Have been sitting for over a week now on a significant milestone and wondering when to plunge in. Actually, first weekend I was away walking around Glasgow in massive crowds and on crowded underground getting to and from Ibrox for Commonwealth Games Rugby Sevens. Great crack.
Anyway I was keeping track of this thread and disagreeing with much that has been said so I thought to plunge in here and stir things up a wee bit – desist from haudin ma wheesht, as 'twere.
I do consider it a great pity that after Michael Aldridge sadly had to leave they brought back Brian Wilde. I always found the Foggy character irritating – met too many of them in real life – and felt he had shot his bolt in his first spell. And Brian Wilde tended to be disruptive. First there was his resistance to Alan J W Bell. As a matter of principle, no actor should be able to dictate as to who should be director. And then there was the matter of, at some time, Bill Owen and Peter Sallis became aware that Brian Wilde was being paid almost twice as much as them. In no way, shape or form could that be justified. But then we all know how profligate the BBC can be in paying the wrong people well over their worth – witness that decrepit nonentity who recently stood down from ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ – just as well before he fell down.
I do wonder if there would be any interest in conjecturing who might have done well as the third man after Michael Aldridge had to leave. It was a matter of regret to my mind that Fulton MacKay who had been considered earlier never got taken on. But sadly he died in 1987 so was no longer with us at the applicable time.
It is also maybe a pity that Frank Thornton was not considered earlier. I do think that after a period in the doldrums, Foggy’s second spell, when there was a lot of repetitive situations, the show picked up considerably when Roy Clarke had a completely new character with which to work. And, of course things improved even more when Billy Hardcastle came on the scene.
I never had any problem with a big cast situation. I suggest it would only have been problematical had things become confusing and to my mind they never did. There was another thread recently looking for episodes which lived up to the early days. I am of the school which felt that almost to the end there was very little deterioration in the entertainment once Truly came on the scene until sadly Clegg’s input diminished so much and in a way the show became, not ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ but the ‘Russ Abbot Show’ by Roy Clarke.
But two episodes which really stand out for me in that era were two with Bobby Ball – ‘Who's That Talking to Lenny?’ and ‘The Swan Man of Ilkley’. Not so keen on ‘Get Out of That, Then’ but, of course, by then Clegg had faded.
And one other brilliant and very different episode, ‘A Short Introduction To Cooper's Rules’.
I’m back but can be sure there will be those who wished I had stayed away. And now I can get back to the quick, sneaky, in and quickly out again attacks.
