All About the Good Life

MUSIC: The Good Life

Come on, Margo, get your hat on.

-This is the Daily Mirror.

-LAUGHTER

I used to get very, very nervous beforehand. I used to have to speak to the audience,

very briefly, telling a joke and then they became our friends.

It's all about suburbia.

It's about escape without giving up your basic life.

OK, sweethearts, nobody moves.

It's like running away from home and camping in the bottom of the garden.

If I'd had a pound for every time you have seen me falling over in that mud...

I had to do it five times, I couldn't walk the following day.

Penny Keith made it all right to laugh at the middle-classes and laugh with her.

Just who do you think you are, Mrs Leadbetter?

I am the silent majority.

It was middle-class behaving badly if you like, but only a little bit.

-Tom!

-LAUGHTER

I know what it is, it's a seance.

Anybody there?

KNOCK AT DOOR Blimey, that was quick.

We sort of struck a pulse.

Most people found it not just amusing, but also quite touching

and quite real.

Right, here goes.

I quit work and we become as damn near self-sufficient as possible.

'He's off the grid and in the lead, 150 miles an hour...'

We keep some animals, chickens, a pig,

we produce our own energy, recycle rubbish.

We've got bags of garden, we grow our own food.

One potato.

This whole thing is getting entirely out of hand. It's like living next door to gypsies.

Hello, Margo!

John Howard Davies got this script, sent it to me.

I thought, "Well, it's a very pleasant script."

I thought it's being me, it's very middle-class, suburban.

Yes, an unpretentious little peapod burgundy, but I think you will like its impudent charm.

Is it travelled?

Travelled? All of ten feet!

There we are, Chateau Good '75.

'There was a one-page synopsis'

this was sent to him, which he read

before the first script was delivered.

He quite liked the idea, but thought perhaps maybe it might be a little too middle of the road.

To the future.

I thought, "Will a lot of people, perhaps not terribly well off,

"will they recognise this kind of idiot, throwing his job away and everything?"

If that's the future, I'm going to kill myself!

It's hurting the back of my eyes!

The great thing is, when we actually did the episode one and he left his job,

he took a spade and he dug the ground.

Of course, he became then classless.

Ladies and gentlemen, the artist playing the character of Tom Good, Mr Richard Briers.

APPLAUSE

'It was always going to be something for Richard Briers.'

I was at school with a young lad called Alan Ayckbourn,

he had written a play called the Norman Conquests, a trilogy

starring Penelope Keith, Felicity Kendal.

If you had seen it, you would have said they were perfect for the Good Life.

Now, the wonderful little woman... LAUGHTER

..my television wife, the delicious, Felicity Kendal.

Miss Penelope Keith.

John came and saw it and that was it, two for the price of one.

Everyone at that time, well, I think still, actually, would like to be in a situation comedy for the BBC.

Of course one leapt at it. I didn't even notice that I only had one line in the very first episode.

What is it? What's going on?

It's the Goods, they're dancing in their goldfish pond.

-LAUGHTER

-Ask them why.

But there was no question of my not doing it, even flipping through,

thinking, "Yes, I want to do this, I want to do this."

The suave, talented, Paul Eddington.

APPLAUSE

# Please release me

# Let me go

DOOR SLAMS

# For I... #

-That you, Margo?

-Yes, it's me.

Bye-bye, Burt.

# For I don't love you any more

# To waste our lives... #

Paul Eddington, I'd seen in another Ayckbourn play in the West End.

He had always played villains very well, so I thought he would play comedy particularly well.

-Here?

-No, more.

More.

-Well, here, then?

-No, no, back a little.

No! That's too much! Oh, really!

'I had never met him before.

'I think it worked terribly well. He was a very good actor.'

It was there in the writing.

Because we got on so well together

it did seem as though we were a married couple because of,

call it chemistry, call it what you will.

I do wish you'd take that peevish expression off your face, Jerry.

You can't see the expression on my face.

I know what it is by the position of your feet!

Sometimes you get scripts that need a tremendous amount of work in rehearsals.

Here, there was no work to be done. It was written by real craftsmen,

the like of which I've seldom seen before or since.

Margo, don't just stand there, something warm, milk and brandy!

LOW GROWLING

-Tom.

-What?

Remy Martin or Hindes VSOP?

LAUGHTER

Brian Jones, the PA, spent a great deal of time

searching for the right couple of houses. We had immense difficulty

and couldn't find anybody who was willing for their garden

to be dug up over a period of maybe three or four years.

Once I had the script, that demanded that we had

two houses, adjacent, a smart house and one that wasn't quite so smart.

So I started to look on the west side of London, because it was easier to get out to the west side.

And then I reached Rickmansworth and from there I came to Northwood,

turned down a street...

..and then suddenly, I stopped and looked to the right

and here were the two houses.

I thought, "Thank goodness for that!"

This was the Good's house.

Now you must realise that in 1975,

it didn't look as nice as it looks now. Then it needed new windows.

It needed a lick of paint, but it fitted the Good's house, perfectly.

This represented a 40-year-old man who really lost interest

and wanted to do something else.

I went in, spoke to the owners and said,

"What we would like to do is to

"plant some cabbages and kale in your garden

"and leeks and things like this..."

"Oh, yes, anything else?"

"Yes, we'd like to put some chickens in there as well."

"And?" "Pigs."

"And?" "A goat." "And?"

"We need to dig up your back garden and your front garden."

I thought, "This is it, they're going to say no."

They looked at each other and they said, "Er, yes, all right."

I suppose in a little bit of a similar way to Tom, I have an interest in self-sufficiency.

So I do grow some of my own vegetables.

We normally grow potatoes, runner beans, cabbages,

various different kitchen produce.

So, I suppose there is a little bit of Tom in me.

This is the garden. Obviously, they didn't have any lawn at the time.

It would have been soil and vegetable patches,

animal pens and various other bits.

So this is the famous fence where Tom and Margo used to have a lot of conversations and arguments.

I want an explanation.

I want to know why you are telling the world and his wife

that Margo Leadbetter's clothes are only fit for scarecrows.

Either you take down my dress, or I shall call the police.

I'm aware that didn't come out right, but you know what I mean.

So, this is the back of the house.

You can see a few bits have changed since the TV show.

I used to live two doors down.

I used to walk past to school at the front and by the time

you would walk back in the afternoon, the house would be completely transformed.

The lawn would have gone and been replaced with soil

and rows and rows of freshly planted vegetables, all ready to eat.

Kill! Kill!

When I moved in in 1986,

it was as it had been in The Good Life.

Which, when I realised it was that house. I thought that was fun!

We still get people who come round, perhaps once a month.

People from all over the country.

"This is The Good Life house, isn't it?"

"I've brought my wife to see this house.

"Do you mind if I take a photograph?"

It's amazing, really, so much later, isn't it?

Do you mean to say that you have been wheeling that filthy apparatus

up and down the avenue, begging for kitchen scraps?

Certainly, and it's not begging it's recycling.

Tom, when will you realise, that you are living in Surbiton and not Zaire?

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,

five, four, three...

I thought about ideas and the type of title sequences required.

What came to mind was an idea from an animation

I had seen many years ago by UPA Cartoons, a brilliant company.

It was a unicorn and a garden by Therber.

The title sequence was a little bird that would fly around the screen,

going upside down as it reached the top, which was very novel.

I thought it was genius. It stuck in my mind.

I thought, "This is the thing that would do for The Good Life."

When the first episode went out, I had cringed a bit

because it was perhaps more naive than I expected.

But it had that humour which I think worked for the programme.

The graphic designers were all very ego centric,

trying to compete with each other and knock each other down.

You couldn't walk down a corridor going for lunch or going to the bar

for some time without getting nudged and laughed at.

But as time has proved, it couldn't have been better animation for the programme.

The best titles usually are simple. Get to the point, get in there and get the show on the road.

Now, listen, stupid.

That's right, look at me when I'm talking to you. Now look.

Over here, Look. Now, if you want the old saucer and milk, cod's head,

the tickle under the chin, you want all that, you've got to graft, right?

Out there, birds? You chase birds, got it? Right.

Right, and kill!

It's all about suburbia.

It's about escape without giving up your basic life.

It's like running away from home and camping in the bottom of the garden.

Well, if that's the best you can do, we'll be here until Christmas.

Well, thank you very much, Tom. Goodbye.

Up until The Good Life, dropping out did mean going off and living in a tee-pee in Mid Wales.

You were running away. That was really important.

So what was wonderful was this idea of dropping out and staying at home. Now that was genuinely new.

I mean, Margo is doing her best. She's the odd one out here.

It's not her fault if she's all weak and feeble.

Weak and feeble, am I?

To be self sufficient, or to have a beautiful garden, we know, would or could make us happy.

It's in your grasp, you know, coming in, holding a cabbage

or clutching some leeks, saying, dinner!

LAUGHTER

It's a sign of the times that most local authorities in urban areas

are facing an unprecedented demand for that British of social provisions, the allotment.

People have worked out that growing their own food, not only helps the house keeping,

but also renews that personal contact with nature,

which, for so many of us, has become depressingly remote.

Well, I'm sorry, I despise allotments, they're so Brixtony.

'We were all inclined to economise'

in some sense at that time. If you had never grown out tomatoes,

you went out and bought a tomato plant or two.

If you had nowhere in which to grow a tomato plant, you bought a flower pot.

There was something of a 1940s spirit abroad at that time.

Barbara? What are you doing?

-I'm trying to sell veggies.

-But you're sitting where you can be seen!

There's no point in hiding in the shed, is there?

HE LAUGHS

Laugh, go on, laugh. I hope you're still laughing

when the value of property in this district plummets to an all-time low.

John Seymour's book, Self-Sufficiency, was really important at exactly that time.

It taught you in great detail how to make tools,

how to milk every possible animal that could be milked.

It sold certainly in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.

There was that feeling that for a book like that to be so

successful in the mid-70s, clearly a lot of people shared that dream.

What Tom and Barbara were doing

was idiotically translating that to the back garden,

and so they were John Seymour reduced right down to suburban level.

OK, sweethearts, nobody moves.

From a practical level, it was clearly hopeless.

He was really, truly awful

and would never be self-sufficient. They'd starve.

How could you miss a chicken from six inches?

It ducked!

The purpose of a situation comedy, one of the basic principles

is you glue people together so they can't escape.

The fact that they lived on top of each other made it what it was.

You've got to have that glue. If there isn't any glue, there is no tension at all.

People always talk about situation comedy as if the situation is what

creates the laughs. In The Good Life, the characters drove the comedy rather than the situation.

My old fork, there he is. There's something of me in that.

This repair idea, it was not just a man mending an implement,

this was a friend restoring to health with affection. Look at that!

What a bloody load of old rubbish!

Good morning!

Margo! Nice bit of thigh!

Achoo!

Shouldn't you have weights on either end?

'I think Tom was a very spoilt child.'

I used to enjoy that part of acting him,

because I could do occasionally funny voices and silly walks,

which I'm very fond of.

HE CLEARS HIS THROAT Good morning!

HE IMITATES GUNSHOTS

'The writing was of any guy,'

so I had to use virtually my own personality and mannerisms

to sort of...

become HIM.

As near as one can!

A lot of clowning around.

HE WHISTLES

The famous tune that I used to whistle,

pretending that I was elsewhere, as it were...

Terrible whistle. People would say, "What is that tune?

"What is that tune?" It was Over the Rainbow.

I think that was probably my only idea that I put forward!

HE WHISTLES

Richard Briers is justifiably called the greatest sitcom actor

of our generation. His timing is absolutely impeccable.

Come along woman, I'm starving! Food! Food!

LAUGHTER

Bread?

Bread?

-What are you having?

-LAUGHTER

He is able to do things within the confines

of this remarkable technique of conveying emotion.

And he does it in a very subtle way.

So he knows how to make you feel sorry for him,

or how to be glad for him.

Come on, Tom, it's only a setback.

It's not a setback, love, it's the finish! We have had it!

So, I go back to work. Oh, well.

At least we can say we tried.

Hells bells...you're dirty.

I think like most women, she was tough. There's a tough side to her.

She had no decent clothes or she never went for a holiday, anything.

-Oh, that's nice.

-That's what I thought when I bought it, but I'm afraid it was a terrible mistake.

"Le Clerk," a jolly expensive mistake.

Well, that's not important. The point is, Barbara, I got it home.

I put it on and I said to myself, "Margo, that simply looks cheap and nasty,"

-so I wondered if you would like it?

-LAUGHTER

Richard and Felicity would just come rushing in,

when we were in the studio and say, "What am I wearing?"

I would say, "I think this or that." I provided the odd second-hand bit here and there.

Hello, grubby!

Hello, dear.

I did provide shirts.

The red shirt and the blue shirt that she wore constantly

were ones that I had gleaned off my husband,

who was very skinny at the time and suited her very well.

Actually, they looked better on her than him!

-Hello, Margo, you look nice.

-You've got one-track minds!

The big green sweater, that was knitted previous years.

I thought that would just be right.

And he enjoyed wearing it and it started to fall to pieces,

which helped at the stage they were, that it was collapsing.

It probably collapsed at the end of the show!

Would you hit a woman...

-in glasses?

-Certainly not.

What have you done?

These are Felicity's specks,

it was very important that we didn't lose them.

So, I don't know why, but that's why I still have them.

Obviously they're clear glass, cos they were done specially for her.

The bit of character-building Elastoplast.

It's a bit dirty!

I had this little chat with Jerry,

I advised him to clamp down on Margo's spending.

Take those glasses off.

How was I supposed to know, it's just bad timing.

-You will interfere...!

-Look who's talking!

All right, all right, don't panic. I might not have to beat you up.

What am I talking about, good Lord!

I suppose Barbara Good was the most difficult role to play.

There was very little to grasp on except love.

-You look gorgeous.

-Do I?

-It's funny dressing up as a woman again, I haven't had my posh frock on for ages.

-What is it like?

Sensuous, I would say, yes, definitely sensuous.

Good, keep feeling that way until we get upstairs to the bridal suite.

They've obviously got a terrific marriage, and a lot of laughs.

They find each other attractive and she has got that very female charm.

Oh, Tom.

I don't deserve you!

Yes, you do.

Even so, occasionally, I used to say to the writers, and they were very good,

I said, "I do think we ought to have a flaming row every now and then, because

"it gets so coutchy-coutchy and cosy wosy, that people get fed up of it."

So they did I think two or three episodes, we had a real up and a downer.

Eileen, this is Tom.

-How nice to meet you, Tom.

-Good to see you.

There is that rather attractive girl came to supper and I was all over her. You know, awful.

I did over-act to it.

Coming right up. HE LAUGHS EXCITEDLY

-Well, cheers.

-Cheers.

And, may I say, Eileen, you look absolutely stunning.

HE LAUGHS EXCITEDLY

Barbara was very, very hurt and very upset. So that was good!

Arrgh!

-What are you doing?

-I'm screaming.

-Why?

Because as far as you are concerned, there are three sexes in the world - man, woman and Barbara!

And just once, now and again, now and again, now and again,

-I'd like to feel that I'm a normal attractive woman!

-That's ridiculous.

He crossed the line and she gave him a right going over and that's very good, that's more natural.

Well, that's just being silly, isn't it?

LAUGHTER

'Tom Good, I've always said I never really liked him,'

because I thought he was terribly selfish, terribly self-centred, it was me, me, me all the time.

Sure, we don't get much leisure time these days, but who needs it?

Take Margo and Jerry, they're probably lolling about in their Swedish armchairs, sipping martinis,

vegetating in front of their colour telly, I mean, who'd swap for that?

I bloody would!

When I started watching it in my early teens, Tom was my hero,

I loved Felicity Kendal and they were the couple I wanted to be when I grew up.

As I got a bit older, I started to get a bit annoyed by Tom.

Is something wrong?

Yes! I'm SICK of the sight of that thing!

I'm tired, I'm filthy, I feel 120, I must look 180.

-Well, why didn't you say?

-Well, I just thought you might have noticed.

Tom has just done this thing, just announced you're going self sufficient and your wife is going

"OK, oh, so we're never going to have any children, then?"

The children are going to be proud of you as well.

Yeah.

Children? You are not...?

No, no. The cat's going to have kittens.

LAUGHTER Oh!

It was discussed by the press

why Barbara and Tom didn't have children,

or Margo and Jerry didn't have children.

In fact it would have destroyed any balance that we might have had.

Well, thank you very much, Jerry!

It took me half an hour to get across London Bridge this evening.

-I could be the centre spread of the Pig Breeder's Gazette.

-Piglet of the month!

We rehearsed pretty well.

I think in comedy you do need more rehearsal with comedy timing.

With an audience of course, you need to be quite polished

and know exactly what you're saying and doing, so you can be quite clever with it.

Come along, woman. I'm starving! Food! Food!

Humour is great, especially when you're in a rather stressful position each Sunday having to do an episode

with 300 people in front and perhaps, you know, ten million people

staring at you from the lounge. It makes you very nervous.

'It certainly was a nerve-wracking thing, you know.'

Richard used to get very, very nervous, as indeed we all did.

APPLAUSE I used to have to speak to the audience,

very briefly, telling a joke because otherwise they got very fed up

and hurt if an actor just walks past them and goes to the set.

It's very rude, but I was always terrified of this joke.

I managed to do it, managed to get a laugh and so I had met them and they became our friends.

Never been this full before. LAUGHTER

Richard would go on and say, "Hello, I'm terribly nervous," whatever.

Felicity and I would go on and say good evening, so they had seen us in

our first costumes and they just had to sit back and relax, really.

Welcome to the Television Centre and to TC6,

allow me to introduce myself, my name's Brian Jones,

I'm the floor manager, the production assistant.

'Part of my job was to warm up the audience.'

Now on previous occasions, warm up people would go on

and crack a whole line of jokes and gags,

very good, but inappropriate in that situation.

LAUGHTER

It can happen is that you get this huge laugh and you're sitting on the sofa, sort of mildly grinning.

So that worried me a lot. When we finished each episode,

there were massive sort of football cheers.

The whole wa-hey!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And I said to the floor manager, "Can you ask them just to clap?

"Because it's a lovely little show, but it's only a little show."

It was a funny thing, because what the audience liked to see most in television studios

-was things going wrong, which of course, they did, quite often.

-No, I didn't mean that.

We've decided on the way we live, I thought you realised that it didn't also contain these...

Blah, blah, blah...

LAUGHTER

Let's get this sorted out once and for all, Margo.

Now go over there and sit. Will you sit!

LAUGHTER DROWNS COMMENTS

I'm sorry, love. Sorry.

-I say, I think Barbara's dinner was absolutely delicious.

-Stop, please.

You don't understand, do you?

There will be Margo poshed up, there will be Eileen poshed up,

and there I'll be looking like something the cat's dragged in!

Now, now, look.

Now, look... you can't replace those, you know.

'We got on terribly well. That again was very lucky because'

this was really like a family and it sort of became like that, very odd.

'I don't think in the period of time that we made the programme there was ever a cross word.

'It was just warmth.'

It sounds very schmaltzy, but in fact it was, just like that, we all loved each other.

LAUGHTER AND SOME APPLAUSE

We were a very, very happy band with John Howard Davis and the two writers.

So, I don't think we ever thought as actors do sometimes,

"I haven't got enough lines, or why isn't my part bigger or better?"

Be quiet the pair of you!

One more word out and I swear I shall throw you both out of the French windows. Now, Margo.

-Good evening, Jerry.

-Good evening, Margo.

-Good evening, Barbara. Good evening, Tom.

-Good evening, Margo.

Good evening, Margo. Good evening, Jerry.

-Good evening, Barbara.

-Good evening, Jerry.

There was something very attractive about the four characters.

There was an interrelationship between them, but they were very different.

So this had to be reflected in the sets.

The French windows were used as an entrance more than the front door.

I don't know about you, but I've never let anybody through my French window, have you?

So, I think that sort of said that they had quite a deep friendship.

THEY SING INDISTINCTLY

A designer should be more detective before putting pen to paper and thinking about colours, anything.

You have to get a clue from the actors, certainly talk to the director, and certainly start

to analyse the script and what it means.

Yes, I'm sorry, I shouldn't really have come round like this.

Oh, heavens above, we're old friends, what does it matter?

Lift up a moment, would you?

They were both middle-class,

but distinctly different in characters.

The Goods' house was, you know, slightly dowdy, muted

and not exactly downtrodden, but had well-worn elements to the interior.

-All right, Jerry?

-The Leadbetter's living room

was supposed to be a contrast, rather more sparkling,

based on, you know, fringes of Harrods.

I went for something that was sort of reproduction/regency.

It might have been expensive, but it wasn't sort of tasteful.

Even that social climber, Veronica Naismith cut me dead in the hairdresser's today.

-I hope you cut her back?

-I certainly did.

Her auburn rinse is no longer a secret in Surbiton.

'We started doing the series, one of the writers said,'

"Do you mind if we write Penelope Keith up?"

I said, "Well, it looks to me as if she's absolute dynamite.

"You've got to write her up."

..Fire!

I have just come to say, thank you very much!

# She may be the face I can't forget

# A trace of pleasure or regret

# Maybe my treasure or the price I have to pay... #

I've just cut my finger, clipping your blasted hedge.

Don't swear, Jerry. And don't bleed in the sink, I've just cleaned it.

Margo is the iconic character from The Good Life and the one that you

would say, "Oh, she's a bit of a Margo," and everyone would know exactly what you are talking about.

You take nothing seriously!

You two are a microcosm of what is wrong with modern society.

Nobody takes anything seriously and then wonders why we can't produce a decent motorcar!

-I'd go easy with that Tabasco.

-I shall do what I like with it!

It was very, very refreshing to see a woman with real character

and strength, who could still be very feminine at times.

Why don't we go home and, erm, we could...?

And behave badly, but do it with such elan, such ferocity, that was terrible funny.

Well, that's the last time I play the tart for you, Jerry.

I'm sorry to be so long,

but one does have to keep such a careful eye on cotelette d'agneau au Duc de la Galette.

She sort of happened, really, Margo, in many ways.

The situation was so strong, as with all good comedy,

that she sort of came along herself and grew and grew, like Topsy.

Is that a burn?

Well, as I seem to have the floor,

there are just one or two remarks I should like to make.

Firstly, I did not seek office.

It is simply...

I seem to have been chosen as the standard bearer for those of us who seek to put a more

-professional gloss on our productions.

-Here, here.

Good morning. Careful!

You must remember that it was practically the era of Margaret Thatcher and of tough women.

Penny Keith fulfilled that comedic role if you like. She wasn't playing Margaret Thatcher,

but a woman who couldn't be pushed around.

Us working for Margo is funny.

We know she's bossy, it's because we know it's just funny, just funny!

-SHE TUTS

-For your information, Tom, it is 2:37pm.

Mr Pearson always started work at 2:15pm on Fridays, I expect you to do the same. Now come along.

Who the hell does she think she is?

-LAUGHTER

-'I think it's just synchronicity

'on the part of the writers and Penelope Keith that she comes along at the same time'

that Margaret Thatcher became the leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.

I don't think that they sat down and said, "Let's put Thatcher on screen,"

but there was a real chiming of the sense of the person that Margo was with Thatcher.

Road cleaning I shall pay.

Street lighting I shall pay.

Ground rent, I shall pay, but when it comes to the drain in front of my house, I shall not,

-because it is blocked up and overflowing.

-Oh, I'll make a note of that.

You will do more than that, Mr Squiers, you will have a plumber

on my doorstep at 9am tomorrow morning with a plunger in his hand or you will not get a penny.

Now, just who do you think you are, Mrs Leadbetter?

I am the silent majority.

LAUGHTER

I think I probably had more reaction about that, because everyone felt

"Oh, gosh, she's speaking for ME."

The extraordinary success of that.

Obviously it spoke for a great many people,

who are and still are the silent majority putting up with it.

Come on, Margo, get your hat on.

-This is the Daily Mirror.

-LAUGHTER

I am terribly sorry, Margo, please, have the Telegraph!

-LAUGHTER

-I think she had a heart of gold,

she really did, but sadly, couldn't see the funny side,

which was the wonderful butt of all the jokes.

Now, then, my motto...

"The ooh, arr bird is so-called because it lays square eggs."

I don't understand that.

She didn't have any sense of humour.

I had a grandmother like that. Couldn't quite see the humour.

It made her very vulnerable. You know, poor thing!

It gave her a nice sort of thing of a character rather than just an old bossy boots.

Do you know what they used to call me at school?

Margo Leadbetter?

No, I wasn't married then.

They used to call me Starchy.

Is that your maiden name?

It was a term of ridicule.

Starchy Sturgess, they used to call me.

Oh...boys can be very cruel.

It was a girls' school.

That made it worse, somehow.

Oh, Margo!

It's true!

Margo...

I think that the vulnerability was very important. Because she could

have been horribly pompous and terribly priggish and you might have thought, "Oh, get off the screen."

So it was important that she was likeable. I didn't think, when I played her, "I've got to make

"her likeable, they must like me," but I found all that in the text.

Well, it's no secret in Surbiton, that I am one of the leading lights in the music society.

By the way, we're giving the Sound of Music at the Town Hall from the 23rd to the 24th.

Interestingly enough, Julie Andrews played my role in the film. Now, I think you may quote me as saying...

-You're not writing any of this down?

-LAUGHTER

'I think it probably was'

quite an in-joke for people like us in the acting profession.

Doing amateur dramatics.

INAUDIBLE

-Is this the star's dressing room?

-Tom, Barbara, do come in!

-Couldn't afford a telegram, so we made you that.

-Oh, how kind.

Shouldn't they be Edelweiss?

You see, Barbara's noticed! I told Miss Mountshaft she should have

ordered the real thing from Moyse Stevens, but no, plastic will do!

The whole thing is tat, tat, tat!

Overture and learners, please, overture and learners!

-Overture and beginners, you ghastly little child!

-LAUGHTER

Yes, I must, one wonders why one does it.

'She thought she would be the most marvellous Maria...'

# And whiskers on kittens. #

'She had such blind faith in herself,'

and what was so clever was the fact that you never saw her sing.

You never saw exactly what happened, but the description of it was brilliant.

It left so much to the imagination as to actually what did go wrong on that stage, it must have been awful!

That was the Sound of Music, wasn't it?

Possibly.

Why did Margo sing Maria?

That is the name of the character she is playing.

-I know it is, but I thought that the song came from West Side Story?

-It did.

Oh, is the Mayor incontinent?

No, why?

Well...he kept popping out.

Probably just a music lover.

Poor Margo!

Smiles on, here they come. Quick.

ALL: Margo! APPLAUSE

'She's very easy to dress because she had a good figure...'

..and a lovely long neck.

Barbara, Tom. I've got the most wonderful news.

People were saying, "oh, I was waiting for her coming in."

I was sort of thinking, "Help, maybe I better not overdo it,"

but then it was sort of irresistible, really.

MUSIC PLAYS

I see you've brought the horse home, Barbara.

'It helped me understand the sort of woman she was.'

The fact that she cared so much about how she looked

and how everything had to be neat and proper.

'So I used to say

'I changed not only every scene, but sometimes every shot it seemed.'

We averaged four outfits a show, if the budget would stand it, which it did.

I hope nobody will gag, a petite marmite.

'Penny and I used to decide...'

what we had. We used to get very carried away with her cleaning outfits.

We had enormous fun with that. Always with the Marigolds, I didn't live that down for a long time.

I used to get presents of Marigold gloves, which are very useful.

And all of those wonderful turbans.

Gotcha!

Got you, Jerry.

I think actually, on the here and now, it was quite outrageous,

but then, after all, it was a comedy programme.

She was the perfect executive's wife.

She was the lady who stayed at home,

always looked nice, always had his dinner ready.

That's what she thought her role was.

In many ways they lived sort of separate lives.

Hello, darling.

'Jerry was caught between his boss and his wife.'

He couldn't do anything right, and yet he did everything he possibly could to keep everybody happy.

-Now, your dinner.

-That's all right, I've got some Indian takeaway.

Then, will you kindly eat it in the kitchen with the extractor fan full on.

The last time, this upholstery wreaked of vindaloo for a week.

-Good night, Jerry.

-Night.

Have a nice sing song.

Well, Paul Eddington was a breeze, he was so natural, proper light comedy,

very light and very delicate

against my kind of clown thing.

LAUGHTER

HE IMITATES MARGO Jerry!

Paul Eddington was capable of playing weakness very well and strength very well.

The difficulty that he had that he was very seldom the motivating force that drove anything.

He had to react, and react he did.

But that's where you get the laughs and he knew that.

Absolute chaos, Jerry has chickenpox!

Yes, he's covered in them.

I'm afraid I'm telling you what I've told the rest of the gang.

The Leadbetters must be considered as totally out of circulation this Christmas. Yes. Yes. Just a minute.

-SHE SHOUTS

-All right, Jerry, I'm coming!

That was Jerry, calling from his sick bed.

'Jerry, he was a fantastic creation.'

He underplayed it beautifully, but had such presence on the screen,

and grew to be a national treasure.

-Early caller?

-An emissary from the music society.

Miss Mountshaft's brother-in-law with a steel plate in his head.

What did he want? Some metal polish?

I asked him, very politely, Mr Ives,

what size lump of clay do you think I should use?

Do you know what he did, Jerry?

He stared quite unashamedly at my...breasts and said,

"In your case, Margy, about a 36B."

Disgusting!

Of course, everyone found it hilarious.

Here they are, you better tell them.

-You tell them. You're the master of the house.

-Am I? Oh!

-We were in bed.

-At 8.30pm, why?!

-JERRY LAUGHS

-Jerry!

Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal and I, all live south of the river and we rehearsed in Chiswick.

Paul lived north of the river and every morning he talked about traffic.

God, I think that Friday night traffic on London Bridge is the worst of all.

-Best part of an hour tonight.

-'We had the writers with us quite a lot, so they took that'

and made that part of Jerry's character, which was fascinating.

God, that rush hour gets worse every day.

It took me half an hour to get across London Bridge this evening.

Of course, he remained in the rat race and he made the money and he had

nice clothes and a nice comfortable house, but he hated the job.

So he paid the price for bourgeois comfort, and also he had a very expensive wife to keep.

I mean, you paid £55 for a new dress and it ends up on Tom's scarecrow.

I didn't pay £55 for it. I charged it to your account!

-How much?!

-Don't say how much like that, it's not an exorbitant figure.

-£55! Barbara would buy three dresses for that money.

-Yes!

What do you mean, yes?

I mean that the home spun suits Barbara.

-I've always thought she looks rather cute.

-Door, please, Jerry.

It was an interesting dynamic between the four of them.

As the series grew, Tom used to flirt with Margo.

That was an undercurrent and sexual tension between the characters that gave it an extra power, I think.

Well, Tom?

Well, Margo?

Yes.

Good.

I shall miss you, terribly.

-Jerry!

-Yes, I know...

-Oh, Tom...

-Don't be silly, don't.

It was this interplay of relationships that...

really give it a little edge that otherwise would not have been there.

-Margo?

-Yes.

Thanks, sexy.

Don't be silly.

Always had a yen for you, you know that.

-Don't you start that.

-I can't help it, it's a fact of life.

'They got drunk and then...'

Paul became very...

rather fancied Little Wonder, we used to call her, privately.

I'm a married woman.

Well, so am I.

I still fancy you!

With alcohol, these things do happen.

So we had that, then I got tight

and he says, "You're a very beautiful woman."

You are not starchy, Margo, you're a very attractive woman.

-No, I'm not.

-Yes, you are.

And I'll tell you something else.

You've got a very sexy neck.

'There was never any suggestion'

that they were going to exchange car keys.

But the fact that there was the attraction there, and they all got drunk and all behaved in

a totally different way, but nothing really happened. It was really clever, we all loved doing that.

DRUNKEN LAUGHTER

Margo! Margo, I'm terribly sorry.

-Tom and I have just been talking.

-Well, that's all we've been doing.

Here you are, alone in the house and I've been seen coming in your back door in my night things.

Oh, yes, and Jerry driving off with Barbara in his pyjamas, it's wife swapping, isn't it?

It hasn't reached Surbiton yet, but it's already got as far as Epsom.

I think it was vital for the comedy, really, as much as anything else,

that it was set in the cosiest, most Conservative, with a small and a big C, in society.

Where the golf club mattered, and Margo's pony club was very important.

Which made the sort of clash of cultures all the more rich for comic material.

What charmed me most was...

the heightened accuracy of the picture of suburbia.

I've taken the liberty of preparing a little champagne buffet for later.

-Oh, I'm so sorry, madam acting chair woman, do carry on.

-Thank you very much.

'It's the perfect example of somewhere where you can belong to a local society of music'

or amateur dramatics, because it's the kind of society

where these things will have members, there will be an audience.

Rehearsal facilities, my home.

Of course, one remembers, very fondly those bohemian evenings

in Miss Mountshaft's flatlet in the high street.

Penny Keith made it all right to laugh at the middle-classes and laugh with her.

The whole series was basically middle-class, but nobody took offence to that in those days.

It was middle-class behaving badly, if you like, but only a little bit.

-You two are very quiet.

-Oh, we're sorry.

Yes, now come along. We have such a rich language.

-Let's use it.

-All right, then.

Er...

I've finished.

-I've finished as well.

-Oh, yes.

-Have you finished, Jerry?

-Yes, thank you, darling.

-And I've finished too.

-It is a rich language, isn't it?

LAUGHTER

It is an incredibly middle-class sitcom, there is no way round it.

In fact, the working-class characters when they appear are real parodies.

Arthur Bailey who comes to fit the window break in the garden, is like a 'cor blimey lover duck'.

Mr Bailey, I want to see you in my drawing room at once.

Won't be a minute.

That is correct, you will be ten seconds!

Yes?

This was a picture of middle-class society up and down the whole nation.

You stupid man!

Don't talk to me like that!

I can because I pay your wages, and get off my carpet!

It is subversive, but neatly subversive, it's kindly subversive.

It's, "You're not perfect and we're laughing at you."

Hello, Miss Mountshaft!

Margo Leadbetter.

We had four very strong characters and anybody who was outside had

to be visualised by what anybody said about them.

'It's so good, so subtle.'

I for one are not prepared to sit through another of

Dolly Mountshaft's diatribes on why Mrs Simpson should have been Queen.

I loved trying to cast the people who were mentioned.

I beg your pardon, Miss Mountshaft.

Miss Mountshaft, she was so classic, tweedy spinster with a very large bosom.

In addition to which I am probably the only person in the whole choir

to have made anything of those ghastly tents we're wearing.

When you are acting being on the phone, I must have, some sense of

how they talk, so you know if you have to interrupt them or whatever.

It's smoke and mirrors!

Blackmail is an ugly word, Miss Mountshaft.

When we decided that enough was enough, they didn't want to continue and make the series

degenerate in quality, so they had to have a finish.

It had had its time, but I wonder how else you could have ended it?

I'm sure there were a thousand ways, they could have discovered gold in the garden and all live together,

-you know, looked after pigs.

-You are JJM's new managing director.

Oh, Jerry!

There was no easy way of ending the series, except with something dramatic.

Will you excuse me for a moment?

Wa-hey!

We put the set behind a curtain, so the audience did not see it until the scene.

I think it took something like 10-15 minutes

to create and then the lights went down.

SINGING

'They had to have some kind of denial, some kind of shock,'

so they chose a burglary, which was very effective. It acted as a closure.

I remember there were people in tears, thinking how ghastly, and it was somehow really rather horrid

to see all that graffiti sprayed on the set which had been there for three or four years. Extraordinary.

It was very brave of them to do it.

Suddenly we were doing drama.

Why us, Tom? And why all this?

I don't know, love.

They're just maniacs.

It was quite moving. In fact, I think it was the most moving element

of the whole thing, you know.

'Because it was something coming to such an abrupt end.'

There's only one solution, Tom.

You got to come back to work.

You can have your old job back again tomorrow. I can promise you that.

'He was very tempted, I think.'

He was going to slip back. It was her, being the woman, of course,

the stronger person of the two, she said, "No, we have to carry on."

I know why Geraldine isn't giving us any milk.

Why?

She needs to be mated again, that's why.

Yes, of course.

What made you think of that?

I don't know. Just thinking about tomorrow, I suppose.

It was a shock, but it was a test of character too, as I said.

We'll have to clean up and get on with it.

Anyway, we're drinking to Tom and Barbara, and their bizarre life.

It may be bizarre, Jerry, but it's a good life.

Yes, that's it, that's it.

Here's to the good life.

# One day I'll wish upon a star

# And wake up when the clouds are far behind... #

I remember saying to my mum, "Can we have chickens in the garden?"

I had this image of myself as Tom going down and going...

HE WHISTLES

And hopefully Felicity Kendal would come around the corner and go, "John, John, John!"

Of course, she never did.

# Somewhere over the rainbow... #

The beauty of Tom and Barbara was they loved each other.

And actually, they were going to try to do it as best they could,

which was really bad,

but if you can do it with somebody you love, then it's all worth it.

# Somewhere over the rainbow... #

'It was watchable by any member of any family.'

The costumes are funny, it IS quite funny, it tells the story

'plainly and simply, with a great deal of affection.'

# And the dreams that you dare to dream... #

'Television comedy, when it's good situation comedy, it seems to last.'

If you are lucky enough to have made people laugh, people are your friends.

'I quite like reading garden magazines, because I'm old now.'

I've a strimmer.

So I like it all neat. Really boring suburban man, that's me.

Planting spuds and things, I can't do that.

# That's where you'll find me... #

'The memory of it is enduring.'

I think because it has never been succeeded by a better programme of

the same kind, that's why it's up there on its own little Olympus.

# Birds fly over the rainbow

# Why, then, oh, why can't I?

# If happy little bluebirds fly,

# Beyond the rainbow

# Why, oh, why, can't I? #

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