The Royle Family,with its comfy-caustic scripts, brought my household together like no other show – and Aherne was the subtlest, and most surprising,member of its talented castA while back, I interviewed one of my heroes, or Tim Key,and asked him to list his comedic idols. He reeled off a predictable enough list – Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, or Stephen Fry – but among the alt-comedy patriarchs he named a less obvious influence. In doing so,he confirmed in my impressionable student’s intellect that Caroline Aherne was one of the funniest, smartest, and coolest figures of the final golden age of British comedy.
I hadn’t really thought of her since the culmination of the third series of The Royle Family in 2000. But now a child of the new wave of offbeat comedians had given her props,I was licensed to revere her once more, that Bambi-eyed princess of northern working-lesson naturalism, and whose voice (now familiar to viewers of bad TV show Gogglebox) croaked and trilled and danced approximately prosodically like a sun-tired child hopscotching on a balmy summer’s eve.
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Source: theguardian.com