Heil Honey I'm Home! Page 2

Quote: Jack Massey @ December 6 2009, 7:48 PM GMT

I disagree with that. Bill gets on with the other white characters, it is just Eddie he doesn't like and calls because of his racist views, whereas Eddie didn't like black people in general.

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See, I disagree with that. Look at the episodes and scenes where he and Bill are forced together. Eddie still makes the odd dig, but he's happy having a few beers with Bill as they go about the cherade of looking after the babies - and then he's equally happy for them to work together to cover up their inevitable mistakes. And yes, Bill is generally happy to do so too, but look at all of the rest of the time: he just goes that bit further in his victimisation of Eddie, leaving him with genuine cause to dislike Bill.

One episode I have in mind was one I watched on YouTube when they are both at loggerheads due to a bed they both want to buy. They both camp outside the shop to get it, Bill gets there first. When asleep, Eddie gets a nightwatchman to put Bill on a building site (I could be wrong here, but if memory serves me correctly it was something high up). Eddie then claims the bed through fairplay. Yet when the man in the bed shop forgets Eddie's address, he asks Bill for it. Bill gives him his address. Now Eddie is clearly in the wrong here, so Bill just got his own back and claimed what rightfully was his in the first place.

I don't recall that episode, but probably right that Bill won in that particular case.

Looking on imdb, it is series 2 episode 4. There is a really funny bit at the start when the bed salesman, played by Frank Williams who played the Vicar in Dad's Army, walks into his shop to find Bill and Eddie both lying on the bed trying to push each other off. Frank says 'Now now gentlemen. Can't you both wait until you get it home'

Ahh, yes, that is sounding familiar now. It was only really from the middle of Series 4 or so that it really 'turns' and Eddie becomes more the victim.

Anyway, this should probably be in a LTN thread. Woops.

Seen very little of ths show myself, so can't speak for that far ahead on the series. What I've seen on it, it is not worthy of the 'infamous nature' it recieves today, yet it certainly wasn't brilliant on moral grounds. The subject of race was tackled better in a sense of intellegence and in humour in Johnny Speight's Till Death Us Do Part.

Isn't this all going off-topic?

Tell us about Heil Honey

Never seen Heil Honey and can't be arsed watching it either to be honest.

Quote: Jack Massey @ December 6 2009, 8:14 PM GMT

Seen very little of ths show myself, so can't speak for that far ahead on the series. What I've seen on it, it is not worthy of the 'infamous nature' it recieves today, yet it certainly wasn't brilliant on moral grounds. The subject of race was tackled better in a sense of intellegence and in humour in Johnny Speight's Till Death Us Do Part.

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I thought Rising Damp tackled it in a good way as well. Rigsby was a less offensive Alf Garnett in a sense

Quote: Tuumble @ December 6 2009, 7:40 PM GMT

Bill Reynolds was played by Rudolph Walker who may be better known these days as PC Gladstone in The Thin Blue Line and as Patrick Trueman in Eastenders.

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He also appears as a Union soldier (with an unconvincing accent) from the US Civil War in The War Games, the final Patrick Troughton Doctor Who serial.

Quote: peter gazzard @ December 7 2009, 12:40 PM GMT

I thought Rising Damp tackled it in a good way as well. Rigsby was a less offensive Alf Garnett in a sense

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Rigsby wasn't really racist though, was he? He felt threatened by others, and grabbed hold of whatever he could in order to belittle them. In Alan's case it was his hair and being a young student. For Philip, it was his slightly mysterious background; and of course Philip, being the intellectually superior, bore the brunt of Rigsby's attacks.

It being the 70s, an era of 'No blacks or Irish' signs in the windows of B&Bs etc, Rigsby may have been a bit of a bigot, but he was generally an non-discriminating bigot. If he was a true racist he wouldn't have had Philip in the building in the first place. Rigsby tended to express a lot of pride in the fact that Philip was " a son of a chief". Whether or not that seemed to express the view that had Philip not have been (which, as it turned out, he wasn't), he would have not have been such a worthy tenant is open to interpretation.

Personally, I just think Rigsby's main problem was that he was a snob, but a pretty ineffectual and harmless one. In many ways Rigbsy's contempt for people such as Philip and Alan was mostly based on envy.

Very good point.

I recently did an interview with the writer of Heil Honey... for my blog, so you might be interested in hearing the story behind the show: http://curiousbritishtelly.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/heil-honey-im-home.html

Nice blog Ben you seem to have got the essence of the show, without getting tied up in the ridiculousness. It's actually one of the only readable articles I've read on that mad show.

Good stuff.

Many hits on that blog of yours.