BILKO SPOTTER

Every idiot gets famous for 15 minutes, even thanks to the BBC, and they should know better.

An article that wouldn't even be fit for the Daily Fail, turned up on their site. It's all about...ho ho, hee hee, NOT FUNNY, some British twit who wishes he could've sucked off Phil Silvers.

PHIL WHO?

Hold on.

Before continuing...let's run that name over again. PHIL FUCKIN' SILVERS.

In America, this guy is justly forgotten. There's a dwindling fan base for his stupid show, and that's almost completely among people who are heading for the glue factory.

The show wasn't very funny then, and it's deadly now. It was driven by the Silvers "Top Banana" personality. Silvers played the hyper conman, selfish, smarmy, scheming and obnoxious. Every episode of the show was the same: Bilko tries to bilk somebody, scam somebody or sneak something. He's aided by his lunkhead sergeants and privates, who are happily doing nothing at an army base in America (far from Korea or any other trouble spot). His platoon seems made up of 40 and 50 year-old out-of-shape clods from Brooklyn. Some roles were played by genuinely amusing character actors, but nobody's amusing when the scripts stink, and when they mostly are forbidden to have a punchline because Silvers has to get it all.

Frankly, this twit in England is as nuts as somebody in America who can't live without "Only Fools and Horses." Or even "Steptoe and Son." What's the big fucking deal? GET OVER IT.

Instead, this twit has started a "museum" which of course, couldn't survive in the real world at all. It's just a room of bullshit tied to his main business which is, no surprise, owning a garbage store that sells crappy memorabilia to shut-ins and nerds.

IF I'M BEING HONEST, it's pretty fucking boring to run across fanatics who like to dress up as Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers, or who still get sap-faced when talking about "hilarious" episodes of "The Honeymooners" and "I Love Lucy." It's disgusting then the object is a Phil Silvers or "Our" Joe Besser or some other faded personality that some pathetic fool adopts and begins to champion.

But this is how you get attention in this idiot world: find something nobody else cares about, make it your life's work, be a pest and write publicity releases, and somebody might come to your door (and store) to interview you. And if you're nice, they might tolerantly call you eccentric and not an asshole, which is what you really are.

As Frankie Howerd would say, THIS guy is "pale and wan. PALE and WAN."

This guy also wouldn't be bothered with Frankie, or any British comedian. No, like some psychotic French git who can't shut up about Jerry Lewis, this guy finds a fascination in some low cultural icon an ocean away...just to be DIFFERENT.

This clueless jerk thinks Phil Silvers was a shy, nice guy? Not really. A friend of mine interviewed Silvers. Silvers was pleasant for a half hour, and then abruptly changed personalities and said, "OK, that's enough, get outta here." Something like that. My friend hadn't said or done anything wrong; it's the nature of the beast.

This revisionist bullshit about Bilko just wanting to provide for his mates? No, it was just a variation on the "gang" mentality (see Leo Gorcey lording over his dimwit Bowery Boys). Nothing lovable about it. There's a very fine line between a sitcom character being such a jerk you LOVE to see him get kicked in the ass by the show's end, and someone so lovable you DON'T want him hurt at all. Most sitcoms allowed a weirdo to just be weird ("The Addams Family" comes to mind) without there being any schemes and scams, or moments of pathos because the lead has lost his money (again) or had a horrendous fight with his wife and/or kids.

Gosh, an ancient vaudevillian died, hope you can TAKE IT.

Look, fan boys do serve a purpose. In this case, this clod now owns all the precious junk Silvers accumulated. Which means for another 20 or 30 years, ONE asshole will be fondly archiving this crap. After that, it goes in the dustbin. Or it all goes cheap on EBAY.

Many celebrities, or if they're dead it's their relatives, send their "papers" and "memorabilia" to a college or to some library or other. Most find that the Smithsonian or Lincoln Center Library ain't interested. Usually the papers are just stored in boxes and nobody ever bothers to go through the maze of forms to fill out in order to see them. And who wants to rummage through Silvers' old receipts, letters and other junk? To write the definitive bio on somebody nobody cares about anymore??

The BBC promotes a moon-faced mournful moron who has a hardon for a mediocre dead comedian.

This clown admits that Silvers was not too good in movies. Nope, he wasn't. Whatever he did on stage is long forgotten. Essentially, Silvers is dwindlingly known for "Sgt. Bilko," and most normal people under 50 could care less. There's so much shit out there from television's "Golden Age," no way can anyone have time for it all. Most don't even want to. A sitcom in black and white, from the 50's, and with no dirty jokes or cleavage? Fuck off.

No, we don't need more "BILKO" in the world. The show is irrelevant. There are heroic misanthropes in comedy (W.C. Fields comes to mind) and television has, and will always have, obnoxiously colorful jerks who at least reflect the human condition (from Steptoe to Alf, and from Sanford to Archie Bunker).

"Bilko" is just an inept hustler, and not nearly as much of a hapless sap of the Universe as "Ralph Kramden," the perpetual sucker for a "get rich quick scheme" on "The Honeymooners." As Kramden, Jackie Gleason was often an unpleasant, stupid lout. He did threaten his wife with "To the MOON, Alice." But the key to the show was the ending of most every episode, which showed him contrite, and he'd hug his wife and tell her, "Baby, you're the greatest." Bilko by contrast lived with middle-aged men, and was nasty to all of them. A total user. And being a fan of Phil Silvers? That marks a total loser.