This is Rowley Birkin, QC - one of England's great drunks and a masterly (if slurred and rambling) raconteur.He is, of course, a character from the great '90s BBC2 skit series 'The Fast Show', created and portrayed by the genius comedian, Paul Whitehouse (check out the Wikipedia link for more information).
There isn't, alas, that much of him on YouTube as yet. I really wanted to find that terribly poignant one where he talks about losing the love of his life - but no luck. Perhaps it's just as well: as with most of the 'Fast Show' characters, the impact of these occasional revelations of human detail was largely dependent on the cumulative effect of having got to know and love the characters so well through multiple slight variations of the same formulaic sketch.
This one's a pretty good illustration of the man's unique storytelling style. My New Year gift to my readers.
1 comment:
The one you want is: Series 2, No.8
"...and I was...I mean, it happened to a terribly young man, I'm sure...
she was a really beautiful woman...and I...she had a very long neck...
she had...very intelligent...really piercing eyes...of course, erm, war came
along...everything was over between us...I remember that I was...a very
beautiful song, "la-la-la"...I was in absolute floods of tears...it was really
very cold, and she was very thin...and I held her in my arms...
[long pause]
I'm afraid I was very drunk.
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