece is a song and dance medley set in 1920’s prohibition America, dancers all in gangster suits, concerning a feud between mob boss Fingers Aldino (“he’s the greatest gangster we know!”) and Reid’s Big Boy Mike Angelo.
This is flawless casting for once, Reid with shoulder holsters, doing some words in an American accent, and singing (lip syncing) “I’m the king, I’m the king of Chicago!” Flapper girls look on adoringly as he segues into It Had To Be You, embracing Eddie Large’s wife as she sits on his lap. If Eddie was into cuck stuff, this bit of the tape would be worn out. After shooting at him with a cap gun, Reid and Fingers get into a dancey fight, but bond over an arm wrestle and everyone leaves the club as friends, for a full Broadway song and dance, giving a taster of Frank Butcher as the lead in Guys and Dolls. “We’re pals now in Chicago town, it’s Fingers and Mike Angelo, two buddies in Chicago town, just watch a partnership grow!” He even does a soft shoe shuffle, and then absolutely fucking nails the ‘ending the song at the penultimate word to suddenly switch to a speaking voice’ with a gentle “goodnight everybody, thanks for watching.”
Episode six, the final show, mysteriously aired almost a full year (51 weeks) after the previous one, complete with new opening titles and theme. It’s also much faster paced, lighter on variety and way more sketchy, the stand-up now a quick set-up for the many skits. Mrs Eddie Large and the weekly pianist are gone, along with the dance troupe, replaced by The Dougie Squires Dozen. Was this the planned beginning for a revamped second series which never came? As a warning before we proceed, the solo writing credit is a man who penned gags for Little and Large, Barrymore, Jim Davidson, Bobby Davro, and Copy Cats.
And yet, what an opening! At no point would anyone ever think to precede the introduction of Mike Reid with a slinky, energetic cover of The Rhythm of Life. Silver-suited dancers peel away one by one — “we’ve got rhythm, Mike’s got rhythm!” revealing the man himself, blue tux and flared trousers, to wish a very energetic “Good evening! You know, I was born in the East End of London, born in the sound of bow bells…” Yeah, you might have mentioned it. But the music’s still going, and he’s walking and talking — about London, about jellied eels at old Tubby Isaac’s — in what’s effectively a proto-rap, betwixt singing “I’ve got rhythm” as he strides through the dancers in a brutal fusion of disco, rap, and EastEnders. Honestly it’s one of the most powerfully weird openings since those kids breakdancing in Cilla Black’s living room, grooving like Austin Powers, right up to the camera, in easily a Top 3 most baffling thing I’ve ever witnessed.
Once that’s out of the way, compared to previous episodes, this is The Fast Show; sketch after sketch, mostly themed around Mike Reid’s Stages of Life. First the wife’s telling him she’s pregnant (“What would you say if I told you that soon we’d be having another hungry mouth to feed?” “Your mother’s coming to stay?”) before he posits ‘what if men had babies instead?’ — “Wouldn’t make half as much fuss as you girls, no way!” Though they give us the concept of a pregnant Mike Reid, they chicken out of the actual visual, post-birth in a hospital bed, robbing us the money shot of Frank Butcher with a massive pregnant belly. It’s fine, I’ll just commission someone from DeviantArt. Regretfully, it’s never clarified where the 11lb baby comes out; caesarian, arse or nob-hole.
The vague, whistle-stop tour of his life continues; as a drill instructor training a regiment of spivs in WW2, a classroom tale of sitting next to Ginger Thompson who shat himself, crying about the mother-in-law at his wedding day, and an alternative world where he went to actual uni instead of the University of Life, and works as a judge hosting a University Challenge parody (“What’s the penalty for bigamy?” “Two mothers in law!”). He’s clearly trying to get a pair of new catchphrases over, cutting off audience applause by barking “Migraine! Migraine!” about a dozen bloody times, and peppering routines with an impatient “Listen! Listen!” One thing he wants to be very, very clear about in his reminiscences is that Mike Reid did a lot of shagging in his younger days. “I had dozens of birds, I made Tom Jones look like a Trappist monk!”
But now a bonafide sketch show, one simply cannot escape the 1950’s American rock and roll bit; everyone sock-hopping round the jukebox like they’re in Happy Days. Although unlike your Davro, Dennis and Abbots, Reid actually was a teenager during that period, albeit in Hackney and not Milwaukee. In the whole lengthy medley, quiff wig and teddy boy swagger, he looks seventy years old, and couldn’t seem more ‘dressed too young’ if he was in a babygro. It doesn’t stop him though, surrounded by young dancers and belting out Johnny B. Goode. “Frank, it’s your cousin Marvin! Marvin Butcher!”
The Mike’s Life concept is abandoned in the final third, translator for a party political broadcast, where Labour’s a Yorkshireman in a flat cap, the Tories a haughty woman, and like all comics of that era, Reid gives trade unions a kicking. Back to the good old days of the music hall, he does Billy Cotton’s Marrow Song — “oh what a beauty, they’ve never seen one as big as that before!” — and he would’ve been right at home with Formby and them other lads, back when nobody noticed a full 100% of comedy was double entendres about wanking and great big fucking veiny dicks that’d split you in half. Plus he still does all his gags about thicko Irishmen and getting the mother-in-law a job as a lollypop lady at Brands Hatch.
Fittingly, the big finale is one of the most cockney things in all of recorded history, inviting us to join a sing-along “dahn the market!” Thumbs in the lapels of his waistcoat, he opens the medley with Oliver‘s Oom-Pah-Pah, and as dancing girls shake their skirts, all I can think is what a fantastic Bill Sikes he’d have made. In a real East End masterclass, even I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am makes it in, though the set design’s a bit muddled, with Victorian clothing but a red phone-box and double decker bus, the top deck of which Reid closes from, bidding us “goodnight, darlin’s, I hope you enjoyed the show. Gawd bless yer!” You know, I think I actually did. Mike should’ve swapped the flamin’ pilchards for tap shoes a bit more often.
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Tags: beginner hauntology, royal variety, saturday morning archaeology, vhs:wtf
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