It Sticks Out Half a Mile

It Sticks Out Half a Mile

The cast of It Sticks Out Half a Mile (left to right): Ian Lavender (Pike), John Le Mesurier (Wilson), Vivienne Martin (Miss Perkins), Bill Pertwee (Hodges)
Genre	Sitcom
Running time	30 minutes
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
Home station	BBC Radio 2
Syndicates	BBC Radio 4 Extra
Starring	John Le Mesurier Ian Lavender Bill Pertwee Vivienne Martin
Written by	Harold Snoad Michael Knowles
Produced by	Martin Fisher
Recording studio	Paris Studios, London
Original release	13 November 1983 – 2 October 1984
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	13

It Sticks Out Half a Mile is a British radio sitcom that was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 from 1983 to 1984. The series starred John Le Mesurier, Ian Lavender, Bill Pertwee and Vivienne Martin, and was written by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles, and produced by Martin Fisher. The series served as a sequel to the television wartime sitcom Dad's Army, for which Snoad and Knowles had written radio adaptations.

A pilot episode starring Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier was recorded in 1981, but was left unbroadcast due to Lowe's death in April 1982. The pilot was subsequently broadcast for the first time in 2004 on BBC 7.

The series spawned two television adaptations. The first, Walking the Planks, was broadcast on BBC1 in 1985, while the second, High & Dry, ran for seven episodes in 1987 on ITV1.

Plot

The year is 1948, and former Chief ARP Warden Bert Hodges (Bill Pertwee) arrives in the fictional seaside town of Frambourne-on-Sea (located not far up the coast from Dad's Army's Walmington-on-Sea, on the South Coast of England) with a plan to restore the town's near-decrepit pier back to its former glory. To achieve this goal, Hodges meets former Home Guard Private Frank Pike, now twenty-two and working at Woolworths, to convince him to enter a partnership to raise the needed funds. Pike's "uncle" (actually Pike's father), the former Home Guard Sergeant Arthur Wilson, is now the bank manager of the Frambourne branch of Swallow's Bank, so Hodges convinces Pike to ask Wilson for the £5,000 loan needed to purchase the pier. When Wilson refuses to invest such a sum of money in a such a venture, Pike blackmails Wilson over an affair that occurred when Wilson first moved to Frambourne. Wilson reluctantly agrees to give Hodges and Pike the loan, and the pier's renovation begins, but not without its challenges. The trio are met with opposition from Fred Guthrie (Glynn Edwards), the lone chief attendant in charge of supervising the pier, while Wilson must ward off the advances of Miss Perkins (Vivienne Martin), the chief cashier at Swallow's Bank, who is in love with him.

Cast and characters

• John Le Mesurier as Arthur Wilson, a former Sergeant in the Home Guard, who is now the manager of the Frambourne-on-Sea branch of Swallow's Bank. Possessing a calm and relaxed attitude to life, Wilson reluctantly acts as Pike and Hodges's reluctant financial advisor upon their purchase of Frambourne Pier.
• Ian Lavender as Frank Pike, a former Home Guard Private who now works in ironmongery at Woolworths. A young, naïve man, and also a dreamer, he enters a partnership with Hodges to renovate Frambourne Pier.
• Bill Pertwee as Bert Hodges, a former Chief ARP Warden, who enters a partnership with Pike to renovate Frambourne Pier. An uncouth and brash man, he was previously Pike and Wilson's rival during the war years, however, Hodges decides to work together with Pike and Wilson to renovate the pier. In a 1998 interview with Dave Homewood, the founder of the New Zealand branch of the Dad's Army Appreciation Society, Bill Pertwee admitted that the character of Hodges was "very different" in this series, and agreed that he had become a "bit less rough".
• Vivienne Martin as Miss Perkins, the chief cashier at Swallow's Bank. Known for her irritating laugh, she is in love with her manager, Wilson.

Background

Development

When Dad's Army ended after nine series in 1977, there were discussions about either continuing the series on the ITV network or for a sequel series to be produced which would follow the Walmington-on-Sea platoon as members of the town council in post-war Walmington. However, Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles instead submitted the idea for It Sticks Out Half a Mile to the BBC's radio department. The idea was well-received, and a pilot episode was commissioned.

The pilot episode, titled "Loyal Support", starred Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier reprising their roles of Captain Mainwaring and Sergeant Wilson respectively, and followed Mainwaring, who, returning from Switzerland with his wife, arrives in Frambourne-on-Sea and approaches Swallow's Bank for a loan to purchase the town's decrepit pier. He is shocked to discover that the bank manager is his former Home Guard Sergeant Arthur Wilson. Wilson, reluctantly, agrees to give Mainwaring his loan, and together they meet the local town council to purchase Frambourne Pier.

Lowe and Le Mesurier enjoyed working with each other on the pilot and agreed to return to their roles once further episodes had been written. If ratings were strong, the possibility of adapting the series for television was discussed. Snoad and Knowles were still writing the rest of the scripts for a full series when, on 15 April 1982, Arthur Lowe died. The series was shelved, and the existing pilot episode was left unbroadcast. However, Lowe's wife, actress Joan Lowe, assured Snoad and Knowles that the series should continue, since her husband had believed that it "had so much potential". Snoad and Knowles thus convinced the BBC that the idea could still be viable, and so a second pilot, titled "The Business Proposition", was produced, with Ian Lavender, Bill Pertwee and Vivienne Martin joining the cast. This being a success, twelve more episodes were commissioned as part of a thirteen-part series.

In a preview article for the Radio Times by Robert Ottaway, published a day before transmission of the first episode, Ian Lavender reflected on the legacy of Dad's Army: "I played with that team for 10 years. The atmosphere… was so great between us." He went on to add that he believed that the atmosphere "carries on, now we are supposed to be three years older" in It Sticks Out Half a Mile. He also spoke about the advantages of radio: "I don’t need so much Brylcreem and eyeshadow to disguise myself, my voice is more or less the same."

In 1999, Lavender revealed that, after the first series had aired, there were again discussions about adapting the series for television. However, just as Lowe had died before a decision could be reached, Le Mesurier died in 1983.

A second Radio Times article by David Gillard, titled "Nostalgia at the End of the Pier" and published three days before the repeat broadcast of the first episode, on 14 July 1984, featured an interview with Bill Pertwee, who stated that It Sticks Out Half a Mile was "the end of the road for Dad's Army". Pertwee believed that this was the final time members of the Dad's Army cast would work together. He recalled: "The series had originally been mainly written around Arthur Lowe and John, and when Arthur died it had to be re-jigged. John had not been well, though he was feeling better when we recorded the series, but I think we all realised that we'd had a great run – the programmes started on TV in 1968 – and we were coming to the end of it."

The series was notable in that it featured some of John Le Mesurier's final performances, and was the final radio series he recorded before his death on 15 November 1983, two days after the first episode, "The Business Proposition", was broadcast. In a 1998 interview, Bill Pertwee, when prompted, believed that, had John Le Mesurier not died, the BBC "probably would have done another series". Pertwee later recalled, in May 2000, that the series "was like one last get-together, one last party with great friends".

Due to the death of Arthur Lowe, the original pilot was not broadcast and the tape wiped, but co-writer Snoad retained a copy which he later returned to the BBC. A short excerpt was played on a documentary entitled The Archive Hour: Radio's Lost Property on 1 November 2003, with the complete programme being heard on a BBC 7 compilation entitled Some of Our Archives Were Missing on 29 May 2004.

Continuity errors with Dad's Army

Pike's age is incorrect in this series. In the first episode of the second series of Dad's Army, titled "Operation Kilt" and set in 1940, Pike states that he is seventeen. However, eight years later in It Sticks Out Half a Mile (which is set in 1948), Pike is stated by Wilson in "The Business Proposition" as being twenty-two, when he should actually be twenty-five. In addition, Hodges's first name in Dad's Army is stated as being William, but in It Sticks Out Half a Mile, his first name is Bert.

Episodes

Original pilot (1981)

Series 1 (1983-84)

Release

Broadcast

The first nine episodes of the series were broadcast from 13 November 1983 to 15 January 1984 on Sunday afternoons at 1:30 pm. Each episode was repeated the following Friday at 10:00 pm, from 18 November 1983 to 20 January 1984. Later in the year, following a repeat airing of the first five episodes beginning 17 July 1984, the final four episodes of the series were broadcast from 21 August to 9 October 1984 at 10:30 pm.

The series was subsequently repeated again on BBC Radio 2, but an apparent mix-up between different BBC departments resulted in most of the broadcast tapes being wiped. However, the BBC's Treasure Hunt unearthed off-air recordings of It Sticks Out Half a Mile, and the digital radio archive channel BBC 7 has broadcast the recovered copies of the series. As of November 2023, the first seven episodes of the series, plus the original pilot episode, are available for listening on Spotify and Audible.

Media releases

The original pilot and the first three episodes of the series were released in September 2010, on a compact disc titled Classic BBC Radio Comedy: It Sticks Out Half a Mile. A second CD, containing the next four episodes and titled It Sticks Out Half a Mile: Continued, was released in February 2012. Both were also released as audiobooks. The whole series, including the original pilot, was subsequently released as a CD and audiobook in October 2019.

The original pilot was also released on the Dad's Army: The Complete Radio Series: Series 3 compact disc in May 2015, and the collector's edition of series three, released in March 2004.

Reception

In 2012, Graham McCann, in his biography on John Le Mesurier, wrote that, although the first episode was of a high standard: 'Some of the subsequent episodes (which were broadcast later in the year) would fall rather flat, certainly by the very high standards of Dad's Army, but the unforced rapport between Le Mesurier, Lavender and Pertwee kept the series sufficiently entertaining to justify it as a spin-off.'

In a 2021 article, Rhianna Evans from the British Comedy Guide wrote positively of the series: "Considering Croft and Perry weren't involved, Hodges, Pike and Wilson's characters all remain very recognisable." She went on to add that "there is very little deviation from the iconic source material, and the character-driven, gentle-paced form of storytelling that made Dad's Army such a success similarly continues. Snoad and Knowles introduced a number of new characters to give the series its own life and flavour, such as Guthrie, who has a perforated eardrum [and] the bank clerk, Miss Perkins, who is in love with Wilson (much to Pike's distain). However, the new cast don't alter the style or tone of It Sticks Out Half A Mile from that laid down in Dad's Army at all: they're perfectly in step with the world we all know". She concluded by writing that the series is "a continuation of the Dad's Army story that any fan would enjoy".

Television adaptations

There were two attempts to adapt It Sticks Out Half a Mile for television, without the Dad's Army characters. The first attempt was a pilot episode for BBC1, titled Walking the Planks. It starred Michael Elphick as Ron Archer (Hodges's equivalent), Richard Wilson as Richard Talbot (Wilson's equivalent), Gary Raynsford as Trevor Archer (Pike's equivalent) and Vivienne Martin as Talbot's secretary, now called Miss Baxter. Despite achieving positive viewing figures, the BBC did not commission a series.

In consequence, Knowles and Snoad took the concept to Yorkshire Television, who produced a seven-episode series titled High & Dry. In the role previously performed by Elphick, Bernard Cribbins was cast, and Angus Barnett took over the role of Trevor Archer.

See also

• Dad's Army
• Dad's Army radio series
• High & Dry