Lord Bonkers' Diary: Confessions of a Knocker Up

The new issue of Liberator has arrived, so it is high time we spent a few days with Rutland's most popular fictional peer.

 Monday

To Oakham Studios. I expect some of my readers will be surprised to learn that the old place is still operating. After all, the glory days of the Oakham Comedies are far behind us. I expect you have seen ‘Passport to Pickworth,’ in which a village declares its independence from Rutland – with hilarious consequences! (There is also one about a poor relation of an aristocratic family who murders his way to a title – I have never allowed this to be shown at the Bonkers’ Home for Well-Behaved Orphans.)

Some years later, as chairman of Oakham Studios Ltd, I helped win a contract from the Association of Liberal Councillors to make a number of training films. More than one prominent member of our party learnt electioneering from watching ‘Confessions from a Committee Room.’ ‘Confessions of a Canvasser’ and ‘Confessions of a Knocker Up’.

What, with the success of my own tribute to the Officer Training Corps at one of our leading public schools – ‘Carry On Uppingham’ – those were good years for the studios.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.