In a bad period for UK sitcom stars with moustaches, Gorden Kaye from Allo Allo has passed away.
Not long after the greatest moustache in sitcom history – belonging to the recently passed Andrew Sachs aka Manuel from Fawlty Towers – Gorden Kaye passed away on January 23.
He had a career full of appearances on UK TV and movies. But it will be as the café owner in the town of occupied French town of Nouvion Rene Artois that is mostly, or sadly only known as.
The TV show occupied prime time in Australia throughout that time, and there was no one more unforgettable than Gorden Kaye’s Rene.
It was arguably one of the finest World War II sitcoms since Hogan’s Heroes took the piss out of German POW camps a decade or so earlier. It concentrated on the incompetence of German officials. It also had an array of memorable characters.
Allo Allo too focused on the incompetence, but they had their aimed on all sides of the conflict. Our favourite of the many memorable characters was the French Police Officer who was a British Spy who attempted to speak French that looked the Police Officer from the Yoplait commercials. That and the elusive Painting of the Fallen Madonna with the big boobies. But it was a different era.
A DIFFERENT PRIME TIME ERA
Hard to think in today’s era of crying on reality TV shows, or animal or police based clip shows, that a sitcom based on Occupied France would be a mainstay of prime time.
And it went for a while too. Not only were there 84 episodes of the show aired between 1982 and 1992 but there were another 1,200 performances of the stage version.
Gorden Kaye survived a massive car accident in 1990, and his resume is less full after that. Although happily for Australians it included the almost obligatory Down Under stage show of Allo Allo. But even if the career did peter out being the main star in a memorable sitcom is a good enough legacy for us.
HAVE YOU STARTED YOUR ALLO ALLO COLLECTION YET? TOO LATE.
A while ago, mainly during daytime TV an ad was aired that started with the question “Have you started your Allo Allo collection yet? Many scoffed at the question, rightly or wrongly.
You can imagine the person who did indeed start their Allo Allo collection would be sitting at home with perhaps equals parts of sadness and smugness. Their Allo Allo portfolio investment option looks that tiny bit more prosperous as of January 2017.
So we salute anyone who started their Allo Allo collection, and of course Gorden Kaye. RIP Rene.
