The trouble with you people is you're not as fit as you used to be.
I don't think I was ever as fit as we used to be.
I'm knackered.
Some of the polish has gone from the top end of your performance curves.
You mustn't go jumping to conclusions just because we can't breathe and our legs have collapsed.
What are tha talking about?
Tha's just as puffed as we are. That ridiculous.
Even puffier.
I have always kept myself in first class, fighting trim.
Yes, but your trim has become a short-back-and-sides, Foggy.
Here, what's a scientific term for flashes in front of the eyes?
Indecent exposure.
Do you reckon our backyard is big enough to keep chickens?
What do you want to keep chickens for?
Not the ideal place for rural pursuits, is it?
Within splashing distance of a Wesleyan Reform chapel. The chapel is empty.
You think it's empty. What about all the spirits of the former worshippers?
I don't believe in them.
Mrs Arthur Paget used to go there with a grim expression.
You can't not believe in Mrs Arthur Paget.
She's still alive.
I don't believe in DEAD Methodists.
Don't you ever give any thought to the possibility of an afterlife?
Don't you believe in any power greater than the chairman of your local National Assistance Board?
When tha's dead, tha's dead. I saw our Walter when that safe fell on him
and if he were having any afterlife, I can tell you he weren't enjoying it.
He hadn't had time to open it, had he?
He were not opening it, he were just moving it for a friend.
What, at 3 o'clock in the morning?
What a lovely surprise(!)
He were well-liked, were our Walter.
Much sought after. I knew several policemen who were carrying his photo.
Is that so, knacker face?
Then cast you blinkers on this matchbox, my friend.
Look at that.
Take it away. Take it away!
Have a look.
Don't interrupt me a minute.
One of the supreme tests of physical fitness is how long you can hold your breath.
In the days of my prime, I could do well over a minute.
I was tempted to volunteer for a frogman.
You've got the face for it.
Don't let him go.
I used to do better than that.
The princes in the Tower did better than that.
You'd make a fine frogman, flapping and barking about like that. Shut up a minute.
What is it?
I can't hear my heart beating.
What do you want to hear your heart beating for? Some people like music.
I like listening to my heart beating.
I could hear it when we arrived.
Now it's stopped.
It can't have stopped.
Would you mind repeating that with a little more conviction?
I can't bear that note of uncertainty in your voice.
You can listen to mind, if you like.
Maybe some time when you're not so busy.
Oh, all right.
We're just a bit out of condition, that's all.
Give me a fortnight, I'll soon get us back into shape.
Deep in thought, Miss Moody?
Forgive me, Mr Wainwright.
Not at all, not at all. We're not machines.
You're very understanding.
Oh, please. No, it's true.
Not everyone respects a person's need for a moment of quiet reflection.
A person like you, Miss Moody.
For me, it's a need, a need that's true. And I respect you for it.
Without it, I feel weighed down by the terrible inertia of one's petty bourgeois environment.
Oh, God, I know what you mean.
Eliot's Waste Land is depressingly real, Mr Wainwright.
Absolutely. I can't understand why the council doesn't stop it with a compulsory purchase.
TS Eliot, the poem, The Waste Land.
Oh, THAT Eliot.
It is still possible, isn't it, for the individual to carry within him or her
a fragment of light, a flame of something, isn't it?
Yes, I'm sure you're right.
A flame of something, yes.
And we who have that flame...
We who have that flame, Miss Moody?
Have a sacred duty to forge a better society,
where even the poorest can benefit from the light within us.
Exactly. Even if we've got to get the Tories out. Right.
And the bloody Independents, and the Ratepayers' damned Association.
You have a fine mind, Miss Moody.
I think like you, Mr Wainwright. Yes, I know you do.
That's what first put me onto it.
And you've got damn good legs too.
I like this one in particular.
Hello, hello, hello, hello. What was he doing down there with your leg?
Are you two engaged?
Hey, here, do you want to have a look in my matchbox?
Just have a little gander.
SHE SCREAMS
Will you get in there?
What was in it? It was...
Well, it's all here.
What's all here? Don't ask.
Our pathway back to physical fitness, that's what's here, in two slim volumes.
I warned you, it's like that moment in the film.
You know, when this nosey idiot lifts the lid of Dracula's coffin
and you know what you're going to have to go through before they get it back on again.
Oh, heck. I tell you what, I'll strike a bargain with you.
You put them books away and we'll promise not to take you into a corner
and give you a right duffing up.
I'll advise you not to talk like that to a trained soldier of the Royal Army Service Corps.
That was a right ladies' regiment.
He stands there, fermenting in his wellies,
covered in all the glamour of an ex-veteran of the chemical toilet platoon of the Pioneer Corps.
A fine bunch of lads.
Whose exploits are still shrouded in a veil of official secrecy.
That was it about our mob, you see. Nobody wants to take the lid off.
I should hope not. Duff me up, he says.
Look at him, takes him all his strength these days to lose money on the gee-gees.
You're falling to pieces, man.
I've noticed the process of deterioration.
There was a time of day one when no-one was faster than you at touching your toes.
Someone only had to drop a fag end and you were down there that fast,
your spine used to crack like a whip.
Look at you now. All right, then. Try me.
Drop a fag end on that lino, try me.
Steady, don't pull a muscle before the big fight.
I'll take him in the pit, that's what I'll do. I'll take him...
It's grotesque. Grotesque.
A left hook.
I think you'll find that's your right.
Listen, I'm the greatest, that's me left hook.
Stop prancing about, will you?
Can't you sit still? I suppose he's afraid that if he does, someone will put him out for the dust cart.
It's hard to be graceful when you've got your breeches tied up with a bit of old clothes line.
New clothes line. Sorry.
Listen to him.
He's out of breath, his pulse is racing and there are little beads of perspiration all over his epidermis.
Don't be filthy.
You don't even know what your epidermis is, do you?
Give me a clue. I told you.
Epidermis? Epidermis?
My granny used to have one of them, I think, in a plant pot in the front window. That was an aspidistra.
It looked like an epidermis.
I'm talking about your skin. It were green and shiny.
That's right, your skin.
Watch it. I know when I'm being insulted.
Well, you ought to, shouldn't you? Look at the practice you've had.
I doubt if even Margot Fonteyn herself could be graceful
with her breeches tied up with a bit of old clothes line.
NEW clothes line.
Where do you keep getting new clothes line?
We have our sources.
Look, read the introduction on page nine.
No, not you. We don't want any one fingered exercises.
I can read. Oh, we know. The Sporting Life and the supplementary benefit application forms.
All good clean stuff. You won't find any four-letter words in my reading matter.
I've only one word for you two at the moment, isometrics.
That were it!
That was what my granny kept in a plant pot in the front window.
She used to feed it bonemeal and used to sing to it every night.
# You're the biggest isometric in the world... #
Well, I must warn you, Foggy, that keen as I'm to have develop a body as tough as whipcord,
or even new clothes line, I should be reluctant to start anything that might involve taking my vest off.
You don't have to take your vest off.
Not for isometrics. That's the beauty of it.
Yes, but I hope you're not spinning us any leader-of-men type fanny,
because you're a bit of a reckless enthusiast sometimes, Foggy.
You can do it all in your plastic mac, if you like.
Well, you say that now, but this latest plot of yours
has this squeak of plimsolls and the flash of nipples about it.
Or is it the flash of plimsolls and the squeak of nipples? Anyway, it worries me. You don't trust me.
Only because tha's crackers.
It's nothing personal, it's just that given the choice between
a spotty moron and somebody who's out to improve mankind, my heart goes out to the spotty moron every time.
Isometrics is the ideal form of modern exercise.
Now look, "Designed for the busy executive at his desk.
"It can be performed without elaborate apparatus at any odd moments of the day."
Oh, you mean like her at 22 Jenkinson Avenue.
Shut up. Now, there's this one, many others can be done without even rising from your chair.
Oh, exercises sitting down.
Right up your street that, isn't it? Yep.
It's merely the scientific application of muscle tension
to develop and restore those tired, flagging limbs.
But there you go again, you see.
I have this nagging suspicion that some of the nicest people
in the world are among those with tired, flagging limbs.
Do you want to be nice or do you want to be fit? You mustn't want to be nice.
People who want to be nice are pain in the...arm.
Are we going to try these simple exercises or are we not?
All right, all right, but let me remind you that as my personal, humble comment upon the wildest
excesses of the 20th century,
I have this ambition - that one day there will be carved on my headstone,
in simple Roman letters, the words:
"To his eternal credit, he was never seen topless."
Thank you. Here, well, exercise three, we'll start with exercise three. We do this one sitting down.
On my word of command, we begin to try to lift the table.
Eh, up, this is more exciting than knocking about with dubious women of the opposite sex.
We shall not be able to lift the table because it's screwed to the floor.
What? Is it? Oh, yes.
Very firmly screwed to the floor.
That's typical of the library committee, is that it?
We'll give the natives are a bit of culture but we'll make sure the tables are screwed to the floor.
Eh, up, dodgy knees. What's the point of trying to lift the table
if the legs are screwed to the floor?
That's the whole idea, you grimy, silly person.
That's the whole basis of isometrics.
See, you exert pressure against an immovable object and it tones the muscles up.
Don't argue. Get a firm grip underneath.
This is the ideal form of quiet exercise.
You can do it in a crowded room and nobody need know you're doing it.
Eh, up, some people have filthy habits.
This is no time for confession.
Now shut up and get hold.
On of the word of command, lifting party.
Lift.
What's going on in here?
Where do you think you're going with that table top?
It's merely a temporary setback.
I reckon I've had enough. Anyway, I don't want my
muscles to get too massive, otherwise my clobber won't fit.
I thought the whole point about wearing rags was it could fit anything.
Flatterer. You're probably going to die in about 100 years, is it really worth bothering to get trim?
I see no reason why we can't do it without the books.
Oh, you need a book? Teach yourself to die, there's a novelty.
No, we can do the exercises without the book.
I've got a grasp of the main principles.
Watch it, it'll make you go blind.
Would you kindly walk a few paces behind?
I don't want the general public to get the impression we've stolen you from the top of a bonfire.
If you insist that we abandon isometrics,
we shall just have to revert to the more orthodox forms of exercise.
Or we can just deteriorate comfortably.
No, we'll start with something short and snappy. Like Nora Batty's garters.
The 100 yard dash.
Oh, heck. Will you settle for a 50 yard stagger?
I'll settle for nothing less than a reinvigorated body.
Now, 100 yards. Yes, I shall count to three. That's a good idea.
That's a better exercised to start with, counting to three.
And on the command, go, I'll expect to see a flying start, no slacking,
no hanging back, this is private enterprise.
You can't get fit under socialism.
Don't poke me in the vicinity of my nipple.
All that socialism will do for you
is to employ another regiment of civil servants to do your running for you.
I'll not have a Tory capitalist poking me within the vicinity of my nipple.
To do your running for you.
At shop steward speed, which we all know is the
equivalent of having your legs firmly shackled in a mangle.
Right, now, on your knees.
That's a Tory talking, that's where they want us, down on our knees.
I do enjoy hearing people discuss politics.
It makes you realise there are things more boring than growing old.
Now, we'll run as far as that bush down there, then we'll stop.
Are you ready? On your marks, this will make the blood race...
I just hope we can keep up with it.
Don't forget I'm still wearing my wellies.
Listen to him, it's like a duck complaining about webbed feet.
On your marks, 1, 2, 3. Go!
I knew it, I knew it. All right, don't get your vest in a tangle.
The idea that when it came to showing a bit of energy, you'd fail miserably.
All right, we'll have a crude commercial incentive.
A shilling each in the kitty, winner-takes-all.
Look at him.
What a performance.
Sometimes, it slips through the hole in my pocket and I have to find it in the lining.
Good heavens. Does the same thing happen to your money as well?
I hope you realise this is very much of a gamble.
Only a little one. Whether I'm going to find any money at all.
We'll wait.
This is it. I've got it here.
Don't go away.
If ever he's mugged, his assailant is going to want waiting time.
Here we are.
Now that King Farouk's coughed up from the royal treasury, on your marks.
1, 2,
3, go!
You'll have to move that bush a bit nearer, Foggy.
I'm losing physical polish.
I ain't...losing...a shilling.
The way you chuck it about on the gee-gees, you'd never think so.
Wait a minute.
I've got an idea.
Where are you going?
Come back!
Come back. Both of you.
I have this affinity for the water.
It's not that I've got the sea in my blood, it's more like a pond
or very shallow rivers.
I like to be able to see the bottom.
A passion for inland waterways could be better than having the sea in your blood.
The Danes used to have the sea in their blood and look how they finished up -
with an international reputation for pornography. It seems they like to see the bottom too.
Hey, there are some rabbit droppings here.
What?
Rabbit droppings.
Well, fill your pockets, kid, there's nobody looking. It were just an idea.
You might at least let me tell you what it is.
You'll be sorry.
That's why the human race was buried in ignorance for thousands of years,
because it wouldn't keep its ears open.
CAR HORN HONKS
You're a hog! What are you?
We're prepared to believe that it's a brilliant idea,
it's just that we'd rather not hear about it on the grounds that
it might tend to invigorate us. Oh, well, please yourselves.
Eh, up, Nora Batty, what are you doing here?
Don't you come here near me.
Do you want to have a look in a matchbox? Here, look.
Will you put that damned thing away?
It won't do any harm, will you?
What have you got in there?
Filth.
Now what's going on? I won't have you frightening my staff.
The staff?
Mrs Batty is working here now, so I can spend more time going around selling in the van.
Eh, up, a bit of glamour on the premises at last.
Oh, you'll have to get her done up a bit though, Sid.
I mean, get her into some black tights and a little skirt
so she can slink around, singing songs like Marlene Dietrich.
He's got a wicked tongue.
This is the best idea you've had since them non-crisp crisps.
They were crisp close enough. Give over.
They didn't go crunch, they went shlop.
I'll give you a shlop if you come in any nearer.
You can't keep your hands off me, can you?
You can't keep your hands off me.
Look, look at these mobile lips.
I didn't come here to be insulted.
Why not? The customers do.
If you got any complaints, see my missus.
No, it's all right, Sidney, we'd rather have a complaint than see your missus.
I understand that point of view.
We'll have three of your horrible meat pies, please, Sidney.
Do you want the small horrible meat pies or the large horrible meat pies?
Small.
Windy.
Here. Ta.
Ta.
Ah!
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Don't take the wrapping off, you'll spoil the flavour.
Now, about my idea.
It occurred to me... Hey, hey, hey, hey.
I do like to see an attractive woman dabbling through running water.
What's attractive about Nora Batty?
She's got a new bucket.
I've seen her with her hair down screaming.
I've seen her all done up on her way to bingo.
Why is it women look so lush when they go to bingo? Their eyes sparkle.
Sad, isn't it, that they seem to prefer it to adultery?
Well, there's a bus that takes them right to the door. That's true, yeah.
There aren't many picture palaces these days that have been converted into centres for adultery.
How come tha took on Nora Batty?
I didn't, the wife did.
She wouldn't trust me with any of the other applicants on account as they had recognisable boobs.
Not good ones, just recognisable.
What the hell are you doing?!
Eh, up, did you see our Sidney move then? Oh, he's fit.
That's what we want - a trainer, like Ivy.
You saw what she did for the Gestapo.
What we want is a very elementary, if only you'll listen to my idea.
I thought you were going to load that van. I tell you what I'm going to do.
What? I'm going to load that van.
Ivy, when is Marlene going to do her cabaret?
Oh, just ignore him, Mrs Batty.
I do, I spend half my life ignoring him.
He shouts through my letterbox, words like, "see-through blouses."
Nora, life is passing us by.
The time will come when you'll long for my passionate lips to be pressed closely against your...letterbox.
He's all mouth and trousers.
They are all alike. Is that it, then?
The whole male sex guilty because I haven't loaded the van?
It's guilty whether you load it or not.
I've never met a man yet that's worth half a good woman.
That's the trouble, you can't get half a good woman -
you've got to take the whole nattering lot.
Get in there! I was only joking. Don't give me your joking...
SMASHING
MUFFLED SHOUTING
How many more times do I have to tell you? How many more times?
Now, my idea concerns
the ideal form of exercise for restoring unfit middle-aged bodies.
We've got the idea.
It's just the opportunity, isn't it, Nora?
# Falling in love again... #
Sit down and pay attention.
Now look, this idea of mine will appeal to you particularly because it involves sitting down...
I'll be glad when this is over.
Why do you always look at things negatively?
Why don't you see the positive side?
I'm positive I'll be glad when this is over.
It's highly beneficial to the kidneys. O-oh... What's your problem?
I think your geography is a bit wrong, Foggy.
Within a few miles we'll slip into it as if we're born to it.
I hate it. I've never met such a pair of complainers.
You sit there and do nothing but moan.
Who's sitting? I'm taking most of the weight in the stirrups. And to think that England has come to this.
From the spirit behind the charge of the Light Brigade to you two reluctant herberts.
It was a horse that made this nation great.
And uncomfortable.
I didn't realise it were this far from the floor.
Supposing I get thrown on my head.
Does he look like a savage beast? His head does a bit, yeah. He's a placid horse.
He's got four feet on the ground.
No wonder he's placid.
What are you worried about? They won't go any faster than this.
I'm not worried about it going faster, I'm worried about stopping it.
Where's the break?
You have to say "whoa".
Whoa. Whoa, you stupid thing.
Whoa, whoa.
I knew it, it's a runaway. What, at this speed?
I thought you betting-shop brigade were fond of horses.
There's no danger, you can always jump off.
From up here?
Tha must be crazy.
I'm not risking it at this height.
They'll stop when they feel like it.
I should imagine, after a while you get used to this rolling motion and start feeling more...
sick.
Take your lead from me.
You don't have to panic, just leave it to the horses.
They'll take us home.
The horses know where they're going.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd