Hale and Pace

Coming out in an era when satire was king with the likes of Spitting Image and Ben Elton doing his laborious, but pointed stand-up. Hale & Pace like slasher horror films of the 1980s is a great example of something that was a critical failure, but a commercial success. Much maligned throughout it's incredibly long run; sometimes justifiably, often unfairly.

A common criticism was "two straight men"; an unwritten rule of comedy being a straight man and a clown a la: Morecambe & Wise and Laurel & Hardy. However, there are many successful comedy double acts with two jokers like Dick & Dom, Trevor & Simon and Vic & Bob. The criticisms of being vulgar are true and often the laughs would be based on someone saying a rude word or a vulgar punchline about bodily functions.

However amongst the throwaway sketches there are some sketches that are as good as anything on any other sketch show at the time: "Yorkshire Airlines", "Piss Off Mr. Chips", "Billy & Johnny" - two kid's TV presenters who hate each other. Weirdly, many comedians who criticised H&P pretty much did the same albeit in a slightly more clever way: Harry Enfield, Lee & Herring, Baddiel & Newman. The mantra being nob gags are OK if there is a literary reference in there.

Another thing people forget is just how good the performances of Hale & Pace are. Both having a gift at regional accents. Norman Pace is a surprisingly good singer, while Gareth Hale often bring a pathos to some of the sketches.

It may have gone for the cheap laugh or have been unecessarily violent and rude, but it represents a time when there was entertainment for the pre and post-pub audience. I will pick the worst of Hale & Pace over the best of Naked Attraction, which is the late night fare du jour.

This used to be on TV every year up until the late 90's. Some stuff had me in hysterics but the show grew gradually more stale with each season. Gareth Hale and Norman Pace are two names I remember well, and hopefully more people will get see their work (going from this being the first comment). A "Hale and Pace" best-of would make a great DVD, provided they included their edgier stuff.

Used to love this show and still do. Some hilarious sketches these two did, brilliant.

Along with Smith & Jones, Gareth Hale and Norman Pace made up the other popular British comedy duo to brighten our screens in the nineties. They spent less time on satirising the big issues and more on sexual innuendos and dirty jokes than S & J, with the kind of sniggering enthusiasm that has always been the English approach to toilet humour. Not surprisingly, their regular characters included two imbecilic teenagers with penchant for sadomasochistic pranks, and a pair of so-nice-you-just-wanna-puke children's show hosts who dropped outlandish double entendres with smiling innocence. They also had something of a gangster fetish, best realised in the two Rons, a pair of stone-faced cockney hoods in black tie who had a firm faith in the compatibility of electrodes and testicles. They shamelessly drew and played on the boorish, sexist and national chauvinistic mentality so loved by the British tabloid press and still too often prevalent when dealing with anything or anyone across the Channel, but never really succumbed to endorsing it without that tongue on the cheek. They always were a bit too clever and a bit too juvenile for that.

Interestingly, Hale & Pace also shone in the obligatory musical numbers that closed their shows, producing a few classics such as the Chris Rea parody "The Voice from Hell"; the Scottish rap duo McHammer (probably not a joke anymore); a country and western song about the singer's Dad, who was a Nazi transvestite, "a goose-stepping man of the night"; and one Godley&Creme-style video that took all the sloppy metaphors in the song's lyrics just a bit too literally. Often these are the most perfunctory parts of a sketch show, but they had enough hits to warrant the one all-music special that combined the best of their singing career.

There is of course only so many ways you can crack a joke about the French, premature ejaculation or the oafishness of anyone with a regional accent, and Hale & Pace eventually started to lose their potency. But their best skits still hold up today, smutty but clever, liberatingly funny in their incorrectness and their vigorously exploited stereotypes.

There are some excellent and detailed reviews about this show here which I support. No need to re-write them.

'Hale and Pace'... what would the snowflakes of today make of these two saucy fellows? In the first episode they microwave a cat - later they played tennis with frogs... so probably this wouldn't even be made today!

'Hale and Pace' was tasteless, schoolboy humour for the rest of us... the 'us' being those that did NOT go to Oxford or Cambridge and the 'Footlights Review' for the high brow, pretentious humour which was fashionable at that time.

Part of the longevity of the series (ten years) is that the two men were simply regular, amiable and 'bloke next door' types. They worked very well together although they didn't have the polish of Morcambe & Wise or even (A little bit of) Fry & Laurie.

As time passed, the sketch routines became stale and they seemed to wear out their welcome in a changing world of British 'light entertainment'. But despite that, there are a lot of great skits and sketches that are still brilliant today.

Incredibly, every episode is available to watch for free on YouTube. Who knows how long that will last, so you might want to head on over there and see for yourself what schoolboys used to find funny (and some old folk - ahem!) still find funny, in a changing and increasingly sensitive and joyless world.

Great telly from two wonderfully funny men.