Denise Scott's comedy favourites

Everybody Loves Raymond

It was thanks to this sitcom that we first realised my mother had Alzheimer’s. She’d always raved about the show but then she started to rave and rave and rave telling us how ‘funny and clever ‘ it was over and over and over again.

I admit I took offence at my mother’s love of Raymond because she hated my comedy. (I realise hate’s a strong word but that was the exact one she used after seeing me do a comedy spot on Australian TV),

Consequently I never saw the show until just after my mother died in 2011. Repeats started running on a local network, and for want of something better, I began to watch. Well blow me down if my mother wasn’t right; it’s funny and clever and more to the point, it reminds me of mum, so I now love it!

Comedy Is Still Not Pretty

Let me say straight up that normally I waould rather eat my own poo than watch myself on screen but this show was special. I wrote it with my Australian comedy colleagues, Judith Lucy and the late great Lynda Gibson for the 2003 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. During our show preparation Lynda’s ovarian cancer made a comeback. The prognosis was not good. We discussed cancelling but Lynda wouldn’t hear of it.

There was also one other problem, apart from Lynda’s illness, and that was the fact our show wasn’t funny! And so we decided to do it wearing flesh coloured , sleeveless, legless leotards, with nipples, pubic hair and bum crack drawn on with Texta pen, their beauty was definitely in their simplicity.

Known as ‘nude suits’, we believed/hoped/prayed that they’d distract the audience from realising our jokes were quite so appalling. What can I say? We won The Age newspaper critics award for Best Comedy Show and also won a theatre gong for ‘most innovative’ cabaret, which was a shock . We didn’t even know it was a cabaret.

Some Like It Hot, 1959

Marilyn Monroe playing ukulele in an all girl big band – that in itself is enough to make a great comedy. But add Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis in magnificent drag, pretending to be female muso’s in the band, and throw in a few ‘mob’ murders, some slapstick chases featuring gangsters, machine guns and men in high heels, plus love gone wrong trysts and love gone right trysts culminating in Marilyn and Tony (still in drag) having a hot passionate kiss on a boat and hells bells you ain’t just got comedy, you’ve got a sexy, poignant big fat brilliant laugh fest from beginning to end!

The Women, 1939

The Women is one of my all time fave funny films. It was made in 1939 and stars Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Hedda Hopper ; directed by George Cukor. I think what’s important to note is that there is not ONE MALE IN THE ENTIRE FILM! I repeat, not ONE MALE IN THE ENTIRE FILM! Just in case you missed my point, there is not ONE MALE IN THE ENTIRE FILM! Even the pet dog in The Women is a bitch!

It’s got the snappiest dialogue, the best ever clothes, glorious plot line and the funniest slapsick cat fight, with the women downright mauling another, that I’ve ever seen.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish to imply that, as a female comic, I’m absolutely sick to death of male dominance or anything - all I’m saying is that I found it refreshing to see a comedy that didn’t star Adam Sandler, Jack Black or Eddie Murphy.

Graham Kennedy

The late great Australian King of Comedy was truly amazing. In 1957, at 23 years of age, he began hosting a live tonight show called In Melbourne Tonight, five nights a week!

Graham had a golden labrador called Rover who featured on the show. One infamous night Graham did a live commercial for Pal dog food . When Rover showed no interest whatsoever in the food, Graham started eating it himself. Now that’s something I could watch over and over again.

In the early 70’s he also infamously impersonated a crow, calling, “Faaaark, faaaaark, faaaaark”, on live TV. The fallout was he was banned from doing live television and forced to do prerecords forever more.

Kath and Kim

An Australian sitcom from two great Aussie comedians, Jane Turner and Gina Riley. What a show! It portrays Australia’s cashed up bogan world with such love, affection and enormous humour. It was so good, America wanted it! Not the Australian version of course because why would Americans be interested in something Australian? They don’t even know we’re a country; well they do, but they think we’re Austria.

Suffice to say the show didn’t translate into American and that makes me love it all the more. One Aussie episode even had Kylie Minogue starring in it! That’s right, our very own, little, teeny tiny Kylie! The very same Kylie who starred alongside Cliff Richard, Elton John, and Tom Jones in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert that will be forever remembered as the show Prince Phillip missed because of a bladder infection.

As for Kath and Kim, as they themselves would say, the show is ‘Noice…a bit different…unusual.’

Published: 13 Aug 2012