Bernard Manning

[Stan Butler]

Probably one of the most well known northern comedians. Famous for insulting the audience, swearing a lot and being a bit racist! But you have to laugh though. (sometimes!) In all fairness to bernard, he does have a go at at everyone, not just black people. Jews, muslims, short, tall, fat, thin. Everyone.

Some people find him very offensive. Not me! I see the funny side!

Went watching him about four years ago. Enjoyed it, but with him not being in the best of health at the time, it wasn't the same Bernard. Same jokes though. Two of which he told twice, and didn't realise. Told the audience to get f**ked because they didn't laugh the 2nd time!

[The Collector]

was it 4 years ago!

As I've said before Bernard is a legend an d if your upset by his comedy DON'T WATCH OR LISTEN TO HIM!

[BlackRaven]

I like Bernard a lot. We did security once at a club he was playing and had a nice chat with him. Somebody I work with worked in the Police and called his house a few times for not paying bills!

Trouble with Bernard though is, its the same jokes (and not just within the same set). If you have seen him once (or on DVD) then you have seen most of his act. Where he exels though (and is probably the best in the world) is when somebody heckles him. After watching half an hour of repeated gags and not laughing, I was all for going home, until a heckler shouted something and the rest of the night was Bernard putting the guy down who ended up walking out. Security then ushered Bernard out of a back door to his car just in case!!

I don't find him in the slightest offensive though. If more people had some of his views, the country would be a better place.

[The Collector]

blackraven said:

I don't find him in the slightest offensive though. If more people had some of his views, the country would be a better place.

Which views?

[BlackRaven]

zygon said:

blackraven said:

I don't find him in the slightest offensive though. If more people had some of his views, the country would be a better place.

Which views?

Well, people think of him as racist, but he isn't really. He (like me) thinks that if people come to the country, make the effort and don't sponge from the country then that is fine.

[Stan Butler]

Sad news folks.

Bernard Manning died today aged 76.





The comedy legend passed away at the North Manchester General Hospital, where doctors had been treating him for a kidney problem.

Manning had been a patient in the hospital for the last two weeks and was taken into intensive care over the weekend but only yesterday his son Bernard junior said his condition was improving.

Showbiz agent Mickey Martin, a close friend of the comedian, told the MEN: "I was going to visit him today but young Bernard called to say he's gone.

"It's come all of a sudden as we thought he was on the mend."

Mr Martin added: "He was the godfather of The Comedians and it's a sad loss to Manchester as well as to the world of comedy."

The comic entertained crowds for the last six decades but shot to fame in the 1970s when he appeared in the ITV stand-up show The Comedians along with Stan Boardman and Frank Carson.

Only five weeks ago he held his own "living wake" for a TV documentary and told the audience: "I'm going to be with you for a long time yet, so don't you worry about me."

But health problems finally got the better of the heavyweight funny man, who suffered from diabetes. Earlier this month he cancelled a gig for the first time in 60 years as he was rushed to hospital with a kidney problem.

His world revolved around a five mile radius of his home in Alkrington, Middleton where he preferred to relax in his vest and underpants - that of his son and grandchildren, and the Embassy Club.

He was forced to close the club for a few months in 1999 due to ill health and was delighted when his son, the `younger' Bernard, as he likes to be known, took over and saved it from extinction.

Throughout his long career Manning courted controversy but remained faithful to the comedy style he adopted when he set forty years ago.

He leaves a son, Bernard, and three grandchildren.



Rest in Peace Bernard.

[Stan Butler]

Bernard was included earlier this year in our special Planet Comedy Calendar....

gary said:

[The Collector]

Just heard this thank's to the boss

I'm glad I got the chance to see Bernard live a few years ago, Love him or hate him, you couldn't ignore him.

In my book a Legend.

Farewell Bernard

[Master Shake]

RIP Bernard.

Very sad.

[The Collector]

From Yahoo! news...note the bit in bold/Italics

[glow=red,2,300]Comedian Bernard Manning has died in hospital at the age of 76.[/glow]

Manning, who shot to fame and subsequent notoriety on the 1971 Granada TV series, The Comedians, died in North Manchester General Hospital.

He was taken to hospital with a kidney problem two weekends ago and had been receiving dialysis.

He had to cancel a show at his famous Embassy Club for the first time in six decades as an entertainer.

Last month he attended his own 'wake' - a gathering of 600 friends and fans at the Hilton Hotel in Manchester - to celebrate his life for a Channel 4 show called This Was Your Life.

He heard tributes from colleagues on the The Comedians but told the audience: "I'm going to be with you for a long time yet!"

Manning was born in 1930 in Ancoats, one of Manchester's poorest suburbs, the second of three brothers and two sisters.

"We had absolutely nothing," he once recalled. "One cold water tap in the house, no bath, outside toilet".

Manning left school at 14 to work in a tobacco factory, and then in his father's greengrocers, before becoming a singer with the Oscar Rabin band.

He then took the stand-up routine he had developed at his club on to television and became a household name.

[Lieutenant Columbo]

Sad loss... I saw him at the Embassy Club, and I'm fortunate to have a copy of his biography which is an excellent book.

Like him or hate him, he was unique - there won't ever be another like him.



N.

[Stan Butler]

I'm not sure why we've ended up with two separate Bernard threads, but anyway, I'll mention this here....


I've just heard a little anecdote about Bernard.

A family friend of ours has a brother who's currently in intensive care in Manchester Royal infirmary and has been for a couple of weeks. Our family friend was paying a visit to him last week. On the ward, she spotted this chap laughing and joking with few of his visitors and thought to herself "Doesn't he look like Bernard Manning!"

She never knew it was really him until she heard of his death the other day.
So, Bernard was still making people laugh right til the end.

[Lieutenant Columbo]

Here - thought I'd show this - it's been in various papers and online... Bernard's 'obituary' that he wrote in advance - interesting stuff that I reckon show's he was an intelligent, literate and insightful chap - judge for yourselves.

SHORTLY before he died, my old mate Spike Milligan said he wanted an inscription on his tombstone to read: “I told you I was ill.”

Well, now that I’m gone, I want carved on my gravestone these words, in letters so small that any visitor will have to move right up close to read them: “Get off! You’re standing on my privates.”

Oh, I know there’ll be a few who won’t mourn my passing, like mothers-in-law up and down the country.

I’ll never forget the day I took my own mother-in-law to the Chamber Of Horrors in Madame Tussauds. Suddenly, one of the attendants whispered to me: “Please keep her moving. We’re trying to do a stock take.”

The one bad thing about dying quietly in Manchester is that I cannot fulfil the solemn promise I made to the old battleaxe. “When you die, I’m going to dance on your grave,” she once said. To which I replied: “I hope you do, because I’m going to be buried at sea.”

I don’t think the Commission for Racial Equality will be holding a wake for me, either. Nor will the Lesbian and Gay Rights lot or the feminists. They were always banging on about how I was sexist or anti-gay.

It was their campaigning that kept me off mainstream television for years, while filling the airwaves with a bunch of fifth-rate so-called comics who were about as funny as a dose of bird flu and whose acts had all the humour of a funeral parlour. (Trust me, I’m in one now and there’s not a laugh to be had anywhere).

In their obsession with turning comedy into a branch of Left-wing politics, they forgot that the only point of jokes is to make people laugh. And that was what I was good at, whether I was on the cabaret circuit in Manchester or at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Well, at least I won’t be seeing any of the po-faced, politically-correct brigade where I’m going. I had quite enough of them in my lifetime.

What they never understood was that I was an equal opportunities comedian. Unlike them, with all their little checklists and taboos and easy targets, I never discriminated against anyone or anything. I was quite happy to get a laugh out of any situation. All that mattered to me was whether the gag was funny or not.

“I had a distant German relative who died at Auschwitz. He fell out of one of the watchtowers.” Now that’s humour, precisely because it’s close to the edge, unlike so many of the tired, comfortable, right-on lines about George Bush in which modern comics indulge, massaging the consciences of their middle-class audiences instead of giving them raw entertainment.

Oh, I can see the other obituaries already: “Bernard Manning, racist bigot”, the smug types will say when they hear of my departure.

But that’s not what the great British public, especially in Lancashire and the rest of the North, will say. They knew that I was a funny bloke. That’s why they kept flocking back to my own cabaret club, even when I was barred from the airwaves.

And I was never a racist. That’s just an easy, catch-all term of abuse bandied around by the media elite against anyone who does not follow their agenda. It was just meaningless. When told by some toffee-nosed southerner that I was prejudiced, I used to say: “Have you actually seen my act?” They would then admit they hadn’t.

“Then you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the one who is prejudiced because you are pre-judging me.”

If they’d ever bothered to turn up at one of my shows, they’d have soon discovered I told gags about everyone, including all sorts of politicians and the Royal Family. In fact the Queen once told me with a smile, after a Royal Command Performance, how much she liked my act. If it was good enough for her, it should have been good enough for anyone.

Racist? Rubbish. Did these selfrighteous critics know that Clive Lloyd, the great West Indian cricket captain, asked me to perform as part of his testimonial? Or that I did a fund-raising event for the Lancashire and India wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer and another for the black boxing champ John Conteh?

For goodness sake, I was multi-racial myself, a descendant of Jewish immigrants from Sevastopol. Throughout my life, a sign with the Jewish greeting Shalom hung by the door of my home in North Manchester.

I was born in 1930 in the Ancoats district of the city, and I never lived more than five miles from my birthplace. I always loved Manchester and her people, though that kind of loyalty and sense of belonging is never understood by the metropolitan elite who despise their own country. My dad was a greengrocer and it was a tough upbringing, for the North was in the pit of depression and money and food were short. I was one of six children and was forced to share a bed with all my siblings, some of whom regularly wet the bed. In fact, I learnt to swim before I could walk.

I remember one night, my mother asked me: “Where do you want to sleep?” I replied: “At the shallow end.”

I went to an ordinary local school and left at the age of 14, taking up a job at the Senior Service tobacco factory in Manchester.

From my earliest years, I had a bit of a talent for performing, singing in choirs and at work. Then, when I was 16, my life changed dramatically on being called up to serve in the Manchester Regiment of the British Army.

Even though the war was over, I had to go out to Germany where I was one of the armed guards watching over the Nazi hierarchy locked up in Spandau prison. For a 16-year-old, it was a bizarre experience, standing over the likes of Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer with a Bren gun.

Back home, I was a good enough singer to make it as a professional. It looked like I’d really hit the big time when, in February 1952, I was booked to sing at the London Lyceum theatre with the Oscar Rabin Big Band, with the show to be broadcast on the radio.

But the day I was due to take to the stage King George VI died, so the event was cancelled. I’ll never forgive the King for dying like that. He left me high and dry.

But soon I found that I was even better at telling gags than I was at singing and in the late 1950s I opened my own club in a converted billiard hall, Manchester’s famous Embassy Club.

The venue attracted many of the biggest names in British showbusiness including Matt Monro, and even The Beatles. It also led to my show on ITV called The Comedians, which was so successful that in 1978 I was even asked to play at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Indeed, my act was an equally big success on the other side of the Atlantic, though I had to adapt material for American audiences. So Irish jokes became Polish ones, such as: “This Polish man gets a job in a Californian zoo. One day a workmate says, ‘For 2,000 dollars, would you have sex with the gorilla in that cage?’

“The Pole thinks for a minute and then says, ‘Yeah, all right. But on three conditions. First, that I don’t have to kiss her. Second, that you don’t tell my mates. And third, that you give me a fortnight to get the money together’.”

I supposed the animal rights lobby would get me on that one.

But despite my TV appearances being reduced since the Eighties, I’ve still managed to enjoy a long and fruitful career. I wouldn’t have changed any of it for a moment.

I was glad I managed to make it into my late 70s, but then there was always a very strong survival instinct in my family. I had an uncle who was still having sex at 74. Which was lucky, as he lived at Number 72.

It was also a contented end, which reminds me of another longlived uncle, a bus driver who went peacefully in his sleep — not screaming like his passengers.

And as I look down on the over-paid executives who have made such a mess of television and undermined true comedy, and as I sense the affection from the mass of the British public, I know I am the one having the last laugh.




N.

[Stan Butler]

Bernard's funeral was yesterday...


They clapped and cheered when Bernard Manning's horse-drawn hearse pulled up at his beloved Embassy Club and they applauded when it arrived at a crematorium nearby.

More than 500 well-wishers lined the street outside the club in Manchester yesterday to pay their respects to the controversial comedian, who died last week aged 76 from kidney failure.

At the crematorium, more than 300 mourners filled its chapel with many more outside.

The congregation included Denis Law, the former Manchester United and Manchester City footballer, and fellow comics Tommy Cannon, Bobby Ball, and Frank Carson, who delivered a eulogy.

Carson said he had visited Manning in hospital before he passed away and that he was, characteristically, "still sparing no one".

"He was complaining that they changed his medication to iron tablets and he woke up facing north," Carson said.



Farewell.

[Lieutenant Columbo]

I like the 'iron tablets' comment - I bet Berranrd was having a good laugh wherever he is.



N.

P.S. Started reading his biography again - well worth a read.