Only Fools and Horses. Graham McCann
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knew, immediately, that this was a man who, if he liked a new idea, would really fight for it to reach the screen. Somewhat intimidated by the double-barrelled name and what seemed from a distance to be a brash and brusque ‘RAF officer’ sort of manner, the would-be scriptwriter was anxious about making contact with such an eminent broadcasting figure, but, eventually, he plucked up the courage to sneak into the crowded BBC bar – where Main Wilson was known to go through the daily lunchtime ritual of sipping half a pint of bitter followed by a small glass of Bell’s whisky – and make himself known. ‘I said, “I thought I’d introduce myself, my name’s John Sullivan, because we’re going to be working together soon.”’10 Main Wilson, understandably, thought Sullivan would be working on one of his shows, but, upon discovering that this props man was actually proposing a script, was sufficiently impressed by the sheer gall of Sullivan’s approach to offer some friendly advice and encouragement over a drink.
Main Wilson was a good choice as a potential patron. Born in Dulwich and grammar school-educated, he remained, at least by the traditional standards of the BBC, something of a maverick (acutely suspicious of authority since the war, when one of his jobs was writing satirical anti-Nazi propaganda for broadcast all over Europe, he empathised instinctively with the workers on the studio floor no matter how high he rose up the TV hierarchy), and he rather enjoyed the unpredictability that came with the more unconventional of creative spirits. This, after all, was the man who had won the trust and respect of the likes of Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock, Eric Sykes, Peter Sellers, Marty Feldman, John Fortune, Barry Humphries and Johnny Speight. He was no romantic – having been through a hard war, he was realistic to the verge of seeming cynical – but he seized on anything and anyone that struck him as genuine and lifted his spirit.
He had been the one, for example, who in the late 1940s had responded to an audition from a young scriptwriter/stand-up named Bob Monkhouse by eschewing the standard BBC marking system and simply sending on a memo that said: ‘WOW!’11 He had also been the one who, early in the 1960s, had spotted the potential in a modest production exercise by a trainee director called Dick Clement (who had co-written a comic story with his friend Ian La Frenais), and thanks to Main Wilson’s enthusiasm and energetic support the project ended up growing into The Likely Lads. Writers always fascinated him and, when he found good enough reasons to have faith in them, he became their finest and fiercest ally.
Main Wilson’s immediate advice to Sullivan was for him to sharpen his skills and heighten his profile by going off and attempting to write sketches for shows such as The Two Ronnies. Sullivan did as he was told, and, once he had some material (revolving around two Cockney blokes – Sid and George – chatting in a pub), he took advantage of the fact that he was currently working on the set of Porridge by slipping the scripts to Ronnie Barker. The following week, Barker called Sullivan over, asked him if he thought he would be able to come up with any more material, and then arranged for him to be put on a contract. The budding scriptwriter was suddenly in business.
The Sid and George sketches would become a familiar ingredient in the rich mix that made The Two Ronnies so entertaining. Featuring several themes and conceits that anticipated Sullivan’s later work (malapropisms, such as, ‘You don’t like birds, you’re illogical to feathers, ain’t you?’; slyly sardonic put-downs, such as describing the point of human existence as ‘something to do, I suppose’; and a succession of dubious deals, including the duck sold as a racing pigeon, the hamster passed off as a ‘day-old Labrador pup’ and a digital timepiece described as ‘an Elizabeth I wristwatch’), the routines bubbled with comic promise. What was also already evident was Sullivan’s delight in drawing together two characters, and drawing out two personalities, through dialogue:
| SID: | You back, George? |
| GEORGE: | No, no, I’m still down there, Sid. |
| SID: | Eh? |
| GEORGE: | What you’re staring at now is one of those uncanny encounters of the third division, see, probably due to the time warp on the A33 between Croydon and the coast. |
| SID: | Eh? |
| GEORGE: | ’Course I’m ’ere! |
Sullivan was soon submitting material not only to The Two Ronnies but also to shows hosted by the likes of Dave Allen, Les Dawson and Barry Took. Like such fellow budding sitcom writers as David Renwick (One Foot in the Grave) and David Nobbs (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin), Sullivan first learned to write for an ensemble of actors by contributing to these kinds of programmes. Obliged to supply precisely timed lines as well as sharply structured sketches, some of it bespoke for certain performers and some of it left hanging for anyone to pick up off-the-peg, he was learning his craft at a rapid rate.
It was not long after this first set of ad hoc commissions began that Dennis Main Wilson, impressed by Sullivan’s progress, encouraged him to start working on his idea for a sitcom. Greatly excited, Sullivan promptly took two weeks’ leave and went to his in-laws’ home in Crystal Palace, where he locked himself away and laboured until he had a proper pilot episode fully scripted. Meeting once again in the BBC bar, Main Wilson speed-read it in twenty minutes and loved it, and, as he later recalled, resolved there and then to make the project happen:
I said ‘I’ll buy it,’ even though the scene had changed, and I wasn’t in a position to buy officially. But under my old thing I would have been, so sod it, ‘I’ll buy it.’ If [the BBC don’t want it] I’ll bloody sell it to ATV or something. And I bought it and luckily our Head of Comedy in those days was Jimmy Gilbert [ . . . ] and I bashed into his office and said ‘Read that!’, and anybody who works in light entertainment and is a boss, poor devil, the number of scripts that come in, even if they’re filtered by script editors . . . But I said to Jim, ‘Read that, not at the top, not at the bottom of the thing – now! We’ll be in the bar.’12
Gilbert – well used to his old friend’s passionate attitude, and already impressed by Sullivan’s efforts for The Two Ronnies – read it, then sought out the two men in the bar and agreed that the Citizen Smith script merited inclusion in the next series of Comedy Special (the successor to Comedy Playhouse, the BBC’s traditional showcase for testing the audience reaction to promising sitcom pilots – and the birthplace of, among several other memorable shows, Steptoe and Son and Till Death Us Do Part). ‘I actually liked the script so much,’ Gilbert would recall, ‘that I immediately asked John for a back-up script, just to make sure that he would be able to maintain the quality, and that turned out to be equally good, so I then went straight ahead and commissioned a whole series before the pilot had even gone out.’13
The commissioning process – in stark contrast to the painstakingly slow and neurotically over-elaborate procedures favoured by today’s major broadcasters – was remarkably simple, straightforward and quick. ‘In those days,’ Gilbert explained, ‘if you were a head of a department at the BBC, and you wanted to make a programme and get some facilities, you just walked upstairs. I went up to see the Controller of BBC1 and told him I’d got this splendid script. So he got his planner in to see if there was space and get some money out of the budget. And that was it. The whole thing was fixed.’14
Sullivan – celebrating with an expensive round of drinks – could hardly believe what was happening. After years of sending in scripts and waiting in vain for something positive to happen, his latest idea was now being fast-tracked into production. A mere six weeks later, on 12 April 1977, the first episode was broadcast on BBC1.15
Directed by Ray Butt (a genial but industrious Londoner whose previous projects included The Liver Birds, Last of the Summer Wine, Are You Being Served?, Mr Big and It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum) and starring the up-and-coming actor Robert Lindsay as the workshy radical ‘Wolfie’ Smith, and Lindsay’s then-wife Cheryl Hall as his sweet-natured and far more conventional girlfriend Shirley, the pilot went