Whom did you see, first, Sergeant Barnes, the accused or
his parents? I saw the parents to begin with,
Sir. What did you say to them?
I put the position to them. I told them that complaints had
been received about their son's conduct.
Yeah. Yes.
I'm so sorry to interrupt you, Sergeant Barnes.
Would you tell the court what in so many words you said on this
first occasion? Yes.
I think I can remember what I said, Sir.
When I went in, the first person I saw was Mr. Groom Kirby.
So I addressed what I had to say to him, to the best of my
recollection. I said something to the effect
it's beginning to add up down at the Mortuary, Mr. Groom Kirby,
meaning that you were keeping a check of this man's victim.
We were rather pressed for space.
Yes, I know that, Sergeant. What I'm asking you now is
whether your remark, it's beginning to add up down at the
Mortuary, referred to this man's victims only or to those of
other people as well. It was a kind of joke.
I was trying to keep on friendly terms at that stage and I made
the remark in a somewhat humorous manner.
I went on to say we haven't got the Albert Hall, Mr. Groom
Kirby. Hello and welcome to Goon Pod.
So last week Joel Morris and I were talking about Yellow
Submarine, a film which we managed to prove beyond doubt
through a series of charts and diagrams, took the goons as one
of its foundation stones with Roger Mcgough's Milligan
inspired quips liberally peppered throughout the script.
The repeated refrain of It's All in the Mind, the glorious
subversion of logic and of course the inclusion of Goon
Show alumnus Dick Emery as one of the core voice cast.
Now this week we are talking about a film from a few years
earlier, but I I think it is fair to say it's it's part of
that grand tradition of of British absurdism which gave us
the likes of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and of course the
Goon Show. Throw in the fact that it stars
a man who did more than most to develop the Goon Show during its
so-called golden era, and I think that's reasonable plenty
for us to talk about this week's film, One way Pendulum.
And my guest, I'm delighted to say, is David Quantic.
Hello, nice to be here. Hello, David.
Hello. I think this is your fourth time
speaking to me. Yeah, yes, we're talking about
the film One Way Pendulum, but I want to talk about NF Simpson as
well. Who, who's the genius behind it?
Because the film was based on his 1959 play of the same name.
And I know David, you're you're you're something of an NF
Simpson. Well, enthusiast and authority.
So first of all, was I correct to group him together with the
likes of of Lewis Carroll, Lear and and of course the Goons?
Absolutely. I mean, he's had a parallel
existence, but he was a Lewis Carroll fan.
He was more of APG Wodehouse fan.
He really liked being labeled or called an absurdist or any of
that stuff. But there's no question that he
was going down a parallel route route to Spike Milligan.
Yeah. Had he ever gone on on record to
say he enjoyed Milligan's work or the Goons or anything like
that? I think he said he liked the
goons, but it wasn't, but it was more interesting to me.
Is that he, like Spike is what you might call Spike Milligan's
children, People like Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and the Monty
Python team, There's a lot of, there's a lot of links between
those two groups. And NF Simpson.
Cleese and Cook were in productions of NF Simpson plays
Jonathan Miller's in the movie, as we'll discover, and Jonathan
Miller directed his stuff. Cleese is in TV versions of NF
Simpson. The Pythons don't like to admit
to his influence, but it's all over their stuff.
It really is. So you said he didn't like the
he didn't like the word absurdism or to be classed as
part of that absurdist tradition.
Yeah, he just, I mean, he came along at the same time as
Ionesco in France. And absurdism is basically
comedy plays that aren't very funny to me.
Yeah. The thing about Simpson, the
reason? Obviously I, I first came across
NF Simpson in the Penguin Book of Nonsense, which was one of
those 70s anthologies edited by Paul Jennings.
And it had, you know, Lewis Carroll in it, it had Monty
Python in it and the Goons. It had all, and it had a couple
of very short items by NF Simpson which were just
absolutely intriguing. So he fits into that world.
And I would describe him as a, as very like Spike Milligan in
his sense of humour, in the way that he plays with space and
time. The difference is with a more
deliberately philosophical and and existentialist point of
view. And a really good ear for the
rhythm of natural everyday conversation as well.
Very much. I mean, while I know that Alan
Bennett knew his work and you know that.
So without accusing anyone of ripping off, you can read the
Alan Bennett voice. You know that obsession with
trivia and detail, it really comes over in NF Simpson.
And what's lovely about his work, he told me once that he
liked basically he wrote very surreal, very strange dialogue,
but everything was set in a very real world.
Lots of suburban front rooms, boring kitchens.
And that is very much the Alan Bennett tradition in embryo.
He likes he likes to hide the bizarre inside the banal and
nobody. None of his character seemed to
question the situations that they find themselves in.
They're very dead pan in their delivery and and I guess a lot
of the humour is in the mismatch between the bland domestic
surroundings and the conversations that go on with
oh. Yeah, I mean, one of the most
famous scenes in one of his plays in his in a resounding
tinkle, which somebody goes to answer the door.
Who was that at the door? And bro, the character replies,
there's a man out, there's a man outside wants you to form a
government. And the the the two people in
the scene have a long conversation about this.
And at no point does anyone who say this is insane.
There are conversations about oh God, my one of my favourite
moments in in the movie is when Peggy Mount comes in as a star
woman and she's come in because one of her jobs is to eat all
the families leftover food. So she's kind of a cleaner
except for food. And she just sits down and eats
all this and nobody says, why don't you give it away?
Why don't you eat? It's just, well, we've got all
this food we need to somebody needs to eat it all and we
can't. I'm pegging him out.
Just her job is to eat their food.
And again, as you said, this is this is not quite, this is an
insane world, but it's also a mundane 1.
Where do you want me, Mabel? Over here, if you would.
Nara. Hope there's not too much for
you. Goodness.
Now, it won't take me long to Polish this off.
I'll get started right away. I'm Perkins.
I'll get the impression Mrs. Groom Kirby some.
She says something in the film along the lines that you get the
impression that she keeps being sent packets of cornflakes.
But in those days, people often did get free stuff like that.
There's a you know, there's a famous scene in Bedazzled in
which people are just obsessed with giving out free products.
Yeah, and, and, and Simpson was, he was, he was around that same
sort of period as the angry young men, like, like John
Osborne. But he was, he had more.
And because I watched the documentary, you made a
documentary what, 20 years ago now, I guess.
And it was clear that he had more in common with the likes of
John Mortimer and and Pinter than the angry young men he was.
He had a much lighter touch and had this sort of this comic
brilliance, but the sharp philosophical mind as well.
Well, it's more timeless to me. I mean, the angry men, young men
thing is kind of, oh, we did look back in anger for a level
and it was, oh, it was horrific. Just people writing about how
bored they were and how they were going to smash the system.
And it's like, no, you're not. And it was an awful lot of that
sort of kitchen sink stuff. But yeah, he was at the Royal
Court with John Mortimer and with Harold Pitt.
The most annoying moment of my life when we were making the
documentary, Wally was, as we all called him, NF Simpson was
back at the Royal Court Theatre. We went out for lunch.
And while he was having his lunch in the Royal Court, Harold
Pinter turned up full of happy stories and memories of being in
NF Simpson's plays. And we didn't get an interview
with him. But yeah, he was remembered with
affection by Pinter and by John Mortimer.
He was that generation of writer.
But like Pinter, like Mortimer, he was kind of outside that
cliched world. It was like one of those bands
who got lumped in with punk rock but wasn't really punk, that
kind of thing. And my big theory is that he was
as a writer, he was swept away by the more violent and
aggressive people who'd come after him, like Python, like
Peter Cook, who had this, had a similar sense of humour, but
were prepared to be more controversial and vicious with
it. Did he ever try to perform
anything? Obviously strictly a writer.
Not to my knowledge. He was always more of a
background man. He worked at the Royal Court
Theatre as a creative director Later on he wrote in lots of
different areas, but he was unlike Armando Yannucci or John
Cleese. He was never in front of the
camera. So one way pendulum, it began as
a stage play and and I looked at the original cast because
there's several members of the original cast who turn up in the
film reprise their roles, such as Alison Legat as Mrs. Grim
Kirby and Douglas Wilmer as the judge and I think Graham Crowden
as well Graham, but I know Graham Crowder.
But it was you had Roddy Maude Roxby as Kirby.
Grim Kirby. Right.
Who's still with us, by the way? Roddy is amazing.
He's an artist and he was in. If so, then yes.
Which was Wally's last play which was performed and when
Wally was still with us. Yeah, Roddy is a is an amazing
man and very talented. Yeah, I saw him most recently.
You know, they released the entire Was it all?
Every episode was all six episodes of The Complete and
Utter History of Britain. Yeah, I watched that.
It was a bit of a shock seeing Roddy in that.
He was kind of Wally's avatar in a lot of things.
Especially if so, then yes, he was sort of a standing figure
for Wally. Wally Simpson famously so-called
because when he was a kid, Wallace Simpson, the paramour
led with the 8th, was around. I I believe I were to ask Bill
Bastler if it's true or asked Wally Simpson that the first
version of the play didn't have Kirby.
Which was the character? That he used eventually Clair
Trait, Yeah, who was teaching speaker weight machines to sing
the Alleluia Chorus. I got to do that piece.
And it was out of having. Been an NF or around an NF
Simpson sketch in one to another and having published bits of his
writing in Art magazine. Bright, bright, bright.
He knew about me, I bet me or seen me.
Bill Gastel had seen me at the Royal College and in a way they
knew that the curby only has one line in the play and he does
this piece of. But he's on a lot, does he not?
No, he, he, he. The opening scene is with him
conducting and then the play starts as it's in the the house
downstairs and the mother talks about him upstairs.
Oh, I see. He's a presence, but he's.
Not here and he responds to a cash register and someone bangs
the cash register I think in hand gun.
He clips off the side of the stage and says you could have
woken me and could have stopped me stone dead in the middle of
an orgasm and then goes off again.
Do you take a play and then you expand it and open it out, which
basically means you have some scenes of people driving around
London on mopeds. There's not much else you can do
with it apart from, you know, add animation.
That was a that was a problem for the film.
It's a reason it got bad reviews and wasn't very successful.
But it's what's added to its charm now is it looks exactly
like a realistic 1960s film with a classic British comedy cast.
But the things they're saying are insane.
Well, it begins right at the beginning.
It made me think of the rebel. You know, the, the that office
there was kind of it wasn't in not in development.
How would I think NF Simpson had been approached a few times to
have the the play made into a film and he he turned them down.
But but then he met Peter Yates and felt that Peter Yates was
the right man to direct the film.
Do we know why? No, sadly we didn't.
I mean, I have read on the Internet that PD Eights
convinced him with his enthusiasm, and PD Eights is a
really interesting director. He'd just done Summer Holidays,
so I think he wanted to wash the taste of that out of his mouth
with a completely different film.
And then after One Way's Pendulum, he did Bullet with
Steve McQueen about four years later.
So he's one of those directors that I really like because he
did everything. He didn't remake the same film,
he would just take, and his enthusiasm for the project is
what's really needed. Because he does.
You can tell that he sat down and thought, how can I make this
into a film? One of the things about Ennis
Simpson's stuff that he readily admitted is that quite often
there isn't much of A plot. It's a it often works better in
small chunks. He said to me the reason he
couldn't write narrative was because his mother had died when
he was about 5. And that presumably just blew a
hole in the whole concept of order and sense life.
And I think that's one of the the cornerstones of Edda Simpson
stuff, that there is no order in life.
He's famous for saying things that, you know, one word might
as well be the same as another. Meaning is there is no meaning
in life. So he's quite cheerful Despite
that. And he came around from that
view. But yeah, it's sometimes quite
hard to watch one way pendulum because there isn't really a
plot. Things happen and then it ends.
Well that's fine though. As someone like myself who loves
the Goon Show, I'm used to that and I'm happy with that.
To be honest. What I want to do is just give
an overview of the the plot as well as it is.
I haven't mentioned, I've alluded to it, but it stars Eric
Sykes. I think this is Eric Sykes's
only starring or top billed film role apart from things like The
Plank which don't really qualify.
But the film is basically about the Groom Kirby family who lived
together in a in a modest suburban house.
And they they, they blithely pursue their own individual
interests. And we have Arthur Groom Kirby,
who who's Eric Sykes and he's erecting a full scale model of
the Old Bailey in the front room, blissfully ignored in his
labours by wheelchair bound Aunt Mildred, who I love, who's man
in Washbourne, who, who's every waking moment.
She's brilliant. We'll, we'll, we'll come back to
her. She's got this obsession about
transport and wanting a tricycle.
And I guess the the key character, I suppose the key
character is, is Kirby Groom. Kirby, who is Jonathan Miller in
the film. He, he's up in the attic.
He's teaching a vast assortment of Speak Your Weight machines to
sing the Hallelujah chorus. And later in the film, he will
be put on trial, at first in absentia for the murder of 43
people, his motive apparently being a compulsion to wear black
morning attire. And again, we'll come back to
that. And his younger sister, Sylvia,
frets over the length of her arms while her mother busies
herself about the house with scant regard for her husband's
activities. Like you say, she has this this
rather burly child woman played by Peggy Mount, who drops in
twice a week to eat the excess food that the that the family
can't manage to dispatch themselves.
So that's what passes for a plot, really.
But every moment is just full of amazing comic invention.
And it's interesting just touching back.
Coming back to Pete, Peter Yates, he'd go on, like you say,
to make bullet, which is famous for for that extended chasing.
Now the film before that, I don't know if you've seen him
robbery. No, I haven't.
Which is a Stanley Baker film in which Peter Yates, It was an
early try out for the for a for a a car chase, which he'd he'd
later refined in bullet. But it's through the streets of
London and although it's it's in lovely Technicolour, there are
bits at the beginning of robbery that made me think of this film
just in terms of the the streets of London and the way he was
filming it. There's a bit in the film in one
way Pendulum where Eric Sykes, Arthur Grimm Kirby has collected
judges robes and a wig from the dry cleaners and he's carrying
the boxes home and he's imagining himself as the High
Court judge. And we see, we see him, you
know, in the robes with the wig. He's about to cross the road and
A and a lorry passes by and as as it passes by it sort of
breaks the spell. And we see Eric again just with
his boxes. And I thought there was a
brilliant piece of direction. So little touches.
There's not a lot of opportunities for that sort of
directorial flourishes. But I think PDHS did a really
good job. There's also a nice moment when,
Yeah, if you wanted to be silly, Eric Sykes is on the back of
George Cole's scooter. And George Cole is a terrible
driver and weaves between large, burly vehicles with complete
blitheness. So you could pretend.
You could say it was a practice run, a very modest scale.
Yeah. I mean, he opens it out, but not
in a Richard Lester kind of zany way.
He doesn't add silly sound effects and treat make it.
He doesn't make it into slapstick.
He does what's what's required, which is to basically treat the
subject matter as though it was perfectly normal.
It's, it's obviously quite difficult to know what's going
on for the 1st 20 minutes or so. And then you gradually start to
put things together and you realise that Arthur Groom Kirby
is trying is he's got this build it yourself kit, an Old Bailey
full size Old Bailey kit that he's trying to manoeuvre into
the back garden and then into the house.
And I do think that the second-half of the film, which
is largely A courtroom scene which is playing out in the
Groom Kirby's front room is absolutely brilliant.
And I could have watched a whole film just with that.
It's funny. I mean, presumably it's what led
to Adam Simpson getting the Crown Court because it's the
best part of the film because it has a narrative you, you know,
where you are with a court scene.
And it's just, it's just really, really funny.
It's a parody of the legal system.
It's just full of insane moments about dressing a baby in black
and lots of comedy riffs. And I just love the joke that,
you know, how do you deal with something as impossible as
building the Old Bailey in your front room?
And part of it is that the statue of the Scales of Justice
is gaping through a hole in the group Kirby's bedroom, and his
wife has to step around it. There's one more thing I'd like
to ask you, Missus Grimm Kirby. Each one of your son's 43
victims was struck on the head with an iron bar after having
been told a joke. Now, would it be true to say,
Missus Grimm Kirby, that your son went to considerable trouble
over these jokes? He went to very great trouble,
Sir. He sat up all hours thinking at
church for them. He wanted to make things as
pleasant as possible for them, even at considerable trouble and
inconvenience to himself. He didn't mind how much trouble
he went to, so long as they ended on a gay note.
Thank you, Missus Groom Kirby. The only character in this film
who seems to be an incredulous, I suppose to what's going on is
is Stan, who's the the boyfriend of Sylvia who's been roped into
helping Arthur get the the Old Bailey kit into the into the
front room. I love all that.
It's weirdly it's Tom King, the villain from Emmerdale as well.
Well, I. Knew him from from Corrie.
He was Billy Walker, wasn't he? Yeah, for years.
That's what I love about actors. They're versatile.
But yeah, he does seem to be from a more normal world.
And which gives you the suggestion that maybe it's just
the groom. Kirby's are in.
They're insane. But yeah, I mean, I'm very fond
by the way of really of Julia Foster in this and her obsession
with her arms and also just the nice sibling rivalry that every
time she brings a boy home, she has to compete with the choir of
Speak Your Weight Machines in the attic, not to mention the
major criminal trial going on in the front room.
Well, that's, that's the thing that that was the thing that
made me laugh the most. Was it it, It takes a while to
get here, but we, we eventually find out that so we see Kirby,
played by Jonathan Miller, nosing around weight machines,
both conventional and speaker weight type, both outside a
chemist shop and on the, on the tube on the underground
platform. He's got this obsession,
obviously. And then but we find out later
that he, he's teaching them to, to sing because he wants them.
He wants them to act as sirens at the North Pole to lure people
there so that he can get a large collection of people in the one
place, get them all to jump up and down at once to tilt the
Earth's axis, and the ensuing Ice Age and resultant deaths
would then give him the a logical pretext for wearing
black the rest of his life. It's completely and relentlessly
logical. It works really well and you
believe it. With Jonathan Miller's silent
portrayal, you believe that he's this kind of junior sociopath to
whom all this is completely reasonable.
Yeah, it was. It was odd because some someone
who's so voluble as as Jonathan Miller playing a wordless
character, you know, and also Eric, Eric Sykes, famously half
deaf and had this liking for silence in comedy or silent
comedies. It's a very wordy film for
someone like Eric Sykes, I felt, although he didn't say that much
I suppose. I think he just appreciated the
the comedy of it as well as, as you say, one of his rare
starring roles. I mean, the the lovely thing
about interviewing everybody connected with Quarry people
who'd worked with him, like Eric Sykes, Jonathan Miller was they
and John Mortimer, they just wanted to talk about him.
They really liked his work. And you know, Sykes was clearly
delighted to have been in this film.
Jonathan Miller, I think, I forget which one he directed,
but I think he he directed a revival of one of NF Simpson's
plays much later on. So he went back to it.
He went back to Wally's work. So he must have loved it
greatly. We we've talked about Alison
Legat, who plays his wife. I didn't know her until we we
covered the Jonathan Miller directed Alice in Wonderland a
few months ago. How is she in that?
She plays the Queen of Hearts. Oh fantastic.
She's wonderful. Maybe that's where he met her.
She's great. She's not.
Again, she's not a name known to me, but presumably want to
theatre goers. But she's got the most boring
part, you know? She's the glue who holds it
together because she's the most normal member of the family.
Apart from hiring a woman to eat all her food, she's kind of,
well, she's the Marge Simpson of the show.
Deal with all the nutters and clean up literally after
everybody. And I love the scene when she
just wanders into the into the Old Bailey in the front room
with a few things for her husband to do and then wanders
out again blithely. She's a witness briefly, isn't
she? She isn't.
She's fantastic in that scene and.
Explaining the function of the cash register, which again is
just basically the cash register acts as a well, she says without
it, Kirby would be in a state of paralysis.
It's just a lovely idea that they've taken the notion of
Pavlov's dogs and reflexes and taking it again to I mean, this
is the thing, the taking it to an absurd degree.
It's the spiral of absurdity which is a feature of the Goon
shows, taking an idea. And it's also something of Eric
Idles comedy taking of taking something that's slightly wrong
and instead of ignoring it, pulling that string until
everything falls apart. Yeah, So the the no sale, if you
bring up no sale in the in the cash register, it's a it's it
causes a Pavlovian response in Kirby.
And he said that he'd wanted to have been 1 of Pavlov's dogs
that was born born too latent of the wrong species, but for that.
There are so many great lines. In one way, pendulum the
daughter's obsession with her arms being she's a perfect, and
the way it comes over is that she's all you hear is basically
typical teenager, always worrying about the way she
looks, and what she's worried about is the inadequacy of her
arms. You may say about apes.
At least they don't have to bend down practically to the floor
before they can reach their knees.
Arms like apes, if you please. That's what she wants.
Now. We couldn't run through it.
Sylvia. Need a whole new set of glands.
You asked me. She's spending too much time at
the zoo with Stan. Oh, Stan.
Hence they leave him out of it. I thought we were leading up to
something like this when you started off about your arms in
the first place. If it comes to that, I don't
know what you've both got against apes anyway.
We've got nothing against apes, Sylvia as such.
So we get the impression that Stan and her often go to the zoo
and the Natural History Museum, and she'd earlier had a
hankering to be a pterodactyl, according to her mother.
There's a curious obsession with animals in in Anna Simpson's
work in the first layer resounding tinkle.
One of the things they have which is troubling the paradox
family is that they haven't named their elephant.
They get an elephant every year from the zoo, much in the same
way that most people go on holiday.
More of the problem and they just keep coming up with names
for it which are all terrible and all very funny.
Can. You remember any?
Mr. Trench And there's a whole conversation about Mason saying
what about Hodge and Mini Parrot says Hottage is all right for a
a monkey. And somebody said we could call
it Mr. Trench and that's a good name for a juror.
It's an insane conversation about the appropriateness of
names, which is very much an Anna Simpson thing, the idea
that words and phrases are interchangeable.
Mona Washbourne as the aforementioned Aunt Mildred.
She reminded me a bit of the Joan Hickson character in
Clockwise. I don't know if you've seen
Clockwise of you I love. Clockwise.
Joan Hickson's character, that Wittering old lady who's always
going on about some some cow who's after the Sherry glasses.
She reminded me, she reminded me of her, but she's always going
on about friends of hers. Oh, Maude Banquet, who doesn't
go anywhere without a camel. And Maude also had an ambulance
at one point until she had an accident with it.
One element of a character from The Playboy, I believe, which
was omitted from the film, was that at night they would cover
her up like a parrot. I know I wanted to say that.
One thing about it's interesting that John Cleese turning the the
clockwise connection because John Cleese turns up in
elementary My dear Watson, which is ATV.
It's on YouTube ATV thing, it's Ennis Simpson does Sherlock
Holmes. John Cleese plays Sherlock
Holmes. Willie Rushton plays Watson, and
it's fantastic because part of it makes sense and a part of it
does not. And what's doubly interesting is
that Cleese returned to the topic and he without asking
anybody, he did his own Sherlock Holmes thing, this time with
Arthur Loews Watson a few years later, which I always think was
a bit cheeky since, well, Anna Simpson didn't own Sherlock
Holmes, Neither did John Cleese. But yeah, I recommend going on
YouTube and looking up Elementary, my dear Watson.
It's got some fantastic. It also contains a a large
section of the TV show called My Blah.
Yes, it does. It's just a sudden some bonus
Frank Muir there. Some bonus Frank Muir.
Frank, you don't. You don't see these so much
nowadays, just after the First World War.
You've got a lot of them. They were sort of practical
garden gnome in small town houses.
They could get a clothesline on on the one tree there, but they
had no way to fix the other end of the line.
So they had these rather lovely objects on the grass and the
other end of the chord was tied around the projecting part
there. And then the the thing was
pulled until the line was tied. It's a clothesline straightener
about 1922. Just getting back to the
production of this film, it was it was produced by Michael
Deeley and we've discussed Michael Deeley on this show
before. He produced The Case of the
Mukhnees Battle Horn with Sellers and Milligan and Dick
Emery in 56. That was his, I think that was
his first proper sort of producing role.
And obviously he went on to produce a lot of films,
including this one, stuff like Blade Runner, The Deer Hunter,
The Italian Job, and also and also Sandy the Reluctant Nudist,
which I think was during a rather fellow patch in his
career. It was filmed in Fulham.
So it was #27 Silverton Rd. is the house or the exteriors of
the house that they, that they film.
And they they took over the nearby Crabtree Hotel and they
set up make up, hairdressing and wardrobe departments there.
Excellent. It starts off with this, this
office, insurance office, scores of desks, as I say, very much
like the Rebel, a little cameo, very blinking.
You'll miss some cameo from Trevor Bannister.
Did you notice that from? Are you being served?
Yeah. Yeah, and the dustbin men.
Football this afternoon? No, I don't think so.
I don't have another go at the car.
Fred, played by George Cole, gives Arthur a lift on his
motorbike. And this is the first ink thing
that we get that Arthur has these weird obsessions or
pursuits because Fred asks him if he's working on another Great
Wall of China. Yeah.
He says straight line. And and later we see Arthur's
wife collecting all the books that Arthur's discarded around
the room. And she says, first at
Stonehenge, you know, it's Noah's Ark.
There's there's also a nice connection that Simpson wrote.
He took the concept, you know, you often read about, you know,
St. Bishop Anselm built Salisbury
Cathedral. You he really wrote a piece
where he took that literally and had the Archbishop of Canterbury
of some undetermined era building a cathedral himself.
And the whole thing is just the Archbishop.
It was hard work getting those stones in place, but somehow I
managed to. So, yeah, he does as I say, he
does this whole spatial thing quite often where people are
building things that would not fit, you know, TARDIS, like,
would not fit in the available space.
Because if you build a Great Wall of China, you know
Stonehenge's order. But where do you put a Great
Wall of China? There was ATV play in 61 as part
of the Younger Generation series.
You won't remember it, David, and it was these one off plays
for television. And there was one called Goodbye
Charlie written by Tim Aspinall. And Tim Aspinall later worked on
Corrie. He was the man who killed off
Martha Longhurst. OK, but the plot of Goodbye
Charlie was this young man who lives in a in a bed set and he's
building a full size aeroplane in the basement.
That sort of thing was in the was in the the zeitgeist around
this time, I guess. That TV play, by the way,
featured Michael Caine, Ronald Lacy and John Thor among the
cast. Back when you could see people
like that on telly every night. Where were you, Mr. Grim Carey,
before you came here today? I was living in a world of my
own, Sir. Where, roughly would this world
be in relation to, say, chest of the street?
Oh, quite some way away, Sir. Your peasants there, in other
words, entailed travelling some distance.
Quite some distance. Yes, Sir.
Do you enjoy travelling, Mr. Grim Carey?
On the contrary, Sir. Do you mean you actively dislike
it? Actively dislike it, my Lord.
You actively dislike travelling and yet you made this lengthy
journey to check on the street of the masochist at the time,
Sir. A What a masochist, my Lord.
A term employed in certain quarters to denote an addiction
to pain as a source of pleasure. Graham Crowden as one of the
councils, is cross examining Arthur Grimm Kirby.
Arthur Grimm Kirby, who's who's erected this Old Bailey?
He's both watching the proceedings and taking part of
the proceedings. Yeah, it's quite surreal, but it
works. And he seems quite delighted to
be called as a witness. And this whole extended cross
examination where Crowden asks him to cast his mind back to an
August day the year before and asks him a specific day and ask
him if he can remember what he did on that day.
And Arthur can. He was in Chesterly St.
interviewing someone for a life insurance policy.
And then he adds with this kind of like almost like a little
listeners lascivious sneer. It was a woman.
She wore a string of pearls around her waist for the
tightness. For the tightness, it's such a
great, it's an Alan Bennett line.
And then there's a whole bizarre thing about I remember because I
was a masochist at the time. Yeah, he was a masochist.
He was at a loose end which was practically hanging off, and
this seems to discuss the judge so much that he hasn't remanded
in custody. He's the judge, is a fantastic
character, he's annoyed by everything, doesn't know things.
And I also want to really single out Graham Crowdon, whose
daughter Sarah Crowdon is someone I know and Sarah was in
it. If so, then yes, Graham
Crowdon's scene stealing performance.
You feel very sorry for George Cole's the barrister because
every time he gets up, Graham Crowden throws himself about,
lounges about, makes gerns at the camera and basically scene
steals like a bastard. He's fantastic in it.
But he's brilliant in every Lindsay Anderson film I've seen
him in as well. He's, oh, he's fantastic in it.
He's got that. He's got that madness to him
which really works in this kind of film.
He seems to be genuinely enjoying the anarchy.
Yes, yeah. George Cole, he's defending
Kirby, who's who's not there, but then he is there at the end
and seems to get off on a technicality.
I don't quite. It's a sentence, I think that
the judge has to sentence. To sentence him to death for one
murder would put him beyond the reach of the law.
So as a result, they're discharging him.
It makes complete sense. It's Yeah.
And he's no point arguing with this judge.
And it just the the movie does kind of tail off really, but it
has this beautiful ending where Sykes gets into bed and he's
reading a book about life on the ocean bed and it just ends with
this fantastic image of a beautiful sun kissed beach.
And there's that going to be his next pursuit.
That's. That's the assumption that he's
going to live on the ocean bed and presumably his own home, and
offer a few brief moments of happiness beneath the tide.
He, he is, he's complete. The character's completely
detached from the rest of his family.
He doesn't seem bothered by the fact that his son is on trial
for the murder of 43 people. Well, mind you, neither does the
mother, neither does the child lady.
They, they, they know that he's got, he's done these terrible
crimes, but it's all for the right reasons, because he wants
to, to wear black. It's just this, this acceptance.
And I love the idea that the parents are responsible because,
you know, he's worn black ever since he was a baby.
And this is because of his parents.
And that bizarre moment when he says if he was black, we were
going to dress him in white, and if he was white, we were going
to dress him in black. So they planned everything.
They're responsible. Well, their son's obsession with
black. Now I think I missed here.
He might be able to help me out if there may be nothing to it
whatsoever. Arthur Groom Kobe doesn't want
to swear in the Bible because there's there's passages in it
that he does not approve of. He he wants to swear on Uncle
Tom's cabin instead. Was there was there anything
there underlying thing that I missed or was that just a just a
random book that they chose that it's?
Just the NSCI think Simpson is if anything, making a point that
like swearing on the Bible. You might.
It's just a book, you know, he's pointing out the absurdity of
saying holding a book and saying this book.
Holding this book means I will tell the truth is nonsense.
You might as well swear on the a A Book of the Road or Uncle
Tom's Cabin. I'm one of these people that
when I'm watching old films, if there's if someone's reading a
newspaper or magazine, I always, I'm always thinking, well, that
dates, that dates when they film that.
So I tried to find a, we see Sylvia at one point in the
kitchen reading a copy of Rave magazine.
Oh yeah. And the Internet is great now
because within two minutes I was able to say they they filmed,
they started filming this in March 64.
And that is Rave, an issue from March 64.
It's got picture of Cliff on the front with a eating an apple.
Oh Cliff, who of course PT eights are directed in summer
holiday. Some holiday.
That's probably a little nod, wasn't it?
Yeah, possibly. Maybe, Maybe they weren't
thinking that hard. The death's head on the
mantelpiece that Stan gave to Sylvia.
Supposed to be a memento Mori. It didn't work and it's faulty.
It's a faulty memento Mori. And the implication in, in the,
you know, I think it's the mother's voice that just, you
know, she, they bought a crap one.
She would have gone to John Lewis and got an expensive
memento Mori. Didn't haven't mentioned Glenn
Houston as Sergeant Barnes. He's fantastic in it.
He stops and we see him first he stops.
So Eric or Arthur is pushing this, this really awkward
looking cart laden with large wooden panels and the and the
like. He's pushing it on the road,
down the road, on the road, followed slowly by a police car.
And then Glenn Houston as Sergeant Barnes speaks to him
and then let's him let's move on.
And I think Eric with the cart then runs a red light and has to
drag it back and gets a ticket. But he later gives evidence in
the in the Kirby trial, he he talks about when he goes to he
goes to visit the Grim Kirbys and he speaks to Arthur and he
says it's beginning to add up down at the Mortuary, Mr. the
Grim Kirby. This is the the reason that NF
Simpson is always great is that the ideas are fantastic, but the
comedy is brilliant. He and he was unable, by the
way, I think to tame this. He wrote some sketches for Dick
Emery, bizarrely enough, which I've seen, and A, that shows you
that Dick Emery had quite a broad brief when it started.
It wasn't just the character roster, but B, they're insane.
He can't just write a sketch where a funny character comes
in, says a catch phrase and goes off again.
It they're long and involved and bizarre.
The shaggy dog stories. Yeah, so I've got them
somewhere, but worth looking up. Yes, and you mentioned the Crown
Court story because it was over 3 episodes, Am I right?
I think. It's certainly what it was, the
standard length for a Crown Court.
It always lasted the afternoon TV week.
Yeah. And I did.
I did watch that a couple of years ago, I think.
Do you know what, Dave? I think it was off the back of
our first discussion when you talked about NF Simpson.
And I think I looked into a little bit and I thought, oh,
interesting, there's a Crown Court that he wrote.
So I watched that. It's basically about people in a
hotel on the edge of a Cliff and the toilets have been installed
at the bottom of the Cliff. Yeah, it's an old people's home,
but yeah. And there's a model, which of
course is fantastic. And yeah, these very old people
have to descend a sheer Cliff face, use the toilet.
And what I love is just when you've grasped this, it goes off
on a tangent and every tangent is explored.
And it is just, it's hell in a, in a very funny way.
Everyone involved is an idiot or a maniac.
But everyone just accepts it. Everyone just and what I you
know, and that's a great tradition of literature, that's
Kafka. And you know, if you, that's
what I love is that's the British tradition that is Spike
Milligan, that is NF Simpson and to some extent Monty Python,
that you take an absurd world, you're immersed in it, but also
it's got jokes just like real life.
We're now entering the 73rd day in the case of Cosmic Planning
Consultants versus the Rosenberg Research Foundation, in which,
by an oversight, an old people's home 3000 feet up in the
Cairngorms has been provided with lavatories situated at the
foot of a sheer precipice several 1000 feet below.
It's been an exceptionally protracted hearing during which
both sides have put up what the judge has referred to as a
vegetable smokescreen of red headings.
It's in the nature of red headings, however, that sooner
or later they come home to roost and in these final stages of the
hearing we may expect to hear the flapping of their wings.
Defence counsel is questioning A vital witness.
Where is he dressed in this peculiar manner?
He is a Sherpa Malad, Himalayan mountain guide whose occupation
it is to lead climbers to the summits of such mountains as
Everest. Everest.
He has Malad what is about the summit of Everest makes it so
vital to arrive. It is done in order to keep such
people as Sherpa solo combo here in business malad and so prevent
their becoming a burden on the state by reason of unemployment.
I see. And you have come here straight
from the Gamalier? Yes, Sir, having had no time to
change. I was in the middle, Sir, of
taking a party up to foot of Everest when I was summoned to
be here to give evidence to the court.
Where is this party now? They're on the mountainside
playing Luda Malad awaiting his return.
This was probably the best known of his plays.
A resounding tinkle was that was never filmed, I take it?
No, there is ATV version which is extant which I have seen
which has got Derek Guyler in the lead.
That's very much worth watching. There was a beautiful play
starring Bernard Hepton called Silver Wedding.
Wow. But he sort of like a lot of
people, he has this success with the first two or three plays and
doesn't really capitalize on it. Things just move on really after
that. So the early stuff is fantastic.
Just anything you can get is worth.
I would just say to somebody just go online, look out for
stuff, buy the plays. My friend Ian Grieves put
together a basically the bet a complete NS Simpson collection.
But just what you can find, really.
And if somebody's actually staging one of his plays,
absolutely go and see it. It's nice on the documentary you
made. So was that.
That was a few years before he died.
I've just fancied making this documentary because I liked his
work and then told my friend Ian Greaves.
He said oh they're doing a live stage version of a resounding
tinkle. I think it was at the Royal
Core. So I went.
Then at the end an old bloke got up and did a speech and I've
been told that Ennis Simpson, you know, wild rumours, he was
in a care home. He was no longer couldn't really
hadn't really got it together anymore.
And there he was and he delivered a hilarious speech and
it was like, wow, oh, wow. We tracked him down very quickly
and then found a vast amount of people who wanted to talk about
him. So I'm very proud of that
documentary because it was a little kind of keeping him in
the public eye and also marking his presence because there was
nothing he the thing was, he lived.
It sounds horrible, but he lived, if you like, too long to
be remembered. If he'd gone 20 years ago, there
would have been plenty of people around to commemorate him and
there would have been seasons of his stuff.
But because he he was literally forgotten that he lived until
his 90s. I remember going to a party once
and saying what is this? He goes, it's my 90th and I'm
like, oh Blimey. Was he ever in fashion, if you
know what I mean, or? Yeah.
During the Royal Court period with Pinter and Mortimer.
OK, You know, Kenneth Tynengate wrote this rave review of him,
and his plays were popular. He's part of the repertoire.
He's just kind of. And the other problem is he's
not, he's not humorless. This is a big bug bear of mine.
Obviously, you know, if you're funny, you're not art.
And he was very, very funny. And you can't.
You're not allowed to do both. Yeah, in that documentary,
either you or somebody quotes Kenneth Tynan actually about
talking about Ian Eskew. That says, what's it something
like? If you've seen all of his plays,
you've seen. When you've seen all of Ian
Esco's plays, you've seen one of them.
It's one of my fights every day. And what would it have been like
to get spend an afternoon at a pub with John Mortimer and
Pinter and and F Simpson? It would have been they're
they're so I, I never met Pinter, but you hear stories.
The three of them were so unlike as people.
You know, there's something quite like Wally NF Simpson was
a was a, was a teacher for years and he's got that kind of, you
know, the English teacher you really like vibe about it.
And John Mortimer is Rumpel. He's basically more Sherry.
I don't mind. And Pinter's kind of steely and
frightening. So they were, you know, you
pretty much got all of English drama there in the 1950s.
I watched the film version of The Birthday Party.
Oh, right, I'm not very good on Pinter, I'm afraid.
It was, it was interesting, Yeah.
It's unlike Simpsons. So, so many extended periods of
silence and just people glaring at each other silently.
That's the thing. The Pinter pause.
He's kind of gone down in history, not so much with the
quotes, but for the bits where no one says anything.
You've had this beautiful technique of substitution.
It doesn't seem like substitution, really.
These juxtapositions are funny because they are, you know, it's
like weird juxtapositions. They're only weird because we're
not in the habit of of of linking them together.
So as he was sort of saying in a way, that rabbit hutches and
their majesty of heaven are fairly interchangeable.
Well, yeah. That reminds me of the onset of
original paren's breakdown in the beginning of fallen rise of
original paren where he he starts using the word parsnip
instead of kind of randomly instead of whatever word should
be in the sentence. And when people tell him what he
said, he just says, well, what's it matter?
You know, writing desk parsnip, What's the difference really?
And that's a very NF Simpson point of view.
In fact, he just presents this complete alternative template
for thinking and reacting, which is deadpan, absolutely deadpan,
but at the same time kind of gloriously nonsensical.
Jonathan Coe, who's been a guest again on In your documentary, he
mentions the Fall and Rise original parent David Nobbs,
influenced by NF Simpson. And David Nobbs admitted that as
well. He he also said that he took
Wally's thing of the disconnect, the apparently not connected
adjective, the noun like a resounding tinkle, an upward
fall. And his first book was called
the Itinerant Nobs. His first book was called the
Itinerant Lodger. So he was hugely influenced by
him. There's also a bit of Tom
Stoppard. Tom Stoppard I met and he told
me that he thought Ennis Simpson was great.
And this is my bit boring except for the fans in a resounding
tinkle, the long version. There's a bunch of critics who
sit outside the play and comment on it as it's going on.
And that device is used in Stoppard's The Real Inspector
Hound. So while he's influence, it
really runs through things. It's not shouted about.
It's kind of buried, but he's he's there.
He's an important part of comedy and drama.
Sylvia at the end of the film we've got her and Stan having
this kiss in the hall. Yeah.
And she breaks the 4th wall. She stares straight into the
camera and says I don't know why you don't go and stand outside
Buckman Palace of the Taj Mahal. Gulp at that instead.
It's a great line because it just, it breaks the 4th wall in
a completely pointless way. You know, it's not like Breck.
It doesn't run through the play. People don't keep addressing the
the audience. It's just once.
In fact, the end of the film is really beautiful.
I'm not sure how much that's Wally that you've got the lovely
scene of Mona Washbourne with this, her fantastic, slightly
simple smile, just smiling beatifically out of the window.
That, you know, we leave this mad family on quite a high note.
To outer space by moonlight on roller skates.
Oh, it's just such a great line. She's the Buzz Lightyear of
English drama and. Julia Foster with Sylvia and and
Ken Farrington understand they're both still with us as
well. You know, just that's.
Fantastic. Julia Foster I mean, I have this
great theory. I probably mentioned it, that
the Carry On films were an evil black hole because they took so
much British talent and just shoved it into the stupid thing.
And Julia Foster, she's gorgeous in this film.
I don't know why they don't all go and stand outside Buckingham
Palace or the Taj Mahal or something.
Look all but that instead. The film was fairly lukewarm in
terms of the critical reception, although one reviewer I I I
noted said director Peter Yates is dead right to film these
goonish goings on in a style of utter style of utter matter of
factness. The zigzag sequiturs and verbal
vivisections of Mr. Simpson's dialogue need no embellishment,
actually. That's a nice review.
Zigzag Sequiturs. I like that, Mike.
Yeah. I mean, it's in that it's nice
that it was made at that time because it's in that Richard
Lester universe. It's in that Spike Milligan
universe. It it's stands next to them.
It's not part of that world, but it does fit.
If you were doing a British comedy Film Festival of the 60s,
you could put that with Hard Day's Night and the Goon Movies,
such as they are. See, I would have had Milligan
down as being a fan and, and even a friend of because, you
know, I, I would have imaged because Milligan used to make
friends with everybody he was friends with Robert Graves, for
example. I would have thought he would
have been the, the sort of, you know, NF Simpson would have been
right up Spike St. in terms of forming a, a bond in a, in a, in
a friendship. But I've not been able to find
any anything that suggests that Milligan and he ever met or
spoke or anything, which is surprising.
No, nor have I, I can only, I mean, my only answer to that is
hypothetical, which is they're working almost in the same area,
which tends to make people move away from each other rather than
towards. But I don't think they, I don't
think they would have benefited much from working together, you
know, or from because they're doing the same thing in their
own way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And Eric, I just saw an interview with Eric Sykes during
the filming of this in 64. And he didn't say much about the
film itself. He was talking about his career
in general. But he did say, I mean, he was
very glowing about the film in your documentary.
But he but when he was interviewed on set, he said the
film is the first comedy of its kind, but people will think it's
abnormal. There's no delinquent son or
daughter on the streets or mother who's a shoplifter.
So some sharp social commentary there from Eric.
I would say there is a delinquent son.
Yeah, I, it's, it's just occurred to me that I, yeah, I
had Eric Sykes autobiography, but I don't remember what he
says about his only starring moving role, movie role, which
is interesting. Yeah, he made a few films around
this time where he was second build if you like, but he's not,
I don't know with Eric Sykes. I don't think he's got enough
range to be A to to have been a great movie style or movie
actor, but he's got the he was the perfect casting.
I think I'm trying to who was The Who was The Who was the
Arthur character in the play? I'm just having a quick look.
It was George Benson who not the singer, but.
Oh, wouldn't it be great? Do not know George Benson and I
imagine any attempt to be to Google George Benson actor.
Oh when I recognize him that he was born in 1911 from in
Cardiff. I'm trying to see what
filmography give me two seconds. That's fine.
He was in films called the man from Toronto holiday lovers.
Keep it 1932. He starts off.
He's in the pure hell of Saint Trinians and the Great St.
Trinians Train Robbery. Oh, I'm the private.
He's Inspector Lestrade in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
Oh, I. Love that film.
Don't you love that film? Pretty cool.
Yeah, It's big Jonathan. That's a big Jonathan Coe
favorite, that one. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that's the for me, that's the best depiction of
Watson on film or TVI think Colin Blakely is brilliant in
that. Colin Blakely brings a certain
kind of rage to it. You, you know, suddenly go mad
and start beating people up. At well, at one point he thinks
wrongly. He thinks that that Holmes has
compromised a lady's virtue and calls him an unspeakable CAD.
And was such a pleasure. I love it.
Shocking behaviour. So, David, thank you again for
coming back to talk about this. It's as I said, it's, I think
it's on YouTube. I've got a personal copy of the
film. It is available certainly on
YouTube, I think, and it's, it's well worth an afternoon viewing.
But you have to you, you can't just watch it and be looking at
your phone or anything like that.
You, you, you have to totally concentrate.
It pays off for that concentration, that's for sure.
And if you're a Goons fan, if you're a Python fan, which if
you listen to this, why wouldn't you be, then I think you, you,
you'd be all about this film. So, so thanks for, for, for
coming on to talk about it. And, and what are you doing at
the moment? I know there's a there's a new
series of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Austen?
That's right, a radio series starring French and Saunders.
And I've got a short story collection now called And Other
Stories. I actually wrote a story once
based on The Woman Who Eats Everything.
Is the idea that you would now in the modern age, well, maybe a
few years ago now, you would employ somebody to come around
and watch all your saved television for you because
everybody's got that hard disk that needs to be cleared of 9
million episodes of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones and just
employing someone to come around and watch your TV.
So. And yeah, I did just want to
say, Tyler, thanks for featuring NS Simpson in this, because I
very much feel like someone who's doing publicity for his
legacy, and it's great that you've featured it.
Well, my pleasure. And as I said before we started
recording, I think I'd never really, I'd probably heard of
him, but I'd never really until you mentioned them to me
originally. And then I watched clips of the
film at the time and then I've watched it now in its entirety
and I definitely do want to seek out more.
I, I did watch the I have watched the, the Klees and
Rushton comedy Playhouse. I have watched that and I have
obviously watched the Crown Court, but I want to seek out
more. And oh, just one thing I wanted
to ask you. What's happening with with your
podcast The Old Fools? Thank you for asking.
We're we're trying to re float it so hopefully it's coming back
soon. And that's the two of you.
It's you and Ian Martin. That's right.
And but you always have a female guest.
We always have a variety of female guests to keep the world
on its even keel. Yes, and one of the things that
intrigues me, and I love it, is from what I've seen, the lost
films of Hollywood. Yes, that's the calendar we've
run out where I had the idea of what if loads of famous films
like When Harry Met Sally and The Matrix.
What if they were remakes of earlier films?
And I had the idea years ago and then it occurred to me the other
day that if these we made posters for these films, it
would actually be much funnier. So I asked Chris Barker, who's
the king of this sort of thing, and we made a sold out calendar
and I've got more plans. I'm hoping to do postcards with
Chris and maybe another calendar next year.
Oh, they're brilliant, beautiful works of art.
They're gorgeous. Chris has done such a great job
and if you Google Lost Films of Hollywood you will find on
Kickstarter a nice video showing you all the funny posters.
Very good. Excellent.
Well, thank you again, David, and thank you all for listening.
Next week, we are talking about two episodes of This Is Your
Life featuring Spike Milligan. So watch out for that.
So until then, please keep rating and reviewing and I will
see you next time. See you soon.
Bye.