Coughin’ Contest

This is an enormous cough! The audience is joining in – they’re on their feet, coughing their hearts out.

To put it mildly, Derek and Clive’s material isn’t anything you could entertain being released today. A pair of debauched, racist, sexist, swearmaster homophobe alcoholics who don’t care who they offend. You hear a lot from Clarkson-types who lament things that wouldn’t be acceptable now and how it was much better in the old days. For the most part, I dislike those people. You *can* still say those things. You just have to be aware of the consequences. It’s not political correctness gone mad. You’re just failing to adapt to modern life.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the old Derek and Clive stuff but I’m aware that it’s of its time. Despite how batshit insane a lot of it is, I personally view it as more sophisticated than, say, Bernard Manning or Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, who you could put in the same bracket. I know technically those two were also an ‘act’, but for me, the works of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were far more rich and varied than either of those. Though I suppose Roy was in the League of Gentlemen, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Whatever you think of all that, this sketch is actually comparitively tame. They do mention Zurich and the album was released in 1977. It kind of helps that the Swiss flag is also shorthand for first aid. On a lung as well, if you hadn’t worked that out.