User Reviews

Freddie Starr ( born Frederick Leslie Fowell ) first made it big after appearing regularly on the '70's LWT show 'Who Do You Do?'. His first major television series was the terrible 'Freddie Starr's Variety Madhouse' but it only lasted one series ( after he quit, Russ Abbot replaced him and it became 'Russ Abbot's Saturday Madhouse' ), afterwards he moved on to do a string of stand-up shows and television specials. The best thing he ever did was this hilarious series for Central Television. It had the man performing slapstick comedy sketches, doing impressions, singing and even interviewing celebrities.

Many of the sketches were filmed in sped-up motion, with over-the-top sound effects, corny innuendo, and cheesy music, strongly reminiscent of 'The Benny Hill Show', which this show was intended as a homage to given that Hill died the year before this went out. In fact, two of Benny's regular supporting actors, Derek Deadman and Bod Todd, both appeared here joining in the fun with Freddie.

One of my favourite sketches featured Starr as an accident prone man in a tearoom who virtually destroyed everything he touched. Another particularly brilliant sketch saw Starr impersonating the brilliant ( and sadly deceased ) Adam Faith, only for the man himself to walk on stage and angrily confront him. Adam was not the only celebrity to be sent up by Freddie though, Mick Jagger and Elvis Presley also got similar treatment.

Also hilarious was Starr's unique rendition of Don McLean's 'Vincent'. Though my favourite sketch saw Freddie enrolling in 'The Starr Olympics' who whenever performing an activity resulted in either himself or another athlete becoming seriously injured.

A number of famous names were happy to come along and be with Freddie, among them were Frank Bruno, Gloria Hunniford, Les Dennis, Graham Crowden, Norman Collier, Bella Emberg and Windsor Davies. Freddie wrote the sketches in collaboration with the show's producer, the late Dennis Kirkland. Each edition closed with Freddie sporting a cheeky grin to the camera. It certainly was not an 'unfortunate enterprise'! That description best fits his 1974 show 'Ready Freddie Starr'.

After the show's conclusion, Freddie next regular series ( which turned out to be his last ) came in 1996 - the much less funnier ( and probably best forgotten ) 'The Freddie Starr Show'.

Two years after Benny Hill's death, Freddie Starr teamed up with producer Dennis Kirkland to make his terrible series, a poor imitation of Hill's Thames shows, replete with second bananas Derek Deadman and Bob Todd ( the latter would pass away soon afterwards, cementing this unfortunate enterprise as his final work. Starr later observed: "I felt the concept was all wrong!". Sadly, viewers felt that way too. Some of the items featuring guest stars of the calibre of Adam Faith and Frank Bruno were amusing, however. But the poorer sketches outweighed the good ones. Much better was 'The Freddie Starr Experience' from 1978 which, to date, is commercially unavailable.