With a stage the size of a postage stamp, the Baillie Room on The Mound is a perfect fit for Mike McCabe’s affectionate tribute to the pint-sized comedian Frank Carson who we are reminded towards the end of this hour-long gig-cum-play Spike Milligan once compared to the M1. The difference being that “you can turn off the M1”. Badum-tish!

The first of many innocent one-liners which mirrored Carson’s “gag after gag after gag” style. Not to mention the format of The Comedians in which he excelled along with a host of other legendary funny men including Bernard Manning, Stan Boardman and Ken Goodwin whom McCabe impersonates with glee. He is, after all, a fine comedian himself having worked with his hero on several occasions after winning the ITV talent show New Faces.

But McCabe’s performance is not so much an impersonation of Frank – in fact, he neither looks nor sounds very much like him – but more a potted history of his life and a celebration of his rapid-fire delivery which it is suggested was formed to plug the gaps in which his “ghosts lie”.

The ghost of his big sister Josie who died when he was five, a framed picture of whom McCabe addresses for most of the show; the ghost of his “old bastard” of a father whom he disliked very much (the feeling was mutual); the ghost of his brother who was killed in action and whose loss shaped his “If I didn’t laugh I’d cry” character; the ghost of a Zionist terrorist whose young and panic-stricken pulse he stilled as he was re-arming his gun; and the ghosts of his fellow soldiers – eight went dancing, only Frank returned.

But to suggest that McCabe’s show is a recruitment drive for The Samaritans is to give a false impression for it is 99.9% funny and relentlessly so. Did you hear the one about… I said to the wife… A man walks into a pub… Some are knowingly naff and all the better for it. Some are old standards as old as Father Time. Some are slow-burners which delight the uninitiated. And some are no doubt McCabe’s off-the-cuff one-liners.

But are they “racist”? A charge levelled at Frank in the early eighties during the birth of alternative comedy. And are they “non-PC”? A devastating critique by the “comedy police” which angered and saddened him in equal measure. “My bubble burst,” he bemoaned before offering the defence: “I take the stupidity out of prejudice.”

For me, when I think of Frank Carson, I smile. As I do when I think of Mike McCabe’s affectionate and polished tribute which may not be as bold and brash and “current” as other shows, but is unflaggingly funny. “I said to the wife, ‘What do you want for your birthday?’ She said, ‘A widow’s pension.'” Badum-tish!

Peter Callaghan
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