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Fairly Secret Army

"A dash of seasoning...a sprinkling of lemon...and slam in the lamb. Just coming darling!"GEOFFREY PALMER more or less exported Jimmy off of FALL AND RISE OF REGINALD PERRIN into Harry Truscott for this decent enough saga of incompetent right-wing rabblerousing militia full of more undesirables (in Hazza’s eyes) than there are to fight in the “real” world. Terribly hush hush, don’t you know. JEREMY SINDEN, LIZ FRASER and RAY WINSTONE among the “wet leftie feminist loonies”.

9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. Glenn A

    September 25, 2009 at 1:44 pm

    Barely remembered now but actually was a very good comedy based on a scene in Reginald Perrin where Jimmy plans a right-wing coup and this presumably is what he does next after leaving Reggie’s commune. Best episode is where he infiltrates a Marxist organisation and finds, to his horror, that his son is both gay and a Marxist and, equally bad, won an award for being hairdresser of the year.

  2. Mark Boyle

    October 2, 2009 at 11:49 pm

    The show was actually based on the memoirs coming out at the time from the likes of former SAS founder David Stirling, who had indeed plotted a right-wing coup with GB75, one of several ex-Army types involved in all manner of paramilitary conspiracies that barely got out of their Gentlemen’s Club smoking rooms.

    A brilliant comedy that lampooned some very troubling people.

  3. Glenn A

    October 3, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    Mark
    There were murmurings of this in the mid seventies which came to naught as the army generally keeps out of politics over here and the army got what they wanted in 1979 when a right-wing Conservative government came in and they also got a 30 per cent pay rise. However, at uni in the eighties I did come into contact with some right-wingers who would quite willingly bear arms against a Labour government.

  4. legrandpierre

    October 3, 2009 at 8:41 pm

    I loved this when it was on. I’d be delighted / slightly afeared to see it again now all these years later.

  5. Glenn A

    November 8, 2009 at 5:39 pm

    It was very funny but is one of those sitcoms like the Kit Curran Radio Show that were very good but are barely remembered now.

  6. Glen A Larson

    November 8, 2009 at 6:01 pm

    Bloody repeats.

  7. Clio

    August 17, 2012 at 3:24 pm

    Yep the 70s army did not like Labour. Series perhaps best seen as a pendant to Citizen Smith

  8. videocurios at youtube

    August 6, 2014 at 9:38 am

    I recorded both series when it was first broadcast,and am gradually uploading it to my videocurious youtube channel should anybody be interested

    https://www.youtube.com/user/videocurios

  9. Glenn Aylett

    August 19, 2018 at 2:49 pm

    More classic Geoffrey Palmer, maybe it was his voice and demeanour, but he just seemed right for playing right wing professional men over 50. Also glad to hear he’s still alive, at the grand age of 90.

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