Terry’s Crackers?

Hello viewers, Max here.

Terry just sent me a copy of the latest part of his memoirs which I’m allowed to put right here on The Media Museum. He starts by recalling the joyous days of making fruity cop dramas, working with Germans and stuffing birds (or something like that…)

Here’s Terry -

Remember Blue Squad? Chances are you don’t. It was a short-lived straight-to-video show I worked on in the mid-eighties following the adventures of some rather tasty policewomen who investigated crimes of a saucy nature. Never had the phrase ‘here come the fuzz’ been more apt as each episode we’d feature yet another gratuitous shower scene.

This was far from The Wire or even The Bill. A typical episode would see the girls investigate such crimes as underwear theft or waggle-eyed fiends lacing the water supply with a high-power aphrodisiac. In fact anything that would segue into soft focus nudity or softcore coitus all set to a score by self-styled master of the erotic, Hans Liebmeister. Hans, known to his parents as Alan Foreman, couldn’t manage a word of anything other than English, but insisted in speaking in a cod-German accent. “I zink dat dees ist, how you say, der most sexual way of music mit der Kasio Keyboard.” Absolute nonsense but he was cheap and if you can find his album, Der Moistness, you’re in for a treat. It’s guaranteed, as the sticker says on the sleeve, to dampen any gusset.

Blue Squad didn’t last for long. It was fairly popular with a certain demographic but we encountered something of a cash flow problem. The production company’s assets were seized as the boss went off to spend time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for his part in a cigarette smuggling racket that did the exchequer out of thousands of pounds worth of snout tax. Customs got their hands on almost everything including springloaded bras, oversized loofahs and a crotchless camel costume.

However, there was the odd thing that managed to escape their clutches. One of these was a puppet of a parrot that was at the dry cleaners at the time having some unspeakable stuff removed from its feathers. The parrot had been used for a particularly fun episode about an animal hypnotist with a passion for prank phone calls. Hans provided the voice of the parrot and it was the nearest the show got to a wider acclaim as years later Chris Tarrant showed a clip on his hilarious television show. Lord knows where he got a tape.

Anyway, I had a fake parrot that lived in my shed for two years until I got a call from Central TV. The poor quality of darts on the latest run of Bullseye meant that they had a bit of extra cash for programme making. And so I was asked to devise a sitcom to rival Allo Allo in quality, but at half the budget. Immediately my mind drifted to the parrot, probably because I’d taken the call from my shed and was a little woozy from gluing together a model Spitfire.

My plan from the beginning was to use the parrot as the central character. Voice actors are a lot cheaper than real ones and usually less demanding. It also gave me a chance to devise another black sheep or odd-one-out comedy. You may be familiar with the concept, wherein a strait laced suburban family is joined by a character such as the wise-cracking alien Alf in ALF, the cut-out communist Wolfie in Citizen Smith or the sex-pest Fonz in Happy Days. Out of these three traits I was most interested in the wise-cracking, having had enough of politics when I was thrown out of the Garrick for wearing a donkey jacket and being too disturbed by my brief tenure as an altar boy to even consider the Henry Winkler method.

I imagined a middle-class family sitting round the dinner table with a low cost Lynda Bellingham-equivalent serving up the Sunday roast. Everyone is making noises of approval until the parrot chimes in with ‘what no crackers?!’ much to the baying amusement of the studio audience. In fact, to spell it out for readers of the TV Times we named the show, ‘Crackers’ and for a moment in the early nineties I worried that Robbie Coltrane had nicked the idea. But, as I was to discover, his show had fewer laughs, and would actually have benefited from a bit of puppet tomfoolery.

The family was made up of parents, Margaret and Graham, and children, Jenny and Tim. Margaret was a house-proud mother and keen member of the local theatre group. Graham worked in an office, wore a bowler hat and often had to have the boss round to dinner, just like any other businessman. The kids were nondescript theatre school brats destined for a life of drugs and tabloid shame but for the brief time I knew them they were, well, they were tolerable.

Sitcom family in place it was time to slot in the parrot. I came at it from a variety of angles. One of the first names I chose was Loki, with the parrot as the reincarnation of the mischievous Norse god. I was amused by the idea of this once proud deity reduced to life as a pet. I wanted to explore Loki’s pathos, get deep below the feathers, figure out how he ticked, or squawked as it were, as he went about meddling in Margaret’s elaborate dinner party preparations. The idea was vetoed and dismissed as too highbrow for an ITV audience and, if I wanted to produce Bergman-esque explorations of the human condition with a parrot puppet, I could sod off to channel 4. I remained where I was and put aside my intellectual aspirations until the series of dramatic monologues I wrote and directed for Su Pollard’s run at the Key Theatre in Peterborough in 1994.

I had been touting around for a half-decent voice actor for the show when we ran into a spot of bother with the budget. Someone finally won the speedboat on Bullseye and the money was taken from our coffers to pay for it. I was forced to flick through the Rolodex and phone up Hans Liebmeister to reprise his role as the parrot. It did solve the problem of character, there was no way the bird could be say French or Australian, as Hans could only manage his decidedly dodgy German impression. He may have been cheap but this sniff of stardom set off the diva in him. He originally insisted that the parrot be named Hans and somehow be given the ability to play an electronic keyboard. After some negotiation we finally settled on Dieter as a name, and reduced the parrot’s musical ability to the occasional toot on a kazoo. You have to rein these people in or before you know it they’re demanding fresh flowers, puppies and tea and coffee making facilities for the dressing room.

We managed to finish four scripts and shoot the pilot. I’d even written a part for Babs in the third episode, with a view to making her a regular guest star and finally being able to afford a home sauna. Officially we were told that shooting had to stop on the show due to a spate of big wins not just on Bullseye but across Central’s formidable range of primetime quizzes. Unofficially, I knew that Hans was to blame. He’d been obsessed with Rod Hull’s appearances on various chat shows and somehow got the idea that people didn’t mind being groped by middle-aged men so long as there was a puppet attached to the groping hand. Whereas Rod, bless him, managed to get away with it for years, poor Hans got stuck on a list and I never heard from him again.

The parrot moved back into my shed, and Babs and I had to wait another three years before we could even begin work on our home sauna.

Code A

Hello, Max here. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been here on the read worthy web page that is the Media Museum blog, so here’s Terry with his amazing show “Code A”

From Terry Bland -

It was the far off future of 1998, tinfoil was in abundance as were rayguns that looked like hairdryers and alien landscapes that looked like quarries. Our hero was Space Agent John Granger, on a mission to investigate extraterrestrial incursions on earth and beyond, designated Code A incidents. The A stood for Alien because, in the early seventies, I was gripped by the UFO phenomenon, having read Erich von Daniken’s ‘Chariot of the Gods’. The compelling account of ancient astronauts coming to our planet, building the pyramids, posing as gods and in general, mucking about.

The creation of Code A began with a mixture of serendipity and inebriation. In 1972, I found myself at Gareth Hunt’s thirtieth birthday party, quite uninvited and quite unsure of how I’d got there. However, I helped myself to the sausage rolls and quiche, quaffed a fair deal of Blue Nun and was making a great big, hairy tit of myself. Gareth was quite angry and threatened to throw me out. ‘You can’t throw me out’, I declared, ‘you’re not the police. You’re just a . . .’. I had no idea what he was, so I narrowed my eyes, pointed at him and said slowly, ‘What are you?’

‘I’m an actor’, he growled, ‘now get out before I break your legs.’

A flash of skin-saving inspiration broke through the drunkenness. ‘An actor! Of course you are. You’re the man Lew sent me to see. I’ve come to offer you the lead role in a new ITC action show.’

Gareth grinned, patted me on the back and offered me another glass of gloopy wine, ‘Well , why didn’t you say so?,’ he said, ‘What’s the story?’

I went on to explain that it was a science fiction adventure show. He would be an intergalactic James Bond, named John Granger, the finest agent of the Cosmic Intelligence Bureau, tasked with investigating the increase in alien visitations. The CIB suspect that these visits are the precursor to an invasion. And it’s all set in 1998 where everything’s all silver and futuristic.

‘What about the fanny?’ he asked.

‘You’ll be up to your elbows in it,’ I replied before spending the rest of the night being paraded around the room, forced to make up more and more of the story as I went along.

Fortunately for me I’d recently written and produced Countess Bonkula’s Reform School for Ghouls, one of the many big hits that had starred my wife Babs. It was a generous serving of spooky sauciness set in a girls’ boarding school and Lew Grade had loved it. I was quick on the phone to him and pitched Code A. ‘I had’, I said, ‘the perfect actor for the role. He’s young, he’s suave, he’s cheap.’

And so work began on the sci-fi spectacular. We hired a quarry, painted it green and got Gareth to run around pointing a hairdryer at various extras in monster suits. I wouldn’t want you to think it was all mindless action though. We used the fantasy setting to tell serious stories, fables, maybe even parables about what it means to be human. Our hero was driven by the carefully constructed backstory I’d written on a napkin from the Little Chef near Wrexham. His wife and son had been abducted during an archaeological dig in Mexico while trying to prove that ancient structures were in fact alien spaceports. Our first episode opened with Space Agent Granger receiving the news and vowing his revenge. Here we achieved a slice of verité. We’d hidden Gareth’s egg sandwich and told him we didn’t have time to get him another and that we had to start shooting straightaway. Gareth went into a rage, sweeping futuristic equipment from Granger’s desk in CIB central office, smashing stuff to pieces and tearing up his script, before sinking to his knees sobbing, ‘Why God!? Why?!’

We all laughed and applauded as the runner handed our star his egg sandwich. Gareth didn’t see the funny side of it though and, while the first aiders tended to the runner, took a great deal of calming down as I tried to persuade him not to quit.

To counter Granger’s heroics we needed a villain and for this I turned to my old friend Morty Vicker. Morty’s double act, Vicker and Tart, had dissolved when poor old Kenny Tart had realised that his wife hadn’t actually got a gambling problem. She had claimed at first to be down the dog track of an evening, then at the bookies during the day, before eventually telling poor Kenny that she needed regular Gambler’s Anonymous meetings. She couldn’t, she argued, tell him where the meetings where because, well, that wouldn’t be very anonymous, would it? However, it turned out that she’d never had a flutter in her life and that the only thing she’d ever had both ways was Morty.

So Morty needed a job and was more than willing to don a monster suit to play Snood, leader of the Clagnauts, an alien race bent on ruling the galaxy. The scheming Snood always had his pre-invasion operations foiled by Space Agent Granger, forcing him to come up with ever increasing dastardly plots. My favourite was in episode four – ‘Foreign Tongue.’

The Clagnauts planned to enslave the human race using hypnosis hidden on a range of language LPs named Insta-Ling. And who better to be the voice committed to vinyl, instructing the world to tear itself apart, than John Granger himself. The episode opened with a half naked Gareth Hunt strapped to a bed onboard Snood’s mothership. Tubes and wires protruded from his body, while atop his head was a colander fitted with flashing LEDs restructuring his brain to serve the Clagnauts. Snood gloats and then we cut to the title sequence complete with futuristic computer voice and stunning synth sounds, all while shots of Gareth in action as Granger are being shown. We see him rolling on the floor with a ray gun, diving from an explosion in a quarry, laughing with an awkward robot and smiling seductively at a lady.

In this episode we really got to see Gareth’s range as he waged a psychic battle against alien mind control. He even had a possessed hand at one point and tried to strangle himself. Very dramatic! As were the scenes in the recording studio when he was doing the Insta-Ling thing. I was impressed with his ability to tackle a number of different tongues, although when he tried his hand with the Dutch he did come over a little German.

As always our hero managed to ruin Snood’s plans and was soon back to his old self, for the final round of fisticuffs in a quarry. I remember it was a scorching hot day, the kind that makes pasty yobs wander the streets with no tops on while clutching a can of Woodpecker to their ultra-white, man-titted chests. No wonder Clive Dunn emigrated. So, it was a roaster and Snood was engaged in a bit of verbal sparring with Granger as his henchmen did their ineffectual sub-karate fighting. Morty had moaned to me earlier that he was getting too hot in his monster suit and that he could barely breath in his mask. I ignored him, remembering the great footage I got from Gareth when he got irate. This time though, it was a mistake. The glue in Morty’s monster mask heated up, the fumes sending him quite mad and setting him off on a one-man rampage. In fact, he managed to get on the evening news for tearing through a greasy spoon and threatening to shove a tomato-shaped novelty ketchup bottle up the owner’s nose. I thought, what with all the media coverage, that it was great publicity for the show. However, Lew disagreed and when he saw the bill for all the damage, along with what we’d already spent on the show, he pulled the plug.

There has been talk of a re-imagining of Code A for the twenty-first century, complete with war-on-terror metaphors, political intrigue and cheaper aliens that aren’t covered in toxic rubber but look just like humans to increase the paranoia levels in the plot. It’ll never work, of course, but I’ll be happy for them to have a go, if only for the royalty cheque.

Charity Begins in Hove

Max Buffer writes…

Even though my Sit Com “Life’s a Drag” was sidelined I knew deep down I still had a premier sit-com in me.

So I started work on an all new comedy based on rejected ideas from my previous efforts. This time I knew for definite (well lets call it 78% certainty) I had a great idea – a charity shop run by two old dears near Brighton – Charity Begins in Hove!

I immediately, (i.e. before even writing a word), phoned my friend Barry Johns and asked for two of his top talents. (If you don’t know who I’m talking about – Barry Johns was one of the top agents in the 70s for most of the Teddington Lock crowd, which in the 60s was quite a big deal).

Barry suggested the lovely Pat Coombs, and Peggy Mount (who, from my experience, wasn’t always as lovely as Pat – though others dispute this). I was over the moon to work with Pat. So I set about writing the script with them both in mind, in double quick time as well – something that might have been my downfall. Good sit-coms do take time after all.

Page One – establish the charity shop by having Pat and Peggy serve a young couple looking for a tea set. The comedy arising from Pat being a bit deaf and mis-hearing everything that’s going on.

We see Peggy behind the counter polishing the till. The shop door opens.

Young man (walking into shop) – Hello.

Peggy – Hello sir do come in.

Young Lady (following the young man) – Hello.

Peggy – Hello Madam.

Pat (walking out from a back room behind a curtain) – What was that?

Peggy – I was just saying Hello to this charming couple.

Pat – Barmy Poodle? What Barmy Poodle? (to the couple) Have you brought a dog in here, no dogs unless your blind. Are you blind?

Peggy – No, there is no poodle, just the couple.

Pat – Good, because we don’t allow dogs in here. (To the couple) If you need help reading any labels then just ask, it’s only my hearing that’s going a bit I can still read.

Young Man – Thanks, but I think we’ll be alright.

Pat – All Night! – sorry dear, we shut at Five thirty!

And so it went on, Pat mis-hearing people for top comedy effect and Peggy getting her out of trouble. And luckily the situations looked like they might be endless. There was going to be Mrs Mopp the regular bargain hunter who was the local gossip and busy body; Mr Green who always came in looking for a Polaroid camera but they never had one (he was also a bit of a dirty old man in a raincoat and liked to chat any young ladies in the shop – quite risque for the 70s I thought) and also PC Patel who would pop in to see how the ladies were getting on and always got a cup of Indian tea from them.

I had some great talent lined up to help with the show, both behind and in front of the camera. Terrence Aspel (who I later found out wasn’t Michael’s brother after all – even though he’d played that card a few times), Bill Maynard, Derrick Branche and Graeme Muir to name all four I can remember.

I did also approach Eric Chappell to help write it, but he was busy developing Rising Damp. I do remember saying to him at the time; why bother with some boring sit-com about a landlord, what funny situations can happen there. And as you will know nothing much did happen, but somehow people found it funny all the same.

So after getting the budget together to record what’s commonly known as the pilot show I booked LWT’s Wembley studios (originally home to Associated Rediffusion run by my good friend Captain Thomas Brownrigg who I believe coined the phrase “If that’s a good TV show then I can easily show you a rubbish one”).

The set was built, mainly reusing an old Tea Shop set of flats from The Avengers that I found in storage – I do like to keep to a very tight budget; which people claim was my downfall with the “What A…” films but as I made over 20 of them how can that be a failure. But I digress.

So we got the cast together for a read through of my just finished script. Unfortunately with no audience to laugh the read through felt very dead. I did hear one assistant producer claim that the script was at fault rather than a lack of audience atmosphere, but they soon found their way out of the door with my boot up their backside. (I had to settle of out court as by the mid 70s it seems you couldn’t kick your staff).

But alas the show was never filmed. The producers got cold feet after the read through and decided to use Pat and Peggy for Graeme Muir’s “You’re Only Young Twice” instead.

I should have claimed executive producer status on that rather successful sit-com (it ran for 4 years) but after a falling out with Graeme over a meal at a seafood restaurant we went our separate ways. I still believe if you order a Brandy you should be made to pay for it, even if it was because the waiter misheard you (not in a Pat Coombs comedy style).

I have never trusted producers who work for ITV since.

Where There’s A Will . . .

by Terry Bland

The first time I worked with Les Dennis was in the late Eighties on the pilot for Laff-o-mat, a comedy sketch show based in a launderette. Cannon and Ball ran the launderette, with Les as their flunky and Bella Emberg as their only regular customer. Each week we were to have a special celebrity guest and their dirty laundry would inspire sketches, played in the glass of the washing machines. For the pilot we had Dudley Sutton, Tinker from off of Lovejoy, and his linen led on to numerous hilarious sketches about antiques. There were many reasons the show never made it past the pilot stage. Firstly, Tommy and Bobby were tied into a contract with a rival company and decided to stick with them rather than defect and take our dollar. Secondly, Bella, bless her, was struggling with an addiction to meth. And thirdly, it was shit.

I was to see Les again in 1992 on the set of Where There’s A Will . . . an innovative challenge show shot at Central Television in Nottingham. It was marketed with the line, ‘Got Your Eye on Granny’s Good Stuff?’ and Les would watch as two teams of two fought to either get into or climb up a will. The first will we tackled was that of Mavis Clayfield. And trying to get their paws on her valuables, come the sad day of her passing, was her son and his wife, Alan and Shelly, battling it out against her nephew, Simon, and his close friend Adam.

Les set a series of challenges based on advice from a team of experts and a special guest. In the first show I was delighted to be reunited with my good friend Paul Shane. I’d known Paul for years and have fond memories of him dragging up and starring in my 1987 film Shirley’s War, a heart warming comic tale of miscreant landgirls set on the right path by the eccentric ‘Dame’ Shirley Wobblestone.

A selection of the pre-ceased’s belongings would be brought to the studio and the will chasers chose what they would like to receive by placing a sticker on the goods. For every item that the pre-ceased decided should go to the person that stuck the sticker, they would get five points. However, if they decided not to leave an item they would rip off the sticker and that person would lose ten points. Points were also scored throughout the show by completing various rounds. The winning team’s points at the end of the game were multiplied by ten and converted to pounds. They would receive half and the other half was given to the pre-ceased to put in their will to leave to the winners. Of course, winners would still have to be kind to their chosen oldie because, as we all know, wills are always subject to change. My own children should make note of that if they want to stand a chance of getting their hands on my antique horse brass, or Barbara’s assortment of collectible hedgehog figurines.

Just before the mid-break Les introduced a special treat – the All-Star Eulogy. Our guest stood in a mock pulpit, as the will writer lay in an open casket. This game was played for charity, the longer the pre-ceased lasted without laughing, under the watchful eye of the CoffinCam, the more money would go to their chosen good cause. If they lasted the whole three minutes we gave them a bonus £300. Paul had us all in stitches and some of his material was pretty near the knuckle, I feared the casket would be sodden with old lady wee but Mavis managed to remain straight faced throughout. She was certainly made of stern stuff. Les asked how she managed and she replied by stating that she’d been through worse during the Blitz. What a trooper.

Our final round was the Last Supper. The two teams made what they thought to be Mavis’s favourite meal, which was then served to her by girls in sexy grim reaper costumes. Alan and Shelly did a traditional roast with all the trimmings. Alan was confident as he explained to Les that he’d gone through his mum’s cookbooks, and all her notes, and found her secret gravy recipe that he then revealed to the whole nation. The reapers put the roast in front of Mavis. She smiled and made a joke about them being scantily clad harlots who would catch their death of cold before burning in the fires of hell. She then took a bite of her dinner and quickly spat it out, screaming that Alan was a thieving bastard and who did he think he was looking through her private cookery notes. Simon’s beef stew fared better. Mavis declared that the energy she saved by not having to chew could then be spent watching that her neighbours didn’t steal from her garden because they were as bad as Alan and probably foreign.

The points were added up and most of Alan’s stickers ripped off, apart from the one on his late father’s carriage clock, which Mavis said he could have, as she’d never liked it. It’s just a shame that she accidentally knocked it off the table smashing it to the floor.

We lasted for one series before a lawsuit by Alan and Shelly forced us off the air. The show was later to be revived for the quiz show channel PuzzleBox on Sky. For a couple of weeks you could catch Les at his best but unfortunately PuzzleBox’s original programming led to its downfall. Passport to Paradise, featuring impoverished Eastern European women competing to marry a British citizen, was the main culprit and was even mentioned in a UN document on people trafficking and an EU directive on gambling.

Mavis Clayfield is still alive. Alan and Shelly have since emigrated to New Zealand and haven’t spoken to Mavis since the recording. Simon and Adam send me a Christmas card every year and have two German Shepherds, named Ken and Stuart.

M.O.O.S.E.

by Terry Bland

During the Eighties I was involved in a number of transatlantic televisual translations, bringing a number of Brit hits to a new American audience including Bergerac (Sanchez), Crossroads (Motel California) and Emmerdale Farm (Dallas). However, my fondest memories of my time in the States come from working on all-original action show M.O.O.S.E., starring future Babylon 5 legend Bruce Boxleitner in the lead role as Michael ‘Mac’ McCormack.

M.O.O.S.E. was the acronym for the top secret Mobile Overseas Operations in Special Espionage. Action TV was at its height, viewers wanted to see justice prevail and with M.O.O.S.E there were no borders, no limits, no holds barred in the fight against international crime and terror. Many of their adversaries were simple drug barons, Mafiosi and Mexicans. The greatest threat that M.O.O.S.E faced came in the form of the Federation of Evil Lords of Crime & Hatred (FELCH). They were, admittedly, a rather pantomime bunch of villains and many found FELCH hard to swallow but there was no doubting the thrills as Mac and the team cracked the whip of justice and came down hard on their foes.

Joining Boxleitner’s Nam vet and former astronaut, Michael ‘Mac’ McCormack, were Terri Treas (later of the Alien Nation TV series) as the linguist Annie Bancroft, Albert Schultz (cheap Canadian actor) as Murray Goldberg, young computer scientist and technical genius, and Tim Rossovich as muscleman Henry ‘Hank’ Hendricks. Rossovich knew Tom Selleck and only got the part due to a lost bet with Tom. I forget the exact details but Steve Guttenberg was involved somehow, as was a large glazed ham. Crazy days.

We were one of the first shows to really take advantage of shooting in Canada. I spent much of 1983 pretending that Vancouver was ‘overseas’, mostly Russia although in one standout episode the team found themselves in Sweden fighting an outbreak of Stockholm syndrome. This nefarious plague had accompanied an atomic wind from a Soviet missile test and was infecting Western Europe with communism. An Eskimo mystic named Nuk Nuk was rumoured to hold the key to a cure. The team went in search of her only to find that she was the last speaker of her language, an obscure Romany dialect thought long dead. Annie’s linguistic skills were put the test as she struggled to overcome the extreme language barrier. Meanwhile, the Russians had found out about Nuk Nuk and sent their agents to finish her off and so it was up to the men to protect the source of the cure. The race took on a more personal note as Murray fell in love with local Swedish lovely Britt (played by another cheap Canadian). Poor Britt had become infected with the disease and started foaming at the mouth and ranting about collective farms. It still breaks my heart every time I see Murray weeping as he points the gun at Britt, closes his eyes and prepares to do the merciful thing. As his finger squeezes the trigger his hand is knocked out of the way, the bullet harmlessly smashing into some wood panelling. Mac and Hank have arrived just in time to tell him that Annie has deciphered the cure. Britt can be saved.

It wasn’t until I was at a M.O.O.S.E convention in 1992 that someone explained to me what Stockholm syndrome actually is but I still maintain it was one of our better episodes. It shows the power of a decent story over basic facts. We may not have been renowned for our accuracy but we knew good action and that kept people tuning in for two seasons of solid thrills. Syndication has kept the show alive in the heads of many and is remarkably popular in Belgium where every year the world’s biggest M.O.O.S.E convention takes place. Come along, dress-up and watch the M.O.O.S.E-a-thon, take advantage of the generous buffet and join me and the actress who played Nuk Nuk for our hilarious Q&A session.

"Life’s a Drag"

I was listening the other day to dear Kenny’s “Hand up your sticks” written by the oh-so-clever Peter Cook (who still owes me for the bet he lost about Ronnie Corbett’s boxer shorts – but as he’s passed on I’ll forget it for now) and it reminded me of the classic duo Julian and Sandy; weren’t they bold.

And then I recalled the sit-com I developed with Lance Percival and William Rushton, which I shall discuss for you here.

I remember suggesting the idea of a sit-com about an old folks home for Drag Queens when having lunch with Danny La Rue and Dick Emery and feeling a little left out when they compared dress sizes. So I diverted the conversation by suggesting we made a sit-com together called “Life’s a Drag”. I took the idea to my friends from TW3 and we bandied some ideas about.

After I fell out with Lance and Will (two separate incidences, neither of which I shall elaborate on at the moment) I took the script for a final ’spit and polish’ to my dear friend, Stuart Bookhouse. Known in comedy circles for his witty after dinner speeches at three Tory Party Conferences I felt he’d be perfect for a sit-com.

Thames TV provided us with a budget, not enough to attract Danny or Dick even though it was written for them, but we were lucky with our casting of Deryck Guyler and Frank Williams as the main heroes Charlie and Arthur.

Harold Snoad shot the first (and only) show for us in the Summer of 1973 in Maidstone, Kent, at a delightful old peoples home called Nazareth House – I wonder if it’s still there. Also joining the cast were Felix Bowness, as Ted the lawnsman, and Yootha Joyce, as Sheila the manager.

The basic plot revolved around Charlie and Arthur coming up with schemes to put on a show, allowing them to dress as Joanie and Betty, their drag alter egos. But whenever thy did dress up they’re get Ted all excited as he believed them to be really ladies and would consistently chat them up. Unfortunately for him they’d mention their ‘friends’ Charlie and Arthur, getting Ted quite riled at his love rivals – little knowing he was talking to them all along.

It was full of innuendo and polari, but unfortunately I can not find a copy of any of the scripts. But I do recall the following scene -

IN THE DRAWING ROOM

We find Arthur dressed as Joanie playing solitaire as Charlie (normal clothes) enters the room.

Charlie – Ooh look at you with your riah all zhooshed up. Ted, being the bold omi that he is, will think it’s his lucky day!

Joanie – Well if I varda him checking out my lallies again I’ll give him a piece of my mind

Charlie - I don’t think it’s a piece of your mind he’s after

Joanie – As long as he keeps his hands to himself tonight I think the whist drive will go swimmingly

Charlie – I wouldn’t bet on it, he’s right randy today. I just saw him up town buying some cologne – LOOK, for Men

Joanie – ‘Look for men’ – what a good idea, want to join me!

They both laugh as Sheila sternly walks in.

We even had a slogan ready for inclusion in the TV Times – “When they dress down they drag themselves up”. But alas the series was never commissioned.

Some say there was a backlash from ‘theatrical types’ who felt the final version of the script pried too much into their world. Some say the show was too risque with it’s overtly queer overtones.

But I think the fact a senior member of staff at Thames TV was revealed to be a transvestite in a shocking scandal that rocked weekday ITV may have had a part to play in the series being cancelled as we started program two.

As a side note I did hear rumour at the time that Dame Sybil Thorndike was appalled by it, but it wasn’t documented in Shedian’s superb biography of her, so I shall never know.

Shepshed – Jimmy Nail’s finest hour

Remembered by Terry Bland

It became a ritual. Every Wednesday at 10.30pm we’d turn the dial to ITV and gather to watch the latest episode of Shepshed, each with a pie and mix (chips and mushy peas – ed) and a can of dab (dandelion and burdock) in homage to the show’s eponymous hero. DI Den Shepshed seemed to crack the majority of his cases within the walls of the chippy owned by his best friend and former army colleague Patrick ‘Patch’ Harrogate and therein lay much of the charm. Shepshed was a copper you could believe in and for two brief series we followed his every adventure, rooting for him in the will they/won’t they relationship with classy solicitor and aristocrat Lady Petronella ‘Nellie’ Thurrock and delighting in his down-to-earth ways.

The show was created in 1988 by Joe Harvey, the man behind the anthropomorphic Vietnam War cartoon Apocalypse Cow, the controversial kids’ classic that attracted criticism both for racism and bovine irresponsibility at the height of the BSE crisis.

The rumours, still sometimes dug up and given a fresh airing on the numerous fan forums, are that Harvey hated his leading man Jimmy Nail and wanted to replace him with John Nettles. Both Harvey and Nail deny this and happily worked together again in the late nineties for the Shepshed series of audiobooks. However, it is true that Harvey broke Nail’s nose during on-set sparring shortly after the star had joked about the time he ‘accidentally’ slept with the creator’s wife. The actual number of people Nail, and indeed Harvey, ‘accidentally’ slept with during the production is unknown but it is perhaps significant that for the audiobooks replacements had to be found for Stella Gonet as Nellie and Michael Praed as Patch.

Shepshed’s passionate quest for justice caused friction with his boss, Chief Inspector Bernard Cleethorpes played by Roland Curram owner of, at the time, the third best moustache on British television. Shepshed battled various adversaries from video pirates to cod smugglers culminating in a massive sting operation in the final episode. A rival shop to Patch’s had opened up and was offering more than just fish and chips. Knocked-off copies of Ghostbusters 2 were being sold along with illegal cod from shifty Icelandic fishermen. Shepshed’s victory and injury in the line of duty (his hand was thrust into batter and then hot fat) earned him a medal and promotion. The show ended with Shepshed proposing to Nellie. An answer was never given as producers hoped for a third series. The audiobooks assure us, however, that the two married and spent many happy years together.

Harvey faced criticism that all the characters seemed to be named at random from the AA Road Atlas, and that his plots were farcical and inconsequential featuring ridiculous dialogue and bizarre racial stereotyping (especially toward Icelandic people for an unspecified reason). However, Shepshed for all its faults was sheer fun and excitement exploring areas that other police procedurals have never patrolled, before or since. Surely it is time that someone dug into the vaults and transferred this treasure to DVD?

Lush Face

Hi, Max Here.

My good friend Terry Bland (with whom I worked on many projects including the film “What a load of rubbish” and the unfinished TV series “A Pig in a Poke, has become the Pope”) sent, on Tuesday of this week, his first (hopefully of many) blog for The Media Museum.

Along with his lady partner, Babs, he recalls the great show ‘Lush Face’ (a show I almost worked on but chose the classic constabulary allotment sitcom “A Policeman’s Lot” instead).

Over to Terry -

Many will remember Lush Face! as the ill-fated panel show presented by variety comedian Morty Vicker in the late Seventies. Others may recall the recent celebrity special hosted by children’s TV favourites Dick and Dom. Lush Face began life, however, as a bizarre and baffling board game created by Thuringen Stansted (real name Percy Villa) in 1967.

Lush Face! box from 1972

Stansted’s premise is seemingly simple. The game requires two or more players. The player whose turn it is, is given a scenario, read out by one of the other players from the cards provided. They must then give a facial reaction to this scenario. From here we descend deeper into realms of complication, fantasy and sheer absurdity. The scenarios range from the extensive:

ANTHONY HAS EATEN THE LAST CRUMPET AFTER COMING HOME LATE FROM SCHOOL. HE HAS BEEN CANED AND GIVEN LINES DUE TO HIS PERSISTENT PROBLEMS WITH PUNCTUALITY. YOU ARE DISAPPOINTED WITH HIM BUT AWARE THAT ADDRESSING THE ISSUES WITH AN OUTWARD DISPLAY OF THIS EMOTION WOULD BE COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE.

To the brief:

WENDY FARTED.

Family enjoying the special 3D edition Lush Face2K! from 1999.

Points are scored out of 12 for originality, judged by the other players with guidance from Stansted’s notes and, if the family was rich enough, the two volume companion set, and combined with the median figure gained through the roll of three dice (one of which was hexagonal). Players progressed around the board shifting to different ‘realms’ eventually reaching the centre of the board. At the centre of the board would be the chance for the player to perform ‘Ultra Lush’, a combination of three facial reactions at once. If the ‘Ultra Lush’ score was more than double that of the previous player’s ‘Standard Lush’ then they would then be able to place their playing piece beyond the reach of the table or, to use Stansted’s hippy-parlance, ‘Far Out’. That player, the winner by conventional terms, would then help all the other players achieve a state of ‘Lushana’ until eventually all had made it ‘Far Out’.

Stansted’s instructions had a reputation for obfuscation, as demonstrated by this extract:

When entering a Realm (or Demi-Realm) for the first time the player must score a median hexagonal dice roll exceeding that of the two standard dice but may not be exact to, or two digits away from, the total of the previous player’s ‘Lushette’ unless that player had at that moment achieved a state of ‘Lushana’.

The popularity of the game was phenomenal. Fans applied the same rigorous scholarship to Stansted’s words as they did to Tolkein’s. Some found in his instructions and companion sets a deeper meaning and a guide for coping with the strains of modernity. It is of little surprise then to find that a cult surrounded the mysterious figure of Thuringen Stansted. Some say that he spent the last years of his life engaged in polygamous bisexual relationships, working well into his nineties on more and more complicated incarnations of Lush Face!. Others say that he merely allowed fans of the game to stay, at a reduced rate, at his caravan park in Whitby with little energy for carnal activity. Those interested in an in depth discussion of the life of Stansted and his game should read Mary Salisbury’s book Lushana! (1998). Whatever the real story of Stansted, Lush Face! remains an intriguing game full of fun for all the family with an emphasis on performance and helping out those less-enlightened or, as the game puts it, the ‘UnLushed’.

Players at a Lush Face! convention in Wisconsin, 2003.

How much is an Arab worth?

Amongst the many shows I’ve tried to get off the ground over the years, I am particularly disappointed that the comedy panel show “How much is an Arab worth?” never made it as a series.

In reflection I think the name was a stumbling block. It was meant to read “Much much money does an Arab Gentleman have in his bank account?” rather than “How much can I buy an Arab Gentleman for?”. At the time I think my stubbornness shadowed my decision to stay with the name, and sent the pilot we made into obscurity.

What a shame. The show was such good fun. Chaired by the ever funny Cyril Fletcher (later to appear with Esther ‘toothsome’ Ransom on That’s Life!) the show featured 4 celebrity guests each week, dressed as Arab sheiks, trying to gain wealth around a circular Monopoly style game board situated behind Cyril’s head.

For the pilot (we actually referred to it as our ‘tryout show’ as the name ‘pilot’ wasn’t in use back in the day, I think it’s more common nowadays thanks to DVD extras or something) we had Reg Varney and Harry H Corbett on one side of Cyril, with Bill Pertwee and Trevor Bannister the other.

There were 5 rounds each week, the first being ‘Woman or Ass’, where the contestants got to barter with ‘an Arabian Market Stall holder’ (played brilliantly by Felix Bowness) for a wife. The 2 wittiest contestants (chosen by the studio audience’s clap-o-meter) got wives and the others got an ass each instead (wives mean two moves along the board and an ass is just one).

Round Two was ‘Oil and Water’ where the contestants had to answer general knowledge questions (we didn’t call it Triva back then you know). On the studio floor in front of Cyril there was a sand filled 5 by 5 grid which we claimed was taken from a desert (in fact the sand came from a brick layers in Teddigton). If they got a question right they could choose a square, and got a small shovel to help ‘dig’ for oil. If successful they got two moves on the circular board. If they found water they got one move (deserts can be dry and water does help), but if the square was just sand they stayed where they were.

Round Three was ‘Sinbad or Sin-good’ where our contestants had to guess if each other was lying or telling the truth about interesting facts about Arabia. I remember one fact being – eating with both hands is a sign of wealth and power as Sheiks have their own servants to wipe their bottoms after defecating and so don’t use either hand to wipe themselves. (I don’t remember if this was true or not, just the fact itself).

Round Four was ‘Selling Sand to the Arabs’ where the contestants paired up and had to recreate the classic ’sand dance’ made famous by Wilson, Keppel and Betty, along with that weeks female guests (in the pilot we had Pat Coombes and Anna Karen). The worst attempt resulted in that pair being eliminated, leaving two contestants for the final.

The final round was the deciding round between the last two contestants, known as ‘This Round Is In Tents’. They had to try and erect a Bedouin tent against the clock and move in their ‘wives’ or asses from round one (which meant a real life donkey for Bill Pertwee).

The eventual winner was Trevor Bannister, who was great fun and enjoyed every moment. He still mentions the show every time we meet at our Water Rats get together’s.

I was also disappointed the show never aired as we’d paid a lot of money for the shows opening animation featuring a comedy camel with a typical ‘tea cloth’ type head dress. I feel this type of character was later stolen by Yorkshire TV for Bully on Bullseye, and so have never spoken with Jim Bowen since.

But I shall leave you wishing to see the show for yourself, which unfortunately shall remain a wish as due to an argument in 1973 over the rights to my feature film “What A Calamity” (part of the illustrious ‘What A’ series of comedy’s, this one about Calamity Jane) the master tape of the show was thrown into Teddington Lock by a managing director from Thames TV.

Farewell for now, Max.