The Worst Comedy Acts Of All Time - Mike & Bernie Winters

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Brother comedians so painfully unfunny they even hated each other, with one replacing the other with a real shaggy dog to support his shaggy dog stories. To be fair, their animosity was primarily due to Bernie having had an affair that he had kept concealed even from his sibling for twenty years before it was exposed by the media. Their success was very much an overnight one. After several theatre audiences had found them unfunny, the brothers (real surname Weinstien), somehow got themselves a slot on a televised Royal Variety Show, and again, the overall success of a big variety show fuelled the egos and careers of individual participants. They had a standard straight man / funny man patter. Mike would go on stage alone, singing, only to have Bernie turn up after a few minutes to ruin his set. Bernie would often just stick his head out of the wings or through the curtains and gurn, with his buck teeth protruding, and make a loud long keening noise, ‘Eeeeee’. If his brother protested. Bernie would slap or poke his face and threaten him with further violence unless he could carry on being an irritating nuisance. This cod-bullying somehow passed for comedy from 1962 to 1978 when the Brothers had their career crushing feud. Mike Winters went to Australia, working as a successful boxing promoter. Bernie carried on going ‘Eeeeee’ at British audiences wondering how much longer they had to wait for the news to start. His brother gone, (though they reconciled at least unprofessionally in the late 1980’s) Bernie suddenly had a new partner, a fully grown Saint Bernard dog called Schnorbitz, who had little to do but walk on stage looking adorable, gaining audience hearts and making everyone go ‘aw’. The dog was a blatant symbol of emotional blackmail. Audiences tuned in to see Schnorbitz and put up with Winters for the privilege. Somehow the dog helped audiences forget how vacuous the Bernie Winters show was. Mike Winters was suddenly irrelevant. I just wanted to see Schnorbitz swapped with the rabid Saint Bernard in Stephen King’s horror novel, Cujo. Arthur Chappell