British Comedy Classics

Mike Reid - The Guvnor's Last Stand - Live

Mike Reid - The Guvnor’s Last Stand - Live - DVD

Mike Reid is best known to many as Frank Butcher in the BBC tv soap, Eastenders. But older readers may remember Reid presenting the children’s tv show Runaround or for the one-hit wonder UK Top 10 single in 1975 – Ugly Duckling.

But before he reinvented himself as Pat Butcher’s husband, he was best known as a successful stand-up comedian in the 1970s.  He appeared in the original 1970’s tv show, The Comedians along with the likes of Frank Carson and Bernard Manning.

The Guvnor’s Last Stand showcases Mike Reid’s last stand-up shows in November 2006. For the first-time on DVD this release is a compilation of the best of two live shows + bonus material from a show in Chatham in Kent – all from November 2006.

The DVD is a good testament of the kind of adult stand-up comedy that Mike Reid should be remembered for.  His cockney accent and gravel-voiced belly-laugh jokes about his ugly wife, getting drunk and reflections on life had me laughing out loud.

These live recordings include his very last stand up performance before his untimely death in July 2007 while on holiday in Marbella of a suspected heart attack.

Mike Reid - The Guvnor’s Last Stand – Live shows a master comedian on stage at the Cliff Pavillion in Southend in 2006 and the last ever recorded footage at Bury Cottage, Stanstead in November 2006.

Mike Reid - The Guvnor’s Last Stand – Live is out now.

Released by Anchor Bay, approx. 68 minutes long.