Comedy Playhouse: Where it All Began

Comedy Playhouse was a great job to get.

You know, if you were an actor, you'd love to be in one.

It was always a sense you didn't know what you were going to get,

or indeed, who was going to be in it.

We all seemed to think everything was possible,

and a lot of us proved that it was.

-I loved all of them.

-HE LAUGHS

I can't understand why it hasn't gone on all over the years,

why anybody stopped it.

Is it coming back?

I haven't been informed.

No one's rung me and said, "Hello, are you busy?"

Hmmm.

Comedy Playhouse was a happy accident

that was conceived in 1961...

Oh, you dirty old man!

..and ended up running for 13 years and notching up 120 episodes.

Steady...go!

Some of the best writers and actors of the day contributed,

and though the shows were first created as individual one-offs,

30 of them would go on to become fully-fledged comedy series.

What's on BBC One?

But the series may not have happened at all

if it hadn't been for the sudden break-up

of one of the most established comedy teams of the day.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson

had been writing for Tony Hancock on Hancock's Half Hour,

at that point the most successful comedy show on television.

We'd written everything that Tony Hancock did for nine years,

radio, television, films, stage, everything.

And one day, to our surprise,

Tony Hancock announced that he didn't want them

to write for him any more.

It was like a break-up of a very close-knit family overnight.

We were all a bit shattered about that.

Fortunately, the head of BBC Light Entertainment, Tom Sloan,

held Galton and Simpson in such high regard

that he didn't want to lose them,

so he called them to his office and made them an offer.

He said, "I want you to do

"10 half hours called Comedy Playhouse.

"You can do what you like.

"You can be in them, you can direct them,

"you can do whatever you like.

"Sketches, storylines, whatever.

"Just bring me 10 shows called Comedy Playhouse."

Somebody just says, "Well, you know

"do what you want, you've only got to do half an hour."

You just go, "What makes you laugh?

"OK, we'll have, we'll do a thing about, er...

"OK, we'll do a thing about a rag and bone man. OK."

Episode Four of Comedy Playhouse was a two-hander called The Offer.

Set in a ramshackle scrap yard in Shepherd's Bush, West London,

it introduced us to two of the most memorable

comedy characters of the '60s.

We didn't know who they were.

We didn't know what their relationship was.

Didn't have names for them.

I typed, "first rag and bone man" and "second rag and bone man",

and we wrote 10 pages, which is half a script,

and said, "Where are we going with this? Who are they?"

And then we had to...are they brothers, cousins, uncle and nephew?

And then one of us said, "Father and son." And that was it.

Oh, Harold! It's my heart. It's started again!

Harold, I'm going.

Do you hear me, Harold? I'm going.

Well, that makes two of us, don't it?

You know, it's normally about

someone unable to leave their mother. But in this case, it isn't,

it's about Harry H. Corbett

desperate to go off and do stuff with his life,

but not really ever being able to escape from...

"Oh, Harold!" All that...you know, I mean, it's just brilliant.

Normally when you did comedy, you were supposed to keep at it,

you know, laugh, laugh, laugh.

And it allowed the audience to not laugh and still be successful.

I know that sounds silly, but it was unusual at the time.

I never got nothing in the past from you, so don't do me no favours.

I don't want none now. It don't bother me.

I'll soon have that on the move.

It wasn't only the tone of the show that was unusual.

Galton and Simpson had also chosen to depict a world -

and a class - rarely portrayed in television comedy,

and they'd also made a conscious decision

to use established stage actors rather than comics.

Right at the end of it, he's trying to move out of the house

and the old man won't let him have the horse.

So he tries to pull the cart himself and he can't,

he can't. He's driving... and he realises he's trapped.

I can't go!

I can't get away! HE SOBS

'We just wrote down "breaks down in tears", you know,

'thinking he would pretend.'

In rehearsal we see Harry crying his eyes out, tears, real streaming.

I said, "God Almighty, that...he's an actor."

Never had this before in our careers,

and we got this wonderful...

he was literally crying. I couldn't get over it.

The frustration and just the sheer sort of anger and the,

the feeling of complete sort of lack of power or potency,

you're...you're stuck here forever.

Until one day you'll be the same age as that man

and you'll be there on your own,

surrounded by scrap metal and rag and bones.

It's...it's heart-breaking, really.

I'm surprised it got any laughs at all!

The mixture of comedy and pathos was certainly not lost

on the man who commissioned the series in the first place -

Tom Sloan the head of BBC Light Entertainment.

Tom came down to the first rehearsal,

and he nudged Ray in the ribs. "You know what you've got here, don't you?" Ray said, "What?"

He said, "You've got a series." Ray said, "Nah, no way."

Galton and Simpson remained unconvinced,

and agreed to do a series on the condition that the actors were also on board,

secretly hoping that this would be the end of it.

But once Harry H Corbett and Wilfred Brambell signed up,

they had no choice but to write...

and write and write.

Eight series, two spin-off films,

and a comic creation that altered the television landscape.

For the second season of Comedy Playhouse,

Galton and Simpson wrote the classic and often revisited script Impasse,

starring Bernard Cribbins and Leslie Phillips.

It was a particularly apt title for an idea conceived

after an alarming bout of writer's block.

They were struggling one week, Monday nothing,

Tuesday nothing, Wednesday, Thursday they were looking at the walls,

by Friday they've counted every single nail that's in the room

and, you know, nothing's happening at all.

And then Graham Stark a friend of theirs, an actor, um,

turns up late on Friday. He's got a sort of newspaper cutting,

he says, "Look, I just saw this story in The Times."

And we said yeah, that'd be good.

He said, you know, um...

two cars come down the same very narrow street,

in the countryside

and neither of them could get out of the way for the other one.

And we listened to that, and we said...

.."That's it. That's exactly what we want. I think it will be."

I said back up! I can't get past here, can I?

Then I suggest you back up.

I'm not backing up. Oh, no. It's not up to me to back up.

If there's any backing up going on, it's going to be you, mate.

I know my Highway Code! I'm further of the lame than you are.

I don't think I actually drove that car,

because I don't think I'd passed my test then.

And then in the studio, it was me going, "Oi, you, get out of my way!"

It's lovely, isn't it? Classic, isn't it?

Toff and a yobbo.

-Come on, then!

-Come on.

-Put 'em up, then.

I'm quite ready for you, mate. You just make your move, that's all.

I can quite see that to construct a good comic half hour

could take a week or so,

but certainly with Impasse,

it just felt that they'd gone, "Boom, boom, boom.

"What about, what about, what about...?" Bang, bang, bang.

And off it went. Terrific.

I used to do the typing, and my shoulder was aching,

with the speed at which I was typing. It just wrote itself.

This expertly-crafted script was brought to the screen again

in Graham Stark's film The Magnificent 7 Deadly Sins in 1971,

and again when Galton and Simpson teamed up with Paul Merton in 1996,

with Merton and Geoffrey Whitehead taking on the main roles.

You great toffee-nosed berk!

Just try it, just once, that's all!

Come on, then. Make your move, you great vulgar scruffbag!

Oh, well...

And in 2009, the script was reprised again

by David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

As the hugely successful Steptoe And Son

turned into a full-time job for Galton and Simpson,

they decided they could no longer write for Comedy Playhouse.

On the plus side, this gave a new wave of writers

the chance to showcase their comedy talent.

And if that went well,

there was always the possibility of a series to follow.

I suppose the most successful one after them was Johnny Speight.

He was a very good writer, very unafraid as well,

He said to me one day, "I've got an idea about a family,

"keep arguing all the time, you know,

"politics, religion and everything".

And that was Till Death Us Do Part.

And it was really original at that time.

So he did it for Comedy Playhouse,

it was another big hit.

You...you Geordie yobbo!

Get off, I'm a Scouse!

-Yeah?

-Yeah!

-Yeah?

Well, they're the worst kind of Geordies, ain't they?

The programme centred on the angry and prejudiced Alf Garnett,

and his relationship with his family,

especially his left-wing son-in-law, Mike.

Difficult series in the beginning, because it was very controversial

and it needed to be, otherwise it was just a series about a family.

There were some episodes of Till Death Us Do Part from the early '70s

which are completely unbroadcastable because the, er,

the politics and the language are extreme.

I mean, if we're so overcrowded, they want to make a bit of room,

get rid of a few people, let 'em start a war!

Get rid of your long-haired brigade, some of your bloody youth!

Oh, charming! Get rid of the young, that's your solution, is it?

Well, they're the ones doing all the breeding, innit?

Oh, I see, and make the pill compulsory

and stop them having babies altogether!

I never said that, did I?

-You did!

-Never said that!

Look, I had you, didn't I?

I had her.

'I had a bit of difficulty with Till Death Us Do Part,

'and I know you sort of say,'

well, it's a laugh at racism,

he's a racist and stuff and that's what it's meant to be about

but, I'm not so sure in some of those shows

that we were laughing at the right thing.

It was about prejudice, bigotry, all those things,

not normally dealt with in a comedy series.

But it's surprising what you can get away with if you're clever

and if you're funny, and they did.

Meanwhile, Beryl Virtue, agent to many of the top writers of the time,

embarked on a mission to take the scripts of Galton and Simpson

and Johnny Speight to a much wider audience,

as she became a pioneer in selling British comedy abroad.

Her first success was a Dutch version of Steptoe And Son,

where it was remade as Stiefbeen En Zoon.

Vader!

In Sweden, they adapted it, renamed it Albert And Herbert,

and it ran for five series in the '70s.

DIALOGUE IN SWEDISH

Whilst in Portugal, it found success as Camilo & Filho.

SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

Beryl also had her eye on America, having already tried

to sell Steptoe And Son there in the '60s without success.

Her next step was to team up with American Producer, Norman Lear,

in an attempt to bring the much more controversial Till Death Us Do Part

to the US market.

The Duke's special was all about America, and I mean the real America.

Oh. Well, then, it must have been all about our racial problems, huh?

Sing Out, Sweet Land, it was called, and it was beautiful.

-And the crisis in the cities.

-Must've had a hundred stars with him.

-The war in Vietnam.

-Sing Out, Sweet Land.

It was all about what's good with America.

It was all about John Wayne.

Well, John Wayne is... BOTH: ..what's good with America.

That's right.

And it was about bigotry and prejudice,

different prejudices to ours, but very relevant for them.

They put on extra phone lines the night it went out

to wait for this barrage of protest,

which didn't come because everybody laughed.

He's very unafraid, Norman Lear, he was like Johnny Speight,

let's have a go at it.

# Those were the days... #

The American version, All In The Family,

ran for nine series and 208 episodes

and was the top-rated show in the States for five years.

# Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again... #

Having been successful with Till Death Do Us Part,

Beryl was convinced that Norman Lear could do the same

with Steptoe And Son, and she was right.

The result was Sanford & Son,

and it ran for five successful years in the US.

Back in Britain, Comedy Playhouse continued to entertain

and bring new writers to the public's attention.

# Talks with all the choicest words... #

And the next young talent to showcase her ability

was Carla Lane, who, along with co-writer Myra Taylor,

created a comedy about two young women from Liverpool living together.

I remember Carla Lane doing Liver Birds, very successful,

run for donkeys' years...

Good too that it had two female leads,

that in itself was quite unusual.

I don't know, women didn't seem to be much in comedy then for some reason.

But you mustn't feel upset. After all, you're alive, aren't you?

And you've got your rabbits to think about.

Oh, me rabbits, yeah.

Oh, one day I'll really branch out in a big way.

You know, fur gloves,

fur hats,

fur coats...

My favourite character in The Liver Birds was always Michael Angelis.

I think his name is Lucien and he kept rabbits,

and he was always going on about his rabbits.

I mean, I don't know why I found that very funny. Very, very funny.

Carla would write for the Comedy Playhouse slot again in 1974,

with another flat-share comedy,

but this time she brought a man into the equation.

No Strings featured Rita Tushingham

and Keith Barron as the reluctant housemates.

Keep your rotten flat!

LAUGHTER

SHE WHIMPERS

I loved Carla's writing.

She does understand relationships,

and what a man and a woman say to each other, within reason.

And I loved, I loved studio audiences, you see.

Desperately hard work, because it was a five-day turnaround,

and then when you were knackered after cam rehearsals,

all the lunatics came in to watch, and you just had to do it.

But I found that... still find it very exciting.

Oh, by the way, I hope this doesn't offend you,

but I always walk about like this.

Not at all.

If you're going to learn to live with my cushion,

then I'll have to learn to live with your legs.

LAUGHTER

I've spent a lot of time in dressing gowns,

not always pale blue, but usually quite short,

cos I've got quite good legs, you know,

and it's about the only thing that's left.

So I did have a tendency, if it was a dressing gown -

"Oh, can I have it shorter, please?"

I quite like a bit of thigh action.

I just hope it's appreciated, otherwise you look daft.

Comedy Playhouse continued to experiment,

and not just with dressing gown length.

There were contributions from a host of stars,

such as Marty Feldman and Barry Took,

Graham Chapman from Monty Python,

and Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden from The Goodies.

Series such as All Gas And Gaiters,

Beggar My Neighbour and Not In Front Of The Children

all started out on Comedy Playhouse.

In 1972, Comedy Playhouse produced a show written by David Croft

and Jeremy Lloyd that would go on to become another huge hit,

run to ten series, make household names of its cast

and push the double entendre to its absolute limit.

TILL CLANGING

'Ground floor - perfumery, stationery and leather goods,

'wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food.

'Going up.'

LIFT WHIRS AND CLUNKS

Oh, is that the best you could do, Miss Brahms?

Well, it's not my job, is it? I'll try again.

It was based, I think, on Simpsons of Piccadilly, wasn't it?

Which has now become a Waterstones, which I go into quite a lot

and every time I go in there, I get in the lift

and say to myself "First floor..." whatever it was.

Actually, I can't remember what it was.

And I kind of hum the theme tune to myself when I press the button.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Everybody makes an entrance.

Mrs Slocombe will come in, her hair will be pink,

she'll come out the lift,

or John Inman will be in drag one week.

You know, it's very theatrical,

it is quite pantomime in many ways, I think.

Well, I can't stay too late.

The man next door is popping in every half-hour

to keep an eye on my pussy.

LAUGHTER

He's coming up!

Double entendre has been with us for ever, hasn't it?

And it's one of the mainstays of some sorts of comedy

and I think Mrs Slocombe's pussy will be remembered for a long, long time.

You cannot come in here with that animal!

You could sort of watch it with your parents

and you sort of couldn't.

They were getting bits that...

"I don't understand all this stuff about pussy.

"Why are you looking so..?

"What?"

It just seemed a very innocent joke to me at the time.

Mr Humphries, are you free?

I'm busy pricing my ties, Captain Peacock.

The gentleman wishes to try on a dress.

I'm free!

LAUGHTER

If you cast the actors right

and people start to fall in love with the characters

and you've got a couple of catchphrases in there,

then, actually, the lack of dramatic tension

that's available in a department store -

you can override that.

Comedy Playhouse continued to produce hit shows

throughout the early 1970s.

Shows like That's Your Funeral, Now Take My Wife,

and It's Awfully Bad For Your Eyes, Darling.

But in 1973, an episode aired

that would go on to be the biggest hit of them all.

LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE THEME

Roy Clarke wrote three shows for Comedy Playhouse...

..but it was Last Of The Summer Wine that would become a record-breaker,

with 295 episodes.

We wrote eight series and thought we'd exhausted it.

He wrote 31 series.

I mean, amazing.

The longest-running sitcom in the world.

I don't know how many episodes they did.

Several million, I think.

Has thou ever thought of getting married again?

Never!

Has thou ever thought of just living together?

Oh!

How about if I just had... visiting privileges?

How come you're still interested in women at your age?

I think it's because they're the only opposite sex we've got.

LAUGHTER

And they don't come any more opposite than thee!

The scenery was the star, I think, of that show

and, of course, the people around it who are all marvellous,

but without the scenery, it wouldn't have been the same.

Last Of The Summer Wine is again a classic,

what I call a gang film, everybody has their own little bit in it,

and comes forward, says their bit, goes back again

and lovely characters.

I've been practising up here

till I've got the balance of a monkey on a twig.

-VAN STARTS

-Go, Davenport, go!

Argh!

I think your monkey's just fell off!

They had me doing stunt work in that -

I mean, standing on top of a van being driven along the road

pretending I was skiing.

No safety equipment at all.

I'm going to write to my agent about this because it's serious, that.

No, great fun.

Very different in style, very well cast...

..if they died, new people came in.

I was the one whose husband kept locking himself in the shed

and was never seen, but talked about.

That was fun. Nelly, yeah.

I'm sorry I shouted at you, Travis.

Now, come out.

You can sulk indoors.

Do come out, Travis,

before the word gets round that I keep you in a shed.

I mean, usually, they talk about,

"There are no parts for older women".

Well, parts for some.

June Whitfield was also in the final big hit

to emerge from Comedy Playhouse, in 1974.

June had already worked alongside Terry Scott

in the variety series "Scott On..."

and this brief encounter was the inspiration

for the Playhouse episode, Happy Ever After.

The pair featured as Terry and June Fletcher,

a middle-aged couple who find themselves home alone

after their grown-up children have fled the nest.

-Come on, sit over here.

-Oh, not now.

-No, no, no.

That's one thing you've said far too often.

This is just the time for us

to have a good look at each other to see what we've got.

LAUGHTER

We've still "got" what we've always had.

Yeah, but I haven't had a look at it lately.

LAUGHTER

He was extremely...

..yes, pompous, I think,

and quite sure that he could do anything.

Whatever it was, "Yes, yes, I can do that," and he couldn't.

We'll see you over there, then!

Erm, what time are we sailing?

Well, we hope to catch the morning tide.

What a good idea, yes.

Yes, I think it's set fair. High cumulus.

Visibility fair to middling.

Not much of a swell. What sort of wind have we got?

Hmm, nor... Argh!

LAUGHTER

Man overboard!

Man overboard!

And, of course, he was always falling in the water,

which he was very good at.

I was the one who fished him out, sort of thing.

Happy Ever After proved extremely popular with viewers,

but in 1979, after six series, John Chapman, one of the writers,

declared that they had exhausted the ideas and that the show should end.

The BBC disagreed and brought in other writers,

but in order to continue the story,

they had to change both the setting and the name of the show.

Terry and the directors thought of all kinds of titles

and eventually they couldn't come up with anything and so Terry said,

"Why don't we call it Terry And June?"

Which is how that happened.

So six months after Happy Ever After disappeared from our screens,

the reassuringly familiar Terry And June launched in October 1979

on BBC One.

I remember watching that and it was one of those middle-class,

genial sort of comedies where June has given

his gardening trousers to the jumble sale

and he's left ten quid in the pocket or something like that.

So it wasn't sort of cutting edge,

but then comedy doesn't have to be cutting edge.

It can also be cosy and create a world of niceness

that sort of resembles what people thought that Britain was like

in the 1950s or whatever,

but, actually, it wasn't like that at all.

I mean, the viewers did enjoy it. Critics absolutely hated it.

Said it was too middle-of-the-road, middle-class,

middle this, middle that.

TERRY SIGHS

-Are you all right?

-I'm finished.

Oh, no, you're not! You're good for another ten years yet!

'People did think we were married.'

I can remember drivers coming to the door for filming

and my husband, Tim, would open the door

and we'd be halfway down the road and the driver would say,

"I quite expected Terry Scott to open the door".

June, I'm home.

APPLAUSE

Terry and June proved that sometimes critics and viewers

must agree to disagree.

The show regularly pulled in 15 million viewers at its peak

and ran for nine years before finally coming to an end in 1987.

ANGRILY: Bon voyage! LAUGHTER

Au revoir!

Comedy Playhouse itself came to an end in 1974

after an impressive 13-year tenure.

Right, you can have it any time you like, mate!

It's what I call long-term applause, that - things you've done

that you've forgotten about and somebody says,

"Oh, weren't you in..?"

AUDIENCE ROARS WITH LAUGHTER

So from a hasty last-minute idea,

Comedy Playhouse went on to become

not just an institution in its own right,

but the birthplace of some of the BBC's biggest successes.

It's not a bad track record, is it?

Not everything on Comedy Playhouse was a hit

but then it was allowing writers and actors to try out new ideas,

to experiment and often to push boundaries.

ALF: It'll just encourage them!

They'll have anybody on the bloody telly these days!

I'm a bit chuffed I was there absolutely at the beginning.

Ultimately it gave rise to 30 series and 1173 episodes...

If you're mucking about, I'll wallop you!

..not bad going for an idea conceived to keep two writers happy.