The Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story

In the leading role of Best Possible Taste (BBC Four) Oliver Lansley was good at copying Kenny Everett's funny voices but this only reminded you that the star was at his funniest when talking straight. "I love you," he told his wife, "but I fancy Burt Reynolds." His muse, the improbably beautiful Cleo Rocos, wasn't in the script. When I saw the two of them together I thought: he's done it, he's reduced sex to a Platonic ideal, the lucky swine. Actually, of course, he was wretched.

Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story review

All in all, Best Possible Taste - The Kenny Everrett Story is a marvellous movie, and is a must see for any fan of the man, his style of comedy, or relationships with some real heart behind them.

That's right; it's yet another melodramatic BBC Four biopic, exploring the life of a comedian including their darker, personal details - but this one contains some naughty bits.

The Best Possible Taste concerns the life of Kenny Everett, played here by Oliver Lansley. Lansley also plays most of Everett's comic characters, including Sid Snot, Cupid Stunt, Brother Lee Love and Marcel Wave, who commentate on the habits of their creator and his complicated love-life: namely being married to his wife Lee (Katherine Kelly), despite being gay...

Like Everett's own style of humour, the show itself was completely bonkers, with lots of quirky editing. There are several instances of scenes which display Everett's true feelings, only for the characters to stop the film and rewind it to show what really happened. For example, there's the scene at the 1983 Young Conservatives conference, in which in Everett's mind he wants to tell the world he's gay, but is stopped by Cupid Stunt, who then shows us that Everett actually blurted, "Let's bomb Russia!"

While The Best Possible Taste is worth a watch, it's not really one for the comedy anoraks. There's no mention of how his characters were formed, and several of his TV outings were not mentioned at all. Instead, the show mostly covers his private relationships and his DJ work. So, while this documentary may have been produced in the best possible taste, I can't say it was as funny as it could have been.

Grace Dent on television: Best Possible Taste

Annoyingly, the Beeb's Kenny Everett story really was in the best possible taste.

Best Possible Taste - The Kenny Everett Story opens with a pair of false teeth in a glass of water gurgling a variation on the standard biopic warning: "It's based on a true story, but some of the scenes have been 'scrungled'. It also contains... naughty bits."

Dropped into Kenny's weird and wonderful world, we are immediately reacquainted with several of its celebrated inhabitants, including Cupid Stunt, Sid Snot, Brother Lee Love, Angry of Mayfair and Marcel Wave. They are on hand to help recount the life and career of the consistently self-destructive, frequently self-loathing and sometimes self-centred radio and TV maverick.

Oliver Lansley perfectly captures Everett and his multiple incarnations. Katherine Kelly plays his wife, Lee, and Simon Callow puts in a suitably luvvie turn as Dickie Attenborough, who rescues the much-sacked Cuddly Ken from the broadcasting wilderness of producing jingles for a carpet warehouse.

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Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story gave us an uncanny impression of Everett from Oliver Lansley, but could this drama really get to grips with the eccentric comedian?

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