The Shape of Things to Come Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

# Oh, what happened to you? Whatever happened to me?

# What became of the people

# We used to be?

# Tomorrow's almost over

# Today went by so fast

# Is the only thing to look forward to...

# ..the past? #

-You get the plates. I'll get the bottle opener.

-Where's your mam?

-Baby-sitting at Audrey's.

-Why am I having fish 'n' chips?

-No-one forced you. It was me that wanted them.

That smell wafting into the car! What can a man do?

Won't do you any harm. Want some bread?

No, thank you. Well, just a slice. Have you got any brown?

-It's less fattening than white.

-You're a funny fella.

Fish, chips, batter, ketchup and a gherkin and you're worried about the bread!

I like to eat well-balanced meals.

I feel like I'm being unfaithful - to my stomach.

In that case, you might as well go the whole hog.

-If you were unfaithful to Thelma, you wouldn't keep your socks on!

-No.

-Have a pickled onion.

Ta.

-Oh, fantastic!

-Forbidden fruit, eh?

-Aye!

-I just remembered something.

-What?

-Thelma was leaving me some lasagne in the oven.

-What's that?

-Oh, it's um... Well, it's um...

It's Italian.

-We got a free cookbook with the cooker.

-Really?

-She'll have gone to a lot of trouble.

-If you don't want yours, I'll have it.

-No! The cat next door can have the lasagne.

-Too fattening, anyway.

-This is one of the great meals of the world! A British invention!

-In the dark days of depression and unemployment...

-Last Christmas?

No, in the '30s. That's when fish 'n' chip shops were invented.

It meant the working classes could get a hot meal.

Right! And don't tell me it's not nutritious.

Our parents, who ate this in the '30s, didn't do so bad in the '40s!

-Not like those Italians, brought up on... What is it?

-Lasagne.

They capitulated at the first hint of hostilities.

-I don't think diet determines national character.

-I think it does.

The national dish is a good indication of the people.

I always avoid sauerkraut, sukiyaki and haggis!

What have you got against the Japanese?

I can understand the Germans, and the Scots are in the World Cup and we're not, but why the Japanese?

I suppose it goes back to childhood.

When we were kids, the Japs were the enemy. More so than the Germans.

Saturday morning pictures, it was always a slant-eyed baddie we booed.

I don't harbour grudges like that -

even though they tortured Biggles in Biggles In The Pacific!

I don't trust them. Maybe because my uncle Fred was in prison there.

-And you don't like Cockneys because your cousin was in Wormwood Scrubs.

-That's not a very nice thing to say.

Every family's got a black sheep.

I dislike them cos they're southern.

Sometimes I think you're the most unreasonable, prejudiced, bigoted soul in all the world.

-That's me. Pass the pickles.

-This takes you back, doesn't it?

Friday nights we'd come back here for fish 'n' chips,

-have long pointless discussions about football or sex.

-Usually both.

-Not a care in the world.

-Relegation, that was our main worry.

-Good days, Terry.

-Oh, magic! Magic.

Aye. Sometimes we'd have our fish 'n' chips on the 17 bus,

off to the dance, eight pints inside us.

Each!

Into the Roxy, swallowed up by that great, warm, sweaty cavern,

a warm, expectant tingle in our loins!

That was the eight pints.

Downstairs to share your metal comb, have a slash and into the cha-cha-cha!

You'd bring 'em in close, and if they stayed in, cheek to cheek,

you knew you were away.

They all danced cheek to cheek...

-..to avoid the pickled onions on your breath.

-Magic!

Seems like yesterday, but it was years ago.

The future's shrinking and I haven't got time for the present.

Why are you so nostalgic? You've cut yourself off from your past.

-Up on the Elm Lodge housing estate with your badminton club friends!

-Here we go again!

What are you doing eating fish and chips in my terraced parlour?

-You should be on Nob Hill eating spaghetti!

-Lasagne.

-How am I supposed to know? I'm not Fanny Craddock.

-You're not!

You're not doing bad with that lot!

-I'll have terrible indigestion.

-Guilty stomach!

Like illicit sex. You can't stop yourself, but then you're sorry.

I'm not getting any, illicit or not.

Nor will I be, not with Thelma's speciality singeing in the oven.

Talk about the old days - you're still leading me astray,

keeping me out, making me drink too much,

filling me up with carbohydrates!

I was only having a half - seven hours ago!

-Good job they closed the Roxy or we'd be down there.

-I don't twist your arm!

-Hello!

-Hello, Mrs Collier. Hello, Aud. Nice night?

Ernie got incapable and I had to drive Mam home.

-We've had some news.

-Yes. Mrs Hope rang.

-What news?

-Your great-uncle Jacob's gone.

-Gone where?

-To a better place!

You mean he's left the old people's home? He was never happy there.

He passed on, Terry.

Oh, never.

Oh, dear. I am sorry.

-I never knew he was ill.

-He wasn't. It was just like that.

-Oh, dear. I am sorry.

-Well, he was 81, Bob.

Ah, me great-uncle Jacob. Well, I never. What a shame!

-I'll put the kettle on.

-Don't you want to get back?

I'll wait till Ernie's asleep and avoid his caresses.

Oh, dear. I am sorry.

Was it just old age?

Oh, yes. Mrs Hope said he passed away quietly in his sleep.

The first thing he's done quietly in his life.

Aye, he was a real character. Not many of his kind left.

-Just as well.

-What a nice thing to say(!)

It's true. He was an old devil.

It's not nice to say a wrong word about the departed but in his case you can't find a right word.

He gave Marjorie a terrible life. Since she died, I don't know how many homes he's been in.

He only just got into Studliegh Mount.

He was 81, but he still had his urges.

What was that first home he went into? Ilfracombe, wasn't it?

He nearly set that place on fire.

Rolling his own under the bedclothes.

Women or cigarettes?

-It could have been both, knowing HIM.

-I've never heard such heartless indifference!

-He was a wrong 'un.

-I call him a character.

He was the salt of the earth. He was great to us when we were kids, remember?

We used to visit him and old Joe Hargreaves.

-He gave Joe Hargreaves a terrible life.

-I'M upset, if you aren't.

We were just talking about our past.

Great-Uncle Jacob was part of my past and I'm sorry he's gone.

Gone forever...like the Roxy.

You're letting sentiment cloud the issue.

Uncle Jacob was a waster, a drifter!

He was a war hero. He showed me his medals.

-They weren't his.

-He was in the front line.

-Not often. He spent three years in the glasshouse in Colchester.

-What about his limp?

In 1921 he had one job the entire year -

Santa Claus in Binns department store. He got drunk and fell down the lift shaft.

He used to tell us fantastic stories about the trenches, and the Merchant Navy.

What about those fantastic stories about Shanghai and Valparaiso?

The North Shields ferry was as far as he got.

Wasn't he a fur trapper? Didn't he fight a bear and have his extremities attacked by frostbite?

If they had been, his urges wouldn't have caused all that trouble.

He might have coloured things a bit. That was his storyteller's gift.

He was a liar and a drifter, as Audrey said.

When he came out of the army he hardly did a day's work.

Any money he drank or gambled away. His wife's life was a misery.

And as for his friend Joe... Well, he ruined that marriage.

He was a bad-tempered, bigoted old so-and-so.

-My God!

-What?

-She's just described YOU.

Excuse me, I have to see a Mrs Hope.

What did you want to see her about?

Mr Nesbit...the late Mr Nesbit.

I'm his nephew, you see.

Dear me! I thought this was an old people's home, not a loony bin.

-Keep your voice down.

-He could do some damage with that stick.

-What did I say? He doesn't know me from Adam!

-Sorry about that.

-What's wrong with him?

-I'm afraid your uncle wasn't very popular.

That's armed assault, you know!

Mr Craig used to play cards with your uncle.

-We warned him, but he wouldn't be told.

-He always was a canny player.

I'll go and get Mrs Hope, then.

-Nice little body, though.

-I bet she kept your uncle's urges going!

She's keeping mine going!

Didn't we use to play cards with him in the shed on his allotment?

Aye! He taught us three-card brag.

We used to do the allotment for him. He was to pay us sixpence an hour.

We did his weeding and pulled his rhubarb. Hard work an' all.

He never did pay us, did he?

No. He just knocked it off what we owed him at three-card brag.

It's a pity that all those stories he told us

about the trenches, the China Seas, and bears in the tundra, it's a pity they aren't true.

They are! Of course they're true!

It's just Mam and the family, they always take Aunty Marjorie's side.

He was all right. He was a proud man, an' all.

He wouldn't let the bosses grind him down.

Never had a boss. Never worked, did he?

No, I mean "them" - the bosses, the Tories.

He beat the system. He wasn't going to swell the pocket of some profiteering capitalist.

That doesn't mean he wasn't working-class in the true sense.

You are just like him, you know. You're a chip off the old block.

-I'm working-class and proud of it.

-So am I.

-Get away! You used to be.

-I'm no less working-class than you.

I ran the same streets, lived in the same draughty houses. But that was in my past.

You still like to live with the working-class struggle.

Some of us have won the struggle and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

-You lost something in the process.

-What?!

-Something old Jacob had.

Chip off the old block.

-About Mr Nesbit, is it?

-Yes, I'm his great-nephew.

-These are his effects. I have to ask for your signature.

-Is this all?

Well, everything is on this list.

There was some cash - we did warn Mr Craig.

Clothing, letters, photographs, a watch on a gold chain

and a pack of marked cards.

No medals?!

There weren't any. If you wish to check...

-No, no, no. Where do I sign?

-Just here.

-My condolences. Is the service this morning?

-Yes, we're on our way now.

In the normal way I would attend myself, but, er...

-Is anybody else from here going? Any of the inmates?

-Residents.

Oh, no. Nobody. Frankly, your uncle wasn't the most popular of men.

We had a lot of difficulty.

He was a character! He still had all his faculties.

His faculties caused the difficulties.

But for his demise we would have had to ask him to leave,

particularly since that incident with Miss Armitage in the sun lounge.

Why does everyone say these things? Just cos he was a character.

You'd prefer a bunch of zombies.

Make life easy for you if they sat around playing draughts all day.

Well, I hope I'm like him when I'm his age.

You're remarkably like him now.

What time is it?

It's not twenty to. We're early.

We can just wait here. It's warm.

Even warmer where your uncle's going.

Oh, that's nice!

Sorry, but if what everyone says is true, I should think his destination is settled.

-Unless he repented.

-What would that matter?

There's more joy in heaven over one sinner repenting than ordinary people just being good.

If Jacob did repent, there'll be a hell of a ding-dong when he arrives.

It's a bit unfair, though.

At the last fence he says, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

It's unfair on good people who keep their noses clean.

What about Miss Fairchild who sells church magazines?

She wages war on want, helps dumb animals across the street.

Her kind's taken for granted.

Rasputin, he had the right idea.

-Did he?

-Certainly. I saw it in a film.

He reckoned God liked sinners, so he sinned as much as he could.

All his life he drank vodka and had it away with Russian peasants,

confident that in heaven there'd be all this rejoicing.

-So unfair.

-That's life...or, rather, death.

It's unfair on people like Miss Fairchild. What do they do when she gets up there?

"There's a magazine. Your cloud's over there.

"Excuse us, there's a party next door for Rasputin."

The thing is to give yourself time to repent.

It's a bit tough if it's sudden - if you get struck by lightning.

What if we haven't repented?

You'd be all right - Queen's Scout, you've applied to the Rotary Club,

you're faithful to Thelma in deed, if not in thought, and you pay your rates prompt.

Celestial membership doesn't depend on paying your rates.

It indicates the sort of person you are. No, you'd have no bother.

-Your chances aren't very rosy.

-I've led a more active life. I'm no stranger to sin.

In the army I was in Germany, Cyprus and Malta.

Those places are heaving with sin.

Thelma and I've been to Cyprus and Malta on holiday.

It's not the same, though - a package tour with your wife.

-IN A LOW VOICE:

-We weren't married on them holidays.

-Pardon?

-We weren't married.

There's no need to whisper. He knows.

He knows about you and Deirdre Birchwood.

And us nicking Dinky toys and ME getting caught.

But this is small stuff compared with Mussolini or...Al Capone...

-Or Uncle Jacob.

-Every family's got its black sheep.

Yours has got more than most - your cousin Tom, Uncle Jacob and you!

You've got a whole flock of them!

Well, your family's not immune.

What about your cousin Lillian who ran off with a road gang on the A1?

Lay-by Lil. What about her?!

Lillian always was headstrong. She gets carried away.

The bypass would have been finished months ago if it wasn't for her!

Don't you go on about my family. Every family's got somebody.

Except Thelma. I'm sure her lot's as pure as the driven snow.

-You're wrong, as a matter of fact.

-Oh?

-Yes... There's this cousin of her mother's. Don't say I...

-No, no, no.

Well...he's... he's called Trevor.

It's just that he's a bit...

-Is he?

-He was at the wedding. You won't have noticed him.

-That fella who smelt of lilies of the valley?

-Trevor!

Get away! Well, it takes all sorts.

He lives with an antique dealer in Harrogate.

They're all puffs in Harrogate.

Huhhh!

What time is it?

It's not ten to, yet.

We're very early. Who's coming?

Oh, they'll all be here, all my family.

And old Joe Hargreaves if he's still mobile.

The mob you only see at weddings and funerals. They'll all show up.

They never came to see him at the home or ask him for the weekend or Christmas.

They'll be here today in their fur and new hats. Hypocrites!

-You're a bit of hypocrite yourself.

-What do you mean?

We thought he was fantastic when we were kids, he was a character.

He told us fantastic stories,

but it is fairly apparent

that he was a bad-tempered, idle, dishonest, lecherous old bigot.

No disrespect.

I'd like to say a few words on behalf of my great-uncle Jacob.

Somebody's got to defend him before he gets off to wherever he's going.

All he tried to do in life was go his own way.

His only sin was not conforming or becoming one of the faceless masses.

He was true to himself but, for all the respect that's been shown to him in this world,

the sooner he goes, the better.

-CONVEYOR BELT STARTS

-What's happening?

He's going sooner than you thought.

-What did I do?

-Pressed the button.

-How do I stop it?

It's too late now. Uncle Jacob's going to miss his own funeral!

I think WE should an' all. Come on!

Have one of these, Rose, or there's Audrey's fruit loaf.

Eee, I shouldn't... Well, just the one.

Some tea, Joe, or will you stick to beer?

I'll have some tea later.

Here's a napkin, Elsie, in case you get meringue down your new frock.

He was a diabetic, Jacob. Oh.

Never stopped him eating sweets and drinking.

He said he was a diabetic. You never knew what to believe.

More cake, Kitty? I don't know where I put it!

I thought he'd outlive you. You never looked well.

I thought I'd never live as long as this, myself.

If I'd known, I'd have got out of North Shields.

-Hello, everybody, Rose, Aunty Kitty. You remember Bob, don't you?

-Hello.

Why weren't you at the crematorium?

Ah, well... we went to Studliegh Mount, you see,

and on our way there, Bob's car broke down.

-Yes, it did.

-Everything go all right?

No, it was most peculiar. He wasn't there.

-He wasn't there?

-He'd gone without us.

Typical of our Jacob, that!

We traipse up to that cemetery in this bitter wind

and he hasn't even the decency to hang on for us.

-Most peculiar!

-I feel sorry for the vicar. He was most embarrassed.

Well, I think it was body snatchers.

In the old days when I was a girl there was body snatchers.

I just don't understand. Didn't the undertaker show up with a coffin?

The vicar saw it with his own eyes. Most peculiar!

There's a switch. Somebody must have set it off.

Yes, well, I think we'll go and wash our hands.

-Are you sure you two weren't there?

-We told you! The car broke down.

-Certain?

-Positive.

I swear by me uncle's grave... if you could find it.

Ah, well. Not too much harm done.

It can't have helped our sin rating though - cocking up a funeral, then lying about it.

Jacob would have seen the funny side.

He'll have got there early.

They won't have time to put the decorations up for his party.

Oh, let's nip down the club. It's like a funeral in there.

-At lunch time?

-It's good there during the day.

Most of the lads are laid off. Some great sessions!

-I told Thelma I'd be home for my lunch.

-Just a swift half.

-Well...

-Oh, I don't suppose you two remember me.

Of course we do. You remember Mr Hargreaves, Bob?

Of course I do. Nice to see you. Even in such sad circumstances.

Sad? Oh, aye.

We've all got to go sometime. I shan't be long following him.

I'm in the crematorium Christmas Club, myself.

You knew him longer than anybody.

Aye, I knew him all my life. We went to school together.

By, this world's seen some changes since them days.

Two World Wars, television, H-bombs...topless waitresses.

Well, I thought he was a fine man.

Not many people have a good word to say, but you knew the truth.

-Aye.

-You were his best friend.

Aye, nigh on 75 years. Through thick and thin, good and bad.

That's a long time to know someone. That's friendship, that is.

I can honestly say that he was a terrible man.

What?!

If you feel that way, why did you put up with him all these years?

That's what I constantly ask myself.

It wasn't easy in those days to cut yourself off and get on.

I managed it. I even married above my class.

Over the years he'd keep coming back, borrowing money, making trouble.

It didn't do me work any good, or me marriage.

Everything I ever tried to do, he mucked up.

Well, he didn't have much to show for it.

The sum total of his life is contained in this box.

Faded letters, odd coins, old photographs and a watch.

-Is it a weskit watch with a chain?

-Aye, this one.

I wondered where it had got to.

I'm sorry, Mr Hargreaves. It's all right, love.

-You're being rude sitting in here.

-There's no room in there.

What's the matter, Bob?

-What's wrong with Bob?

-I don't know. Unless he's trying to bend forks by willpower.

PHONE RINGS Get that. I'm making more sandwiches.

-I've seen the future. I have just seen the future.

-He's going to meet a tall, dark sailor.

No. Audrey, him - he's old Uncle Jacob.

Old Joe Hargreaves - that's me.

He tried to better himself, he married above his class, he got a nice home and a nice wife.

But that wasn't any good,

not with Uncle Jacob borrowing money, breaking up his marriage.

Jacob and Joe... they're Bob and Terry, 40 years on.

-You said it, Bob.

-I've seen the future and it's a nightmare!

It's in your hands. That glimpse may have been a blessing in disguise.

The solution's simple enough. You've got to cut yourself adrift from that.

It's an omen! I'll stop seeing him.

I'll stop doing what he wants me to. He's not ruining my life.

I'm pleased to hear you say it, Bob.

-Let's get down the club.

-No!

-Pardon?

-NO!

-Come on! A swift half.

-I said no.

I'm not coming with you. You'll realise that I'll be coming with you less and less and less.

I'm going home to have lunch with my wife, with Thelma.

-It won't be ready.

-Well, how would YOU know?

That was Thelma on the phone asking what she should do about lunch.

I said you won't be back till 3.30. Howay!

Intelfax Subtitles by Kate Shaw for BBC Subtitling, 1995