As a sitcom, it stayed loose and light – the storylines tended to stick to a very small and predictable range of topics, usually involving bungled protests and brushes with the law, and the characters never really acquired any depth or drive – but, at its heart, was the engagingly Walter Mittyish figure of Citizen Smith himself, the sheep in wolf ’s clothing who fooled no one except himself:
| WOLFIE: | We in the Tooting Popular Front are massing our forces ready for the big push! |
| SHIRLEY: | How many of you are there? |
| WOLFIE: | Ha! How many? How many fish in the sea? How many stars in the sky? |
| SHIRLEY: | How many, Wolfie? |
| WOLFIE: | Six. |
Brightly written and nicely played, the character struck a contemporary chord, especially with younger viewers, and kept people interested and entertained even when the plots started to pall. Without inspiring any critic to hail it as a classic, the majority of those who previewed and reviewed it treated the show with a fair measure of warmth and affection, and came to see plenty of potential in John Sullivan as a sitcom writer. As he prepared to move on to his next project, therefore, the future seemed excitingly bright.
It was in 1980, however, that Sullivan suddenly found himself in trouble. After bringing his first sitcom to a satisfying close, his initial idea for a second one – Bright Lights, about a naive northern boy who comes to London in search of glamour and excitement – was scrapped at the planning stage and then he also lost the next one that he wrote before it had even reached the screen.
It was called Over the Moon, and was about a hapless football manager trying in vain to turn a lower-league football club into the next big thing. A pilot episode had been recorded on 30 November in a studio at Television Centre, and, although one or two who saw it had misgivings about its potential (Jimmy Gilbert, for example, felt that, compared to the first edition of Citizen Smith, ‘it hadn’t worked out so well’16), it was well enough received internally for the BBC to commission an initial series of six episodes. Sullivan was very optimistic about its prospects: the cast – which included Brian Wilde (best known at the time for playing the permanently befuddled prison officer Mr Barraclough in Porridge) as the manager and George Baker (a familiar face since becoming a British movie star in the 1950s) as his chairman – looked strong, the producer/director was Sullivan’s friend and old Citizen Smith colleague Ray Butt, and the situation itself – dealing as it did with the old-style working-class milieu of pre-Premiership football – was something that Sullivan knew well, and loved sufficiently to make it seem plausible as well as funny. It therefore came as a shock when, just as he was in the middle of writing the fourth instalment, the call came from Ray Butt that Bill Cotton, the then-Controller of BBC1, had returned from a trip overseas and promptly cancelled the commission.
The explanation Butt was given was that, as the Corporation had previously committed itself to making a brand new sitcom about a boxer (Seconds Out, starring, ironically, Robert Lindsay), it was decided that one comedy with a sporting theme was quite enough for the time being, so Over the Moon was dropped like a sick parrot. It was disastrous news for John Sullivan, because he and his wife had just had a baby and taken out a mortgage on their first house in Sutton, Surrey. Only under contract at the BBC for one more year, the future, financially, suddenly looked ominously bleak.
While the scriptwriter and his erstwhile producer/director busied themselves with finding a solution to the problem, three actors were facing their own challenges as 1980 moved towards its end. David Jason was still searching for the role that would establish him once and for all as a bona fide star; Nicholas Lyndhurst was looking for the chance to advance his fledgling career; and Lennard Pearce, having been in the business for the best part of fifty years, was finally pondering the possibility of retirement.
David Jason, at the time, was by far the best known of the three performers, but in 1980, after being touted for years as a big star in the making, he was still regarded by many as nothing more than a top-class support act. Although his thick dark hair was sometimes disguised with a variety of coloured wigs, his diminutive stature (5feet 6inches tall), large and dark orbital eyes and wide thin-lipped grin were familiar to many viewers after seeing him in numerous supporting roles, but some still responded to his presence in the credits with the question, ‘David who?’17
Born David John White on 2 February 1940 (sadly his twin brother, Jason, lived for only two weeks), he came from a similar working-class background to that of John Sullivan. His father, Arthur, was a fish porter at Billingsgate Fish Market. His Welsh mother, Olwen, was a charlady. The family home was a small terraced house in Lodge Lane in Finchley, north London.
He was always a gifted mimic, and found it easy to amuse his family and friends with impersonations of popular radio stars, but acting only became important to him after he took part, at the age of fourteen, in a school play about the English Civil Wars. Grudgingly standing in for an ailing classmate, he appeared as a cavalier and, much to his surprise, loved the experience and, after it was over, resolved to remain on the stage by joining a local amateur dramatic society.
He left school at fifteen, and tried to honour his parents’ wishes by training for a trade, working first as a mechanic and then as an electrician. His real ambition, however, was to make acting his proper profession, and he spent his spare evenings treading the boards in amateur productions. He received his first notice in July 1955, when a local drama critic named W.H. Gelder spotted his potential and praised his performance in the Incognito Theatre Group’s production of the St John Ervine play, Robert’s Wife. Further reviews by Gelder appeared in the Barnet and Finchley Press, including one that applauded David’s efforts for another local amateur dramatic group, The Manor Players: ‘[T]he extraordinarily precocious schoolboy by David White, looking like a young James Cagney, and playing, though only 16, with the ease of a born actor [was] possibly the highlight of the evening, which was bright enough in all conscience . . .’ Gelder would also write that the young actor was ‘one of the comparatively few amateurs whom I could conscientiously recommend for the professional theatre’. The critical plaudits delighted the amateur actor, who saved all of Gelder’s reviews and made sure that they did not escape his parents’ attention.18
By his early twenties, David was working during the day as an electrician alongside his old friend Bob Bevil for a company the two men had set up called B & W Installations, but, even though the business started to do quite well, he never stopped listening and looking out for a serious chance to perform. The opportunity finally arrived in March 1965, when his elder brother Arthur, who had himself started acting professionally, was offered a part in the popular BBC police drama series Z Cars; in order to accept, Arthur had to abandon a forthcoming engagement (to play the minor part of a coloured butler called Sanjamo) in a play – Noel Coward’s The South Sea Bubble – at Bromley Rep in Kent, but, before dropping out, he recommended David to the director, Simon Oates.
The recommendation worked: after watching David in an amateur production, Oates judged him a ‘stunningly talented’ actor and signed him up.19 Thrilled to be given such an opportunity, David promptly surrendered his share in B & W Installations and made his professional debut as an actor on 5 April 1965 at Bromley Rep. He followed this with a few more minor engagements before returning to the repertory company on a twelve-month contract. It was here that he served his theatrical apprenticeship, submitting himself to the discipline of Rep’s rapid rotation of roles, tones and themes. Always a very private man (‘The only person who knows me,’ he would say, ‘is me’20), as well as a very driven one, he