EARDRUM-BATTERING COMEDY OF the working class woman from RONALDs WOLFE and CHESNEY. Miserly PETER “VOICE OF THE BOOK” JONES runs a clothing factory with a shopfloor redolent of CORONATION STREET’s Baldwin Casuals. Laughter ensues when staff of seamstresses, amongst them MIRIAM KARLIN (all series), ESMA CANNON, SHEILA HANCOCK and BARBARA WINDSOR (BBC version), ANNA KAREN and GILLIAN TAYLFORTH (LWT version) decide to work to rule. Decible level alternated between the moderately high and the sheer fucking terrifying. Episodes always ended with all sides “pulling together” to avoid minor crisis of the tea-urn-exploding kind. REG VARNEY and CHRISTOPHER BEENY also turned up, while Olive from ON THE BUSES joined the staff during the LWT years.
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Iain Banks – Raw Spirit
Tuesday, 22.00, BBC2Tragically this final ever interview with one of the most influential and popular authors of the last few decades, recorded a few weeks ago, now has to be screened posthumously. Viewers in Scotland will have seen it last week and now the rest of the UK gets the chance, albeit in slightly truncated form.
The LWT version had Lynsey de Paul singing the theme tune to a ragtime tune. LDP could always be relied on in the seventies, when her pop singles weren’t doing much, to turn out a decent theme tune for a television show.