Are you being served kept a delighted audience in smutty inuendo for an incredible and appropriate 69 episodes it was pre-water shed filth well if i’m not home on the stroke of six my [ __ ] goes mad giggles and laughs and all the innuendos that went on that you’d never get away with now but despite the show’s huge popularity with the audience it never really tickled the bbc’s fancy don’t think bc wanted them to do it that’s still the type of thing we do we’ll reveal the series of extraordinary events which kept tv’s most outrageous
Sitcom running for 13 years the scenery’s been destroyed and he said no it hasn’t it’s in my barn the moments that threatened the cast’s incredible bond there was always a little bit of sort of vins to who would be top billing the offscreen tragedies behind the onscreen laughs wend you didn’t want to be alone so she rushed into this first marriage but the second one absolutely run into the court and the behind the scenes secrets that have been buried for decades and after 44 years nobody knew it was my fault until now tonight we
Rifle through some drawers to uncover the shocking secrets and scandals of the show the bbc couldn’t kill well are we not filming this i it’s 1972 and britain is suffering through a painful minor strike mass power cuts and the government declaring a national state of emergency and events on the international stage also take a tragic turn however the drama of the athletic competition is soon overwhelmed by a calamity unfolding in the compound which houses israel’s team figures seen in the windows by gathering throngs are those
Of arab gorillas holding israeli athletes hostage 8th of september 1972 the munich olympics were going on there’s a group called u black september uh eight members of black september k kidnapped members of the israeli olympics team killing two of them tragically so the bbc coverage of the olympics was curtailed for about 3 or 4 days with the wall toall olympics footage now cancelled suddenly there was a completely unexpected and large gap in the schedules with hours of blank screens to fill a resourceful member of staff at
The bbc found a tape that had been languishing broadcast on the shelves it was from the comedy playhouse series of pilots although not one which had been deemed good enough to show and they were desperately trying to find what we got on the shelf all without do that tape was the pilot of ru being served and that day was only the first of many unlikely triumphs for this extraordinary sitcom and that’s what enabled the first episode the pilot episode which the bbc weren’t even keen on originally showing to be shown because they had no other
Programs because the olympics weren’t on on the 8th of september 1972 a tired and shell sho country got their first glimpse through those malfunctioning lift doors at grace brothers department [laughter] store anyone got a ladder a larger than life workplace that sold much needed good times along with some cozy seaside humor anyway the upper part should be obscure i’m sorry mr granger how long have you been with grace brothers mr lu um 1 month mr granger i’m i’m i’m still sort of feeling my way around as you might say
Although a certain famous catchphrase was yet to be coined are you free mr hrey at the moment yes sometimes you can see tous escapers and i guess that that’s what it was for people to kind of get away from things that were happening cuz there was some dreadful things happen in society in terms of you know the 3-day week the minor strike and there was many strikes on that period the audience loved it but despite the pilot’s healthy viewing figures the straight laac bbc was still far from convinced about committing to a
Series don’t think bbc wanted them to do it they wanted ters to do it you know it’s like on the buses or something not still typ thing we do itv was doing great business with on the buses full of cringingly inappropriate board and crump pit she’s a cracker you’re all right she’s all right dolly bird a’t she here come on let’s get out the canteen save re seat he yeah but that kind of thing wasn’t very bbc luckily for us the show was co-written and produced by david croft of dad’s army fame who was held in very
High regard at the bbc and lounging like the legend that he was in the literal corridors of power he was in the right place at the right time when the new head of light entertainment bill cotton discovered that another sitcom wasn’t going to be ready in time the thing about david croft he was very thick with the bbc he’d been working for the corporation for 10 15 years a very safe pair of hands croft helpfully pointed out that a series of are you being served was cheap and could be ready in 6 weeks with the magic words uttered the
Be was on board well almost as john inman himself recalled with surprising cander in this 1999 interview david went uh to see uh bill cotton uh who was then head of light entertainment and he said oh yes yes well we’ll have some of those uh but get rid of the puff and david and thank you david um said if the puff goes i go a hugely offensive comment today but also a potentially catastrophic decision that would have cost the show its most iconic character and most famous catchphrase i’m free so it was purely because bbc and bill
Cotton in particular trusted david croft so much that they got the series alongside david croft was writing partner jeremy lloyd who had come to him with the idea of are you being served in the first place he just returned to the uk after a spell performing in a bizarre psychedelic american sketch show he was in america at the time the late 60s early 70s in rona martin’s laughing jeremy yes love my uncle used to work in a up factory that made toy guns i think that funny what what happened to he blew a sork he came back from america desperate
To try and get some scripts commissioned as a writer lloyd had returned from the states to make a go of his ill-fated marriage to joanna lumley but he was struggling to find any work as a writer back in the uk jy lloyd was frustrated sort of smoking after smoking after smoking cigarettes cigarettes and pulling his hair out saying what do they want what do they want from me you know they’ve had you know sitcom they’ve had police they’ve had buses they’ve had hospitals they’ve had factory floors what what do they want luckily lloyd’s
Wife joanna spotted an opening remembering the amusing tales he told her of one of his former jobs you wanted to do it about the gentleman’s outfitters because jeremy years before had worked as a salesman at simpsons in picadilly and it was his then wife joanna lumbley that gave the idea to jeremy to write something about a department store so the pilot was shown the series written mr humphrey stayed and with viewing figures of 12 million by series 2 the bbc undeniably had a hit on their hands it was a comedy
Phenomenon it became one of the biggest shows on british television certainly one of the most loved shows but despite its enormous popularity with the audience a series of secret bbc memos through throughout the 1970s revealed the bbc remained well let’s just say tepid about the show with bill cotton saying the second series was doing what it had been placed in the schedule to do and later that the show would be better if it was twice as funny and half as smutty it was funny it was a studio based miniature carry-on film most steps really it seems
The attitude of the bbc wouldn’t have been a surprise to the cast as nicholas smith also known as mr rumold frankly revealed in 2010 it goes back to the general distaste that the bbc had for areu being served david crops had to fight every year to get them oh couldn’t you get t it’s a bit down market for the bbc and so on you know coming up we reveal the secrets behind the show’s infamous feline inuendos i was the first one to show mrs slom’s [ __ ] and the behind the scenes gaffs that nearly derailed the show it was a complicated
30 second sequence which sometimes went horribly wrong it’s 1979 margaret thatcher has become britain’s first female prime minister russia invades afghanistan the wman is launched and the unsuspecting british public are about to get their first glimpse of one of the most iconic characters in television history it might have been exactly the kind of low brow in uendo the bbc didn’t like but the show’s now 16 million regular viewers were very fond of mrs slm’s much loved and proudly talked about pet it’s a wonder i’m here at all you know my
[ __ ] got soak in wet i had to dry it out in front of the fire before i left you know if you if you’re thinking of the smutty interpretation of [ __ ] then you’re awful outrageous person you shouldn’t be thinking that at all what we’re talking about is a cat and in what’s probably a world exclusive we’ve tracked down the man who finally brought the famous feline to life i was the first first one to show mrs slom’s [ __ ] i believe actually it was called tiddles visual effects maestro matt irvin has agreed to spill the onset
Secrets behind the long running gag we got a cat basket and inside my colleague charlie lum he fitted a motor and out the front we can see it’s been cut away there we fitted a tail and here’s that expert craftsmanship on show this is slokum there is a strict rule that staff may not bring pets to the store well you know how clumsy those removal men are i’m not having a handle in my [ __ ] actress molly sugden clearly had no quals delivering the runchy humor on screen offscreen it made things painfully awkward for her young family
Are you being served was in that era when things weren’t politically correct uh you could have the uh double onanda and some of them were actually quite risque and you know as you can imagine i was you know first of all at primary school when mom started and then actually i being served went right the way through um going to secondary school o levels a levels actually joining the army and all through that period myself and my brother had to pretend that we hadn’t become aware of what certain jokes were for instance the [ __ ] jokes what you
Mean these kind of perfectly innocent references oh mr rumble i hope this is isn’t going to take long my [ __ ] has been locked up for 8 hours i’m afraid it’s just not convenient for mom it became increasingly difficult as well and it was one of those things where both parties had to pretend to be stupid and had to pretend not to understand what the joke was both knowing that the other party probably did understand the joke so it was one of those that really wasn’t mentioned at home the bbc may have written off the
Show as down market and smutty but an audience research report from 1974 found that are you being served was considered good clean fun and a good laugh by most with audiences enjoying the comedy’s british seaside lineage the audience couldn’t get enough and as the series went on are you being served kept on giving it to them harder and harder oh sorry it’s catching but i mean look at this really this is lan captain peacock i do not respond to man’s finger yeah it was pre-water shed filth it was just innuendo double onra it was
Full of innuendo which is the comedy of the day inuendo i think innuendo is glorious it’s the bedrock of british comedy really so how on earth did the show get away with it well lloyd and croft were artists of an old comedy writing trick the selfcleaning if you’re old enough to get the joke you’re old enough and if you’re not you don’t get the joke it’s one of them your mom and dad laugh and you go why you laughing they go i don’t know it doesn’t matter we’ll tell you when you’re older in fact the double meanings were everywhere if
You knew where to look i don’t know if it’s true but i figured it was mainly jeremy’s doing but everybody had a name that suited the character spooner was a stirer i figured and there was mrs slokum read what you will if you think about some of the names mrs slow come slow come inman oh no that’s his no that’s not his he mr humph inman sorry that’s his real name isn’t it that’s a big that’s a bit of a fa par isn’t it i thought it that was deliberate episode i remember that my mom and dad roared that and i i i did too was a flashing father
Christmas it was like a mannequin that flashed you in this episode the store’s electronic santa was supposed to open his arms in a friendly embrace but a technical error led to much more near the knuckle humor ho ho ho little boy have i got a surprise for [laughter] you we roared in our house at that episode roared you know tv critics had also spotted the smut factor being turned up to 11: in 1979 the evening standard noted that the show was pandering to the lowest common denominator and the guardians tv listing
Described as increasingly sleazy and the character that quickly became the fans favorite was the most outrageous staff member of all men’s wear maverick mr humph with his iconic catchphrase an unmistakable john imman would get letters from around the world from mainly women um who wanted to mother mr humphries the general public uh ladies uh married women women they loveed that type of performer it’s oh oh they love it in a 2003 interview wendy richard fondly recalled her own experience of john inman’s broad
Popularity walking along the street with him and i was just a tiny bit behind him but looking at people’s faces as they walk towards him they were all so pleased to see him i mean they really loved him my nan loved camp men and a lot of nans love camp men and my nan adored inman i’m free you and inman had his own particularly apt ways of dealing with his new notoriety charmingly revealed in this early interview live so much but i can’t go out into the street so easily anymore you see because uh occasionally i get a or uh are you free
And i say well i’m not free but i’m reasonable and uh it’s very exciting really the public are very very nice to me incredibly neither the writers nor cast seem to be sure about mr humphrey’s sexuality as molly suden thoughtfully ponders in this interview on the subject a lot of people have asked me the was mr humis gay and i don’t know it’s very difficult to say he’s never completely outed in the show i mean it’s sort pretty obvious he’s gay um but his camp which is a very different thing um it’s a tradition of kenneth
Williams and larry grayson and frankie howard and that heightened reality ity of a gay man in comedy john imman played gay and camp interestingly in one episode when mr humph is propositioned by a man he turns him down leaving even more question marks over the character what else is money for i’m rich i live alone perhaps you’d like to come up to my place and have a dream oh i don’t think i could afford in fact the sex lives of all the characters were kept decidedly off screen this was 19 1970s britain where sex was absolutely not to be discussed
Openly which suited an innuendo driven show like are you being served down to the ground so if the bbc bigwigs weren’t fans of the show didn’t like the main character and didn’t approve of the smut what did they like well it was cheap the only sets they had really were the shop floor mr rumal’s office and the canteen occasionally you might see them in the kitchen or maybe in another department but you never saw them outside of the store apart from the one episode they went to downing street supposedly in fact a 1975 bbc internal document
Specifically applauded the show for its economic use of the studio high praise indeed so how else were they saving money are you being served of course had lots of extras the girls in the lift lots of other people pretending they work there or were shoppers so sometimes we didn’t have as many extras as we should cuz that would save just couple hundred quid and we could have something else instead obviously one of the signatures of mrs slokum was the different colored hair and there could never be two episodes in a series where
The hair was the same color and in the early days i don’t think the bbc had quite the costume budget it has today and they couldn’t afford wigs so it was up to mom to dye her hair and it was actually in those days pretty much diy dye your hair so she would do rehearsals during the week that was fine hair could be normal but when it came to record at the end of the week she had to die her hair and then she had to get her hair back to a normal color and then to a different color in a week’s time so it was always a bit of a
Trauma and um some of the haird she turned up at school with you know when she was collecting us from school were interesting to say the least the need to balance the books even led to some very creative measures when it came to making sure there weren’t any losses incurred between shows one of the dummies on the floor with the suit on and i i happened to look at the back and the whole back of the jacket was cut in half it’s true to stop any prospective shoplifters in their tracks grace brothers were pedaling damaged goods one thing a lot
Of people don’t realize when they look at that set of a being served it’s beautifully put together isn’t it with all the clothes there every single item of clothing every single garment is purposefully down damaged because the bbc didn’t want anyone working on the show taking home a pair of trousers so the are you being served production team run a tight ship and david croft’s technique for getting the show in the can was equally efficient david shows were always run as if they were theater pieces you’d rehearse rehearse rehearse
All day get the lines right get the actions right get the effects right get any of the props other things right changes of costume whatever go for supper come back the audience will would be in by then and you get yourself up and you would run it more or less like a theatrical production so if if we could david would go through a show without stopping david croft hated doing retakes because you never got the same reaction from the audience twice it was just un slick then all the laughter and hilarity then on to the next take time to the
Second in a studio so they just had to sort of get it right first time the actors knew their liv didn’t fluff them if they did they usually got around it um and the audience the audience reactions you got was was genuine showing an audience something once twice three times the laughter gets smaller and smaller each time and the act tended not to perform it as well twice so therefore he would even if something technically wasn’t quite correct you nearly always went for take one are you being served was allowed to get away
With mistakes no other show could blink and you’ll miss them them but it was riddled with this kind of thing captain peacock are you free you just can’t get the right sort of people for this job nowadays yes and he’s worked here for 35 years he never worried about a boom microphone coming slightly into into shot well look i’ll take this he’s so cack-handed just a minute let me get in position right mr grace now do your speech it may not be technically the best take but the reaction or the performance was the best and this
Pressure to get it right first time didn’t let up even over the famous end credit sequence the show was sometimes quite easy to shoot and strangely one of the hardest things was the end you have been watching and quick cuts from actor to actor now oh that’s right oh god some of those are embarrassing you pull this stupid face to try and be mr spooner or whatever and the cast had to get it right they had to know when they were to wave at the camera or smile or whatever they were going to do and it was a complicated 30- second sequence which
Sometimes went horribly wrong yes that you have been watching segment was performed live timed to the second and fraught with chances to go wrong and one member of the crew has a decades old secret to get off his chest as a camera assistant i was given the opportunity by the operator to do the you have been watching sequence they were done in one take the cameras would have their shots of the right artists and then the vision mixer would cut the camera and the caption at the same time so that the right names appeared with the right
People i did my shot of molly suden i quickly got my shot of alfie bass and then went hurtling off to do my shot of the two gentlemen in brown coats everything fell apart the camera before me was blamed we reset and we did it again mly suon alfie b the men in the brown coats it all fell apart again the camera after me got blamed from a doorway i saw arthur english smiling i’d missed him out and that’s why the whole thing fell apart thankfully arur english was lovely and didn’t do me in and after 44 years nobody knew it was my fault until now
And on that bombshell coming up the secret battle for top billing there was always a little bit of vying between john inman and my mother as to who would be top billing and what really went on at rehearsals champag champagne champagne you know it’s 1977 the queen celebrates her silver jubilee virginia wade wins wimbledon concord starts regular supersonic flights from london to new york but once again britain’s pluckiest sitcom is under threat john inman had been cast in a new itv sitcom odd man out in which he
Played the lead role of a man running a factory making sticks of rock producer david croft was happy to carry on making the show without inman but in a u-turn that would give even government ministers whiplash the bbc who had previously wanted mr humph out now insisted that he stayed in they quickly realized that he was the the pivotal character it became his show really john inman stayed but it was clear that he’d become the show’s breakout star when the series first started trevor banister and molly suon shared top billing
It’s round and but as the series progressed and mr humphries became a fan favorite friction began to creep in leading to some scandalous maneuverings with a publicity poster of course there was always a little bit of professional rivalry um and there was always a little bit of sort of vying between john inman and my mother as to who would be top billing and i think secretly they both considered themselves the star of the show and i remember it sort of not coming to a head but actually being most visible when they did a summer season
Where they took are you being served on the stage at the winter gardens in blackpool it was agreed that mom would be top left and traditionally top left was the top billing on our poster uh but this poster was specially arranged so that there was molly top left frank thoron top right but john inman slightly higher and in the middle and i remember there being a little bit of sort of spitting about that 1976 was a bumper year for inman being named both bbc tv personality of the year and tv times readers funniest
Man on television and his growing profile meant he was able to get away with a spot of onset misbehavior there was a fair bit of improvising in rehearsals the odd line would go in or a a move that was not in the script but was a funny thing to do so actors would bally john would want to try something in the rehearsal room and we’d keep it in it was either john or molly zden and they would be so ridiculously funny that no one could speak we’d spend half an hour just hysterical laughing falling about and then suddenly they’d be off
And into character like that occasionally he he’d try it on the crew run because he knew he’d keep it in he knew would get a laugh from everybody john used to do the make the odd fluff and i was never too sure if it was on purpose cuz the audience love it when you fluff but uh he was just naughty naughty but nice in 1980 the show took another break to allow inman the chance to star in the australian version of are you being served without his colleagues jery lloyd and john imman went over jery lloyd is as obviously co-writer and and sort of
Executive producer to make sure it was all done properly and john inman they wanted john inman but then they surrounded john inman with an all australian cast um and it’s an interesting experiment pleas he’s taking it seriously even a senior salesman’s hurg bet that sent him back a bit oh you look very smart mr humph oh thank you mrs crawford when i left this morning my land lady burst into tears on the doorstep oh i expect it was because she was so proud of you yes that cped with the fact that i’d spent the rent on a new act didn’t quite
Work out because you know the dynamic is not there there there’s a sort of captain peacocks type character there’s a mrs slokan type character but without frank thoron and monty suon it’s it doesn’t quite hang together but there it’s an interesting experiment and and just just proof positive of the international appear of the show inman returned for another four series back in britain but despite the odd bit of professional friction there was no doubting that areu being served was always a team effort areu being served
Was an ensemble piece which was very much they cr sort of forte and he’s very keen on the morale of the cast that it should be good it always was with him in fact the cast had their own unique ways of dealing with any difficulties which arose and i i recall that when they were recording the german b during rehearsals frank thornton used to have to slap my mother as part of the dance and i think he was getting a bit enthusiastic and slapping maybe a little bit more vigorously so one day my mother put some tic tacs in her mouth uh and when he
Slapped her she spat them out like she’d lost a couple of teeth and i think he got the message after that was a bit less vigorous their own sort of um expertise in terms of playing that that that high octane comedy fast really uh and there’s there’s a real love for each other they all got on so well they were to a fault a lovely gang they were very close knit and i think that’s one of the secret of david croft’s skills that he manages to get a well knit cast according to show insiders this camaraderie continued when the cameras
Weren’t rolling including some legendary behind the scenes parties when they weren’t working they were they met up usually in john inman’s attic which was called his party room and had a bar in one corner and they i mean they were great mates and they became friends and you know they socialized with each other you know my mom and dad were very very good hosts and they used to have parties in their home and invariably the cast val being served would turn up wendy richard and m suden had birthdays very close to each
Other so you know they take it in terms about who would get the champagne and the cakes organized and that sort of stuff and it was a family despite their enormous fame the big name stars made sure to make newcomers feel welcome when i went the first day i i i can’t really describe it except it was like going into somebody’s front room with all the family there because everybody knew each other and i was terribly nervous you can imagine and they all knew each other and it was just another day at the office but for me can you imagine what it was
Like being with all these iconic actors there was john inman frank thornton nicholas smith um wendy richards and i i was just in a and i thought my god how am i ever going to open my mouth and say anything and on screen here’s louise’s character getting a typically over-friendly welcome what’s your name virginia edwards that’s a nice name you’re lively little thing would you like to see my curriculum v ti not at 10:30 in the morning come and sit on my kn good you’re not too heavy shall uh has anyone got the number for hr
Everybody was so nice and and chatty and friendly and i just sort of fitted in it it was fantastic when you join a show that had been running for a long time they all know each other so you’re the new kid on the block so therefore you have to stand back and you have to sort of feel the room really there was no starriness about any of them you you became part of the game which which was actually very lovely and we can disclose that one guest star narrowly avoided complete onscreen humiliation thanks to an eagle-eyed crew member 70s pop star jess
Con in it i played sort of jess conrad the glamorous jess conrad you know the tight trousers and the teeth and the baret and everything and all the glam jess conrad in the show played a professional golfer jess looked absolutely perfect there was one thing wrong is that jess didn’t know how to swing a golf club i’m supposed to know all about golf i i didn’t really he said he could he played golf at the audition i remember it i’m just a sort of poser i know i look good in the gear and that kind of that’s where it ends costume not
Knowing whether he was left-handed or right-handed had bought two gloves i was offered a black glove and a white glove and i’ve got the white glove on and we’re just about to to do a take when um a chiy walks past and he went governor that’s what he’s called the director um your soal golf pro has got his glove on the wrong in hand show business ding and he then took the cast and crew for a quick thank you drink which revealed a thing or two about wendy richard’s preferred tipple actors love to drink actresses loveed to drink and
Uh i asked wendy what she wanted and it wasn’t a pain was champagne what would you like darling champagne oh yes of course yes she drank champagne like it was going out of fashion only do bottle sir oh fine fine that’s fine fine yes and it kept coming and kept coming and kept coming champagne champagne champagne you know that was lunch and we were all thinking how much is this costing john inman’s going how much are they paying him then so uh that was a lesson well learned but she was well worth it i mean she was a great girl
Sadly when wendy richard’s upbeat performance must a tragic and difficult personal life well she didn’t want to get married the first time she had no intention of getting married but she had been her mom wasn’t well when she was uh wendy was running her b&b for her and when her mom passed away she just didn’t want to be on her own so she rushed into this first marriage i think it lasted a matter of months and that was over but the second one they used to knock her about constantly she told me about it and it it was horrible
Thankfully wendy was able to share her suffering with her friends in the cast and crew including the makeup department who were sometimes called on to disguise her injuries she used to have to go even onto the set covering up the bruises to so no one would realize what she’d been through coming up new ideas are out of stock at grace brothers i remember john inman saying oh we’ve done this and we’ve done this and the cunning plan to disguise the lack of fresh plots suddenly all of the cast would do a song
And dance number at the end of each episode for no particularly brilliant reason it’s 1985 britain’s first mobile phone network is launched the live a concerts take place and as areu being served enters its final series there’s no denying that grace brothers belongs to a vanished world despite some outlandishly hair raising attempts to stay current what happened well i b me mother’s little three-wheeler we had to go to this party in peckam and we couldn’t go on the bus because it was fancy dress i would never have
Guessed i think a lot of people feel like the sitcom outstate it’s welcome because it went on for an incredible number of series are you being served had truly become the show which the bbc just couldn’t get rid of the commissioning of series 9 is one of the most astonishing pieces of wheeling and dealing in sitcom history there was a gap in the schedule so david croft went to the head of comedy and said why don’t we do are you being served in this gap and he said well you’ll never get the actors and the cast were all available
Luckily you’ll never write the scripts oh we’ve got four of them already they hadn’t but and then the head of comedy said well the scenery is being destroyed and he said no it hasn’t i bought it from the bbc it’s in my barn so we had the scenery we had the actors and we were filling this gap at quite short not really and the actors were astonished because 3 four years earlier they thought they’ve done the last ever episode people still loved it people still adored it it’s still got good viewing figures but it did become
Repetitive i remember john inman saying oh we’ve done this and we’ve done this they were running out of ideas they they were coming round and john was one that picked up on it first by the time it got to something like series n they were reusing a lot of plots that had been in the original episode certainly some of the jokes were being recycled and fre teas which is which the teas is the one with the froth on top is this coffee i thought it was tea no the tea is the one with a fro on it and reviewers also noted the lack of
Fresh ideas in the show’s final year the sunday express lamented that it served the bbc well for years but as the plots grew thin it became a parade of pantomine personalities even david croft admitted in his autobiography that plots were getting farfetched or else were thinly disguised rehashes of previous shows where happy days jumped the shark are you being served souped the frog in an episode where the shop staff for some reason trade places with the canteen staff visual effects supro matt irvin worked his magic for a plotline that required a
Pretty major leap of the imagination for viewers there was a pets department a frog frog and the frogs put you know and he gets a laugh from the audience he get a laugh from the audience even better if he gets a laugh from the camera crew that’s even better i’ve done that before now got a laugh from the camera crew i know i won that one operation is a theory um you know what can you do to make it different from the episode previously so let’s go more outrageous let’s do this let’s try that as the show entered its final three series not even
The introduction of a new character in the form of pop star mike barry was enough to lift the increasingly outlandish plot when you think it had been going for seven years before i even joined it i must have been really fed up with it by then but they weren’t you see when mike berry came in and played mr spooner uh he was a breath fresh air really accomplished actor but also an accomplished singer unfortunately they skewed a lot of the plots to become musicals so suddenly all of the cast would dom these funny costumes and they’
Do a song and dance number at the end of each episode for no particularly brilliant reason 1 2 3 and by the final episode the grace brothers staff whose original purpose had been to run a clothing department were attempting to break into the pop industry i just had a call from a record company and apparently they’re considering signing spoon her up so of course we’ll reinstate him this could be very good publicity for our department when the doors to grace brothers finally closed in 1985 the long awaited climax
Seriously now come on that’s enough was a surreal musical performance featuring the whole cast i think i being served survived for so long because there was something for everyone click in forget your troubles and just you know be entertained by these these wonderful comedy actors was it was a fantasy land so therefore you could get away with lots of things in the face of scandalous demands secret snobbery and plenty of behind the scenes shenanigans the whopping 10 series of are you being served were a
Victory it was just fabulous fabulous fun and great times halan days of british sitcom just one of them really i’m just sorry it ended but it had to it just had to end but i loved every minute of it it was just like a holiday really with your mates their sole intention was to amuse us it was to make us laugh and they did and they did it in a way that we can’t do it now if you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues raised in tonight’s program please go to channel 5.com helplines for information and
Support and mrs slokum and the gang are off to the costa plonka for some holiday fun in the sun next in are you being served the movie he
