Hello Me Old Flower. Now Listen Very Carefully, I Shall Say This Only Once.
Have you heard about the comedy carpet at Blackpool? It is one of Britain's largest pieces of public art, cost £2.6m, and celebrates the contribution to comedy by more than 1,000 writers and performers who have performed in the town.
And it's a work of genius.
Created by artist Gordon Young, and designed in collaboration with Why Not Associates, the Comedy Carpet is a celebration of comedy on an extraordinary scale. In fact artist Gordon Young, spent five years of his life creating it.
Catchphrases, jokes and songs are cast in black and red granite throughout the vast 2,200m² construction. Names date from the music hall era to the present day and include hundreds of comedy legends ranging from Morecambe and Wise, Tommy Cooper and Tony Hancock to Spike Milligan, Monty Python and Peter Cook.
The comedy carpet recently won a Civic Trust award for Blackpool and is shortlisted for the Design Museum's design of the year. Not only that, it has also been awarded the prestigious Tokyo Grand Prix design award, beating off competition from over 3,200 projects from across the globe.
It's fun, it's beautifully eccentric and it's the kind of thing that makes me proud to be British.
So how disappointing to hear that almost 50 square metres of the artwork were removed by council workmen without consulting Young or Why Not Associates. The council vandalism also included the removal of the dedication slab unveiled by Ken Dodd last year.
Sorry but I don't get it, you would have thought the council would be protecting this piece of art. After all they commissioned it.
And how disappointing to hear that, having won so many awards and plaudits from around the world, the good folk at D&AD have decided it's not good enough for the new annual.
Not good enough. Sorry but that's a staggering oversight.
Probably a bit too British me thinks.
http://comedycarpet.co.uk/
John Fountain is a copywriter.
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Twitter: @fountainjohn
