The Liverpool comedian lifted the lid on his infamous appearance on Des O’Connor Tonight in an exclusive interview with the ECHO
Stan Boardman spoke to the ECHO in an exclusive interview about his life story (Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
Stan Boardman worried his career was ruined after his most infamous TV moment. The Liverpool comic may now be 88-years-old, but he remains as passionate as ever about stand up and is still making people laugh around the country today.
However, he was concerned his life in comedy was going to be brought to an abrupt end in November 1986 when Des O’Connor invited him onto his chat show. Stan is still synonymous with this routine 40 years later and said he was wondering when it was going to be brought up during his exclusive interview with the ECHO at his home last month.
Stan told the ECHO that presenting legend Des loved comedy and wanted his reaction to hearing the comic’s routine on the Des O’Connor Tonight show to be authentic. In their meeting before the show was broadcast live that night on November 11, 1986, Des asked Stan to only explain the set-up of the gag, which involved a Polish fighter pilot called Charlie Polanski, who had been invited onto an episode of This Is Your Life.
Much of Stan’s material centres around WWII and the set up of the joke involved war hero Charlie telling a story about a dogfight over the English Channel with German pilots.
Reflecting on the joke, Stan told the ECHO: “There were 25 million viewers watching [Des O’Connor Tonight] that night, it was 7.45pm.”
The gag featured a play on words with the German fighter plane, Focke-Wulf, as Stan’s joke saw Charlie make repeated references to the Germans as “Fockes”.
However, the punchline revealed the pilots were flying a different kind of plane and he was actually calling his enemies a different, more offensive term.
The punchline, “That is correct, but these f*****s were actually in Messerschmits [another brand of German manufactured plane]”, left the crowd in the studio in hysterics, as Stan told the ECHO: “The audience started laughing their head off, I thought, ‘Bloody hell.’ I normally don’t get this much, just for one gag.”
TV host Des held back the laughter as he looked up to the heavens in the clip, which has been viewed 1.8m times on YouTube. The presenter possibly knew what was about to come, as the joke was broadcast before the British TV watershed, and ITV changed Des O’Connor Tonight from a live show to be pre-recorded moving forward, as controversial routines from Oliver Reed followed in the same episode.
Comic Stan thought his performance couldn’t have went any better, but he returned to the green room in silence, as he told the ECHO: “[Growing up] we didn’t have a garden shed never mind a watershed.
“It was because it was too early in the evening and Des lost his live show, which was sad.” He added: “It was in all the papers. I thought that’s ruined my career.”
However, they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity and Stan realised the controversy had the opposite effect when he went to perform his next live show. He said: “I went down to Caerphilly on the Sunday. I was supposed to be [performing] on the Monday. I asked [the promoter], ‘Do you think there’ll be anyone in after the Des O’Connor thing?’
“[Before the episode aired] The show had only sold a few tickets for each night, and [the promoter] said, ‘Two days ago, we sold out for the week, so do you think it’s done you any good?’ Bloody right it had.'”
Stan said the TV work become less and less after the joke in 1986. When he told this story on stage at Hot Water Comedy Club in a clip that went viral on social media, he joked: “You never saw me on the telly again.”
However, in his interview with the ECHO, he revealed Des harboured no ill feeling about the moment, as he said: “Des asked me to go back two or three times, but it was too nice so nobody remembers that.”
Stan’s story is incredible as he shot to stardom when he won a nationwide competition to perform at the Palladium in the 1970s and he become a household name with appearances on Opportunity Knocks and The Comedians.
He has witnessed the landscape of comedy change throughout his 50 years in the business, but he said there’s only one thing that bothers him with comedy in the modern era. Although his most infamous television joke danced around swearing through word play, he said up and coming comics nowadays rely on bad language too heavily.
He said: “The way comedy has changed now is everyone is swearing on stage and I don’t like that sort of thing. When Johnnie Hamp put me on The Comedians, he said, ‘If you swear, it won’t go out’. You tailor your act to not swear.
“The young comedians now are all swearing. It gets on your nerves. We don’t want that. It grates me. They’re good comedians, and they don’t need to swear.”
Although he was concerned the moment on Des O’Connor might have derailed his career and TV appearances may have been fewer afterwards, Stan’s life in comedy continued to thrive as he is still performing across comedy clubs today. He is looking forward to the next chapter at the end of his ninth decade, as he said he has no regrets about how anything has panned out.
He said: “I’ve no regrets at all. I’ve led a good life. I don’t know if anybody could have had it easier or happier than what I’ve had it.”
The comedian spoke to the ECHO about his life story to mark the release of his autobiography, Stan Boardman: My Life Story, which was released last year. You can read our full interview with him on his life, traumatic beginnings and love for Liverpool here.