Edward Sinclair

The contrast between line-toeing optimist Mainwaring and corner-cutting realist Wilson is neatly scripted at the top of this 1969 episode. Needless to say, when the platoon uses up all its ammo on a low-flying German plane, their approaches to the problem are very different.

The resultant court of inquiry (Mainwaring wins) is, of course, a shambles, disrupted by elderly visitors to the hall and choir practice in the office. There are some ripping one-liners, and it's the first surviving story to credit Edward Sinclair as the Verger, whose gurning indignation was to become his stock-in-trade. Jones soon puts him in his place with, "Why do you take the collection home to count it?"

Mark Braxton, Radio Times, 12th October 2013

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?"

David Gillard, Radio Times, 14th July 1984