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Dipsticks In Amsterdam

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  One of the most curious phenomena in the history of British comedy was movies based on sitcoms. This can perhaps be traced back to The Army Game ’s film spin-off, I Only Arsked! (1958), but it was the 1970s that saw its golden age (if you can call it that). Most of these movie versions paled in comparison to their TV counterparts, with many of them featuring recycled scripts or disorientating cast changes. Sometimes, they would offer something different to the TV show, such as Johnny Speight’s 1968 version of Till Death Us Do Part partly focusing on Alf Garnett’s war years. However, this difference usually meant the cast being supplanted outside their “sit” (often at the expense of the “com”) and sent on holiday, such as Holiday on the Buses , George and Mildred and, most notoriously, Are You Being Served? , where all the staff of Grace Brothers went abroad together! Although the sitcom movie spin-off was a dead duck by the 1980s, you could still see them repeated regularly ...
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Cutting A Caper: The Joy Of The Comedy Crime Gang

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This was a commissioned article for the theatre programme of the Oldham Coliseum Theatre Company's production of The Lady k illers (2016). What is it about the machinations of Professor Marcus and his motley crew in The Ladykillers that delights us? Are we drawn in by criminal gangs because it allows us to see them get their just desserts or do we actually like to see the bad guys succeed? W e enjoy watching the gun-toting gangs in films like Bonnie and Clyde , Die Hard and Reservoir Dogs , especially as they’re made up of charismatic and stylish villains; but the moment they shoot an innocent civilian or policeman, they become difficult to root for. So it usually falls to the gang in comedy caper films, where crimes are more far-fetched and bullets are less likely to be fired than quips (or sticks of rock), to lure us in and make us feel complicit in the illicit. The crime caper genre has its roots in the more dramatic heist films of the 1950s, most notably John Huston’s The As...
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Ghosts Of Laughter

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This was an article for the theatre programme of the Saints Drama Society's production of Blithe Spirit (2025), co-written with Charlotte Ellingham. From the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and M. R. James to the horror films of Hammer and Hollywood, fictional ghosts are often portrayed as foreboding or frightening. However, although being chilled to the bone seems at odds with tickling the funny bone, there remains a grand tradition of comical ghost stories. A recurring theme of spooky comedy involves haunted people who “ain’t afraid of no ghost”. Short stories such as Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost and H. G. Wells' The Inexperienced Ghost , as well as the film Beetlejuice (1988), all feature unconvincing apparitions that fail to scare the living. Even when ghosts' creepy credentials are found wanting, they can still irritate the living. The TV series Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) , So Haunt Me and Ghosts all focus on earthbound spirits stuck in limbo, wa...
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How Volunteering Saved My Life

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I haven’t updated this blog for several months, which is down to a combination of procrastination and being busy rehearsing for an amateur-dramatics production of Blithe Spirit . Ironically, it’s the latter that’s inspired me to write this latest post.  My latest adventures volunteering with my local am-dram group are something I would have never envisaged this time last year, when I was awaiting the results of a short course of chemotherapy. I had been diagnosed with an abdominal germ-cell tumour in January 2024, which came about following another type of voluntary work. A month earlier, I had been planning to return to Rugby Hospital Radio, to present a one-off 1980s Christmas show. A few days before the show, I had been experiencing painful abdominal cramps, which I’d put down to indigestion or an irritable stomach. However, the over-the-counter medication hadn’t worked, and after struggling to get through the three-hour radio show, I decided to go to the drop-in centre at St Cr...
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Attack Of The Gnomes

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Review  –  Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (BBC One, 6.10 PM, 25 December 2024) As with The Morecambe and Wise Show in the 1970s and  Only Fools and Horses in the 1980s–1990s, you could argue that Christmas Day isn’t complete without a Wallace and Gromit adventure. Yet it’s been 16 years since the stop-motion duo’s last film ( A Matter of Loaf and Death ), although it feels like they’ve never been away. Vengeance Most Fowl sees cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his faithful dog Gromit facing a familiar foe – the rooster-impersonating penguin Feathers McGraw (last seen in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers and surely one of TV’s most iconic villains). After being imprisoned in a zoo for stealing a precious diamond, McGraw seeks revenge on our heroes by reprogramming Wallace’s “smart gnome”, Norbot, his latest invention and business venture. With a clueless chief inspector (voiced by Peter Kay) pointing the finger at Wallace, it’s up to Gromit to save the day again. ...
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Funny Games

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If there’s one thing guaranteed to enliven a dull sitcom (or even a great one), it’s a scene that locks two or more characters in combat across a table, playing a board or card game. Whether it’s ludo or Cluedo, poker or pontoon, the games people play in sitcoms allow writers to explore the competitiveness and pettiness of their characters in often hilarious detail. “Should there not be some cards in here?” One sitcom holds the record for the time its characters spend playing board games  –  Father Ted . With fathers Ted and Dougal having so much free time as priests, they spend much of it playing the likes of ludo, Cluedo, and snakes and ladders. (In the original Father Ted DVD commentary,   writer Graham Linehan explained that he and co-writer Arthur Matthews ensured that Ted and Dougal played the most unskilled games.) When Ted thinks he’s finally about to play a game that challenges the old grey matter, chess, he has to concede to Dougal’s choice, Buckaroo. “ I th...
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The Nation's Favourite

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This was a commissioned article for the theatre programme of the Comedy Theatre Company's production of dinnerladies (2011). Victoria Wood has been the nation's favourite name for over a quarter of a century. Ever since she made her television debut in 1974 on ITV talent show  New Faces , she has been delighting audiences with her wry eye for the foibles of everyday life, filtered through well-drawn characters and rich dialogue, which led one  Guardian  critic to describe her as "the lovechild of Alan Bennett and Pam Eyres". Wood first made a name for herself performing comic songs on the BBC consumer affairs series  That's Life  in 1976. Although the songs would remain part of her repertoire (most famously, 'The Ballad of Barry and Freda'), Wood's background as a drama undergraduate led her to write her first play,  Talent , which was adapted by Granada TV in 1979. Two more plays,  Nearly a Happy Ending  and  Happy Since I Met You , s...
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