La Sagesse des Normands

I cannot let this day pass without marking the centenary of the birth of Norman Wisdom, who in his day was one of Britain's biggest film stars (as was George Formby - we have a funny idea of film stars here). Wisdom was one among many deeply unfunny comics who peaked in the Fifties and Sixties (something of a sub-speciality of this blog: see Charlie Drake, Bernie Winters, Dickie Henderson, etc). As with Charlie Drake, in my innocent boyhood I found Wisdom hilarious and would queue up with my brother to catch his latest film, which would invariably feature his Gump character, most often in the form of Norman Pitkin, a tiresome imbecile who was constantly falling over and creating mayhem, yet who always ended up getting the better of Mr Grimsdale or some other representative authority figure (usually played by Jerry Desmonde) and even getting the girl or, if not, treating us to some excruciating pathos, yet more painful to watch than his comedy - even as a boy I found that part of the package hard to take.
 There was not so much as a Google doodle to mark the centenary today, but they'll no doubt be marking the occasion with due ceremony in Albania, where Wisdom was a cult figure, largely because his films were among the few to reach Communist Albania from the capitalist West, being considered as fine embodiments of the triumph of  the proletarian little man (Norman Pitkin) over the capitalist ogre (Mr Grimsdale). Wisdom was treated as a national hero in Albania and on one occasion was in Tirana when the England football team were playing Albania's finest. The little chap duly ran out onto the pitch, wearing a half-English, half-Albanian shirt and executing one of his trademark trips, to universal hilarity. He also treated the Queen to one of his comedy trips while stepping up to collect his OBE at Buckingham Palace. Irrepressible he was.
 Norman Wisdom's theme song was Don't Laugh At Me. Not a great choice for a comedian really...

Hail, Zog!

Today is the birthday of the self-proclaimed King Zog of Albania (born 1895), a glamorous, high-living figure who reigned as constitutional monarch from 1928 to 1939, replaced Islamic law with a Swiss-style civil code, survived more than 50 assassination attempts - in one of which he exchanged fire with his would-be assassins - invented the Zogist salute (right hand flat over the heart, palm facing downwards), was deposed by Mussolini, and ended his days as a Riviera recluse. The throne of Albania seems for a while to have exerted a strange fascination. The cricketer - or rather, in John Arlott's phrase, 'the most variously gifted Englishman of any age' - C.B. Fry claimed he was offered it while on League of Nations business in Geneva in 1920. He might well have been - but one Otto Witte, a German circus acrobat and fantasist, claimed to have gone one better and been crowned King of Albania in 1913. Noting his resemblance to a nephew of the Sultan who had been invited by some Albanian Muslims to assume the throne, Witte travelled to Albania with a sword-swallower friend, and was duly acclaimed as King by local troops. In the five days before his ruse was discovered, he enjoyed the delights of the harem and took the opportunity to declare war on Montenegro. Unsurprisingly, no evidence was ever found to support Witte's story - but the Berlin police allowed him to describe himself as 'former King of Albania' on his identity card. I wouldn't be surprised if Albania's national hero, Norman Wisdom, regales his captive audience at the twilight home where he now resides with tales of how he too was offered the throne of Albania.