Empire state of mind
Chris Barrie went for the burn 30 years ago as an ambitious leisure centre boss in The Brittas Empire
AVISIT to Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre was less about staying healthy and more about simply staying alive in Nineties hit The Brittas Empire. “Since I have been manager, I have been proud to say there have only been 22 deaths – and not one of them was a staff member,” the centre’s boss Gordon Brittas once declared.
Chris Barrie played the nitpicking manager with big ideas and an even bigger talent for seeing every one of his ventures go horribly wrong. In fact, the ambulance service paid so many visits to the leisure centre that drivers were ordered to go round to the back, so as not to alarm visitors.
Chris himself used to work in the sports department at Harrods before his acting career took off and he appeared on both Red Dwarf and The Brittas Empire at the same time.
The BBC sitcom began 30 years ago on January 3, 1991, and the cast included Pippa Hayward as Gordon’s long-suffering wife Helen, Harriet Thorpe as under-pressure receptionist Carole, who kept her children in a cupboard behind her office desk, and
Michael Burns, who played the hapless, and chronically accidentprone Colin.
Many of the Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre scenes were filmed at the Ringwood Health and Leisure Centre in Hampshire and the comedy ran for 52 episodes over seven series, regularly attracting nearly 10 million viewers, before the leisure centre finally closed its doors in 1997.
Gordon could often be heard gleefully exclaiming “eeeexcellent” at the start of one of his projects, only to see it all end in yet another failure. In fact, the leisure centre itself was often a casualty and was blown up three times over the years.
Constant failure though, proved to be no deterrent for Gordon, with him once telling the leisure centre staff: “I want you all to have a good dream tonight and bring it with you tomorrow”.