Mark Steel on Charlie Chaplin

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2018

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mark Steel makes the case for Charlie Chaplin being one of the most radical comedians of his time.

He reckons it's sad that most see Chaplin as that bloke who wore a bowler hat, had a funny walk, waved a cane around and wasn’t even that funny.

Mark argues that the silent film star and his "Tramp" character make sense if you look at the upheavals in society that were occurring alongside his career.

Mark is best known for the Mark Steel Lectures and Mark Steel's in Town. He says that while Chaplin was standing up for the working class, the irony was that he became the richest rebel.

With Simon Louvish - author of ‘Chaplin: The Tramps Odyssey’.

Presented by Matthew Parris.

Producer: Perminder Khatkar

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day 2018.

Transcript

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0:36.0	Clues to the identity of this week's great life.
0:39.0	Bola Hat, Toothbrush Mustache, Funny Walk, and a cane. a the most famous British silent film star ever. Charlie Chaplin, he's the choice of today's guest,
0:56.8	comedian and writer Mark Steele. Mark as he was a silent artist, I suppose the best tribute to him would be 28 minutes of radio silence.
1:06.6	Yeah well this did happen once the BBC broadcast the gold rush a silent film and on the radio and it was just yeah exactly that.
1:16.7	Well, probably more than that an hour however long the film is of just people laughing and you could hear the piano and that
1:24.4	they might prefer that to us.
1:25.8	I think it went down very well in the audience I'm sure the people at home will have loved it.
1:29.5	I go to be honest and say I've never really given Charlie Chaplin much thought. I've seen some of his black
1:36.5	and white films they were obligatory viewing at children's birthday parties when I was little, but I've never been particularly captured by his humour.
1:46.0	Never really got the point. I just don't find slapstick. Funny, what am I missing?
1:52.0	Well, I think the first thing that you're missing and this is not your fault at all is that
1:59.0	one of the tragedies of Chaplin is that he's been thought of as just a slapstick entertainer and
	...

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