Milton Jones on Top Cat: ‘I wanted to make people laugh, and live in a bin’

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/apr/22/milton-jones-on-top-cat-comedy-heroes

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When I was growing up, by far the funniest person on television was Top Cat. If you remember, he was a cartoon character who lived with some other cats in an alleyway somewhere in America (in Britain the show was once called Boss Cat, to avoid confusion with a brand of cat food). In each episode, TC, as his close friends could call him, and his gang, would always get the better of Officer Dibble, the local policeman, and then the old cop would shout: “I’m going to get you for this, Top Cat!.”

Hilarious, I thought, when I was seven – as did the studio audience, by the sound of it. My hero’s world was the rubbish-strewn backstreets, a place where top dogs always lost to under-cats. My age group was more than happy to celebrate the beating of any bullies.

The rest of the show was classic cartoon land. Musical sound effects, telephones that spoke gibberish, and characters who would run on the spot for a second before generating a cloud of smoke, and then dash off to the sound of something like a ricocheting bullet. There was even a catchy theme song that explained everything. It culminated, under the credits – as I remember – in TC putting on his pyjamas and settling down for the night underneath the lid of his bin, after putting out a “do not disturb” sign. And so it was, around this time, that I decided that I wanted to be a wise-guy, too, to make everyone laugh, and to live in a dustbin. (My Mum was against this and insisted that I put on my pyjamas and brushed my teeth while standing in the washing basket, instead of in a bin.)

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Years later, I learned that the show was supposed to be a sort of Sgt Bilko for kids. Not that I knew who Sgt Bilko was, then. One terrible day, I discovered that the laughter for my favourite show was canned. (I was probably told this by the same person who told me the truth about Santa Claus, and that Pritt sticks aren’t roll-on deodorants.) It was a crushing blow. So that’s why TC’s material didn’t work in the playground! I’d assumed that that many laughing Americans couldn’t be wrong. But it turned out they didn’t even exist. Part of me couldn’t help thinking, “I’ll get you for this, Top Cat!”

But did this mean the programme wasn’t funny? Of course not. However, I’d learned an important lesson that was to stand me in good stead for a career in comedy. Some shows do it with canned laughter, some comedians do it by laughing at their own jokes, and others just use quotes on their posters. It’s not enough just to be funny: to succeed, you have to find ways to reassure your audience that you are funny, too.