Larkin about for laughs ...
QUESTION
Was the 1950s TV show The Larkins, starring David Kossof and Peggy Mount, based on the H. E. Bates stories?
ITV’s The Larkins was a sitcom about an irrepressible Cockney family. It was first screened in 1958 and so it might appear more than a coincidence that the name Larkins was used as H. E. Bates’s Darling Buds Of May appeared in the same year.
However, its creator, builder’s clerk Fred Robinson, had written the show ten years earlier for an amateur production by his local scout troop.
Peggy Mount had gained enormous success with her portrayal of a tyrannical mother-in-law, Emma Hornett, in the West End play sailor Beware!
Theatre critic Kenneth Tynan loved her: ‘she scorches the earth about her . . . The
savage impatience of Miss Mount’s acting must be seen to be believed.’
Therefore, she was perfectly cast as Ada Larkin, the loud-mouthed matriarch with a heart of gold.
Mount suggested that David Kossoff play her downtrodden husband Alf, who was always trying to slink off to the pub.
The rest of the cast featured tearaway son Eddie (shaun O’Riordan), daughter Joyce (Ruth Trouncer) and her ex-GI husband Jeff (Ronan O’Casey), an outof-work writer of cowboy comics.
The Larkins lived at 66 sycamore street, next door to their nosy neighbour Hetty Prout (Barbara Mitchell), her husband sam (George Roderick) and daughter Myrtle (Hilary Bamberger), who had a fling with Eddie.
Peter Black, writing in the Daily Mail, described The Larkins as the ‘best domestic situation comedy series created by British television’ and stated that Robinson ‘understands that what is entertaining about Cockney idiom is its quick wit and eccentric vocabulary, not its sentiment’.
There were four series between 1958 and 1960, with an additional two series from 1963 to 1964, a total of 40 episodes.
It proved so popular that a spin-off film, Inn For Trouble, was released in 1959. The Larkins are in charge of a country pub and are joined by Carry On regulars Leslie Phillips and Charles Hawtrey, A. E. Matthews, stanley Unwin, Graham stark and Irene Handl.
In the final TV series, sycamore street had been demolished, Alf and Ada had taken over a nearby cafe and gained a lodger, Osbert Rigby-soames (Hugh Paddick). Unusually for the era, all episodes of The Larkins survive.
Matthew Owens, Cardiff.
QUESTION Have any artists come on stage as a surprise during a tribute act?
A COUPLE of years ago, I saw Bootleg Blondie at the Boom Boom Club in sutton, surrey.
Blondie drummer Clem Burke was in the audience and I asked him to sign my flyer. When the band came back for an encore, Burke played with them for a couple of songs.
Dave Chapman, Sutton, Surrey. I WAs at the Tropic at Ruislip, Middlesex, some years ago when The Beached Boys were performing. David Marks, one of the founder members of The Beach Boys, was there and joined them on stage for a few numbers.
Philip Duerden, Ruislip, Middlesex. In 2013, status Quo were in Derry for a gig celebrating its status as European City of Culture. Quo drummer Leon Cave and bassist John ‘Rhino’ Edwards rocked up at a local pub to watch Quo tribute act The Matchstickmen.
Edwards joined them on stage for a performance of Paper Plane. Kiefer Gallagher from The Matchstickmen told the BBC: ‘I couldn’t believe it!’
Diane Esher, Bicester, Oxon.
QUESTION Who were the accomplices of Brutus in the plot to kill Caesar?
FORTY senators took part in the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar, but the names of only 20 have survived.
They were: Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Gaius Trebonius, Lucius Tillius Cimber, servilius Casca, Pontius Aquila, servius sulpicius Galba, Quintus Ligarius, Lucius Minucius Basilus, Gaius Cassius Parmensis, Caecilius, Bucilianus, Rubrius Ruga, Marcus spurius, Publius sextius naso, Petronius, Publius Turullius, Pacuvius Labeo and Publius servilius Casca Longus, who is believed to have struck the first blow.
It was an integral part of the plot that all 40 senators should attack Caesar in the belief that the senate would never put so many of their number on trial.
Caesar was immensely popular with the people of Rome because of his military achievements and the way he spread money around the plebian class.
An astute politician, he instigated riots so he could be the one to quell them, arranged the appointment of allies into legal and administrative positions and manipulated the senate into granting him the title of dictator for life.
Rome had expelled its last leader, Tarquin, in 509 BC for despotic behaviour and many senators feared Caesar would emulate him.
Chief among his opponents was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey or Pompey the Great), another successful military commander and politician and Caesar’s co-consul in the senate.
The ringleaders were former allies of Caesar who felt they hadn’t been adequately rewarded for their part in his rise and political opponents who sided with Pompey.
Two former allies were Gaius Trebonius and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus. It is towards Brutus that Caesar directs the accusatory line ‘Et tu, Brute?’ in shakespeare’s play, because of his betrayal.
Two of the other ringleaders were political opponents who had served under Pompey: Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, ‘the lean and hungry man’ described by shakespeare. Cassius has always been regarded as the plot’s instigator and architect.
The aftermath of the assassination was civil war. Public opinion demanded revenge for Caesar’s murder. The plotters were killed in the civil war, took their own lives or were summarily executed.