I’m Captain Mainwaring!
QUESTION Was Robert Dorning the first choice to play Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army?
The multi-talented performer Robert Dorning was the first choice of scriptwriter Jimmy Perry to play Captain Mainwaring, but this was as close as he came to the role.
Perry had written a script called The Fighting Tigers based on his experiences in the Watford home Guard, which he had joined as a teenager in 1940.
he appeared in the sitcom Beggar My Neighbour, where he met his future scriptwriting partner David Croft, who was a producer on the show.
Croft showed The Fighting Tigers to Michael Mills, the then BBC head of Comedy. It was eventually commissioned as Dad’s Army.
Perry’s ideas on who he’d like to play the major parts included Dorning as Captain Mainwaring and Arthur Lowe as Sergeant Wilson.
This was inspired by their appearance in the Granada sitcom Pardon The expression, set in a department store, which was a spin- off from Coronation Street, where Lowe had played the manager of Gamma Garments. Lowe almost didn’t make the grade either. The BBC didn’t want him because he’d been contracted to ITV.
The role of Captain Mainwaring was offered first to comic actor Thorley Walters and then to Jon Pertwee of Doctor Who fame, who both declined.
By the time Lowe was approached, Perry and Croft had been inspired to recast Mainwaring as lower-middle-class, with upper-class Sgt Wilson, played by John Le Mesurier, as his subordinate.
Dorning had studied drama and dance with the intention of being a ballet dancer. he also played the saxophone and violin and sang in a dance band.
After serving in the RAF in World War II, he was cast as a dancer in the 1948 film The Red Shoes. he went on to appear in countless films and TV shows, including the role of Mr West, the bank inspector, in the classic Dad’s Army episode, 1969’s Something Nasty In The Vault.
Frank Shields, Durham.
QUESTION Is Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl based on a folk song?
GALWAY Girl is an original song from ed Sheeran’s 2017 album Divide.
The Number Two hit was a collaboration with the Northern Ireland trad band Beoga, which features the twin duelling accordions of Damian McKee and Sean Og Graham, pianist Liam Bradley, bodhran champion eamon Murray and vocalist and fiddler Niamh Dunne.
Beoga means ‘lively’, which is a good description of their music.
The band had been invited to Sheeran’s house to work on some ideas. Sheeran, known for the speed of his writing, was inspired to write Galway Girl by Dunne’s playing, hence the opening lines: ‘She played the fiddle in an Irish band/But she fell in love with an English man.’
The tune was derived from the Beoga track Minute 5.
It has been suggested it is similar to the Steve earle song Galway Girl. Both have an Irish flavour, but appeal to different types of listener.
One music critic criticised Sheeran: ‘he’s appropriated an entire Irish folk tradition. And not only musically: his lyrics are essentially a grab bag of Irish stereotypes that stops a “to be sure” short of “diddly-dee potatoes.” ’