Abigoliah: Hello there. This is All British Comedy Explained, the podcast where I, Abigoliah, finally learn about all the British comedy I have been missing out on and to guide me through this comedy labyrinth is writer Tom Salinsky.
Tom: Hello.
Abigoliah: Hello. And we’re on the same side of the table, which feels so weird. But that is because we are also joined by the hosts of Tom’s other podcast, Best Pick. Please welcome John Dorney and Jessica Regan.
John: Hey, hey. Hello. Hello. Hi there.
Tom: Yeah. So familiar surroundings, but slightly unfamiliar configuration.
John: Yeah. No. It’s disconcerting. What a Carry On.
Abigoliah: Tell me. Tell me real quick about Best Pick. Tell me about the podcast.
Jess: So myself and Tom were Tom helped me do some research for I was appearing on a show Celebrity Mastermind, and I’d picked Quentin Tarantino as my specialist topic. Different times folks. And although, you know and we enjoyed doing the research and Tom quizzing me so much and watching all the films and talking about them afterwards and how we misremembered some and how that we were like thinking, how can we keep this good thing going? And then we realized, well, we always have an Oscar party every year. And we sort of hashed out this concept of Best Pick, where we set ourselves the task of watching every Best Picture winner ever, but crucially, in no particular order. So picking it out of a hat so that we wouldn’t be slogging through each decade that we could, like, you know, you’d get a, you know, and that saved our brains that saved, saved, saved it, saved the project, I think. So then we divvied up the research. And what we do for each podcast is we share research. Dorney looks at the making of the film. I look at the year in film in question, and Tom does the ceremony, which is often filled with scandal and tidbits of gossip and upsets and all sorts of things. Then what’s kind of unique about our podcast is that we pause it, we watch the film, then we return, and we have our reactions in real time to what we’ve seen.
Abigoliah: I wonder if you have duplicated that form in another.
Tom: I have one idea for a podcast. I just keep reinventing it, but it’s a good one over again.
Jess: Now there’s something about that reaction. I think there’s something about that because also even Tom, like the fact, like if you’re watching it separately on laptops, when you get a chance, it’s just not the same.
John: It’s a communal thing is different, isn’t it? And I think we really kind of noticed that because the third one we did was the third film, wasn’t it? No, the third film to win, which was All Quiet on the Western Front and we literally went, we go, we’re gonna go watch this film. We’ve never seen it. When we come back, I’m absolutely horrified.
Jess: Yeah. And completely like.
John: War is terrible, guys film. But oh God. Yeah, that was that. You could hear the change in us.
Jess: And also it was stunning. And we were like, filmmaking was what now back then, you know.
John: So very.
Jess: Bold. Yes.
Abigoliah: Amazing. Well, everyone should check out Best Pick you guys have done over. I want to say over 300.
John: No, no, no.
Tom: We changed the numbering after we finished doing the the, I think it was the first crop of we’ve done over 500.
Jess: 3000 episodes, you know.
Abigoliah: All Best Picture nominees.
John: You didn’t know there were so many sometimes with different names. We’ve done it with with different voices. Yeah. And different titles of the podcast, but they’re all us. All podcasts are us. I’m Abi too. I’ve got a really good American accent.
Jess: This is in fact a tribute to Pluribus.
But yeah we Tom, I believe someone called it hotel numbering, which I really like. So it’s like, you know, the, the floor is a room is three, seven one because it’s on the third floor.
Abigoliah: And it’s the 17th.
Jess: Room. Yeah. It’s just a way to kind of, I suppose it’s really good to actually have an opportunity to explain it in case people are confused by it. Because you can always, we’re always updating the first floor, shall we say, which is the Best Picktures because the new Best Pickture comes out every year. But when we do a little side project like, say, the top ten of the BFI films are best, you know, voted best of all time, then that’s its own little season or that’s or, and then we’ve done some watch alongs and commentaries, which I love actually. I kind of miss them. We must do some soon. But yeah so that people.
Tom: Can capitalise and yeah, yeah, kind of kept it going because yeah, we can’t keep watching best Picture winners because we’ve done them all.
Abigoliah: You ran out.
Tom: Yeah, we sure did.
Jess: We. Sure. But it was a lovely sense of completion. I mean, I’m not saying I’m glad there was a pandemic, but it definitely helped us to 100% helped all these neurodivergent people. Stay on stay on projects.
Abigoliah: I will say nothing.
Jess: Else going.
Abigoliah: On. Good for you guys. Because how many times do people set out to like, do something like watch every Best Picture and never complete it? You guys did it. And then you added that because.
Jess: They get stuck in the 80s and they go, no, I can’t do this anymore.
John: Also, I did, and I think when people somebody said, what advice would you give? And he goes, you’ve got to tell someone you’re doing it. Yeah. Because once you’ve told someone you’re doing it, you kind of have to. Yeah. Because there are loads that if you it’s a very hard thing to do. If you kind of like sit down and go, I’m gonna watch every single minute because some of them you’re not going to want to do. You’re kind of going to get about halfway through and go, oh, I kind of got to finish this because we had to like go and talk to the podcast about it. Yeah. Then we kind of had to finish them.
Tom: Yeah. And even if the film’s terrible, you’ve got something to say about it. Yeah.
John: That’s terrible.
Jess: Yeah. Check out Braveheart for Salinsky nearly like flipping tables. Yeah. Have you ever seen Salinsky angry?
Abigoliah: No. You got angry?
Jess: You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.
Tom: I believe I said, who do I have to fuck to get off this podcast?
Abigoliah: Wow. Yeah.
John: Mel Gibson is the answer.
Jess: That’s what you’re listening to on the train home. And you think you know someone? Ali, do you know what I mean? You think you know someone?
Abigoliah: We’re saying we’re not watching Braveheart today. What are we watching?
Tom: We’re going to watch Carry On Cleo.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Which is one of a small number. There was a little bit of debate about this just before we started recording, but one of a small number of the enormous number of Carry On films often cited as the best.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So basically, if you don’t like this, you don’t like Carry On.
Abigoliah: Okay. All right. I’m excited because people have asked, they’re like, are you going to watch Carry On Film? You should watch Carry On film. So this is my first. Oh, wow. I’m a Carry On virgin. I’ve never seen one that I’m aware of.
John: So I tell you the thing I’m excited about with this because, you know, I’ve seen, I think most of them, I don’t think I’ve seen all of them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Emmanuelle. And there’s probably 1 or 2 of others in the middle I’ve never got around to. But one of them, they were always on like bank holidays on BBC Two. And that’s how you end up watching them when you when ITV on ITV or. Yeah, but the main thing I remember like I think getting one of them on DVD Carry On up the Khyber I think it was and seeing that and watching it on DVD when it’s remastered and in widescreen, and you have this immediate thought going, oh holy shit, these were shown in cinemas because they were cut and paste. They were pan and scan on TV, and so you’d only watch them on that thing. But the actual widescreen and all that thing, you’d go, it looks incredibly different experience. And so that’s one of the things I’m interested in seeing.
Tom: There’s a lot of production value in Carry On Cleo and how it achieved. That is a story I shall shortly tell you.
Abigoliah: So with Carry On, I don’t know much, but what I am picturing is a perfect 90 minute comedy. Are they 90 minutes long?
Jess: Yeah. They’re tight.
Abigoliah: The length any comedy should be.
John: Oh, God.
Abigoliah: Yes. Never longer. Okay. I’m glad that they’ve done that. 90 minutes. I like 90 minutes is perfect.
Tom: So the story begins in 1958. In that year, the British film company Anglo-Amalgamated Productions released four films, a crime movie called The Long Knife, science fiction horror film called Escapement, a musical comedy vehicle for Tommy Steele called The Duke Wore Jeans and an Army comedy called Carry On Sergeant, starring William Hartnell and Bob Monkhouse. Never heard of Bob Monkhouse?
Abigoliah: No, but I work with a guy named Roger Monkhouse. So whenever I hear Bob Monkhouse, I think it’s going to be Roger. And it’s not.
Tom: He was all over TV in the 70s and 80s hosting game shows.
Abigoliah: I think I know him if I saw him, yeah yeah yeah.
Tom: But he started as an actor and this was one of his movies. So Carry On Sergeant had begun life as a script called The Bull Boys, written by veteran playwright novelist R. F. Delderfield. And it surrounded a pair of ballet dancers called up for national service when National Service was coming to an end. Producer Sydney Box realised that the window to release this film was closing rapidly and so, having not been able to do anything with it himself, he passed the idea to his brother in law, the film producer Peter Rogers, and his directing partner, Gerald Thomas. So now they had to try and turn this into an actual movie script. They were turned down by, among others, Spike Milligan, your favourite.
Abigoliah: I’ve heard of him. Yeah.
Tom: And Galton and Simpson.
Abigoliah: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Who wrote who? Who wrote Dad’s Army? No.
Tom: Tony Hancock.
Abigoliah: Tony Hancock.
Tom: And we haven’t covered it yet. But also Steptoe and Son.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: He managed to get John Antrobus to write the script, and Antrobus scrapped the ballet angle and reoriented the story around one of the characters who’s called up for national service on the day of his wedding. But they still weren’t happy with how the script was progressing. So Roger’s next turned to a screenwriter called Norman Hudis, who’d just worked for him on The Duke Wore Jeans. Now, who just saw the story as needing a bigger gang of characters, and his vision was they’d all start off as hopeless recruits, but eventually they’d all rally round their bullying sergeant to help him win his bet with another man. And Carry On Sergeant is just what an officer would say if they’d interrupted proceedings as they were now handing control back.
Also, there was a film called Carry On Admiral, which had been a big hit the previous year, and they thought maybe this would confer good fortune upon.
John: The project may have told the story on the podcast before, but I remember never stopped you. Yeah, yeah, it’s never stopped me. But when I work for blockbusters in the early 90s. Wow, I remember, I remember they, they were discussing all of this thing about how you could bring in your VHS. Yeah. People were bringing their VHS and you’d pay for them, and sometimes the stuff would get first pick of the people were like trading in. And they said, and there was one guy, this guy, the guy who was like running the course. And there was this one guy who brought in. He brought in a really sort of rare copy of the VHS of Carry On Admiral, which he bought and was able to like flog on eBay. And I was going, yeah, that’s not a Carry On film. And I was like, literally arguing with this guy said, well, it earned him a lot. He was able to sell it for a lot of money. Yeah. For people who didn’t know, it’s not a Carry On film.
Abigoliah: Yeah, I was just about to ask if there was something called Carry On before. And this is called Carry On. Carry On already a franchise.
John: It’s also worth mentioning as well, that not all of the Carry On films have the words Carry On at the front.
Tom: We’re coming to that.
Abigoliah: I’m gonna need a diagram.
Tom: When Kenneth Williams was doing these films, he was also regularly appearing on a radio comedy show called Round the Horn and his appearance in the Carry On films was often mocked. And I remember Kenneth Horne in one episode saying “Kenneth Williams, of course, star of the Carry On films. That’s C-A-R-R-I-O-N Carry On films.”
John: That’s a great joke.
Tom: Yeah. Now, if you go back and watch Carry On Sergeant, I don’t think it looks especially remarkable. It looks like a lot of other British comedy films being made around the same time. It looks like school for scoundrels. Or there was another series of Doctor in the House. Doctor, this doctor, that which just started in the early 50s and and seemingly went on forever. But Carry On Sergeant cost Anglo-Amalgamated £70,000 and was the third most successful UK film of 1958.
Abigoliah: Wow. So it’s 70,000. Sounds like a really cheap amount even in.
Tom: British films have been pumped out at this time, but £70,000 was not a lot of money. So obviously Anglo-Amalgamated asked for a follow up and perhaps thinking about the doctor in this doctor that or there’s also a dentist series also starring Bob Monkhouse. And so they thought, well, let’s try and keep all the thin man, you know, follow the thin man, the thin man down, the thin man and so on. So they thought, we’ll try and create some kind of continuity, but they didn’t think they’d be able to get the same actors back. So they created a brand new story. But it was the same team writer Norman Hudis, director Gerald Thomas, producer Peter Rogers, and this time it was Carry On nurse. So they weren’t. They didn’t get William Hartnell, Bob Monkhouse back, but supporting actors Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques are all rehired to play essentially the same characters just with new names and now in a new setting.
Abigoliah: Yeah, okay. But same vibe. Yeah.
Tom: Okay. And this was the UK’s top grossing film of the year, and it pulled in $2 million in America.
Abigoliah: Whoa! Yeah! Carry On.
Tom: Nurse, Carry On Nurse. You’ve never heard of it.
Abigoliah: Big in America.
Tom: And so they, they were onto a good thing. And Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers made another 28 Carry On films between 1959 and 1978.
Carry On Teacher was released the same year as Carry On Nurse, and features a motley crew of new teachers who finally rally round to help out their new headmaster. Carry On Constable was released in 1960 and features a motley crew of new recruits to the police force, who finally rallied round to help their struggling sergeant. That was the first Carry On film for Sid James. About whom we’ll hear more shortly. Sid James takes the starring role in Carry On Regardless, as Bert Handy, who runs the Helping Hands Job agency and takes on a motley crew of new recruits who finally rallied round to support him, and the following year saw the first Carry On film in colour, Carry On Cruising, in which captain Sid James struggles with a motley crew of eccentrics who finally rally round to support him.
Jess: Are you sensing a theme?
Tom: Yeah, I think around this point it seems to have occurred to at least Norman Hudis that he was beginning to repeat himself. So he stands down and Talbot Rothwell
Abigoliah: This is not a real name.
Tom: Takes over from Carry On Cabby.
John: That’s that’s one of those names. That’s two surnames, isn’t it? He doesn’t have a first name.
Tom: This change in personnel did not please Kenneth Williams, who’d been in every previous Carry On film but turned this one down. It’s back in black and white, and Jim Dale joins the cast. And now with Sid James.
Abigoliah: Jim Dale as in Jim Dale, who’s still alive now and spoke at my university graduation.
Tom: Yeah, that would be the same Jim Dale, I imagine. Yes.
John: Yeah. Pete’s dragon. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Abigoliah: I’ve seen him on Broadway. Look at that.
Jess: Look at that.
Tom: And then Carry On Jack in 1964 brings back both Kenneth Williams and color photography. Now, this is an interesting film in the series because it was the first that spoofed a different genre. All the other ones had been basically like workplace comedies. But now we’re on the high seas with Nelson and Hardy, and there’s more than an echo of the very troubled Mutiny on the Bounty starring Marlon Brando, which had been a very expensive and famous flop only a few years earlier, but there was no danger of Carry On Jack spending that kind of money. As luck would have it, Shepperton Studios had recently been home to the big budget movie H.M.S. Defiant, directed by Lewis Gilbert, and set in the same period.
Abigoliah: So they had the set.
Tom: All the sets were still available.
Abigoliah: To pay for it.
Jess: That is so sustainable. I wish we did more of this.
Tom: So the result was that the full colour Carry On Jack about the Napoleonic Wars cost about the same as the black and white Carry On Cabby about taxi drivers in contemporary London.
Abigoliah: That’s amazing. I wonder if they’d even let you do that sort of thing now because of copyright and stuff like that. You know what I mean?
Jess: Like, yeah, like the designer fee and all that. It would probably agents getting their percentage of the.
Abigoliah: Unions and stuff.
Jess: But I think we are going to have to find a way. Yeah.
Abigoliah: I don’t think it’s a bad idea. No.
Jess: It’s great.
Abigoliah: They built the Black Pearl. It could have been used a lot more, you know, like that sort of like big.
Tom: I think that kind of thing just does still Also sometimes go on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Abigoliah: I mean, I guess that’s what the studio lots are. It’s like we have New York. Yeah. This is New York.
Tom: And you see the same backlot buildings used in movie after movie.
Abigoliah: So you said 28 films in basically 20 years. So more than a film a year. Yeah. So is this.
Tom: They’re just pumping them out.
Abigoliah: Are they like almost in like a studio system sort of thing where it’s like these actors are always going to get hired for this, these projects.
Tom: They work under those kind of contracts. Yeah. So this is all still anglo-amalgamated. And they would have had a deal with Pinewood, which is where most of these films were shot. But no, occasionally, as with Kenneth Williams turning down Carry On Cabby the regular team would say, oh, I’ve got another job or this isn’t paying me enough.
Jess: Or there’s a history, a storied history of repertory theatre, tradition of repertory theatre that I’m sure you kind of you have obviously like, say, Steppenwolf as well. It would be in Chicago really famous for it where, you know, you have a company of actors who just do different plays. And when you’re rehearsing in the day, doing one play and you’re performing a different one at night, and that tradition, I think, completely lends itself to this Carry On. They were a company of actors who could kind of come and go, but had that stability of the rep company, essentially.
Abigoliah: Oh, that’s really cool.
Tom: But it was a loose association rather than a contractual arrangement.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I understand. Continue.
Tom: So they saw the potential of genre spoofing. And the next century had a go at the still very new James Bond movies with Carry On Spying, which introduced Barbara Windsor to the series. And that was the last black and white entry. And now Talbot Rothwell has abandoned Norman Hudis gang of misfits for ever more tortured puns, double entendres, sexual innuendos. Yeah. Now, while Carry On Spying was in cinemas, Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor, was finally released after five years of development and production.
Abigoliah: And I’m sure you guys have covered. Oh yes.
Jess: Tom does quite the deep dive and it’s wonderful.
Tom: So this was an even bigger white elephant than Mutiny on the Bounty. It had mainly shot in Rome during 1961 and 1962, but that was after an abortive attempt to film it on the backlot in Pinewood between September and November 1960. Okay, they’re trying to get Mediterranean skies just outside London.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: In November. It didn’t work.
Abigoliah: That’s tricky.
Tom: But once again, the sets were all still sitting there waiting to be used. And the producers of Cleopatra also helped out by taking Anglo-Amalgamated to court for copyright infringement. Not for the set, but for the poster.
Abigoliah: Hey, amazing.
Tom: So that got the film. Loads of free publicity, and the only price they had to pay was designing a new poster. Yeah, and it’s Carry On Cleo, that we’ll be watching. So it was another huge hit, its look back on very fondly. Is it the very best of the series? I mean, taste will vary, but it’s certainly one of about 3 or 4, which is consistently mentioned as being one of the very best. And it kind of kicks off what at least one Carry On historian called the series Imperial phase. So from this point on, there’s a really strong succession of really kind of classic films of this nature.
Abigoliah: Did they do up? So I’m guessing Barbara Windsor played Cleopatra?
Tom: No. So I’m not quite sure why not. But Amanda Barrie was chosen instead. About whom?
Jess: We’ll tell you why not? Because I think she is almost like a kind of a she has those Elizabeth Taylor eyes. She does. She has the most extraordinary eyes.
Abigoliah: Well, that’s what I was going to ask. Did they do a Cleo as Elizabeth Taylor and Cleopatra? Did they go the same eye makeup?
Tom: They’re using the same costumes. I mean, literally, Sid James is in the same costume that Richard Burton wore. I mean, it’s remarkable.
Abigoliah: You couldn’t do that today. Bob Mackie would.
Jess: Never. Yeah, but she’s the most marvelous dupe like for for most marvelous art.
Tom: So there are another 20 Carry On films after Carry On Cleo. So I’ll just try and give you some of the highlights. Almost every single one of these was produced by Peter Rogers, directed by Gerald Thomas and written by Talbot Rothwell, which also meant that none of these three essentially had the time to do anything else right from this point on, their entire CV is Carry On films. So the formula is well established. They do cowboy films, they do horror films, they do the French Revolution. Now for the 1967 film, The Rank Organisation took over distribution from Anglo-Amalgamated. And speaking of copyright, there was a worry that the Carry On name might not be available. So despite clearly being part of the same series, the 1967 entry was released as Don’t Lose Your Head, which is about the French Revolution and then the Foreign Legion spoof with American star Phil Silvers. You know, Phil Silvers, Sergeant Bilko.
Abigoliah: Sergeant Bilko from what?
Tom: From the Phil Silvers show.
Abigoliah: No.
Tom: When you’re watching I Love Lucy. You never watched Sergeant Bilko?
Abigoliah: I don’t think it was on Nick at Nite. Oh, I missed it.
Tom: Oh, wow. Okay. Anyway, that was released as Follow That Camel. Okay, so sometimes you see those films with the Carry On prefix rather awkwardly bolted onto the front. Okay, but nobody would ever make a film called Carry On Follow That Camel.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that was resolved. And then they returned to contemporary settings and medicine for Carry On Doctor. But I think it’s really interesting comparing Carry On Doctor to Carry On Nurse because the seaside postcard humour is definitely taking over. They are much more jokes about things like Bedpans. There are character names like Frances Biggar and Kenneth Tinkle, and much more sex and nudity than ever before. All still fairly tasteful, but definitely trying to get the dads watching.
Abigoliah: Mum.
Tom: In a famous scene in Carry On Camping. Barbara Windsor’s bikini top flies off as she’s engaged in OT under Hattie Jacques’s supervision, and this trend only continued from here.
Abigoliah: We’ve all been there.
Tom: So back to medicine with the very awkwardly titled Carry On Again Doctor. That’s 1969. And from this point on, it’s the historical and the contemporary ones roughly alternate. But by now also the need for guest stars like Phil Silvers or Frankie Howerd or Harry H. Corbett was no more, because now the series regulars are all stars in their own right. Fans will turn out to see them almost no matter what. But also censorship is over. The Hays Office in America has closed and a rating system has been introduced instead. And Carry On films were always certificate A, which is roughly the equivalent of 12A today. So parental guidance or children needing to have a parent. But they’re getting more and more risque and struggling for relevancy and freshness.
Abigoliah: Do they kind of turn into like, remember, I kind of associate it with like National Lampoon’s, those comedies from the 70s, Porky’s.
Tom: And Revenge of the Nerds.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: They’re heading in that direction at this time.
Abigoliah: When it’s like, this is funny. And then you’re like, why are five women topless? For that reason.
Jess: Yeah. And one is passed out. What are you doing? Yeah. Yeah.
John: It gets really going to get to this, but roughly around the 70s there’s this other series happening called The Confessions.
Tom: Yes, exactly. So yeah, Confessions of a Window Cleaner is, I think, 74. And that kicked off the British sexploitation craze, which made it even harder.
Jess: Nobody asked for.
Abigoliah: I didn’t know you guys had it all.
Jess: Yeah they did. Oh they did.
Abigoliah: Oh, is it porny?
Jess: Yeah.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Basically. Yeah.
John: Soft soft porn again. Really ugly middle aged men.
Tom: And and and a kind of embarrassment about sex and kind of a hoped for joyful, as you said, Jess lusty enthusiasm about sex, but mixed with this sort of very English shame.
Jess: Yeah, yeah. It’s a it’s a it’s it’s awful.
Abigoliah: Where, where did these happen? Were they on television? In cinemas.
Tom: In cinemas?
Abigoliah: Yeah. Were they cinemas where people could jerk off in like this?
Jess: No no no they were they were like, it was kind of like mainstream.
Abigoliah: If you’re named John Dorney. Yeah, exactly.
John: Don’t clean up after.
Abigoliah: No.
Jess: Way to get yourself barred from the Picturehouse Group. Jeepers. But I think there’s always.
Tom: Subject matter has been a very bad influence. Which I blame myself.
Jess: That’s why Tom was like, we won’t go here without at least two women on the panel. But there’s always, I think when censorship pulls back. Right. Which is what we want, you know, we, we don’t want censorship. However, there’s always a slight race to the bottom. And it’s always people who seem to intent on making the kind of the to exploit the financial gains for the least artistic integrity. So you do get a proliferation of just awful garbage, basically. And then the pendulum kind of can correct itself and you get like, really? Then people start to use the for more interestingly, but it’s always a bit depressing, I think, in a way.
Tom: So I think the rot starts to set in around 1975 with Carry On Behind.
Abigoliah: Which was the that’s what she said.
Tom: The first to be written by anyone other than Talbot Rothwell since 1962. Instead, Dave Freeman took time out from writing The Benny Hill Show to do the script instead. But it was Carry On England, as John was talking about, which seemingly brought the series to a screeching halt.
Abigoliah: For those who are listening via via your headphones, you did not see Jess Regan just go. Who took time off from the The Benny Hill Show. She just went, sorry, you can’t you can’t see me do it. She sucked in and then had a face of like, oh, God.
Tom: We’ve mentioned Benny Hill a couple of times. Do you know who Benny Hill is?
Abigoliah: Yeah, I know like of it. I’ve not seen it, but it is it. I thought it was kind of highly problematic. Is it problematic?
Jess: It’s my sleep paralysis demon, I think.
Abigoliah: Is it?
Tom: He basically plays a comedy Dirty Old Man in a variety of sketches. I think he was a very talented performer.
Tom: But his style of comedy went out of fashion really fast once alternative comedy came in.
Jess: And rumored Virgin.
Tom: Yes, he was clearly fucked up about sex in quite specific ways.
Jess: Maybe. Let’s not take our cues from from people like that.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jess: Well, let’s not give them a television show.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Don’t give television shows divergence. That’s what we’ve learned. Here.
Tom: Carry On England only features Kenneth Connor from the classic lineup. He’s joined by Windsor Davies, who is essentially reprising his role from television’s It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. There’s a parade of topless women on the thinnest of pretexts. It’s the first film of the series to get a double a certificate, meaning children under 14 could not be admitted. Critics hated it, which was nothing new. But it lost money.
Abigoliah: Oh, no. That’s the worst thing any film can do.
Tom: So there’s a compilation film That’s Carry On, released in 1977, which features Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor stuck in a projection booth showing each other clips of old Carry On films.
Jess: I mean, I’d watch that.
Tom: I think it was basically released in the wake of That’s Entertainment, kind of proving that big studios could make big money with compilation films. And the series was finally laid to rest after Carry On Emmanuelle in 1978, which was another double, a rated film and another box office disaster. So I won’t go into detail about this, but there’s a couple of other things in the margins. There was a 1975 television series called Carry On Laughing, which is essentially the same crew doing random sitcom episodes, and that had been moderately successful. There was even a stage show, Carry On London, which had a West End run in 1973, but Emmanuelle was the end of the road. By the 90s, there was a new generation of comedians who’d grown up with these films and a kind of buzz of nostalgia about them.
So 1992 is Carry On Columbus disinterred, Jim Dale now pushing 60 as Christopher Columbus.
Abigoliah: How old is he now?
John: 1990.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Jesus.
Tom: He had Bernard Cribbins by his side, who you’ll remember from the Fawlty Towers episode The Hotel Inspectors.
Abigoliah: Yes, yes, I remember him.
Tom: And a long list of younger comedians and comic actors Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, Sara Crowe, Julian Clary, Maureen Lipman, Nigel Planer, Tony Slattery, Martin Clunes. With this kind of cast, how could it miss? It was released to cash in on the 500th anniversary of Columbus reaching the Americas, and it was another almighty flop.
Abigoliah: Is it too many styles? Like. Because if you bring the Carry On into like the alternative comedians, do they not that they don’t know what to do with it.
Tom: They did know what to do. They loved it. They. They threw themselves into proceedings. It’s just that the script was terrible.
John: It doesn’t help as well. Actually, one of the things that is perhaps misunderstood in terms of the Carry On in general is the cast, and most of the people associated with it are largely straight actors of the like the original ones. So they all kind of started off. Barbara Windsor started off in quite serious and heavy theater.
Abigoliah: Oh, you mean straight as in serious?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kenneth Williams was quite sort of, if anything, was really disappointed with how his career went because he like had all these parts, you know, Shakespearean leads and stuff like that. And then it just became this sort of that was what his caricature became caricature like. So James was really positive about it. But yeah, even and some of them still managed to get through. There’s a surprising amount of Bernard Bresslaw playing monsters in things like Krull and Doctor Who. Yeah. And and others then kind of get revived in sitcoms like Kenneth Connor. But yeah, but but but I think if that doesn’t help, anytime anyone talks about reviving it, they talk about reviving it with comics. And you know, it should, I think, be straight actors.
Jess: Well, I mean, even Amanda Barrie will get to you know, she started off doing like.
Tom: Well, you tell us about Amanda Barrie.
Jess: Well, yeah, I mean, I’d love to. Are you sure? Yeah. That’s the end of the franchise. So. Nice segue there. So I’m really happy to talk about Amanda Barrie who’s playing our who’s our Cleo today. Particularly as it’s pride month and she is a bisexual queen.
Abigoliah: Yay.
Jess: We love her. And she was born Shirley Broadbent and she, I think she might. I wonder if there’s a if she’s in the Guinness Book of Records because she started performing at three. She’s still with us and she’s 90.
Tom: Amazing.
Jess: And she’s popped up in Amandaland, I think. And she like, she’s still going. She’s in absolutely fine fettle and we love to see it. But she had a tough childhood. She was devastated when her parents from Ashton-under-Lyne split. And she was very like, kind of doted on by her mother and, you know, kind of hot housed a bit, but then all of a sudden was.
Abigoliah: What is hot house.
Jess: Like? Just like it was a really kind of, I suppose helicopter parent would.
Abigoliah: Be hovering around.
Jess: And but she was very suddenly packed off to boarding school at the age of 12 which completely devastated her. But she appeared in pantomime as a child and she was a dancer, which I think you can tell because she has an incredible elegance about her in everything she does. And it’s very striking when you kind of see her around other actors in a way that there is that kind of dancer body that kind of comes through. At 16, she was dancing at the Windsor Club with Danny La Rue and Barbara Windsor, and she she changed her name to make her West End debut in 1961, Babes in the Wood. And throughout the 60s, you know, she was in these incredible stage productions like cabaret, Private Lives, Hobson’s Choice, which really back up what you were saying, Like, you know, Hobson’s Choice is an amazing play about three daughters and, you know, private lives, classic cabaret, subversive like it’s lots of comedians can act are terrific actors. Absolutely. But don’t forget about actors altogether. Don’t just think you need a comedian for a funny part, because there’s so much more to it than that. You know, like, not every actor’s a comedian, not every comedian’s an actor, like, you know, but some people are both. That’s great, but not everybody, right?
Abigoliah: But I am available for any pictures.
Tom: Quadruple threat.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Reboots of Carry On, here I come.
Jess: Be careful what you wish for. But she made her screen debut in a film called Operation Bullshine in 1959. She only started in, I think, in two of the Carry Ons. She had a supporting part as a cab driver, you know, in Carry On Cabby in 1963 and then took the title role in Carry On Cleo. She was in a film in 1965 with Billy Fury called I’ve Got a Horse, and they went on to have a bit of an affair, as she has two biographies where she details. One is called Not a Rehearsal, and the second one is called I’m Still Here, which I quite love.
Abigoliah: By the way, those are two great, great titles.
Jess: Great titles. She was in a Walt Disney film called One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing. She’s just always tipped away. She’s just always worked. She pops up in lots of English properties. But it was as Alma Sedgewick in Coronation Street, which is, I think our longest running soap, I think. Yeah, it predates EastEnders.
Tom: And by a long way.
Jess: By. Yeah. Yes. Because by a long way indeed. Yeah. Because EastEnders is 86 I think. But I always thought Amanda Barrie stood out in Coronation Street for a couple of reasons. First of all, she definitely styled herself okay. Because she would always have a little popped collar and her sleeves would always be rolled up. And honestly, she could be a Brooklyn barista. But here she was in the 80s and early 90s when women were maybe, you know what, like slice of life dressing. They didn’t look glamorous, but she always just looked like a touch of the Joanna Lumley. She just had this natural grace about her and she really popped on screen. And the alma storyline I remember really vividly as a child, she had this on and off again relationship with Mike Baldwin. No, his name was Mike Baldwin. What was his name? It was Mike Baldwin, somebody.
Tom: Baldwin. Mike Baldwin, Mike Baldwin.
Abigoliah: Is he one of the Baldwins? Is he Baldwin.
Jess: Temu Baldwin. Temu Baldwin. And I think he wouldn’t mind that comparison.
John: I mean let’s be honest given the actual Baldwin’s.
Jess: Yeah.
John: Temu Baldwin is saying something.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Also new merch Temu Baldwin just dropped.
Jess: So he like but they, he would he would always act better when he was with the man to marry, you know what I mean? She would raise his game. I definitely found that. And because he was like playing the classic like geezer lothario. And then he had this affair with Tanya. And I think it was I think it was a hairdresser or. Yeah. Anyway, it was it was like storylines would go on for ages, and it was actually like people would really get these amazing acting chops, scenes. And a lot of people from soaps have gone on to be national treasures. And I think Amanda Barrie is one. But the whole time she was on Coronation Street, she was keeping a secret about her sexuality. So after her affair with Billy Fury.
Abigoliah: Sorry, is this in the 80s or the.
Jess: 80s and 90s?
Abigoliah: Okay, okay.
Jess: But well, up until the 90s, her whole. I found it really moving. Actually, I didn’t realise she spent her whole time on the soap opera, you know, being a national treasure, being in the public conversation. But she couldn’t reveal that she was, that she was bisexual and she was terrified. And I think that she had quite an unconventional marriage. So she married a man and they did get divorced, but they stayed though they got separated, but they never divorced. And I think they had an unconventional marriage because she married a theatre director and actor, Robin Hunter, but she was convinced she would be axed from the soap if producers got wind of her sexuality and she said, I didn’t think I would be fired. I know I would have been fired. Taking into account the climate at the time, the people I was close to always knew about me and the relationships throughout my life. Being the age that I am, I still remember when gay men were absolutely crucified for being the way they were. I believe in the freedom to do and be exactly as you wish in life, to live in your own way.
I dream of a day when people’s sexuality is regarded as so unimportant that no one even bothers to remark on whether somebody is gay or straight. It’s probably a pipe dream, but I still like to dream. However, it’s a bit of a happy ending. So a week and a half into the role, somebody leaked details to the press, but it didn’t really get consumed that much. She still managed to kind of maintain her privacy, but when she did come out after leaving the soap in the early 2000, in her biography, all she got was hugs. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive and I thought I was going to be stoned in the street, she said. You know, and it’s just so sad about the fear. But she was such an icon because like, she was in like, she’s had an amazing career in panto. She’s popped up like on Have I Got the Weakest Link. She nearly slapped Gordon Ramsay in the face, which is, you know, very cool.
Abigoliah: Well, we’ve all wanted to.
Jess: Wanted to do Celebrity MasterChef. She’s now married to a woman, her long term partner who actually was a writer who I think was a journalist and a writer. And they got married, like I think in 2014, I think. And it’s like, it’s but and they, I mean, this woman was her long term Hilary. Her name isn’t Hilary Ronan. So like, you know, love wins at the end of the day, it’s, it’s never too late. And, and she is living her best life now she’s 90 and she’s living her queer lifestyle with her partner and she’s as cherished as ever she was.
Tom: What you see a lot of in these Carry On films is very obviously queer coded characters played often by people like Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey, who were gay men who were then also given rigorously hetero storylines.
John: Yeah, that’s very weird, isn’t it?
Tom: It’s a it looks bizarre now, but you’ll see it in Carry On Cleo with the Kenneth Williams character.
John: Kenneth Williams is always lusting after someone, usually Hattie Jacques.
Abigoliah: So Kenneth Williams is gay in real life? Yes. And he’s always playing an Uber straight.
Tom: He’s always playing a straight character. He’s playing a queer coded character who is nevertheless given a hetero storyline.
Abigoliah: Oh.
Jess: Even though the dogs in the street will be like, hey, girl.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Jess: Yeah.
Abigoliah: And with our with our leading lady Cleo, whose name is Amanda Barrie. Amanda Barrie. What I’m picturing is someone who’s been a gay icon her whole life. Definitely, but never out of the closet.
Jess: Until the the early 2000. And she was in a iconically queer show called Bad Girls. Okay. She starred in that, and I feel like she’s always been around queer people. I feel like those who know knew I could send something, even from how she styled herself. She didn’t dress like any of the other women. There was something not heteronormative about how she presented in Carrie. Even she always had a blazer rolled up. She, like I said, that collar popping.
Abigoliah: What was it? Katharine Hepburn. Who? Yes, exactly what I’m picturing. The popped collar and the.
Jess: It was just this little style, you know, but also it looked great. It looked really cool and really timeless. But she was also she was in nine episodes of doctors, which was this soap that I was in, and I must have just missed her. She also like she’s had like an 87 year career.
Abigoliah: She’s still not acting now. She’s still yeah.
Jess: Like her credits go right up to she recently. She never really gave up. Like, I don’t think she’s done anything for the last couple of years. But even then she’s doing the rounds, giving interviews about her, her biography, talking about how thrilled she is when she watches Coronation Street now, because there’s so much queer representation on Coronation Street. It went completely the other way. And she’s so it makes her so happy to see that.
Abigoliah: Yeah. And you can understand why in the 90s, she’d be terrified to come out. Am I right that it was illegal to be gay up until the 70s here? No.
John: Yeah.
Tom: But also the.
John: But still not kind of. Yeah.
Jess: There was some legislation, though, that, like had to be gotten rid of like really late in the day, though.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. In the 90s. Yeah. Yeah. Effectively from the late 60s. But the age of consent wasn’t the same as for straight sex. Lesbians, of course, can do what they like.
Jess: Because the Queen didn’t believe was a queen. Victoria didn’t. It was like, well, I don’t know. How would that even work? So so in a way that that kind of stopped it being criminalized because she just couldn’t get her head around it.
Abigoliah: So am I just thinking part of me in my head is like, yeah, because Queen Victoria was fucking bopping ladies. And she’s like, I don’t I don’t see that’s not sex.
John: No, she she has your sitcom pitch, right?
Jess: No, I mean, alas, having she, she was she was crazy for the day. Was, was Queen Victoria. She had like nine children and couldn’t leave her husband alone. She was obsessed with her husband, Albert. They had a very passionate. They’re one of those like they. It was real love. But I think she was so about that d life. She couldn’t get her head around the other. You know. Hey guys, it’s historical fact. Don’t look at me like that.
Tom: Carry On.
Abigoliah: Carry On.
Jess: I played her I played her in a short film by friend of the pod, directed by friend of the pod, written and directed by friend of the pod, Joy Wilkinson. So we did extensive research. Okay.
John: Well, you know, on the subject of raging heteros obviously you can’t have Cleopatra without Mark Antony. So I’m going to be talking about Solomon Joel Cohen who was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the 8th of May, 1913. And he was the son of a pair of London born vaudeville performers. And that name did not stick. He was known as Solly. But eventually there was a bit of confusion with a cousin of his at school who had a very similar name. So he took a new first name and a surname from his parents stage name becoming Sidney James.
Abigoliah: Sid James, who was born in South Africa to London parents so you can both be South African and a Cockney. It can’t happen. We got really yelled at. Yes.
Tom: I referred to him playing Cockney characters, and about 100 people commented saying that he was born in South Africa, which I had not mentioned but did know also is.
John: He’s playing Cockney.
Tom: Characters. I’m not saying he’s Cockney.
John: That’s a different thing.
Abigoliah: I think you might have said he. It doesn’t matter. But the internet loves to correct especially.
Jess: Splitting hairs there, aren’t.
Abigoliah: They? Oh, I love it.
Tom: It’s engagement. It just drives us up, up, up. Yeah.
John: That is fair. That is. Yeah. But yeah, so the name lasted longer than his parents marriage because in 1919 they left him in the care of his relatives while taking their act on tour in Australia. By the time they got back in 1921, they were starting divorce proceedings. Now, Sid James as a young man, had quite a variety of careers. There was like a diamond cutter. There was he was a boxer. He was a dance tutor. And all of these, everyone who’s like grown up with kind of his logic kind of going boxer, I can see. Yeah. But the one he basically got the most successful as was as a hairdresser basically he worked and trained in a salon that was owned by his mother and then a salon in Kronstad. And that’s where he met his first wife. His new father in law was quite a successful businessman. And he bought James a salon in the basement of a very impressive hotel. So obviously, within a year, James decided he wanted to be an actor. He joined the Johannesburg Rep Players and did work with the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
His relationship with his wife and father in law deteriorated, at least in part due to his affairs with other women and the, you know, the problems with the work. And they ended up divorce. He was married three times. Now, World war II saw him join South Africa’s army, but when it ended his service, gratuity funded a move to the UK in 1946, where he started to gain work in the British film industry. His first appearances are in the crime dramas Night Beat and Black Memory in 1947, but he starts getting roles in some films that have stood the test of time. Shortly after that, so, for example, he’s a barman in Powell and Pressburger’s 1949 film The Small Back Room, which I don’t think I’ve actually seen it, but I do like a lot of Powell and Pressburger, so that’s going to be on the list. But rather more memorably, he’s got an appearance as one of Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway’s gang in the 1951 Ealing classic The Lavender Hill Mob, and that’s his first comedy. This leads to one of his most important roles, who somewhat typically is called Sid.
The comedy writers, Galton and Simpson’s saw the film and decided to cast him as a dodgy geezer, petty criminal antagonist to the lead of their own radio series, Hancock’s Half Hour in 1954.
Abigoliah: Which we have covered on All British Comedy Explained.
John: And presumably that is where the professional Cockney like him, because he’s basically playing a character called Sidney James through the entire thing, which is a very thinly veiled version of him.
Tom: And again, this was you compare this to Dick Van Dyke and other people like that, playing characters of their own because Anthony John Hancock plays Anthony St John Aloysius Hancock in Hancock’s Half Hour.
John: It was initially a radio series, and with him as part of an ensemble of a variety of guest actors who were regulars in the series. And as the series progressed, he became less of an enemy. Although there was always a bit of a dodgy edge to his character when the series was put on TV simultaneously. So it was sort of running alongside the radio series. James became the only member of the original cast retained regularly for the TV series, although the others did make appearances. Maybe not all of them, but yeah. And with the bigger part, he basically became part of a double act with Hancock. His film and TV career continued alongside this. A return to Ealing in The Titfield Thunderbolt in 1953 and other.
Abigoliah: Sorry.
Jess: Yeah. What we both. Yeah.
Abigoliah: You are going through this so quickly.
John: Yeah. The Titfield Thunderbolt. It’s not the. The field tit thunderbolt. That’s a different film.
Tom: It’s about a runaway train.
John: It’s a runaway train.
Jess: Is it? Is it indeed?
Tom: Yeah.
John: It’s a village called Titfield or something.
Jess: New password just dropped.
John: I’m sorry. I just assumed I could just breeze over The Titfield Thunderbolt.
Jess: Because you grew up hearing this absurdity. We do not.
John: Yeah, yeah. I’m just so used to it. I’ve seen it for years. It’s quite a charming English film. And yeah, other notable titles include in 1957, this is all three of the ones we’re going to hear next. A King in New York opposite Charlie Chaplin in his last lead role. The movie version of Quatermass 2 as a journalist and probably my favourite of all of his other sort of film work, Hell Drivers, which is a particularly noteworthy film because it’s a Stanley Baker drama, Stanley Baker out of Zulu. But the cast is, in hindsight, stacked. Because the film also includes. This is as far as borderline inclusive. Herbert Lom, Gordon Jackson, Alfie Bass, David McCallum, Patrick McGoohan, William Hartnell, and Sean Connery.
Group: Wow. Wow.
John: Yeah. But most of them playing bit parts like Sean Connery’s got like about 5 or 6 lines. He’s barely in it, but it’s because it’s pre-Bond.
And I think I think Hartnell and McGoohan have quite solid roles. I can remember quite a bit. Mccallum I can’t remember at all. But it’s one of those ones where you see the like the listing on the DVD and going, okay, this film has to be interesting and it’s a pretty good film, actually.
Tom: All these hard men of British cinema. Yeah it is.
John: It is a ludicrously like hard film as well. It’s basically about these drivers who are trying to I can’t it’s sort of like a almost a British version of The Wages of Fear because they’re having to drive trucks really fast across the English countryside, and they kind of risk crashes. And they have to do so many.
Jess: Pitching a remake with Jason Statham. Yeah.
John: I think there might even actually be one, because it is that sense where it’s quite. And there’s some criminal undertakings going on.
Abigoliah: Italian Job-y.
John: Yeah, people. It’s a bit more edgy because I remember I think Herbert Lom has the shit kicked out of him at one point for something.
Abigoliah: This is really backing up. But you mentioned he divorced his wife because of loads of affairs. Did he ever remarry?
John: He was married three times, of course, and as far as I can tell, was never faithful to any of them.
Abigoliah: Just because you know how an artist has a line. Can I draw you? He was a hairstylist. He just touches her hair and he’s like, you must let me cut your hair. And then you have sex with her.
John: I have to look at the look up the details, because I think they were all surprisingly early, because I think we ran through the three quite quickly. But also there are there are stories about sort of illegitimate children and, and all of that kind of thing, I think as well, because we’ll get to this in a second.
Abigoliah: But what a. Sid.
John: But two there are there are two different Terry Johnson plays where one of the main characters is, is possibly an illegitimate child of Sid James.
Jess: But we’re all possibly illegitimate children. Sid James.
John: Exactly.
Abigoliah: He’s the Genghis Khan of Britain.
John: Well, yeah. So in 1960, at the end of the sixth series of Hancock’s Half Hour, the star had felt that the format was exhausted. So James was dropped. He was felt rather hurt by the decision, but the pair remained friends. However, it meant he wanted to play a different kind of role now, so he stopped. He was trying to avoid criminal types to a degree. He turned down the role of Fagin in the stage production of Oliver. Now he ends up, therefore, in a very contrasting part, playing a policeman in a role originally intended for the comic actor Ted Ray. In the next film, in a series, he. That Ted Ray had recently appeared in, Ray was under contract for ABC Studios, who threatened to stop distribution of a film for a different studio. So he was reluctantly dropped by the producers, meaning that they needed a new actor to play a sergeant in Carry On Constable. So James goes on to make 19 Carry On films, usually with top billing and often with characters called Sid. To the degree that Harry H. Corbett’s character in Carry On Screaming is also called somewhat obviously flagging a last minute substitution. Sid. Another time he was replaced by Phil Silvers after he’d had a heart attack. His next film in the series, Carry On Doctor, has him mainly in a hospital bed after this. I love this kind of looking at this detail, he said. Yeah. After this health scare, he kicked his heavy cigarette habit and reduced his eating and his alcohol consumption to a limit of 2 to 3 drinks each evening. That’s well done. That’s going to make all the difference.
Abigoliah: How many packs of cigarettes was he smoking afterwards? He’s like, I’ve gone from 4 to 2. Yeah. Making the big difference.
John: So yeah, starting in the black and white era, his initial roles as Tom has covered are usually authority figures, then transitioning to the cheeky lecturer role. He’s better known for when the series moves to colour and Talbot Rothwell becomes the main writer. And at this point he basically becomes primarily known as a comedy performer. So Galton and Simpson weren’t put off by the Hancock split. They wrote him a new role in their series Citizen James from 1960 to 1962. There’s also George and the Dragon in 1966 to 1968. Two in Clover for ATV from 69 to 70. But his most successful sitcom is from 1971 to 1976, Bless This House, which also got its own film in 1972.
Abigoliah: That’s come up.
Tom: A couple of times.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: He’s on his third marriage by this point, but he became obsessed with his co-star Barbara Windsor, leading to a three year affair despite her being married to the gangster Ronnie Knight.
Abigoliah: Now she was married to a gangster and he still went in there.
Jess: Barbara Windsor was like that. Like with Krays? Yeah. Oh my God. She was embedded.
John: Yeah.
Jess: Embedded.
John: Yeah. He was also at the time he was he had a massive gambling problem. So there’s a really one of the lines I really remember from the play we’re going to cover briefly in a moment was like one of the gangsters associates saying to him, it’s not that he minds you shagging his wife. It’s not that he minds you owing him a fuck ton of money. It’s more the fact that you shagging his wife wallow in your fucked.
Jess: That’s the rough.
Tom: That’s the rough.
John: Shape of the.
Abigoliah: Line.
Tom: Yeah.
John: He kind of was so, so much. Yeah. So weirdly close to his character. But yeah, so Knight apparently had all of Sid James’s household furniture rearranged as a subtle threat to kind of suggest, oh, I can get in It would just be what I like. That’s a really.
Group: Whoa.
John: Isn’t it?
Jess: Oh, that’s giving me chills.
John: There were rumors that there was an axe embedded in the floor. At another point, and this is the thing I found kind of glorious. This was denied by some of Sid James’s friends, and one of the ones specified was the later host of 15 to 1 William G. Stewart.
Tom: Good lord.
John: Yeah, that’s very nice. Anyway, in April 1976, four days after the sixth series of bless This House ended and midway through negotiations for two more series and a second film, Sid James had a heart attack on stage at the Sunderland Empire during a performance of the play The Mating Season. Now the other actors on the stage sort of ad libbed because they thought he’d just died and was forgetting his lines.
The curtain was closed. A doctor was asked for Again, this got much laughter from the audience who thought it was part of the show. But no, he was he was taken to hospital and pronounced dead on arrival from this heart attack at the age of 62.
Tom: Ooh.
John: His ashes were scattered in the Golders Green Cemetery. Now, his affair with Windsor was the basis of the National Theatre. Play just mentioned Cleo Camping Emmanuelle and Dick and its subsequent film adaptation called Cor Blimey! all by Terry Johnson. And it’s a very good play. I really enjoyed it. And at least partially in terms of dealing with the relationship of an older man with a younger woman, but also his kind of bitterness and frustration about being perceived as being the same character as he is in the films, because he did seem to have generally been a bit in love with her. So in the stage play and indeed in Cor Blimey!, he was played by the actor called Geoffrey Hutchings. The character is also played in a TV film, Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!, which was a Michael Sheen drama. Michael Michael Sheen as Kenneth Williams.
Jess: He’s really good.
John: He’s played by an actor called Jed McKenna. And I will finish by trying to point out a reasonably odd coincidence. Do you know what Geoffrey Hutchings and Jed McKenna have in common?
Tom: Other than both blokes.
John: Other than both playing Sid James.
Abigoliah: They both fucked Barbara Windsor.
John: No, they did not, as far as I’m aware. I will give I will give these guys a clue. These guys have seen Jed McKenna in a play.
Jess: They’ve both worked with John Dorney.
John: That is the correct answer. I was in a play called flight at the National Theatre with Geoffrey Hutchings, who was a very it was a it was a very caustic man. He was very funny, very dry and dark humoured. And Jed McKenna played Sigmund Freud when I played Salvador Dali with my very, very Spanish appearance.
Jess: Well, if we’re playing this game, I’m sure I know I’ve mentioned it before, but my biggest kind of connection to, you know, British comedy, I think, is that I got to work with Barbara Windsor. Oh, really? Yeah. So I did an episode. So the two big soaps, as we talked about, were Coronation Street and EastEnders. And I got to do an episode of EastEnders in 2008 and it was very brief. It was meant to be a longer storyline, but different things happened. But basically I kind of couldn’t believe her star struck. I was because I was a bit like, yeah, that’s cool. Whatever. Like I’ve been like going to RADA and I like met loads of I met, I’ve met Alan Rickman. I’ll be fine. I was not fine. Yeah. She radiated light. She walked straight up to me. Didn’t know who I was. Had one scene with me, grabbed my hand, squeezed it, and went. Hello, darling. And I just melted.
Group: Wow.
Jess: And she was so warm and funny on her lines and like, oh, what am I saying? Am I doing okay? And just so everything you wanted her to be. And like it was a real, like, not a great fun scene for her. She had to just look a bit aghast at, you know, her, you know, another character’s shenanigans. But she just brought it. And I mean, she really did. She really lit up a room. Like she, she just was, she was that woman. And she’s, she was beautiful. She was so gorgeous. So yeah, that’s my, it’s my Carry On connection.
Abigoliah: And then just to reiterate, my Carry On connection is Jim Dale spoke at my commencement ceremony. And I also saw him in Threepenny Opera on Broadway. Very cool. When when Alan Cumming did it, it was Alan Cumming. Cyndi Lauper. Jim Dale. Ana Gasteyer. It was freaking. That’s why I was like, wait, how old is he? Because he was. So when he did the commencement, when I saw him in Threepenny Opera, he’s so vital that. Okay, so what’s your connection, Tom? How do you how are you connected to Threepenny or not? Threepenny opera. Carry On.
Tom: I think I’m drawing a blank.
Jess: You’ve gotta have a think over the movie. Maybe I’ll have something for the second half.
John: Yeah. Incidentally, I just. I just find this very entertaining. I did look up the age difference between Sid James and Barbara Windsor, which is roughly 24 years. Okay. But what I particularly loved was the AI overview was what came up on Google. And I glanced at that. And it has this glorious sentence. We go during their tenure off screen relationship between the 1960s and 70s, the difference remained constant. Yeah.
Group: So stupid.
Tom: Artificial intelligence.
Group: Bastard, you thick idiot. Oh.
Abigoliah: And this is why you should never use AI to write anything. Yeah, anything.
Jess: Yeah, we might do a little Wikipedia counter, but no AI on our episodes, I’ll tell you that.
Tom: Let’s go watch Carry On Cleo.
Abigoliah: Let’s do it.
* * * * *
Tom: All right. Welcome back. We talked about the way in which sometimes after watching the film, the TV show changes the atmosphere. It changes the mood. We come back excited, thrilled, shocked, transformed. I think we’re just all a bit kind of drained after that.
Jess: So my question is, are you still speaking to Tom?
Abigoliah: Well, here’s the thing. You know, how is this your Braveheart moment? At the beginning, I was like, is this gonna be a a tight 90 minute film? Our Carry On films, 90 minute films. And you guys were like, absolutely could have been done in 45 minutes. Yeah. Could it? Yeah. That being said, and we’ve talked about this before, I think it’s hard to watch and enjoy comedy, especially something that stylized at ten in the morning. Yeah, I, I mean, I didn’t, I laughed once, but I didn’t hate it. I know that’s a really weird. No review of it.
John: I would think. Yeah. I was sort of thinking, I was thinking someone was trying to analyze it. I was just thinking, I’m not loving this. But at the same time, I’m not hating it. It was almost exactly the same thing. I was kind of just, yeah, a slightly weird thing to be watching. Yeah. It’s never been one of the ones that I’ve had as my go to Carry Ons.
Abigoliah: But you have go to carry.
John: I don’t think I do, but it’s the ones where I think of the ones I remember liking.
I sort of remember having a lot of a good time with Cowboy and Screaming and Khyber, but this was not kind of on my list. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen any of them in full or even in part, I think. Yeah.
Tom: And yeah, they were clipped a lot, not just in that compilation film, but also there would be celebrations every so often or they would just like come up in documentaries. And when you see like the six best jokes all in a row, it seems quite good. But the, the gossamer thin plot, the endless repetition, and there are jokes where you sort of you wonder why they bothered. Like towards the end there was a bit about cut out the carpet and then beat it. Which is a joke if you look at it really hard, but you sort of wonder why anyone would go to the trouble of actually contriving that, let alone writing it down, giving it to actors. Yeah, because filming them saying.
John: It, it’s not quite a joke. Is it because it’s like it’s wordplay? Yes, but it’s not something you can ever imagine anyone going, oh, I’ll actually laugh out loud at that, if you know what I mean.
Abigoliah: What was your thoughts of it?
Jess: I just feel very dead inside now.
No, I, I just, I think I was hoping for more nostalgic charm and I think I was hoping for more of that kind of joyful, playful stuff that I spoke about, but I just didn’t find it here. I found it so bereft of jokes. And when you go. But hang on. Like there was a lot of funny people in the UK at this time. How is it so bereft of like. And it isn’t about being snobbish like, and what’s a really weird juxtaposition. And I think I think it’s sort of fascinating to study. Like there was a lot of moments where I thought that would be. I know kids who would burst into tears at how funny this is, right? Like when he’s hiding in the pot and the little feet going right. Really? Like, almost like very high quality kids humor. But when it’s so rooted in sex, that’s really uncomfortable, you know? But like I did watch these as a kid, and so much of it would have gone over my head. And I’m sure lots of it would, because there are sort of sight gags that I think would be just so charmingly, perfectly pitched for kids. But then it’s all.
Tom: Like kind of juvenile version.
Jess: This is pre this is prekindergarten. Come on. This is like, this is like a cartoon like like.
Tom: It’s like a Tex Avery wolf.
Jess: Again, that’s more sophisticated in a way like this sort of more. I don’t think it’s particularly fun or interesting to just pile on to Carry On. You know, it’s just not, it’s not fun or interesting. It’s like, I don’t have much to say. And that’s not me being like reluctant, but I don’t know that I have any clear critique of it. That’s actually like, what, What? What do you say? It was it was a different time. I, I it’s just not good though, right? It’s not good.
Group: But you know what?
Jess: Fuck nostalgia sometimes, you know.
Abigoliah: You know what, though? I found the actors captivating. Like I said, it’s like I want to see more of Kenneth Williams. Which, by the way, he’s giving me a short Danny Kaye vibe.
Group: Oh, okay.
Tom: Okay. Yes.
Abigoliah: Yeah. That’s what I get with Amanda Barrie. I loved her, Cleopatra.
Jess: It was very contemporary. It reminded me very much of Morgana Robinson. In toast. Oh, those. It was like a toast character. And it was really like. She was very much, like, played it like a suit. And I wonder if actually toast takes some inspiration from Theo because it that kind of softly spoken. And it was so funny in toast.
Abigoliah: I might have liked her more than Elizabeth Taylor.
Group: Yeah. I mean, she she she was.
Jess: She’s she was like I said, she reminds me of Goldie Hawn at one point. And I think she was doing stuff. She was finding a lot of comedy in just a silly way of presenting herself when she was given not particularly funny lines.
John: It was a really sort of in contrast to the others, it was a really sort of naturalistic pitch.
Jess: It was really.
John: Interesting. And to be fair to the others, most of them are by this point trapped into the persona they’ve had in the other film. So it’s not like you can just suddenly kind of largely do the actual speaking Latin with any real conviction, though, you know, he does his best.
Abigoliah: I would watch another Carry On film. I would like to watch it at night with friends like you guys, but I think quintessentially what you need to enjoy. A Carry On film in 2026 is a wet gummy and a glass of wine. Then I think.
Group: It.
Abigoliah: Would really.
Group: Help.
Jess: I think you’re putting a lot of weight on the gummy industry there.
John: I would say the thing that kind of just crossed my mind, talking about the ones that I remember liking, as I say so specifically Screaming Cowboy and and Khyber, they’re all quite violent. The stakes are somewhat higher because even though there is death in this one, you never kind of. It’s about, oh, it’s the threat on Caesar’s life. Everyone already historically know cowboy, you know, literally starts with like Jon Pertwee being murdered. And, and the stakes are sort of raised because it’s all about a sort of life and death struggle. And, and screaming is a horror film parody. And so suddenly there’s a lot more death at stake from from what I remember, as I say, not having seen it in a while. And, and I’ve always thought that there is that thing with a lot of comedy or a lot of solid narrative comedy is that there is something dark at its heart. And I never quite sure there’s anything dark at the heart of clear, which sort of slightly takes away from the narrative drive of it. For me, I think if there was actually a solid enough story happening, I would be going along with it a little, a little bit better than I am and going through, okay, there’s some weak jokes, and it’s largely peppered with innuendo and cheap puns.
Tom: Speaking of which, I do want to address one historical footnote. So infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me is the most famous line of this film and arguably the most famous line of the series. It was also not written by Talbot Rothwell Oh, really? Who sought permission from the actual writers Frank Muir and Denis Norden, who included it in a Take It From Here script some years earlier. Permission was granted, but Denis Norden to his dying day was furious that the most famous line he’d ever written was never attributed to him.
Abigoliah: Oh, that is annoying. Yeah, sure. Have it. Why not?
Group: Yes.
Jess: Hold on. Yeah. I don’t know. I think it’s I feel like it has more of a place in, like to understand the kind of the attitude towards sex. This push and pull is really interesting to look.
Abigoliah: At.
Jess: This saturation and fear and shame. Like, the Carry On series does capture something I think that’s quite uniquely British.
Because we were more repressed in Ireland. Like, we didn’t make films like this. There was no sex comedies like this. Like we were essentially a theocracy until the 90s. I would say when divorce became legal in 1993, we didn’t even have divorce.
Group: Oh, wow.
Jess: So we didn’t have like a kind of a how’s your father? Kind of. That just wasn’t there.
But we but like, yes, the Carry On films were obviously very popular, you know, and a lot like British humor was heavily imported. So we were exposed to it, but we weren’t like originating it or, you know, it’s, it’s so uniquely British. And I think it is an important snapshot or kind of time capsule of like, how to look at it kind of sociologically and maybe a bit joylessly I understand, but like just kind of going, how do we get here? How, how is there such sort of sexiness and proliferation? And yet there was such kind of, oh, it’s dirty, it’s something nasty in the woodshed, like all this. It is really interesting to look at, but it’s still maintain that there is not enough. There’s not there’s not enough. It’s not enough. Full stop. That’s it. That’s that’s the sentence to kind of keep it alive or keep looking back, I feel I just think it’s a slog now and I’m not I’d have actually dated attitudes or whatever genuinely out of it’s not fucking funny.
Group: Is.
Abigoliah: Like we’ve said, the plot was in. It felt like it took us forever. I mean, we we timed it. We were just over halfway through.
Group: 47.
Jess: Minutes.
Abigoliah: When we got to Cleo actually showing up. But that being said, and I know they borrowed the sets from Cleopatra, so I’m very curious to know. I thought it was really pretty. Oh yeah.
Group: Oh my God, that.
Jess: Is the prettiest little Carry On film you will ever see in your life. And I do thank you for selecting.
Group: That.
Jess: Because at least I definitely was able to just like focus on the costumes, draping like there’s, and there’s a lot to be said for like, even when something is maybe done a bit on the cheap and a bit borrowed and a bit found when everything is, is made kind of by hand or like, you know, you know, that there was amazing seamstresses and there was, you know, like, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s solid. It’s tangible.
Group: Yeah.
Jess: There’s something very tasty and crunchy about that for sure.
Abigoliah: I can’t believe that it released in theaters to me when.
Group: We were.
Abigoliah: Watching is like, to me, I’m like, no, this is straight to video. This is or like a Saturday special. Yeah. There was no video, but or like a TV special. I, I’m shocked that people went to the theater in.
Group: Their droves.
Abigoliah: In droves. Yeah.
Group: You know.
Jess: I mean, this is the thing, like tune off and the silliness of it. Of course, it must have been like tremendous escapism and also getting to see like, a lot of tits and ass like.
Group: Yeah. And also because.
Jess: A lot of carbs, there’s plenty. There’s plenty for the moms there too, you know.
Group: Because.
Tom: Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor had been in cinemas the previous year.
Group: Yeah.
Tom: This was just like so much fun. Taking the piss out of this great ballooning behemoth Hollywood production.
Jess: Scary movie, which had been.
Abigoliah: I was just thinking, they’re.
Jess: Kind of.
Tom: All over the newspapers for five years.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Jess: And like, I love scary movies. So like, let nobody come at me. Like, you’re just a snob. It’s like, no, I’m, I’m, I’m down for Cindy and Brenda forever. Like.
Clip: Please, dad.
Oh my God, we’re gonna die. It would have just been you if you would have just shut the fuck up.
Jess: Yeah, well, I just. But I thought the.
Abigoliah: Actors were good. Like, there’s something about it that I did find quite charming as someone who’s never seen it before, I was like. And like we said, it’s like, maybe it was the repertory aspect. It looked like it was really fun to do. Like it wasn’t good. But I’m quite charmed by it.
Jess: I’m.
Abigoliah: If that makes any sense.
Jess: It could be an Irish English thing as well. You know, we’re just like, what’s wrong with you? Copy. So on, get it together. What? What are you being like this? Why are you being weird? You’re being so weird. That was like a lot of that just was like, oh, it just kind of maybe it’s like, too close rather than it’s like, you know enchantment room remove lends enchantment, right? And we do not have that. We’re not enchanted.
John: Also, there are a few things I did keep noticing that there are a lot of jokes that it’s not dated, not in the sense of attitudes or anything like that. There are just references and like phrases and common sayings where it’s all a little bit like, okay, as I said, we have to like, like sit out and get the footnotes out to figure out and understand what the jokes are and, and when. Those are a good chunk of the jokes and contemporary references, a good chunk of the jokes. It’s very hard to like keep up the momentum. So when actual jokes are not being kind of go, that’s probably a reasonably nice joke. You’ve not quite got that rolling humor of it. That kind of makes it funnier.
Abigoliah: Oh, something I clocked that I thought was interesting because we’ve watched so many shows where like of this time area where everyone is speaking in our piece. And I was like, look at all the accents. Look at like all the different parts of Britain being like represented. Well, not Scotland, but they it wasn’t all people being like, oh really darling, you know.
Jess: Oh no, it’s very much a lot of this, you know. Yeah. A little bit more working class. And I will say like my work that sounded quite South African or New Zealand. But, but exactly, I was gonna say, but that’s the thing. No wonder it kind of there, it’s easy for him to kind of go into that because there is, there is like a heritage there, but I love Sheila Hancock’s opening monologue. Now that was my probably my favourite bit because I love, I love that accent. There’s a brilliant Catherine Tate sketch where like a policeman gets knocked in the head and he wakes up and like the 1930s notes, kind of maybe 1930s. Yeah. And he’s like, oh, you keep your eyes front and your smiles for your mother and it doesn’t make any sense. And I, but I just, I love that particularly. It’s a, it’s a really hard accent to nail. And that’s why I’m always very drawn to it. I’m always trying to work in.
Tom: It was 80 odd throughout that scene.
Jess: Yeah. She is.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Jess: The ADR was strong with that one.
Tom: Made me wonder if it was her voice. Oh, no.
John: No it is, it is her voice. Yeah, I can recognize her. I’ve seen her. She’s so wonderful.
Abigoliah: I was trying to think of the word as we were watching it. I was like, is this dubbed? Yeah, it was ADR.
Group: Okay. Oh, yeah.
John: And today we do have to cover that thing because we reference this when we’re watching it. This the bizarre time period of the British sequences. It’s yeah.
Tom: It’s got it into his head that the Romans invaded Britain around the same time that Raquel Welch was in her.
Jess: Expecting her to pop.
John: Out. And obviously, I mean, to criticize the film for historical accuracy is perhaps missing the point somewhat.
Jess: But that is a bit why that was a bit wackadoo.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. The overall joke, you, you compared it to A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, which is, you know, Borscht Belt comedians suddenly cropping up in togas. And so here we have like these, these recognizable stereotypes from the, you know, the Jewish East End Baraboi selling slaves.
Jess: And I loved.
Tom: Him. Yeah.
Jess: Shout out to him.
Tom: Yeah. As Warren Mitchell. Yeah. Yes.
Jess: So good.
Tom: So that’s the joke. But the joke that the Romans invaded in prehistoric times doesn’t actually seem to be a joke. More just like somebody really doesn’t know his history.
Group: Yeah.
John: And yeah, just kind of makes zero sense. And that’s the thing you kind of need. Even if it doesn’t have to be historically accurate, it just feels like a coherent world. Like if you’re referencing a specific time period, don’t make, don’t break it on that level.
Tom: Or if you’re going to break it, break it the way that Blazing Saddles does. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like consciously walk off the set into the studio backward.
Group: Yeah.
John: I would say, I mean, I think there’s some fun stuff in the plotting. I do genuinely really like the idea of like like Kenneth Connor continually not being involved in fights, but suddenly appearing to win them just through contrivance and fast plotting. That’s quite neat.
Jess: That was nice. That was nice.
Tom: Yeah, it’s all a bit kind of lumbering, though, isn’t it?
John: Yeah, I think that’s I thought this could do with like a really tightened edit.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Yeah. If we just used.
Tom: The fan to Carry On. Cleo. Yeah. 55 minutes.
John: Yes, 55 is generous.
Abigoliah: I really think if it was 45 minutes, we would have been like, the Funniest thing we’ve ever seen. Well, you know, I.
Jess: Still don’t know about that.
Tom: You don’t do some contemporary reviews.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: These are pretty thin on the ground because they were choking them out by this stage. But the times sniffed at it, saying the formula does not really lend itself to this particular form. And in addition, there are distinct signs of tiredness in the writing. I would remind you, this is the 11th film of 31. Yeah. Well. Wow. Corny jokes and even blue jokes are acceptable enough in broad farce, but few of them bear much repetition when the same word play on phrases like at her toilet are repeated ad infinitum. Even the most farce oriented spectator will probably find it also ad nauseam.
Abigoliah: I don’t disagree.
Jess: That has more weight than you know.
Tom: But in a celebration of 60 years of carrying on in 2018, the BFI named Cleo the best of the series, describing it as rife with knockabout energy, puns and visual gags.
Abigoliah: It’s just pretty to look at. That’s why they picked that one.
Jess: Yeah.
Tom: The lack of energy is the thing that really kind of.
John: I’m not sure I can think of that many visual.
Jess: Gags, 30 minute signs where it’s just like, I was like, what’s even happening? I don’t even know what’s happening. Whereas if there was like a bit of plot at the end, that was quite funny. And I think the anchor of it was your man losing all like, like managing to win all these fights and then actually like taking the sword.
John: Yeah, that’s quite funny. Yeah, a nice little.
Jess: And he’s very winning, you know. Yeah.
Abigoliah: By the way, the the, the constant at her toilet. Is there a joke there that I don’t understand other than like, she’s in the toilet, like they’re just saying toilet instead of bathroom.
Tom: Toilet means like putting on her makeup.
Jess: Yeah, it used to, it used to have the connotations of like.
John: It’s not having a shit.
Abigoliah: Oh, it’s not like she’s in the toilet. No, no, like.
Jess: But the joke is like, oh, we’re saying Cleopatra’s at the toilet. Haha. Well, actually it’s not rude. Like back then that would have been historically accurate about her. Like, you know, just having her like.
Abigoliah: Because you guys know in America we don’t say toilet, you know? Yeah. Like in America, if you go to the bathroom, you go to the bathroom. So the toilet thing, I was like, oh, like this almost, it almost felt like a North American not understanding like that. She’s in the toilet because we wouldn’t.
John: Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah.
Tom: Jess.
Jess: I always forget about this, but
Tom: Can you Carry On Cleo in a single sentence?
Jess: Would anyone else like.
John: To take this? I thought of infamy. Infamy? It’s not really infamy. Yeah.
Jess: I appreciate that.
Tom: Now, at this point we asked, did the Academy get it right? The Academy declined to nominate this or any Carry On film in any category.
John: This is such a surprise.
Tom: I assume we’re all on board with that.
John: Yes.
Jess: I mean, yeah.
Tom: I mean, even the even the Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra didn’t do particularly well.
Abigoliah: Didn’t get nominated for like best costumes or something.
Tom: I’m sure there’s, you know. Yeah. To get back to the episode to check, but, that. Yeah. This is this is not the kind of thing which normally.
John: I mean, what year is this again.
Jess: 60 for that particular year if you. I was looking up the top films in the box office trying to find the UK box office. And I found the American box office, which I’d obviously found before for the podcast, but it reads like the UK box office, the Brits are dominating. So it’s a very broad church, and I think it’s important to have a broad church in culture. And I think it’s important that like, I’m not mad that Carry On exists. And I would it’s just it’s, it’s not for me, but it’s like somewhere to go and just completely switch off and have just people doing silly shit in funny accents. Fair enough. Go at it. But if there was just a bit more wit, it’s kind of a testament to how much I rate British comedy that I feel so let down by this, because I’m looking for that. There’s so much charm abounds and so many other things, you know, and it’s not a snobbery thing, I promise you. It really, really isn’t. It’s just those films were they were pounded out, sausage factory style.
Tom: This is it.
Jess: And it’s just.
Tom: It’s in 20.
Jess: Years when when they’re that disposable, I, I feel that disposability.
Tom: They were made cheaply. They would never expect it after the first few to set the box office on fire. But they always were profitable.
Abigoliah: I mean, like, you kind of nailed it a little earlier. They’re kind of like the not another scary movie, not another teen movie of the time. And those those started to come out in like the early aughts. Yeah. And, and at first we were all like, these are amazing. And then after a while, you’re like, we get it. Yeah.
Jess: And not another date movie, I think is the nadir of that. That is so bad. Whereas none of the teen movie is fucking hilarious.
Abigoliah: Yeah yeah.
Jess: Yeah.
Oh my God.
John: Is that the Chris Evans.
Jess: One?
John: Yeah, yeah.
Jess: It’s so funny. Why is she still here? She graduated four years ago. It’s just so stupid. It’s so stupid.
John: I I think watching this, there’s at least part of me thinking, well, a few things. It might be worth trying. One of the black and white ones, because that’s before it turns into the sort of the bawdy seaside humor thing. So with a different writer, it might have a different vibe. And I am also quite tempted to go and try screaming and cowboy again, just to kind of go, yeah, let me see what those are like because those are, those are ones that, you know, there are that did strike me. I think I remember seeing cowboy surprisingly late and going, oh no, this one’s dark.
Jess: It’s Carry On screaming like a hammer horror kind of thing. So is it good?
Tom: I mean.
John: It’s this is the thing. I can’t really say that on the basis of going. I haven’t seen any.
Tom: Performance in it, which is quite a treat. Who? Harry H. Corbett.
Jess: Oh, right.
John: Yes, yes, I can remember, you know, kind of at least one of his jokes being, you know, quite good. And but again, that’s the thing, you see the clips of it and you get to hear those and frying tonight and I’ll take down anything. So all right then trousers, all those sort of things. But it’s just like, you know.
Abigoliah: Just to pitch it. I think you guys should watch the Carry On horror film one week and then watch not another scary movie another week and compare the spookiness of them. I don’t know if you guys would do anything like that. But I think that’s kind of interesting.
Jess: I don’t think I’m gonna get got again, if I’m honest. Okay. You got you got me, Salinsky. I’m not gonna get got again.
Tom: Now, movies are not eligible for the show. For film?
Abigoliah: No.
Tom: But can I assume that if they were, this would.
Abigoliah: Absolutely not.
Tom: Would not inaugurate, but I.
Abigoliah: I seriously, there’s something about it I found so charming. And maybe because it was so visually scrumptious, because sometimes I’ll watch an old movie, it might even be one that is quite famous. And I’m like, I don’t care about this at all. But I just think it’s pretty to look at and I and like I said, I found Kenneth Williams. I’m like, I need to know more about him.
Jess: And he’s like, he’s so compelling. Yeah.
Abigoliah: And Amanda Barrie again, there’s, she, she is quite captivating as a human. And, and Sid James I thought was really giving it at all and was routed. There were parts where Kenneth Williams So the way the camera was, it’s like he’s speaking out to people and his eyes never focused. You know what I mean? It’s like he’s just staring at a wall. Whereas Sid James, they cut to him and it’d be like, oh, you are quote unquote seeing people like he is acting in it. He’s just giving up.
Jess: One moment I really liked, I will say is like when he takes the substance that makes you horny and makes you attractive, well, not like it makes you sexually powerful. And he turns to Kenneth Williams and he’s like, oh yeah. And I, I actually thought the fact that there wasn’t like a shaming moment when, when Kenneth Williams is like, no, stay on task. I need you to, to bone Cleopatra. And he’s like, yeah, that probably would be better. He’s not, he’s not like going, oh, yeah, disgusting. Exactly. And I was like, okay, okay. There’s something kind of really uncharming about that. And I thought that was kind of cool.
Tom: So I think this got a version of sex is kind of infantile. It’s like. It’s almost like this is maybe not so much will work for John, but it’s like Harpo Marx chasing after pretty girls. Like you’re not quite sure he’d know what to do with him if he caught them.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Jess: There’s there’s no, there’s no dominant kind of like the men like, like Sidney James and Sidney James emerging from Cleopatra, completely ravaged. Yeah, yeah. He’s like, not able to walk. She’s fine. Yeah. And that’s quite cool. Like I did enjoy that as well. There wasn’t like.
John: But it’s also like he emerges fully clothed and the sex seems to be like leap on top of someone and all of your clothes are fully on. How are you doing this? This isn’t the room.
Jess: It’s so weird. All this child like kind of sort of stuff juxtaposed with it. But like when I kind of liked was they have like, there was all these like references to the slave girl, but no one was throwing her over the shoulder. Yeah. No one was like, you know, ravishing her. Like, it really was like 12. Like it really, really was. And I suppose it is a clever property in terms of like, I do want to give it credit for Like, I always like things that the whole family can watch. And definitely if I’ve seen that at a certain age, so much of it would have gone over my head. And that’s fine. And it’s kind of nice when you say visually scrumptious, but but that’s not that’s enough flowers for me. Now. There’s no more flowers for me for that.
Tom: I believe you have a book out.
Abigoliah: Oh, yeah. So I have a book out called NeuroDivergent Moments. So it’s out the 18th. So if you’re hearing this before the 18th, you get on to the pre-orders. And if you are hearing it after the 18th, just, just order it.
John: I mean, it’s possibly worth specifying the 18th of what? Oh, because people can hear this. This is definitely when they’re hearing it is around or before 18th of some description.
Abigoliah: June 2026. 18th of June 2026. But I co-wrote it with my other podcast partner, Joe Wells. And we’re really proud of it. It’s been received well so far. And as far as purchasing it. It goes if you follow me on Instagram at abakelia. You’ll find all the information because I post about it all the time.
Tom: And I also have nothing to promote, advertise, or confess to.
Jess: I have a bunch of audiobooks out this summer that I did not write, but I did voice. So if you like hearing me on these podcasts and you want to hear me play a bunch of different characters, please check out The Truth About Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent. Such a Nice Girl by Andrea Ma, both of which are best sellers at the moment. Then also I did a beautiful book called Frieda Slattery as herself, and you can look me up on Spotify or Audible to find other titles that I have voiced.
John: No, I’m good, I’m good. Nothing to report.
Abigoliah: Well, guys, thank you so much for listening to this crossover episode of All British Comedy Explained with the Best Pick crew. If you liked All British Comedy Explained, we have a Patreon for £3 a month. You can get all of our episodes ad free for £5 a month. You get all the episodes ad free, plus our bonus episodes. We have mini episodes. We have watch backs where we talk about current TV such as SNL. We’re going to start doing some American shows on the Patreon only so you can do that. And if Patreon isn’t in your situation right now and you like the podcast, maybe give us a five star review or share it with a friend. We’d really appreciate that. Thank you for joining us and we will see you next time.
Tom: Thanks for joining us, Jess and John.
John: Thanks for having us. Yeah.
Jess: Any time.