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| 'Boom Boom!' Mr. Rodney with Basil Brush, 1968 |
We’re
a Likely Lad less than we were yesterday, with the very sad news of
the passing of Rodney Bewes, best known for his role as Robert
Scarborough Ferris in the classic sitcom. But it was in his capacity
as sidekick to Basil Brush that I first became aware of him, and for
me he will always be ‘Mr. Rodney.’ I can even give the exact date
when I first saw him on television... it was Friday 14th
June, 1968, and the musical guests on that first ever Basil Brush
Show were Manfred Mann, miming their current chart hit, My
Name is Jack.
It was Basil Brush’s first solo series, having been promoted from his former roles as, originally, one of the ‘Three Scampies’ and, latterly, assistant to TV magician David Nixon. In his capacity as mentor to the irrepressible fox, Rodney Bewes established a formula that would endure for the next twelve years, as further ‘Misters’ stepped into the role, beginning with Derek Fowlds in 1969. Strangely, my memory is of Rodney Bewes’ tenure on the show lasting much longer, but in fact he was there for just twelve weeks over the summer of 1968, during which another enduring aspect of the show was established: the episodic story, usually of a swashbuckling character, entertainingly interrupted by Basil’s interjections, bags of sweeties and, much later, a battery operated yapping dog called ‘Little Ticker.’ During this first season, the story concerned the wild west adventures of outlaw Des P. Rado of Cripple Creek (later tales usually involved a hero named Basil). Basil, in typical fashion, misheard ‘Cripple Creek’ as Chiswell Green (or possibly Kensall Green), leading to some typical byplay with Mr. Rodney.
It’s a shame that Mr. Rodney’s tenure on the show was so brief, as there was a genuine rapport between him and his foxy co-star, and he proved to be a jovial host, displaying his versatility as a bit of a song and dance man by joining in singalongs with various musical guests. Although Derek Fowlds proved to be an excellent replacement, I still retained fond memories of the classic ‘Mr. Rodney’ era of the show (not a single episode of which, sadly, survives).
As to Mr. Rodney himself, it wasn’t long before he turned up again on the small screen, in a series which became a personal favourite of mine at the time, Dear Mother, Love Albert. Bewes not only starred in the series, but was its creator and producer, his star being decidedly in the ascendent by this time. The format had been inspired by his friend Tom Courtenay, whose surname was appropriated for the titular Albert. Courtenay’s letters from his mother (later published) provided the premise for the series, which saw Bewes’ northern character writing home from his London bedsit, and embellishing his somewhat mundane lifestyle in his correspondence. The first series, produced for Thames Television, is believed lost, but series 2-4 saw a move to Yorkshire Television, and all of these episodes survive. Watching them now, it’s easy to see similarities between the persona of Bewes’ Albert character, and that of Bob Ferris, whom he had already played for three series over on BBC television. The similarities even extend to the area of wardrobe, with Albert favouring the same kind of dark blue, three-piece suits that Bob Ferris would later be seen wearing in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. Bob, however, was to become a far more nuanced and complex comic creation than Albert, who was more of a good-natured fall guy, forever getting into scrapes with girlfriends, landladies and his boss, Strain (an early role for future Sweeney guvnor Garfield Morgan).
I’d never seen the original Likely Lads series, which had come to an end in 1966, but in the first week of 1973, the BBC’s New Year programme line-up included a brand new series, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. Our mum, who remembered the original, encouraged me and my brother to watch, and seeing Rodney Bewes again was like encountering an old friend, as indeed happens to Bob and Terry in that introductory episode, Strangers on a Train. Over the coming weeks, the series became a favourite, and I began to find myself identifiying quite strongly with the character of Bob. His middle-class aspirations – marriage, a good job, a nice house – all seemed entirely admirable to me at the age of eleven going on twelve. I didn’t realise at the time that writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were actually poking fun at the shallowness of Bob and those who shared his values. But what was the alternative? To be an idler like Terry Collier? This was the dilemma facing millions of people in 1970s Britain: you either bought into the system and became smothered by its narrow, middle-England values; or you dropped out and risked being marginalised like Terry, whose workshy, cynical attitude to life typified the era’s armchair lefties – strong on opinion, but lacking the commitment and drive to actually get up and do anything.
Social comment aside, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads was brilliantly written; some of its best moments are still laugh-out-loud funny over forty years later. Yet it lasted for just two series and a solitary Christmas special, a total of twenty seven episodes (plus a further nineteen of the original series). The decision to end the the series seems to have come from Clement and La Frenais who felt at the time that there was nowhere else to go with the Bob and Terry relationship, and instead developed a new comedy vehicle for Ronnie Barker in the form of Porridge.
But it wasn’t quite the end. Three years after the last Whatever Happened to... episode, the lads returned for a final outing, this time on the big screen. Feature film spin-offs from successful TV series had been reasonably successful in the early ’70s, and The Likely Lads (1977) was a relatively late entry in the genre. Without a doubt, it is the best of all such efforts, with comic sequences that rival the best moments of the TV series, and a melancholic atmosphere recalling the neo-realism of early sixties movies in which both Bolam and Bewes had appeared.
With the sole exception of a boarding house episode that was reycled from an early Likely Lads script, the movie was all new material; indeed, there was easily more than enough potential in that one script to have developed a third series for television. The lads’ lives are changing... Bob is beginning to question the ‘full and exciting life’ that he supposedly enjoys with Thelma, while Terry, with the run of his parents’ high rise flat and a new, Finnish girlfriend, is living a bachelor lifestyle of ‘sport, slippers and sex’ that is the envy of Bob. An attempt to combine the two comes drastically apart when the lads decide to sneak home early from a caravan weekend in the country, brazenly picking up two girl hitchhikers despite having Thelma and Terry’s girlfriend literally in tow. As Bob’s lifestyle flies to pieces, his shiny red Vauxhall Chevette becomes a visual metaphor for the damage being wrought, as it slowly succumbs to accidents and incidents of vandalism. The last we see of our heroes is Terry, with suitcases in hand, having had a change of heart about a planned career aboard a merchant ship, while Bob finds himself literally cast adrift as the merchantman steams away, next stop Bahrain.
It wasn’t just Bob Ferris who was cast adrift. The movie was, sadly, one of the last high profile appearances for Rodney Bewes who, after more than a decade in the television spotlight, now retreated to a primarily stage career, often touring in one-man shows (Wikipedia claims he presented a version of Rollerball which seems exceedingly hard to swallow – much more in character was his solo stage version of Three Men in a Boat).
Bewes reportedly enjoyed a friendly relationship with his co-star James Bolam, until the pair fell out, seemingly over an indiscreet remark made by Bewes regarding Bolam’s girlfriend, the actress Susan Jamieson, who had fallen pregnant. Bolam, an intensely private man, was angry that Bewes had spoken about it in public, and following an acrimonous phone call, the pair never spoke again.
What’s less easy to understand is why Bewes was seen so little in TV and film from the late ’70s onwards. It’s hard to imagine this situation being of his choosing: in later years, he lamented the lack of TV repeats of The Likely Lads, citing James Bolam’s refusal to give consent, and making it quite clear that he could have used the fees from such reruns. A few years ago, I read Bewes’ autobiography, A Likely Story, wondering if it might provide any clues as to why he became sidelined from two very important branches of the acting profession. Had he somehow made himself difficult to work with? Nothing obvious came to light, other than a tendency to drop famous names rather more often than necessary; that plus the sense that, like many other celebrities, he gave the impression of living in his own personal microcosm, a ‘Rodney Beweniverse’ if you will. But in a profession where the individual becomes a product to be sold, this is very much par for the course, and I can’t bring myself to believe that Bewes had an ego big enough to deter his peers from wanting to work alongside him.
Seven years ago, I produced a demo of a song in tribute to Rodney Bewes. Despite its slightly humorous slant, it was meant sincerely, and was a reflection of the time, in the 1970s, in which I genuinely wanted to grow up to be Rodney Bewes, or rather, one of the types he portrayed on film and television. In some ways, perhaps I have... Although I never met him, I later became aware that Bewes had heard the song, and referred to it in at least one interview. I’d like to think he found it flattering.
As Bob Ferris, he may have had his ups and downs in fictional married life, and as Rodney Bewes, his career trajectory may not have worked out quite the way he might have hoped for: but to be remembered for even one role on TV, and in a series as iconic and fondly-remembered as The Likely Lads is an achievement of which he should have been rightly proud. And he had been a young, succesful actor during the most exciting, creative and dynamic decade in the history of humankind.
Let’s
face it: who wouldn’t want to have been Rodney Bewes?