Arthur Atkinson

Arthur Atkinson is a fictional character who appeared regularly on the British TV sketch comedy show "The Fast Show".

Played by Paul Whitehouse, the character of Atkinson was a parody of various 1940s-era British entertainers, most notably Arthur Askey (from whom his name and resemblance was derived) and Max Miller. The black-and-white sketches consisted partly of Atkinson doing his antics on a theatre stage, and partly of historical footage of a 1940s theatre crowd laughing at a comedy performance.

The Arthur Atkinson clips were usually preceded or succeeded with a short note from the fictional modern TV presenter Tommy Cockles (played by Simon Day), who is himself a parody of British TV presenters. It becomes clear as the series progresses that Cockles deeply resents Atkinson.

Atkinson's monologue and jokes were often nonsensical and appear random, as were his addresses to the audience ("I've seen you griddling eggs like there's no tomorrow!"). His two famous catchphrases were "How queer!" and "Where's me washboard?" Despite the nonsense, everything causes the audience to erupt in laughter. Atkinson occasionally presented Northern comic Chester Drawers whose act never went down well; Atkinson had to crash the stage to prevent the audience from walking out.

The only notable exception was when Atkinson asked one gentleman in the audience "Excuse me, sir, is that a moustache on your lip or is it shit?" The utterance of profanity caused disapproval and the audience left the theatre. According to Tommy Cockles, "his fan club was shut down, his contract was torn up by the BBC, he was no longer talk of the town but whisper of the village and he couldn't get a round of golf anywhere. Do I care? No." This parodied the real downturn in fortunes of Tommy Trinder, who was sacked as host of "Sunday Night at the London Palladium" by Lew Grade in 1958 when he refused to stop cracking jokes criticising the show's programme-makers, ATV.

By the third series, Atkinson's career appeared in decline as he appeared in an "unpopular" sitcom, "Blame Arthur" (a parody of British sitcoms of the '50s and early '60s) and a cheesy '70s "Confessions"-style sex comedy called "Confessions of a Door-To-Door Cucumber Salesman." (The real-life Arthur Askey's last film was a soft-core film, "Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse".) He also appeared in a parody of Samuel Beckett's play "Krapp's Last Tape" - many British comics of his vintage appeared in Beckett, notably Max Wall and Charlie Drake. It was revealed in the Fast Show live tour in 1998 that Atkinson died backstage at a show, where he got stuck against a hot radiator (he was trying to retrieve a boiled sweet he had dropped).

Trivia

*TV critic Mark Lewisohn dedicated his book "The Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy" to the 'memory' of Arthur Atkinson.