 |
|
      |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Origins As he had done with other characters including Lord Rustless and Arkwright, Ronnie didn't always find a proper home for one-off characters until sometime later; Arkwright, for instance, first appeared properly three years after his first appearance with Open All Hours' first series transmitted in 1976 between series of Porridge. Clarence, on the other hand, had been waiting far longer. He started life in an episode of Ronnie's last series for ITV, Six Dates With Barker, called 1937: The Removals Person by writer Hugh Leonard. Here, he was just called Fred, but this first episode rewritten fifteen years later by Ronnie would begin the last series he would ever make. Written by Bob Ferris As with all his writing, Ronnie
never submitted anything under his own name. His usual
pseudonym, Gerald Wiley, had graced the credits of many
an edition of The Two Ronnies, although
others had also been used. Here, Ronnie decided to use
the name Bob Ferris, a writer many Fleet Street pundits
reflected at the time must have been sick as a parrot to
have one of the finest comic actors cast in his first
sitcom, only to lose him to retirement after just one
series! Bob Ferris, of course, was the name of Rodney
Bewes' character in The Likely Lads and Whatever
Happened To The Likely Lads, shows
written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais who had
provided Ronnie with arguably his greatest TV success - Porridge. It was
obviously a nod to them for what they had given him. In 1985, Ronnie decided, though did
not announce to any but his very closest colleagues such
as working partner Ronnie Corbett, that he was going to
retire in two year's time. He felt he had achieved
everything that he had set out to do in his career, and
that it was best to finish while he could still write and
perform well; as a perfectionist, he was worried that
other material was drying up and that his own work wasn't
as good as it had been. However, this didn't mean that in
those two years he was going to sit back and watch the
roses grow; he was going to carry on working right up to
the end. Although Open All Hours had come to an end, The Two Ronnies was still going strong, and in particular had gathered a new audience through re-edited compilations in Australia. Together with Corbett, Ronnie went to Oz to record a special set of sketches, along the lines of the two tramps featured in their English shows, to add to the edits. On returning, he had the final Two Ronnies Christmas Special to record, plus the final sitcom he had written, which turned out to be Clarence. The story Coronation Day 1937, and Get A Move On Removals is called to the house of Mrs Vaille and family for a rush job, taking their furniture down to Southampton ready for shipping to Rangoon where the family are moving to. Clarence Sale is left by his young mate Albert to do the packing while he knocks off to go and look at the procession. Here, Clarence meets Jane Travers, the maid, who helps him with the packing, which is just as well as it is proved within seconds of the van pulling up that Clarence can't see past the far side of his spectacles! Even with her help, he still manages to break several pieces of Mrs Vaille's porcelain and the telephone, much to Mrs Vaille's daughter Angela's disgust; she is waiting for a call from her boyfriend Geoffrey. Albert fails to return, so Clarence decides to dump all the furniture out in the street to await the van's return. He and Travers do this and then have a cuppa. Both find the other good fun and Clarence offers to taker her to see the celebration bonfires, which she accepts. While she gets her hat and coat, he accidentally proposes to Angela, mistakenly believing her to be Jane, and gets a slap for his trouble! However, when she discovers what he has done, Jane runs after him and tells him she'll think it over. She is out of a job now, as she's not going with the family which is probably just as well, as by dumping the furniture outside, they find that the local street urchins have nicked the furniture and added it to their bonfire! Discussing their future over fish and chips back at Clarence's mis-decorated flat - well, he did do it himself! - Jane decides they should have a trial period before rushing into marriage, and proposes that, as she was left a cottage and £200 by an aunty in a recent bequest, they should go there. Clarence agrees and they set off to visit it. After the ride down to Oxfordshire, Jane is firmly of the opinion that he shouldn't drive the van any more - an unscheduled picnic heralded by the van going through the roadside hedge decides her on that - and gets him to teach her, which makes life much safer on the roads for everybody! Arriving at the cottage, which is an old corrugated iron affair with no electricity or gas, they find it needs a lot of work, but agree to move down. When they do so, fate works against Jane's ideas of each of them having separate rooms, as the floorboards collapse in her room! After initially camping out on the floor while Jane has the bed, Clarence ends up in the bed with her, but only after the bolster is placed down the middle! He is offered a small moving job by the Vicar's wife, but this turns into a fiasco when the sofa being moved ends up through the unopened window! He does a good job on the repair work, but is banned from the Vicarage. Travers, however, does get a job as housekeeper there, mostly on the strength of her cleaning up the mess! On the strength of this money coming in, they acquire some hens, which Clarence mends Aunty's old run for. Unfortunately, he forgets or doesn't see that he's left the end off and all escape, though Travers manages to recapture all but one. Even so, they still manage to get an egg from the hen's first night's lay, although initially it looks like Clarence has found and cooked the china egg Travers was given to encourage the hens - but he hasn't! Although moving jobs - especially after the vicarage fiasco - are scarce, Clarence keeps busy while Jane works to keep them. His attempts at gardening are haphazard, and he accidentally plants a packet of beads instead of beans in the vegetable patch. It's probably as well that he watered them using a riddle rather than a bucket! He does, however, finally get a job after a visit to the labour exchange. It doesn't last long, not because of his inability to do the job, but because of his bringing his work home with him; the overall trousers his foreman gives him at the sewage farm reek for miles! Travers is forced to smother him in a large bottle of Paris toilet water she got for Christmas to get rid of the smell, and insists he quit the following day. He does, but the smell gets her into trouble at the vicarage where the Vicar's wife accuses her of smelling like a cheap tart and she hands in her notice - telling the woman what she thinks of her at the same time! Things look bad, but only until Jane meets a local old dear, Mrs Titheridge, who being mostly wheelchair-bound needs both a housekeeper and a gardener-cum-handyman - so there's a job for Clarence as well, in theory! Both he and the old lady get on very well, and he suggest he take her for a walk in the chair. Arriving at the nearest pub, he offers to get her a packet of crisps while he gets himself a Guinness. He comes out quickly, as they haven't got any crisps, and offers to try the next pub instead. Unfortunately, he fails to notice that the wheelchair has only Mrs Titheridge's folded parasol propped up in amongst the cushions with her sunhat on top, as she has got out on her sticks to use the pub's convenience! He pushes this to the next pub, talking all the while assuming she's dropped off when there's no response and only finds out when he offers her the crisps. He thinks she's fallen out of the chair en route and rushes back, checking the verges and roadside as best he can, but can't find her. When he gets back, Jane is beside herself and when the old lady's phone rings, she thinks it's the hospital. However, it transpires that the old dear is certainly not in hospital and that Travers has to collect her from the pub, as she's rather the worse for drink! However, the big day arrives, the bands having been read, and Jane conspires to stop Clarence driving her up to the church in the van; he wouldn't take no for an answer at the time, but told her how to immobilise it in case someone tried to steal it and this is what she does to make sure they arrive in one piece. Together, they walk arm in arm up to the church, are married and Clarence is finally able to say goodbye to that flaming bolster! Tying up the loose ends Clarence was Ronnie's metaphorical attempt to bring things to a close and neatly tie up things in his professional life before moving on. Not only was he able to reuse a character that he'd never been able to find a home for, even in a Two Ronnies sketch, but he was also able to provide some work for a long-trusted colleague by way of a parting gesture. Josephine Tewson was cast here as Jane Travers, but their working relationship went back all the way to a play in the West End in the late Sixties called The Real Inspector Hound. Ronnie noted how always on the ball she was with lines, and that she was a good character performer that if push came to shove, could be relied on to deliver the goods. When a woman was needed for parts in his then-current show Frost On Sunday with David Frost, he suggested Jo for the part, and after that the pair would often appear in series or plays. In fact, when The Removals Person was made, Tewson also played Travers, so Clarence was like coming home for both of them. She would go on after the end of Clarence to become Hyacinth Bucket's much put-upon neighbour Elisabeth in Roy Clarke's Keeping Up Appearances. At the time of writing Clarence, Ronnie was living in Oxfordshire in a millhouse bought in 1981; for years he had wanted to come back to his roots where he spent most of his childhood and he had finally managed it. As he was writing the series, he thought it would be just as good an idea to actually set it 'just around the corner' to see how city-boy Clarence would actually cope in the country. He needn't have worried; Clarence couldn't see any more of the country than he could of the town! Much use of visual sight gags was made throughout the series; examples include sitting on a chair with no seat and a German steel helmet sticking up - Clarence sits down on the spike and jumps up complaining of 'bloody wasps!' - and knocking a nail in a wall inches away from one that's already there to be used because he doesn't see it - Clarence then hangs the picture on the old nail, not the new one, and what's more hangs it back to front without noticing! These together with the gentle, but piercing wit of Ronnie's script - you never got any real crudity in a Barker script, which made even the sewage farm episode a breath of fresh air (if that's possible!) - made Clarence a lightweight sitcom, more suited to earlier times perhaps. However, for those who preferred their sitcoms in this vein, that was alright by them. The end was nigh Of course, although Clarence was a nice little series, it was inevitably melancholy in some ways, for viewers knew that they were watching the last of regular Ronnie on screen, and that knowledge coloured the viewing. Filmed and recorded in the spring of 1987, the series aired for its one and only time on terrestrial tv in January 1988 on BBC2. The very last line not only provided a touchingly inaccurate assertion from Clarence, but also that Ronnie Barker now considered his career behind him and he was open to do what he wanted in retirement. As Clarence said, "I can see me way clear now." And Ronnie could. article copyright PPS / M. Hearn 2002 |