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    Last of the Summer Wine
    Last of the Summer Wine
    Last of the Summer Wine
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    Last of the Summer Wine

    By Sue Miller

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    About this ebook

    The best jokes, gags and scenes from a true British comedy classic.

    ‘Do you reckon I’m in love with Mrs. Batty, or is it just sex?’ Compo

    Compo: I thought you'd be open.
    Sid: Well that's a natural assumption if you ignore the drawn blinds and the forty foot sign that says closed.

    Set and filmed in and around Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, Last of the Summer Wine follows the adventures of three quirky pensioners and their equally unusual neighbours. A true British classic that appeals to all generations, it is our nation's longest running comedy programme. The line-up of the comedy trio has changed numerous times over the years, but the calibre of the family-friendly humour Roy Clarke creates has remained the same, and it’s as funny and eccentric now as it was in the first episodes he wrote over 25 years ago.

    Including the pilot, broadcast ten months before the first series, 29 series, made up of 279 episodes, have been screened to date, with the 30th series set to air this autumn. The sitcom has consistently been a favourite in the ratings, with viewing figures peaking at 18.8 million in the mid-eighties.

    Famous fans include Prince Charles, the Queen Mother and the Queen, who said it was her favourite TV show.

    The Best of British Comedy – Last of the Summer Wine includes:

    • The History: an overview of how Last of the Summer Wine was born and developed
    • Gags and Catchphrases: a collection of classic quotes
    • Did You Know?: snippets of info about the show, cast, etc.
    • Favourite scenes: the most memorable scenes in full
    • A LOSW quiz

    'If God's omnipotent, what could he possibly want with my old woman?' Clegg

    Compo: Your old lady's dog is crapping all over the pavement.
    Blamire: That's funny. He usually sews it up in little bags and sends it by post.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateNov 12, 2009
    ISBN9780007237302
    Last of the Summer Wine
    Author

    Sue Miller

    Sue Miller is the bestselling author of While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, Inventing the Abbotts, and The Good Mother. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Read more from Sue Miller

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      Book preview

      Last of the Summer Wine - Sue Miller

      THE STORY IN A NUTSHELL

      It was the 4 January 1973 and a half-hour comedy pilot, ‘Of Funerals And Fish’, had just flickered on to our screens. Nora Batty was chatting with a neighbour when a small van pulled up outside. A man jumped out and disappeared into Bill ‘Compo’ Simonite’s house next-door.

      NORA: They’re taking his telly again.

      NEIGHBOUR: God, is it Tuesday already?

      These lines provided the first breath in the life of a programme which would become a small-screen legend; it’s the doyen of all sitcoms and still going strong, 36 years later. It’s hard to find another sitcom which evokes so many emotions than Roy Clarke’s Last of the Summer Wine. A sense of innocence, humour, contemplation, sadness—they’re all there, embedded in scripts brought to life by a fine bunch of actors, and I’m not just referring to the main cast: even those recruited to play secondary characters or guests roles turned out well-honed performances.

      But where Summer Wine scored extra marks is in its delicious setting. Yes, the Pennines, in the heart of Yorkshire, can be rugged, bleak and, as the performers often discovered, exceedingly chilly. But the greenery and fine curves of the rolling landscape provided a wonderful backdrop to the show.

      To unearth the origins of the sitcom, we have to travel back nearly four decades to that Comedy Playhouse offering in the depths of winter 1973. Pioneering Duncan Wood, the then Head of Comedy at the BBC, who’d produced such shows as Hancock’s Half-Hour and The World of Beachcomber, had seen Roy Clarke’s comedy drama The Misfit, which between 1970 and 1971 ran to two series on ATV; he regarded the writer as the right man to pen a pilot script he had in mind, even though Roy had established himself, primarily, as a writer of drama.

      The premise for the half-hour script centred around the daily goings-on in the lives of three elderly men—not that much happened; for them, it was about trying to fill their very long days with something to occupy their ageing minds, although they fought tooth-and-nail against the onset of old age. For a while, Roy Clarke struggled with the concept and was on the verge of declining the chance to write the pilot script; but then he found a solution to his predicament: by treating the three central characters like juveniles, with carefree attitudes and a sense of freedom akin to the years of adolescence, he created plenty of opportunities to inject humour into the script.

      Everything clicked. Roy Clarke delivered a script which was shown as a pilot programme, a well-proven way of discovering which comedy ideas had the legs to become a full-blown series. The pilot, ‘Of Funerals And Fish’, was transmitted on that January evening and before long a series was commissioned. The first of six episodes, ‘Short Back And Palais Glide’, was screened in November 1973.

      ‘WE’VE REALLY CRACKED IT THIS TIME.’ (HOWARD)

      For a time, it looked as if the series would be called The Library Mob, despite Roy’s provisional title being Last of the Summer Wine. Thankfully, BBC executives saw sense and opted for the writer’s suggestion, which in its way symbolised the sitcom’s style and format. Here, three men were reaching the twilight of their lives, despite what they may have wanted to believe, so savouring the final drops of life to the full, like you would a fine wine, were of paramount importance.

      Roy Clarke’s title conjures up images of rurality, too, and this aspect of the programme was an integral part of its success and longevity. For me, like millions of other fans, the characters’ regular wandering on the hills, far beyond the clatter and noise of civilisation, was a crucial element—a form of escapism. It’s a well-known fact that much of the filming takes place in and around Holmfirth, a small West Yorkshire town situated in the Holme Valley. Six miles south of Huddersfield, the town grew up around a corn mill and bridge in the thirteenth century, and has now been placed firmly on the tourist map, thanks to Summer Wine. The location was suggested by the late Barry Took,

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