It is a dislocating experience to discover that two 1970s British Legends were actually The Same!
The eponymous character in the Vic Sinex advert who gave the nation a catch-phrase that entered common usage for many years - as a generic reassurance for any doubt; was actually The Same as the naughty and nightmare-inducing mammal from popular children's TV show Pipkins...
(...a show that - for those who experienced it in youth, became the very definition of the term Low Budget).
I admit that Malcolm and Hartley do not look very alike, at least superficially; but recall that we are here dealing with a master of disguise.
Yet on reflection and fundamentally; the two are clearly one and the same whiny, seedy, camp layabout that so fascinated (and, no doubt, corrupted) Britons young and old - a mere fifty years ago.
I remember an episode of Pipkins when they sang a song to the tune of "A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square", and Hartley Hare had the last line of each verse "something something something Hartley Hare." (I cannot recall the words) But I remember being puzzled and thinking to myself (because I always liked the old songs, even as a child) "This allusion will certainly be wasted on most children." Of course I was too young to be aware that the nightingales in question were in fact the ladies of the night, who would hang out in Berkeley Square. But Hartley Hare would have known that.
ReplyDelete@wa - "Hartley Hare would have known that."
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you are probably right, there.
An actor called Nigel Plaskitt playing a character called Hartley Hare on a show called "Pipkins" -- that's got to be about the Englishest thing I've run across this week.
ReplyDelete@Wm - Yes indeed, "Nigel Plaskitt" the actor does seem to be yet another of the identities assumed by this mysterious and protean individual.
ReplyDeletePersonally, if I was forced to decide, I would regard Hartley Hare as likely to be the 'real and original' individual; with Course-you-can-Malcolm and Nigel Plaskitt as just some of his guises.
And he was in "The Ribos Operation" from the Key to Time arc.
ReplyDelete@Joseph A
ReplyDeleteI knew he looked familiar. Old Mr. Scringe Stone himself.