Stanley Unwin was a British comedian who invented his own comic language, “Unwinese”, referred to in the film Carry On Regardless (1961) as “gobbledygook”. Unwinese was a corrupted form of English in which many of the words were altered in playful and humorous ways, as in its description of Elvis Presley and his contemporaries as being “wasp-waist and swivel-hippy”. Unwin claimed that the inspiration came from his mother, who once told him that on the way home she had “falolloped (fallen) over” and “grazed her kneeclabbers”.
Unwin’s early career and training introduced him to wireless and radio communication, and this, coupled with work in the BBC’s War Reporting Unit from about 1944, ultimately proved to be his passage into the media. While based in Birmingham from 1947 to 1951, Unwin made his first, accidental, transmission. While testing equipment, he gave the microphone to broadcaster F.R. ‘Buck’ Buckley, who ad-libbed a spoof commentary about an imaginary sport called “Fasche”. Buckley then introduced Unwin as “Codlington Corthusite”, whereupon Unwin continued the sketch in Unwinese. The recording was broadcast on Pat Dixon’s Mirror of the Month programme and a favourable audience reaction led to the commissioning of another sketch in which Unwin, playing an inhabitant of Atlantis, was interviewed about life in the sunken city. A letter of praise from Joyce Grenfell, whom Unwin admired, gave him confidence and he determined on a career in show business.
After the war, while in Egypt and recording a series of shows by Frankie Howerd, Unwin stood in for the comedian when Howerd fell ill. Unwin’s next major breakthrough came when producer Roy Speer introduced him to the comedian Ted Ray. Once Ray had heard Unwin talking, he said simply: “I want him in the series” – namely, The Spice of Life, co-starring June Whitfield and Kenneth Connor. During the mid-1950s, Unwin performed in about a dozen shows for Speer and made the acquaintance of Johnnie Riscoe and his daughter, Patsy, who would become his managers for the rest of his career. By the end of the 1950s, Unwin had ventured into the film industry, being given a part in the Cardew Robinson film Fun at St. Fanny’s (1956).
In 1968, Unwin was invited to narrate “Happiness Stan”, a six song fairy tale about a boy of the same name, taking up the entire side two of the Small Faces’ album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, which reached number 1 in the UK Albums Chart. In 1969, Unwin appeared in Gerry Anderson’s “Supermarionation” TV series The Secret Service, both in person and as the voice of the puppet character Father Stanley Unwin, whose appearance was based on him. Episodes typically comprised one or more scenes in which the character of Unwin would attempt to baffle opponents with his gobbledegook. When Lew Grade, Anderson’s financial backer and head of distributor ITC, was introduced to the Unwinese dialogue, he cancelled the production on the basis that he believed viewers would not understand what Unwin was saying, despite the fact that such confusion was intentional.
Though professionally retired in his later decades, Unwin still continued to make occasional appearances. In the 1970s, he appeared on The Max Bygraves Show on ITV, sometimes speaking normally and sometimes in gobbledegook. In the final episode, Bygraves tested a number of gobbledegook phrases on Unwin, who claimed that he could not understand them. In 1985, Unwin recorded with Suns of Arga on their album Ark of the Argans, providing spoken word accompaniment in Unwinese on the first three tracks. In 1987, he recorded again with Suns of Arqa on their track “Erasmus Meets The Earthling”, featured on their album Seven, and a remixed version of this track was released again in the 1990s. He appeared as himself in a hospital scene of Inside Victor Lewis-Smith. In 1994, Unwin collaborated with British dance music act Wubble-U on their single “Petal”; on its re-release in 1998, the track ranked number 55 in the UK Chart. In 1998, Unwin made a cameo appearance in the Aardman Animations series Rex the Runt, as an accountant who speaks largely in fairly standard English, occasionally lapsing inexplicably into Unwinese.
Unwinese, also known as “Basic Engly Twenty Fido”, was an ornamented and mangled form of English in which many of the words were deliberately corrupted in a playful and humorous manner, but which was still largely comprehensible to the listener. Unwin’s performances could be hilarious yet disorientating, where the meaning and context were conveyed in a disguised and picturesque style. For example, in his talk on music, “Populode of the Musicolly”, Unwin says: “They do in fact go back to Ethelrebbers Unready, King Albert’s burnt capers where, you know, the toast fell in and the dear lady did get a very cross knit and smote him across the eardrome excallybold. The great sword which riseyhuff and Merlin forevermore was the beginning of the Great Constitution of the Englishspeaking peeploders of these islone, oh yes.” Unwinese has been compared to Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poetry, such as Jabberwocky, where the sentences sound superficially like English when read aloud, but their precise meaning is unclear.
