Four Years of Carry On Blogging!

It's not Brexit Day, it's Carry On Blogging day. Well something like that. Four years ago today I came to the random decision to write a blog about my love of the classic Carry On series of British film comedies. It wasn't part of a strategic plan and I certainly didn't have a Backstop, Matron!

I had tweeted through the @CarryOnJoan account for a year or so and thoroughly enjoyed the interaction with other Carry On fans. It all took off far faster than I ever dared to imagine and I now have 18.6K followers. Moving from 140 odd characters to thought-through blog pieces on all manner of things was a big step though but I'm ever so glad I did it. It is a proper labour of love and sometimes real life does get in the way of all the fun but four years later I'm still at it ;)

The main reason I keep blogging is the interaction it leads to with fellow fans on the internet every day. The internet has perhaps become an increasingly dark and dodgy place but my involvement with it through Carry On Blogging has been (nearly always) a complete and utter joy. 

So four years in, I've nearly 19 thousand followers on Twitter and I've published the best part of 2000 original blog posts. At times it's been a deeply personal take on the Carry On films and how they affected me as I grew up and why I treasure them still. As a fan, writing these blogs on my laptop in my pyjamas, it's quite extraordinary that the blog has enabled me to interview the likes of Valerie Leon, Robin Askwith, Judy Matheson, Juliet Mills, Julian Holloway, Elke Sommer and Patricia Franklin. And through the blog I've met and interviewed superb people like Morris Bright, Amanda Barrie, Fenella Fielding, Madeline Smith and Anita Harris. Not bad for a boy who used to collect Cinema Club VHS tapes from the Woolies Bargain Bin! 

I was thinking about the Carry Ons and their legacy quite seriously recently following my interview with the fantastic journalist and broadcaster Samira Ahmed. Samira is a fan of some of the films and certainly many of the actors and yet she also struggles with aspects of their content, when viewed with a modern eye. The most troubling comment Samira made was regarding the future lifespan of the films. She questioned whether the Carry Ons would survive in the consciousness of the nation. Do they have such a collective cultural pull that they will always be cherished and never forgotten? Until Samira raised that issue I confess I hadn't given it that much thought. I am sure generations to come will not understand the humour or recognise the ever so talented faces who brought the films so brilliantly to life. That makes me sad but that's life and time is passing. 

Sadly the Carry Ons are mainly mentioned these days when one of the actors who appeared in them passes away. Last year we lost far too many familiar Cary On faces and for me, with the death of Dame June Whitfield in December, we really did reach the end of an era. Despite this I think it's important to continue cherishing our rich comedy heritage in this country. I started this blog mainly as a tribute to the tremendous Carry On actresses and supporting actors who never really got the credit they deserved either at the time or within their lifetimes. Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Patsy Rowlands, Peter Gilmore, Esma Cannon, Peter Butterworth, Bernard Bresslaw, Amelia Bayntun, Joan Hickson, Bill Maynard, Dilys Laye…the list goes on. I loved them all and although the vast majority are now long gone, they still feel so very much with us thanks to their gloriously big, colourful, comic performances in the Carry Ons. They deserve to be remembered so fondly and I will continue to do so. 

So forget Brexit, if only for the day, and pick out your favourite Carry On film. Stick it in the DVD player or whatever fiendish device you own, sit back, relax and enjoy a Britain that never really existed but goodness, wouldn't it have been nice if it had? What will I be watching? I think on this weird old day, a bit of Carry On Up The Khyber feels just about perfect.

Carry On, and thanks for all the fun.

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

Bernie Carries On … as Arthur Upmore

Over the past year I have written a series of blogs covering each of the roles of some of our favourite Carry On stars. I began my looking back at each film role played by the three leading ladies in the series - Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques and Barbara Windsor - and most recently I've written about all of Kenneth Connor's Carry On performances in the run up to the great man's centenary. 

Today I am continuing a new strand of this series by turning the spotlight on that gentle giant of British comedy, the late Bernard Bresslaw. Probably one of the most under-rated actors in the main team, Bernard was a part of the series for ten years and fourteen films, tackling a superb range of crumbling villains and delightfully dimwitted foils to the likes of Sid James and Kenneth Cope. Bernard enjoyed a long career away from the Carry Ons and spent much of his later life wowing audiences in legitimate theatre. However he will forever to remembered for his clutch of hilarious Carry On supporting turns. 

Bernard joined the Carry On team in the mid 1960s and along with Peter Butterworth was the last main team member to join the gang. Along with Butterworth, Bernard played a series of smaller, supporting roles to begin with before graduating to major roles towards the end of the decade. Bernard fitted in effortlessly with the rest of the team and he's the kind of actor who is working hard but making it look oh so easy. A quiet, erudite, thoughtful family man away from the film studios, I often think Bresslaw has never received the credit he's due as like Connor and Butterworth, he didn't ever seek the limelight or splash his life over the front pages.

So today, we'll bring this series of blogs to an end with my thoughts on Bernard's last role in the Carry On film series, as Arthur Upmore in 1975's Carry On Behind. 

In 1975, after the departure of so many of the leading lights from the series (James, Jacques, Windsor and writer Talbot Rothwell) what was left of the gang reconvened for an update on the classic Carry On Camping. In Carry On Behind, several familiar looking characters went off for a summer holiday at a caravan park. As with Camping, Behind was filmed not in summer but in the early spring so the weather was less than pleasant for all involved - the mud and freezing temperatures clearly visible for most of the film!

Behind is a real hotchpotch of sitcom sequences with no real storyline to speak of - just a bunch of English eccentrics delighting in some increasingly filthy innuendos! Unlike some of the period costume Carry Ons, Behind, set in the grimy world of the mid-1970s really hasn't aged well but lovers of seventies kitch will adore it! I admit I have a real soft spot for this film and it's become something of a guilty pleasure. For me it  is the last proper Carry On ever made. It's certainly much more naughty than previous efforts with much more obvious sexual references and a fair sprinkling of nudity. The whole thing feels much more like a Confessions film, and you can tell Peter Rogers was trying to keep the Carry Ons up to speed with the latest developments at the box office. 

The film features a mix of old faces and newcomers and it is really the cast which carries the film home. As well as regulars Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Jack Douglas, Bernard Bresslaw, Peter Butterworth, Joan Sims and Patsy Rowlands, I also really enjoy the performances from the likes of Windsor Davies, Carol Hawkins, Ian Lavender, Sherrie Hewson and of course, international guest star Elke Sommer. 

So what about Bernard's role in the film? Well with the absence of some big names Bernard is front and centre as one of Behind's biggest and most bankable stars. Indeed only Kenneth Williams and international guest star Elke Sommer are billed above him. In many ways Bernard provides the anchor for this Carry On last gasp. The threesome of Bernard, Patsy Rowlands and Joan Sims as middle class couple and interfering mother in law is the reassuring sitcom centre to the film and gives us a last chance to see three of our favourite Carry On actors working together and clearly enjoying themselves. Although Joan is given another forgettable shrewish part, playing a character much older than she actually was at the time, the fact she's mainly seen with Bernard and Patsy makes it easier to accept. And Bernard and Patsy are brilliant as husband and wife, surely a sitcom pairing that was begging to be put on the small screen?

As with most Carry Ons, there isn't that much of a storyline and for large chunks of this Carry On Camping re-tread Bernie clearly misses his old sparring partner Sid James. As the everyman of the piece, Bernard is wide eyed and relatively innocent at the bizarre, innuendo encrusted goings on around him and has no idea where to put himself when the likes of Elke Sommer and Adrienne Posta come to call! Of course Patsy, as on screen wife Linda, is always there to catch him in the act of something suspicious even though he's always entirely innocent. 

Much of the humour of their situation is drilled from the arrival of Joan's foul mouthed mynah bird, with vocals from the director Gerald Thomas. Joan, in an early incarnation of the indignant Hyacinth Bucket persona, is never convinced her bird would say anything as crude  as the things it actually comes away with. While this leads to several nicely set up comic misunderstandings, the material is pretty flimsy for such gifted comic actors to work with. Given the fact Behind started to push the boundaries, as Dick had the previous year, the likes of Bernard, Patsy and Joan begin to look slightly out of place. An island of calm in the middle of sea of blue gags and flashes of nudity and crudity. I'm glad they were there as they gave the film some much needed heart, but sadly for two of the actors present it would be their last Carry On with the gang.

I don't really know if Bernard ever went on the record with a reason why Behind was his last Carry On film. I'm not sure if he was offered a part in either England on Emmannuelle. Certainly he continued to appear with the team in the Carry On Laughing series for ATV, also broadcast in 1975, but his Carry On film career came to an end with this entry. The death of Sid James the following April may have made Bernard think twice about appearing in Carry On England as the two were good friends on screen and off. Whatever the reason, Bernard is most definitely missed in the remaining Carry On films, although perhaps given the quality of the last two efforts, he made the right decision not to appear. Patsy Rowlands also made Behind her last association with the team. Although never a main team player, hovering up and down the cast lists, Patsy was an intrinsic and much loved actor and any film without her left a big gap.

The end of Carry On Behind does provide some old fashioned Carry On satisfaction. Warring couples are reunited and everyone ends up happily paired off. The Upmores are seen leaving the campsite happy once more. Joan's Daphne has reunited with her long lost husband Henry (Peter Butterworth). As a note to go out on, it's warm and satisfying. Although in retrospect it really was the end of an era.

I hope you've enjoyed this blog series looking back at all fourteen of Bernard Bresslaw's Carry On contributions. Bernard really was the gentle giant of British comedy. A solid, reliable and very clever actor, Bresslaw has often been overlooked. I hope this series of blogs has shone the light on just how important his contributions were to the Carry On team and just what a superb comedy actor he was.

Stay tuned soon for my next series of blogs looking at all sixteen of Peter Butterworth's Carry on roles. 2019 marks Peter's centenary so what better time to look back at this brilliant actor and his superb work with the team?

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

Carry On at 60 in The Telegraph

With the Carry On films turning 60 years young this year there has been a rather subdued flurry of articles about our favourite series of films in the press. I've just come across one of these, written by Andy Roberts for The Telegraph. 

I always read such pieces with trepidation as I hope the writer is going to treat the films and their long departed stars fairly. And I think, on the whole, Mr Roberts does just that. It's a very interesting piece which describes the very best and the very worst of the Carry Ons in glorious detail. 

While Roberts claims that the majority of the well-known cast of actors did their best work elsewhere, he does state that the films would have been nothing without their talents and there I wholeheartedly agree with him. Despite Peter Rogers claiming, as Roberts repeats, that the title Carry On was the star, we all know that wasn't true. It was those loyal, underpaid yet beautifully skilled comedy actors that kept as and indeed keep us coming back for more.

Andy Roberts flags up Norman Hudis for particular praise, believing that his first six films in the series were well written for the actors engaged to play his parts. I was also pleased to see actors such as Peter Butterworth and Patsy Rowlands given plenty of credit for their delightful contributions over the years. So often actors like Peter and Patsy are missed out in tributes. Roberts also pays tributes to the likes of Imogen Hassall, Jacki Piper and Elke Sommer and I'm so glad he has.

And he ends the piece with mention of my favourite Carry On of all time. You can read the article in full here although you may need to register with the site first. It's definitely worth a read.


You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

Bernie Carries On … As Gripper Burke!

Over the past year I have written a series of blogs covering each of the roles of some of our favourite Carry On stars. I began my looking back at each film role played by the three leading ladies in the series - Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques and Barbara Windsor - and most recently I've written about all of Kenneth Connor's Carry On performances in the run up to the great man's centenary. 

Today I am continuing a new strand of this series by turning the spotlight on that gentle giant of British comedy, the late Bernard Bresslaw. Probably one of the most under-rated actors in the main team, Bernard was a part of the series for ten years and fourteen films, tackling a superb range of crumbling villains and delightfully dimwitted foils to the likes of Sid James and Kenneth Cope. Bernard enjoyed a long career away from the Carry Ons and spent much of his later life wowing audiences in legitimate theatre. However he will forever to remembered for his clutch of hilarious Carry On supporting turns. 

Bernard joined the Carry On team in the mid 1960s and along with Peter Butterworth was the last main team member to join the gang. Along with Butterworth, Bernard played a series of smaller, supporting roles to begin with before graduating to major roles towards the end of the decade. Bernard fitted in effortlessly with the rest of the team and he's the kind of actor who is working hard but making it look oh so easy. A quiet, erudite, thoughtful family man away from the film studios, I often think Bresslaw has never received the credit he's due as like Connor and Butterworth, he didn't ever seek the limelight or splash his life over the front pages.

So today, we'll continue this new series looking at Bernard's role as the grunting, snarling wrestler Gripper Burke in the 1970 film Carry On Loving.

By 1970 times were most certainly a changing. The cosy postwar years which launched the Carry Ons were long gone and everything was a lot more liberated and up front, as it were. After nearly twelve years of hit films, the Carry On team were still at the top of their game but perhaps there was felt to be a need to adapt and change to maintain their position at the top of the comedy charts? Carry On Loving saw an attempt at this. Basically Loving is a saucy seventies tribute to Norman Hudis' classic 1961 film Carry On Regardless. Instead of the Helping Hands Agency of the earlier film, this 1970 update saw Talbot Rothwell set the film at the Wedded Bliss Matrimonial Agency, run by Sid and Sophie Bliss. Loving even saw the outside of the Wedded Bliss Agency filmed on the same location in Windsor that had been used for Regardless almost a decade earlier.

Sid James and Hattie Jacques are the stars of Loving, running through the hotch potch action and large cast of favourites. Sid and Hattie had tremendous chemistry which had been honed as far back as the Hancock shows in the 1950s. They first appeared together as a romantic duo in Carry On Constable in 1960 with further double acts in the likes of Carry On Cabby in 1963. Although my favourite Sid pairing is with Joan Sims, Sid and Hattie were also very believable as husband and wife. Sid and Hattie provide the backbone for all the youthful, romantic antics in Loving. Peter Rogers brought in a number of fresh young faces to balance out the more established stars such as Joan Sims, Charles Hawtrey, Bernard Bresslaw and Kenneth Williams. In the likes of Richard O'Callaghan, Jacki Piper, Imogen Hassall and Julian Holloway, had Peter found the foundations of the next generation of Carry On stars?

Well not quite, although all but Imogen would return for more films. Terry Scott was also on board bridging the gap between younger cast and the more mature stars. Hattie's main interactions in the film are with Sid, Kenneth and Charles. Her nemesis was Joan Sims as the object of Sid's affections, Esme Crowfoot. Of course Hattie and Joan were the best of friends in real life but they made for the best of adversaries in this Carry On, although sadly they don't get to share much screen time. 

So what about Bernard's role in the film? Well I think this is probably Bernard's smallest role in all of his fourteen Carry Ons. It's pretty much a cameo role and he only really makes his first appearance around half way through the picture. Much like his other film cameo of 1970, as the wrestler in Frankie Howerd's Up Pompeii, Bernard is on grandstanding form as a picture of hulking, brutish, potent masculinity! Gripper, returning from his travels, hopes to pick up where he left off with girlfriend Esme Crowfoot (Joan Sims). However in his absence Sidney Bliss (Sid James) has started sniffing round and they are pretty much caught in flagrante delicto. As poor Esme tries to calm a snarling Gripper, Sid makes for the exit dressed in Esme's frillies, down her back entrance, as it were. Sadly for the innocent abroad in all this, Bertie Muffett, he picks this moment to turn up looking for a date with Esme. This gives Bernie a chance to throw some shapes as he tosses a stunt double Bertie round Esme's very seventies flat! 

Bernard makes his next appearance much later in the film, as an unwitting accomplice to the cunning Sidney Bliss! After his common law wife Sophie (Jacques) takes up with the snooty Percival Snooper (Kenneth Williams - who else) Sid plots to get Sophie back. Sending an unsuspecting Esme round to Snooper's all dolled up and be-cleavaged, Sophie takes off after catching Esme ripping off Percival's trousers to reveal a rather fetching pair of bright orange boxer shorts! As Esme makes with the seduction techniques, in bursts Gripper who attacks Snooper! Which brings us to one of my favourite scenes in the entire film, as Patsy Rowlands storms in, playing Snooper's lovestruck housekeeper and teaches Gripper a few new moves!

It's a lovely moment and provides yet another dollop of pure farce but it's expertly played by some of our finest comedy actors. Poor Bernie plays the hapless Gripper with a combination of pure grunting butch and comedic thicker and it's yet another role he could easily have phoned in had he wished. Of course a talented, committed professional like Bresslaw would never do such a thing which is why, much like Charles Hawtrey in Up The Jungle, Bernard's small role in Loving almost steals the film.

Bresslaw makes one final appearance in Carry On Loving and it's as part of the climatic wedding reception cake fight scene. It's actually Gripper Burke who sets the events in motion as he spots Sid's suit as the one drying in Esme's flat! Before he can properly kick off, Esme clouts him one with the end of a champagne bottle. Too late though, as all hell breaks loose! Bernie is last seen as the final credits role, been beaten over the head by a baguette wielding Hattie Jacques!

Sure Bernard had better roles in the series and certainly bigger ones, but I love his snarling turn as wrestler Gripper Burke. I don't know why it wasn't a bigger part (I'm sure someone out there can tell me what else Bernard was working on at the time) but as ever I'm just glad to see him as part of the cast.

So those are my thoughts on Bernard's role in Carry On Loving. Stay tuned for my next blog in this series, as I look back at Bernard's role in Carry On At Your Convenience!

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

Guest Blog: Carrying On Historically with Carry On Henry

In this fabulous guest blog, regular blog reader Deborah Osborne writes about the historical aspects of the brilliant 1970 Carry On comedy, Carry On Henry. So how historically accurate was Henry or was it, as the film itself suggests, all cobblers! Read on to find out:

As a history lover the costume Carry Ons have always been some of my favourites. Part of that attraction is seeing how the past is presented in films that don't have to take themselves seriously.

I chose Carry on Henry for this post because the Tudors have always been some of the main historical players in our cultural identity and there have been a number of popular screen adaptations that were contemporary with Carry On Henry (specifically Anne of a Thousands Days which lent costumes to Henry) and recently, most notably Wolf Hall in 2015.

However in a world where Hilary Mantel’s portrayal of Thomases Cromwell and Moore are criticised, how accurate can a comedy be? Especially when the film itself opens by freely admitting that it is ‘all cobblers’.

The film starts with Patsy Rowlands beautifully playing a queen about to lose her head. We never find out which of Henry's six canon queens she is. (Possibly Anne Boleyn? But I challenge anyone to make this fit the rest of the film).

Which queen is not as important as the fact that everybody knows Henry VIII had six wives and executed some of them. In the same way everyone will recognise the names Cromwell and Woolsey, and know that Henry was having trouble Rome.

There are enough ‘facts’ in Henry to make it feel familiar and comfortable, even though those facts have all been screwed out of sequence and then melted down in the same pot. We can still recognise the flavour of the past and slide into the scenery like it's a well worn jacket.

The film plays on what we think we know and enables us to share the joke by pushing that to the very extreme of sanity. Henry and Cromwell don't even wait for Queen Patsy’s head to hit the scaffold before they are dashing through the tower to attend Henry's next wedding to Queen Marie, played by the glorious Joan Sims. Barely married a day and Henry is already plotting divorce.

This is also true of Sid James as Henry himself, which appears in the Independent’s 2015 top eight portrayals of the monarch along with Damien Lewis and Homer Simpson(!). There is bluster, overturned tables and summary executions a plenty, while at the same time Henry never really seems to be the one in control. It is great fun to see a Henry who is constantly being out maneuvered by the women (and lackeys) he is seeking to intimidate.  

There are some huge historical whoppers in Carry on Henry (Fawkes and his gunpowder, not to mention two extra queens) but equally there are some moments that make the film’s backdrop feel almost authentic.

There are several scenes between Cromwell and Woolsey that reek of (as well as lampoon) the conspiracy, intrigue and corruption traditionally associated with the Tudor Court.

My favourite bit is after Henry has married Marie, without seeing her face, and he asks Cromwell how she looks. I'd love this to be a nod towards the story of Anne of Cleves being misrepresented to Henry by Cromwell and the incident that contributed to his eventual execution.

Then again, perhaps it is all cobblers after all?

Thanks very much to Deborah for taking the time to write and submit this fascinating post. You can follow Deborah on Twitter @deboraheosborne. 

And if you fancy having a bash at a guest blog all of your own, drop me a direct message on Twitter and we'll have a chat! 

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram