Potty Time

Michael Bentine was an English Comedian, a comic actor and perhaps best known as a founding member of The Goons, a madcap collaboration that arguably found its biggest audience in the post war years with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe.

I knew his work in my childhood years when his own show, Potty Time was broadcast on the BBC, actually from 1973 to 1980.

It was a chaotic but very skillfully crafted production featuring very hairy, bearded puppets and with Bentine creating them and providing all of the voices.

I can clearly recall the detailed, diorama type sets for the programmes complete with sound and visual effects that really caught the imagination of my age group.

This was only a small example of Bentine's creativity and genius.

I have been able to catch some recent broadcasts of Bentine's 1984 radio shows.

One scene is of an aristocratic type, Sir Reginald who bets everything on a turn of the cards whilst at the Cliff Top Gambling Hill,set in Macau in the China Seas.

Although he feels his luck is in when he draws a King of Spades the casino master, one Chow Mein takes him to the cleaners with an ace of spades. Always honourable, Sir Reginald offers to settle his debts by producing the following items from his person.

£2000 Sterling
$50,000 Mexican
100 Krugerrands
200 Gold Sovereigns
62 new pence
Mother's diamonds
Father's emerald jockstrap
The Family Jewels
Deeds to the family pile in Tooting
The Brighton Flat
Love nest in Finchley
Hippopotamus head trophy
12 Elephant tusks
A Portrait by Rembrandt
A Statue of Pope Pious V in beef dripping
Meissen Tea Service
A barrel of Guiness
2 shotguns by Purdy with 12,000 rounds of ammunition
Canteen of cutlery
Huge stuffed owl
14 stuffed boa constrictors
A gaggle of geese
A gallon of weed killer
A Tame Lion and 1 wild lioness
Steam lawnmower
Combine Harvester
1 Harvest
My fair wife Cynthia
Signed portrait of Adolf Hitler
Treaty of Rome
Scale model of the Taj Mahal
Collapsible Mosque
A synthetic fog generator
Omar Khayyam's tent pegs
Wine
Loaf of Bread
A firkin of ditchwater
My faithful hound, Rugged
My Book-keeper McTavish
The unexpurgated volumes of the Kamasutra
110 trombones
A cargo of cheap tin trays
John Masefield in raspberry ice cream
Prize herd of Hereford Cattle
Helicopter
A rubber ducking stool
Marie Antoinettes' commode
The original guillotine
A porno tape of Fifi and the gorilla
Harold Wilson's Memoirs
A thought by Jim Callaghan

.......or I could give you a cheque.

Bentine was a fascinating character from his Peruvian British origins, Eton education, a wartime stint in the Intelligence Services, a crack shot with a pistol and even being credited with the idea behind establishing the special operations divisions of the SAS. He died in 1996.

I remember him for his great vocal characterisation and the outrageous comedy from his creations, The Potties.