Arthur Lowe

Radio 4 commissions drama about Dad's Army

Dear Arthur, Love John, by West End playwright Roy Smiles, will chart the relationship between Dad's Army stars Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier and focus on the creation of the beloved TV series.

The Arthur Lowe you might not know

Take a look at some of the erstwhile Captain Mainwaring's less famous comic turns.

Video: Arthur Lowe honoured with blue plaque

A blue plaque dedicated to Dad's Army star Arthur Lowe was unveiled at his Derbyshire birthplace by comedy co-star Ian Lavender.

Lavender, who played Private Pike in the long-running sitcom, was in Hayfield to lead the tribute to the much-loved Captain Mainwaring actor.

The ceremony was organised by Derbyshire County Council following a vote on its website.

Lavender said he thought Lowe would have been "chuffed" with the honour.

Richard Lester's adaptation of the play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus is a truly bonkers curio. Set in a blasted post-apocalypse Britain where roughly 20 people have survived, all of whom steadfastly avoid discussing what has happened, the film features an impressive pantheon of 1960s British talent - Milligan, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson, Arthur Lowe - attempting to carry on as normal with bicycle-powered public transport and the ever-present threat of mutation.

Lowe turns into a parrot, Moore turns into a sheepdog, and Richardson wearily endures his inexorable transformation into the titular rented accommodation. Bleak, dark, surreal, silly and truly unique.

The long-lost 1969 comedy The Bed Sitting Room is finally given the spotlight it deserves. Based on a rather freeform post-apocalyptic play by Spike Milligan, this is rightfully regarded as something of a missing link in UK comedy. Under Richard Lester's inventive direction, Britain is reduced to around a dozen characters following a nuclear "misunderstanding" and the population dwindles further as radioactivity causes people to mutate into parrots, wardrobes and the titular cheap accommodation - yes, Spike Milligan clearly did write this. It's a bleak and funny mix of music hall gags and Samuel Beckett-style existentialism with a cast including the great Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Marty Feldman.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson have been writing together for 60 years and given us classic comedies. If they never write another word we are all in their debt. Radio 2 had a good idea to celebrate their partnership by recreating some of their old scripts for today's new comedy stars. The last in the series was Paul Merton in the role Tony Hancock made famous, The Blood Donor.

Actually, it was written for Arthur Lowe so, in theory, it should have passed easily into another voice. Unfortunately, it didn't. Merton sounded as if he were reading. So did June Whitfield's daughter, Suzy Aitchison, playing the nurse, the role her mother took so memorably 48 years ago. Why? It wasn't the script or the players. It's the art of good comedy production that's gone missing. The technical process has grown easier. The making of words into magic remains a tricky art.

Nostalgia at the End of the Pier

Yes, I think we all felt this was the last - the end of the raod for Dad's Army," says Bill Pertwee of It Sticks Out Half a Mile, the radio sequel to TV's enduring Home Guard comedy success. The series - which begins a repeat run on Tuesday and includes a bonus of four previously unheard episodes - was recorded early last year (1983) abd was to be the last ever completed by John Le Mesurier.

Bill - who of course, played that dirty-fingernailed greengrocer and one-time Air Raid Warden Bert Hodges - believes the whole cast knew that it would probably was the last time they would all work together, though such feelings went unspoken. "The series had originally been mainly written around Arthur Lowe and John, and when Arthur died it had to be re-jigged. John had not been well, though he was feeling better when we recorded the series, but I think we all realised that we'd had a great run - the programmes started on TV in 1968 - and we were coming to the end of it. We'd lost so many of the original cast- Arhtur, John, Laurie, Arnold Ridley, Edward Sinclair, James Beck and a few months later, John was dead too."

I asked Bill to assess the show's enduring appeal. "When it started there was a lot fo kitchen sink drama around and people were pleased to sit back and laugh at this rather gentle company of people," he says, "The younger viewers enjoyed the Mack Sennet routines - the chases and so on - while the older viewers found it extremely nostalgic."

Bill himself had come from a variety background, including playing at the Windmill, and has recently returned to farce with two big hits for the Theatre of Comedy Company in London. "The rest of the Dad's Army cast were all actors, really, so I'd never worked with any of them beofre. We were all terribly different but there was a tremendous camaraderie between us. It was very hard work, but we had wonderfully happy times. You can't help but be sad when you look back now, can you?"

There are TV characters who cling to our memories long after their series have been laid to rest. I'm sure many have speculated about those indomitable triers of Dad's Army. Whatever would happen to them when their pikes were taken away?

And that's the inspiration behind It Sticks Out Half a Mile, which transports John Le Mesurier, Ian Lavender and Bill Pertwee[/i] into 1948 - into a situation where John is now a bank manager, timid Ian is now a trainee manager at Woolworths and Bill is a wheeler-dealer.

Missing from the contingent are Arthur Lowe and John Laurie, now sadly dead. Ian Lavender says, "I played with that team for 10 years. The atmosphere... was so great between us - and I think that carries on, now we are supposed to be three years older." The advantage of radi, he says, "is that I don't need so much Brylcreem and eyeshadow to disguise myself, my voice is more or less the same."

Arthur Lowe, the captain of Dad's Army, is its kingpin. And what holds it together. It's no effort to reel back to the days of Dunkirk. You could put Mr Lowe into any era. He is the man for any hour.

It seemed to me to blend sentiment and humour rather uneasily as if afraid of making too much fun of a hallowed wartime institution... The one solid pleasure last night was watching the performance of Arthur Lowe as the organizing hero.