Sketch of Musical Comedy Duo Hinge and Bracket

The two ladies, Dr. Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket, were a drag act, the comic creations of George Logan and Patrick Fyffe. The Wikipedia page on them notes that they started off in the gay clubs before entering the mainstream, and that they differed from other drag acts as the comedy was based far more on character. The section on this on the Wikipedia entry runs

‘Patrick Fyffe and George Logan devised the Hinge and Bracket act after they met performing at the Escort Club in Pimlico, London. Fyffe had already gained experience performing in his cabaret drag act as a glamorous soprano named Perri St Claire, and his character had appeared in small parts on television shows such as Z Cars and Doctor in the House, as well as the 1972 film version of Steptoe and Son.

Fyffe and Logan began to work on a comedy act featuring Fyffe as a retired opera singer who still thinks she can sing, with Logan as her male accompanist. The idea developed into a dual drag act featuring a pair of eccentric old ladies. Their act was distinct from drag queens in that their portrayal was more realistic than exaggerated caricature, allowing them to gain more mainstream appeal beyond gay clubs. Some fans were convinced by their performance and were unaware that the elderly ladies were being acted by two young men, although their act was frequently decorated with double extenders. Hinge and Bracket were portrayed as a pair of elderly spinsters who had spent their lives performing classical music. They frequently indulged in reminiscences of their heyday singing in opera and performing with Ivor Novello and Noël Coward. Their characters evoked a genteel English inter-war world and their stage act was frequently interspersed with performances of popular songs (often Novello or Coward) and light opera numbers, especially pieces by Gilbert and Sullivan. Both were singers, and Dr Hinge usually provided the accompaniment seated at the piano.^[2] Writer Gyles Brandreth described Hinge and Bracket as “a drag act with a difference. They offered character and comedy instead of glamour and sex appeal.”^[5]

The ladies shared a house (known as The Old Manse or Utopia Ltd) in the fictional village of Stackton Tressel in Suffolk; the name was adapted from Fyffe’s Staffordshire birthplace of Acton Trussell. They employed the services of an eccentric housekeeper, Maud, played in the radio series by English character actress Daphne Heard.’

Apparently, they got their broadcasting breakthrough in 1976 when they appeared on The Good Old Days, following which they had their own series on Radio 4, The Enchanting World of Hinge and Bracket which ran from 1977 to 1979. This was followed three years later by a BBC 2 series, Dear Ladies, which ran from 1982 to 1984. They also had another series on Radio 2, The Random Jottings of Hinge and Bracket, from 1982 to 1989. This was followed by another series, At Home with Hinge and Bracket, in 1990. Wikipedia also notes that they also appeared at the Royal Opera House in a production of the Die Fliedermaus, a West End production of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, and Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage, as well as numerous appearances in pantomime and Royal Variety Performances. They also released a record, Hinge and Bracket at Abbey Road, with a cover spoofing the Beatles album. Logan stopped performing as his character after death of Fyffe from cancer in 2002 at the age of 60, but brought her out once more for a performance of the comic opera, The Dowager’s Oyster in 2016.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinge_and_Bracket

I can just about remember them from my childhood in the 1970s but wanted to write about them as they show how TV drag shows have changed between then and now. Hinge and Bracket and Danny La Rue were mainstream evening entertainment. I got the impression that whatever the origin of drag in gay culture, on TV at least it was strongly influenced by Music Hall. There was a joke about La Rue that ‘he wasn’t born, they just found him on Mother’s Kelly’s Doorstep’, referring to one of the old Music Hall songs. And it wasn’t just gay men who performed in drag. Many straight comedians did, including Les Dawson and Ronnies Corbett and Barker. The two were also part of a trend of musical comedy that includes people like Victor Borge, Richard Stillgoe, Kit and the Widow, and Victoria Wood. They’ve been succeeded by the Australian Tim Minchin, while drag returned to television with Paul O’Grady’s creation, Lily Savage and RuPaul’s Drag Race. Minchin’s far edgier than Hinge and Bracket, who were a gentle, genteel form of comedy, while the Drag Race is much more sexualised. This is in line with general changes in sensibility, in which comedy has become more satirical and much more savage and bitter. There’s also an explicit connection to sexual politics through the radical trans movement and the influence of Queer Theory. This would have been extremely difficult in previous decades when homosexuality was illegal, and gays were still extremely unpopular following decriminalisation. But I’ve got considerable nostalgia for the earlier TV drag shows, when it was just about comedy and entertainment. Perhaps this type of distinctly British drag will return in time.

Tories’ Comments about Universal Credit and Self-Employed Show They Don’t Care About Small Businesses

Mike this evening put up a post about how the Tories are trying to justify the removal of benefits to the self-employed under Universal Credits by claiming that it ‘incentivises’ them. Mike makes the point that it clearly shows the cruelty behind the Tories’ policies. They’re all about cuts and making things harder, not about rewards. It’s always, but always the stick, not the carrot.

I’d have thought that to be self-employed, you have to be very well self-motivated anyway. I’ve heard from my father amongst others that to run your own business, you have to get up early and go to bed late. And about half of all small businesses fold within the first two years.

The self-employed and small businessman have it bad enough already, without the Tories making worse. And I think they should seriously consider voting Labour.

Oh, I’ve met enough small businesspeople, who say that they won’t vote Labour, because of the old canard that ‘Labour wants to nationalise everything’. That hasn’t been true since the rise of the Social Democratic consensus in the Labour party. As articulated by Anthony Crossland, this said that you didn’t need nationalisation or worker’s control, provided there was social mobility, a progressive income tax and strong trade unions. All of which have been destroyed under the onslaught of Thatcherism.

But even before then, socialist thinkers like G.D.H. Cole were arguing that Labour should also seek to protect small businesses as part of their campaign to defend and advance the cause of the working class. Cole was one of the most prolific of Socialist writers, and was one of the leaders of Guild Socialism, the British version of Anarcho-Syndicalism. Even after that collapsed, after the failure of the General Strike, he still beleived that workers’ should have a share in the management of the companies in which they worked. So definitely not a sell out to capital, then.

I am also well aware that many small businessmen are resentful of workers gaining wage rises and further employment rights. They argue that they can’t give themselves pay rises, because of the economics of their businesses, before complaining about how much it would all cost them. Well, perhaps. But they can decide how much they charge, and what they intend to pay themselves. And they control their business, not the people below them. I’m sure it’s true that some white collar workers are better paid than the self-employed, but that’s no excuse for not paying your employees better wages.

But a wider point needs to be made here: the Tories don’t support Britain’s Arkwrights, the s-s-small businessmen, who were personified by the heroes of Open All Hours, as portrayed by Ronnie Barker and David Jason.

And yes, I know about all the rubbish about how Thatcher was a grocer’s daughter, who slept above the shop when she was a child. But Thatcher, and her successors, was solidly for the rich against the poor, and big business against the small trader. That’s why they’ve given immense tax cuts to the very rich, and put the tax burden on the poorer layers of society. It’s why, despite repeated scandals, they will never willingly pass legislation to force big businessmen to pay their smaller suppliers promptly and on time.

And it’s why they will always back the big supermarkets, no matter how exploitative and destructive they are. George Monbiot in his Captive State has chapters attacking them. Not only are they parasitical, in that they pay their workers rubbish wages, so that they need to draw benefits, benefits that the Tories really don’t want to pay, they also destroy the small shops in the areas they move into. And they screw their suppliers with highly exploitative contracts.

In an ideal world, the big supermarket chains would be nationalised or broken up as monopolies.

The small businessperson needs to be protected. They, not the big supermarkets, create employment and healthy, living communities. They should be protected, just like the working and lower middle classes, which includes them, should.

And the only party I see willing to do that is the Labour party. Remember when Ed Balls said that Labour ‘wanted to grow your businesses’ to the small traders about this country? It was sincere. I think it was wrong on its own, as it shows how Labour under Blair had abandoned the working class, and was concentrating on hoovering up middle class votes. But ‘Red’ Ed did have a point. It should’t be a case of either the working class, or small businesses, but both the working class and small businesspeople.

Because the small businessman too deserves protection from exploitation. Which they will never get from the likes of Thatcher, Dave Cameron and May.