I’ve got to be honest, years ago I used to find St.Helens famous comedian Johnny Vegas very UNfunny.  I can remember watching him on ‘Shooting Stars’ numerous times and he just really used to irritate the life out of me.  Whereas Bob Mortimer used to make me chuckle with his zany wit, Vegas just seemed like a drunken loud mouthed fool.  The only thing he did that made me laugh a bit were those ‘PG TIPS’ adverts with that puppet named MONKEY.  Fast forward to the present day and my opinion of him has completely changed.  I think he’s one of the funniest people on TV right now, could never envisage me saying that ten years ago.

As a fan of the much loved BBC1 sitcom ‘Open All Hours'(starring Ronnie Baker and David Jason), I was therefore intrigued to watch the pilot episode of ‘Still Open All Hours’ in 2013.  With the great Ronnie Barker sadly no longer with us this now saw Granville(David Jason) at the helm of the shop with his son Leeroy(James Baxter) as his shop assistant.  On the whole I found the show OK, wasn’t a patch on the Ronnie Barker version but it was still humorous in places nevertheless. The thing I most remember most though was laughing at a gag near the end that involved the character played by Johnny Vegas.  He played a character called ‘Wet Eric Agnew’ and his scenes were the funniest thing in it in my opinion.  The latter gag involving anchovy paste and instead of consuming it, he had mistakenly applied it to his unmentionables……….having been told by Granville how it had wonderful side effects in terms of livening up the bedroom department.

On the back of this pilot, ‘Still Open All Hours was then commissioned for six new episodes.  As I write this I have seen the first four and yet again as with the pilot, I think Johnny Vegas as ‘Wet Eric’ steals the show.  I acknowledge that ultimately it is the script of writer Roy Clarke that gives him the funny situations and funny things to say, but I do think Johnny plays the role brilliantly. I never realised it until now just what a good actor he really is. It’s his great comedic timing, his funny facial expressions and his natural delivery of the amusing lines that make him stand out as such a good comic actor. He is so good at playing this sexually frustrated married man ‘Wet Eric’, so hilarious.  One running joke is that his wife only wants to go near him when it’s going to rain(it scares her he’s said). In an effort to convince his wife it is going to rain soon, he succumbs to Granville’s efforts and ends up buying an umbrella from him. The problem being though that these umbrellas are very forceful at opening, which leads to one disastrous but very funnily scene where see ‘Wet Eric’ hiding behind a car due to one of the umbrellas having opened up inside one of his trouser pockets.  David Jason is a national treasure but Johnny Vegas is the best thing in ‘Still Open All Hours’ by far!

Never really watched the ITV1 sitcom ‘Benidorm’ up to this year because it’s never struck me as a thing I thought I would enjoy watching if I’m honest. eg too coarse and corny for me. Nevertheless, I’ve somehow ended up watching the first three episodes of the new series this year and not minded it, somewhat surprisingly. Thought episode one was amusing in parts, the second one not that funny, but last week I thought the third episode was hilarious in parts. It was hilarious primarily due to Johnny Vegas reappearing in it again as the character ‘The Oracle’.  His parody of a darts player was hilarious to watch, plus his rapport with is much beleaguered old Mother(Elsie Kelly) was soooo funny. They took part in a darts quiz which mimicked the old TV game show ‘Bullseye’.  One of the jokes was that his Mother in it couldn’t get any of the questions right, after he’d just gone and got a really big score throwing darts to win the round.  Again, the way Johnny Vegas played the role as he does with ‘Wet Eric’ in ‘Still Open All Hours’, it was just so funny to watch.  It was a very amusing script I acknowledge but it amused me so much I think due to Johnny’s unique comic acting, his exasperated voice by itself was very humourous.  After ‘Bendidorm’ ended I kept making myself grin when thinking about Johnny’s performance.

If these two shows are anything to go by then really I hope we see a lot more of Johnny Vegas acting on our TV screens, being funny like he is here.  Could be be the next Ronnie Barker even? Perhaps that is setting the bar a tad too high, although if he carries like this then he won’t end up that far behind him!