Whacko!

It seems a long while since I watched this series. Come to think of it, it was a long while ago! Jimmy Edwards, better known at the time, perhaps, for his radio series "The Glums", is the archetypal scheming Headmaster of an impoverished second-rate private (public in UK) school. I recall, now nearly fifty years later, the episode in which the school appropriates the Eton Boating Song, Jimmy Edwards adding his own (similar) words. The song had become popular on the hit parades of the time. I still chuckle at the "new electives" that the headmaster proposed to update the curriculum: Advanced Fly Fishing, Perfume Blending, and Steamroller Maintenance. As a school principal myself many years later, I sometimes quoted these course titles in staff meetings. In the 1970s, young members of staff thought I was balmy. By the 1990s, these titles could be taken quite seriously as worthwhile subjects, more relevant than many of the "real" subjects. I can't recall any of the supporting cast having very significant careers, except for Mr Dinwiddie who went on to become Young Mister Grace in "Are You Being Served?" The writers, Frank Muir and Dennis Norden, were renown for the many TV and radio series that they produced.

The previous comment suggested the supporting cast hadn't done much else. Not quite so. Arthur Howard (brother of the more famous Leslie), who played downtrodden Mr Pettigrew, already had a long acting career on stage and in film, including the famous Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico. Edwin Apps, who played Mr Halliwell, went on to write, with his wife Pauline Devaney, the sitcom All Gas and Gaiters, which ran for five years on BBC. (The two used the pseudonym John Wraith.)

The show was produced live in the Shepherd's Bush Empire, which entailed a lot of problems with scene changes. A black curtain screened off the side of the stage not in use from the audience, and Muir and Norden had to write all the scenes long enough to enable the scene-shifters to get the next set ready - a major restriction in a half-hour show.

One of the most famous gags concerned an auditor trying to nail the venal and slippery headmaster. The auditor is shocked by an entry reading "To school sports day - 50 crates". "You served alcohol at the school sports?" he asks. "No, no," replies Jim; "those were book prizes. It's Pettigrew's handwriting, dreadful.. that's not '50 crates', it's 'Socrates'."

I used to enjoy watching Whacko! with the inimitable Jimmy Edwards as the star attraction, the BBC repeated episodes made years before (1956-1960) throughout the '60's. There was a last colour series made in '71/'72, but I can't remember much about that – either the episodes weren't very good or the zeitgeist had gone by then. Whacko! is in the same boat as the Billy Bunter TV series is – the times and mores have almost completely vanished and the BBC as the voice of the state for political correctness refuses to release any of the surviving episodes, except maybe to Universities for their august dissection.

The Pools Win first broadcast 1960 seventh series: The headmaster of Chiselbury School for the sons of gentlefolk is pouring his pint of bitter for breakfast and chucking all the bills away when he finds he's won £38,000 on the football pools. After a mad half minute he realises it's really his wimpish no. 2 Mr. Pettigrew (played by Arthur Howard) who's won it. Rather than let him give it all away to his favourite charity Jim decides to make him sample The Fleshpots to try to change his mind … Did Pettigrew "feel the bubbles go up his hooter" or not? Cheaply made to be sure, but more than making up for it with witty dialogue and delightful main characterisations by writers Frank Muir and Denis Norden. It's the usual tour de force performance from Jim, with his seedy cynicism and yet just-in-time optimism somehow always made you root for him instead of the boys he was sometimes compelled to thrash so soundly. Nobody was thrashed in this episode which was probably the only reason the BBC showed it again in 1991 – deviant sexual angles are always at the top of their minds nowadays, whether banning harmless old stuff like this or showing endless modern filth instead.

So popular a film and radio series followed - it's great stuff, old fashioned TV comedy for the initiated, but probably totally incomprehensible to todays generations of serious folk.