Hale and Pace
Genre: Comedy
Original Screening(s): 1988-97
Hard-hitting and fast-moving modern humour served up by the
irreverent and highly popular duo, Gareth Hale and Norman
Pace.
"The duo made a regular habit of trying to offend as many
viewers as possible and generated a huge number of
complaints over the years"
Put the lattes aside, these lads are all froth
By CAROLYN WEBB
Thursday 18 October 2001
Comedy duo Hale and Pace
If you're stuck up, it may be best to avoid British comedy duo
Hale and Pace's new live show. Hoitytoity types, they say, just
don't get them.
This is the humor that depicts a ``guide cat'' leading a blind
person, TV cooking hosts microwaving a cat and theatre critics
chastising their children for a school performance.
It's not everyone's glass of chardonnay.
However, with Gareth Hale and Norman Pace back for their sixth
tour of Australia, it's evident that they do have a fan base out
there. They are doing more than 40 gigs in two months at
venues from Launceston to Newcastle. They play two shows at
Melbourne's Crown casino and will also do gigs in Geelong and
Frankston.
Hale and Pace promise that many favorite characters from their
10year TV series will be there on stage, including the East End
nightclub bouncers the Two Rons and the children's television
presenters Billy and Johnny.
They love to act the lads in their skits but in real life they're very
nice blokes.
Hale is the tubby, fairhaired, mustachioed one with the cockney
accent. Pace is rubberfaced, impish and darkhaired, with slightly
more rounded vowels.
They have been performing since they met at teacher's college
in southeast England in 1971, and after 10 years of their own TV
series and hundreds of live shows, are still great friends.
Actually, more like the proverbial married couple, talking in
tandem. Funny even in normal conversation.
``We have brought some new people (meaning characters)
across with us,'' Hale says over lunch.
``Gareth's doing, well, it was the alphabet song, but it's become
the alcohol song,'' Pace adds.
``An anthem to drinking,'' says Hale. ``I play Duncan Disorderly.''
``Acting drunk is very difficult, but he's very good at it,'' comments
Pace. ``I'll have to do a lot of research,'' says Hale.
Reading past reviews, the pair rarely get lukewarm press. Critics
either hate them or love them. Take these reviews of their (final)
1999 TV series when it ran in Melbourne: ``Overrated ...
predictable sketches ... punchlines are as fresh as weekold
porridge,'' wrote the Herald Sun's Garry Mansfield.
But in a review in The Age Misha Ketchell commented: ``...there's
something pleasing about the unsophisticated approach of Hale
and Pace; they practise a certain brand of laddish toilet humor,
imbued with a vaguely British sense of the absurd ... continues
to elicit the odd guilty giggle ...''
Norman Pace has chewed on this phenomenon and concludes:
``With the smartarse, caffe latte, artyfarty party types - and their
partner - we're not very popular.
``But the ordinary people of Australia seem to like what we do.
``I think we're down to earth. You know, `smart smut' is what we
specialise in, mainly.''
It's easy to label the pair laddish and misogynist, but they say
they're out to entertain both women and men. Pace points to the
bawdiness of your average hen's night. ``Women like to laugh at
willy jokes as much as men,'' he says. ``Hopefully, anyway.
Otherwise we've been pissing up the wrong alley for 20 years. I
think it's actually sexist to propose that it's any other way.
``Most of the jokes we do are derogatory to men, actually.
Absolutely. We belittle ourselves and other men far more than
we would belittle women. And we never do jokes about racial
minorities. We will have a laugh at the expense of Aussies and
New Zealanders and British, they're great big grown up states
that can take care of themselves. We won't have a whack at
racial minorities whose lives are already difficult in our country or
yours. You won't find us coming on and doing jokes about
Aboriginal people or Maoris or any immigrants here at all.''
Hale and Pace love Australia, partly, they say, because we `get'
their humor. They don't tour the US, because the Americans
don't get them.
It's a funny - funny as in weird - time for comics at the moment.
After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington,
funnymen worldwide, including Americans David Letterman and
Jay Leno, and Australia's Peter Berner, gave solemn tributes in
the place of the usual joviality.
Hale and Pace say they will avoid the terrorism issue.
Hale says: ``It's very difficult to find any corner of that that can be
seen as the foundation for jokes.
``These things have no place in our show really,'' says Pace. ``If
anything, I guess what we're doing is trying to take people away
from that, have a laugh, forget the problems that they have, you
know?
``We're the froth on the cappuccino.''
their most recent BBC series — which was comedy with an
"internet" interlude, i seem horribly to recall — was pulled after
just two eps, i think, but i can't find any details on the interweb
― smartarse, caffe latte, artyfarty party type s, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
six years pass...