The absolute very first time I saw a Carry On film was probably on telly in the 70s. I’m pretty sure it was ‘Up the Khyber’ which, at the time, I may not have realised was cockney rhyming slang and, to be fair, I probably wouldn’t have understood it even if I did. I remember my older sister laughing at the name but let's hope that was because she was studying Central Asian geopolitics at the time.
The Carry On films were created by British production teams at Pinewood Studios, featuring (very) British actors & locations and aimed fairly & squarely at British audiences who found humour in everyday situations but particularly those which involved going to the toilet. There were no token Hollywood actresses to cynically appeal to the cinema-going public across the pond (you know who you are Richard ‘Four Weddings/Notting Hill’ Curtis) and the films weren’t trying to make a social statement or lecture us on how to behave – they were just trying to make us laugh. I know, naïve or what?
Our folks had several years of the franchise under their belts but us young kids growing up in the 70s were totally unprepared for the Carry On innuendo. The raunchiest stuff we'd seen on telly before then was Brian Cant flirting with Toni Arthur on Play School, Florence hitting on Dylan in Magic Roundabout and John Noakes, Peter Purves & Valerie Singleton....well, let's not go into what they got up to once the Blue Peter cameras stopped rolling.
The Carry On franchise has now been firmly consigned to the culture dustbin by today’s liberal elite who, thankfully, are helping us hoi polloi work out what we’re allowed to watch – we simply can’t be trusted otherwise and it would be carnage. I sneakily saw a few re-runs recently (I closed the lounge curtains and turned the volume down, obviously). They were Cleo, Screaming, Nurse, Khyber and Camping (yes I know, a dose of COVID gave me a little more free time than I was expecting). I think I may have been committing a non-crime hate crime – whatever one of those is - so I’m relying on you not to spill the beans (which, according to the Beano’s Bash Street Kids, is what all school children did or didn’t do in the 70s).
To be fair, we’ve all been conditioned to believe that the films were several degrees worse than 'video nasties' (which used to be horrific enough to be the target of a Daily Mail campaign but are now considered so mundane that they're just called 'videos') and I was expecting a torrent of misogynistic jibes but was surprised at how many of the jokes were either aimed at the blokes or were simply bad puns.
‘You stood on my Indian dress’. ‘Sari’. ‘Don’t mention it’.
‘Somebody tried to shoot me in the Schnitzelstrasse’ ‘Oh, that sounds painful’.
‘The Professor’s injured. He’s bleeding terrible’ ‘Never mind his qualifications, is he hurt badly?’
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ ‘Not at all’ (Fenella Fielding's vampire then gently combusts)
‘Infamy infamy, they’ve all got it infamy’
‘I’m taking this cow to the bull’ ‘Couldn’t your father do it?’ ‘No, it must be the bull’
‘Doctor, please I want to be wooed’ ‘You can be as wude as you like’
It was actually the James Bond films at the time (in the days before 007 got in touch with his feminine side and grew a social conscience about killing and shagging) which had far more suggestive exchanges. ‘I’m Plenty O’Toole’ ‘Named after your father perhaps?’ or ‘My name is Pussy Galore’ ‘I must be dreaming’. In fact, if you didn’t know the Bond references, you’d probably have guessed they were Carry On quotes but the actual names which Sid & the gang took on were far tamer: Dr Tinkle, Private Widdle, Khasi of Kalabar, WC Boggs (he ran a toilet manufacturers). The nearest they got to the racy Bond character names were Dr Nookey and Arthur Upmore, bless them.
This time round, I may not have cried with laughter as I did when I first saw the films but they brought back happy memories of watching them together with the whole family (I’ve told you before – 1 telly, 3 channels, no choice) and then practising our Kenneth Williams ‘ooh, matron’ impressions and the Sid James dirty laugh. I had to work particularly hard at Sid’s cackle because I tended to come over a bit Muttley. Mum, on the other hand, got it down to a tee which in hindsight is more than a little disconcerting.
Watching them again reminded me of those unenlightened days when we’d chuckle at things which were mildly offensive rather than report them to the police and roar with laughter at the ridiculous attempts Bernard Bresslaw and Sid James made to find a way to sneak into women-only spaces like changing rooms and dorms, little knowing how much easier that would become just a few decades later.
Apparently, I’ve been to many of the production locations without even realising it because they had to be within a minibus ride of the Pinewood Studio complex near Slough (to save a few bob rather than the planet but at least that celeb generation didn't fly around in private jets and then lecture us on cutting our carbon emissions). A park in Gerrards Cross was transformed into Ancient Rome for Cleo by adding, well, they didn’t actually make any changes at all - it just looked like a park in Gerrards Cross plonked at the end of the Forum. I’ve also had the pleasure of a finger being introduced to a place where fingers are rarely meant to venture in the same hospital where Charles Hawtrey received similar treatment in one of the Doctor films (“oh hello” indeed).
There were 29 films released over 20 years and they made Sid, the 2 Kenneths, Charles, Joan, Babs, Bernard and Hattie household names. Only the last few of the releases could be described as uncomfortably smutty, not just by the Twitterati (predictably) but also by the rest of us normal folk who somehow manage to avoid sending hate mail to JK Rowling. Those ones were indeed the cinematic equivalent of some of the less subtle seaside postcards which showed buxom women complaining about police officers wielding dangerous weapons or telling off car mechanics for inspecting their rear ends.
By that time though, the franchise was well past its prime and it seems hugely unfair for critics to hold these last few up as examples of the entire genre. You can almost hear that nasal whine from the grave of Kenneth Williams - if his ashes weren't scattered over East Finchley crematorium that is - crying 'infamy, infamy they've all got it infamy'.
Next and last: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...SCHOOLDAYS IN THE 70s & 80s
If you like this blog, please take a look elsewhere on the website (here) for similar nostalgic takes on Grease, mixed tapes, Magic Roundabout and the Young Ones amongst others.
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