The newspapers duly alerted their readers to the imminent arrival of ‘the last of the best long-running comedy series of them all’,18 and Peter Tinniswood previewed the series for the Radio Times:
I could happily take up the whole of this issue … writing about this series. Sufficient to say that this is a flag-carrier for all that is finest in television comedy. The writers … have created a pageant of characters who are near-Dickensian in their richness and warmth.
The splendid cast … has created a wholly believable world in which comedy of the highest order has been allowed to bloom and flourish. They are all irreplaceable.
I believe the loss of this programme from television is tragic. Bring it back, Mr Producer, please.19
The opening episode, ‘Wake-Up Walmington’, went out on BBC1 at 8.10 p.m. on Sunday, 2 October 1977. It was a slightly shaky start: not all of the performances were up to their usual standards (Arthur Lowe, for example, acted at a postprandial pace, while John Le Mesurier both looked and sounded disturbingly weak), and the editing was also uncharacteristically clumsy, but the writing, reassuringly, was as apposite as ever. The close-knit world of Walmington-on-Sea is depicted as being in the process of unravelling: the townspeople have taken to calling the Home Guard ‘the geriatric fusiliers’, the platoon’s morale has plummeted to rock bottom, and a rattled Mr Blewitt (‘You wouldn’t have done that to me if I was fifty-seven years younger!’) stands up to Hodges (‘I hate you!’) and reduces the normally cocksure warden to tears (‘See? He’s got feet of clay!’). The old bully sits down and sobs:
HODGES I can’t take it any more, Napoleon! D’you know, I’m the most hated man in the town! Nobody’s taking this war seriously!
MAINWARING I agree with you there.
WILSON Well, you know, it’s only human nature, sir. The Home Guard’s been formed two years and there hasn’t been an invasion yet. And people are beginning to think we’re just wasting our time.
MAINWARING That’s exactly what Germany wants, isn’t it? Lull us into a false sense of security, and catch us when we’re off guard. Something’s got to be done about it!20
Mainwaring’s ‘solution’ – ‘Operation Wake-Up’ – has the platoon, and Hodges, dress up as a band of ‘cut-throats and desperadoes’ in order to shake the community out of its complacency (MAINWARING: ‘Tell the men to march like a rabble in a shifty and furtive manner.’ JONES: ‘Very good, sir. Platoon: in a shifty and furtive manner, like a rabble, quick march!’).
Subsequent episodes saw the show recover much of its old form. ‘The Making of Private Pike’, for example, featured a memorable little scene in which Wilson – who has jumped to quite the wrong conclusion after hearing that Pike was out all night with a young ATS woman in Mainwaring’s new staff car – attempts, for the first time, to have an adult conversation with his ‘nephew’:
WILSON Well, now, Frank. About last night …
PIKE I know we shouldn’t have taken it. But we didn’t do the car no harm.
WILSON Yes, well, I’m not talking about the car. I’m talking about the girl. A lot of people will know that you spent the night together. And a lot of people will tell you that what you did was wrong.
PIKE (defensively) I was pushing – she was steering!
WILSON Well … But, to my way of thinking, what you both did wasn’t ‘evil’. Do you follow me?
PIKE (sounding confused) It was nine miles …
WILSON You see, our sort of society has a rather rigid framework, and, er, if we don’t stay within it, people point the finger at us.
PIKE I had to work hard to get up Grant’s Hill. Twenty yards at a time …
WILSON Yes, well, just remember this, Frank: I understand. Now, we haven’t been too close, I know, just recently, but now I feel we’re sort of – d’you know what I mean? – kindred spirits. Sort of, you know, sort of ‘men of the world’. Do you feel like that, too?
PIKE (still puzzled) Y – Yeah. Kindred spirits. Men of the world.
WILSON Good lad.21
‘I’ll never forget doing that scene with John,’ said Ian Lavender. ‘David and Jimmy had just come up with this new dialogue – two or three pages of it – and we didn’t have time to learn it or rehearse it – we just got on and did it. And it felt like the most natural thing in the world – because the writing was so good, and because we knew each other so well. It was terrific. Absolutely terrific.’22
The series moved freely from style to style. ‘Knights of Madness’ was an elaborate and effective prop-based romp that featured a march by Mr Yeatman and his Sea Scouts, a keep-fit display by Mrs Yeatman and the ladies’ netball team (‘Come away from there, Frazer!’), a performance by the Eastgate Morris Dancers, and ‘a spectacular medieval extravaganza’ – inspired by England’s patron saint – involving the Home Guard (WILSON: ‘Have you decided who’s going to play St George?’ MAINWARING: ‘I should have thought that was obvious’) and the ARP wardens (‘Right, Napoleon – you’ve asked for it!’). ‘The Miser’s Hoard’ was a far more intimate, character-driven piece about Mainwaring’s bid to persuade Frazer to exchange his stash of sovereigns for an annuity (‘Cap’n Mainwaring, there’s just one thing I want tae say t’ye: if you think you’re goin’ tae get your hands on my gold, you can think again. I don’t trust banks, I don’t trust burghers and I don’t trust you! That’s all I want tae say, thank ye!’). ‘Number Engaged’ – the penultimate episode – was a strong, simple story – shot mainly on location – about the platoon’s attempts to dislodge a bomb that had become entangled in some telegraph wires (‘Uncle Arthur – mum’s going to hear all about this!’).
An average of 10.5 million23 tuned in each week, and, although John Le Mesurier’s gaunt appearance continued to act as an unsettling distraction – ‘He looked so ill,’ said his wife, ‘that the public thought he was on his last legs, and the press came down to Ramsgate to take photographs of him at home to prove that he was still alive and kicking’24 – the general response, so far, had been extremely good. Dennis Potter, for example, commented in the Sunday Times:
This ill-fitted platoon remains just about the last reliable example of the classic television comedies of a decade and more ago: that is, a show which provokes authentic laughs instead of uncomfortable sniggers, and one that grows out of the lasting eccentricities and memorable quirks of its acceptably imbecilic characters rather than the mostly salacious one-line gags which pass for dialogue in … later models …
We shall miss these shambling warriors when they fade away as all old soldiers are supposed to do.25
The final episode, ‘Never Too Old’, was a real labour of love. Croft and Perry had wanted it to be funny but moving, and do justice to the show, the characters and the actors, and honour the spirit of the real-life Home Guard, and come to an elegant end rather than an awkward halt, and, thrillingly, it managed to do all of those things, within 30 minutes of consummate situation-comedy, with wit, good taste and compassion.
It went out on the evening of 13 November, Remembrance Sunday, and opened with an unexpected admission from Jones: ‘I have fallen in love, Captain Mainwaring. With a woman.’ Mainwaring is shaken by this news – ‘I can’t be expected to face a Nazi invasion with a woolly-headed corporal!’ – and even more shaken when he is told that the woman in question is none other than Walmington-on-Sea’s most flirtatious widow, Mrs Fox (whose relationship with the old soldier had previously been described as ‘purely teutonic’). Once Mainwaring has established that this is not a passing fancy – ‘Oh, no,’ says Jones, ‘it’s definitely not a passing fancy – I’ve fancied her for seventeen years!’ – and sat patiently through the butcher’s bout of self-doubt – ‘Does she love me for myself, or does she love me for my meat?’ – he concludes that the union might actually work (‘After all,’ he confides to Wilson. ‘They’re both the same class’). Once Mrs Fox (played by Pamela Cundell with just the right air of innocent menace) has persuaded a distinctly ill-at-ease Mainwaring to act
as her father (MRS FOX: ‘You wouldn’t give me away, would you?’ MAINWARING: ‘Wouldn’t I?’), the wedding ceremony goes ahead (MRS FOX: ‘Mr Mainwaring – I think I’m going to cry.’ MAINWARING: ‘Oh, do try not to’), and then, at the reception, Mainwaring offers the newly-married couple a toast: ‘I wish you both the very best of luck, and may you be as happy as I have been with my own dear wife, who unfortunately can’t be with us this afternoon.’
The atmosphere in the studio was made all the more special for the cast by the fact that the two writers had arranged for as many wives and partners who had Equity cards – such as Arthur Lowe’s wife, Joan Cooper (who played Dolly Godfrey), and Arnold Ridley’s wife, Althea Parker (who played an unnamed wedding guest) – to join the performers in front of the camera for the scene set at the reception. ‘David [Croft] tends to hide a lot of his feelings,’ observed Ian Lavender, ‘but, deep down, he’s a sentimental old bugger.’26 Croft, who had returned to direct the final episode, acknowledged: ‘It was a very emotional evening. The production gallery was unusually quiet throughout the recording, and, as the end drew near, there were plenty of people with lumps in their throats.’27
The fictional celebrations came to a sudden halt after a call from GHQ. Reports of barges moving around the North Sea coast led to the platoon being placed on immediate standby, and Jones found himself spending the night at the end of a cold pier with Pike instead of inside a warm hotel with his wife. While the two men stand on patrol, however, they are joined by Mainwaring, Wilson, Frazer and Godfrey, who have brought along a dusty bottle of champagne with which to drink their friend’s health. Hodges, inevitably, arrives to disturb the mood, pausing only to point out that the invasion alert was a false alarm, and to mock the men who are still standing guard (‘What good would you be against real soldiers? They’d walk straight through you!’), before departing back into the darkness. The champagne is then poured into mugs (or, in Godfrey’s case, a medicine glass), the men begin to drink, and the final few beautifully-judged minutes are allowed to unfold:
PIKE Mr Mainwaring? Warden wasn’t right, was he, when he said the Nazis would walk straight through us?
MAINWARING Of course he wasn’t right!
JONES I know one thing – they’re not walking straight through me!
FRAZER Nor me. I’ll be beside you, Jonesie.
MAINWARING We’ll all be beside you, Jonesie. We’ll stick together – you can rely on that. If anybody tries to take our homes or our freedom away from us they’ll find out what we can do. We’ll fight. And we’re not alone – there are thousands of us all over England.
FRAZER And Scotland.
MAINWARING And Scotland. All over Great Britain, in fact. Men who’ll stand together when their country needs them.
WILSON Excuse me, sir – don’t you think it might be a nice idea if we were to pay our tribute to them?
MAINWARING For once, Wilson, I agree with you. (raises mug) To Britain’s Home Guard!
ALL (turning to face the camera) To Britain’s Home Guard!28
The studio audience applauded, the closing credits rolled, and then, after nine years, nine series, eighty episodes and forty-eight hours and ten minutes of great acting, fine writing and glorious television, it was all over. An estimated 12,524,000 people29 had watched an era come to an end. The BBC’s audience report was full of praise for the show and tinged with sadness at its passing: ‘It was felt that all the characters had been beautifully portrayed (“superb performances from all”) and special mention was made of Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring and Ian Lavender as Private Pike. The production, too, was highly praised for bringing out a convincing sense of period and for paying great attention to detail. Altogether, it was generally agreed that the programme had always been magnificent, that the cast could not have been better chosen and it was sad to see the series come to an end.’30 The critics, too, lined up to pay tribute to what the Guardian’s Peter Fiddick described as ‘one of the jewels of TV comedy’:
It is bound to be remembered for sentiment and nostalgia, and it’s made the most of those, but that makes it all the more necessary to record, as the absolutely final credits roll, that it has given us finer farces, straighter faces, richer characterisation, and a deal more social observation, than most of the more pretentious dramas, and always kept us guessing which would turn up next …
It will be missed.31
The BBC, Bill Pertwee remembered, had failed to arrange a farewell celebration in time to mark the final studio recording: ‘We’d all put our best bib and tuckers on, you know, thinking someone was probably going to surprise us with a bit of a party, but they just handed us the usual black dustbin bags for our stuff, turned off the lights and we all trudged off to the bar for a drink.’32 The Daily Mirror,33 sensing an opportunity to embarrass the Corporation, arranged for each member of the Dad’s Army cast to receive a special medal – ‘For services to television entertainment’ – followed, on the night the final episode was transmitted, by a valedictory (and much-photographed) dinner at London’s Café Royal. ‘It was quite a jolly evening,’34 recalled Clive Dunn, with a considerable amount of wine being consumed (John Le Mesurier, whose range of drinks was limited to orange juice or mineral water, would later confess that the ‘only way I had of getting myself into the spirit’ of the occasion was by smoking what he described, euphemistically, as ‘extra strong cigarettes’),35 and there were some memorable after-dinner speeches (which, Dunn pointed out, ‘were not repeated in full, because some of the remarks we made were not necessarily conducive to selling more newspapers’).36 ‘It was a good evening,’ confirmed David Croft. ‘A very funny evening. John Laurie got very abusive, as he was wont to do, but amusingly so, and I remember that Arthur’s wife, Joan, who was inclined to get rather merry, got up to make a speech. She’d been going about three or four minutes when, all of a sudden, she slipped under the table – just like that – and Arthur, of course, took no notice and just carried on as if nothing had happened!’37 Bill Pertwee thanked the hosts for their generosity, and then Arthur Lowe rose to second the sentiment (although he rather spoiled the effect by adding that, in spite of this, there was ‘no way’ he would allow ‘such a rubbishy newspaper’ as theirs inside his house).38 ‘This is a sad occasion for all of us,’ Lowe went on to declare. ‘I’ve never wanted the show to stop, but some of us,’ he said, looking round at the others, ‘are getting on a bit.’39 John Le Mesurier observed that ‘being in Dad’s Army was like belonging to a gentleman’s club’;40 Clive Dunn joked that ‘Having a final dinner like this is a bit like going to your own funeral’;41 Ian Lavender remarked that he looked on the day when he was chosen for the part of Private Pike as ‘the luckiest day of my life’;42 Arnold Ridley got unsteadily to his feet, smiled his usual crinkly smile, said ‘Thank you very much’,43 and then sat straight back down again; and then John Laurie, Clive Dunn recalled, ‘stood up and said in his wildest Scottish brogue that, although a lot of remarks had been made about the series and the participants, no one had so far mentioned that “Actors are a load of—ts!” Silence reigned for all of five seconds, and then the assembly fell apart. Marjorie Proops nearly fell off her chair.’44
Another function followed a short while later, when the team was summoned by the BBC’s Board of Governors to an ‘official’ farewell luncheon party – a ‘rather formal occasion,’ sighed John Le Mesurier, ‘which none of us enjoyed over much’45 – and then Lowe, Le Mesurier and Laurie contributed one last cameo appearance, in character, to the Christmas edition of another much-loved and bona fide national institution, The Morecambe & Wise Show (Mainwaring glowered at Elton John and muttered, ‘Stupid boy!’).46 The year came to an end, the reality sank in, and the cast and crew of Dad’s Army, with some reluctance, ‘stood down’.
CHAPTER XV
Revival
History books begin and end, but the events they describe do not.
R.G. COLLINGWOOD1
You know, this thing could run and r
un.
MICHAEL MILLS2
There was life, and work, after Dad’s Army. Both David Croft and Jimmy Perry were awarded the OBE (for services to television) in 1978, and the two men continued their writing partnership into the 1980s when they launched their third situation-comedy (inspired, like the others, by personal experiences), entitled Hi-de-Hi!3 The actors, too, in spite of their advancing years, seemed determined to keep their careers open and active.
Arthur Lowe, for example, continued to advertise everything from Harvey’s Bristol Cream to Cadbury’s Hanky-Panky (‘The man’s got no dignity,’ John Laurie used to cry. ‘Pay him a thousand pounds and he’d dress up as a monkey’)4 and appear in plays (although his range of choices, it seems, was limited artificially due to his insistence that any offer had to include a part for his wife, Joan)5 and movies (the director Lindsay Anderson, with whom Lowe was reunited for Britannia Hospital, commented that ‘I never wanted to make a film without Arthur in it’),6 and he continued to serve as the narrator of Roger Hargreaves’ cartoon series for children, Mister Men (BBC1, 1974–82). He also showed no hesitation when the opportunity arose to return to the genre of situation-comedy: Bless Me, Father (LWT, 1978–81) saw Lowe assume a smoky Irish brogue to portray, quite delightfully, the mischievous Roman Catholic priest Father Charles Duddleswell; he was superb in Roy Clarke’s underrated (and under-repeated) Potter (BBC1, 1979–80) as the pompous busybody Redvers Potter, the retired MD of Potter Mints (‘The Hotter Mints’); and in A. J. Wentworth, B.A. (Thames, 1982), a gently funny series based on the stories of H. F. Ellis, Lowe appeared as the eponymous bumbling mathematics master.7 ‘I’ll be an actor until I keel over and drop dead,’8 he liked to declare.
Finding work was not so easy, however, for John Le Mesurier, whose well-publicised ill-health meant that he was now regarded as an insurance risk. ‘I feel very lonely without you all sometimes,’ he wrote to Arthur Lowe, ‘and am sad not to be busy, as you are. But the slightest physical exertion puffs me out … Mind you, if we were all called on location to Thetford tomorrow, I’d be there!’9 He missed his drink – his ex-wife Hattie Jacques sent him a crate of non-alcoholic wine, but he complained that it tasted like grape juice – and had found nothing that could act as a distraction (his wife tried to coax him into sharing her passion for gardening, a well-meaning attempt that was batted straight back: ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said with a shudder, ‘but I think it’s ghastly’).10 The money began to run out, and he was forced to sell his Barons Court flat. Old friends, such as Annie Ross, the jazz singer, Peter Campbell, the theatrical agent, and Derek Taylor, the casual bon vivant, and his two sons, Robin and Kim, often travelled down to Ramsgate to see him, but it was clear that he was growing increasingly morose.
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