Look, no beating about the bush.
Bit of a cock-up on the catering front.
The catchphrases you would always hear somebody saying,
"I didn't get where I am today..."
I didn't get where I am today without knowing a real winner when I see one.
Or somebody in a pub would say, "Super!"
And you'd always hear somebody in the back going, "Great."
-Great. -Super.
Sometimes I would go to sit down in a pub, and you'd hear...
(RAZZES)
Because these were the things that people remembered.
-Sit down. -Thank you, CJ.
(CHAIR SQUELCHING)
Sorry, CJ.
NARRATOR: This week's Comedy Connections tells a classic story
of suburban frustration.
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, shown over three series
between 1976 and 1979, attracted 11 million viewers
and achieved the rare distinction of being both a cult and a mainstream hit,
which brought together some of the best talent in British comedy.
-Have a good day at the office. -I won't.
Bored, sex-starved and weary of the rat race,
sales executive Reggie Perrin
became an unlikely standard-bearer for middle-aged malcontents
fed up with their daily routines.
This was a sitcom whose central character
teetered on the edge of a nervous breakdown
and then fell right into one and audiences loved him for it.
I think one of the great things about The Fall and Rise
is that it's a kind of eternal theme.
It's got appeal to anyone who's doing a job which they can't stand, really.
And it just goes beyond that into this wonderful, crazy
"Up you!" to the world, to the bosses, to the government,
to everybody, to all sort of institutions.
It's wonderfully anarchic in that way.
It might have been set in the Home Counties commuter belt,
but there the similarity between Reginald Perrin
and other suburban sitcoms of the '70s ended.
This was emphatically not your average evening's light entertainment.
-Morning, Joan. -Morning, Mr Perrin.
Eleven minutes late. Staff difficulties at Hampton Wick.
A large cast of work colleagues and family gathered around Reggie,
aiding and abetting his increasingly desperate attempts
to break free of his monotonous existence.
REGGIE: From now on, I'm going to do everything differently. I'll show them.
NARRATOR: Reggie Perrin was such an original character,
that he even managed to come up with a new variation
on the mother-in-law joke.
I wanted this thought process with the mother-in-law
to come storming through Leonard's vision and into ours.
And so I looked at thousands of animals doing all sorts of things,
but the reason why the hippo got the job
was because he wobbled.
And I wanted a wobbling mother-in-law.
Mother-in-laws always wobble in my book.
I said, do you mind if we go over and see Mother on Sunday?
NARRATOR: But the hippo wasn't the only innovation.
The closer Reggie Perrin came to cracking up,
the richer his fantasy life became.
And the audience got to share his private and increasingly crazy thoughts.
But this was because the writer, David Nobbs,
had already approached the character of Reggie from another angle.
The fact that it was an adaptation from a book actually made different from
a conventional sitcom. I didn't really see it as a sitcom.
I saw it as an adaptation of the book and it happened to be in half hours,
it was the story that mattered
and it did sort of move sitcom on a bit, I think, because of that.
I caught a later train because the sun was shining.
It was 11 minutes late.
Seasonal manpower shortages, Clapham Junction.
NARRATOR: Before creating Reggie, David Nobbs had worked in television
since 1962, when his jokes and sketches were chosen by David Frost
forThat Was The Week That Was.
Ten years later, Nobbs had become
one of Britain's most experienced comedy writers,
his work including sketches for The Two Ronnies.
You're a fraud, I'm not talking to you.
This man is a fake!
ALL: This man is a fake!
-Oh, my God. -ALL: Oh, my God.
David Nobbs' original novel, The Death of Reginald Perrin,
featured Reggie as an anti-hero who ended his days in a lunatic asylum,
not the most obviously fruitful territory for a Head of Comedy
looking for the next big hit.
But the BBC's Jimmy Gilbert didn't get where he is today
without knowing a good thing when he saw it,
despite early worries about a cock-up on the commissioning front.
Jimmy Gilbert had given me the book to read
and I'd read it and thought it was wonderful.
I didn't actually see quite how it was going to be a funny situation comedy.
When I did my first draft script of the first episode of Reggie Perrin
and I went in to see Jimmy Gilbert,
he was less than pleased. He had a long face
and he had some assistants with long faces and they said,
"Look, we think you really haven't had enough faith in your own book.
"You've stuck in all these jokes." And I said, "Well, it's a sitcom."
So, Jimmy and I told him to take them out
and make it much more of a narrative.
Because it was a narrative
and it had to follow the sequences of the book.
Now all that was missing was someone
to bring Reginald Perrin to life.
So I went to see Jimmy Gilbert at the BBC
and he said, "Have you got anybody in mind for the part of Reggie?"
And I said, "Yes, Ronnie Barker."
And he said, "Excellent, splendid, Leonard Rossiter it is."
Reggie Perrin was Len and the rest of us.
You know, it was Reggie and a whole lot of other people.
Rossiter was indeed the star of the show,
but he'd had a long, hard journey on the road to Reggie,
starting at the bottom of the ladder over 20 years earlier.
JOHN BARRON: He started in very modest circumstances,
he was an assistant stage manager for a time,
a real dogsbody, you know, fetch the tea.
Not with me, but that was the first job he had.
And then he joined the repertory company that I was in
in Wolverhampton in 1955.
In 1962, Leonard Rossiter first made an impact on the small screen
appearing as a detective in Z Cars,
before moving on to play Mr Shadrack the undertaker
in the big-screen version of Billy Liar starring Tom Courtenay.
Rossiter's sitcom debut was in an early episode of the classic Steptoe and Son.
He later reappeared as an escaped convict
and worked for the first time with director John Howard Davies.
I taught that boy everything he knows.
He was nothing when I found him.
I wasn't in bleeding jail, was I?
I was straight, I was.
I was a bank clerk, till he opened an account.
By 1975, Rossiter was playing opposite Richard Beckinsale
in Rising Damp.
AndThe Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
saw Leonard Rossiter at his eccentric best.
Yes, to the Traffic Manager at British Rail, Southern Region.
Dear Sir, Every morning my train is 11 minutes late.
This is infuriating.
This morning, I took a later train. This also was 11 minutes late.
This also is infuriating.
Why don't you retime all your trains to arrive 11 minutes late?
Then they would all be on time.
Yours faithfully, Reginald Iolanthe Perrin.
As the series progressed, Reggie's gradual disintegration
was slow and sometimes painful to watch.
His mid-life crisis deepened as his world fell apart.
It's about Mr Perrin, Doctor.
Ah, yes.
Well, do you know what's wrong with him?
Yes, I do. Middle-age, exhaustion,
boredom, anxiety, self-disgust, misery, sense of inferiority,
dislike of industry, dislike of instant pudding,
25-year itch, fear, insecurity, frustration.
What can we do about it?
I haven't the faintest idea.
And when the 46-year-old Reginald Perrin finally lost patience
with his humdrum existence,
suddenly he was speaking for a whole generation.
(SCREAMING)
I don't think you'll be needing that again.
Well, I think I'll clear my desk, Joan.
Good idea, that shouldn't take long.
No, it shouldn't.
It didn't.
He was on nearly all the time.
That's the way David wrote it. One huge central figure
who had half the dialogue and the other eight people divided up between them.
Oh, no, do come back, you know, it's bad luck
-to look through the window, Jimmy. -What, what, what?
Look at this. Isn't this... It's a stuffed trout I caught at CJ's place.
That's my boss's place down in Hampshire.
-Oh, interesting. -I eat a lot of fish.
I'm a fish person.
TIM PREECE: Did he suffer fools gladly? Not really, no.
I mean, people got the sack.
I don't think I've ever been in something where people got the sack.
In fact, he needs no introduction from me. So, here he is.
PREECE: He was the boss, Len. It was very much his show.
Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you, Mr... Whatever your name is.
Leonard Rossiter may have ruled the roost,
but on the screen there was no shortage of talent to back him up.
David created a lot of wonderful characters,
which he always does, wonderful characters.
And I think, uh... it was a miraculous cast, actually.
Ah, 11 minutes late.
Signal failed at Vauxhall. Thank you, darling.
-Had a good day at the office? -No. What's for supper?
-Liver and bacon. -Ah.
With Rossiter whirling in all directions,
a strong, dependable wife was needed for Reggie to bounce off.
In Carla Lane's sitcom pilot Going, Going, Gone... Free?
Pauline Yates had played Geoffrey Palmer's long-suffering
and unquestionably better half.
Molly, say something to him. He's got measles.
Congratulations.
Oh, thank you, Molly.
John Howard Davies knew he'd found the perfect Elizabeth Perrin.
I always wanted her as number one because she has an innate stillness,
a kind of secretiveness about her.
She was able to keep calm under duress.
-What's wrong, Reggie? -Nothing's wrong.
No, no, things have never been righter, I promise.
-I do love you, Reggie. -Yes, yes, of course, and so do I. Yes.
(STAMMERING)
GARETH GWENLAN: Oh, her role was absolutely vital.
On first view, it appears that she's simply the placid wife at home
and she cooks the dinner and she says, "Yes, Reggie, no, Reggie."
But in fact, Pauline as an actress,
and the character that David created,
are much more complex and Pauline's playing of it
was absolutely superb.
-Your brother. -Oh, hello, Jimmy. How's the army?
-Mustn't grumble. -REGGIE: Uh, drink, Jimmy?
Ten past three, almost teatime. Whisky, please.
After playing a variety of doctors and detectives on TV,
and combining both as a police pathologist
in the BBC series Softly, Softly Task Force,
Geoffrey Palmer took to comedy with ease in Going, Going, Gone... Free?
It was directed by Gareth Gwenlan,
who was keen to cast Palmer as Reggie's confused brother-in-law Jimmy.
Look, no beating about the bush.
Bit of a cock-up on the catering front.
Muddle over shopping. Fact is, right out of food.
PALMER: Len was extraordinary because you had to get up to his level,
I mean, he kind of forced you, in a way it was...
You could say it was intimidating, but it was demanding.
So, therefore, you gave it your best. Everyone was...
(SNAPPING FINGERS)
You know, up there. You really had to be.
Had to be, to stay with him.
Come on, Jimmy, who are you going to fight against
when this balloon of yours goes up?
Forces of anarchy. Wreckers of law and order.
I see.
Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, neo-Trotskyists,
crypto-Trotskyists, union leaders, communist union leaders.
I see.
Atheists, agnostics, long-haired weirdos, short-haired weirdos,
vandals, hooligans, football supporters, namby-pamby probation officers,
rapists, papists, papist rapists.
I see.
Foreign surgeons, head shrinkers, who ought to be locked up,
Wedgwood Benn, keg bitter, punk rock, glue sniffers,
Play for Today, squatters, Clive Jenkins, Roy Jenkins,
up Jenkins, up everybody's , Chinese restaurants.
Why do you think Windsor Castle is ringed with Chinese restaurants?
Oh, I see. Is that all?
-Yes. -I see.
You realise the sort of people you're going to attract, don't you, Jimmy?
Thugs, bully boys, psychopaths, sacked policemen,
security guards, sacked security guards, racialists, Paki-bashers,
queer-bashers, Chink-bashers, basher-bashers, anybody-bashers,
rear admirals, queer admirals, vice admirals,
fascists, neo-fascists, crypto-fascists,
loyalists, neo-loyalists, crypto-loyalists.
You really think so? I thought support might be difficult.
He was extraordinary. What he set his mind to, he did.
(SNAPS FINGER)
Better than anybody, you know. Wonderful actor.
-Hello, Dad! -Hello, darling.
-Hello, Uncle Jimmy. -Hello, how's my favourite niece?
As Reggie's daughter Linda,
Sally-Jane Spencer played the role of aspirational '70s suburban blonde
to perfection.
Though something of her weird family must have rubbed off on her.
SPENCER: Linda was rather odd, I think, probably.
And people still come up to me today and say,
"You're the one who was married to the husband who made privet wine!"
I'm sorry, Tom, you were saying?
Ah! Um...
-All your stuff's rubbish. -Yes.
You've got a notice in your window, "Everything sold this shop
-"is absolutely useless." -Yes.
-You're selling my wine. -Yes.
That's an offence against the Trade Descriptions Act.
No.
I always had a problem with Tom in that I thought he should be short and fat.
So I never knew why somebody tall and thin and gloomy
should be playing it.
On the very first day filming, which was the famous safari park scene,
sitting in the car, it was so hot and so miserable,
and there were two kids. I don't think I had kids by then.
I wasn't very good with children.
So we had to sit in the back of the car with these children
and I found it so miserable
that I think that's what made Tom the way he is, really.
Sorry, but why am I a bearded prig?
-You really want to know? -Yes.
Because you have a bright red open-plan Finnish playpen,
you put supposedly witty house adverts
in The Cookham and Thames Ditton Chronicle,
you brew your own parsnip and nettle wine,
you smoke revolting briar pipes,
you built a gothic stone folly in your garden
and you called your children Adam and Jocasta
and made them eat garlic bread the moment they were off the breast.
All right?
I see.
Well, I think that from the point of view of sort of double acts,
which there were quite a few of in the series,
the relationship between Reggie and Doc Morrissey
was absolutely wonderful. The acting was sublime.
Do you find you can't finish the crossword like you used to?
Nasty taste in the mouth in the mornings?
Can't stop thinking about sex?
Can't start doing anything about sex,
wake up with a sweat in the mornings?
Keep falling asleep during Play for Today?
Extraordinary, Doc, that's exactly how I've been feeling, yes.
So do I. I wonder what it is?
I think Doc Morrissey was a little bit nervous about Perrin.
And that, I think there was this slight edge with Leonard.
Leonard knew what he wanted to do.
Where are we going for our holidays this year?
(MUMBLING)
(EXCLAIMING)
Oh.
-Elephant hunting? -No, Wales.
Sally-Jane Spencer and Sue Nicholls
were graduates of the Birmingham Academy of Dramatic Art,
both having appeared in Crossroads in 1964.
Before carving her niche as Audrey Roberts in Coronation Street,
Sue Nicholls played Sunshine Desserts' tastiest product,
Reggie's secretary and dream girl, Joan Greengross.
I said I'm ready.
Ready for what?
My first day joining Reggie Perrin was in fact the pre-filming for the show,
so I hadn't met any of the cast.
In fact, it was only Leonard and myself, on that day, that were called.
To the, uh, to the... Joan?
-Yes, Mr Perrin. -You have lovely breasts.
Oh!
Of course I knew who he was and he must have found out who I was,
but we journeyed to this field a bit out of London, the location.
Then it was all set up and the next thing you know,
you're running towards each other and in huge clinches
and he was on top of me and I was on top of him.
And that was my first meeting with Leonard.
And lovely it was, too.
While Elizabeth was on safari visiting the hippo,
Reggie finally got to Joan with no desk between them.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Forget it, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that.
-Reggie! -I'm terribly sorry, I shouldn't have...
I remember leading him upstairs, leading Reggie upstairs,
and he came rather like a lamb to the slaughter,
if I remember the scene.
(LAUGHING) His little shoulders went all hunched.
It was like dragging a naughty schoolboy upstairs.
I loved the relationship between the two of them.
And in fact, I think... I like to think that Reggie found
Joan attractive and sexy. I think he did.
Hello, CJ.
Yes, CJ. Yes. Certainly, CJ.
Yes, any time this morning would suit me best.
Certainly, CJ.
Seeing CJ 4:00 this afternoon.
Reggie's boss, CJ,
and I didn't get to where I am today not knowing
that CJ stood for Charles Jefferson,
was John Barron.
Barron had played the dean in the BBC Godcom All Gas and Gaiters.
So when John Howard Davies was looking to cast Reggie's tyrannical taskmaster,
it was all down to divine inspiration.
I didn't get where I am today biting people in the changing room.
I think CJ, the character that I played, was really...
Probably David Nobbs intended it to be more of a self-made man,
rather than a chap like me with a la-di-da accent, you know.
One, two, three, four, make 'em sweat outside the door.
Five, six, seven, eight, always pays to make 'em wait.
Come!
Sit down, gentlemen.
No one could call himself a proper boss without a couple of yes-men around.
And Tony and David were... What's the word?
-Great. -Super.
Bruce Bould had gone to the same drama school as Trevor Adams,
though they had never worked together.
But they both landed on their feet in '70s sitcoms,
Trevor Adams rolling up in an episode of Fawlty Towers,
directed by John Howard Davies.
-We've booked a room. -Have you?
-Yes, a double one. The name is... -One moment, please.
-That's a nice suit. -What?
Nothing.
-I thought you said something. -No.
Howard Davies then cast Bruce Bould in The Good Life,
as a bearded idealist who made Tom Good look like Jerry Leadbetter.
I've discovered that I want Ruth more than I want a commune.
What about that?
That's the most sensible thing you've said all week.
Is it? You see, I still don't read you, Tom.
Perhaps if we sat down and discussed it...
No, no, no, no, no.
Having tastedThe Good Life, Bruce Bould was hungry for more.
And I think my agent said...
He had the script and he said "There are three lines.
"Two of them are 'super' and the other one
"is something to do with ice cream."
-Great. -Super.
That's about it, then.
BOULD: So I said, I don't think I want to do that,
I'll turn it down.
And later that day, my agent rang again
and said, "John Howard Davies has been on the phone and says
"this is a terrible mistake. Please go and read the book.
"It's a very nice part."
(STAMMERING) Sorry, I wasn't sure whether I heard you say come in or not,
so I thought, if you didn't , I'd better not,
and if you did, you'd say it again, and I could always come in then.
Things finally became too much for Reggie halfway through the first series,
so he decided to head for Dorset
and take his death, as well as his life, into his own hands.
REGGIE: Why not really end it all?
Prove once and for all I'm not a fraud?
Just walk out to sea with my hands raised above my head.
Walk on until only the fingers are visible,
a last defiant gesture to a hostile world.
(EXCLAIMING)
NARRATOR: But showing signs of cold feet,
he faked his suicide instead
in what would come to be known as ''doing a Reggie''.
After a few months away, Reggie reinvented himself as the Wolfman,
aka Martin Wellbourne.
It was soon give-us-a-job time.
Come in.
Ah, nice to see you, Mr Windpipe.
Nice to be here.
Ah, new chairs, I see.
Yes. How do you know?
Uh, no, I didn't know. They just look new.
You're right. Very observant.
The old ones used to make an embarrassing noise.
-Do sit down. -Oh, thank you very...
And before long he was back in the old farting chair routine
at Sunshine Desserts,
his lust for a new life seemingly thwarted.
Oh, God.
This second series, The Return of Reginald Perrin,
reunited the original team,
but this time to help Reggie fight back against a selfish consumer society.
It was just mindblowingly clever.
And all the bits about the Grot shops and selling things for more money,
and the whole thing, in addition to being extraordinarily funny,
was also an incredible commentary on, you know, consumerism
and everything else that goes on.
So, it wasn't simply a series of gags.
David writes with great depth.
To Reggie's horror, and in spite of his best efforts,
Grot became a worldwide success.
BOTH: Have a good day at the office.
I will.
Back at the usual time?
Yes.
In the new Grot empire, Elizabeth was appointed
the Head of European Development.
Flushed with corporate success, Reggie even got to turn the tables on CJ.
One, two, three, four, make him sweat outside the door.
Five, six, seven, eight, always pays to make them wait.
Nine, 10. Come!
Ah, CJ, come in, come in. Good to see you. Do sit down, CJ.
Thank you, Reggie.
(CHAIR SQUELCHES)
As the impact of his success sunk in,
Reggie realised he was back on the same old treadmill.
And when it all got too much, he made his way back to the Dorset coast,
this time with Elizabeth.
Goodbye, old Reggie's clothes. Goodbye, old Reggie.
Goodbye, old Elizabeth's clothes. Goodbye, old Elizabeth.
In series three, broadcast in 1979,
David Nobbs created The Better World of Reginald Perrin
for the gang to inhabit.
Reggie had a master plan. Sort of.
I thought, why don't I set up a community
where people can learn not to argue and fight,
but where people can learn to live in peace and love and happiness.
But I think that's a wonderful idea, Reggie.
-Do you, darling? -What sort of community?
Oh.
No, no, no, we won't become the lost tribe of Llandrindod Wells.
(CHANTING)
But that brave new world was short-lived.
In a cruel twist of fate, CJ once again occupied the big chair.
I was your boss, then you were my boss, now I'm your boss again,
but I haven't got you here in order to gloat. That's not the CJ way.
Reggie Perrin couldn't have gone on forever.
You know, he committed suicide once, he came back once.
What do you do after that? You can't go on doing that.
So, it had to be finite, really.
Would you please look at the times of trains to the Dorset coast?
Thank you.
That's the uniqueness of what David Nobbs and Len did,
was to make up a one-off.
Three series of a one-off, yes, but it was a one-off.
I don't think that there has been anything since like it.
REGGIE: You see, darling, it's catching on. Everybody's doing it.
The show ended on a high, with 11 million viewers
tuning in to see Reggie's fantastic journey come to an end.
For David Nobbs, however, a new life was just beginning.
NOBBS: I think what it did for me was enable me to choose what I wrote.
I could choose my subject and I knew it would be done,
and I did choose my subject,
which was British residents in Spain,
and it was done,
and I got the lowest recorded audience for any sitcom
in the history of BBC1.
(NOBBS LAUGHS)
Goodbye.
Cheerio.
Although burnt by The Sun Trap,
David Nobbs would later have prize-winning success with
A Bit of a Do starring David Jason.
In 1984, Nobbs resurrected and renamed Jimmy,
the right-wing former major, for A Fairly Secret Army.
In 1978, Geoffrey Palmer starred alongside Wendy Craig
in Butterflies, directed by Gareth Gwenlan,
and in 1982, he and John Barron appeared
in the anarchic cult sitcom Whoops Apocalypse.
That same year, Gwenlan reassembled the Reggie cast in a Christmas special.
Five minutes long, it left everyone wanting more.
Fact is, a bit of a cock-up on the catering front.
Christmas day, no nosh.
Brats brawling and a distaff side in a tiswas.
Just wondered... Odd scrap...
Turkey, Christmas pudding, that sort of cape, eh, Jimmy?
Yes, if you've got 'em.
-Help yourself, Jimmy. -Thanks, Reggie.
-Oh, Reggie... -But, darling, darling, Christmastime!
Leonard Rossiter's star continued to rise in theatre, film and television,
including a famous series of adverts with Joan Collins.
And he appeared opposite Peter Sellers in The Trail of the Pink Panther.
In 1984, about to go on stage in Joe Orton's Loot,
Rossiter suffered a heart attack and died in his dressing room,
aged 58.
Pauline Yates, Reggie's onscreen wife, went on to star in the sitcom
Keep It In The Family.
And most recently she featured in the war drama Warriors.
Seventeen years after series three of Reggie Perrin,
David Nobbs had the idea of getting Pauline Yates and the remaining cast
together for The Legacy of Reginald Perrin.
NOBBS: I thought it would be rather bold and exciting to do
a thing about Reggie without Reggie.
I thought it would be that the other characters were strong enough
and I had a plot idea
for a rebellion of old people
against the youth culture of the times.
And I thought it would be rather nice to fit this in
with the old characters from Reggie Perrin.
I think, in retrospect, it was not such a clever idea and it wasn't perhaps
as well as I'd thought.
I am being lifted from my seat in the middle of reading the BBC news
by two burly men who can only be described as ugly brutes.
Yes, we're sorry about that, Angela.
There was some wonderful stuff in it because David cannot write badly,
but to do Reggie Perrin without Len Rossiter,
you know, what are the other characters without him?
In the 1970s, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
quickly achieved cult status.
Three decades later,
it remains a classic comedy of mid-life crisis management.
PREECE: I think the great appeal for people of Perrin,
I think he was like us.
This difficulty of coping, but keeping himself going all the time,
and pretending his own suicide is wonderful.
I like Reggie very much indeed.
A sweet, signore?
Yes, thank you.
Yes, the ravioli.
More ravioli, signore?
Yes, it's very good, quite superb.
But ravioli is not a sweet, signore. Try zabaglione, is a sweet.
Look, I want ravioli. I came here for a balanced three-course meal.
Ravioli, ravioli and ravioli. Is that clear?
Sė, signore.