Jim Henson once got angry when a magazine published a photograph of Kermit the Frog on a coat-hanger in a props cupboard because he didn't want the illusion of reality to be ruined for the children who loved him and his friends. Harry Corbett, according to legend, once turned the car round on the way to a family holiday and drove all the way back home because he had forgotten to bring Sooty along, and Keith Harris - well, he was something different altogether. I recall a sequence on The Farm where Harris was alone in the bedroom putting Orville to bed as if he was attending to a child. They were talking to each other, or rather Keith was holding a conversation and playing both parts; was he deliberately playing for the camera? After all, even as an adult I would rather see a puppet being lovingly put to bed rather than dumped in a suitcase. If he wasn't playing to the camera then he was opening himself up to those of us who loved his shows as children as one rather fucked up individual whose puppet was possibly an extension of his split personality. When Rod Hull died a lot was made of the fact that he had grown to resent Emu for holding back his ambition to be a comedian in his own right, or to be taken seriously as an author. Of all the tragic 'behind the smiles' show business stories, puppeteers seem to be on another level.
The news broke today that Keith Harris had died of cancer and much like when Rik Mayall died, the social media posts were all about love and nostalgia for our childhoods. Of course there were the jokes about how Orville is speechless with shock but I don't think they were done out of malice, although it was a little poor to be doing jokes about fisting. I'm sure some of us checked that he didn't actually die five years ago and an online obituary had inexplicably gone viral (the Tony Hart test as it will no doubt become known), and sadly I was relieved that the Reaper had taken him away rather than Operation Yewtree, even paying tribute to a recently deceased celebrity from childhood is riddled with the danger that the eulogising will blow up once the revelations come in (the Jimmy Savile rule as it will no doubt become known). Joking aside, I was genuinely saddened by the news as I remembered watching him on Crackerjack and his own shows. His story of a tough time at school because of his undiagnosed dyslexia and battles with booze and depression aren't unfamiliar of course but when you analyse it, the sadder his tale becomes.
Today I listened to 'Orville's Song' (the correct title of what people seem to think is 'I Wish I Could Fly') for the first time with grown up ears and I was almost in tears by the end of it. It has to be one of the saddest songs ever; when you're a child it is just a duck singing about how he can't fly yet in hindsight this is a song about self-loathing and insecurity, "I often pretend the sadness will end, but it won't". Was Harris channelling his own feelings through his work all that time without anyone realising? In an interview with Louis Theroux he said that nobody cared about him and only wanted to talk about Orville and that he couldn't be a person or a performer in his own right. As much as he loved Orville (and I believe that he did genuinely love him) did he feel held back by him in the same way that Rod Hull did about Emu? The other character in The Keith Harris Show was Cuddles, the aggressive monkey that never tired of proclaiming that he 'ates that duck, could this be Keith channelling his resentment without the need of a therapist? Maybe I am reading too much into it.
Rest in peace Keith Harris, our thoughts are with Orville and Cuddles.
This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative can be heard here.
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April housekeeping
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