THIS week’s Icons muxed ip their words. They made themselves look stupid for others’ entertainment. Rooted in the everyday lives and patter of Glasgow, they were wildly popular all over Scotland.

Look up Francie and Josie on yon YouTube and hark at audiences in convulsions. It was a more innocent time, before wits became frightened out of their, er, wits. Today, even their introduction, “Hullawrerr, china!”, would find them objects of suspicion, literally Hitlers perhaps, even though the reference is to “china plate”: mate.

Mates, they’re a staple of comedy acts. Think Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Morecambe and Wise, Fry and Laurie, French and Saunders, Reeves and Mortimer, Trump and Putin.

Francie and Josie played two half-wits, making one comedy act. Josie (Rikki Fulton) was supposedly the clever one, relatively speaking, though the curl of hair suggestive of a question mark at the top of his head cast doubt over that supposition, as did his memory of a teacher “using an allergy” (analogy).

Francie (Jack Milroy), the less bright of the two, had even worse trouble with his wordular electrocution, for example recalling the Sixties in a fit of “pure neuralgia” (nostalgia) and finding himself “overcome with emulsion”.

Both were dressed as gallus, Glaswegian teddy boys, in suits of primary colours with short jackets, bootlace ties, and trousers at half-mast.

Ridiculous. Ironically, though, teddy boy style was seriously inspired by the duds worn by dandies in the Edwardian era and revived in earnest by Savile Row tailors after the Second World War.

Inevitably, music was also part of this peculiarly British socio-cultural phenomenon of youth rebellion. For teds it was rock and roll and rhythm and blues. As I’ve had occasion to point out to you before, all musical genres with “and” in them are rubbish.

Rock is good. Rock and roll tripe. Blues good. Rhythm and blues tripe. Country good. Country and western tripe. Just saying.

SUPER TEDS

DESPITE the outfits, Francie and Josie said they weren’t really teds: “Never washed their hair, these fellas. Just went in for an oil change.”

France and Josie were not beyond deconstructing, even if inadvertently, their own jokes, including the legendary Arbroath effort that involved confusion between the words “sister in” and “cistern”. We should also mention the bewilderment occasioned by the ambiguity of “a chap at the door”.

Of themselves, in the their own wordies, they said: “We have perspired thegither to make a pair of spectacles of wurselves and foisted wurselves on a highly expectorant public. We do not wish youse to be under any disillusionment, so we are taking this opporchancity to present before your very eyes a production which for sheer hypocrisy and slight-of-hand will live forever in the annuals of all maternity.”

This grand mission depended for its success on observations of the lives of ordinary people at the time, such as experiencing the first Indian and Chinese restaurants (“restyorints”).
Entering one of the latter for the first time, Josie is discomfited to find no salt and pepper on the table. Francie, meanwhile, sings a song called Hudacurry (“it wiz hot/really scorchin’/like a torch in ma mooth”).

It was the legendary Stanley Baxter who, in 1957, first came up with the idea of two loafing Glasgow wide boys who wouldn’t hurt a fly and who found the world a funny, if baffling, place.
Baxter suggested the idea to Jimmy Logan, who rejected it, as did Fulton initially. As Baxter recalled: “At first, he said he didn't want to pay for the Teddy Boy suits, [saying] that they would be too expensive for an act that may not work out.”

KILLER PATTER

FULTON eventually agreed but tore into Stan Mars’ scripts: “He would start to pull faces, tutting, flicking back pages and saying in that morose voice, ‘Oh God, is that all you could come up with?’” Later, continued Baxter, “Stan would come into my dressing room and say, ‘I’m going to kill that bastard.’” Comedy. You’ve got to laugh.

But, stoically, Stan persevered, coming good with Rikki and Stanley’s added input, and the Francie and Josie double act (Fulton and Baxter) soon took off, first appearing on The Five Past Eight Show at the Alhambra Theatre, Glasgow, in 1958.

When Baxter moved to London in 1959 to pursue his television career, the act was rested. However, the following year, Fulton formed a new F and J partnership with Jack Milroy. Milroy's wife, Mary, recalled: “Rikki went straight out and bought the suits, Jack bought the wigs … and a legend was born.”

Reviews were positive. The Edinburgh Evening News, taking in a show at the city’s King’s Theatre, noted that Fulton “has to perfection the walk as well as the talk of the ‘typical Glasgow ted’”.

The Scotsman noted pompously: “The intense academic ignorance of Rikki Fulton is shown off so wonderfully well by the preposterous fooling of Jack Milroy …” Ooh, I say.

TV AYES

IN 1962, Scottish Television gave the pair their own show, The Adventures of Francie and Josie, sometimes described as “STV’s first situation comedy”.

The show was a big hit, taken up for broadcast by Anglia, Border Television, Grampian Television, Tyne Tees and UTV. The resultant fame brought the sort of perks that only Scotland could provide. Francie and Josie were asked to open a supermarket in Dennistoun.

And that was not all. The pair were asked to appear at the opening of many British Relay TV rental shops. Yep, in the olden days, many folk had to rent their tellies. You could even get coin-slot TVs which might conk out just as you were getting to the exciting climax of Bagpuss.

At the boys’ first shop opening, in the upmarket spa town of Airdrie, zealous crowds smashed the store’s windows. Why? Because they were there. And they were made of glass. What d’you expect?

(Image: PA)

STRIKE IT LUCKY

IN all, 32 episodes of the TV show were made between 1962 and 1965. There was no series in 1964 due to a technicians’ strike. Oh, how I miss a good strike. Happy days.

After the success of the television series, the duo returned to the stage and, in 1970, released an LP, Francie & Josie, on Pye's Golden Guinea label, recorded at the Ashfield Club in Glasgow. Tracks included Hullorerr, I’m Glad I Was Born In Glasgow, and Hee-Drum-Ho-Drum Ragtime.

Fulton and Milroy have gone the way of all fish now, but their characters’ spirits live on in tribute shows by Liam Dolan and Johnny Mac. The latest, Francie and Josie – It’s a Stoater, is touring Scotland right aboot noo.