ADOLF HITLER '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL (Tom Lancaster, 1973)

'Without 'two world wars and one world cup', as the song goes, the English would have disappeared from even their own imaginations by the year 2000.' Peter Handke

'Without the Beatles, England are Portugal; Empireless and small.' Ian Svenonius, The Psychic Soviet

' [These comedies] come with the idea: we the British, and more specifically, we the English, can laugh at ourselves, and that is what makes us better than you. But it also contains the more troubling thought: we can laugh at ourselves, because whatever we are, we know we're better than you.' Stephen Fry

When England were paired with Germany in the World Cup last week, it resurrected age-old cliches that even the brazen seemed to use half-heartedly, aware that the ground had shifted. But use them they did, and when Our Boys were ambushed by a swashbuckling young German side filled with various ethnicities, the great unspoken English response was: that should be us. But naturally, it couldn't be, not right now, because deep introspection and radical projection isn't natural for the English (we use a French term, avant-garde, remember, because we have no equivalent of our own).

The goal that wasn't was one of those poetic echoes that sport, unscripted, throws up, a beautifully crafted red herring, in this case.

The Second World War gave Britain several things: A renewed feeling that her innate sense of moral superiority was correct (the geographical spread of the Nazi forces everywhere but the islands is both a fact and a metaphor), a celebratory complacency (for while America thrived in a consumerist glee adrenilized by rock'n'roll/Vietnam/Space Race euphoria, and the rest of Western Europe rebuilt and modernized itself, Britain clung to a sepia infrastructure) and a ribald miscellany of comic types to sustain itself for twenty years, thirty years, forever.1 From the kinky Gestapo officer to the tediously punctual guard, to name but two, the Nazis as joyless sadists turn up again and again, especially in the Nineteen Seventies,when every sitcom/stand-up routine/sexploitation comedy of English origin had one.

Always, it is the notion of spirited, fair-playing Englishmen which prevails, the plucky geezer fighting the robotic enemy. Of course, a berserk romanticism on the part of the Nazi's is key to what undid them. but its kinder (and lazier) to think about them as automatons consistently outgagged and outsmarted by an Englishman, with common sense,wit and attitude.

Adolf Hitler '68 Comeback Special seizes the same turf, initially, as Heil Honey I'm Home, or 'Allo 'Allo: it's mean panto season, then, and our ugly sisters wear swastikas. Shot with the same tone as the Robin Asquith 'Confessions...' flicks, and often with a similar cast and locales (Southend stands in for Paraguay, Brixton is Manhattan), John Le Mesurier plays an eerily un-uncanny Erwin Rommel in the style of Roger Moore, trying to guide the second coming of Hitler (Tony Booth) back from the jungle hideaway in Paraguay he has inhabited since 1945. His plan: Career resurrection, Broadway style. He books a televised show (under the pseudonym Johnny Fuhrer, a name later adopted by the singer of shock punks The Swasticklers) at Carnegie Hall where he will unveil the fourth reich, supported by hypnotism, which he hopes to conquer the new empire of America with. Only his timing is awful, as he discovers that the night he has booked is the same night that Elvis Presley's Comeback is being televised from Las Vegas. The entire world will be looking elsewhere.

Against advice, Hitler plays the show anyway, and to an audience of three, he performs a play, 'Spy Finkel and the Gormless Rotunda', in which a member of the Reich infiltrates America and discovers its pitiful and horrific daily existence.1 The joke is that Hitler's grandly pompous narrative arc, approaching fifteen hours with the menace of a panzer division's progress through Ukranian frost, is so devoid of entertainment (especially in comparison with Elvis' charm) that no-one could ever sit through it comfortably. But this is dealt with so smugly, that one comes away feeling immense sympathy for the misunderstood auteur of epic plays/mass genocide/ethnic cleansing. The underlying feeling is that this Hitler, failing Austrian painter, is an outsider talent being crushed under the wheels of an ignorant entertainment industry. Fuelled by Nazi bullion and a dream he books a rundown theatre for a year, and continues to play the show to nobody, heroically.

Tony Booth is grandly sypathetic, coaching from the front row every night, convinced that with slight script tweaks and absolute commitment he'll have his hit. John Le Mesurier plays Rommel as a resigned but dutiful right-hand, coping with the Fuhrer's eccentricities and his own alcoholism with suave and offbeat style. His white-suited Rommel is immaculate even when waking from the gutter. They're both too likable and foolish to hate, which somehow seems like the grandest faux pas of all.

And then Nazis fell out of fashion, at least in comedy. Stephen Frears' Somme Girls Are Bigger Than Others (1986) was a late, independent dig, mixing First and Second World War metaphors with death-by-Thatcher northern yearning. But the archetypes live on, and on, perpetrated mostly by English minds 'who have already decided on their place in the world, and it is at the top table.'4

Adolf Hitler '68 Comeback Special Directed by Tom Lancaster Produced by Bert Harris Written by Tom Lancaster, Simon Humphries Starring Tony Booth, John Le Mesurier Rank Organisation Release Date UK: Aug 1974, US:N/A, 104 mins Tagline 'The Most Notorious Act of the Century is Back!'

1. And by Britain, in this case, I mainly mean England. Wales and Scotland have other nationalistic crutches to cling to. The Northern Irish.... well, I'll leave the Northern Irish alone for now.
2. Sam Mendes directed a version of this play on the London stage in 2000. It was restricted eight hours, but received some minor praise.

3 .I quote German thinker Pierre Littbarski: 'The English are forced to use a French term, 'avant-garde', becauser they have no equivalent. Their children are stripped of dangerous thoughts, punished under a grammar hammer. The cleverest English are comedians and popular musicians. Ask an Englishman to name a clever fellow countryman,and they will say Stephen Fry. Or Morissey. 'Yes, that bugger's a smartarse.' Philosophical questions must be framed in these highly accessible forms. This is not necessarily a bad thing. So: navel gazing about the war is restricted to casual romanticism.'

4. George Bernard Shaw.

HICK (Smith Hyphen-Jones, 2000)

Hick by Ted Hughes

'They waited and waited for him to begin
But when he did he was already gone
The bear with the uneasy grin
Is walking back once again from the sun
His legs
too slow to guard the door
Interloper's grenades split his
bat
Limpid agitated swafts in place
Of cultured
darting strokes
Our hopes
Cling
On
On Colonial burial grounds
A hired soldier fights a rearguard action
One hundred and Seventy Eight
In the heat and haze
But it's too late now
31.32
The answer to a question
We know not what'

'A maths problem even more complicated than the one at the start of the film Rushmore. We know that the answer is 31.32, Hick's bewilderingly modest Test average, but we all arrive at that figure in a different way. Was it an 'aversion to the short ball + Curtly Ambrose x selectorial inconsistency = 31.32'. Or 'mental fragility – flat tracks x too long a qualification period x simple misfortune = 31.32'. Or simply 'Graeme Hick ÷ Ray Illingworth = 31.32'. Nobody will ever truly know, but everybody has their own take on it.' 1



When Ted Hughes, poet laureate, composed his poem about the enigmatic Zimbabwe-born England batsman Graeme Hick in 1998, it fired few imaginations, buried as it was in a collection of detritus verse named Detritus Verse. Hick, remembered mostly as a failure for his country, despite being a perennial bully on the County circuit, was described by Ted Hughes as having 'the care of all sport etched on his smile'. Another poet named Hughes, the legendary Australian Merv, had an instructive verse of his own for Hick: 'Mate, if you just turn the bat over, you’ll find the instructions on the other side.' The collected works of Mervyn Hughes remains a wondrous untapped source for cinema (if you exclude the excretable Aussie comedy Slugger McGabe (Jeff Thomas, 1995), clearly based on the life and times of the mustachioed one), and indeed the world of cricket is somewhat under-represented. The rumours that Paddy Considine has signed on the play Ian Botham in the biopic Beefy to shoot next year may end the drought.

Until then we cling to this: Hick. Which makes every attempt to secure Hick's place in the misunderstood genius camp by serving up 90 minutes of footage of him in languid slo-mo foisting Indian spinners to the rope and silkily pocketing slip chances with ease. Over the top is laid the poetry of Ted Hughes read by Brian Blessed, whose bullfighter-in-China delivery renders the exercise hilarious, especially when he uses his rumbling whisper at moments of high tension (a whisper that is more volumnious and heavy than his booming conversational tone). This is matched by strident Elgar pieces, bulging and billowing, which is hardly very Hickian; This Blessed and Elgar one-two might suit the hairy-lipped violent battery of a Gooch or a Robin Smith, but surely the shy Zimbabwean hulk is better suited to another combination, and all kinds of pairs can be imagined. No-one is suggesting Geilgud and Mozart, but perhaps Nighy and Chopin? No, too slippery perhaps. Broadbent and Walton? Too English. Fry and Debussy? Not quite. Any one of these combinations would create a completely different personality for Hick and for Hick, and all are possible. For Hick stands as a modern enigma, a would-be legend who failed, a loved letdown who also won. An experiment might involve the same footage being played over and over, with the same words read over the top, but each time by a different actor and with different orchestral accompaniment. One might then turn on the lights each time and ask the gathered schoolchildren 'What kind of man was Graeme Hick?' and then tabulate the results. Because, it may well run the gamut. Might Laurie reading over Scarlatti conjure a murderous Hick in the minds of the babes? Might Forsyth (Bruce, naturally; although repeating the dose with Frederick might be worth attempting, in carefully controlled conditions) reading over Reich cause them to dance giddily for the ice cream man? Or weep for some punishment not yet offered?

Myself? I'd plump for a wearily shrill Kenneth Williams reading over some Satie. That's my Graeme Hick, at least today.

Hick Directed by Smith Hyphen-Jones Produced by Smith Hyphen-Jones Narrated by Brian Blessed Boundary/Film Four Pictures Release Date UK: June 2000 US: N/A. 92 mins Tagline: None.

1. Rob Smyth, The Guardian, May 2008