Dispatches from a frantic planet: the video essays of Stuart Millard
Regular readers may have sussed that I live in England. What’s possibly unclear is that, growing up, life was dull. While contemporaries downed stolen bottles of WKD while fingering each other in the local graveyard, I stayed home, with the family, watching telly. I wasn’t alone, of course - pre-internet, pre-adulthood, pre-In Spite Magazine, the gogglebox was entertainment at its most accessible. Unless you count books.
What I couldn’t appreciate, though, was how fucking weird a lot of it was. Perhaps you don’t know what I mean. “I watched loads in the 90’s, it seemed okay to me.” Really? What about interviews with “professional gnomes”? Blindfolded men shaving each other? Quiz shows fronted by garbage cans? Talking cardboard boxes? A troupe of Indiana Joneses dancing in front of Princess Anne? Yeah, it was odd. Now you know this, you can begin to question it. How did this happen? What were they thinking? Who was to blame?
Enter Stuart Millard.
“World’s Deadliest Man.” Photo from his Amazon author profile.
Since lockdown, Millard has taken to YouTube, backed by loyal Patreons (myself included), to push Fair Use policies to their limit in dissecting the remnants of bygone telly. Context is provided; tangents are followed; nothing is too obscure or ghastly. It’s also one of the funniest channels on YouTube, in no small part thanks to Millard’s commentaries, filled with equal parts insight and gags. The closest American equivalent is possibly The Soup. In the UK, fans of TV Offal, Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, and In Bed with MeDinner should enjoy this, as will anyone raised on the strange, grubby, muted version of 80’s/90’s Britain found on the magic rectangle.
Michael Barrymore, “ah-so”-ing his way into the nation’s hearts. All images taken from Stuart Millard’s YouTube channel.
Recurring themes (read: ongoing obsessions) span the videos. Michael Barrymore, once Britain’s most famous man, now a pariah following an unresolved and deeply suspicious death in his private pool, is profiled across multiple clips, notably a review of his best-of VHS. Noel Edmunds, the man who gave the world Mr Blobby, crops up time and again, as do the vanguard of late-era British variety - Keith Harris, Cannon and Ball, Timmy Mallett, Paul Daniels (and son), Bernie Clifton…
Ongoing series focus on the Royal Variety Performance, an annual cabaret staged for the entertainment of whichever member of the Windsor family is free that day; Saturday morning children’s programmes, including an appearance from late outsider legend Frank Sidebottom; and detritus of the home video market (VHS:WTF) - material too niche or amateurish for broadcast, punted onto tape for cash. Want a stand-up special by Coronation Street’s Liz Dawn? An hour of bromance between footballer, crisp salesman and culture warrior Gary Lineker, and bald snooker player Willie Thorne? Frank Stallone's mum and a harem of women pretending to box? In 1992, these could have been yours for £11.99. Now, they are free, in necessarily truncated form.
In spite of a following nowhere near as large as he deserves, Millard has dozens of free videos on YouTube, along with an extensive blog delving further down the cultural rabbit hole. For a bizarro trip down memory lane, you can spend days perusing the archives. But I want to pull out one piece for your immediate attention. Not the video on The Royal Knockout Tournament, in which a since-convicted paedophile pits teams of minor royals and A-list celebrities against each other in a series of pratfall-based slapstick games. Nor the video on the finale of Byker Grove, a kitchen sink children’s drama that ended with 25 minutes of postmodern surrealism evoking yet pre-empting David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE. It’s not even the Mr Blobby deep dive, a study of the chaotic cryptid that 1000 words couldn’t even begin to explain to an American audience. A Halloween special featuring Charles Hawtrey as Dracula? Well, that one is tempting.
No reader. For you, I share a video truly capturing a moment in time - the end of British variety, a nation at war, filled with unabashed pride in country. Yet it also offers a portent of things to come - a post-Brexit nation over a decade into Conservative rule, firmly engaged in a civil culture war, championing a perverted form of patriotism inspiring unapologetic prejudice and nostalgia for a time when “Britain was truly great.”
I am referring to Gulf Aid.
“4 and a half years I’ve been dissecting rotten old telly for Patreon, and I thought I’d seen it all. But Gulf Aid…”
Gulf Aid was a variety show, performed live and released on video, intended to raise money (maybe) and morale for British troops in Afghanistan (the first time round), created by Murdoch-owned The Sun newspaper, best known for printing boobs on page 3 and lies about the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy that see the rag exiled from Liverpool to this very day. Headliner is comedian and gammon king Jim Davidson - sexist, racist, homophobic, latterly known for whinging about wokeness like Bill Maher without the weed, but somehow a prime-time 90’s telly host (imagine if Dice hosted The Price Is Right and Wheel Of Fortune - there you go). Hosted by “Mad” Mark Peters (“Arguably the UK’s number one presenter’s”), its supporting cast includes everyone from Brotherhood Of Man; Are You Being Served star John Inman; 3 men with balloons covering their knobs; magician Stacey Lee (despite featuring “none of your David Blaine holding in a piss for ten days here,” she only has 6 Twitter followers); David Copperfield (not that one); a terrified Mike Yarwood; a trio of rapping impressionists with versions of Frank Bruno and Stevie Wonder that are practically hate crimes; a fake Dame Edna Everage and a real Dame Vera Lynn. It’s obviously hateful but, with Millard’s assistance, it will help you understand this country like never before. Watch and weep. Maybe with headphones on, if kids are present.
