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Created as a vehicle for entertainer Dickie Henderson, this show ran for two
very successful series under the Jack Hylton Presents banner. It followed the
same format every week, with a song from a guest singer and two or three comedy
sketches.
Most of the sketches followed a similar format, with Henderson and co-star
Anthea Askey (daughter of Arthur) playing husband and wife, usually with a
maximum of bickering and misunderstanding. Eve Lister and Bernard Hunter
gave fairly regular support, as, in the first series, did ex-boxer Freddie
Mills. The domestic set-up is very much of its time, with Henderson being the
working husband and Askey the rather scatty housewife at home; most of the
comedy stems from their inability to communicate with one another without
confusion and misconstruction: with Anthea continually correcting and
undermining Dickie as he tries to tell a story, or the two squabbling about the
washing-up.
As well as the comedy to be had from married life, a recurring theme was that
of Dickie as a man with all the world seemingly conspiring against him - whether
struggling vainly to be served at the lunch counter or stuck in the wrong queue
in the post office. There were also numerous silent movie spoofs, giving
Henderson plenty of scope for over-acting
The series was a relatively new type of comedy for British television:
fast-paced and wordy, packing a lot into each 25-minute episode. It proved an
excellent showcase for Henderson's talents, and provided him with the perfect
foil in Askey. But what was new to Britain was not as original as it appeared.
The viewing public were initially in the dark about the source of the scripts -
American comedian Sid Caesar's highly successful series Your Show of Shows, with
contributions from the likes of Neil Simon and Woody Allen. Jack Hylton and Associated-Rediffusion had done a deal to share the cost of buying in the scripts, and for the first series the cast themselves took responsibility for
Anglicising any particularly obvious American references (for the second series,
the scripts were properly edited).
So successful was the pairing of Henderson and Askey that they toured with a
stage show, and their adventures were even turned into a comic
strip.
Pam Rostron
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1. A funny joke (4:13)
