Gordon Fitzgerald Kaye 7 April 1941 - 23 January 2017
January, 2017 and while many berate 2016 as the worst year ever (especially for celebrity deaths) already this year has delivered a hammer blow in the death of Gordon Kaye, lynch pin performer in the greatest English ribald sexual innuendo French comedy of all time. Yes, you read that right.
Allo Allo was an extraordinarily successful British comedy series that ran for ten years between 1982 and 1992 about René Artois, the esrtwhile French cafe owner during the height of the German power in occupied France in World War 2. A cafe frequented by Gestapo, resistance, German officers, British arimen and adulterous waitresses whilst hiding stolen German artwork. It is the ultimate combination of fiasco possibility combined with relentless double entendre and rapid fire absurdity.
To read it on the page you would think that it sounds distinctly unfunny, on the contrary it is a stepping stone between the comedy sensibilities of the 1970's and the politically charged comedy that was to follow. Allo Allo is an institution, driven by the script writing genius of Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft it is absurdist pantomime that served as family entertainment for an entire decade.
Many actors express frustration at being type cast (only considered for one type of role or remembered for one character), Monsiuer Kaye was much more graceful, saying that “We did ten years and Hitler only did six!” and was also on record as saying that “there is no other character I would rather have played!”
The Bulldog team would like to express our debt of gratitude to Gordon Kaye and the entire Allo Allo team and thank them all for the flash of stocking and simultaneous education in Shakespearean soliloquy. They just don't make TV like this anymore.
