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Published March 2008 in the Plymouth Diary
Don’t panic – it’s only Dad’s Army!
The show that launched a thousand quips – ‘don’t panic’, ‘we’re all doomed’, ‘stupid boy’ and ‘don’t tell him Pike’ – is back to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its first ever screening.
TV gold Dad’s Army was Britain’s answer to Sgt Bilko but the platoon from Walmington-on-Sea was led by a far less conniving but no less bungling and incompetent commanding officer, Captain Mainwaring.
Precious few of the original cast are still alive today. Arthur Lowe who played Mainwaring and John Le Mesurier, his long-suffering sergeant, died within a year of each other in the early eighties. One of the brightest stars of the show, James Beck who played Pte Walker, died at the young age of 44 while the show was still being recorded in 1973. Always ducking and diving with a roll-up cigarette permanently stuck to the corner of his mouth, his Cockney wideboy role will be revived at the Theatre Royal from March 25-29 by former Eastenders’ star Leslie Grantham.
Leslie’s career has been shrouded in controversy which led one national newspaper to comment somewhat cruelly that at least there will be one member of the new Dad’s Army cast who has actually shot a German. A reference to when Leslie spent 10 years in jail for the murder of a taxi driver while serving as a soldier in Germany in the mid-sixties.
The 60-year-old actor first hit the big time in 1985 as one of Eastenders’ most charismatic characters ‘Dirty’ Den Watts. After bowing out in 1989 he made the kind of move that gives soap operas a bad name when he ‘returned from the dead’ in 2003. But Grantham was hit by more controversy a year later when he became embroiled in an internet sex scandal. He quit the show for a second time in 2005.
On the lookout for fresh challenges, Leslie jumped at the chance to star as Pte Walker. “I always liked Walker because I knew about half a dozen of them where I grew up,” he told the Plymouth Diary.
Leslie admits he wasn’t the biggest fan of Dad’s Army and preferred its sharper, US equivalent, Bilko. “Not all of Jimmy Perry’s stuff appealed to me but Dad’s Army and It Aint Half Hot Mum were written from experience and there was a ring of truth to them.
“We all know a pompous bank manager, a wideboy and so on. There were 80 episodes made and many of them can be regarded as classic TV. My favourite sitcom of all time is Bilko but with Dad’s Army it doesn’t burn out your brain cells to watch it. It just makes you laugh and you can enjoy the characters.
“You can’t help but laugh at the stupidity of characters like Mainwaring and Corporal Jones but their stupidity and naivety were all part of their charm. If they were tough, gung-ho guys the series wouldn’t have worked.”
Writer Jimmy Perry approached Leslie while he was working in panto in Plymouth two winters ago. Perry and co-writer David Croft had finally been persuaded to make the original scripts, which were last produced in the 1970s, available for this lavish new production. It features four of the original episodes, including the classic Deadly Attachment in which Capt Mainwaring and his men capture a German U Boat Crew with uproarious results. It’s the episode with the classic line: ‘don’t tell him Pike’.
However, the highlight of the evening is the inclusion of two very rare and real gems known as ‘the lost episodes’. Not seen since 1969, this production will offer a unique opportunity to see two classics that have been completely lost since the BBC, who in those days did not foresee our huge appetite for classic TV, wiped the originals. The first, A Stripe For Frazer reveals the competition between Frazer and Jones when Mainwaring offers a promotion to the rank of corporal for one of his lucky soldiers, while The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker catalogues Pte Walker’s desperate attempt to avoid the draft with hilarious consequences.
At first Leslie felt slightly intimidated by the burden of expectation. “Just before we went into rehearsals I thought ‘uh-oh – have I made a terrible mistake here?’ I suddenly realised we were going to play these really iconic characters on stage. But I thought as long as the audience doesn’t expect James Beck, Clive Dunn, John Le Musurier and Arthur Lowe, it would be ok.
“And in fact, after getting the first two performances out of the way we knew the audience was on our side. What’s more, in rehearsals Jimmy Perry came up to me and said: ‘you are Walker’. That really helped and gave me the springboard to go on and enjoy it.”
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