Lucy’s trolley sweep is what Dale would have wanted...
Characters Lee & Lucy
If it’s true that the most important thing in comedy is timing, then BBC1 got it spot on last night. The series finale of featured a scene in which Lucy ran around a supermarket throwing random items into her trolley as quickly as she could.
Okay, so she was doing it in anger following another row with her husband Lee.
Nevertheless, as an unintentional tribute to dear departed Dale Winton it did the job for me. Sadly, Lucy’s supermarket sweep didn’t involve any giant inflatables.
Then again, Lucy and Lee had been arguing about her having a boob job, so in a way you could say it did.
And if you think that was tenuous of me, you obviously don’t watch Not Going Out very often. The boob job storyline was basically an excuse for the writers to squeeze in as many breast-related gags as they could in the allotted half hour.
Sometimes it worked well – Lee quipping: “Now I know why they say you don’t get many of those to the pound”, when he found out how much a boob job costs, or Lucy updating the pencil test by complaining she could hold a couple of ipads under her breasts these days.
Other times you could totally understand why the studio audience was groaning – Lee persevering with the convoluted set-up to a “tit for tat” punchline.
That’s Not Going Out in a nutshell though. All it wants to do is make people smile and it’s not too proud to try anything in its pursuit of that.
Which brings us neatly back to Dale.