TV Cream

TV: H is for...

How’s Your Father?

SHOP-WINDOW-ABUSING FUNSTER HARRY WORTH didn’t last long in this sitcom built around him as a single dad coping with student son and teen daughter, with plenty of mistaken identities, rag-week adults-dressed-as-babies misunderstandings. No-one seemed to care, or indeed notice.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Droogie

    July 4, 2022 at 12:39 am

    Harry Worth had a bizarrely long TV career for someone of limited comedic talents. Everyone remembers the shop window gag, but does anyone recall a single plot line of any of his sitcoms? I remember watching this as a kid and being deeply underwhelmed

  2. Sidney Balmoral James

    July 4, 2022 at 12:38 pm

    There are a few of Harry’s different shows on Youtube, and agree it is all rather underwhelming, although arguably the gentleness of the comedy is part of the charm. One of a number of understated post-war comics – Arthur Haynes, Eric Sykes, Dickie Henderson- but whose shows could not be shown these days (if they even exist in any great number). It seems to be the slightly manic ones which have stood the test of time: think Bilko, Hancock, Eric Morecambe, Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howerd – they’ve all got a madcap edge to them (Hancock was very manic in his early radio days and there’s quite a lot of silliness in even his later TV, although he famously wanted to be more naturalistic, which was a dead end for him ultimately). One comic who is all but forgotten these days who should fall into this madcap category is Jimmy Edwards.

  3. Glenn Aylett

    July 5, 2022 at 7:24 pm

    Harry Worth was big in the sixties, but seemed to struggle as tastes changed and this sitcom was a swan song for him and not a good one.
    Jimmy Edwards to people of a certain generation will be the walrus moustached flogging headmaster of Wacko. Also he was very brave to come out in the seventies, when things were far less liberal.

  4. JakeyD

    November 11, 2022 at 10:27 pm

    Jimmy Edwards was outed by a so called newspaper and was really upset about it as he had hidden all his life to save his career.

    • Sidney Balmoral James

      November 11, 2022 at 10:50 pm

      Indeed, including being unforgiving when his Whacko co-star Arthur Howard, had been caught cottaging: I think the only openly gay comic on television in those days was Ray Martine.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top