Edith clegg tombstone

brendalovescompo

brendalovescompo

Dedicated Member
In the episode when Clegg is putting flowers on his wifes grave. It was the pilot show. The year she died was 1971, but the year she was born is not visible. Was this done on purpose or am I missing something. I am in the USA and do not have the tapes. I have only seen on YouTube and it was not the best quality. Have been a fan for about a year. I am starting my collection of "the compo years" , and it is almost complete. Thanks for input. :)
 
Not all grave stones have the date of birth on, my mothers doesn't have her's on,I'm not sure why!
 
Just re-scanned Of Funerals and Fish.

I believe Edith Clegg's tombstone sayes:

EDITH CLEGG

1900 - 1971
 
In information I've read about "First Of The Summer Wine", that series is supposed to be taking place in 1939 and Clegg's age is given as 18 at the time. If Edith were born in 1900, that would mae her 21 years older than Norman.
 
More I look at that scene the more sure I am that
no birth date is really shown. Looks like 1900, but prolly
not. Just a place-holder??
 
It seems like they intentionally masked it. To me, it almost seems to read 1890 or 1990.

cleggedith.png
 
Chunky Rumbelow said:
I think the last digit is definitely an 0. 1920 maybe?
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1920 would make sense (as opposed to 1900). But was it a genuine grave where they rather badly tried to obscure the birth date (which is very definitely there)? Or was it fabricated in which case it is a puzzle as to why they did it so poorly? I suppose we have to recognise it was a pilot episode and no one visualised how long the series would last; certainly no one would think of there being a prequel (FOTSW) and that over forty years later there would be such in depth analysis of such a trifle. And we do know from other instances that sometimes there were failures in continuity.
 
IMDB at that link sez

Spouse: Edith (1940 -1971, her death)

which would make her about 20 years younger than Cleggy.

then goes on to say:

"Trivia Edith was born in 1900 (according to her headstone in the pilot episode), and Norman was supposed to be the same age .... This would have made Norman over 100yrs old at the end of the series in 2010.

who nose???
 
I suspect that the date was deliberately obscured so as to not to be too limiting, but | guess 1920 would be a good average of the date suggested and would make her only a year older than Norman Clegg - no wonder she converted him to cream!
 
I had a look at the dates/headstone in photoshop and the birth date is fudged or obscured

Hector
 
Hector said:
I had a look at the dates/headstone in photoshop and the birth date is fudged or obscured

Hector
Click to expand...

Looking at the screenshot posted here you could see it as 1900, 1000 or 1990. It was probably obscured for reasons that as it was the first episode the date was to be left deliberately unknown. However, if it is to be assumed that Edith was around the same age as Clegg, she obviously died quite young. Don't think we are ever told how she died. I think having Clegg as a widower from the start was to add to the impression that the trio were effectively losers in life who had come together to find comradeship and a purpose. As others have said, no one probably thought the series would go on for so long that questions around a wife that died young would be raised 40 years later.
 
I've always assumed it was meant to be 1920 or so, since that fits the other characters. However, I've read that originally the characters were going to be a bit older and it was only later (but prior to casting) that the BBC decided to basically make them the WW2 generation.

I haven't watched much FOTSW, but IIRC Edith is not a character in it. Which raises the question of why she isn't given Clegg's stories about basically being chosen by her and having no real control over the whole thing. But then FOTSW falls apart on close inspection anyway - for example, it has Wally and Nora as basically the same age when the adult actors were quite a bit different in age and both were way off of the age they would have been to be 18 or so in 1939. Kathy Staff was ten years too young and Joe Gladwin was 15 years too old.

Which reinforces the idea that a lot of this stuff wasn't set when they started the show but merely came along later. Age of the actors vs. the characters was fudged from the beginning - Clegg and Blamire were played by actors the right age, but Compo was played by an older actor even though the show established they were supposed to all be about the same age. Other characters were cast probably with no real thought that later on those characters might be defined as the same age as the trio as well - Ivy, Sid, and even Foggy were all played by actors at least a few years outside of where they were supposed to be.
 
Sarkus said:
Which reinforces the idea that a lot of this stuff wasn't set when they started the show but merely came along later. Age of the actors vs. the characters was fudged from the beginning - Clegg and Blamire were played by actors the right age, but Compo was played by an older actor even though the show established they were supposed to all be about the same age. Other characters were cast probably with no real thought that later on those characters might be defined as the same age as the trio as well - Ivy, Sid, and even Foggy were all played by actors at least a few years outside of where they were supposed to be.
Click to expand...

I think it was also a question of how old do they look? They probably got away with Bill Owen being the older actor because Compo was scruffy and didn't care too much about his appearance. He could be presented as old before his time. For the most part the characters looked around the same age, some people do look more youthful as they age than others.
 
Sarkus said:
Which reinforces the idea that a lot of this stuff wasn't set when they started the show but merely came along later. Age of the actors vs. the characters was fudged from the beginning - Clegg and Blamire were played by actors the right age, but Compo was played by an older actor even though the show established they were supposed to all be about the same age. Other characters were cast probably with no real thought that later on those characters might be defined as the same age as the trio as well - Ivy, Sid, and even Foggy were all played by actors at least a few years outside of where they were supposed to be.
Click to expand...

I did follow this thread a bit but really had no sympathy with any concern over the relative age of actors. Part of the skill of acting is to play the part at the age intended. And I would suggest that beyond say fifty it is extremely difficult to be precise about age. Some in their mid sixties look under fifty, other look near enough eighty. Irrespective of the age of the actors all those who formed part of the lead bunch could have been taken as the same age as far as I am concerned. (That was maybe until Hobbo came along - another aspect of his failing to convince.) Recently there was comment on the BBC Scotland programme, 'Still Game'. Well , the two leads there are far younger than the parts they are playing.
 
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