Series One, Episode Five: The New Mobile Trio

First Broadcast – BBC1, 9.25pm, Monday 10th December 1973

In which our heroes give an old banger a test drive… 

NOTE: Our thoughts on this episode were first posted to this site way back in 2014. The text below was revised and expanded as part of the preparation for the first Summer Winos book in 2020.

Bob: Oooh… is this another early glimpse of the G.W. Castle car showroom? Clegg is gazing longingly through the window at a spanking new MG sports car, which seems entirely out of character for one of life’s timid plodders! Is he actually having a midlife crisis? And then he joins up with Blamire and Compo at a road safety exhibition. We assume, as ever, that they’re simply filling their days with any free distraction available to them, but does Clegg have an ulterior motive here? His eagerness to make straight for a rather curious contraption in the corner suggests so… 

Andrew: Yes, Clegg’s keenness to have a go on a driving simulator machine seems entirely at odds with his later fear of getting behind the wheel of a car. Then again, the way in which even sitting in this simple and supposedly fun contraption gets him agitated does seem to point towards his latter-day nerves. Were these types of exhibitions a thing, then? I remember lots of bicycle and road safety talks in school – including visits from the Tufty lady – but can’t think of any open-to-the-public displays.

Bob: And I’ve never seen anything like that driving simulator, even in the 1970s. How did it work? It’s almost like a modern arcade game, with the driver in a seat facing a video screen, wrestling with a mock steering wheel… but the display itself just appears to be seamless, continuous footage filmed through a car windscreen. It can’t have responded to Clegg’s actions, surely? 

Andrew: The closest thing I can think of is a cycling simulator they used to have at Walt Disney World, where the film got faster or slower depending on how quickly you pedalled, but there was no question of having control over the direction of travel! Therefore, I think we have a choice of two reasonable explanations: either Last of the Summer Wine takes place in an alternative reality in which British video game manufacturing took a massive leap forward during the post war years, or… the device depicted onscreen is a bunch of toss. 

Bob: And while we’re talking about Clegg being out of character, he’s thoroughly nasty to the kid using the simulator before him, too. “Ever heard the phrase, suffer the little children? Well get off, before it starts…” 

Blimey, Clegg is hard as nails in this episode! 

It’s interesting how many of these early episodes have distinct themes. The pilot – as you pointed out – was about the repetitive nature of our trio’s everyday lives; ‘Paté and Chips’ looked at the comforts of family life; ‘Spring Fever’ pondered notions of romance and loneliness; and this is an episode clearly centred around the idea of escape… literal escape from the everyday, through the increased mobility of owning a car. Clegg is desperate to “get out more and travel further afield.” 

I guess it’s easy to forget how many people didn’t have that privilege in the early 1970s. I certainly remember knowing lots of friends and family members that had never been behind the wheel of a car. Including my mum, actually… she didn’t learn to drive until 1989, when she was 47. We were entirely dependent on my dad’s driving skills throughout my whole childhood, and if he was at work then it was buses and bikes for us.  Andrew: I’ve yet to learn, which is something you may have picked up on while taxiing me up and down the country to various Summer Winos live shows. My dad has never learned, either. Despite his failure on the driving simulator, Clegg still wants to buy a car, but can we put this down to him looking back on his past as a motorist with rose-tinted spectacles?

Bob: I wonder! It’s slightly jarring seeing him so keen to drive, as I think a big part of the appeal of the show is that the trio are not mobile. It certainly contributes to the theme of older people reverting to their childhood. Yes, childhood is a gloriously liberating period, with no real responsibilities, but it can also be frustrating. When you’re a kid, you’re effectively imprisoned in your home town and its surroundings, bound by the limits of how far you can walk (or at least cycle) during the day. And our three heroes are similarly trapped. 

Andrew: I can imagine that, at this early stage in proceedings, Roy Clarke was still testing out what did and didn’t work. We have to remember that until he hit upon the idea of them behaving like kids, a series about older people was never something he actually wanted to write. I can imagine him theming each episode, as you mentioned earlier, as a way to test-drive the characters. I think that also goes some way to explaining Clegg’s occasional prickliness. The personalities of each character still overlap a little as they continue to solidify. 

Bob: There are some fascinating insights into Blamire’s earlier life during this scene in the library. During his army career, he served with the Fighting Royal Signals – essentially laying down telecommunications systems in war zones, often being the first on the scene. Where do you think he served? We take it as read that he fought during the Second World War, but in subsequent years he could easily have been in Palestine, or Malaya, or on the Korean peninsula. 

Andrew: I quite like the idea that he served in Burma, where he had a series of comical near-misses and split-screen encounters with Rangi Ram from It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. 

Bob: Wartime service seems to have effectively ended his romantic life, too. He claims to have been betrothed to a woman called Cynthia Merchingrove (“She was to be mine the moment I achieved an executive position with the Water Board”), but returned after six weeks’ of active service to find she’d left him. Is there ever any hint that he’s been in a relationship since then? As we discovered during ‘Paté and Chips’, his romantic thoughts from thereon were mainly devoted to his favourite wartime singers. 

I wonder what “insurance money” he has, too? Compo suggests it’s quite a little nest egg. 

Andrew: And then there’s Clegg on his expired partner: “My dear wife, God rest her soul, the silly bitch…” I know I keep pointing out these blunt lines, but bloody hell!

Bob: That really is an eyebrow-raiser, but – in his defence – there’s definite affection there! 

Andrew: Mrs Clegg is the great mystery of Last of the Summer Wine, but obviously in a much less gimmicky way than Elizabeth Mainwaring, from Dad’s Army. We learned in the previous episode that she had a sharp tongue, but how much of a person can you really get to know going solely from the recollections of those they leave behind?

Bob: After spotting an advert for a used car in the now sadly-defunct Holmfirth Express (it ceased publication in 2009 and became a mere Saturday supplement in the Huddersfield Examiner… it’s a fate that will come to us all) our trio head out to investigate and find themselves in the cluttered home of a delightfully dotty old lady, played by the fabulously-named Mollie Maureen. She pretty much made a career out of these kinds of roles, I remember her popping up in Kenny Everett’s various TV shows of the 1980s. 

Andrew: That’s one of the joys of watching vintage sitcoms for me; seeing lesser-known actors appear to do variations on their “turn”. Just skimming through her credits, I see that Mollie Maureen also turned up in Nobody’s House, Doctor on the Go, Doctor at Large, Sykes, The Rag Trade, Happy Ever After, and Open All Hours – and that’s just the sitcoms! Where do people like her get work these days? The only comparable actress I can think of today is Ninette Finch, who turns up whenever any British series is in need of a dotty old lady. 

Mollie’s character owns an off-screen dog whose growling and door-shoving seems to contradict her claims that he won’t bite. Does an off-camera dog count as a sitcom trope? Clarke certainly reuses it in Still Open All Hours. 

Bob: And blimey, Ronald Lacey plays her son, Walter! Good grief, you could fry sausages in that hair. “He drives this lorry… sometimes”, says his mum, which explains why the entire house is piled with boxes of contraband, clearly liberated from a succession of long-distance haulage trips. 

Andrew: His mam offers what I think might be one of my favourite pieces of completely irrelevant character backstory. Talking of the time he brought a dog home she says: “He thinks he’s kind to animals, but when he’s stupid drunk he tries to teach it to ride a bicycle!” 

I reckon the test of really good guest characters is whether you think they could sustain a sitcom of their own. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a good sitcom, just something that might have made it to broadcast. Walter and his mam certainly count. It would be called Walter Won’t Falter and it would have run for six episodes on ITV in 1974. 

Bob: He’s fantastically unsavoury. Honestly, nobody does a greasy, seedy leer quite like Ronald Lacey. He even does it in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where he plays Major Toht, Indiana Jones’ nemesis from the Gestapo! I wonder if any other of the Lucasfilm family pop up in Last of the Summer Wine? Do we get to see Michael Sheard? Or Leslie Schofield? Oh, the anticipation. 

For the time being, I’m boldly stating that Ronald Lacey is the only actor ever to have shared a scene with both Jane Freeman and Harrison Ford. 

Andrew: £30 for a car! Even a knackered old one.

Bob: I’ve just been rummaging around online, and it looks like the average weekly wage in 1973 was about £40, so spending £30 on a used car is probably the equivalent of… what, a few hundred quid of today’s money? Maybe £500? Although the chugging deathtrap that Walter attempts to flog to our trio clearly isn’t worth a penny. He drives it straight into a tractor, and they boldly run away from the irate farmer, trapped inside his toppled vehicle. 

Andrew: Is this our first proper hillside stunt sequence in Last of the Summer Wine? I’m hesitant to mention tin baths at this early stage, but the car certainly rolls out of control down an incline! 

Perhaps this incident, combined with the trio’s overall lack of success in getting mobile in this instalment, might have been the one that left Clegg scarred for life. Some would say that this isn’t the sort of series I should be inspecting for watertight continuity of characterisation but… actually, they’re probably right.

Bob: Yeah, Clegg’s initiative to buy a car is very much at odds with his “not getting involved” persona that was firmly in place by the end of the 1970s. But you’re right, Drew… let’s keep within the spirit of the show and say that Roy Clarke deliberately lightened Clegg’s character as he got older, mellowing his temper but narrowing his ambitions. I like that.

Andrew: Meanwhile, Ivy is on the move, reluctantly leaving Sid in charge of the cafe. She’s off to visit her sister in hospital – not that this seems to elicit any sympathy from Sid! In keeping with our noted theme of not going anywhere, Sid hints that Ivy has been mentioning she’s going out for the past two hours. Unlike the trio, however, Ivy does make her escape. Then again, she’s a grown-up.

Bob: And while on the subject of 1970s economics, it’s 12p for a ham sandwich in the cafe in this episode. Well you did ask me to keep an eye on these things… 

Andrew: Keep it up, this is social history. At this rate, we’ll get a grant from the National Lottery. 

We end up where we began, but what’s this?! We actually head inside the hallowed halls of the G.W. Castle car showroom… 

Bob: And they do actually buy a car in the end! There’s a charming little conversation between the two salesmen, keen not to write off the potential for a sale based on Compo’s shabby appearance. “If Onassis lived round here, he’d look just like that…” they muse, and I like the possibility of Compo being seen as an eccentric local millionaire… 

Andrew: …who romances Jackie Kennedy. 

And we should take a moment here to point out a face that we’re going to be seeing a few more times on our travels through the series. Jim Whelan plays the more hirsute car dealer and it seems he was popular with more than one producer, appearing as different characters across several decades. 

Or perhaps it’s the same character and he just goes through jobs quicker than Frank Spencer. 

Bob: He spent the early 2000s popping up as a regular vicar in Coronation Street, so add that to his CV, too! 

I got another 1970s childhood flashback from the kids with the grimy, greasy hair, sitting on the stone steps in their vests, waving at our trio as they tootle past in their freshly-purchased £30 car. It just took me back, for some reason. A tiny snapshot of nothingness that just encapsulates the northern England of the mid-1970s. It’s the little things that set me off. 

True to form, our trio end up pushing their new car down the road. I actually had a look to see if their short-lived vehicle is traceable on the DVLA website, as the registration number is clearly visible – 476 BWX. But there’s no sign of it. Sad, as I’d happily pay £30 for whatever’s left of it now.

Andrew: Talk about gritty, we finish this episode with a hit-and-run accident!

Bob: Literally… there is no escape. Our trio have tried everything they can in this episode, but it’s clearly impossible for them to travel beyond the boundaries of Holmfirth. It reminded me a bit of The Prisoner.