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Chris Hallam takes a look back at the comedy of the Thatcher era...

Let's face it: there was definitely something about Maggie.

A recent live show dedicated itself entirely to the history of comedy during the Thatcher years. Weird? No. But could you imagine show dedicated to the comedy scene of any other long serving PM such as Macmillan, Wilson or Blair? It's also a bit odd when you consider Margaret Thatcher's period in office ended a full twenty two years ago.

Clearly the conflicting passions the Lady inspired still run deep. Partly this must be down to the personality of Margaret Thatcher herself.

Her election in May 1979 coincided almost exactly with the opening of the London Comedy Store and the birth of alternative comedy. The new regime soon met with a wave of hostility over its apparently uncaring attitude.

"In the old days, people used to be named after what they made," onetime Comedy Store compere Alexei Sayle joked, "Carter if they made carts, Cooper if they made barrels. Thatcher if they made people sick."

Many of the comedic old guard were unsettled by the change. Impressionist Mike Yarwood who had enjoyed huge success in the Seventies with fairly gentle impersonations of the likes of Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Denis Healey, claimed he couldn't adequately do the first woman Prime Minister and subsequently saw his career go into decline. Later in the decade, both Phil Cool and Rory Bremner managed to rise to success, without attempting a Thatcher impression. Bremner largely sidestepped the issue by being assisted by the leading Thatcher impersonator of the day, Steve Nallon.

Nallon also provided the voice of Thatcher on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image. Running from 1984 until 1996 (thus almost half of its time on air being under Thatcher), the series was always patchy. Despite this, it probably defines the comedy of the Thatcher years better than anything else.

In an attempt to undermine the female PM personally, the series usually portrayed Thatcher (in a not especially funny running gag) as a cigar smoker in a suit - as if she was a masculine cross dresser. As Alwyn W Turner has pointed out in his book on the period, Rejoice! Rejoice!: Britain in the 1980s, this may have backfired as satire as it merely served to emphasise her strong leadership.

Other jokes worked better. "You can't give up now!" says Thatcher at one point. "What about your wartime hero?" She replies: "He topped himself in a Berlin bunker."

The show also made great capital out of the rich range of supporting characters the era produced. Kenneth Baker appeared as a slug on a leaf. The face of Labour's Deputy Roy Hattersley was projected onto that of a real baby Labour leader Neil Kinnock was kissing during the title sequence, ultimately spewing out the name "Spitting Image". Meanwhile, Thatcher's nemesis within her party, Michael Heseltine appeared in various forms - often in a bomber jacket or as superhero 'Blondman'. Or sometimes prancing across the screen asserting "I have no intention of running for the leadership of the Tory Party" while wearing a sign saying "Vote for Heseltine" on his back.

The series also found a parallel with Steve Bell's cartoon If..., which began in 1982, whilst Private Eye magazine's Dear Bill feature was based around letters supposedly written by the PM's husband Denis Thatcher to an unknown friend (widely assumed to be journalist William Deedes).

Fictional comedy characters reflected the spirit of the times too. Despite operating on the fringes of the law (if not outside it), Arthur Daley as played by George Cole in Minder and Derek "Del Boy" Trotter, portrayed by David Jason in Only Fools And Horses both reflected the acceptable face of Thatcherism. Daley's constant reference to his unseen wife as "her indoors" could just as easily have referred to the Prime Minister and her status in Number 10. Del Boy meanwhile openly aspired to be a Yuppie (that's a 'young, upwardly-mobile professional', for you youngsters) and indeed was attempting this when he took his famous fall through the bar.

Sometimes the satire would backfire. Left wing comic Harry Enfield was projected to unprecedented success on the back of only a few brief appearances on the show Friday Night Live as the character Loadsamoney in 1987 (pictured). The character was supposedly a plasterer grown rich on the Yuppie boom and reportedly inspired by images of London football fans taunting more impoverished northerners by waving wads of cash at them. Opposition leader Neil Kinnock was soon referring to a "Loadsamoney society". But like Alf Garnett, Loadsamoney became a hero to some. Enfield complained when The Sun newspaper used an image of Loadsamoney to support a bingo promotion and ultimately killed off the character in 1989.

Less vulnerable to the possibility of heroism was Alan B'Stard, portrayed by Rik Mayall in The New Statesman from 1987. A Thatcherite Tory MP, B'Stard was adulterous, regularly indulged in blackmail, occasionally stretched to murder, and was as openly sadistic to his supposed ally Piers Fletcher-Dervish ( Michael Troughton) as he was to the wider world.

The irony of the Thatcher years is that the Lady who inspired so much comedy semeed herself utterly humourless. True, her most famous speech "You turn if you want to, the Lady's not for turning" contained a double pun, but this was a rare exception. In later life, she unwittingly invited comparisons between herself and a decaying malevolent corpse: "I'm back... and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign 'The Mummy Returns'."

Her funniest ever remark referred to the indispensability of her colleague William 'Willie' Whitelaw: "Every Prime Minister needs a Willie". A hilarious thing for Britain's first woman Prime Minister to say. Yet the innuendo seems to have been quite unintentional.

The most successful political sitcoms of the 1980s were of course Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. Brilliantly written and with a central character ( Paul Eddington's Jim Hacker) never clearly aligned to any political party, the series actually managed to remain distinctive from the narrative of the Thatcher years.

When the series won an award in 1984, however, writers and cast were horrified to learn that the Prime Minister - a fan of the show - had written a sketch featuring her and actors Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Eddington. The script proved to be predictably rubbish and Thatcher demonstrated no acting ability whatsoever, but writer Jonathan Lynn took an opportunity to turn the tables. In a speech afterwards, according to his book Comedy Rules he declared: "I should like to thank Mrs Thatcher for finally taking her rightful place in the field of situation comedy". The PM was not amused.

By 1990 the world had changed. The era that had begun with Not The Nine O'Clock News was now ending with the first series of Have I Got News For You. Many of the comics who were most critical of the Thatcher regime - Ben Elton, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, French & Saunders had ironically grown rich and successful under her watch.

"I know that if you are flourishing in a regime, you are not supposed to bellyache about it," Fry concedes in The Fry Chronicles, "[but the] new callousness and combative certainty of Thatcher and her cabinet of vulgar curiosities were alien to the values we grew up with and it smelt all wrong."

Yet the world had changed. British politics has never had such divisive a figure at the top, and probably not seen Left and Right quite so polarised. We may never see such fertile comic times again.

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article feature british comedy guide maggie maggie maggie: ho ho ho

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Maggie Maggie Maggie: Ho Ho Ho - British Comedy Guide

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Home Features Maggie Maggie Maggie: Ho Ho Ho Chris Hallam takes a look back at the comedy of the Thatcher era... Let's face it: there was definitely something about Maggie. A recent live show dedicated itself entirely to the history of comedy during the Thatcher years. Weird? No.

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Only Fools And Horses, named Britain's Best Sitcom in a 2004 poll, follows the lives of Derek, Rodney, Edward and later Albert Trotter, as they duck and dive through life, barely managing to scrape a living. Occasionally friends such as shady car dealer Boycie, the easily led Denzil, dopey Trigger or barman Mike became involved, often against their will, in Del's dodgy and not infrequently dangerous schemes.

Market traders, the Trotters conduct their unregistered business under the banner of Trotters Independent Trading Co (or Trotters Independent Traders - TIT - for short), operating out of a knackered, grubby, once-yellow three-wheel Reliant Regal Supervan. They live in a high-rise, Nelson Mandela House, on a Peckham council estate.

Background

Writer John Sullivan, from Balham in south London, had spent his youth in a variety of low-paid jobs before having his first work ( Citizen Smith) commissioned whilst working as a scene-shifter at the BBC. Notably, he'd spent time as a market trader, and when Citizen Smith came to an end in 1980, he was asked to develop further series ideas: Only Fools And Horses was born.

Originally titled Readies, producer Ray Butt signed up Nicholas Lyndhurst as Rodney first. Lennard Pearce was soon found for the part of Grandad, but the central character of Del Boy was more problematic. Jim Broadbent was offered the part, but declined due to existing commitments (he would later play DCI Roy Slater). Enn Reitel was also considered for the role, but it was not until Butt saw David Jason in an Open All Hours repeat that he was considered. For fans of the show, it's hard to picture the part being played by anyone else, but Sullivan was initially unhappy with the casting: it was only upon seeing Jason's interpretation of the character during a read-through that his fears were allayed.

Reception

The programme's position as one of the nation's favourite TV shows is a world away from its humble beginnings. The first two series failed to attract much interest or acclaim, achieving what were for the time only mediocre ratings - so weak, in fact, that the series was almost cancelled by the BBC. However, word of the series began to spread during repeats, and the show was soon attracting huge audiences: a third series was swiftly commissioned.

Ever since, the series has enjoyed sizeable viewing figures. A British television ratings record was set in 1996 when more than 24 million people tuned in for the third of the Christmas specials, Time On Our Hands. The following episode, 2001's If They Could See Us Now!, attracted more than 20 million people to their TV screens, a figure not bettered by any other television programme that decade.

Unlike many of Britain's other big-name sitcoms however, Only Fools And Horses has achieved mixed reception abroad. The show has enjoyed success in many European and former Soviet countries, including Greece, Spain, Montenegro, and Portugal, where the series was remade as O Fura-Vidas, but struggled in other territories: in the USA, for example, the series remains a cult hit but failed to become a mainstream success in the manner that so many other British sitcoms had. Reportedly, Americans had so much trouble understanding the language used in the series that some episodes were subtitled.

Series Development

Only Fools And Horses is an interesting study in the evolution of the sitcom. The initial series follow a similar format to many others: isolated episodes that can be viewed in almost any order. We learn more about the characters and their complex back-stories with each episode, but their lives do make no progression. The first change to the formula was enforced: in December 1984, early during the production of Series 4, Lennard Pearce suddenly died after suffering a series of heart attacks. As we now know, Buster Merryfield was cast as Edward 'Grandad' Trotter's brother, Albert; the few location scenes with Pearce that were already completed were re-filmed with Merryfield: he continued in the series until his own death in 1999.

From here, Sullivan begins to develop the show. No longer is each episode entirely throw-away: longer episodes are produced, and he begins subtly linking characters, ideas, and Del's dodgy dealings back to what had happened - in some cases - years previously. Slowly, the characters themselves shift. Notably, Del and Rodney began to settle down with respective partners, but both experienced problems: Rodney, who married the bright Cassandra, became intimidated by her career and friends, and they suffered the emotional trauma of a miscarriage; Del endured a volatile relationship with Raquel, an aspiring actress who, when they met, was moonlighting as a stripagram. Eventually, Del and Raquel cemented their relationship with the birth of a baby.

By this time, the show had moved on from its initial premise of the two roguish but likeable brothers, to cover wider themes. It also kept pace with real events and social trends: as the 1980s episodes progress, Del becomes more of a yuppie, trying not just to scrape a living but to actively improve his lot and move up in society. This move naturally encompassed wider themes, from marital breakdown to miscarriage and the struggle to conceive at all. But whilst there are dark, sad and often moving moments in the show, viewers are safe in the knowledge that an uplifiting scene is never far away.

The End

In 1996, the BBC announced that the series would come to a final close. It would end with a bang, in the shape of three hour-long ratings-smashing episodes that reunited Raquel with her long-lost parents and culminated in a glorious triumph for Del and Rodney when an antique watch Del has had hanging around for years turns out to be a rarity of enormous historical value. It sells at auction in London for more than £6 million, and the Trotters finally achieve their aim of becoming millionaires.

However, it wasn't long before rumours began to circulate that Sullivan might bring the Trotters out of retirement for a millennium special. Although this didn't happen, in 2001 it was announced that the show would return for three multi-million pound special episodes. The first was broadcast on Christmas Day that year.

With both Buster Merryfield (Albert) and Kenneth MacDonald (Mike) having recently passed away, their characters were written out - Uncle Albert was said to have died peacefully on the coast whilst publican Mike was ensconced in jail - but all the other regulars were back on board to find that, owing to some unfortunate stock market investments in South America, the Trotters had lost their fortune. The specials played out on successive Christmas Days, finally closing in 2003 with Sleepless In Peckham, in which the brothers faced huge demands from the Inland Revenue, and Rodney and Cassandra finally had the baby they'd been longing for.

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only fools and horses article essay guide cast details episodes information british comedy

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About Only Fools And Horses - British Comedy Guide

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Only Fools And Horses, named Britain's Best Sitcom in a 2004 poll, follows the lives of Derek, Rodney, Edward and later Albert Trotter, as they duck and dive through life, barely managing to scrape a living.

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Only Fools Xmas Special - Time On Our Hands

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Only Fools Xmas Special - Time On Our Hands

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Highest viewing figures for a British sitcom

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"Only Fools and Horses...." Time on Our Hands (TV Episode 1996)

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Directed by Tony Dow. With David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Buster Merryfield, Tessa Peake-Jones. Raquel is nervous when she prepares to introduce her parents to Del Boy, following a long rift with them. As usual, Del is determined to make sure they have a meeting to remember.

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IMDB

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Only Fools and Horses.... (TV Series 1981-2003)

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Only Fools and Horses.... (TV Series 1981-2003) on IMDb: Hugely successful British comedy about of two streetwise London brothers: Del (Derek) and Rodney Trotter. In early years they shared their council fla

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Only Fools and Horses listed as 2nd

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From Doctor Who to The Sopranos, Steptoe And Son to Only Fools And Horses, Brideshead Revisited to Downton Abbey, they are the shows that have shaped TV. We've grown up loving Eric and Ernie, thrilling to The Avengers and sobbing to Brideshead Revisited.

So it beggars belief that not one of them is on the list of the 50 Most Influential Television Shows, compiled by the organisers of the world's leading TV get-together, the prestigious and trend-setting MIPTV trade fair.

Programme makers from all over the globe come together for MIPTV, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. But their list, compiled by so-called experts, suggests the people who run the world's telly stations don't know much about what makes great viewing.

Shows included on the MIPTV list include a Japanese cartoon called Astro Boy, the Tony Curtis/Roger Moore clunker The Persuaders, the quiz-plus-assault-course-format The Krypton Factor, the Australian melodrama The Thorn Birds, that dreadful Down Under soap Neighbours and a children's cartoon called Rugrats.

It seems probable that whoever the 'experts' were that compiled the list, they're too young to have seen many of the great shows when they were first broadcast. Perhaps they just watched a bundle of clips on YouTube.

Here, in contrast, is an incontrovertible list of the actual 50 most influential shows - the most entertaining, brilliant and sometimes downright appalling TV programmes ever made.

7 Brideshead Revisited (1981).
The most sumptuous costume drama ever filmed, with the backdrop of Castle Howard. The best adaptation TV has ever achieved of a classic book. And it turned Jeremy Irons into a star.

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The top 50 TV shows of all time: As 'experts' name the most influential shows, our guru of the goggle-box says they left out some stonking classics

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From Doctor Who to The Sopranos, Steptoe And Son to Only Fools And Horses, Brideshead Revisited to Downton Abbey, they are the shows that have shaped TV. We've grown up loving Eric and Ernie, thrilling to The Avengers and sobbing to Brideshead Revisited.

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Del and Rodney Smash the Chandelier | Only Fools and Horses | BBC Comedy Greats

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Very first episode of Only Fools was aired

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Only Fools and Horses Wins

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In the meantime, know that I have all your data and lists, and that one way or another we will get them back online. However, I do not have a timeline, and my work and personal lives are extremely busy right now. So keep patient, and Listology will return as soon as it can.

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BBC - Only Fools and Horses - Del's Lingo

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A guide to the colourful lingo Del uses from Only Fools and Horses.

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Del Boy Falls Through the Bar | Only Fools and Horses | BBC Comedy Greats

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BBC Genome Project

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There are more than 5 million programme listings in Genome. This is a historical record of the planned output and the BBC services of any given time. It should be viewed in this context and with the understanding that it reflects the attitudes and standards of its time - not those of today.

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'Dickens of our generation'

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A look back at one of Britain's best-loved sitcoms

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A look back at one of Britain's best-loved sitcoms

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'The genius who gave us Only Fools'