| Name | Kenny Everett |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Maurice James Christopher Cole |
| Birth date | December 25, 1944 |
| Birth place | Seaforth, MerseysideEngland |
| Death date | April 04, 1995 |
| Death place | London, England |
| Medium | Radio, television |
| Nationality | British |
| Active | 1962–1995 |
| Genre | Character comedy, surreal comedy, sketch |
| Influences | Spike Milligan, Joe Meek, Delia Derbyshire, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Peter Cook, Vivian Stanshall, Frank Zappa |
| Influenced | Chris Moyles, Chris Tarrant |
| Spouse | Lee 'Lady Lee' Middleton |
| Notable work | The Kenny Everett Television Show |
| Website | http://www.kennyeverett.co.uk/ |
Kenny Everett (25 December 1944 – 4 April 1995) was an English comedian, radio DJ and television entertainer. Born Maurice James Christopher Cole, Everett is best known for his career as a radio DJ and for the Kenny Everett television shows.
He attended a junior seminary at Stillington near York with an Italian missionary order, the Verona Fathers.
After schooling he worked in a bakery and in the advertising department of The Journal of Commerce and Shipping Telegraph.
Having revealed a natural comic and broadcasting talent, he began a career in entertainment. He adopted his stage name from film-star Edward Everett Horton, a childhood hero.
He teamed up with Dave Cash for the Kenny & Cash Show, one of the most popular pirate radio programmes. His offbeat style and likable personality quickly gained him attention, but in 1965 he was fired after some outspoken remarks about religion on air. Like most of the pirate stations, Radio London carried sponsored American evangelical shows and Everett's disparaging remarks about The World Tomorrow caused its producers to threaten to withdraw their lucrative contract with the station.
Everett returned six months later, however, before being given his own show by Radio Luxembourg in 1966. Within a year, he had joined the BBC's new pop music station BBC Radio 1 after previewing The Beatles' new album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and interviewing the band. Everett had struck up a friendship with The Beatles and accompanied them on their 1966 tour of the United States, sending back daily reports for Radio London. He also produced their 1968 and 1969 Christmas records.
At Radio 1 Everett continued to develop his own unique presentation style, featuring zany voices, surreal characters, multi-tracked jingles and trailers, all of his own creation and compilation. It was ground-breaking radio material that has since been much copied.
Everett had a great love of sound recording equipment, in particular using reel-to-reel tape recorders, often adding sound-on-sound to his recordings and stereo/multi-track recordings of his pseudo-singing voice. These were broadcast on air regularly and he often created his own radio jingles. This skill was also transferred in some part to TV in his later career.
Everett's shows on BBC Radio 1 included Midday Spin, and in 1968 he took over a Saturday show from 10 am to 12 noon.
In 1970, Everett again found himself fired, this time after suggesting on air that Mary Peyton, the British Transport Minister's wife, had bribed her driving test examiner. The remark was a spontaneous quip, following a news item describing how Peyton had finally passed after many attempts.
Following an interview on the BBC Radio Solent children's show Albert's Gang, Everett submitted weekly shows to the station that he had pre-recorded at home. This afforded the BBC the opportunity to vet the shows before broadcast. Everett was then heard on various BBC local radio stations before being reinstated at Radio 1 in 1972. Here he recorded a weekly show from his home in Wales and it went out on a Sunday afternoon.
During this time, legislation had been passed allowing the licensing of commercial radio stations in the UK. One of the first, Capital Radio, began broadcasting to London and the Home Counties in 1973. Everett joined the station and was given his own show, where he further developed his distinctive ideas. From 1973 to 1974 he presented the station's breakfast show, initially alongside Dave Cash, a friend and colleague from Radio London days, and later as the sole presenter.
Using reel-to-reel tape recorders and mixing equipment, Everett created many comedy characters on The Breakfast Show with Dave Cash on Capital, one of which was called 'Yasher the Smasher' referring to a character who smashed pianos. This was indicative of how many people went through a destructive period smashing traditional wooden pianos. The idea was first started with Pete Townshend from The Who encouraging the group to destroy their equipment on stage.
In 1974 he moved to a less high-pressure timeslot at Capital. Here he further developed his style and his cult following, and featured both what he thought the best in music (Queen, Chris Rainbow) and the worst, which led to the popular Kenny Everett's World's Worst Record Show programmes, later released as an album, with slightly different tracks. Several shows featured the "Bottom 30": compilations (from listeners' votes) of the world's worst records during this period, including some tracks by well-known personalities not known for their singing, notably William Shatner (Captain Kirk of Star Trek) with his version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "The Shifting Whispering Sands" by Eamonn Andrews.
In 1975 Everett played a pivotal role in getting Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" released as a single. He also presented a pre-recorded programme on Saturday lunch-time for Radio Victory in Portsmouth, later providing Captain Kremmen to the station for transmission in the Dave Christian's late show.
In May 1985, he was called in to replace Graeme Garden (who was ill) for one episode of the Radio 4 game show, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
He returned to Capital Radio, presenting the same slot as he had on Radio 2. After Capital split its frequencies in 1988 he was heard on Capital Gold, with a line-up that included people like Tony Blackburn and David Hamilton. Everett presented the afternoon show and then moved to the mid-morning show. He left in 1994 when his health deteriorated to the point that he was unable to continue.
In 1973, Everett provided the voice of the cat 'Charley' in the Charley Says animated series of public information films.
(It is not currently clear to which of these efforts Everett was referring when, years later, he spoke dismissively of some early TV work: "We just used to turn up at the studio and try to be wacky". In interviews, co-presenter Greer spoke of him as "a televisual genius".)
Everett was the announcer on the original version of ATV's "big box game" Celebrity Squares which ran on ITV from 1975 to 1979. Also in 1975, Everett featured in an uncredited cameo in an episode of The Goodies, entitled The Goodies Rule – O.K.?, in which he appeared as a political candidate in a (fictional) General Election.
Various pop and TV stars made cameo appearances on the show, including Rod Stewart, Billy Connolly, Kate Bush, Cliff Richard, Freddie Mercury, Terry Wogan and Suzi Quatro (see also "Friends" section below) and classical musicians such as Julian Lloyd Webber.
Everett would often ad lib and deviate from the script; his bloopers were sometimes left in the final cut and on several occasions he pulled the camera around the studio revealing the crew not quite sure what was going to happen next. Quite often the crew were victims of his humour – on one occasion Everett encouraged the crew to sing "Happy Birthday" to a cameraman, presenting to him a cake which he duly pushed in the cameraman's face.
There were also the stories of Captain Kremmen, a science fiction hero voiced by Everett and originally developed for his Capital Radio shows, who travelled the galaxy battling fictional alien menaces, along with his assistant Dr Gitfinger and his voluptuous sidekick Carla. In the first three series these segments were animations created by the Cosgrove-Hall partnership (responsible for the successful children's cartoon series Dangermouse, among many others). In the fourth series (Video Cassette) Kremmen was featured as live action, with Anna Dawson playing Carla; the segments were comedy shorts, rather than the earlier stories.
Other characters included: aging rock-and-roller Sid Snot, unsuccessfully flipping cigarettes into his mouth – at one point Everett managed to catch one in his mouth, to the amusement of the studio crew; Marcel Wave, a lecherous Frenchman played by Everett wearing an absurdly false latex chin; and Angry of Mayfair, an upper middle-class City gent complaining of the risqué content of the show, banging the camera's lens hood with his umbrella, and then storming off, turning his back to us, only then to be revealed as wearing women's underwear in lieu of the entire back half of his suit.
He also created the never-seen character of 'Lord Thames', supposedly the owner of Thames Television (the company was actually owned by two conglomerates). The character was often the butt of Everett's rants and was said to symbolise his contempt for senior management at the company, claiming they lived behind an ancient, cobweb-covered door marked as the "Office Of Saying 'No'". Thames never disciplined him for these comments, unlike prior employers such as the BBC.
Everett's interest in (then primitive) video processing technology and electronic effects showed itself in such features as the appearances of a bobbing 'alien' entirely composed of a distorted video image of his own head ("Hello. I'm Spod, from Planet Thfnnnn. And this is all I do... Pathetic, isn't it?").
The series ran for four seasons on ITV, and was a big ratings hit. The last episode ended on a rather sour note (after Everett had locked horns with Thames management over his show and its scheduling) with Everett giving a restrained farewell speech as the set and scenery was being stripped down by the crew. The final shot before the closing credits was Everett himself being picked up and placed inside an oversized garbage can.
In Australia, complaints resulted in ongoing censorship of the program, especially the Hot Gossip segments due to the provocative, skimpy and highly revealing costumes and leotards worn by the dancers.
Thames Television claimed copyright on Everett's characters, and tried to prevent their use by the BBC. Whilst this action failed, it led to the creation of new characters such as Gizzard Puke (intended to replace Sid Snot), and the spooneristically named Cupid Stunt, an American B-movie actress with pneumatic breasts, and played with no attempt to disguise Everett's beard, who told a cardboard cutout of Michael Parkinson lurid tales of life on set with Burt Reynolds and other male stars of the era. Her original name, Mary Hinge, was vetoed by the Corporation as too obvious, and announcers were encouraged to refer to her as Cupid to prevent mispronunciation. Inept TV handyman Reg Prescott became another firm viewers' favourite, as each week he managed graphically and bloodily to injure himself with tools whilst attempting to demonstrate DIY tips.
Brazilian-born Cleo Rocos co-starred in the BBC series. She often appeared in nothing more than frilly underwear and high heels, and her figure was used to great comic effect as a focus for drooling, lascivious men.
Everett was told in 1989 that he had HIV, and he went public with his illness in 1993. He died from an AIDS-related illness, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, on 4 April 1995, aged 50.
Friends and colleagues revealed what it was like to know and work with the man they affectionately dubbed "Cuddly Ken". Additionally, contemporary celebrities such as Chris Moyles and Chris Tarrant talked about their love for the outrageous entertainer, and discussed the ways in which Everett had influenced them and their work. It also featured archive footage.
In March 2010 the BBC confirmed it was working on a 90-minute TV biopic called Number One in Heaven to be written by Tim Whitnall and focussing on Everett's unhappiness at secondary school.
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;Television
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Category:1944 births Category:1995 deaths Seaforth Category:British radio people Category:British television sketch shows Category:English comedians Category:English radio DJs Category:English radio personalities Category:Pirate radio personalities Category:English television presenters Category:LGBT comedians Category:LGBT people from England Category:LGBT radio personalities Category:LGBT television personalities Category:Offshore radio broadcasters Category:Gay actors Category:AIDS-related deaths in England Category:Comedians from Liverpool Category:Radio presenters from Liverpool Category:Copywriters
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