How did you get into Last of the Summer Wine

E

Eli Thingy

Guest
how did people on this forum get into Last of the Summer Wine, did you watch it from the beginning and like it or was it while watching a repeat, or are you a younger fan whos family watched it and u got into it that way or are u a fan threw watching the dvds?

personally i got into it via a friend, he is a mad summer wine fan (he actually used to be on here as Compo, Foggy and Clegg but got removed for some comments he made, well thats what he told me anyway, he has actually told me he regrets them comments and would love to come back on here but fears he wudnt be welcome) and i wasnt sure about the show at first but then i watched Full Steam Behind and that hooked me on the show and then watched the new series when they were shown in the 00's and watched the repeats on gold and drama (as it was then) and got the dvds and now im hooked on the show.

so how did u fans get into Last of the Summer Wine?
 
Sort of drifted into it in the earlier series , watching the tv while eating sunday tea. Stayed with it cos we liked the gentle humour though! :D
 
We don´t get it over here in Germany, about 4 years ago I discovered it on youtube, but only after I had just become a fan of Peter Sallis, and when searching for him, LOTSW came up. Apparently the average fan would be a middle-aged British male, so I´m failing on all accounts, lol!
 
I watched it when it began. I was in school and I think only my cousin and myself out of the entire comp watched it. It'd be fair to say Norman Clegg was my first love! I watched it for years, but when I discovered boys I kinda wandered....! My parents always watched it, though, and the year before last, when my Ma died, Summer Wine was a real Godsend to my Dad. Every day he found escape in the antics of that mad lot in Holmfirth. That got me right back into it. I remembered how beautiful it was, and how Clegg always got the best lines. I fell in love with it, and yeah, Norman Clegg, all over again. Clever, witty, poiniant, Norman Clegg.
 
Watched it by accident when living in Toronto. There was a channel on tv that showed British shows and this was one of them. Loved it instantly....
 
Sitting in a B&B in Yorkshire many years ago. One
of our earlier trips over.

Turned on the TV and heard them announce the "last" of
The Summer Wine. Thought we'd better watch it if it was
"the last." May never get another chance.

Have been hooked ever since.

Have acquired all the episodes and specials, as well
as some of the shorter bits (Funny Side).
 
I'm not sure if it was 2005 or 2006, but I remember I was on my Christmas vacation. One day I was turning channels and stopped when I came to this show with some old guys walking around with great scenery behind them. All it took was a couple minutes and I was immediately hooked. I liked the personalities of the 3 men (I luckily just happened to see the Foggy trio at first, probably why to this day I prefer Foggy), I liked their comments, their restless roaming of the countryside getting into trouble whereever they stopped. Loved the mean big ladies they always seemed to run into, and just couldn't wait till the next day to watch more. I started recording it the very next day too. Back then I recorded them on VHS, but it was just about then that I started DVD recording, so I soon was recording on DVD from then on. It's been a great show, I've seen all of them once thru (EXCEPT for the latter day "Specials" which are never shown in the USA) & am now watching the series a 2nd time, this time I'm watching from the beginning and going in order. FIrst time I watched the series it was all mixed up due to the stations here at that time skipped years at a time and would go back and forth. Now they all start from the beginning and go forward (still skipping the "Specials" though).
By the way, if anyone has these specials:
Special S16 01/Jan/95 The Man Who Nearly Knew Pavarotti
Special S17 29/Dec/96 Extra! Extra!
Special S18 29/Dec/97 There Goes The Groom
Special S21 02/Jan/00 Last Post And Pigeon
Special S22 30/Dec/01 Potts In Pole Position
Special S24 29/Dec/02 A Musical Passing For A Miserable Muscroft
Special S25 21/Dec/03 A Short Burst Of Fred Astaire
Special S28 28/Dec/06 A Tale of Two Sweaters
Special S31 31/Dec/08 I was A Hitman For Primrose Dairies

Let me know, I would like to do a trade with you. Even if your DVDs are PAL, (mine are NTSC) I would like to do a trade.
Thanks.
 
We watched the pilot. Then waited hopefully for a series, as it was so funny. The humour was not the slapstick 'in your face' stuff that we were used to, it sort of crept up on you. I was in my thirties then, with small children, who by the way have never been that bothered about it. I must have been a dreadful mother!
 
I was introduced to it at a very early age by my Grandad. I am very grateful He did, I would have missed out for sure if I hadn't discovered LOTSW!
 
Me dad, from the age of 8 I have seen him go though hell with pain for an 8year old to see her dad who was a healthy, comical and happy man reduced to tears with pain, the site of him laughing every Sunday made all the bad stuff go away for half an hour. He still laughs now, he watches 2 episodes every night before he goes to bed.
That's what made me start watching it and from there I formed a love of it of my own.
It still makes all of liefs bad stuff go away for half an hour, its a really good escape.
 
Had made a family trip to Florida to Disney in 2007 of August and turned on the PBS station down there, saw they had Doctor Who on. I haven't seen Doctor Who on a PBS station in 20 years. When we came back home to North Carolina after the vacation, I checked to see out of curiosity if Doctor Who was on the PBS station here. Sure enough! It was, but it was running the first series of the 2005 version.

I'm sort of a theme music/opening person, so I'd tune in to catch the opening and see what episode of Doctor Who was on. I would turn PBS on a couple minutes before.

As I did this, I'd see this other show that's going off. Lots of green countryside, buildings that seemed they were built a long time ago. Almost like it was produced to be a certain period of time or quite possible in its own "time bubble" and not letting current stuff or whatnot be part of it. Even the ending tune was kind of catchy.. So I thought one day I'd just check out the opening of this show just to see it....

I tuned in and these three pensioners are talking about not being fit or healthy, so the one that seemed to be the leader of this trio decides that they should have a foot race. I'm sitting here watching them do this up a hill and baffled especially with the one in the green watch cap, and the antics that are being done. Not the normal situation you'd expect to see. That's when I changed the channel.. then later tuned in and saw them riding horseback through a soccer field because they couldn't control the horses.

The episode was "Isometrics and After"

As time went on I started to pay more attention. I remember watching the ending to "Who Made a Bit of a Splash in Wales Then". Seems like I remember watching all of the episode of "Getting on Sidney's Wire". Missing "Full Steam Behind" but actually having the show on as background noise for all of Series 5. Series 5 was an odd one, because it seemed to have two part episodes without actually being two parters. "The Flag and its Snag", "The Flag and Further Snags" (which I remember watching the whole canal boat scene. When "Earnshaw Strikes Back" came on, I thought maybe I missed an episode...

Somehow in the midst of them showing Series 5, a Seymour episode popped in "Heavily Reinforced Bottom". I'm trying to remember if I saw this one first or "Here We Go Again into the Wild Blue Yonder", but both of those I remember having my full attention and I was hooked!

It was agony during Pledge months here and we would have no Summer Wine, till I found out that someone had a BUNCH of episodes on dailymotion (not anymore), whom now I am Facebook friends with and maybe a year or two found out who each other was. I found out he was the one that posted them on dailymotion and he found out that I was the one that emailed him back then when there was a threat of him not posting episodes anymore. Had a good laugh about that one... Thanks Craig!!!!!!!

Last of the Summer Wine shortly ended its North Carolina PBS run a year later... and it wasn't till a year or two ago that I found out South Carolina PBS was showing Last of the Summer Wine (but only Series 24 through I think 26... I miss watching the older episodes on PBS!!!)

That's how I became a Summer Wino, and here I am doing Summer Wine comics for fun! What a Herbert I am! lol
 
Started to watch the show on Sundays with my parents,who had watched the series from the ousset.Distinctly recall watching Cheering Up Ludovic in '83 when I was 6 and a half
 
Afew years ago I turned on my local PBS station to watch something and
Summer Wine was just ending. I was enthralled with the scenery and all that
stone....stone bridges, stone fences stone buildings....... and I eventually fell
in love with the cast and all their goings-on. I have since bought all the LOTSW
dvd's I can get my hands on. I watch at least 1 episode every day. I never
get tired of it!
 
With me, it was a mate at the shoe factory where i worked at the time.
He was telling me about this comedy programme that he had watched the previous evening, it was 1973 so it must have been either the first episode, or the first series.
I didn't pay much notice to what he had said, i was about 20 years old then, i had other things on my mind (motorcycles, girls, etc), so it was probably about ten years later when i started to watch it with more interest, although over the previous ten years i had seen a couple of episodes now and then but i wouldn't have said i was actually a fan.
1984 was the year when i started to become more interested in it, VHS recorders hadn't long been out, so i bought a Sharp front loader (£500!!!) and started to record the episodes.
The very first one was "Getting Sam home", a repeat if i remember rightly(?), then the others that were on in that same year were "From wellies to wetsuit", "The odd dog men" and "A bicycle made for three", so they were obviously repeats of series 5 & 6.
Pretty much from then on, i was a hardened fan and recorded as many episodes as i could, although we moved to Southern Ireland in 1993 - 1996, so i missed the series over those years but it's been good to catch up with them on the DVD's that i started buying in 2005.

G ; )
 
I discovered Summer Wine thanks to my wife. I always liked British comedies but was from central Pennsylvania (a region deprived of Summer wine). In 2005 we moved to the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC where Maryland Public Television is rich in British sitcoms (about 3 hours of programming known as"Afternoon Tea"). However, Keeping Up Appearances was the only show I was interested in catching. At the time it came on at 2:30 and Summer Wine at 2. I work as a teacher in daytime hours and had her record KUA for me. She started catching Summer Wine before KUA came on (during the mid-2000s episodes) and she told me I got to see the crazy show with all the old guys! I finally had a moment where I sat down and viewed it. In my first viewing experience, I was very intrigued to see Gavin Hinchcliffe with skis on a moving car. It was amusing but I wasn't quite hooked yet.

Then MPT also aired Summer Wine on Saturday nights where I first viewed Why Does Norman Clegg Buy Ladies Elastic Stockings? I remember the gas person or water company person entering Seymour's driveway with all the warning signs and the Oil Drilling Bicycle. I started getting more into it and then I have visions of catching "Who's That Mouse In The Poetry Group" with the mouse and Truly in the library and so I became hooked.

It took me a lot longer to get into the series from the 70's. That is a much different pace than what I am used to. So if my first experiences with Summer Wine was during that era I never wold have become hooked. Thankfully, after a few runs through that era, I also have an appreciation for the earlier years.
 
I believe it was around 2007 when an American public television station in my area broadcasted an episode entitled "Sinclair And The Wormley Witches". I was immediately hooked after noticing Frank Thornton was in it, and I remembered him fondly from his role as Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served. I had been a huge fan of AYBS since I first saw old episodes of it in the late 1980's. Through the link with Frank, I discovered other episodes and was amazed to know the show had been on the air since 1973. Surely its longevity must have been acknowledged by the Guinness Book Of World Records! I also fell in love with the beautiful scenery of Holmfirth and the surrounding areas. As I got deeper into the show, I was further pleased at how well-written and developed the plots and characters were. I began to realize why it had such mass appeal and lasted for as long as it did. The show overall felt like a little slice of Heaven on earth -- a nice, peaceful change of pace from the vulgarity and depravity that seems to pass for popular TV programming nowadays. I soon began collecting DVD's of the old episodes through the BBC America catalog and continue to do so to this day. LOTSW will always have a special place in my heart and soul.
 
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