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Dad’s Army: The Story of a Very British Comedy
Graham McCann
The story of the greatest British sit-com and its enduring appeal.When we laugh at Dad's Army we laugh at ourselves, and nearly fifty years after it was first broadcast, millions of us are still laughing – whenever and wherever it is repeated. With contributions from the people who planned, produced and performed the programme, and material drawn from the BBC archives, acclaimed author Graham McCann has written the definitive story of a very British comedy.This edition does not include any illustrations.
Dad’s Army
The Story of a Very British Comedy
Graham McCann
Copyright (#ulink_1da21b39-c8cd-536f-a206-4d2c964a8eee)
Fourth Estate
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This edition first published in 2002
First published in Great Britain in 2001
Copyright © Graham McCann 2001
The right of Graham McCann to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9781841153094
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN 9780007389421
Version: 2015-12-16
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Dedication (#ulink_4e96653e-9590-5039-8c02-9eb6b6b53f04)
For my mother, and in memory of Dick Geary
Epigraph (#ulink_84173136-4930-52d0-a354-183bfdac99f5)
Love and celebrationare matchless foundationsfor programme-making,given there is skill as well.
HUW WHELDON
Contents
Cover (#u785f62de-2ff8-54d1-8a76-1f687c230db4)
Title Page (#u9fd97f99-c6ac-5f83-b82f-1f72e7f16819)
Copyright (#uec1fef00-5cc4-5666-a62c-9524e0e66251)
Dedication (#ulink_99fee220-ce7e-50d5-aa35-d15027c9781e)
Epigraph (#ulink_a72fd2a2-ee59-567a-8fcd-45f19240a0a1)
PROLOGUE (#uf1f39a7e-de8a-5c36-be40-caa91cc58f7c)
PART ONE: THE SITUATION (#u92cb1f39-b02e-5b7e-ad4c-b2efdad5924a)
I A Peculiar Race (#u3c9c4cad-8f54-5c38-9f5a-864bc57235d8)
II A Cunning Plan (#uba0b73e6-1268-50ee-8cd0-fa3a04c02120)
III You Will Be Watching … (#uf58a1293-0be7-569a-bc39-fdfd7c3e09ee)
PART TWO: THE COMEDY (#u3ff3e0c4-9480-5a2c-9120-7e9d142a5de1)
IV The Pilot (#u3eff7798-2cc6-53d4-9522-677f7a18eb30)
V Series One (#litres_trial_promo)
VI Success (#litres_trial_promo)
PART THREE: THE CHARACTERS (#litres_trial_promo)
VII An Officer and a Gentleman (#litres_trial_promo)
VIII A Scot, a Spiv and a Stupid Boy (#litres_trial_promo)
IX The Old Fools (#litres_trial_promo)
PART FOUR: THE COMPANY (#litres_trial_promo)
X Thetford (#litres_trial_promo)
XI Shepperton (#litres_trial_promo)
XII Shaftesbury Avenue (#litres_trial_promo)
PART FIVE: THE CLASSIC (#litres_trial_promo)
XIII The Nation’s Favourite (#litres_trial_promo)
XIV Never Too Old? (#litres_trial_promo)
XV Revival (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Episode Guide (#litres_trial_promo)
Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)
Index (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Notes (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_c8ce6038-8653-556f-a48e-0f33e4e910c5)
This is my country
These are my people
This is the world I understand
This is my country
These are my people
And I know ’em like the back of my own hand.
RANDY NEWMAN
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Humour is not a mood but a way of looking at the world.So if it is correct to say that humour was stamped out inNazi Germany, that does not mean that people were notin good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something muchdeeper and more important.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
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Even our jokes have walls and hedges round them.
J. B. PRIESTLEY
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You must remember this: a small church hall, somewhere in England, sometime during the Second World War. To the left, perched high on top of a wobbly wooden stepladder, is a fresh-faced, fragile-looking youth, folded over a tommy-gun, primed and poised to pounce. To the right, seated behind a rickety card table, is a wiry, wily old campaigner, leaning over a Lewis gun, all set to snap and strike. At the centre, shiny toe to shiny toe, stand a short, stout Englishman and a tall, thin German.
The German has just announced that he has added the Englishman’s name to the ominously long list of those who, once the war has been won, will be brought to account for their actions. The Englishman has just replied that, since the Germans are never going to win this war, he can put down whichever names that he wishes. It is at this point that the fresh-faced youth on the ladder elects to interject:
Whistle while you work.
Hitler is a twerp.
He’s half barmy,
So’s his army.
Whistle while you –
‘Your name will also go on the list!’ exclaims the German. ‘What is it?’ ‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’ orders the Englishman.
‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’ What a beautiful comic line, patently apt yet palpably absurd, so funny for being so true. It encapsulates not only the kind of qualities – brightness, decisiveness and bravery – we tend to associate with our best self, but also those – foolishness, fearfulness and frailty – that we tend to associate with our worst. It makes us laugh so much because we laugh most unaffectedly at what we know most about, and what we know most about is ourselves: each of us, at some point or other in our life, has said or done something equally as apt and equally as absurd as ‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’
It is really no wonder then that this scene has been hailed by some as the funniest moment in the history of British television,
(#litres_trial_promo) nor that the show in which it featured has come to be recognised as one of this medium’s most treasurable achievements.
(#litres_trial_promo) We do not warm to just any old thing that the small screen serves up to us; for all of the hours, days, months and even years of television that we watch in the course of a lifetime, we actually remember very little, and cherish even less. We tend to recall and respect only those few programmes which try neither to be momentous nor mundane, but which simply try, right here, right now, to engage our minds and our moods.
Dad’s Army was just such a programme. It ran for nine years – from the summer of 1968 to the winter of 1977, stretching out over nine series and eighty episodes – and has continued to be a frequently repeated favourite ever since. Its extraordinary appeal, in terms both of breadth and of depth, has remained remarkably solid over the years. For example, the episode entitled ‘The Deadly Attachment’ (which featured that ‘Don’t tell him, Pike!’ line) attracted an estimated audience of 12,928,000 when it was first broadcast on BBC1 back in 1973; when, the following year, it received its initial repeat, 10,908,000 people tuned in to see it, as did 9,082,800 for the second repeat in 1978 and 10,600,000 for the third in 1989.
(#litres_trial_promo) Such rare and special constancy has little to do with any clinging need for nostalgia:
(#litres_trial_promo) among the programme’s most devoted admirers are some of those who would prefer to forget the war, as well as some of those who are not able to recall it. Dad’s Army’s lasting appeal has a great deal to do with an unquenchable craving for quality.
Dad’s Army, as a television programme, was something special. It stood out back then, when television’s aim was to entertain a nation, and it stands out even more prominently now, when the intention is merely to indulge a niche. It was – it is – an exceptional piece of programme-making. Every element epitomised the unshakeable commitment to excellence: the gloriously apposite theme song, a flawless recreation of the sound of wartime defiance; the well-chosen setting, animated by the meticulously assembled authenticating detail; the quietly effective style of direction, focusing our attention on the action rather than the art; and, at the very heart of it all, the consistently fine acting and writing which combined to cultivate a set of characterisations that audiences came not only to laugh at but also to live with and love.
The comedy that comes from character, observed J. B. Priestley, is ‘the richest and wisest kind of humour, sweetening and mellowing life for us’.
(#litres_trial_promo) Context can supply the catalyst for the comedy, but only characters can supply the raison d’être. ‘The humour of incident and situation that does not proceed from character, however artfully it may be contrived, is at best,’ argued Priestley, ‘only an elaborate play, making a glitter and commotion on the surface of things. But the humour of character goes down and touches, surely but tenderly, the very roots of our common human nature.’
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Not everyone who has watched Dad’s Army will have known much, if anything, about the last world war, or the history of the Home Guard, or life in early 1940s England, but everyone, surely, will have known someone like the portly, pushy, pompous little provincial bank manager and platoon commander, George Mainwaring (‘Oh, they’ll know by the tone of my voice that I’m in charge …’), or his sleepily urbane and vaguely insouciant chief clerk and sergeant, Arthur Wilson (‘Would you all mind falling into three ranks, please? Just as quickly as you can, in three nice, neat lines. That would be absolutely lovely, thank you so much’). Most, if not all of us, will have known someone very much like the indomitably doughty but somewhat over-excitable local butcher and lance corporal, Jack Jones (‘Get help? Right ho, sir! Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’), or the sly and saturnine Scot, undertaker and part-time private, James Frazer (‘I knew it: we’re doomed. Doomed, I tell ye!’), or the frail, permanently fatigued former gentleman’s outfitter and conscientious dispenser of bicarbonate of soda, Charles Godfrey (‘Do you think I could possibly be excused, sir?’), or the sharp, street-smart spiv Joe Walker (‘’Old on a minute – I said they were difficult to get, I didn’t say impossible!’), or the mollycoddled, maladroit and callow clerk and combatant, Frank Pike (‘Uncle Arthur, if you don’t let me up on that bunk I’ll tell Mum!’), or the vulgar and obstreperous greengrocer and chief air raid warden, Bill Hodges (‘Ruddy ’ooligans!’), or the camply effete Anglican vicar, Timothy Farthing (‘I must say, you’re a much braver man than I am’) and his fawning, flat-capped verger, Maurice Yeatman (‘Ah, well, there’s all sorts of courage, your Reverence – I don’t know how you have the nerve to get up and give those sermons every Sunday’). Dad’s Army, deep down, was not really about the war. It was about England. It was about us.
It was about our amateurism (‘I think we can quite happily say that Jerry’s parachutists will be as dead as mutton from Stead & Simpson’s to Timothy White’s. We’d get a clear run down to the Pier Pavilion if that blasted woman would get out of the telephone box!’), our faith in good form (‘Break the glass? Have you lost your senses? We’re not savages, you know! We’re a well-trained British army of sportsmen!’), our willingness to help out (‘I’d be delighted to oblige in any capacity that doesn’t involve too much running about’), our reluctance to be regimented (‘I’m afraid I’m just not awfully good at strutting and swaggering’), our cosy eccentricities (‘I’m so sorry my sister Dolly couldn’t come tonight – she’s got a touch of rheumatism – but she sent you some of her upside-down cakes’), our irrepressible playfulness (‘We’ll do “Underneath The Spreading Chestnut Tree”! Sergeant Wilson will do the cheerful actions, and we’ll follow’), our loyalty (‘I’d go through fire, and brimstone, and, and, treacle for you, sir!’), our caution (‘Do you really think that’s wise?’), our courage (‘They could put twenty bombs down my trousers and they will not make me crack!’), our deep-rooted distrust of outsiders (‘Damned foreigners! They come over here and then have the cheek to fire at us!’), and, most of all, it was about our chronic consciousness of class.
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Class provided the grit that made this pearl. As Dennis Potter put it:
Dad’s Army is made possible by the extended joke which allows the British, or more specifically the English, to turn every possible encounter into a subtle joust about status. There is as much drama swilling about in our casual ‘good mornings’ as in the whole of Il Trovatore, and more armour-plating on a foot of suburban privet than in the latest Nato tanks … [Dad’s Army] is a conspiracy of manners between the loving caricatures in crumpled khaki and the complicit delight of an audience which likes pips as well as chips on its shoulders.
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