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Monday, March 06, 2006

Can You Play a Pianny?

Here's another page from the Knuckles-waiting-to-be-published pile. Cornelius' views on whether the Goon Show was anti-Semitic or not differ from my own; I always thought the dodgy "Yid" gags were mitigated somewhat by Peter Sellers being Jewish. (And the fact that they all spent quite a bit of time fighting Hitler when they were younger.) But I think it made a pretty good strip.


Four more pages to go on the new Art d'Ecco story! Then I've just got to wallop the book into some sort of coherent order and do a few splash pages...

1 comment:

  1. Ray Ellington and Max Geldray were both Jewish (or of Jewish descent) too. I think probably the "Jewish piano" thing probably is more anti-Semitic-seeming thing than the stuff in the Goons, and as a resolutely atheistic (and lefty, non-miserly) Jew I do find it somewhat offensive and not honestly very funny or clever.
    But hey, whatever. Here's an interview with Spike in which he talks about it:

    http://www-staff.mcs.uts.edu.au/~hugh/spike.html
    Remember Spike Milligan's series, Q, on the ABC? My earliest recollection of the show was the sketch in which someone plays the 'jewish piano', a cash register. Spike: "That's right, yes. And we had so many letters; a letter from the Chief Rabbi. I said, `Look, please, I'm not antisemitic, I couldn't be, I wouldn't have fought in the war if I was'. `It's very disturbing to Jewish people'. `I'm so sorry; what can I say?'" But at least Milligan used other religions for a springboard into surrealism: "Two vicars, with suits, knock on this door, the door opens. They say `we are Jehovah Burglars'. `Oh yes'. `Yes, we are being persecuted by the police, for our beliefs'. `Oh? What are your beliefs?' `We believe you've got a lot of money'. "This sort of sketch was the essence of the show: "There were no jokes, just situations all the time."

    Of course, we all know about your experiences with SM :)

    ReplyDelete

The spam filter is back on because it just goes berserk if I switch it off. Sorry - I'll get to your comments ASAP!

About Me

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London, United Kingdom
Eisner and Harvey Award-winning cartoonist responsible for The Muppet Show Comic Book, Thor the Mighty Avenger, Snarked! and Fred the Clown. Would like to save the world through comics.