Each actor appreciated the fact that his character was meant to matter. Jones and Godfrey, more so than any of the other members of the platoon, epitomise the essential ethos of the Home Guard: age may have withered their bodies, but it has failed to weaken their spirit. One lags a beat or two behind the younger men, and the other lacks more than a little of their virile self-control, yet neither man’s courage can be questioned. Jones needs no prompting in order to volunteer to crawl out along a flag pole, or cling to the sail of a windmill, or to have grenades tossed down his trousers, while Godfrey, even though his mobility is somewhat limited, will not hesitate to risk his life in order to assist in the defence of his country and his cottage.
Jones, in particular, is a man on whom Mainwaring plainly dotes. ‘I admire his spirit,’ the proud captain purrs. ‘You can see the light of battle in his eyes. Very exhilarating.’ The deferential old campaigner can usually be relied on to make his relatively inexperienced and under-qualified commanding officer feel a little more authentic, even if, in the course of doing so, he also succeeds, inadvertently, in making him feel a little more uneasy as well:
JONES Oh, Captain Mainwaring! That’s the sort of talk I like to hear, sir! You know, you remind me of a major we had in the trenches in 1916. He was just like you. His name was Major Willoughby-Darcy, sir, and he didn’t like skulking, either. He couldn’t bear skulking. He didn’t like crouching and skulking at all, sir. He was a marvellous man! You ought to have seen him! He had his top-boots polished like glass, and he had a monocle in his eye glistening away there. Anyway, one day, we was all crouching down in the trench, and suddenly he says, ‘Look here, boys! I’ve had about enough of this!’ He says, ‘I’m going up on the parapet and walk about and show those damned Jerries I am not afraid of them!’ And he got up on the parapet, and –
MAINWARING Yes, I think I know what you’re going to tell me, Jones. He walked about on the parapet and never suffered a scratch.
JONES No, sir. He got shot. And he got shot in a very awkward place. He did a lot of crouching after that.11
The relationship is not without its tensions – Mainwaring can sometimes be cutting with his comments (‘No, I think you’re getting into the realms of fantasy again, Jones’), and Jones can sometimes be stingy with his sausages (‘There he goes again with his “realms of fantasy”! He’s playing with fire, you know – I control his meat!’) – but each man’s respect for the other ensures that no enmity will ever be allowed to fester. There are some, it is true, who regard the lance corporal’s inimitable brand of befuddled belligerence as a distinct liability: Frazer, for example, considers his comrade to be ‘a woolly-minded auld ditherer’, and Wilson, who is well aware of the fact that Jones has an unfortunate tendency to ‘get rather over-excited’, fears that he sometimes acts as a bad influence on his battle-starved captain. Mainwaring, however, continues to take great comfort from the knowledge that, if the Nazis ever do arrive, Jones will be right by his side, nostrils flaring, bayonet fixed, shouting, ‘Hande hoch! Hande hoch! Keep those handeys hoch!’
Godfrey, in such a circumstance, is likely to be a little further back; Mainwaring knows, however, that he, too, will stand up, or perhaps sit down, and be counted. There was a time, early on in the existence of the platoon, when Mainwaring tended to side with Frazer when the cruel-tongued Scot dismissed Godfrey as the kind of half-hearted soldier who was ‘as soft as a cream puff’, and this negative perception seemed to be confirmed when Godfrey confessed that he could not bring himself to harm a humble mouse, let alone a fellow human being (‘I can’t stand cranks!’ the outraged captain complained. ‘Can you imagine a man not wanting to fight? It isn’t normal!’), but it was not long before Mainwaring had the true measure of the old man:
MAINWARING Why have you never worn your medal?
GODFREY Well, it, er, seemed rather ostentatious.
MAINWARING Ostentatious? Well, if I’d won the MM, I should have been so proud I would have worn it on my chest for the whole world to see!
GODFREY Oh, that would’ve been all right, because you look like a hero.
WILSON It just shows, sir – you can’t go by appearances.
MAINWARING No, er, ah.12
Mainwaring likes to think of Godfrey as ‘a sort of father figure for the younger ones to lean on’, and Wilson, in this particular instance, is happy to concur (‘as long,’ he warns, ‘as they don’t lean on him too heavily’). In his youth, it appears, Godfrey was quite the gadabout, all wing-collar, white tie and cherubic smiles as he flitted from one festive function to the next, but he now leads a thoroughly unsensational life in retirement, rising at 7.30 a.m. each morning to brew the tea for his two sisters, tending to various chores in his garden, listening to a little light opera on the wireless and, of course, attending, whenever possible, the regular evening parades. He may give the impression of being resigned to his own decrepitude – his days are dogged not only by his weak bladder, but also by rheumatism, gout, headaches, indigestion and a drowsiness that borders on narcolepsy, and he has long given up trying to straighten his stooping back (because, he says, ‘at my age it’s already decided which way it wants to go’) – however, he is still sufficiently vain to refuse to wear his spectacles on the grounds that they make him look old.
The one thing about Godfrey that no degree of infirmity can ever change is the fact that he is a genuine English gentleman: dapperly dressed (at least when out of the drab denim uniform), discreet, magnanimous and honourable, he is completely impervious to all external pressures when it comes to doing the decent thing. When, for example, the platoon, in a moment of collective weakness, elects to remain in the pub and play darts rather than arrive on time for parade (‘The Nazis aren’t coming just at this minute,’ one of them laughs), it is Godfrey, alone, who decides to set off for the church hall:
FRAZER No you don’t! We’re in this together and we’re going to see it through together! I’m not going tae stand by and see any namby-pamby, creeper-crawling back!
GODFREY I’m sorry, Mr Frazer, but that sort of talk, you know, doesn’t influence me in the slightest bit. I’m going to do what is right.13
Godfrey will always endeavour to do what is right, even if the act of doing so exhausts him, and it is this, above all else, which makes him quietly inspirational.
He, like Jones, like Frazer, Walker and Pike, like Mainwaring and Wilson, is a thoroughly believable character, inhabiting a thoroughly believable world, real enough and rich enough to withstand the weekly examinations. Regular viewers could pause between each episode and map out the local landmarks – Swallow Bank, St Aldhelm’s Church Hall, the Novelty Rock Emporium, the Jolly Roger Ice Cream Parlour, Stone’s Amusement Arcade, the Plaza cinema, the Marigold Tea Rooms, the British Restaurant, the Red Lion pub, all of the shops along the high street. They could imagine the actions of the inhabitants – not just the members of the platoon, but also Hodges, and the vicar and the verger, and Mrs Pike, and the frighteningly flirtatious Mrs Fox, the frightfully common Edith Parish, the ever-shaky Mr Blewitt, the permanently scowling Mrs Yeatman, Alderman Bickerstaff the mayor, Mr Gordon the baldheaded town clerk – and even debate such patently unprovable issues as the nature of Mrs Mainwaring’s looks, the ration-friendly recipe for Dolly Godfrey’s upside-down cakes and, inevitably, the ‘truth’ of the relationship between Pike and his ‘Uncle’ Arthur. The fact that it all seemed to matter, even though it was just a fiction, was due not to mass delusion, but rather to mass affection.
THE COMPANY
We really did love working together. We all came from different walks of life. We all came from different areas of the business. We all contributed. Some of us weren’t natural playmates, but we were all great workmates.
LAN LAVENDER1
CHAPTER X
Thetford
Most of the British countryside, especially in the most vulnerable areas, is ideal for the kind of defence which you are called upon to organize. It is exactly the sort of cou
ntry which is a nightmare to the Nazi.
HOME GUARD TRAINING MANUAL1
Assuming that the production manager has tied up all the loose ends … you should find yourself and the crew at the right place, at the right time and, with any luck, on the right day.
BBCTV TRAINING MANUAL2
They used to call it ‘Croft’s weather’:3 every summer, when the cast and crew arrived in the little Norfolk town of Thetford for the annual fortnight of filming, the sun, in spite of the inevitable vagaries of the season, always seemed to be shining. The clement conditions would then continue, invariably, until all of the exterior shots for the forthcoming series had been gathered safely ‘in the can’. The world of Walmington-on-Sea, as a consequence, would always – regardless of what time of year the show went out – look brightly green and pleasant.
Location shooting revolved around a cluster of tried and trusted routines and rituals. The Bell Hotel, a former coaching inn situated in the heart of the old part of the town, served as the base for the principal members of the cast, while the smaller Anchor Hotel, which was just across the river, accommodated the remainder of the team. Saturday saw the arrival of the production crew, along with several caravans full of costumes and equipment, and the actors followed, via various routes and diverse modes of transport, on Sunday. The initial sights and sounds remained, year in, year out, much the same: David Croft and his production manager, Harold Snoad, could be seen attending to details both minor and major; Jimmy Perry could be heard reassuring people that his battered old medicine chest contained everything from throat sprays to senna pods; Arnold Ridley would be double-checking that his room overlooked the quiet river rather than the noisy courtyard; John Laurie and Ian Lavender would be chatting in the reception area; James Beck would be asking someone to spare him a cigarette; John Le Mesurier, Clive Dunn and Bill Pertwee would be busy exchanging short jokes and tall stories; Arthur Lowe would be inquiring anxiously if the local corner shop still stocked his precious cork-tipped Craven ‘A’s; and Frank Williams and Edward Sinclair would be bustling about in a manner that was strongly reminiscent of the vicar and the verger. Keys were collected, rooms explored, bags unpacked, and then, in the evening, old friendships were rekindled.
Each morning began with Arthur Lowe’s notoriously detailed analysis of the breakfast menu: ‘I see you have kippers,’ he would say to the worried-looking waitress. ‘Tell me, are they boil-in-the bag or are they’ – at which point his left hand would essay a friskily undulating motion – ‘real swim-about kippers?’4 He would also ask if the cold ham was tender – really tender – and note that, while he was perfectly happy to have his coffee strong, he preferred to take his tea weak – and that meant depositing only one tea bag in his pot rather than the two that the tea-boy seemed intent upon giving him. The other actors, who grew to relish this regular performance, were by this stage already finishing off their own meals and were starting to study the day’s itinerary and discuss their forthcoming scenes. John Le Mesurier, in spite of having stayed up most of the night telling stories and sipping spirits, would appear well prepared for the day’s work, whereas James Beck, because he had stayed up most of the night with ‘Le Mez’, would appear somewhat the worse for wear. A production assistant would eventually appear and announce that the coach was due to leave for the latest location in five minutes, and then the cast and crew would rise and make their way out of the hotel. Lowe, more often than not, would be the last to leave, and, when he did finally emerge, it was not uncommon for him to discover that the coach had departed without him. ‘These early morning starts play havoc with my lavatorial arrangements,’5 he would grumble to Jimmy Perry, who usually found himself having to wait behind in order to chauffeur the dilatory actor to the next site. (Perry bought him some packets of All-Bran, which, after some initial resistance – ‘I’m not touching that muck! It’s like eating the stuffing of a mattress!’ – alleviated the problem considerably: ‘You know,’ Lowe would sigh, sounding like some cheap advertisement, ‘All-Bran has totally changed my life!’)6
The daily shooting schedule, like all shooting schedules, involved lengthy periods of inactivity punctuated by brief but intensive bursts of action. Most of the cast would while away the idle time by sitting back in their chairs and reading – Arnold Ridley, for example, would lose himself in the theatrical and sporting columns of the Daily Telegraph, while John Laurie and his fast-learning protégé, Ian Lavender, would compete with each other to see who would be first to complete The Times crossword. Arthur Lowe’s focus, however, rarely seemed to be far away from food: elevenses, for example, called for at least a couple of rounds of sandwiches (usually bacon and sausage, but sometimes ham if it was ‘genuine Wiltshire’ and not that ‘packeted muck’7), which would then be followed by a full traditional English lunch and an afternoon tea that consisted of several rounds of cucumber sandwiches and a choice selection of Mr Kipling – and they really had to be Mr Kipling – cakes. Dinner, inevitably, was a topic that Lowe first began to ponder well before the end of the afternoon (there was wine to choose – a crisp, light, dry Ruffino, perhaps, or possibly, depending, of course, on the food, a soft, buttery, Mâcon – and another menu to peruse), but then again, as Ian Lavender confirmed, this was one meal that everyone came to cherish:
It was like a family gathering. There was the crew, the cast, the extras – who, incidentally, were never called, or treated like, ‘extras’; they were always referred to as the ‘extra-specials’, and were made to feel part of the team – and we’d all come back to the hotel and join up for this evening ritual. It actually really did serve an important purpose, because it gave us all the chance to talk. I remember asking David Croft why filming always took a fortnight even though, essentially, everything could probably have been wrapped up neatly enough in eight or nine days, and he said: ‘You haven’t seen each other for nine months. These two weeks aren’t just about filming; they’re also about all of you sitting around before, during and after dinner and talking, getting rid of all of your stories from last year – what you’ve been doing, what jobs, where you’ve been, what happened to so-and-so, all of that – so that by the time we get to rehearsals you haven’t got anything left to talk about and I’ve got your undivided attention.’ And, of course, it worked. A very canny man, David, very canny indeed.8
These regular periods of relaxation also helped the more mature members of the cast to recharge their batteries after spending so much of each day playing out in the fields at being soldiers. David Croft – whom some of the actors referred to affectionately as ‘the one-take major’9 – moved from one set-up to the next at what by normal film-making standards was a remarkably rapid pace: ‘I had to. We could only afford, I suppose, one-and-a-half days filming per episode, so we had to pack quite a bit into one fortnight, and I needed to be very efficient. I never, for example, took a safety shot – because once you did, and it didn’t work out quite right, you’d be up to take 7 or 8 in no time at all and you’re wasting an awful lot of time – and I rarely went further than take 3. I had to drive very hard, because if I didn’t keep going it all would have stopped completely.’10 It helped that Croft had, in Harold Snoad, such a reliable and well-organised ‘right-hand man’. ‘David and I got on extremely well and he had complete faith in me,’ recalled Snoad (who would later be responsible, as a respected producer-director in his own right, for such situation-comedies as Ever Decreasing Circles and Keeping Up Appearances).11 ‘For instance, on the whole he seldom saw any of the locations … before turning up on the actual filming day. I would then say “I thought we could put the camera here” – only one camera on location – “and they could come round that corner and we could pan them to the bridge … ” etc., and nine times out of ten he would totally agree with me and that is how he would shoot it.’12
Sequences were shot in a wide variety of East Anglian sites during the show’s nine-year run – including, for example, an old railway station in Weybourne (for ‘The Royal
Train’), a farm in Witney Green (for ‘All Is Safely Gathered In’) and a sand quarry in King’s Lynn (for ‘The Two and a Half Feathers’) – but the two most common locations were the town of Thetford itself and the Military Training Area in nearby Stanford. Each year, Snoad remembered, certain parts of the town had to undergo a routine transformation in order to pose as wartime Walmington-on-Sea.
Whenever we had to do any filming in the streets of Thetford it was necessary for the windows of any houses we saw in the background (and this could be quite a large number in some of the platoon marching sequences) to look correct – i.e. criss-crossed with sticky tape as they would have been during the war. When we first started filming the series we used to spend many a long hour trudging up the road visiting each house with rolls of sticky tape, explaining what we wanted and often having to do the job ourselves. We very quickly decided that this was far too time-consuming, so when the second series came along we duplicated copies of a letter explaining what we wanted, with a diagram of a typical finished window, and these were dropped through the letter boxes in envelopes along with a roll of brown sticky tape and a pound note for their trouble. And everybody obliged!13
The first time that Snoad saw Stanford – the parish of which had been appropriated by the War Office in 1942 as a base for Army exercises – he knew that he had found an extraordinarily serviceable site:
Not only was there some lovely countryside but there were some proper roads (which would pass as public roads – indeed, originally they had been public roads). There were also various buildings which had originally been part of small hamlets, but which had then been taken over by the MOD when they acquired the whole area, including cottages and a church. Some of the buildings had suffered somewhat having been used for target practice, but on the whole there was enough left to provide most of what we needed. There was also a river (which had gates which allowed us to flood the surrounding area when we needed Pike to be rescued having fallen into a bog) and a bridge. Colonel Cleasby-Thompson [the commanding officer of the camp] was extremely helpful and we were virtually given a free hand to do anything we needed.14
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