Arthur Atkinson

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This article is about the fictional comedy character. For other meanings, see Arthur Atkinson (disambiguation).

Arthur Atkinson is a fictional character who appeared regularly on the British TV sketch comedy show The Fast Show.

Played by Paul Whitehouse, the character of Atkinson was a parody of various 1940s-era British entertainers, most notably Arthur Askey (from whom his name was derived). The black-and-white sketches consisted partly of Atkinson doing his antics on a theatre stage, and partly of historical footage of an actual 1940s theatre crowd laughing at a comedy performance.

Atkinson's monologue and jokes were often completely nonsensical and appear entirely random, as were his addresses to members of the audience ("I've seen you griddling eggs like there's no tomorrow!!") His two famous catchphrases were "How queer!" and "Where's me washboard?" Despite the nonsense, everything he said causes the audience to erupt in laughter. Atkinson occasionally presented Northern comic Chester Drawers whose act never went down well; Atkinson had to crash the stage in order to prevent the audience from walking out.

The only notable exception was when Atkinson asked one gentleman in the audience "Excuse me, sir, is that a moustache on your lip or is it shit?" The utterance of profanity in public caused immense disapproval and the audience left the theatre instantly. According to Tommy Cockles "his fan club was shut down, his contract was torn up by the BBC, and he couldn't get a round of golf anywhere. Do I care? No."

By the third series, Atkinson's career appeared to be in decline as he appeared in an "unpopular" sitcom, Blame Arthur (a parody of British sitcoms of the '50s and early '60s) and a cheesy '70s Confessions-style sex comedy called Confessions of a Door-To-Door Cucumber Salesman. (The real-life Arthur Askey's last film was a soft-core film, Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse.) He also appeared in a parody of Samuel Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape. It was revealed in the Fast Show live tour in 1998 that Atkinson died backstage at a show, where he got stuck against a hot radiator (he was trying to retrieve a boiled sweet he had dropped).

The Arthur Atkinson clips were always both preceded and succeeded with a short note from the modern TV presenter Tommy Cockles (played by Simon Day), who is himself a parody of British TV presenters. It becomes more and more clear as the series progresses that Cockles deeply resents Atkinson.

[edit] Trivia

• TV Critic Mark Lewisohn humourously dedicated his book The Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy to the 'memory' of Arthur Atkinson.