Author, playwright, and sketch comedy pioneer Alan Bennett was born May 9, 1934.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your fandom of British humor starts with Monty Python, do yourself a huge favor and take a look at Beyond the Fringe, the sketch comedy revue starring Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Jonathan Miller. Its roots stretch back to 1960, when it was conceived for the Edinburgh Festival as a showcase for the best comic talent from Oxford and Cambridge. It was a fortuitous turn of events for satire fans that these four disparate voices would come together and create such a sharp show \u2013 erudite, political, and silly. It would play the West End in London in 1961 before making its Broadway debut in 1962. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this particular bit, \u201cTake A Pew,\u201d Bennett plays an earnest minister, expertly meandering through an ultimately meaningless homily. It makes me laugh every time I hear it, especially the \u201cmountain\u201d story (I won\u2019t ruin the punch for you there, it\u2019s marvelous). Every so often, the intro of \u201cBut my brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man,\u201d gets stuck in my head and won\u2019t leave for a couple of weeks. Bennett\u2019s inflection, tone, and grammatical choices are perfection. It\u2019s hard to hear this and not think of the gallery of pompous twits to which John Cleese would later give voice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can find video of Bennett doing this on YouTube, but none of it is shareable at this time. So head over there to search, or just soak in the audio here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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