The discussion in the previous post of a sitcom which didn't make it to pilot stage has reminded me of one which did pass that hurdle at least, even though it was never broadcast.
Fiddler's Green, starring Donald Sinden, was recorded in Teddington in July 1987 - not 1989, as The British Television Pilot Episodes Research Guide (above) has it; I can state this with some authority because I was present as an observer throughout rehearsals and recording.
Well, almost. On Monday, the day of the readthrough, I was busy elsewhere, trying to finagle time off from a rather less interesting sort of observation deemed necessary preparation for my imminent dominie drudgery; this having been secured with a fulsome promise to make up the time later (which I'm only a little ashamed to say I never did), the rest of the week was mine for the witnessing of comedy being created.
Thirty years on I can't remember the precise justification, in terms of my training course, for being there, other than the fact that my tutor had a neighbour who happened to be a sitcom director and producer (Tony Parker, best remembered for Shelley). But however it was done, it was arranged that I should sit in on rehearsals for the show, written by Ian Davidson and John Chapman. Actually, I suppose, if pressed, a media studies-related explanation for my presence could have been trotted out, but it wouldn't have happened at all without that tutor recognising my interest in comedy and the kindness and understanding of a Head Teacher willing to unshackle me from other obligations.
The sitcom didn't lead to a series though it was a pleasant, gentle comedy, even if it didn't happen to be wildly original. But it most definitely wasn't knockabout: Tony Parker took care, he told me, in casting the smaller parts, avoiding caricature.
Rehearsals took place over a week in a Scout hut in Teddington, with me scribbling away in a notebook as Sinden boomed. It was undoubtedly his show. He was playing a retired admiral whose elderly nanny was still living with him and keeping his flights of fancy in check. She was played by Eleanor Summerfield, who will be familiar to some for her roles, often comedic, in British films; Elspet Gray, the wife of Brian Rix, was the doting and attentive neighbour who secretly yearned for Sinden's character while he was busy making a fool of himself, at least in this pilot episode, over the arrival of a younger woman in the village (Lynette Davies).
It was reassuring to see the care that was taken in all aspects of the production: one small piece of business was rehearsed over several hours, and the questions about motivation that would automatically apply to the preparation of a drama were asked during rehearsals - in more compact form, perhaps, but the principle was the same. I recall my relief and delight that actors and director were taking matters as seriously I'd hoped; it felt like a vindication of all thodr hours spent studying comedy, grabbing whatever books I could find: however trivial it might seem to others of my acquaintance here, at last, was direct evidence from its proponents that it truly mattered.
Which is not to say that the week's proceedings were drily industrious. Tony Parker pointed out with glee the barbs from Eleanor Summerfield's character which gave the show an extra sting: her role was essentially that of Sancho Panza to Sinden's Don Quixote, a pairing common to many sitcoms (Steptoe and Son, Frasier etc).
On Friday, when the camera crew came into the rehearsal hall, the sense of Sinden as a performer became apparent: they may have been technicians but it mattered to him that this first audience should find the show funny, and there was a sense of him raising his game, becoming more focused. Everyone was giving a huge amount all the way through rehearsals, however, and I was told by several actors it had been an unusually happy company, thanks to the generosity of its star.
I can't pretend that I remotely got to know him. We only exchanged a few words, and rather stupidly I thought it was my role to stay at a distance, forever scribbling; despite being a longtime student of comedy I had no experience of mingling with actors and must have been a little awed by the situation. Now I regret my constant hovering in the background rather than recognising when I could reasonably sit down and take part in the general conversations between bouts of work, or even just smiling affably and drinking it all in, trusting I would remember the essentials and write up my notes on the way home. That said, it's possible there was a kind of hierarchy which meant I was doing the right thing - I seem to recall conversations more readily volunteered by the people serving the tea there - but I do regret not at least trying to throw myself into the centre more. It may also have been partly because the tutor who had set things up had warned me that actors feel exposed and vulnerable in rehearsals, and I was mindful that I was there because of a favour.
I must stress, however, that the director, Tony Parker, who had given permission for me to be there, was very kind indeed to me throughout, driving me to the station after rehearsals, and happy to discuss comedy en route.
One of the discussions which I was party to, I think with Eleanor Summerfield, Donald Sinden and others in the cast, was the business of responding to the studio audience; Ms Summerfield remembered seeing Frankie Howerd unable to resist playing to them. And Tony had an anecdote about directing a sitcom - it may have been an episode of Shelley - which had to be recorded at the last minute without an audience because of a strike. That same evening, after it had all been done and dusted, word came down that an audience would now be permitted in the studio after all, and so a second version of the show was taped ... and even though the cast were all seasoned professionals, and the presence of a studio audience is problematic (you can't play directly to them), somehow the fact of their being there lifted all the actors' performances to a higher level.
When Fiddler's Green finally got into the studio on the Sunday, following a week of rehearsals in a nearby Scout hut, the experience was slightly disappointing for me, for reasons which were nothing to do with the actors. It was simply that over the last week I'd had the privilege of watching them perform only a few feet away from me; now, for the first time, I was experiencing the frustrations which come with being part of a studio audience: the stopping and starting for technical reasons and the need to watch at least some of the action on the TV monitors when the cameras are in the way on stage. There was a warmup man, who would also come to the fore during hitches, although Sinden himself often stepped in to jolly the audience along, mugging away for the camera if he or someone else fluffed a line.
Throughout the process, and not simply in that final, more public section of it, I have to say that Donald Sinden never gave any sense whatsoever of slumming it - of resenting having to give his leer, as it were, instead of his Lear. I suppose rehearsals were not that onerous, in the sense that they started in the morning and usually stopped by early afternoon, but there was a sense of steady industry throughout.
This still allowed room, however, for Sinden's occasionals mischievous variations in his delivery of a line like: "I shall tell her about my experiences in the Senior Service." At the end of the show Eleanor Summerfield's nanny asks Sinden's character what book he is reading, to which he answers with relish: "Oh, Balzac!" at which she storms out; there were times in rehearsal when he essayed alternatives such as "Suckling," which I assume he had coined. I hadn't seen Tony Parker direct before, but it was clear that he was greatly enjoying the process too; at one point he remarked happily on having the urine extracted from him at regular intervals.
I wrote up a report afterwards, although as far as I recall this was some time after all essays directly related to course requirements had been handed in. Can it be that my time at Teddington had no real connection to my course at all? If that is the case then I have to thank the tutor who may simply have been responding to my evident interest in comedy. (I still have the original A4 notebook somewhere but this piece is being written purely from memory.)
I recall phoning the tutor a few months later to assure him I was still working on the task, and his enthusiasm at the prospect of receiving what I'd written, adding how delighted he imagined the director would be too. Once the report had winged its way to them some time later, however, the response from the tutor was carefully non-committal, along the lines of: "We're glad you found something in it to interest you." I'm not sure exactly what I expected - oh, alright, ideally: "On the strength of this masterpiece we hereby appoint ye Boswell to the stars ever after" or some variant thereof - but even I can recognise a brushoff when it glides ever so gently past.
We are talking about events more than thirty years ago, but I still wonder about that non-response. Maybe the writing was bad - the style, I mean. The legibility too: it was certainly foolish not to have the thing typed up for the benefit of professional eyes, but the prospect of paying for a typist in those pre-computer days, especially when I'd had to borrow money from the student union just to survive, seemed excessive. It was some months after the recording before I finally finished the writeup - I can't remember how many - so if that report had a political role, however small, to play in the commissioning of a series perhaps a decision had already been made and its time had come and gone without my knowing it. I recall talking briefly about the fate of Fiddler's Green to one of the writers about ten years later, though he didn't have much to say about it.
It's also remotely possible that a detail I included may have caused a bit of friction. That same writer, present during studio rehearsals, whispered a criticism to me of a particular camera shot; I jotted his remark down and included it in my final report with no malicious intent, thinking of it as no more than another interesting moment. And when I overheard a cameramen or other member of the crew in the toilet remarking to his friend "I see that that Slinger's Day is back" I took that as my cue to criticise the crudeness of such a comedy in comparison to the genteel delights of Fiddler's Green - not realising, in that pre-internet age, that as it happened Tony Parker had also directed that show's pilot.
Sometime later, after a certain amount of badgering (by me), I handed my report to a tutor on a Media Education course I was attending in the evenings for her thoughts; after a couple of weeks she told me that it was very well written but needed to be boiled down to a couple of A4 sides if it was to work as an educational tool. Like the lukewarm response from my college tutor, this was a blow, even if I could console myself with the thought that I'd already achieved what I'd always considered the primary object of the exercise: to understand for myself more about how sitcom worked.
A few years later a play in a theatre showcase led to my working with a TV producer on a sitcom for myself; the idea didn't originate from me although I helped to develop the characters. Two scripts were written, one with the remote collaboration of another writer, but it didn't get to pilot stage. I recall a surreal night dashing from a parents' evening to a glittering farewell party being held for the producer in Picadilly; it was difficult to shake off the idea that once I had met and kissed the star for whom the sitcom was intended my feet would be permanently affixed to the "up" escalator to writerly fame and wealth, and all those gibbering evasions I'd intoned a few hours earlier would finally be a thing of the past.
I did kiss said star farewell at the end of the night (purely in a social context, you understand), so that part of my dream did come true as far as it went - but I ought to have paid more attention to what hadn't happened earlier in the evening, namely any mention, even in passing, of the sitcom.
So it goes. There is more to be said about the above, but you will doubtless have your own pain, if that there Pete Townsend is in any sense a reliable chronicler of the human condition:
The chances I've lost, opportunities tossedLuckily I can end this piece on a more positive note by recalling that at the drinks gathering which followed the recording of Fiddler's Green I was able to tell Elspet Gray, starring as Donald Sinden's love interest, how fondly I remembered her husband's farces transmitted on New Year's Day, adding: "I'm just a comedy enthusiast", which still holds true today. And the recently made friend who was my plus one at that gathering - swayed, perhaps, by the starry company I kept - began to see rather more of me thereafter.
Away and into the blue
And if I didn't take full advantage of the chance to get up close to Donald Sinden and the other actors, the same cannot be said for a later comedy-related project, ensuring that Funny Bones, the tale of Freddie Davies's life, would be laid out, as the late Ken Dodd put it in his introduction, "from soup to nuts."
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