According to a new biography, when Sid James died in April 1976 he had been just about to finalise plans to record a sitcom pilot for Thames Television in which he had been slated to appear with ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. It's a sad tale of what might have been - and, author David Hamm suggests, so very nearly was.
This was actually the second attempt to make the show. The recording, originally scheduled for August the previous year, had been postponed after some unspecified dispute; the matter seems to have been swiftly and amicably resolved but by a cruel twist of fate Teddington Studios were then unable to accommodate the show until July 1976, and so the pilot was never made.
I can find no mention of this project in Robert Ross's The Complete Sid James, nor in Cliff Goodwin's earlier book (admittedly I haven't read the 2011 updated edition), though Alan Clayson's biography of Ringo Starr does refer to a TV project of Ringo's around this time as "a double act with a much-loved televison and film actor in hopes that some mutually benefical Starrdust [sic] would accrue" - although Clayson then states in a footnote, without going into detail, that "Fate decreed the project was not to be: ill-Starred [sic] indeed."
Luckily a new study of Sid James by David Hamm, entitled El Sid and officially published on September 19th, is less cryptic and even provides a plausible backstory for their brief seventies partnership. Sid, it seems, had met Ringo as long ago as 1965 when the drummer was supposedly offered a starring role in the film Three Hats For Lisa, though I am inclined to agree with Mr Hamm that this must surely have been a publicity stunt: whatever his success in A Hard Day's Night it's difficult to imagine Ringo being released by Beatles manager Brian Epstein for a non-group project at that time.
That said, photos have come to light (though they are not reproduced in the book) which show Ringo and George Harrison larking around with Sid James and Joe Brown (who played the role supposedly offered to Ringo) at London Airport while filming was taking place for Three Hats For Lisa. The author - rightly, in my view - declares that this doesn't increase the likelihood that Ringo ever seriously considered the part: Harrison could have been visiting Joe Brown on location, with Ringo simply deciding to come along for the ride, or the Beatles may have been arriving or departing on another tour, spotted their friend filming and decided to gatecrash proceedings. Nevertheless, these images, which I'm presuming Mr Hamm has actually seen, do provide evidence that James and Starr were acquainted long before the sitcom idea was first mooted around early 1975.
Not that the snaps are enough to explain why such a disparate pair might have been attracted to the idea of working together. Ringo was still enjoying considerable solo recording success, after all, even if Goodnight Vienna (1974) had sold less well than his smash-hit eponymous album. With his recording contract with EMI coming to an end in January 1976, however, it may be that he viewed the prospect of a TV series as a contingency plan - or a means, perhaps, of widening his appeal in order to boost his negotiating power with record companies.
Whatever the rationale, there's no doubt that the idea of a former Beatle committing his energies to a sitcom at such a time seems, at first glance, unlikely. While he had acquitted himself well in several films (the mammoth indulgence of Born to Boogie excepted) Starr had no experience, and quite possibly no awareness, of the discipline demanded of sitcom actors, who typically rehearse and record an episode in one week - and bear in mind this was at a time when such programmes were invariably recorded in front of a studio audience with limited time for retakes.
Possibly it was assumed that the older hand would be willing to guide the fledgling TV actor although this begs the question: what was in it for Sid? With every chance of the show falling flat on its back if Ringo wasn't up to the challenge, this seems to have been a risky undertaking for an established TV star. Sid did indeed express doubts when the idea was first mooted although these were quickly quashed, as David Hamm explains in El Sid:
A private screening of That'll Be the Day was summarily arranged in Soho, and within two minutes of Ringo's lecherous Teddy Boy Redcoat turn (the holiday camp setting was based on Butlins despite the uniform's different colour), James stood up, shouted "I'm in!" or "That's for me!", and the deal was on from that point.That, at least, is the story told to Mr Hamm by someone on the margins of the venture. I do hope it's true: it certainly makes more sense, and is a more pleasing thought, than the idea advanced by the author himself that Sid might have been desperate for work at this point - though workaholic he undoubtedly was: he finished the sixth series of his longrunning ITV sitcom Bless This House mere days before stepping onstage at Sunderland and two further series were already being planned.
I suspect that, despite its risks, working with Ringo represented a challenge which Sid might have relished at this point: a welcome, if temporary, break from the velvet rut of Bless This House. As Mr Hamm points out he may have regarded that sitcom as his pension, especially as his maturer years were making those lecher roles still foisted upon him in the Carry Ons seem increasingly embarrassing, but after six series and a spinoff film of Powell and Driver's cosy family comedy there surely can't have been much left for Sid to explore about the put-upon patriarch he portrayed.
But perhaps we should think more about rightness rather than risk: as a man with considerable experience in film as well as television, who had helped ensure Tony Hancock was seen to best advantage in his early TV shows, James would surely have been the ideal partner and mentor for another performer who had both charisma and natural talent (whether or not that might turn out to be on the Hancock level) but little technical experience of television acting.
Whether Starr, or members of his management team, fully appreciated all that Sid was bringing to the table is not made clear in the book, although they cannot fail to have been aware of his earlier double act and how effectively James's gritty, no-nonsense character had balanced that of Hancock's morose dreamer, Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.
Sid James's death, during a performance of Sam Cree's farce The Mating Season (a role also essayed onstage by sometime Carry On star Jimmy Logan) finally drew an indelible line under the sitcom project. In his autobiography Up Front the the late Victor Spinetti, veteran of several Beatle films, wrote of being offered a script originally intended for Sid James a year or two after his death, although it's by no means clear he was referring to this one. If it was indeed Sid and Rich either Ringo's name was no longer attached or Spinetti tactfully chose to omit all mention of his Beatle buddy's involvement, past or present.
And that seems to be that: one of the many sitcoms (I've even dabbled in one myself) which, for a variety of reasons, were not to be.
What makes the case of Sid and Rich especially poignant, however, is that it so very nearly was: as mentioned earlier, studio time had been provisionally booked for a pilot recording at Thames Studios in Teddington around August 1975 before some sort of disagreement between the stars or, more likely, their respective managements, led to a temporary falling out.
Rather surprisingly Hamm doesn't speculate about the source of the disagreement, noting only that although the matter was swiftly resolved the slot at Teddington had already been reassigned and a waiting time of up to twelve months was forecast. James, Starr and the two scriptwriters (not named in the book) were planning to meet shortly after the run of The Mating Game with a view to finalising arrangements for rehearsals and recording in July; it is particularly painful to reflect that for some reason now either lost to memory or not shared by those in the know we were thus deprived of even that isolated chance to observe how the pairing of Sid James and Ringo Starr might have worked in actuality.
So what might have caused what turned out to be a fatal delay? The book offers no foundation for saying so - this is my opinion, not the author's - but could it be that the title of the show was the sticking point? "Sid and Rich" may sound mellifluous but it certainly lessens the likelihood of the venture being regarded as "The Ringo Starr Show & Support". Might that have been an issue?
Not, it should be said, that I am ascribing this possible objection purely to ego. If Ringo felt (with some justification) that he was putting himself on the line, risking all on a new venture with the primary intention of securing more clout when negotiating his recording contract, perhaps in his mind he merited the reward of top billing - by virtue, as it were, of sheer bravado, regardless of how much he might have to depend upon the more seasoned performer's guidance. (I can't imagine, by the way, that the order of names in the title would have been a contributory factor: for every "Morecambe and Wise", after all, there is a "Cannon and Ball" - and as far as I know Oliver Hardy never complained of being announced as second best.)
But assuming there was indeed friction around an issue of this sort, what then happened to turn it around? Again the book is of no help - though in fairness to Mr Hamm, as El Sid is a general account of James's life and career he has no compelling reason to dwell overlong on a TV series which didn't actually happen for the benefit of a few fanatics.
I have contacted him to ask whether he unearthed any extra information which didn't make the final MS and will report back if I receive any response. In the meantime, however, let me advance a theory, with apologies to Mr Hamm - and indeed Mr Starkey, Peace and Love Upon Him, should he ever read this - if I have got things totally wrong.
To sum up: as I understand it, the principals or those representing them have some sort of dispute mid-1975, possibly over the show's title, possibly not, but serious enough for the costly decision to be made for a recording to be cancelled or postponed shortly before rehearsals are due to begin. The argument is happily resolved but a proposed meeting which would have resulted in a rearranged schedule for the pilot is cancelled after the death of one of the leads; there may or may not have been at least one subsequent attempt to resurrect the idea with other actors (though it's remotely possible Ringo may still have been attached) but this did not advance to pilot stage.
And that, O Best Beloved, is just about as much as is known - though, again, please bear in mind that much of the above is speculation on my part and blame should not be laid at the author's door. (Subtext: read the book yourself when it comes out, why dontcha?)
I apologise that this blog post, which started out with the intention of being a brief news item about El Sid - which, I may as well say here, is a thoroughly enjoyable read and a useful introduction to the breadth of his career in film as well as TV - has degenerated, or translated itself, into a repository for my own theories; even so, I cannot resist suggesting an answer to one final question - to my own satisfaction, more or less, if no one else's.
The question is this:
If the dispute was, as I suppose, about a refusal to share top billing then why did Ringo give in? What caused matters to be resolved "happily" and for Rich and Sid to be a going concern once again?
My theory - and if you've stuck with me this far I daresay you'll be eager, or at least wearily resigned, to hear it - is this:
You may remember, if you are one of that unhappy band who has seen Born to Boogie, that at some point Ringo (who appears in the film as well as being its director) is shown utterly gobsmacked as he witnesses, first hand and up close, the spectacle of the youthful Marc Bolan, in his glittering hour, his brief pomp, working his turbocharged elfin magic on the even youthfuller audience. I'm pretty certain that Ringo would have had cause to attend the odd major rock concert or two in between the Beatles' breakup and the filming of Born to Boogie (at the Empire Pool, Wembley, in 1972), but at that moment he is giving a very good impression indeed of a man assailed by the joyless and uneraseable knowledge that henceforth, from this moment on, he is no longer, nor must he seek to be, the main attraction.
If I have lingered on this moment it's because I suspect it may have a bearing upon those obscure sitcom negotiations at Thames. If Ringo, or more likely those batting for him, tried to play hardball with television executives about the billing/title issue perhaps it was subtly intimated that in this world - their world - Sid James was royalty through and through and Starr, for all his chat show appeal and continuing fame in the wider universe, a pretender at best. Did that sharp memory of Bolan at full tilt leap back, unbidden, into his mind, helping to force another mental gearchange of his status?
Too bad, if so, that such a revelation came too late to allow Sid and Rich ever to be realised in front of an audience ... Who knows, there might even have been the odd Beatlefan-type whoop and scream, especially if a couple of his old bandmates came along to support the venture. It's not too fanciful to imagine that Joe Brown might have shown up too, whether to cheer along Sid, his former costar, or just to keep George company.
*
This post was sparked off by a relatively short section of David Hamm's forthcoming biography of Side James, El Sid. Overall the book doesn't really break much new ground but it's still a very well-written and recommendable assimilation of material drawn mostly from existing works plus a few original interviews - Ringo not included, alas. As with Graham McCann's Morecambe and Wise, if you haven't read any other books about its subject your enjoyment will undoubtedly be the greater (though in fairness to Mr McCann I must point out that Eddie Braben does cite his book as a reference in his own autobiography). And I am very pleased indeed to see that Mr Hamm devotes seven pages to Three Hats For Lisa, like Robert Ross, seeing it as "a seminal Sid flick".
Rereading the above I see that I haven't yet described the "sit" of Sid and Rich, so readers may be wondering what the fuss was about. The book provides a limited amount of information (though again, I promise to revise this post if I learn more from the author) but the idea, at least for the first series, seems to have been a mirror image of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse formula which famously spawned Steptoe and Son: instead of the writers trying out a different idea with different actors each week it seems the intention was to retain Sid James and Ringo Starr throughout as essentially the same characters (and penned by the same writers too, I think, though this is less clear) and have them running a different business each week; the intention was that a second series, if forthcoming, would then be devoted to whichever idea had proven the most popular.
That was the plan although - assuming the above to be an accurate description of the writers' or performers' intentions by Mr Hamm - I do have to say it seems more than a little surprising. I recall scriptwriter John Brennan, whose instructive sitcom writing course I attended circa 1995, saying that the genre ought properly to be named "character-com", meaning that it's primarily in the interplay between characters where the real interest and enjoyment is to be found. Mainwaring and Wilson as astronauts, say, or running a zoo would be neither particularly improved nor diminished.
The book doesn't furnish the particulars of subsequent episodes of Sid and Rich, or even confirm whether any scripts beyond the pilot got to the point of being commissioned and completed; frustratingly, too, the author doesn't appear to know whether the final draft of the pilot survives, though copies must surely reside in one archive or another.
But there is one tantalising detail in El Sid which goes some way to explaining why both performers were drawn to that initial script - why a TV "name" might have been willing to risk disaster with an inexperienced partner and why a rock star might have made concessions to ensure such a modest undertaking remained afloat.
The pilot episode of Sid and Rich places the two in a ladies' hairdresser's - and for some readers that may be all you need to know. "Doleful dreamer" Rich Friendly has inherited the place from his recently retired aunt (wish I could say that Jessie Robins had been approached to play her but it isn't clear, alas, whether this character is even an onstage presence) only to find that the grizzled Sid Marks comes as part of the fixtures and fittings, a valued employee of Rich's aunt who helped build up her business and is therefore, for all practical purposes, unsackable. Resenting this interloper who has been handed the keys to the kingdom he helped establish, Sid is all too ready to point out the flaws in Rich's hairbrained schemes to attract more customers - and not above "the occasional discreet act of sabotage" should reasoning fail. But an occasional hint of paternal protectiveness toward the unworldly Rich suggests friendship may blossom between these two very odd coiffurists.
Those on familiar terms with Sid James's CV will know that he was a very successful ladies' hairdresser in Johannesburg before the acting bug bit - and even lower grade Beatlenuts will be aware from numerous documentaries (as per the videocap at the bottom of this piece), that it was Ringo's oft-stated plan to open a chain of ladies' salons after the Beatle bubble burst. History records, of course, that that soapy sphere endured rather longer than Ringo or anyone else anticipated, and interest even in the remotest byways of the Beatles' lives and variegated careers - to wit, this review - remains as strong as ever.
It really is a great pity that that sitcom never got made, and painful to consider that it almost was. There is something particularly pleasing and suggestive about those real life parallels which suggest it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that Sid and Ringo might have made a credible comedy pairing, at least in a tailormade show such as this. Sid James had practical experience of running a chain of salons; for Ringo, or so I'd like to imagine, the notion of owning such a place hovered at the back of his mind as a broad sweep of an idea, unsullied by any compelling need to get his hands dirty - or shampooey - while the Beatles continued to ride high.
It's perfectly possible, of course, that the joint effect of their performances might not have rivalled Mainwaring and Wilson, nor yet Sid's sublime earlier partnership with The Lad Himself, but assuming they were furnished with good scripts and sensitive direction there is enough revealed about the intentions behind Sid and Rich in David Hamm's well written and comprehensive account of Sid James's career to make this reader, at least, wish most earnestly that the great comic actor and foil had been spared at least a few years longer for us to find out.
El Sid by David Hamm is published by John Blake Books on the 19th of September. Their website is here.
Please note that a final version of the cover has not yet been approved and I have been asked not to reproduce the image which was originally emailed to me.
The images of Starr and James, top, were found online. They are not from the book and not from any proposed publicity material for the sitcom. The image of Ringo above is from a documentary about the Beatles.
Note: As stated above, the scriptwriters are not mentioned by name in the book, but I can say with authority that they were not Vince Powell and Harry Driver as the author explicitly states this in his text twice. He does, however, advance the possibility, based on what evidence I don't know, that the Sid and Rich project may have begun life under another title as an inhouse way of testing out aspiring writers who wished to submit scripts for Bless This House, which was of course created by Powell and Driver; in that case, however, I can't see why they wouldn't just ask those would-be writers for a spec Bless This House script. And for anyone wondering who might have approached Starr and James with the idea of a sitcom in the first place I did not address this above simply because it's a detail apparently not worthy of mention by Mr Hamm - in the published version of the MS anyway. More below if and when I get a response from him.
Find out more about Three Hats For Lisa, which starred Joe Brown and Sid James, in an earlier post here.
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