Pilot

Hector

Hector

Dedicated Member
I was watchinga little part of the pilot earlier and i noticed a girl coming out of Noras house to hang up some washing.Does anyone know who she was meant to be?.Possibly Nora was going to have a daughter in the show but Roy Clarke decided to go the route we all now know,just a thought.
The other thing i noticed was when Cleggy puts flowers on his wifes grave there is only a date of decease(1971) and no date of birth but just a few marks.There is also nothing else like Dearly Beloved,Sadly Missed,Wife of,etc,that we usually see on a headstone.

Hector.
 
I had always assumed that the girl belonged to one of the neighbours - as the putting out of washing seemed to quite a communal event.

I suspect that Clegg's wife, Edie, only had a clear death date as there was no need to be precise about her age and hence Clegg's.
 
I suppose she could have been anyone really,from a neighbour to inlaws and so on.I suppose the only ones who really know are Roy himself and those involved with the show.It was also coupled with the comment Compo made to Nora about her husband Harold that got me thinking about possible other directions.

Hector
 
Hector said:
.... with the comment Compo made to Nora about her husband Harold that got me thinking about possible other directions.

Hector
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interestingly the script says"... your Wally's that wrapped up wi' his pigeons ... "
 
Reading on in the script I see the headstone was to have read:

EDITH CLEGG 1909 - 1971


although that would be out by about ten years when First of ... is taken into account as Clegg would have been born abut 1921 to be 18 in 1939.
 
barmpot said:
Reading on in the script I see the headstone was to have read:
EDITH CLEGG 1909 - 1971
although that would be out by about ten years when First of ... is taken into account as Clegg would have been born abut 1921 to be 18 in 1939.
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I did think there was an anachronism - essentially in "First of the Summer Wine" as that came after a lot of the earlier series. In the pilot Clegg states how many years they were married. Given wife dies in 1971 they would have been married by 1938 but, of course, in FOTSW he was not remotely married in 1939.
 
Wasn't that girl coming out of Nora's house Gloria??? I could be wrong...
 
Gloria was a redhead/ginger colour as i remember her from Some Enchanted Evening.The girl coming from Noras has quite dark hair and looks taller.

Hector
 
Hector said:
Gloria was a redhead/ginger colour as i remember her from Some Enchanted Evening.The girl coming from Noras has quite dark hair and looks taller.

Hector
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Gloria was emigrating to Australia in Who's That Dancing With Nora Batty Then? :)
 
Compo said:
Wasn't that girl coming out of Nora's house Gloria??? I could be wrong...
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In the pilot there were two cast members both listed as "Neighbour". I think the younger one was Pat Bonna who showed up again in "Spring Cleaning".
 
I think in the pilot is quite clear the younger woman is supposed to live in the house we know as Nora's.

Since this was the pilot obviously there was no thought as to where Nora could live, probably because she wasn't necessarily going to be a regular character. In fact she hardly appeared in the first two series (or the novel) either.

For the sake of continuity, we will have to pretend she was helping Nora with her washing.

Pat Bonna was the more mature woman, who returned in the same role in Spring Fever.

I cannot read the date on the grave stone well. It may well say 1920.

The use of the name Harold instead of Wally is annoying.

As mentioned, it's Wally in the script, and Wally Batty also gets mentioned in the original novel.
 
barmpot said:
Reading on in the script I see the headstone was to have read:

EDITH CLEGG 1909 - 1971


although that would be out by about ten years when First of ... is taken into account as Clegg would have been born abut 1921 to be 18 in 1939.
Click to expand...

OK I am going to do some math here and please let me know if I am wrong. If we were to imagine Clegg was roughly the same age as Edith and the pilot aired in 1973, he would have been approx. 64 at the time (given Edith was born in 1909). It makes sense considering the characters are supposed to be retired. Although one thing I had a hard time accepting in the Blamire years is that Clegg seemed too young for the role of a retired person roaming about libraries, etc.

But as many of us do in this forum we look too much into little details like this when it wasn't Clarkes original intention to begin a 37 year show that had every aspect tied together. Also, I shouldn't complain because for over 30 years Clegg was one of the center pieces of the show and this couldn't have happened if he was literally played by a 64 year old actor in 1973!

One question, how old do you all think Clegg looks in the pilot. He seems like 45-50 to me.
 
Peter Sallis was 51 when they started filming, but I agree, he looked a bit younger most of the time whereas Compo always looked older. I think I even saw 1900 on the headstone of Clegg´s wife´s grave, but I´m not sure. Far too old anyway.
 
I thing Peter was about 50 when it started, but one thing that aways made me laugh was that all 3 were supposed to in the same class at school yet Bill Owen was about 13 years older than Brian Wilde :)
 
wstol said:
As I saw it, when the programme began, they were redundant rather than retired.
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Yes Clegg was a redundant linoleum sales man, Blamire was retuire from the army but oo young to draw his OAP, likewise Foggy. Compo was not redundant as he had never worked - apart when in the army - so they were out of work for one reason or another, but not yet 65.

I think in the episode the date on the headstone was deliberately vague so it could have been 1909 or 1919 (which would fit much better with FOSW).
 
I suppose with this being the pilot, Roy Clarke hadn't any fixed ideas on precisely how old they were, his brief was simply to write about old people, and 51 perhaps wasn't considered quite old enough at that time.

Later in the series there was hints about their age that tied in more or less with FOTSW.

In a much later episode, I think it may have been The Secret Birthday of Norman Clegg, Clegg is embarrassed about how old he is. He doesn't say how old he is, but one has to wonder if it's one of those milestone bithdays like 80, as he wants to go to a posh restaurant which is very unlike Clegg. This was around 2002 or 2003 I think. It was recently revealed on another topic that Compo may have been born in 1923.

Of course, we are thinking about this far too much as it's just a programme someone's written, but I'm always interested in dates and ages of all kinds of things!
 
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