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Anything for a Laugh (Harbour $28.95)
Pierre Berton, that prolific guy who used to wear a bow tie, is less famous in the '90s. Allan Fotheringham will soon be approaching fuddy-duddy status. Jack Webster is no longer heard from. And BCTV has dumped longtime sportscaster Bernie Pascall in favour of wisecracking youth. Old guys, the ones who fought wars, cut down trees and supposedly under-estimated women, are old news. No wonder Peter Newman always wears a cap. "There aren't many icons left,"; says Eric Nicol, who arrived in Vancouver in 1921. "We've got the Spice Girls and then what?";
After serving with the RCAF, enduring one year at the Sorbonne and writing BBC comedies for two years, Nicol joined The Province as a columist in 1951, initially writing five times per week. After winning more Leacock Medals for Humour than anyone else, Nicol began to fall from fashion in the permissive early Seventies. "Who wants to read stuff written by a person who has never smoked anything, who has spurned both beer and booze, has been faithful to his spouse, has never been arrested for crime...";
Beset by family troubles, Nicol shocked his readership by producing something serious, Letters to My Son, a book based on Lord Chesterfield's famous tome to his wayward son. "Although life is a box of chocolates according to Forrest Gump,"; Nicol recalls, "what they expected to get from me was a soft centre. Instead they bit into a sourball. "I felt badly about this. I had violated one of the first rules of surviving as a writer: continue to give your readers what they have learned to expect from you. If you are Stephen King, you give them horror, book after book. Margaret Atwood, feminist turmoil. Farley Mowat, a torrid love affair with wolves, whales, whatever the Maritimers are slaughtering as a surrogate for having a team in the National Hockey League.";
During his 40 years of writing for The Province, Nicol never had a contract, he never took a holiday and he never missed a deadline. But as a self-avowed 'devout determinist', an agnostic 'hooked on antique principles', Nicol was determined not to change with the times. After 35 years, the droll punster was retired by Pacific Press at 65. After that he wrote one column per week, reduced to one column per month, then zilch. "The print humorist is an endangered species. Every year I expect to receive a Canadian Wildlife Federation calendar with my picture on it."; Self-deprecating to a fault ("In the feast of life, I have been a digestive biscuit";) and theatrically prudish, Nicol has accumulated the wisdom of the fool, the jester. It shows throughout his new collection of memoirs called Anything for a Laugh (Harbour $28.95)
As Nicol looks back in humour, his quips about his parents, his two marriages, raising children and the importance of financial security reveal someone who is deeply sensitive, often to the point of excruciating shyness, apolitical and always wary of authority.
Faced with any duress or unpleasantness, he is self-protectively philosophical, a trait that might prove irritating except for the fact that Nicol's viewpoints are witty, unfailingly original and occasionally downright odd. "I can take pride in nothing,"; he writes. "It's a sort of low-grade humility."; Anything for a Laugh isn't destined to knock Margaret Atwood off her perch, but it's an amusing, often shrewd book-one worthy of some pride. Having written more than 30 books, dozens of plays, countless BBC radio skits and thousands of newspaper columns, Nicol is no longer a household name, but the old guy is still funny. 1-55017-187-9
[Alan Twigg / BCBW WINTER 1998]
After serving with the RCAF, enduring one year at the Sorbonne and writing BBC comedies for two years, Nicol joined The Province as a columist in 1951, initially writing five times per week. After winning more Leacock Medals for Humour than anyone else, Nicol began to fall from fashion in the permissive early Seventies. "Who wants to read stuff written by a person who has never smoked anything, who has spurned both beer and booze, has been faithful to his spouse, has never been arrested for crime...";
Beset by family troubles, Nicol shocked his readership by producing something serious, Letters to My Son, a book based on Lord Chesterfield's famous tome to his wayward son. "Although life is a box of chocolates according to Forrest Gump,"; Nicol recalls, "what they expected to get from me was a soft centre. Instead they bit into a sourball. "I felt badly about this. I had violated one of the first rules of surviving as a writer: continue to give your readers what they have learned to expect from you. If you are Stephen King, you give them horror, book after book. Margaret Atwood, feminist turmoil. Farley Mowat, a torrid love affair with wolves, whales, whatever the Maritimers are slaughtering as a surrogate for having a team in the National Hockey League.";
During his 40 years of writing for The Province, Nicol never had a contract, he never took a holiday and he never missed a deadline. But as a self-avowed 'devout determinist', an agnostic 'hooked on antique principles', Nicol was determined not to change with the times. After 35 years, the droll punster was retired by Pacific Press at 65. After that he wrote one column per week, reduced to one column per month, then zilch. "The print humorist is an endangered species. Every year I expect to receive a Canadian Wildlife Federation calendar with my picture on it."; Self-deprecating to a fault ("In the feast of life, I have been a digestive biscuit";) and theatrically prudish, Nicol has accumulated the wisdom of the fool, the jester. It shows throughout his new collection of memoirs called Anything for a Laugh (Harbour $28.95)
As Nicol looks back in humour, his quips about his parents, his two marriages, raising children and the importance of financial security reveal someone who is deeply sensitive, often to the point of excruciating shyness, apolitical and always wary of authority.
Faced with any duress or unpleasantness, he is self-protectively philosophical, a trait that might prove irritating except for the fact that Nicol's viewpoints are witty, unfailingly original and occasionally downright odd. "I can take pride in nothing,"; he writes. "It's a sort of low-grade humility."; Anything for a Laugh isn't destined to knock Margaret Atwood off her perch, but it's an amusing, often shrewd book-one worthy of some pride. Having written more than 30 books, dozens of plays, countless BBC radio skits and thousands of newspaper columns, Nicol is no longer a household name, but the old guy is still funny. 1-55017-187-9
[Alan Twigg / BCBW WINTER 1998]
Submitted on July 7, 2003 in By David.
