Series One, Episode Six: Hail Smiling Morn Or Thereabouts

First Broadcast – BBC1, 9.25pm, Monday 17th December 1973

In which Blamire whips out his brownie and asks Compo for a better exposure…

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: Is there trouble in extra-marital paradise? We open this episode with Mrs Partridge running away in tears from Mr Wainwright, fleeing from the library in haste as Blamire and Compo saunter in, keen to peruse an exhibition of photography. Compo has a proper “doorstep” sandwich as well, of the kind unseen since sliced bread became the dominant force in this country. Look at the size of it! You could prop up a table leg with that. 

After everything I said about Blamire and Compo having no common ground at all, here they are as a duo! Clegg is nowhere in sight as they admire artful, black and white photographs of moon-faced children, gnarled tree branches and “two skinny tarts poncing about in the fog.” 

Andrew: There’s not much in the way of affection though, is there? When they join each other en route, there is barely so much as an acknowledgement of one another before Blamire strides ahead. And as they arrive at the library, the first thing Compo wants to do is call on Clegg. He’s very single-minded in that respect.

Bob: The conversation is still spiky, but there’s clearly more warmth than I’d suggested between them. 

Andrew: Blamire casts himself as a connoisseur of the photographic arts, having taken advantage of the army’s further education schemes. Compo wasn’t so pro-active; his only memory of wartime education being a film about “social diseases”. When did this term fall out of fashion and can we start the campaign to have it brought back? It’s so… civilised. 

Of course Compo’s only interest in the photographs on display is channelled towards ‘September Morn’, a tasteful study of – HANG ON, THAT’S AN ACTUAL MUCKY PICTURE ONSCREEN IN AN EPISODE OF LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE! Full frontal nudity in a BBC1 sitcom?! 

Bob: Good grief! That’s it, I’m calling Sir Charles Curran. Oh, and Mrs Partridge is definitely cooling on her and Mr Wainwright’s clandestine affair. “This urge to touch you comes from the depths of evolutionary time,” groans her seedy paramour, but she’s having none of it today. He gets the bum’s rush. 

Andrew: I wonder if this is a case of Professor Higgins’ teachings having backfired? He’s been pushing the object of his desire to pursue her status as a modern liberated woman, but now that she’s done that, she’s also realised that she’s the one who holds the power in this relationship! 

Bob: So that’s where Clegg was… attempting to assemble a rather threadbare-looking tent in his front yard! And the exhibition has clearly inspired Blamire to dig out an antique camera. “Princess 

Margaret’s not going to come round again…” warns Compo, clearly in reference to HRH’s marriage to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones. You don’t get many celebrity photographers any more, do you? They were everywhere in the 1960s and 1970s… from toffs like Armstrong-Jones and Lord Lichfield to working class heroes in the David Bailey mould. I guess the rise of digital picture-taking has democratised everything, and removed a bit of the mystique. 

Andrew: I think that’s true. In a world where we can mess about watching Last of the Summer Wine and publish a “book”, what kind of prestige can any of the traditional arts hope to hold onto? Blamire is on another quest to educate Compo – which he fully acknowledges is an uphill struggle. 

On the production side, I had no idea that Clegg had more than the one house during the course of the series. This certainly isn’t where he was living by the time I started watching the show in the 1990s. This abode doesn’t seem as fitting somehow. The decor is far too 1970s for a start.

Bob: Too up-to-date, you mean? You’re right, but… it’s not just Clegg’s house, is it? It’s his marital home. It’s been two years since his wife died, but it’s clearly still her house: look at the patterned wallpaper, the plush sofa, the ornaments and soft furnishings. In the aforementioned BBC paperback of scripts, Roy Clarke actually describes the house in some detail: “The petit bourgeois palace of Edith Clegg (deceased) still shows the imprint of her personality but its edges are softened now by Clegg’s much more carefree approach to housekeeping.” 

So Clegg’s later house is a single man’s home, but this one has seen a woman’s touch. It’s nicely done.

Andrew: I think we get our one and only look at Mrs. Clegg in this episode, too. A solitary photograph on display in the front room. Compo says: “She were always ugly, then?” but – to be fair to the woman – the fleeting glimpse we get of her wedding picture reveals a slim and attractive bride. Perhaps she was ugly on the inside? But just check out the lingering look that Clegg gives her photograph at the end of that scene. Despite all of his bravado, he does seem to miss her… or at least to have admired her. 

Bob: Yes, that passing look is very touching. You could blink and you’d miss it, but the love and the loss is all there in a brief, beautiful moment. There’s no mention of a reflective moment’s silence in the published script, so it’s just a gorgeous character touch from Peter Sallis. 

What also struck me is that Compo and Blamire both look at the picture as though they’ve never seen Mrs Clegg before. Was Clegg kept so under-the-thumb that they were pretty much out of contact with him for the duration of his marriage? No wonder he’s keen to have a few adventures in these early episodes. For the second episode running, it’s Clegg that suggests a new pastime… a night under canvas. 

And I love Clegg’s lengthy anecdote about his and his wife’s aborted camping expedition, where she wept and “pined for her draining board”. Lovely writing again, and superbly played by Sallis. 

Andrew: It’s a bit of a thrown-away memory, isn’t it? The Cleggs’ night in a field off the East Lancs Road sounds like it could have made for a one-off Wednesday Play in its own right! A couple completely out of sync with one another in the wild; Clegg full of enthusiasm and his disgruntled partner out of place in her best navy coat and chapel hat, having to contend with being the target of fly-tippers…

Bob: I’d buy the DVD. 

Andrew: A search for photogenic creepy crawlies in Clegg’s garden yields but a single caterpillar. I love the slightly artsy way that Blamire’s snapshots are woven into this episode. He triggers his shutter, and suddenly we’re treated to a Ken Morse style rostrum camera view of the developed shot. The fact that none of his photos are any good only renders Cyril more sympathetic. We’ve all got dodgy pictures in our family albums, with decapitated loved ones and over-exposed vistas.

Bob: Oh, my gran refused to take a picture of anyone from the neck upwards! Our trio’s travels around the town and surrounding countryside, taking photos as they go, have thrown up possibilities for a few location visits here, too. I’m intrigued by what appears to be a large, disused chimney stack, with a flight of stone steps up the side. I wonder if it’s still there? I bet it’s not. 

Andrew: I’d really love to get hold of some of the photographs that Blamire takes during the course of this episode. More so than the staged publicity shots, they really seem to capture the playfulness of our trio as they’re mucking about. It would seem unlikely, but it would be nice to think those negatives are still locked up in a BBC archive somewhere.

Bob: It’s a fabulous little sequence. I think the gentle pastimes pursued in these early episodes are maybe more effective and believable than the stunts that came in later years. It’s like that scene in ‘Spring Fever’ where they’re idly drifting down the river on a raft made from planks and empty barrels… it’s just casually dropped into the episode as an incidental feature. A bit of background to the really important stuff – the dialogue. Their dabblings with photography here have a similar feel. 

And 16p for egg and chips in the cafe. Bet you’re sorry you asked me to keep tabs on these prices now. It won’t stop me. 

Andrew: As always, we stumble across Sid and Ivy in mid-argument. She’ll never forgive him for getting drunk at her grandad’s funeral. 

IVY

Three pints of ale and you think you’re Jack Benny. 

Now, children, Jack Benny was… actually do I really have to put Jack Benny into context? There are limits! 

Bob: I did wonder how archaic that reference would have sounded in 1973? Benny’s popularity was arguably at its peak in the 1940s, but our friend David Brunt has pointed out that the BBC showed a series of new Jack Benny specials in 1970, and he was actually a guest on Parkinson less than a fortnight after this episode was broadcast! 

Some more lovely, long-forgotten vocabulary in this episode… Compo says “Speak up, we can’t hear you in the Fourpennies,” to the arguing Sid and Ivy – a reference to the raised, more expensive seats at the back of a theatre? And oh, further revelations about the early days of Sid and Ivy’s relationship. From their conversation at the end of ‘Inventor of the Forty Foot Ferret’, we’d assumed they’d been forced into marriage as Ivy was pregnant… but we might be wrong! It seems Ivy’s mother just assumed she was pregnant because she was sick on the bus, on the way back from accompanying Sid on a works outing to the Lincolnshire seaside town of Mablethorpe. And that was enough for her to march them to the altar! Does that sound likely? Whatever, we get the second mention of barley wine in this series. I’m starting to pine for a pint of Gold Label. 

And when did the last “works outing” take place in this country? A proper, all-expenses-paid booze-up on a charabanc to the seaside? They were a goldmine for 1970s sitcoms and comedy films. There’s a brilliant one in Carry On At Your Convenience. 

Andrew: There were definitely works outings still going on in the 1990s. We used to live next to the International Paints factory and every summer a bus would turn up to cart people off on a boozy trip. I think the more modern equivalent may sadly be the dreaded “team building” excursion. 

There’s an exchange here about Molly Pepper, one of Compo’s alleged romantic conquests: 

BLAMIRE

She married a university lecturer!

CLEGG Well don’t hold that against her, anybody can make a mistake.

As a former university lecturer, I suppose I should be offended by Clegg’s comment, but to be honest I can sort of see his point…

Bob: Yeah, but university lecturers were genuinely seen as a bit weird in the early 1970s. Most people would never have actually seen one outside of the Open University on BBC2. The nearest things to universities anywhere near me in the 1970s were Teesside Polytechnic and Cleveland Art College, and even those were seen as dangerously subversive refuges for hippies, communists and other similar beardy-weirdy types. Breeding grounds for potential Mr Wainwrights! I think it was only in the 1990s that “going to uni” became the almost universal experience that it is now. 

Andrew: We get more insight into Sid and Ivy’s “love” life in this one scene than I think we do across the rest of the series. Their passions run hot and if they could just put the arguing aside for one minute I think they’d be at it like jackrabbits! I love this little exchange: 

IVY

I’ll not have you broadcasting what goes on in our bed. 

SID

Broadcasting what goes on in our bed? You could get it on a telegram! 

Bob: We’ll have to attempt to find the patch of grass where Mr Wainwright and Mrs Partridge go “nearly all the way” as well. Will you go “nearly all the way”, Drew? I bet you won’t, you little tease. 

Andrew: With my hay fever? You’ll be lucky. You know, I get the hint that some of these scenes between our aspiring lovers are a little bit too much for the studio audience. Lines that you would expect to get roars barely raise a titter. They won’t laugh until the dialogue makes it clear nothing too rude has actually happened. The same was true of the more adult material in that previous scene with Sid and Ivy. Perhaps a coachload of Mormons on a works outing had been dropped off at TV Centre that evening? 

And, can we just have a moment’s admiration for Blake Butler, who – as he stands up – is clearly playing Wainwright as having to conceal an erection with his coat?

Bob: He’s just pleased to see her! Gosh, it’s a lovely sunny day here, isn’t it? It’s idyllic. No wonder Clegg is still getting all misty-eyed about a potential camping expedition. “A drowsy summer night… the smell of grass…” he muses. Camping always seemed impossibly exciting when I was a kid. Spending the night under canvas, liberated from the bounds of parental interference, free as the wind. It felt like the ultimate adventure, and many a rainy school dinner hour was spent plotting insanely ambitious expeditions to the farthest reaches of Paul Frank’s farm. We were eight, and we were going to revert to nature and spend the entire summer holiday living like outlaws, firing arrows with rubber suckers at marauding cows and sheep. Total number of nights ultimately spent living under canvas: none. 

This is beautiful, anyway. Ronnie Hazlehurst’s wistful flute arrangement dances on the breeze, and even the inevitable sweep of torrential rain across the hills only drives our heroic trio from the flimsy flysheet of Clegg’s tent to our second dusty, abandoned barn of the series. Three friends, gathered in a remote building, talking cobblers as the wind howls outside. It’s perfect. 

Andrew: Are there many abandoned farm buildings scattered around the countryside these days, or have they all been converted into stylish apartments and getaway cottages by the team from Grand Designs?

Bob: No, they’re out there. I walk a lot on the North York Moors, and there are still some gloriously rugged and desolate little places. Fancy watching Series Two in one of them? I’ll bring my laptop. 

I might even attempt to enter the “deep recesses of Hindu Meditation” that Blamire mentions in passing here, a line that caught my ear. We’ve mentioned a few times that Bates played Rangi Ram – an Indian character – in It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum, something that would be understandably unacceptable on 21st century television. But as we’ve also said, he was born and raised in India and served with the British Indian Army in the early 1940s. He clearly had an appreciation of Indian culture, and was reportedly the only fluent Urdu speaker in the cast of It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. So I wonder if Bates even suggested the meditation line himself? Especially as it’s not in the original script, as published in the Last of the Summer Wine Scripts book, from 1976. Mind you, neither is the entire pub scene that follows! 

Anyway, yes… a decadently beery breakfast, and do you reckon there’s a cheeky reference to Dad’s Army here? Blamire refers to Compo as telling “more lies than Godfrey’s parrot”. I assumed this must be a reference to something, but the only clue that Google throws up is the fact that Walmington-on-Sea’s Private Godfrey did indeed share his house with a parrot called Percy! And his sisters Dolly and Cissy, of course. And their Upside Down Cake. 

Andrew: As nice an idea as that is, I’d wager that Godfrey is just another name pulled up from Roy Clarke’s well of unseen characters! 

Bob: Or just a random Yorkshire phrase whose origins have been lost to folklore? This all stems from Compo’s fanciful tale of having deserted from the army with his best friend, Ginger Carrington. Even at this early stage, do we take Compo’s wartime memories with a pinch of salt? The prospect of a daring desertion fuelled by romance seems at odds with his anecdote in ‘Paté and Chips’ about having spent the war in Blighty with a pool of army typists. If Blamire doesn’t believe a word of it, then maybe we should be sceptical, too. 

Andrew: With foreknowledge of episodes to come, I should warn all those who enter here to abandon all hope of character continuity; especially when it comes to our trio’s wartime experiences. Given that he single-handedly wrote the entire series and a spin-off in the era before home video recording or digitized record-keeping, you can’t really blame Clarke for that. But we will, obviously. 

Bob: Another lovely episode, and maybe the first in which our main trio actively look for a new hobby to pass the time? In fact, several new hobbies: photography, camping… and the series actually ends with Clegg once again leading the way and suggesting model aircraft-building as their next prospective pastime. I wonder if the second series had already been commissioned when this was filmed? If Last of the Summer Wine had ended right here, this new-found zest for novel experiences would have made a fitting feel-good conclusion to it all. 

Andrew: Yes, it’s an upbeat ending to the first series. Had it ended here, I wonder what its reputation would be like today? I suspect it would be a little-seen, but highly-regarded entry in Clarke’s canon. Dare I say that had the series ended its run somewhere in this earlier period, it might be taken a little more seriously for the incredibly well-observed example of character comedy that it is?

Bob: No, don’t say that.