Читать книгу Porridge - Richard Webber - Страница 5

B

‘PRISONER AND ESCORT’

Fletch discusses his criminal background.

FLETCHER: When I left school I went round the local labour and appraised the professional opportunities open to me. Unfortunately my lack of scholastic achievement prevented me from doing the things I really fancied, such as stockbrokerin’ or teaching tennis at a girls’ school. And I didn’t reckon working in a cardboard box factory. So I robbed the sub-post office off the North Circular.

BARROWCLOUGH: And you never looked back since, so to speak.

FLETCHER: No – nor have I ever been short of 3d. stamps.

BARROWCLOUGH: What have you gone down for this time?

FLETCHER: Aw, don’t talk about it. Be a farce if it wasn’t such a tragedy, Own fault, should have stuck to what I know best – housebreaking. But I lifts this lorry. Impulse steal. You know what I mean, impulse steal. I think it’s a doddle, don’t I?

BARROWCLOUGH: I gather it wasn’t.

FLETCHER: Yeah, you know why, though – flaming brakes failed. Criminal letting lorries on the road in that condition. And he was overloaded. So there I was, with five ton on me back roarin’ down bloody Archway.

BARROWCLOUGH: Wonder you weren’t killed.

FLETCHER: I nearly was. Went through three back gardens, went clean through a brick wall and finished up in somebody’s tool shed.

BARROWCLOUGH: Did they get you for wilful destruction of property? I mean, knocking that wall down.

FLETCHER: Yeah. And I asked for six other fences to be taken into consideration.

Memories …

‘I liked the pilot, it contained some wonderful material. It’s only a three-hander but the contrast between Fletcher, Mackay and Barrowclough is very strong. There are two moments that are particularly funny: the first where Fletch pees into the gas tank – and I can still remember the laughter from the studio audience going on for a long time – and the second when Fletch escaped on the moors, runs around all night before breaking back into the hut he’d left in the first place.

‘Ronnie’s reaction, when he discovered where he was, was classic. I remember thinking what a genius he was then, because he was able to make that laugh go on and on. In hindsight, Fletcher wouldn’t normally be the kind of person who’d try escaping because it would cause too many repercussions when he was caught. But you could argue it was an impulse decision: he suddenly saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. The main thing is, we thought it was funny and his reaction to it was better than anything anyone could have imagined on the page. Overall, the pilot was a great success.’

DICK CLEMENT

Barrowclough discusses his wife.

BARROWCLOUGH: Well, she sees a future of frustrated ambitions stretching before her. She doesn’t like what I do or where we live. So over the years she’s grown bitter and unsettled, full of restless urges, which have manifested themselves in various ways like bad temper, spots and sleeping with the postman. And there were liaisons with other men. We got to rowing all the time. Things went from bad to worse. Eventually we went to see the marriage guidance counsellor.

Did you know?

The gatehouse seen in the opening credits once marked the entrance to St Albans’ Prison before, later, being acquired by the local council and becoming a depot for the highways department. Now, the building acts as headquarters for a mineral-water company’s sales and marketing department.

FLETCHER: That help, did it?

BARROWCLOUGH: It helped her! She ran off with him.

FLETCHER: Oh well, you’re well out of it, aren’t you, mate. You’re well out of a slag like that.

BARROWCLOUGH: She’s come back.

FLETCHER: Oh I see … well, people change.

BARROWCLOUGH: I blame myself, I’m a failure. I’m only hanging on to this job by the skin of me teeth. I got so depressed I thought I’d take advantage of the prison psychiatric department. See them about my inferiority complex. Well, it’s not a complex really – I am inferior.

Memories …

‘Barrowclough may have become a slightly one-note character, but he was a wonderful foil. When we spoke to people about prison life, there always seemed to be the hard bastard and the soft touch; there are comparisons in the army or the air force. Everybody knows the ones you can’t mess with and those in whom you can see a weakness that can be exploited. Mackay and Barrowclough represented both sides.

‘We deliberately set out to have a modernist and traditionalist; having Mackay as the old hard-liner and Barrowclough the new, relatively liberal screw created conflict and that’s the life of our comedy.’

DICK CLEMENT

‘I had lots to do in the pilot, whereas in other episodes I wasn’t given so much. In the actual series, Barrowclough wasn’t as important, which was sad. But we had a good company. You can’t spend a lot of time with people without either falling out bitterly or getting on; fortunately we all got on well together.’

BRIAN WILDE