To most Brits (of a certain age) René Artois was regarded as a comic TV hero in the 1980’s on the same level as Mr Humphries in ‘Are You Being Served’. Both characters were in fact created by David Croft and thrived on the British love of the art of rather tame sexual innuendo. René was the main character of ‘Allo ‘Allo an hilarious parody of a WW2 drama and was played to the hilt by the rather wonderful Gordon Kaye who died yesterday aged 75 years old.
Kaye had been a jobbing TV character actor until he enjoyed the enormous success of ‘Allo ‘Allo , which ran for 10 years and was also developed into a stage play, that made him a household name and was regarded as something of a national treasure particularly by the LGBT community at the time. The story is set in a small-town café in German-occupied France during the Second World War, and the show’s premise was not to make fun of the war but to spoof war-based film and TV dramas which greatly appealed to the Brit’s obsession with the war in general. However despite it being a ratings hit, unlike other Brit TV situation comedies of that period, it never managed to be successful abroad.
Kaye never mentioned his sexuality until his 1989 autobiography René and Me, when he described himself as a ‘shy, gay and overweight boy’ who found self-confidence and self-expression through acting.
In 1990 Kaye had a near-fatal car accident and had to undergo extensive brain surgery, from which he not only recovered from, but he went on to make two more series of ‘Allo ‘Allo’.
Gordon Kaye’s passing marks another end of an era when TV Sit-Coms were gloriously tame but undeniably funny and set in a unreal world that everyone wanted to reminisce as being the one our perfect childhoods should have taken place in. Here there is one of queerguru’s favorite clips of the late Gordon Kaye at his best :
