GEORGE COLE aka Arthur Daley (sheepskin coat, cigar, hat, jewellery, ‘er indoors, “nice little earner”, “world is your lobster, my son”) and DENNIS WATERMAN aka Terry McCann (boxer, fighter, mouthing-off-er) fall in and out of trouble every week, encountering dodgy a) gear b) birds c) topless birds d) filth e) motors en route. Went on for ever. TOP OF THE POPS came calling when theme, performed by ‘Dennis Waterman And The Dennis Waterman Band’ went skywards, ditto spoken-word novelty Christmas tune ‘What Are We Gonna Get For ‘Ed Indoors’. Waterman pissed off to be replaced by GARY WEBSTER in 1991. Also kicking around: GEORGE LAYTON, GLYNN EDWARDS, PATRICK MALAHIDE, PETER CHILDS and ANTHONY VALENTINE.
Creamguide's Pick of the Day
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Top of the Pops
Thursday, 19.30, 01.05, BBC4For the first time in a while, two consecutive episodes, so it’s a completely different line-up to the last time and some belated debuts for Ian Dury and Sham 69 who we’d have otherwise seen two weeks ago, in a classic Pops juxtaposition with another Cilla flop and the first appearance of a record that, even skipping all the Savile and Travis episodes, you’re going to hear a hell of lot over the next few months.
There was another copyright-busting character in IPC’s School Fun comic in 1984 – ‘Young Arfur’. Pointedly referred to his mum as “Er indoors”.
When Dennis Waterman left the series, i could never understand why they decided to bring in a new boat (“boat-race – face, madam” as Arfur once memorably enlightened a fellow-juror unversed in the ways of cockney rhyming slang) to take over, when they already had a ready-made replacement on the manor in the form of Ray “I’m the Daddy!” Winstone, who at that point had a recurring role as hapless mechanic Arnie.
Unlike the grizzled monster of today, back then Ray was actually quite fresh-looking and could be thought of as a catch for the ladies. However, despite having appeared in high profile films such as Scum and Quadrophenia, I think his star was on the wane at that point before his Travolta-like resurgence some years later. Which was a shame, as I think he was much better suited for the role than the geezer they picked – wonder if the show’s producers ever thought (or admitted) in hindsight that they made a bit of a gaffe there?
I seem to recall that the reason the Leeds commercials were able to use Cole – and the reason that he was playing not Arfur Daley but merely an “Arfur Daley-type character” was his wearing of a flat cap rather than a trilby.
Presumably the same sort of thinking excused the Wispa ads’ employment of sundry BBC sitcom types – I think they wore civvies, didn’t they, rather than holiday camp uniforms/jungle camouflage gear etc… (and it rings a bell that Ruth Madoc addressed “Mr Fairbrother” with his “real name”, Simon)