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Aimi MacDonald is a British actress who was born in Glasgow, Scotland on February 27, 1942. She was best known for her recurring role as "The Lovely" Aimi MacDonald in the television sketch comedy show At Last the 1948 Show (Rediffusion, 1967).
Background
Aimi MacDonald entered show business at the age of 14. She was initially a dancer, working in both Britain and the United States. She appeared in several musicals in London's West End and in cabaret Theatreprint programme for The Mating Game (Apollo Theatre, London, 1972).
At Last the 1948 Show
MacDonald came to national attention in At Last the 1948 Show. In between the longer sketches, and at the opening and closing of the show, she would present a short piece on the seemingly inexhaustable theme of her own loveliness. She has been described as "a sort of low-key British Goldie Hawn" Aimi MacDonald - "The Avengers" (Hawn having risen to fame at about the same time in the American show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In).
The sole female
The 48 Show was one of a number of productions with a predominantly male cast (in this instance, John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman) whose origins lay in the Cambridge Footlights in the late 1950s and early 60s. With Do Not Adjust Your Set, also created by Rediffusion, it was the precursor of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in which Carol Cleveland was, in her own words, the "blonde stooge", and, in many respects, the successor of the radio series I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, in which Jo Kendall had been the only woman. The female star of Do Not Adjust Your Set was Denise Coffey.
Macdonald's highly contrived caricature of a "dumb blonde", with her hair curved around almost to the edges of her lips, stood apart from the core of 48; she did not contribute to the sketches, nor is she credited with any of the writing of the show. However, in retrospect, although the style and content of 48 were highly influential, Macdonald's solo contributions (sometimes joined by a small troupe of showgirls that included the actress Mary Maude, subsequently in Southern Television's Freewheelers) were in fact one its most distinctively memorable aspects.
"The lovely Aimi Macdonald" as a catchphrase
Even into the 21st century, when a DVD of the 48 Show was released, the phrase "I'm the lovely Aimi Macdonald" could still trip dippily off the lips of middle aged people who had seen the programme as schoolchildren. With the possible exception of some lines in the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch ("Try telling the young people of today that ..."), it was the only catchphrase to survive from the show; indeed, although several phrases from individual sketches in Monty Python entered the language See, for example, Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations (1991) 49:10-14, Nigel Rees observed in 1980 that "the new breed of university-graduate comedians often eschews [catchphrases] altogether" Nigel Rees (1980) Very Interesting ... But Stupid!.
Other work
Macdonald's more conventional acting roles on television included appearances in episodes of The Avengers, The Saint, Man About the House and Dixon of Dock Green. She played the part of Wendy in the film Take a Girl Like You (1970), based on the novel by Kingsley Amis. Stage roles in London included those of Susie in George and Ira Gershwin's Lady Be Good (with Lionel Blair in 1968) and Honey Tooks in Robin Hawdon's long-running farce, The Mating Game (1972).
In the 1970s Macdonald appeared occasionally on the radio panel game Just a Minute - again, as the sole female panellist of four, being subjected (as were others) to the exaggerated jibes of comedian Kenneth Williams that women should not be permitted to take part Welcome to "Just a Minute".
References
External links
At Last the 1948 Show
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Tim Brooke-Taylor — Graham Chapman — John Cleese — Marty Feldman — Aimi MacDonald
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