Aimi MacDonald

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Aimi MacDonald in The Mating Game, Apollo Theatre, London, 1972
Aimi MacDonald in The Mating Game, Apollo Theatre, London, 1972

Aimi MacDonald is a British actress who was born in Glasgow, Scotland on February 27, 1942. She was best known for her recurring role as "The Lovely" Aimi MacDonald in the television sketch comedy show At Last the 1948 Show (Rediffusion, 1967).

Contents

[edit] Background and early career

Aimi MacDonald's Scottish father was a doctor. Her mother was English. She was the youngest of three daughters [1].

MacDonald went to ballet school as a child [2] and entered show business at the age of 14. She was initially a dancer, working during her teens in both Britain and the United States [3]. While performing with a dancing troupe in Las Vegas, she met rock 'n' roll star Elvis Presley at the Silver Slipper casino, remarking many years later on both his fondness for "jam[ming] with the rest of them" and his unsung ability as a jazz guitarist [4].

MacDonald married an American musician at the age of 17 and they had a daughter named Lisa [5]. However, the marriage did not last and MacDonald returned to Britain, appearing during the 1960s in several musicals in London's West End and in cabaret.[6] She recalled that she had to keep working to support herself and her daughter and that this was sometimes a struggle [7].

[edit] At Last the 1948 Show

Aimi Macdonald (second from far right) in At Last the 1948 Show (DVD cover)
Aimi Macdonald (second from far right) in At Last the 1948 Show (DVD cover)

MacDonald came to national attention in At Last the 1948 Show, for which role she had been talent spotted by rising television star David Frost [8]. In between the longer sketches, and at the opening and closing of the show, she would present a short piece on the seemingly inexhaustible theme of her own loveliness. She has been described as "a sort of low-key British Goldie Hawn"[9] (Hawn having risen to fame at about the same time in the American show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In) and her excitable, sweaky voice was likened to "a choir of frantic mice" [10]. Some forty years later a journalist referred to MacDonald as "bubble-and-squeak Aimi" [11].

[edit] The sole female

The 48 Show was one of a number of productions with a predominantly male cast (in this instance, John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman) whose origins lay in the Cambridge Footlights in the late 1950s and early 60s. With Do Not Adjust Your Set, also created by Rediffusion, it was the precursor of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in which Carol Cleveland was, in her own words, the "blonde stooge", and, in many respects, the successor of the radio series I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, in which Jo Kendall had been the only woman. The female star of Do Not Adjust Your Set was Denise Coffey.

At Last the 1948 Show cast photograph — with Aimi MacDonald featured at the top of the image as 'the sole female'
At Last the 1948 Show
cast photograph — with Aimi MacDonald featured at the top of the image as 'the sole female'

Macdonald's highly contrived caricature of a "dumb blonde", with her hair curved around almost to the edges of her lips, stood apart from the core of 48; she did not contribute to the sketches, nor is she credited with any of the writing of the show. However, in retrospect, although the style and content of 48 were highly influential, Macdonald's solo contributions (sometimes joined by a small troupe of showgirls that included the actress Mary Maude, subsequently in Southern Television's Freewheelers) were in fact one its most distinctively memorable aspects.

Elizabeth Morton's portrayal of Madeline Bassett in series 3 and 4 of Granada Television's Jeeves and Wooster (1992-3), based on the novels of P. G. Wodehouse, appeared to have much in common with Macdonald's demeanour and delivery in 48.

[edit] "The lovely Aimi Macdonald" as a catchphrase

Even into the 21st century, when a DVD of the 48 Show was released, the phrase "I'm the lovely Aimi Macdonald" could still trip dippily off the lips of middle aged people who had seen the programme as schoolchildren.[12] With the possible exception of some lines in the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch ("Try telling the young people of today that ..."), it was the only catchphrase to survive from the show; indeed, although several phrases from individual sketches in Monty Python entered the language,[13] Nigel Rees observed in 1980 that "the new breed of university-graduate comedians often eschews [catchphrases] altogether".[14]

[edit] Other work

Macdonald's more conventional acting roles on television included appearances in episodes of The Avengers, The Saint, Man About the House and Dixon of Dock Green. She played the part of Wendy in the film Take a Girl Like You (1970), based on the novel by Kingsley Amis. Stage roles in London included those of Susie in George and Ira Gershwin's Lady Be Good (with Lionel Blair in 1968) and Honey Tooks in Robin Hawdon's long-running farce, The Mating Game (1972).

Aimi Macdonald (left) in The Mating Game
Aimi Macdonald (left) in The Mating Game

In the 1970s Macdonald appeared occasionally on the BBC radio panel game Just a Minute - again, as the only female panellist of four, being subjected (as were others) to the exaggerated jibes of comedian Kenneth Williams that women should not be permitted to take part.[15]

[edit] Press stories and later life

MacDonald's private life attracted some intertest in the press. She shared a mansion in Ascot, Berkshire with racehorse owner Geoffrey Edwards, remarking that she was "living in sin ... It's lovely. I shall probably live in sin for the rest of my life" [16]. She herself owned a racehorse named Weep No More. Her name was linked to various politicians, including disgraced Labour Minister John Stonehouse (whose secretary and mistress Sheila Buckley named her as one of his lovers) and future Conservative Prime Minister John Major. MacDonald has denied relationships with either man, or ever having met "poor John Major", though she did recall Stonehouse as "tall, dark" and "very attractive to women" [17]. In her sixties she observed that "everyone gets hysterical if I say hello to a politician today ... It's very annoying to be branded a scarlet woman" [18].

MacDonald went into business for a time, opening a lingerie shop in West London, but had to sell up during a downturn in the British economy in the early 1990s [19]. She later returned to show business, taking part in a few nationwide tours, including that of a stage version (2003), starring Darren Day, of Cliff Richard’s 1962 musical film Summer Holiday, in which she played the mother of former Hear'Say singer Suzanne Shaw. Reviewers of this successful show often referred to Macdonald as a "sixties starlet" [20].

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  2. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  3. ^ Theatreprint programme for The Mating Game (Apollo Theatre, London, 1972)
  4. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  5. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  6. ^ Theatreprint programme for The Mating Game (Apollo Theatre, London, 1972)
  7. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  8. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  9. ^ Aimi MacDonald - "The Avengers"
  10. ^ See The Oldie, March 2007
  11. ^ William Hall in The Oldie, March 2007
  12. ^ See, for example, Barry Johnston (2006) Round Mr Horne; William Hall in The Oldie, March 2007
  13. ^ See, for example, Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations (1991) 49:10-14
  14. ^ Nigel Rees (1980) Very Interesting ... But Stupid!
  15. ^ Welcome to "Just a Minute"
  16. ^ Quoted in The Oldie, March 2007
  17. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  18. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  19. ^ The Oldie, March 2007
  20. ^ See, for example, http://archive.southwalesargus.co.uk/2003/7/25/66548.html

[edit] External links


At Last the 1948 Show
Tim Brooke-Taylor — Graham Chapman — John Cleese — Marty Feldman — Aimi MacDonald
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