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Find out moreLouis Barfe was born in 1973 in Epsom, Surrey. He studied at Lancaster University. He has written for Private Eye, The Oldie, Publishing News, New Statesman and Crescendo and Jazz Music. His first book, Where Have All the Good Times Gone: The Rise and Fall of the Record Industry, was published by Atlantic Books in 2004. It was followed by Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light Enntertainment in 2008 andThe Trials and Triumphs of Les Dawson in 2012. He lives and breathes British TV comedy.
British TV comedy in its glorious forms - from sitcom to sketch shows -is a much-loved highlight of the small-screen schedules. In this must-have collection, Louis Barfe has selected the very best of British television's comedy classics. Unforgettable moments from Dad's Army, Blackadder and Fawlty Towers rub shoulders with classic sketches including Monty Python's 'Dead Parrot' and The Two Ronnies' 'From Handles'. Generation-defining examples from That Was the Week That Was and Spitting Image appear alongside relishable offcuts from more recent triumphs including The Office, The Thick of It and Outnumbered. Showcasing our funniest TV comedy stars, their shows and their writers, Britain's Greatest TV Comedy Moments is a hilarious trip down memory lane.
Les Dawson was a Northern lad who climbed out of the slums thanks to an uncommonly brilliant mind. Married twice in real life, he had a third wife in his comic world - a fictional ogre built from spare parts left by fleeing Nazis at the end of World War II - and an equally frightening mother - in - law. He was down to earth, yet given to eloquent, absurd flights of fancy. He was endlessly generous with his time, but slow to buy a round of drinks. He was a mass of contradictions. In short, he was human, he was genuine, and that's why audiences loved him.
British TV comedy in its glorious forms - from sitcom to sketch shows - is a much-loved highlight of the small-screen schedules. In this must-have collection, Louis Barfe has selected the very best of British television's comedy classics. Unforgettable moments from The Morecambe and Wise Show, Blackadder and Fawlty Towers rub shoulders with classic sketches including Monty Python's 'Dead Parrot' and Hancock's 'The Blood Donor'. Generation-defining examples from That Was the Week That Was and Not the Nine O'Clock News appear alongside relishable offcuts from more recent triumphs including The Office, The Thick of It and Outnumbered. Showcasing our funniest TV comedy stars, their shows and their writers, Britain's Greatest TV Comedy Moments is a hilarious trip down memory lane.
Les Dawson was a Northern lad who climbed out of the slums thanks to an uncommonly brilliant mind. Married twice in real life, he had a third wife in his comic world - a fictional ogre built from spare parts left by fleeing Nazis at the end of World War II - and an equally frightening mother-in-law. He was down to earth, yet given to eloquent, absurd flights of fancy. He was endlessly generous with his time, but slow to buy a round of drinks. He was a mass of contradictions. In short, he was human, he was genuine, and that's why audiences loved him.
Les Dawson: a comedian who, more than any other, spoke for the phlegmatic, resigned, sarcastic, glorious British way of life. This is his story. A Northern lad who climbed out of the slums thanks to an uncommonly brilliant mind, Les Dawson was always the underdog, but his bark was funnier and more incisive than many comics who claimed to bite. Married twice in real life, he had a third wife in his comic world - a fictional ogre built from spare parts left by fleeing Nazis at the end of World War II - and an equally frightening mother-in-law. He was down to earth, yet given to eloquent, absurd flights of fancy. He was endlessly generous with his time, but slow to buy a round of drinks. He was a mass of contradictions. In short, he was human, he was genuine, and that's why audiences loved him.
With a cast of thousands, including Peter Cook, Ken Dodd, Dusty Springfield, Spike Milligan, Rolf Harris, Bruce Forsyth and Reeves and Mortimer, Turned Out Nice Again reveals a world of comedians and cavorters, dancing girls and crooners. From the early days of vaudeville, via the golden age of radio, live television spectaculars, the rise of the chat show and alternative comedy, Louis Barfe pulls back the curtain of variety to reveal the world of light entertainment in all its glory.
Louis Barfe's elegantly written, authoritative and highly entertaining history charts the meteoric rise and slow decline of the popular recording industry. Barfe shows how the 1920s and 1930s saw the departure of Edison from the phonograph business he created and the birth of EMI and CBS. In the years after the war, these companies, and the buccaneers, hucksters, impresarios and con-men who ran them, reaped stupendous commercial benefits with the arrival of Elvis Presley, who changed popular music (and sales of popular music) overnight. After Presley came the Beatles, when the recording industry became global and record sales reached all time highs. Where Have All The Good Times Gone? also charts the decline from that high-point a generation ago. The 1990s ushered in a period of profound crisis and uncertainty in the industry, encapsulated in one word: Napster. Barfe shows how the almost infinite amounts of free music available online have traumatic and disastrous consequences for an industry that has become cautious and undynamic.
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