Hoffnung

Over on the Dabbler, under Mahlerman's Sunday post on Unserious Music, Worm mentions the once very famous and popular Gerard Hoffnung. That name took me right back to my boyhood. One of my uncles had a recording of Hoffnung's legendary stand-up (and sway about) performance in front of a notably well lubricated Oxford Union audience. This was the huge comedy hit of its day, and my uncle and father would laugh almost as uproariously as the Oxford audience as they listened to Hoffnung in full flow - sounding, as ever, like the most bufferish of old buffers, though he was a young man. It's a tour de force, and, though something of a period piece, still worth a listen - his comic timing is quite extraordinary.
Hoffnung's charming little books of music-themed cartoons sold very well - it's impossible not to like them - and still turn up quite often in charity shops. The musical performances he staged were perhaps rather laboured affairs, as such minglings of comedy and 'serious music' tend to be. But his most interesting legacy, I think, are his recorded interviews with an urbane Canadian called Charles Richardson. Hoffnung, his bufferish persona honed to perfection, proves the most impossible of interviewees (think Peter Cook's Arthur Streeb-Greebling and then some), offering rambling irrelevant 'answers', interrupting his hapless interviewer, taking offence at innocuous pleasantries and indignantly telling Richardson to mind his own business when pressed for anything resembling an answer. The result is something at once very funny and way ahead of its time. Have a listen here...