VIDEO: The Nairobi Trio performs "Solfeggio"

Sixty years and three months ago, Newton Minow, then Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told a convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, that television was a  "vast wasteland". Things have gotten worse since then. Now, daytime TV offereings such as The View makes one pine for the bad old days when you could at least watch some shows (live and in glorious black-and-white) which were entertaining, without being political or (shudder) politically correct.

Every now and then, one could see real creativity and talent. Six years before Mr Minow spoke, I used to watch Ernest Edward Kovacs doing experimental and often spontaneous live comedy on the curiously-named Ernie Kovacs Show. [Shouldn't you have been in school? Ed.]

Yes, well... Mr Kovacs delighted his viewers with such characters as Matzoh Hepplewhite (a hapless magician), Percy Dovetonsils (a poet who may just have been "gay", although we used other words, in those days) and Mr Question Man, who inspired Johnny Carson's "Carnac the Magnificent".

My favourite recurring skit, however, didn't show Mr Kovacs' face at all. He was just one of three derby-hatted apes who made up the Nairobi Trio. The shtick was always the same, more or less. They mimed, mechanically and rhythmically, playing Robert Maxwell's "Solfeggio". Try to watch this without laughing!

  

Ernie Kovacs has been credited as an influence by many individuals and shows, including Johnny Carson, as well as David Letterman, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Jim Henson and The Muppet Show, Conan O'Brien, Andy Kaufman, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Pee-wee's Playhouse.

Chevy Chase thanked Mr Kovacs during his acceptance speech for his Emmy award for SNL. While Ernie and his wife Edie Adams received Emmy nominations for best performances in a comedy series during 1957, his talent was not recognized formally until after his death in a car accident in 1962. A short time later, he received a posthumous Emmy for Outstanding Electronic Camera Work, as well as an award from the Directors' Guild.

A quarter-century later, Mr Kovacs was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television. The Pulitzer Prize–winning television critic, William Henry III, wrote "Kovacs was more than another wide-eyed, self-ingratiating clown. He was television's first significant video artist."

Ernie Kovacs' particular brand of insanity helps to keep us sane in an increasingly insane world. He's gone, but not forgotten!