“I’ve just heard a song on the radio called Funky Moped, by a bloke called Jasper Carrott.” So said our Dad, as he came in from work one evening in the summer of 1975. We didn’t believe him. Our Dad was a bit of a joker, and used to come out with silly names and comical ideas to amuse my brother and myself when we were children. He insisted it was true – he’d been listening to one of the local radio stations on his way home, when the record came on.
A few weeks later, at a cousin’s 21st birthday party, we got to hear it ourselves. I even mentioned it in my diary: ‘hear The Funky Moped’ reads the entry for Sunday 6 July. I think it was the same cousins who advised us that we ought to listen to the B-side. My brother bought the single, probably shortly afterwards, and we duly played the B-side, ‘Magic Roundabout.’ So did a lot of other people. Rather than a song, it was a stand-up comedy routine, parodying the popular childrens’ TV programme in a vulgar manner: ‘Do you think Florence is a Virgin? Drops ‘em for certain…’
On the strength of people buying the single to hear the B-side, ‘Funky Moped’ entered the charts, fifty years ago this week. By now, Jasper Carrott was quickly becoming a new local hero – he hailed from Solihull, where he’d formed his own folk club, The Boggery, back in 1969 (I’d seen its advertising blocks in the Birmingham Evening Mail). His folk singer routine – including covers of songs by the likes of Jake Thackray – had quickly been eclipsed by his comic patter, although for his earliest television appearances he still appeared with an acoustic guitar.
A self-produced live album, comprised mostly of stand-up routines, had been sold around the clubs in 1973, and it was from here that the ‘Magic Roundabout’ track was extracted to provide a B-side for the ‘Funky Moped’ single. DJM records had signed Carrott, hoping to repeat the success of recent comedy albums by Billy Conolly, Mike Harding and others, and the single was conceived as a means of promoting their new artist to a wider audience.
I was following Carrott’s progress in my diary: ‘Funky Moped enters charts at No.13’, I wrote on 26 August. Two days later, the entry read: ‘Jasper Carrott is on Top of the Pops’, followed by the note ‘miss him’. I’m sure I saw his performance a week or so later, as the single continued to climb the charts, reaching No. 5 on 20 September. For his TOTP appearance, Carrott decided to send himself up, donning a Vegas-style white suit and matching shoes. Those in the know nodded and smiled and got the joke: everybody else was left scratching their heads. In retrospect, Carrott realised it was a mistake. Perhaps he should have got himself a Moped and a naff helmet? It didn’t matter – a new comedy star had arrived.
By now, his DJM album ‘Jasper Carrott Rabbitts On and On’ had appeared in the shops, and was on my Christmas list. The following year, I got his new live album, ‘Carrott in Notts’. By this time, he’d appeared in a one-man show on BBC1, A Half Hour Mislaid With Jasper Carrott, shown in a regional opt-out slot on Friday 17 September 1976 at 10.15pm. But it was the commercial channel that provided Carrott with his mainstream TV breakthrough. LWT boss Michael Grade had caught his act in Stratford and quickly offered him a contract, resulting in five TV specials: An Audience With Jasper Carrott (1978), The Unrecorded Jasper Carrott (1979), Carrott Gets Rowdie (1980) Beat the Carrott (1981) and Carrott Del Sol (1981). By the time of Carrott Del Sol, I owned a video recorder and kept a copy of the programme (which hasn’t been seen since but is available to watch on YouTube).
By now, his routines were very familiar to myself and my friends, including one about his attempts to rid his garden of a persistent mole and another about his antics as a lorry driver. At last, Birmingham had produced a comedy folk hero, to stand alongside the region’s pop superstars (Jeff Lynne had produced ‘Funky Moped’ and Bev Bevan, a childhood friend of Carrott, played drums on the track).
In 1982, Carrott migrated to BBC1, invited to front a new late Saturday night programme, conceived as a modern-day version of That Was the Week That Was. Carrott’s Lib debuted on 2 October 1982 and ran for a year. My diary records that I watched and taped the debut edition, and over the coming months, a lot more episodes were committed to tape. By now, though, I’d discovered another Midlands comic hero in the form of Rik Mayall – or rather, his investigative reporter persona Kevin Turvey – and I began to take less of an interest in Carrott’s television efforts. Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown (1989-1996) presented eccentric TV adverts from around the world, while Canned Carrott (1990-1995) saw a return to the stand-up format, including a regular sketch The Detectives (later developed as a series in its own right), and introducing performers Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. Carrott continued to appear on the BBC, presenting stand-up routines until 2012’s The One Jasper Carrott. From Carrott’s Lib onwards, his act, scripted by various hands, increasingly began to incorporate topical material, and watching this week’s BBC4 repeat of The One… it was immediately apparent how dated this type of material sounds, in contrast to his more personal, observational comedy – latterly focusing on family issues and ageing.
Jasper Carrott is still performing and has no plans to retire. A quadruple heart bypass in 2017 gave him ‘a new lease of life’, and he didn’t do too badly from selling his shares in the TV production company Celador, for a reported £10m. In 2023 he joined the cast of The Archers, and I’m sure he’ll continue to rabbitt on and on for the forseeable future. Fair play to BBC4 for acknowledging his half century as a media star, by presenting an evening of material on Tuesday 19 August. For me, though, he really belongs to the 1970s, and those early stand-up routines. The LPs are long gone from my collection, but can be found easily enough on YouTube.
‘Boing! Time for bed...’
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