Taking A Leap of Faith
The Reality Is Racist Policies Were Even Prevalent In Comedy. For Instance One of The Biggest Stars of In The 70s Was Jim Davidson, Who Is Now In His Sixties. He Was Booked To Perform At The Palladium At Number of Times And Would Pack It Out. He Had His Own TV Shows. Hosted Primetime Entertainment Shows And Was Considered Hilarious. So The Gatekeepers Simply Kept Bookin’ More of The Same.
He Still Has A Followin’. One of His Primetime TV Jokes Told The Tale of A Man In A Pub Who Had A Monkey On Each Shoulder. A Fellow Customer Gives Each of The Monkeys Five Pounds. Why Did You Do That A Fellow Customer Asks? “Because You Can’t Take It Out On The Kids” Came The Seemingly Hysterical Punchline. Controversial And Racist As That Joke Is, We Shared It Because Many People (Including Jim) Say He Is Not Racist.
To Be Fair, There Are Also A Small Number of Black Comedians Who Also Say He Is Not Racist And Have Worked And Continue To Work With Him. Perhaps Picking’s Were Slim (No Pun Intended).
But The World’s Moved On. We Can Do Better. Slim Has Done The Hard Yards. As Have His Relevant Modern Day Comedy Contemporaries. Black People Have Always Had Allies. Finally A Modern Day Talent Management Company Got Fed Up Seein The Same Old Comedy Faces And Decided Ten Years Ago That Comedy Needed A Reboot. A Decade Later They Have Taken Slim Under Their Wing After Virtually Three Decades of Him Tryin’ & Tryin’ On The Comedy Scene. Hope Springs Eternal!
Previous Black Actors, Comedians And Phesbians Have Had To Go Abroad Because UK Gamekeepers Overlooked Their Talent And Under Estimated Their Ability And Then Discriminated Against Them Disproportinately. These Include David Harewood @davidharewood, Eamonn Walker (On Linkedin) And Gina Yashere @ginayashere To Name But A Few.
Photograph: British Actor Eamon Walker (In American Drama ‘Chicago Fire @nbconechicago’; British Actor David Harewood (In American Drama Homelands) @davidharewood And British Comedian Gina Yashere (In American Comedy ‘Bob & Abishola’) @ginayashere bobheartsabishola
But Knowin’ Their Worth And Potential To Be Even Greater They Had The Courage To Leave The UK To Fight Against Their Industry’s Refusual To Recognise Them. Respectively They Fared Well Elsewhere. Harwood In Homelands. Walker In Chicago Fire And Yashere With ‘Bob Loves Abishola’ Which She Wrote. It Stars Billy Gardell of Mike & Molly Fame (The Smash Hit Comedy Created By Mark Roberts With Whom Gina Worked). America Has A Tendacy To Be Significantly Ahead of Us Here In The UK. T’was Ever Thus. And Gina Actually Excelled Herself As Bob Loves Abishola Features Both An African Actress Playin’ The Female Title Role And An African Female Writer, In The Form of Folake Olowofoyeku And Miss Yashere Herself Respectively.
Indeed Slim Himself Had Planned To Go To America Just Before Covid Broke Out, But At The 11th Hour He Got A Fresh Break From His Now New Management Team (To Whom He Had Applied Years Ago). They Were Keen To Develop A Different Kind of Comedy And Havin’ Started Out Ten Years Ago And Worked With The Likes of Mo Gilligan, They Eventually Worked Their Way Round To Developin’ Slim Too.
They Put Their Faith In Him And Started To Develop Him To A New Level Fully Aware of His Hard Work And Hammersmith Apollo Triumphs Over The Years. They Took Him To The Next Level of Management And That Took Him To The London Palladium.
It Definitely Seems In This Case That “Team Work Makes The Dream Work!”
TheOrator.Press ~ A New, Monthly, Online, Independent Magazine 