Merseyside Mirth Makers - Kenny Everett

Kenny Everett

Maurice James Christopher Cole was born in Seaforth, Liverpool on the 25th of December 1944 and brought up in Hereford Road, Seaforth  he attended the local secondary modern school, St.Bedes in Crosby. Later he attended a junior seminary at Stillington near York in North Yorkshire with an Italian missionary order, the Verona Fathers, where he was a choirboy.

In 1964 he became a disc jockey working at the pirate radio station Radio London where he was advised to change his name to avoid legal problems. He adopted the name "Everett" from American film comic actor Edward Everett Horton, a childhood hero. Here his offbeat style and likeable personality quickly gained him attention, but in 1965 he was sacked after some outspoken remarks about religion on air.
However a BBC producer, Johnny Beerling, had secretly visited Radio London around this time and observed Everett at work: "I saw this man Everett doing everything. In the old way of doing things, the DJ sat in one room with a script. Someone else played the records and somebody else controlled the sound. Yet I see this man who has control of everything".
He was heard in May 1967 on the BBC's soon to be discontinued Light Programme previewing The Beatles' forthcoming album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and he became one of the DJ's on the new pop music station Radio 1 from its launch at the end of September 1967. Having been snapped up by this new BBC Radio 1, Everett pioneered the role of disc jockey as a popular entertainer, with ground breaking nonsensical jingles, crazy anarchy and wild lunges at figures of authority. Here in the seclusion of the studio, the basically shy and nervous Kenny could escape from his own neuroses into a world of fantastic invention which saw his manic comedy grow with creations such as the Captain Kremmen series - a cross between Dan Dare and the Goons.

Radio studio madness

By the late 1970s, in between sackings for inappropriate remarks on air, Kenny was now much in evidence on television as well as the radio.
In 1970 he made three series for London Weekend Television: The Kenny Everett Explosion, Making Whoopee and Ev; and he also took part, along with such talents as Willie Rushton and John Wells, in the 1972 BBC TV series 'Up Sunday'.
This diminutive and bearded Liverpudlian, with receding hair and wildly rotating eyes, now presided over an hysterical melange of music and fustian lampoon, laden with innuendo. His comic zenith came in 1978 with 'The Kenny Everett Video Show' and 'The Kenny Everett Television Show' which were the ideal vehicles for Everett's eccentric characters and sketches. Besides Captain Kremmen, other characters included: ageing rock-and-roller Sid Snot, unsuccessfully flipping cigarettes into his mouth; Marcel Wave, a lecherous Frenchman played by Everett wearing an absurdly false latex chin; and "Angry of Mayfair", an upper middle class City gent complaining of the risqué content of the show, banging the camera's lens hood with his umbrella, and then storming off, turning his back to us, only to reveal the wearing of women's underwear in lieu of the entire back half of his suit.

' Sid Snot'

He was still though performing on radio during this time as, having submitted pre-recorded shows to BBC Radio Solent, he was then heard on various BBC local radio stations before being reinstated at Radio 1 in April 1973. Upon joining Capitol Radio in London, Kenny further developed his comic characters and zany jingles and was now developing a cult following with his cocktail of inventive brilliance and unremitting disrespect making him hugely popular with listeners,

Having returned to BBC Radio in 1981 on Radio 2 he was sacked again in 1983 following a joke about Margaret Thatcher. Meanwhile his successful TV series had run for four seasons on ITV before he fell out with them and the BBC offered him a live-audience sketch-format comedy programme, starting with a Christmas special on BBC 1 in 1981, followed by five prime time series.With Thames TV unsuccessfully attempting to claim copyright on Everett's characters he had introduced others including Gizzard Puke (intended to replace Sid Snot) and the spooneristically named Cupid Stunt, a blonde American 'B-film' actress with pneumatic breasts, and played with no attempt to disguise Kenny's own beard. Her final action in each sketch was to uncross her legs then swing them wildly to recross them (brazenly giving viewers an eyeful of her racy red lingerie) as she uttered the catchphrase "It's all done in the best possible taste!"

The show's popularity reached unimaginable heights with some of the biggest names in show business – Rod Stewart, Kate Bush and David Bowie to name a few - all clambering to appear alongside Kenny and were only too happy to feature in many of the mad cap sketches.

Kenny passed away, aged 50, from an AIDS-related illness, on April 4, 1995.

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