Bill Pertwee

Preview - Dad's Army: The Love of Three Oranges

People often complain of there being too many repeats, especially over Christmas. However, the old favourites feel as much as a tradition now as the Queen's Christmas Message, naff cracker jokes and rows over the afternoon game of Monopoly.

Radio Times review

A popular 1970 episode. The captain's doughty dependables rally round when the ARP wardens challenge the platoon to a game of cricket. Jones offers to keep wicket, Walker the spiv provides reconditioned balls and even Frazer will have a go "if someone will explain the principle of the thing".

There's plenty of cheating (demon bowler Fred Trueman plays a ringer), some epic excuse-making from a shown-up Mainwaring, and a rousing last-ditch effort from an unlikely source. A greater role than usual, too, for the late Bill Pertwee, who selflessly played chief hate-figure Hodges for nine years.

Radio Times review

The first episode of the 1970s is a jovial knockabout in which the platoon prepares for a parade of all civil defence units. In one of those lovely, evocative scenes in the local cinema, a Gaumont newsreel gives Mainwaring the idea for a regimental mascot. And Pike is piqued by having to leave early ("I haven't seen the Donald Duck yet").

Some ram-chasing antics enable the cast to give little thumbnail sketches of their characters: timid Godfrey, furtive Frazer and mellow Wilson lying back in the buttercups.

There's a nice variation on Jones's catchphrase ("Permission to stop panicking, sir") and some enthusiastic gurning from Bill Pertwee as Hodges. At one point the warden is so thoroughly upstaged that even Mainwaring is forced to laugh, and the Home Guard/ARP rivalry reaches a ludicrously funny conclusion.

Dad's Army: Here today, gone tomorrow

Bill Pertwee, who died recently, always cited Dad's Army as his best work. He knew it would endure, he said. And how it has. Always voted in the top two or three of the nation's favourite shows, endlessly repeated, a DVD best-seller.

Want to get old? Buy a typewriter or hide away

I guess the longevity of comedy writers and of Bill Pertwee suggests that if you want to live to a ripe old age don't be a star.

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?"