Hughie Green, who had presented shows on television since 1956 – including quiz shows Double Your Money and The Sky’s The Limit and the long-running talent show Opportunity Knocks– proved his own versatility by impersonating eight characters in this one-off variety show from Thames Television, transforming himself from a panto-loving schoolboy to Valentino, a Keystone Kop and many others.
The show – which aired on Wednesday 28 April 1976 at 8.00 pm – was set in a fictional music hall and cinema, which eventually became a bingo hall. Hughie was supported by Beryl Reid, Bernard Bresslaw, Pat Coombs and former Miss World, Eva Rueber-Staier.
There were moments when viewers said, “is there nothing this man cannot do?” and there were moments when they said, “yes there is!”.
The highlight was a splendid silent film with superb subtitles (one said “Bang!”) with Hughie being seduced by a dark vamp (Rueber-Staier) who could well have been the younger sister of Cleopatra heavily made up as Elizabeth Taylor but whose broad, sensuous lips mother her identity, followed by a caption which read “I am Florence of Arabia”.
All this to a piano accompaniment (played by you-know-Hughie) so eloquent you just knew that Schopenhauer had got it wrong and that all of life was but a rich pattern of diminished sevenths and left-hand tremeloes.
The show was without shape or form, it was too long, and most viewers never thought they’d see the day that Hughie Green did a serious impression of Al Jolson. Or witness a sketch about an 80-year-old Major (Major Green) with an ending which could have so effortlessly been worked into a commercial for the British Sugar Corporation.
But it didn’t matter. The mans infectious ebullience and obvious zest for living made up for everything!
There were moments when viewers said, “is there nothing this man cannot do?” and there were moments when they said, “yes there is!”.
