Dennis, Oz and the lads 35 years on... And the lads 35 years on...
TV CLASSIC AUF WIEDERSEHEN, PET FIRST AIRED IN NOVEMBER, 1983
FOR television viewers in 1983, there were just four channels to choose from. Thirty-five years ago, those tuning in at nine o’clock on Friday, November 11, would find on BBC1, the News, followed by Knots Landing. On BBC2, there was an episode of the long-running American comedy series M*A*S*H. And, on recently-launched Channel 4, A Week In Politics awaited.
That day’s Chronicle, however, had as its ‘Pick Of The Night’ a new ITV offering called Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
Written by Dick Clement and Whitley Bay-born Ian La Frenais - creators of The Likely Lads and Porridge - this was “a 13-part comedy-drama series about a gang of building workers who head for Germany in search of employment.
“Only a 90-minute flight from home they may be, but they might as well be in the Chinese countryside for the amount they have in common with their German hosts.”
In the event, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet would be a TV triumph, telling the ups, downs and scrapes of an ill-matched bunch of Brits living in a hut on a German building site as they escaped unemployment in early-80s Thatcherite Britain.
There would be a further three series - and a TV special - over the following three decades.
But it’s fair to say it was series one, set in Dusseldorf, which best captured the imagination of the TV public.
Central to the group’s on-screen shenanigans were a trio of Geordies bricklayers Dennis, Oz and Neville brilliantly played by the relatively unknown Tim Healy, Jimmy Nail and Kevin Whately.
The other major characters were Barry, Wayne, Bomber and Moxie purportedly a Brummie, Cockney, Bristolian and Scouser respectively - played by Timothy Spall, Gary Holton, Pat Roach and Christopher Fairbank.
The TV-viewing nation would quickly take them to their hearts.
Some of the action was filmed on Tyneside although nearly all of the first series was shot in Germany and at Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, in Hertfordshire.
A couple of days before the first episode was aired, the Chronicle caught up with two of the new show’s stars.
Tim Healy told us: “Clement and La Frenais don’t just write funny scripts, they give you rock-solid characters on which to build. With scripts like these, the actors feel they can’t fail.” Meanwhile, Jimmy Nail (real name Jimmy Bradford, a singer in a Newcastle blues-rock band) was far more forthcoming talking to the press than he would be in later years. “I’m chuffed as hell to be in the series,” he told us. “I’ve met people like Oz before. In fact, I used to work on a German building site for two years and was a bit of a hard nut meself, and also a general ne’er-dowell.” Director Martin Bamford recalled Nail’s audition: “He walked through the door wearing a beaten-up leather jacket, with a beer gut, a broken nose and several teeth missing. It looked as if the part had been written for him.”
The actor continued: “Oz is the sort of guy who goes around doing anything for a few bob - he just leaves the house and his missus behind and goes off when the mood takes him. He’s one of life’s drifters - amiable and capable, but with no great motivation to do ‘owt. “I long ago gave up hoping to be a matinee idol, but I think I possess what
I’m chuffed as hell to be in the series. I’ve met people like Oz before. I used to work on a German building site...
I call rugged good looks. Who am I kidding? I’m a character actor with a character’s face.”
Thirty-five years on, the Official Auf Wiedersehen, Pet Fansite, run by Lee Barrett, is celebrating the milestone in a special newsletter.
Lee says: “Who would believe that a series about a bunch of builders living on a building site in Dusseldorf would become so popular, with viewing figures hitting almost 20 million?
“Based on an original idea by Franc Roddam, and conceived to be a one-off film, writers Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement were convinced this could make a fantastic series, and so they encouraged Franc to let them develop and write 13 episodes.”
Meanwhile, series producer, Martin McKeand, recalls: “It’s extraordinary to think it is 35 years since all that happened. Of course, though some memories are crystal clear, some are lost in a haze of beer and schnapps fumes.
“The first image that always comes to my mind is from those early days of location shooting in Hamburg, in a rather luxurious hotel bar, and Jimmy Nail musing aloud: ‘Amazing really me, a humble welder, plucked from obscurity and surrounded by glamorous boilers.’ This line not written by Clement or La Frenais, but from the man who later created and wrote Spender.”
But it’s left to the show’s creator Franc Roddam to sum up the legacy of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet at 35.
He says: “The show is one of the greatest TV dramas of all time, thanks to a fantastic cast and brilliant writing by Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement.”
Nobody here is arguing...
■■Visit the Official Auf Wiedersehen, Pet Fansite at www.auf-pet.com