Feud with his Likely Lad co-star Rodney Bewes took to his grave
As Likely Lads star Rodney Bewes dies at 79, how ironic that it was his real-life rift with his co-star that gave one of our great comedies its edge
Of ALL the memorable TV sitcom theme songs over the years, it was the most melancholy, its words the most haunting: ‘Oh, what happened to you, whatever happened to me? What became of the people we used to be?’
Rodney Bewes, one half of the hit BBC show Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, who died yesterday aged 79, asked himself those questions every day of his life for 40 years.
His acclaimed double act with co-star James Bolam had ended in an acrimonious telephone call in 1976, after an ill-judged joke sparked an almighty row between them.
The two most famous on-screen pals in Britain were no longer on speaking terms — and, despite Bewes’s repeated pleas, there was never to be a reconciliation.
This one-sided feud cost Bewes dearly, as Bolam refused to sanction re-runs of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, denying him years of TV repeat fees of up to £4,000 an episode that would have radically changed his financial circumstances.
In 2010, he commented sadly that here he was, an old man in his 70s, still with a mortgage and an overdraft — which could have been wiped out by a single run of their 26 classic Seventies episodes together. (Only eight episodes of the original mid-Sixties series, simply called The Likely Lads, survived.)
‘To stop other people earning money is cruel,’ he said.
But, despite the bad blood, Bewes, born in Bingley, Yorkshire, in 1937, always insisted that he was a jolly chap who wanted to be everybody’s friend.
His nature was in sharp contrast to his Likely Lads character. Bewes played earnest social climber Bob ferris, a dull, but kindly, soul who was henpecked by his wife Thelma (Brigit forsyth) and who sometimes yearned for his carefree teenage days in the Sixties.
BOLAm was the feckless Terry Collier, a scrounger and a ladies’ man, always on the lookout for a free pint and the chance to taunt Bob over his middle-class aspirations. There was a dark edge to the sitcom, by Ian La frenais and Dick Clement. It had started out as a more carefree comedy in 1964, about the escapades of a couple of apprentice electricians in a Newcastle factory. It came to an end in 1966 when the boys decided to join the Army — but Bob was rejected because of flat feet while Terry was accepted.
When the show relaunched in 1973 as Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, Bob had a career and a home, while Terry was a bitter ex-squaddie who felt shortchanged by his mate . . . and life.
At the time, viewers never suspected the resentment might be real. Yet to watch the show now — and some episodes are timeless — it’s possible to detect a genuine nastiness in Terry’s jibes.
Bolam did his oblique best to hint at his dislike for Bewes. He told one interviewer: ‘Just because one played great friends, it doesn’t mean that you are great friends.’
When fans called out in the street, ‘Hey Terry, where’s Bob?’ Bolam would snarl: ‘He’s dead!’
Bewes never understood it. He truly thought they were friends, recalling with fondness how they would go out for meals together with their wives after the show.
The catastrophic break came after an interview in which Bewes revealed that Bolam’s actress wife was expecting a baby.
Bewes had four children with his second wife, Daphne — a daughter, Daisy, and triplet sons Tom, Billy and Joe.
The way Bewes told it was that Bolam heard he was to be a father himself while driving with his wife, Susan Jameson. ‘You know Daphne had three babies at once...well, I’m just having the one!’ she told him. According to Bewes, Bolam nearly crashed the car.
It was a good story, even if Bewes had embellished it slightly, and he was baffled when Bolam slammed down the phone on him after it appeared in print.
That would be the last time they spoke. Even when Daphne died following a stroke two years ago, Bolam did not get in touch.
The end of The Likely Lads in the mid-Seventies came as a serious blow to Bewes. He adored being famous — he had shared a flat with actor Tom Courtenay in the Sixties, hung out with mick Jagger and laughed at himself for being starstruck when he met Omar Sharif. ‘So handsome,’ he’d joke, ‘you’d want to jump into bed with him.’
He commanded big fees for voiceovers, for Birds Eye TV advertisements among others, and at his peak earned £250,000 in a year — nearly £2 million today — though back in the mid-Seventies, the taxman took nearly all of it.
He loved flashy cars, including a Porsche convertible and a Bentley limo. But, whereas Bolam itched to tackle more serious roles, Bewes was content to ride his fame. He never found another role that gave him so much so easily, and his screen acting career quickly wound down.
Bolam went on to great critical acclaim with When The Boat Comes In and The Beiderbecke Connection, before in 2003 taking a lead role in BBC1’s New Tricks, which ran for 12 years. It was when he got this role that he decreed there should be no more Likely Lads repeats, perhaps to avoid over-exposure.
Bewes couldn’t forgive that. ‘I’m not a pain-in-the-a**e serious actor who thinks: “Oh God, aren’t I important” and is ashamed of an absolutely brilliant show I was in more than 30 years ago,’ he said.
HE LOVED to talk about himself, though. In 2005, he wrote his autobiography — and complained that the publisher cut more than 1,000 pages of his favourite stories.
many of these he would tell in his one-man show in which he toured the country, often meandering on for hours on stage before settling down to sign autographs and swap anecdotes with fans.
Above all, he liked to reminisce about the heady days when he and Bolam were pals.
‘We had such fun...on the night before recording we’d be on the p***, we’d get to the studio and the first thing we’d do is ask for the nurse to get us some headache pills. We were such good friends.’
What, indeed, became of the people they used to be?