IT’S a full-time job keeping pace with the Sixties — but it’s made easier with Granada’s Comedy Four, the Thursday replacement for Bootsie and Snudge.

Many people are always a step behind … and can never understand why. Still, they cling to their own ideas. Old fashioned … certainly. Square … very possibly.

But their cheerful determination not to get with it is often very amusing.

Comedy Four didn’t set out to cash in on this situation.

The idea was simply to keep us chuckling. Four half-hourly, completely different, situation comedy stories were planned.

Every story has a different script team and cast.

Yet one theme has been unintentionally stitched through the four stories – the struggle of some people to keep up with the Sixties.

Tonight’s first episode — “Tea at the Ritz” — is a fair example.

A dithery couple run a dowdy cinema called the Ritz that was probably all the rage in Valentino’s day and which still serves tea to patrons during the interval.

Into this happy, but none-too-profitable set-up, steps a slick young salesman, with a get-rich-quick scheme to scrap the tea and show sexy films.

“Tea at the Ritz” has a definite hint of Bootsie and Snudge about it.

Producer Peter Eton and writers Peter Miller and James Kelly were members of the B & S team.

The dotty couple who run the Ritz both appeared — as dance-hall owners — in a B & S episode on December 20 last year.

Their names: Ann Lancaster and Ronnie Stevens.

Off-stage, they are old friends. Ann is god-mother to Ronnie’s three-year-old son, Paul.

On-stage, they are two of television’s most versatile characters, each with a rich repertoire of dialects.

You have heard both many times in ITV comic commercials. Ann Lancaster has been the ’voice’ of pigs, glasses, oranges — and she was the mystery caller of “Albert!” in the popular man-in-the-bath TV Times advertisement.

Ronnie has appeared recently in a toffee commercial with Arthur Haynes.

He was also in ITV’s New Look and The Peggy Mount Show.

Ronnie — quavering impressively — told me: “For ‘Tea at the Ritz’, Ann and I concentrate on our crackly, wavering elderly people-type voice.”

The salesman is played by Norman Rossington, one of the bright young men of British comedy.

He has appeared in many successful films, including Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, and many television laughter programmes … The Army Game, Our House, and ITV’s Tune On The Old Tax Fiddle.

“Tea at the Ritz”, then, has three talented and experienced mirth-makers.

But the entire series is encrusted with top-line comedy character actors and actresses.

Second show in the series is Tin Pan Alice, with Athlene Seyler, Warren Mitchell and Carole Carr.

It’s about an old dearie who runs an out-of-date music shop who suddenly has the alarming experience of having a hit record on her hands. Third of the quartet brings two great comedians together — Kenneth Connor and Deryck Guyler.

They star in Fit For Heroes, the story of a retired Army major and his faithful batman who plan revenge in the Post Office when their pensions are stopped.

Finally, Dudley Foster and Bernard Bresslaw come together in Home From Home — the story of two bewildered old lags caught up in changing conditions in one of Her Majesty’s prisons.

Comedy Four intends to be uncomplicated and amusing But watch for ironic twists in all four plots.

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NO, Bernard Bresslaw — Popeye of The Army Game — isn’t as goofy as all that. It’s just that he’s 6ft 5in tall, has an adenoidal voice, big eyes, and tends to leave his mouth open…

But one can’t kelp making good-humoured fun of Bernard — his looks and personality naturally invite it.

The other day, for example, a man introduced his young daughter to Popeye. She had insisted to her father that Popeye couldn’t really be so silly. “Say something,” ordered the girl. Bernard said something. The poor girl went away with an even more puzzled air. To be proved wrong at that age can be shattering…

Of course, being so tall isn’t all fun. People tend to pick on you. Till last season, Bernard used to play rugby. He was a wing forward, one of the most vulnerable men. Opponents used to look his team over, then the whisper would go round: “Better get that big feller down hard to start with or he might be a trouble.” First time he touched the ball, down he would go under a pile of writhing bodies.

It was the same in the Army. Bernard didn’t find it half such fun as the television one. People always used to pick on the tall RASC driver clerk.

But Bernard showed them. He turned to good account his natural ability to play the part of an “oaf.” His first big part was that of a simple country boy in the Irish farce The McRoary Whirl. This was one of the few occasions he has worn a suit on stage — a sky-blue suit to go with his off-white camel-hair coat and white cap.

The play lasted only three days in London’s West End. But it was a good blooding for Bernard.

Previously he had been cast in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art students’ annual public show. It was Christopher Fry’s Venus Observed, and was put on at the Phoenix Theatre. He didn’t play an oaf then. In the audience was the director of Windsor Repertory, who heard complimentary remarks about Bernard made by Fry, who was sitting next to him.

When Bernard wrote to Windsor Repertory for a job the director gave him a part in The McRoary Whirl.

Bernard left the Academy with the Emile Littler Prize.

He did a couple of tours before The McRoary Whirl, but then began to find doors closed to him with “You’re too tall.” They couldn’t say that, though, when he was auditioned for the part of a guardsman in the television play Who Goes There? In this part, people really began to appreciate what a perfect oaf he made.

But oafishness is not the only weapon in Bresslaw’s armoury. He recently played a brute in a Mark Saber thriller film on ITV.

Bernard’s friends say he makes a lovable goof; others say he’s a “natura” as a psychopathic case. And it was as the latter that he appeared in the Mark Saber production, going so far as to shoot a poor old lady’s dog.

He believes his public will accept him in this sort of role. One admirer wrote him saying she didn’t like Popeye nearly so much since he had shot that dog. I don’t know whether that means she accepts his other guises or not, but at least she really lives them all with him. I wonder what she’ll think if she sees Bernard in his current film role as a bearded sneak-thief in Blood of the Vampire?

Though 23-year-old Bernard doesn’t mind playing the fool, he would like to develop his other capabilities. He doesn’t yearn to play Hamlet, but he does want to play Shakespeare.

Another ambition is to play in pantomime. Any combination of Idle Jack and Buttons would do.

Who knows? Under that amiable and “vacant” exterior may beat the heart of a great Shakespearean actor. What would Cupcake think of that?

The post He’s Popeye the soldier man appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THERE are right ways and wrong ways of obeying commands. Which comes as a surprise to the awkward squad in The Army Game —they never knew they had a choice. However, on realising the situation, they immediately applied for permission to publish “The Army Game Guide to Good Soldiering”.

(Note : The Guide to Good Soldiering, as here illustrated, is not recommended to serving soldiers).

(Note again : The Army Game will serve up more laughs this Wednesday and every alternate Wednesday).

(Last Note: Cast of our Guide is… The O.C. (Geoffrey Sumner), Sergeant-Major (William Hartnell) … Corporal (Michael Medwin) … Popeye (Bernard Bresslaw) … The Professor (Charles Hawtrey) … Cup-Cake (Norman Rossington).

Words by Eric Linden, following a technical chat with ex-RSM Brittain

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THERE is nothing very special about the Nether Hopping transit camp and surplus ordnance depot. Motorists passing by as they speed along the arterial road never give it a second glance.

It is a ramshackle, miserable-looking hutment camp, three miles from the nearest village and 10 from the nearest town. A camp forgotten by the War Office, where life follows the same lazy routine.

This is the scene of Granada’s new fortnightly comedy, The Army Game.

The peace of Nether Hopping is, however, rudely shattered by the arrival of five newcomers.

“Fly” boy of the outfit is Cockney Cpl. Springer, played by Michael Medwin. He’s the type who sizes up the situation in his first three days in the Army and decides that the rest of the two years will be one long scrounge.

Only regular among them is Pte. Brisley (Alfie Bass) who is called “Bootsie” because he’s been excused boots for most of his Service life. He’s the pessimist of the group.

Then there’s Pte. Hatchett (Charles Hawtrey), who for obvious reasons is nicknamed “Professor.” He’s the barrack-room lawyer.

Pte. Popplewell (Bernard Bresslaw), better known as “Popeye,” is a giant who represents the brute strength of the quintet.

Finally there is Pte. Cook who, on the strength of all the parcels he receives from his fond mother, has the nickname “Cup Cake.”

Collectively, the five are a major threat to the smooth running of any camp – a quality which has kept them on the move. They are determined that their travels must end. But they haven’t counted on Company Sergeant-Major Bullimore (William Hartnell). He does his best to run Nether Hopping on service lines, but he is getting rather tired of the effort.

It is inevitable that a meeting between such a group and a man like Bullimore should be the start of a private war in which no quarter is given and none asked.

Quite happy to let the sergeant-major run the camp his own way is the O.C. Major Upshott-Bagley (Geoffrey Sumner) realised that when he was given the least responsible job the War Office could find for him he had reached the pinnacle of his career. He is content to vegetate until he is pensioned off.

The Army Game has been devised as a riotous comedy – but it is not a farce. The situations may be a little larger than life, but they are based on incidents that could happen in any Army camp.

In this all-male cast, Granada have found people who look the part and who can act the part from personal experience.

Geoffrey Sumner, for instance, joined the Army in 1939 as a second-lieutenant and finished up in New Delhi as a colonel.

Bernard Bresslaw feels quite in character as one of the inmates of Hut 29. He was a private in the RASC. And William Hartnell had a private’s-eye view of the war in the Tank Corps. His promotion didn’t come until he left the Army in 1943 and Carol Reed made him a sergeant for his part in The Way Ahead.

Alfie Bass was a dispatch rider. About the characters in The Army Game he says: They could be real people.”

Scriptwriter Sid Colin was in the RAF. To make sure he gets his technical facts right, Granada have appointed a military adviser, Major John Foley. And the War Office have provided a liaison officer and given him permission to visit any Army camp he likes in search of authentic material.

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