Cultural Dessert

'Comedy Carpet' by Gordon Young

14 October 2011

Comedy Carpet, Blackpool

It was great to have the opportunity to see Blackpool's new Comedy Carpet – an amazing artwork by Gordon Young featuring the catchphrases, jokes and names of more than 1,000 comedians which was unveiled by Ken Dodd at the foot of Blackpool Tower earlier this week. There has been massive worldwide interest in the Comedy Carpet: it was temporarily the most searched for term on Google. The ‘carpet’ is built from concrete and coloured granite and designed to withstand both the thousands of feet that will walk across it and the Blackpool weather. Encountering it for the first time is a compelling experience: the various catchphrases are all in different fonts, colours and sizes and face in different directions so you have to keep walking around to see the words that are initially upside down to you. This draws you in as you keep spotting another familiar phrase and trying to remember who said it. While there were plenty of old favourites I found quite a few lines I didn’t recognise and I kept smiling as I got the gist of another pun or witty aphorism for the first time. I suspect we will all have our favourites and I certainly found myself returning to the large words “I’m playing all the right notes – but not necessarily in the right order”. See: http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/lifestyle/legend_unveils_comedy_carpet_1_3857375

Labels: Comedy, Exhibitions

posted by Robin Simpson @ 4:16 pm