The King of the Practical Joke
Jeremy Beadle died at the tragically young age of 59 in 2008.
He had been off our screens for a number of years before that when his show “Beadle’s About” finished in 1996.
The critics had pronounced that he was ‘old fashioned’ and that his humour with this type of show was cruel.
Complete nonsense of course as his viewing figures regularly topped fifteen million.
This welcome release on DVD demonstrates why his show was popular and why Jeremy as the prankster in chief was so popular.
In his trimmed beard and wall to wall grin people who had been his victims immediately realized that they had been “had” when he popped up microphone in hand just at that moment when the joke had gone far enough.
Joe Public were really the stars of his show and we the viewers were all in on it.
The show was a hoot with a five pound note prompting all kinds of bizarre behaviour when the lucky finders tried to retrieve their windfall.
The mortified sailor son’s boxing match that is interrupted by his over protective mother who bursts onto the ring to scold his boxing opponent.
The canny bargain hunter’s shed that is smashed to pieces seconds after he seals the deal for its purchase.
The look on the victims’ faces are pure gold in television terms and we the viewing public loved it.
Jeremy Beadle was a whole lot more than a television host.
He put his fame to good use raising over 100 million pounds for charitable causes, a fact only disclosed after his death.
A lover of books he had a library of over 300,000 volumes!
My father had a saying when I was growing up, ”It takes a wise man to play the fool”.
Jeremy beadle was a wise man.
I suspect that Jeremy knew that the joke was on his critics.
Beadle continues to be about in admiring profiles on him and releases such as this series.
This is great fun to watch and will raise a chuckle.
None of us would admit it but we would all have loved to have been Beadled!