A full episode of The Basil Brush Show with Mr Derek

When Derek Fowlds was cast in Yes, Minister he was, as a secondary modern boy, apprehensive about playing a Whitehall highflyer, So he turned up for the first rehearsal with a pair of glasses and a posh accent.

"What are you doing?" asked Paul Eddington, "Just talk to me the way you used to talk to Basil Brush."

And this is how he talked to Basil Brush. Mr Derek was the best of Basil's companions, perhaps because he was stricter with him, which meant that they got through the story. There's a moral about parenting there somewhere.

This is, as far as I can recall, is a typical episode of The Basil Brush Show. It's one of several from the Mr Derek era on YouTube at the moment.

The Black Theatre of Prague was the sort of act you were supposed to like as a child, but perhaps didn't. Cheesy Peter Noone, only 24 in 1971, was already on the downward slope, having been huge in the 1960s. Jacqueline Stanbury worked throughout the 1970s in minor roles, including an uncredited one in The Day of the Jackal. She is married to a friend of this blog, David Wood.

But what made these shows special was the crosstalk and rapport between Basil and Mr Derek. Fowlds is on record as saying he signed up for a second series for the money, but somehow during the course of it the puppet came alive to him and became a real talking fox.

Here it's all very 1972. There are jokes about Jack Bodell, Fred Trueman (who had left Yorkshire by then and was turning out for Derbyshire on Sundays) and British Rail.

The scripts were clever, but what the audience of Cubs and Brownies the BBC assembled would laugh at was a lottery, judging by this episode. But I loved Basil Brush and his weekly shows were a treat.

Jack Bodell was a British boxer, perhaps the most notable of the 'horizontal heavyweights' that we went in for in those days.

When the greatest British heavyweight of the era, Henry Cooper, made a comeback to fight for the European title, an interviewer asked if he planned to fight another British boxer. He sounded doubtful: "if I beat Jack Bodell once more, they'll let me hang him over my mantlepiece."

But that didn't stop Bodell being promoted on the world scene. In 1971 he fought the leading white American heavyweight Jerry Quarry, only to be knocked out in 64 seconds.

Trying to salvage something from the wreckage, a British journalist asked if Bodell had been an awkward opponent. Quarry thought for a moment and replied: "Well he sure fell awkwardly."

Mr Derek in the Further Adventures of Bulldog Basil

Maybe this doesn't show them at their best, but clips of Basil Brush with Derek Fowlds, his finest companion by far, rarely turn up on YouTube.

Enjoy it while you can.

Derek Fowlds: A part well played

The first episode of Yes, Minister was broadcast on 25 February 1980, which makes it a good day to mention that Talking Pictures Encore has an interview with Derek Fowlds about his acting career.

You can watch A Part Well Played online for free.

Derek Fowlds, who died in 2020, is remembered for appearing with Basil Brush and in Yes, Minister and Heartbeat, but he enjoyed success on the stage and in films too.

Goodbye Mr Derek

I was very sorry to hear of the death of Derek Fowlds.

His selflessness as an actor was central to the success of Yes Minister, but as a working-class lad he was worried about playing a Whitehall high-flyer. So he turned up to rehearsals with a pair of glasses and a posh accent.

When he saw this Paul Eddington said: "Just talk to me the way you used to talk to Basil Brush."

And here is Derek Fowlds with Basil Brush. Together they produced some of the happiest television moments of my childhood.

The Solarnauts: Derek Fowlds in space

The blurb on YouTube explains:

Well, here's an oddity! An unsold pilot for a proposed 1967 sci-fi actioner out of the UK. Eye-popping costumes and sets belie an overall cheesy but charming tone. Cast of familiar but un-nameable Brit character actors, only Bond-Girl Martine Beswick and a very young Derek Fowlds stand out.

Derek Fowlds: How I fell in love with Basil Brush

He was also Bernard Woolley and Oscar Blaketon, but people of my generation will always be grateful that he was Mr Derek.

Basil Brush and Mr Derek play Shakespeare

Fifteen precious minutes of Basil Brush and Derek Fowlds have appeared on YouTube, though I am sure they would have been broadcast in colour.

The clip here shows them tackling Romeo and Juliet. Things like this cracked us up in 1973 (if there wasn't a power cut).

Basil Brush and Mr Derek

BBC Genome has a nice article on one of my childhood heroes, occasioned by the fact The Basil Brush Show was first aired today in 1968:

Basil Brush started his own show in the traditional Crackerjack slot at five to five on a Friday afternoon. The first series of The Basil Brush Show debuted on 14th June 1968. Again scripted by George Martin, it was produced by Johnny Downes, and Basil was partnered by actor Rodney Bewes, late of The Likely Lads. 

In Basil’s inimitable fashion he was addressed as ‘Mr Rodney’. The first series also benefited from impressive musical acts, including Manfred Mann, The Alan Price Set and The Kinks. 

The series performed well enough, and a second series followed in March 1969, although Rodney Bewes had bowed out to concentrate on his ITV sitcom Dear Mother… Love Albert and was replaced by another young actor, Derek Fowlds, later famous for roles in Yes Minister and Heartbeat – but for now known by Basil as ‘Mr Derek’. 

Fowlds became perhaps the best remembered of Basil’s partners, interacting well with his furry friend through several series until he called it a day in 1973. They made guest appearances on It’s Lulu, and landed a 'best of' show and a Christmas morning programme in 1970.

Most of the programmes Fowlds made with Basil were wiped. There used to be a longer video of them together on Youtube, but at the moment the scrap above is all that is to be found there.

Yes Prime Minister on Britain's attitude to Europe

As so often with this series and its predecessor Yes Minister, there is a lot of truth in this clip.

It reminds us that it was the Conservatives who promoted the expansion of the European Union after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In part this was out of a wholly creditable desire to embed democratic institutions in the newly liberated nations of Eastern Europe.

And in part it was due, if not to cynical motives laid out by Sir Humphrey, then to a hope that a wider Europe would prove shallower and there would be less of a desire for direction from the centre.

In the event this hope was dashed. It turned out in those heady, optimistic days that Eastern nations would accept any amount of direction if membership of the EU was the prize.

The other night I was listening to an interview with Derek Fowlds (Bernard in the clip above) - as you do when you can't sleep.

Fowlds, a working-class lad, was daunted by the prospect of playing a Civil Service high flyer and turned up for the first rehearsal with a posh accent and a pair of spectacles.

Paul Eddington had little time for these gimmicks and advised him: "Just talk to me the way you did to Basil Brush."

Famous faces in Gideon's Way

I have now watched all 26 episodes of Gideon's Way on Youtube. As I said in my first post on the subject, one of the pleasures of the series is the regular appearance of actors who later became famous in other roles.

So it is that in one episode (Boy with Gun) you will find both Smiley's enforcer Mendel from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Wally Batty from Last of the Summer Wine.

That first post showed you John Hurt and Michael Cashman. Here are some more familiar faces.

A young Donald Sutherland in The Millionaire's Daughter.

Mrs Bridges from Upstairs Downstairs as a criminal boss in Big Fish, Little Fish.

Harry Hawkins from Softly Softly was on of my first TV heroes. Here is Norman Bowler in Morna before that (and long before Emmerdale).

Mr Lucas from Are You Being Served? appeared as a Constable in The Reluctant Witness...

...while Private Walker from Dad's Army was an Inspector in A Perfect Crime.

And here, before Heartbeat, before Yes Minister, before even Basil Brush, is Derek Fowlds in The Nightlifers.

On being addicted to ITV3

A few months ago my television's integral DVD player failed, so I sent the set away to be repaired. When it came back with an unexpected bonus: I could now receive ITV3.

This station is largely devoted to repeats of old situation comedies (On the Buses, Terry and June) and, in particular, old detective series. It has become something of an addiction of mine.

There are the prestige dramas like Lewis, Inspector Morse and Vera. And the more workaday series like Wycliffe and Heartbeat. Though the prestige dramas are great in theory, I often find myself losing motivation halfway through, so it is the shorter dramas that I have studied more closely.

Wycliffe, despite being set in the tourist county of Cornwall, is a notably downbeat series, thanks both to the writing and the central performance by Jack Shepherd. But I suspect it offers a more honest picture of Cornish life than we are often given.

And a recent episode displayed one of the pleasures of these old dramas: spotting famous faces before or after they were famous. Two of Wycliffe's junior police officers were played by Philip Glenister and Marc Warren, and the villain was played by former EastEnder Leslie Grantham.

But then I recently watched a Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes in which the lad made to impersonate a dead noblewoman turned out to be Jude Law.

My greatest affection, however, is reserved for Heartbeat. Of course, it has numerous faults: Bill Maynard is a son of Market Harborough, but his comic turn as Claude Greengrass soon palls. While to call Nick Berry's acting 'wooden' would be a kindness. He could have portrayed a whole timber yard.

Still the cast changed from year to year, and there are many pleasures. Derek Fowlds is a reassuring presence: I remember him as Basil Brush's Mr Derek from the 1960s; he was the only man who could keep Basil in order. Fowlds' replacement all allowed Basil to run rings around them and never managed to finish the story. There is a lesson about parenting there somewhere.

And William Simons who played Alf Ventress turns out, improbably, to have been a child star in the 1950s. He played Anthony Steel and Dinah Sheridan's son in Where No Vultures Fly and West of Zanzibar.

Best of all there is the music. When Heartbeat was launched, making the 1960s the subject of nostalgia seemed almost daring. This was in the John Major years when that decade was being blamed for all our troubles. Today it seems pure escapism and the literal mind of the producers meant that the Spencer Davis Group's Keep on Running features more often than most songs.

What I particularly like is the contrast between the cosiness of the Yorkshire setting - Hearbeat's Aidensfield is the real-life Goathland, which also has connections with Malcolm Saville - and the wildness of the music.

Take a recent episode which ended with a shoot out at Goathland Station involving the villains and Leslie Grantham (this time playing a mysterious Special Branch officer), all played out to the trippy sounds of Dear Mr Fantasy by Traffic.

It's what the sixties should have been like, even if they weren't.

Sparks: This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of us

Back in July I wrote:

Let's face it: the 1970s had few redeeming features. There was Basil Brush, the keyboard player from Sparks and after that you are struggling.

A trifle harsh, perhaps, but thanks to Youtube you can see who I was praising.

Sparks was an American band who grew up listening to the great British groups of the sixties and enjoyed some success over here in 1974-5. They were a beacon of wit and lightness of touch in an ocean of of clumsy glam rock. This week's video shows their song "The Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of us", which reached no. 2 in 1974.

At the heart of the band were the brothers Ron and Russell Mael. And Ron, who also wrote most of the songs, was the keyboard player I mentioned.

His toothbrush moustache and sidelong glances at the camera were famously unnerving. Sometimes he smiled, which was even scarier.

The Mael brothers are still around. Sparks get rediscovered every few years, which is more that you can say for most bands of their era. Read more about them on their website.

Basil Brush fans need not feel left out. Youtube has a clip of Basil from his glory years. It's eight minutes of pure gold, and also features an impossibly youthful Derek Fowlds.