When Alfie Bass and Bill Fraser, stars of Bootsie and Snudge, are invited out for the evening, there is always the question — do they go as Bass and Fraser or Bootsie and Snudge? But when an invitation to the principal inhabitants of television’s Imperial Club came from a real-life Imperial Club, there was no doubt about it — the night out was for Bootsie and Snudge. And it went something like this …

THE major-domo of the Imperial Club, resplendent in his uniform, was looking through the post piled on the reception desk. “‘Ullo, ‘ullo, what’s this then?” exclaimed Snudge. “A letter addressed to not nobody else but me.” Then he added, with a look of deep disgust at his assistant in the corner: “And that one over there.”

As Bootsie came up, Snudge tore the envelope open. Inside was a piece of notepaper headed “The Imperial Club.”

“And what for would the Imperial Club be of writing to us ‘ere in this Imperial Club?” he asked, aggressively.

“Look,” said Bootsie, peering under his shoulder “It’s got a different address. It’s another Imperial Club, in South London.”

And, taking the piece of paper from Snudge’s hands, he read slowly: “As your club has the same name as our club, we are inviting you both to be our guests.”

Snudge fixed his beady eye on Bootsie and inquired in his most indignant tones: “And ‘ow do you think your name ‘appened to get writ on to this smart piece of hembossed stationery?”

Cried Bootsie: “I’m as good as you.”

“Not,” declared the major-domo firmly, “when it’s an hinvitation to a swurry.”

On the journey, there was a mood of ill-suppressed excitement about the pair. “I’ve got no doubt,” confided Snudge in a hoarse whisper, “but what there’ll be a lot of financiers and company directors at this ’ere club we’re going to.”

“Yes,” burst in Bootsie, “and famous surgeons with lovely hands and all that.”

Walking down Kennington-lane, however. the mood began to change. “You know,” remarked Snudge. “this is a strange district for the hoi polloi.”

However, they reached the club building. and were quickly greeted by Jim Pringle, the steward. “Tell me,” said Snudge, looking round the clubroom with an air of gracious authority, “which one is Charles Clore? I know ’im. of course, but is face ’as slipped me memory.” Jim looked puzzled. Meanwhile Bootsie was glancing round anxiously. “I bet that one’s a surgeon,” he announced, pointing to a man in the corner. “Look at the way he’s holding his beer in his lovely long fingers.”

“I think,” the steward interposed, “you must be under some misapprehension. Do you know what this club is?”

“Why,” cried Snudge, an anxious tone creeping in, “it’s one of the famous abodes of the hupper crust, isn’t it not?” “No,” Jim replied, roaring with laughter. ‘This is the club for the NAAFI workers in London.”

Snudge was a sight to be seen. Drawing himself up to his full height he exploded: “Even when I was in the Army I didn’t not go near the NAAFI.”

Bootsie took the blow more calmly “Well, never mind, eh?” he remarked. And moving over to the bar he added: “If you don’t have any surgeons, have you got any winkles or shrimps? Or…” and here his eyes lit up, “any jelly babies?”

“I’m afraid not,” chuckled Jim. “Would girls do instead? This is a mixed club.”

Snudge began to mellow. “Now you come to mention it,” he recalled, “I do remember a NAAFI girl what used to be at No 3 Disposal Camp…”

Someone put a disc on the record player and a tall blonde approached Bootsie. “Well, all right,” he said, “but if I have a dance wiv you, mind me feet.” And he limped on to the floor.

Snudge twirled his moustache. “Yes, my dear.” he said in reply to a question from a tiny brunette. “I was the pride of the sergeants’ mess at Poona. When it came to glide round the old floor there wasn’t no one who couldn’t touch me, not nohow.”

As his partner rocked her way through the number, however, doubt began to flit through his mind. “Are you quite sure,” he demanded, “that this is the Lancers?”

In search of a little rest after the strain of the dance, Bootsie and Snudge joined a whist party in an adjoining room.

But the peace and quiet was short-lived. Snudge’s beady eyes swivelled too firmly in the direction of Bootsie’s cards. “’Ere,” exclaimed Bootsie indignantly. “No lookin’ – and no splashin’.”

Snudge refused to be put out. “Haven’t you got the double six?” he asked blandly.

As he played his next card a cry came from Bootsie: “You’ve revoked!”

Flashing a look of reproach. Snudge rejoined: “If you hadn’t spoken, nobody wouldn’t never not know I’d revoked.”

They were at the snooker table when Steward Pringle approached them once “We were wondering,” he asked diffidently, “if you would both be so good as to give us the benefit of your professional experience?”

Snudge smirked. “Well,” he said con condescendingly, “when it comes to knowing about serving delicacies to the hot polloi, I’m your man. Camel curry, with goat’s brains on the side-plate, Mafeking pudding… no, not that,” he added hurriedly.

“And,” put in Bootsie, “I know all about the delicate jobs. All the ones that need fine handling and cartful fingers. Beds, for example … sleeping on ‘em and that.”

“Actually,” replied Jim, “we were thinking more of such things as washing up and cleaning the place out.”

As the last member of the NAAFI Imperial Club slipped away, Bootsie was busy on a sink-full of dirty crocks.

Snudge, who had confined himself to expert advice on how much washing-up liquid to put in the water, looked at his watch.

“Well,” he said to Bootsie, “I’ll be leavin’ you now.”

Pulling his NAAFI overall closer around him, Bootsie plunged his hands into the suds with an air of hatred. “You rotten droopy drawers,” he hissed at the spruce figure rapidly vanishing through the doorway.

The post Night out for Bootsie and Snudge appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

A new Granada comedy series Bootsie and Snudge begins next Friday. It features those two characters from The Army Game — Sergeant-Major Claude Snudge, played by Bill Fraser, and Bootsie, played by Alfie Bass. But they have left the Army. TV TIMES writers Frank Duesbury and Charles Bayne met them in Civvy-street

WE were strolling down King’s-road in London’s Chelsea when we noted something odd. Not the sort of normal odd thing you would expect to see about Chelsea, which is famous for its oddities.

It was the sight of Sergeant-Major Claude Snudge and his old enemy Bootsie in civvies.

Snudge was leading by about 20 yards, his beady eyes squinting in one of those rare bursts of late summer sunshine. He was immaculate in a business suit, white shirt, nattily knotted tie, and a well-brushed Homburg.

Bootsie was trailing behind, scowling. He was clad in a sweater, trousers and his best plimsolls, which have fewer holes in them than his second-best pair.

“Mr Snudge,” we ventured, “why are you not in uniform?”

“Are you addressing me, sirs?” he snapped, his thumbs, we noted, stiffly pointing down the seams of his immaculate pin-stripe trousers.

We said we were, and perhaps he would like to come and have a drink. And Bootsie, too. “Not wiv him, never,” said Bootsie, who had drawn up beside us.

“I will have a drink with you gentlemen in the saloon bar of this ’ere public house,” said Snudge.

“And I’ll be in the private bar,” said Bootsie testily, hobbling away.

We asked Snudge what he would like to drink. “Bearing in mind me new life I think I’d like a gin and mixed,” he said with an evil smile, “because I’m going to be mixing it.”

He smoothed his waistcoat, deftly snapped a cherry stick between his thumb and forefinger and said: “I am going to be a company director, but I have not decided which company shall have the benefit of my experience. I am in considerable demand.”

We said his experience with the men of Hut 29 in The Army Game should help.

“Help,” spluttered Snudge. “It is invaluable. If there was any of them takeover bids knocking around, Snudge would know. Anything dodgy going off and Snudge would sort that little lot out. Not no how they won’t make a ‘nana’ out of me.

“Then there’s me upbringing, me stature. There’s them that’s got it and them that ain’t. Like speaking proper.” Snudge paused to sip his drink. “I shall have a car, chauffeur-driven of course, two secretaries, and occasional trips abroad,” he said. “No more of that Bootsie and his pals for Snudge. I am now going to live the life of a gentleman, manipulatin’ millions of pounds, thousands of men, machines, exports, imports.

“Power is what I’m trained to, and power is what I am going to be. If I can handle Hut 29 I can handle anything.”

We left Snudge planning his company reports to join Bootsie in the private bar. He was sitting on one stool with his aching feet resting on the rung of another.

“Am I glad to see the back of him,” said Bootsie, nodding towards Snudge several yards away. “It’s worth being in the Army just to be able to say goodbye – to horrors like Snudge.”

Well, we said, what are you going to do, Bootsie? “Me,” he cried, his face lighting up. “I’m just going to do good for everyone. I’m going to be a politician.”

We said we would have a drink while he explained. “Yes,” said Bootsie. “I’ve seen so much unhappiness in the world brought about by that rotten old Snudge that all I want to do is make people happy. Especially them with bad feet.”

He looked serious and went on: “When you have suffered as much as I have, with feet and Snudge, and all the time spent in the medical room of any Army camp, you get to understand the needs of people.

“That is why I have such compassion. I feel for the underdog. I’ll fight his case, because there are Snudges throughout the land.

“I can see myself now, making my maiden speech in the Commons. The deathly hush as the Members listen to my argument, one that would make Flogger Hoskins proud to call me his mate.

“‘Oh, Bootsie, Bootsie!’ they’ll shout when I sit down. I can see it all now … the newspaper headlines … the interviews … my Private Member’s Bill for free plimsolls for bad feet sufferers … Can’t you see it all, eh?”

We said we could. More or less.

Bootsie wriggled on his stool and muttered: “But I never want to do anything for Snudge. Except to make him unhappy. If I ever meet him again in Civvy-street, I’ll have him. I’ll have him.”

How, we ventured, was Bootsie going to get elected to Parliament? He gave us a conspiratorial wink. “It’s being fixed,” he said. “I’m already at the top of the top ten at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park. The crowds love me. I just can’t help being popular.”

With that, he finished his drink, slipped from his seat and limped through the door into the bustling street. Ahead of him was Snudge, still 20 yards away …

They were heading for the Labour Exchange. A company director, a Member of Parliament? That is what they said. We shall have to wait and see.

The post Bootsie and Snudge in Civvy-street appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

I HAVE kept silent long enough. But now I must speak. Now I must tell all. By telling what I know, I shall walk in terror of my life, but still it is my duty to tell the world of the graft and corruption that exists behind the scenes of Bootsie and Snudge.

First, let me tell you something of myself. I am a tabby cat employed in the offices of Feldman and Took, who purport to be the writers of Bootsie and Snudge; I say “purport” but more of that in due course.

I was christened Calthrop Mingus. (How I came by this name is a long and uninteresting story. It is best told by my employers, who are adept at writing long and uninteresting stories.)

I first came into their employ in the summer of 1960 (I secured the post through an agency), and at first it seemed a comfortable situation. Soon, they were to be revealed to me in their true light.

Not that they have ever physically maltreated me, but there is such a thing as mental cruelty.

It started with cheap gibes at my cathood. “If you’re a cat,” they would sneer, “where’s your tail?” (I am a Manx cat, but what do those ignorant dopes know?)

“Why don’t you catch mice?” they would taunt. There was none; what was I supposed to do, import one to satisfy their blood lust?

You have no conception of the lengths they go to degrade me.

They would exercise their warped minds by devising fresh soubriquets for me. “Fatty.” they would hoot; “Old Pajama Case” … “Boss eyes” (A veiled reference to the cast in my left eye and typical of their loutish, heavy-handed sense of humour)

At other times they would sing, brawl, whine, giggle, throw the furniture about and do impressions of Alma Cogan. (Needless to say — very bad impressions. Neither of them has any talent.)

Generally they would end up squabbling over who should sleep in my basket. But let us consider them separately.

Barry Took (as he now calls himself) can be most charitably described as a gawky, shambling, credulous fool. He is intensely vain and affects an opera cloak, a duelling scar and an eyepatch.

He likes to be called “the Baron” and tries to assume the manner of a Middle-European nobleman.

All in all, the effect he achieves is not so much that of a scion of a noble house as much as that of a barker at a flea circus, which, in point of fact, he was.

Not the sort of man you would wish to meet in a dark alleyway — or anywhere.

But it is when I consider Marty Feldman that my blood runs cold. Below middle height (in fact, he stands 3ft. 6in.) with the appearance of a depraved jockey and the savoir faire of a hermit crab, he is without doubt the better looking of the pair.

He likes to think of himself as a dandy, and his green frock coat, moleskin trousers and stove pipe hat have caused many gasps of surprise and grudging admiration when he rides in Rotten Row of a Sunday morning, on a large St. Bernard dog.

At his best — a truculent, bibulous clod, he is nonetheless an enigmatic and puzzling personality. You leave his company with one question uppermost in your mind, “Why isn’t he behind bars?”

These, then, are my employers. You are saying to yourselves, how can these moonstruck simpletons produce the scripts they claim to?

Come with me to their seedy office in a condemned building in Chelsea, and let us observe them at work.

It is a simple room. The desk is a homely muddle of bottles, dust and begging letters awaiting their signature.

The floor is covered by what in happier times would, have been described as a carpet. It is here we find them — on the floor.

Some deep, primeval instinct makes them stir. They lumber to their feet, mouthing curses at each other and slump at the typewriter.

They concentrate. Hours pass. No inspiration. They just sit there staring into space, waiting for something to come. Then suddenly — just when it looks as if it’s going to be a blank day, Took speaks.

“If I look out of the corner of my eye,” he says, “I can see my ear reflected in my glasses.” Hours pass. Then Feldman leaps to his feet … “I can touch the end of my nose with my tongue.”

Soon, exhausted by concentration, they shamble off to a nearby tea parlour and that is the last I see of them until night when, crazed with tea and biscuits, they return with their disreputable acquaintances to make the night hideous with their pathetic carousing.

How then does the script come to be written?

At last it can be told. The jig’s up and the cat’s out of the bag. I, Calthrop Mingus, a mere pussy cat, am the real author of Bootsie and Snudge. Calthrop Mingus — the name you never see.

But I’ve reached the end of my tether — from now on boys, you’re on your own!

The post The cat’s whispers appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.