Re: Andrew Vines Replies to Your Questions Q1
Q1.How did you become interested in Last of the Summer Wine as a TV Show?
A1.Well, like many other people, I’d grown up with the show. I was a kid when the first series, with Michael Bates, was shown, when, to be honest, a lot of the humour went over my head. I do recall starting to “get it” when Brian Wilde arrived as Foggy, and one memory that sticks in my mind is all of us at home – my parents, my brother and I – laughing helplessly at the scene in Isometrics And After when the three men brace themselves at the library table, and the table top comes off. Looking back, I’ve no doubt that at that particular moment, the scene in our living room as we fell about was replicated all over the country. Let’s never forget that this was not a “niche” show aimed at a narrow section of the audience – this was a show everybody in the land watched and loved, and talked about when they got to work or school the morning after the latest episode was shown. Like millions of others, I adored it, and so did everybody I knew. Precious indeed were those days when comedy united people, when not only families sat down together and laughed at the same things, but towns, cities, large parts of the whole country did so. I wish it happened now. We’d all be the better for it. Last of the Summer Wine did that, it brought people together. It was everywhere, thanks to the quality of the writing, production and performances, one of the most perfectly realised of all comedy shows, where concept and execution were in so harmonious a balance that it simply flew with joy, and that joy communicated itself to the folks at home. I do recall in the early 1980s going to a fancy dress party with a couple of mates as Compo, Clegg and Foggy (I was Clegg, simply because one of my pals was taller, and the other one shorter, plus I had a flat cap) and finding that another three blokes had turned up as the immortal trio. Not only that, there were at least two women there dressed as Nora Batty. That’s how it was – everybody knew and loved Summer Wine. It was part of the national psyche and remained so for years and years, so my interest in it was always there, and bound up with happy memories. My mind turned towards telling the story in 2008/9 when it became clear that the BBC was moving towards bringing the series to a close; it was also apparent that time was catching up with the principals, since there was a story in some of the newspapers about Peter Sallis and Frank Thornton being no longer able to go on location to Yorkshire. It seemed to me that the time was right to sit down and set down the story. It also seemed to me that the time was long overdue to raise a cheer for a series that was in the front rank of British sitcoms, but had been rendered rather invisible by its omnipresence. Odd though it sounds, it had been overlooked because it had been part of the landscape for so long. It was taken for granted, and the time was right to say, “Hang on a minute, do you realise what a gem there is right under your noses?” Last of the Summer Wine is right up there with Dad’s Army, Steptoe and Son, The Good Life, Only Fools and Horses, etc, etc. It was time to salute a series that represented the gold standard in what television comedy could achieve.
