Sunday, October 03, 2010

TV Tie-ins: The Two Ronnies redux

A couple of novelisations featuring Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.

Open All Hours by Christine Sparks
BBC 0563-17924-4, 1981, 159pp, £1.25.
Granville looked down at his short, undistinguished person, wrapped round in a large white pinny. Here he was, a young man in his twenties, already at work in the shop at six-thirty in the morning. What did the future hold for him? A continuing occupation as shop assistant, warehouse attendant, delivery boy, window cleaner and general underpaid dogsbody to Uncle Arkwright?
__Uncle Arkwright, of course, didn't see it that way. He asserted that Granville was a lucky lad with no appreciation of his good fortune in being born to an inheritance, always knowing he was secure and need never fear unemployment. Wasn't Granville on the threshold of a satisfying career, learning the trade from the bottom, all found, and wasn't he—in the due process of time--going to inherit this thriving grocery business, Arkwright's life's work and his sole reason for existence? Well, his sole reason as long as Nurse Gladys Emmanuel remained adamant to his advances. Even lavish gifts like half a pound of out-of-date butter or one of last year's unsold Christmas novelties from the stockroom couldn't tempt her.
__Here they were, Arkwright and Granville both, trapped in a corner grocery that sold everything and stayed open all hours to do it.
From the pen of Roy Clarke who also wrote Last of the Summer Wine.

Sorry! by David Climie
Star 0352-31050-2, 1982, 154pp, £1.35.
Timothy Lumsden is 41, a librarian, unmarried, and lives at home with his mother and father. He has never heard of the word jacuzzi and is not very sure what a Porsche is. Though his clothes sense is perfect, he is mutton dressed as mutton!
__But don't let his mother catch him repeating any of this. To her he is still the eighteen year old ready to launch himself on a waiting world. Well, almost ready, because he's bound to have forgotten his handkerchief!
__You can say what you like about father—he's not listening. And if you can think of a better defence mechanism than that, try living with the Lumsdens!
Adapted from the TV series by Peter Vincent and Ian Davidson, who were behind many of the sketches Corbett performed on The Two Ronnies.

1 comment:

  1. G'day, Steve. I never saw "Sorry" when first screened but being addicted to everything English on DVD, gave it a go but really didn't take to it at first. But it grew on me over time. Cheers!

    ReplyDelete

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