199 It Ain't Half Hot Mum

First  watched : 1975

Since  this  series  had  to  have  already  been  in  production  when  the  shocking  death  of  James  Beck  occurred  in   September 1973,  Perry  and  Croft  must  have  realised  they  needed  to  open  up  a  second  front  as  the  clock  ticked  on  the  cast  of  Dad's  Army  before  that  particular  tragedy. So  it  was  that  at  the  beginning  of  1974  we  had  a  second  half  hour  sitcom  based  on  the  wartime  experiences  of  Jimmy  Perry, this  time  as  a  young  artillery  officer  who  became  involved  in  entertaining  the  troops  in  India  in  the  closing  stages  of  the  war  in  Asia.

I  don't  think  I  saw  any  of  the  first  series  but  must  have  been  on  board  for  the  second  as  I  remember  some  episodes  with  George  Layton  as  Bombardier  Solomons  who  left  at  the  end  of  the  second  series ; cast  changes  ( and  hit  singles ! )  are  very  good  for  the  dating  here.  Nevertheless  it  was  a  bit  hit  and  miss  whether  we  saw  it  or  not; it  was  on  at  eight  on  a  Thursday  after  Top  of  the  Pops  and  that  was  usually  bed  time   during  the  week  so  it  depended  on  whether  my  mum  was  in  a  good  mood  or  not.

The  stories  revolved  around  a  small  artillery  company  in  India   whose  soldiers  found  preparing  and  performing  shows  for  the  troops  there  infinitely  preferable  to  actually  fighting  on  the  front  line. In  this  they  had  unspoken  allies in  the  Colonel  and  Captain  in  charge  who  themselves  wanted  to  get  home  in  one  piece  but  not  Sergeant  Major  Williams  ( Windsor  Davies  )  a  loud  Welsh  martinet  who  never  ceased  to  regard  his  company  as  "a  bunch  of  puffs "  that  he  should  be  leading  into  battle  despite  most  of  them  being   manifestly  unfit  for  actual  fighting. These  included  the  effeminate  coward  "Gloria" Beaumont  ( Melvyn  Hayes  who  I  somehow  failed  to  recognise  from  Here  Come  The  Double  Deckers ) ,  the short,  rotund  Gunner  Sugden  ( Don  Estelle )  and  bespectacled  intellectual  wimp  Gunner  Graham ( John  Clegg ). This  tension  between  men  and  immediate  master  underpinned  the  whole  series. The  action  was commented  on  by  three  Indian  characters  Rangi  the  none-more-British  bearer  ( played  by  Anglo-Indian  actor  Michael  Bates ) cheerful  char  wallah  Muhammad  ( Dino  Shafeek  who  sang  and  played  the  Indianised  war  tunes  that  accompanied  the  transitions  between  scenes )  and  punkah  wallah   Rumzan  ( Babar  Bhatti )  who  knew  just  a  few  telling  phrases  in  English.

In  a  reversal  of  one  of  Dads  Army's   long  running  plot  lines  Williams  wanted  to  claim   the  pretty  but  gormless  Gunner  Parkin  ( Christopher  Mitchell ) as  his  son  having  "known"  his  mother  and  this  was  revealed to  the  company  who  altered  Parkin's  medical  file  to  strengthen Williams's  belief  in  the  expectation  that  he  would  want  to  protect  Parkin  ( and  therefore  them  )  from  mortal  peril. I  think  the  revelation  in  the  last  episode  that  Williams  had   enjoyed   a  liaison  with  Parkin's  mum  if  not  actually  fathered  him  is  a  bit  of  a  cop  out. Williams's  mincing  walk  and  facial  twitches, his  over-loud  homophobia  and  admiration  for  Parkin's  physique  all  suggest  that  the  paternity  issue  is  a  red  herring  to  cover  his  homosexual  interest  in  the  young  man  but  perhaps  that's  a  modern  reading  that  would  never  have  occurred  to  Perry  and  Croft.  

Perry  reckons  that  It  Ain't  Half  Hot  Mum  was  his  best  work  but  even  ignoring  the  political  controversies  ( see  below )  I  don't  think  there'd  be  too  many  takers  for  that  opinion.  You  couldn't  love  the  characters  in  the  same  way  as  those  in  Dad's  Army.  Where  you  had  stout-hearted  old  lions  trying  to  do  their  best  for  the  country  in  Walmington-on-Sea , It  Ain't  Half  Hot  Mum  asked  you  to  pick  a  side  between  a  bunch  of  cowards  and  an  overbearing  bully.

Another  aspect  of  IAHHM  that  rather  annoyed  me  was  Perry  and  Croft's  inflexible  rationing  of   screen  time  among  the  ensemble  cast. You  knew  that  poor  Kenneth  MacDonald  as  Gunner  Clark  would  never  have  more  than  a  couple  of  lines  per  episode. They  did  have  to  shake  up  the  pecking  order  in  1975  when  Layton's  departure  ( caused  by  dissatisfaction  with  his  allotted  role )  meant   Hayes  was  promoted  to   Bombardier  and  became  more  prominent  ( not  a  plus )  and  Estelle's  chart-topping  success  with  Whispering  Grass  demanded  that  he  got  a  larger  share  of  the  action  too.

 I  actually  met  Don  Estelle  at  the  end  of  that  year. He  lived  near  Rochdale  and  was  a  distant  relative  of   someone  connected  to  my  mother's  playgroup. When  they  needed  someone  to  open  the  Christmas  Fair  she  offered  to  ask  him  and  he  said  yes.  He  had  his  album  Sing  Lofty  to  sell   and  brought  along  plenty  of  copies  but  it  was  still  good  of   a  genuine  TV  star  at  the  height  of  his  fame  to  come  to   Littleborough  and  do  the  honours. We  met  him  on  the  stairs  at  Littleborough  Conservative  Club  as  we  were  leaving  and  he  seemed  like  a  nice  bloke,  answering  our  inane  questions  - is  he  really  like  that  ? ( meaning  Davies  ) - with  good  grace. We  didn't  have  a  record  player  at  the  time  so  there  was little  point  in  buying  a  copy  of  the  LP  but  my  mum  loved  his  voice  and  bought  a  subsequent  effort.  In  2000  Whispering  Grass  was  featured  on  one   Channel  4's  Top  Ten  Comedy  Records  and  there  was  a  very  sad  bit  of  footage  of  Don  doing  the  song  at  a  stall  in  Rochdale's  Wheatsheaf  Shopping  Centre  with  Cyril  Smith  of  all  people  doing  the  Windsor  Davies  bit. He  died  in  2003,  a  year  after  my  mother.

In  1978  Bates  died  and  his  character  wasn't  replaced; his   fourth-wall  breaking  addresses  which  bookended  the  episodes  just  disappeared.  

In  the  later  series  it  seemed  that  Michael  Knowles   as  the  gloriously  dim  upper  class  Captain  Ashwood  became  the  funniest  character. The  scene  where  he's  been  told  to  get  down  with  the  men  and  starts  spouting  Cockney-isms  is  the  best  in  the  series. That  may  have  been  a  conscious  script  development  but  it  might  also  have  had  something  to  do  with  Prince  Charles's  personality  becoming  better  known  to  the  public   and  people  making  a  connection  between  him  and  Ashwood.

The  series  finished  in  1981  to  allow  Perry  and  Croft  to  concentrate  on  their  new  hit  Hi-De-Hi.  It  was  probably  the  right  time  to  wrap  it  up  though  we  were  still  watching  it  at  the  end.

While  Perry  and  Croft's  reputation  for  a  long  time  protected  It  Ain't  Half  Hot  Mum  from  the  vituperation  hurled  at  Love  Thy  Neighbour  and  Mind  Your  Language  ( in  which  Shafeek  also  featured )  by  the  Howard  Kirks   that  patrol  and  police  our  media, no  more  than  the  odd  episode  has  been  screened  since  1985. In  2012   the  BBC  apparently  decided,  though  did  not  publicly  announce , that  the  show  could  never  be  repeated   due  to   concerns  about  racism  ( and  probably  homophobia  though  that  wasn't  mentioned )  a  decision  that  brought  an  angry  response  from  the  nonagenarian  Perry. Even  at  the  time  the  casting  of  Bates  was  criticised  though  Perry  claimed  there  were  no  Anglo-Indian  actors  available  and  Bates  was  Indian  by  birth  and  had  a  wide  knowledge  of  the  languages  and  culture. It  should  also  be  noted  that  Peter  Sallis  , Bates'  co-star  in  Last  of  the  Summer  Wine,  said  that  Bates  was  very  right  wing  and  had  furious  political  arguments  on  set  with  the  socialist  Bill  Owen.

Ironically,  MacDonald  had  one  of  the  highest  profiles  after  the  series  finished  with  a  minor  but  long-running  role  as  Mike  the  barman  in  Only  Fools  And  Horses  until  1996.  Davies  continued  shouting  for  another  ten  years  in  the  rightly reviled  mug-fest  Never  The  Twain.   The  others  too  continued  acting , usually  in  comedy, until  they  died  or  retired  although  Mike  Kinsey  ( Gunner  Evans ) had  a  spell  as  a  Labour  councillor  in  the  early  noughties.