Turning junk into comedy gold
A show about rubbish proved a real winner for the BBC 60 years ago. MARION MCMULLEN looks at the launch of Steptoe And Son
THE wail of “you dirty old man” was heard with regularity on Steptoe And Son as Harold was repeatedly shocked by his father Albert’s latest antics.
There was no love lost between the pair and the insults would fly around their London home at Mews Cottage, Oil Drum Lane.
Harold once told his father: “You are a dyed-in-the-wool, fascist, reactionary, squalid little, know-your-place don’t rise above yourself, don’t get out of your hole, complacent t**d. You are morally, spiritually and physically a festering fly-blown heap of accumulated filth.”
The comedy about the two rag and bone junkmen began life 60 years ago on June 7, 1962. It followed the success of a pilot called The Offer, and that became the opening episode of the new series.
Harry H Corbett played Harold, who dreamed of a better life, while Wilfrid Brambell played his grouchy and devious father, even though in real life he was only 13 years older than his screen son.
Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, the cowriters of Hancock’s Half Hour, were the team behind Steptoe And Son and were inspired to create the characters after overhearing some junk dealers talking in a Shepherd’s Bush cafe. The sitcom was the first to cast actors and not comedians in the starring roles, and the mixture of coarse comedy and pathos gave the show its universal appeal and ensured its success.
Steptoe and Son ran until 1965 and was revived again in 1970 and lasted until 1974. The public appetite for the show was such that it led to two feature films and a radio version and spawned Sanford And Son in America. Sir Elton John even took the middle name of Hercules after the horse in the sitcom.
In the end, the overwhelming success of the comedy meant Harry H Corbett found it difficult to escape from his famous role afterwards.
He once said: “After Harold, the junk man, had gone, no-one would take me seriously.”