Published as An Ex-Straw-Ordinary Character, Infinity #26, 2020.
This hit the newsstands just as the UK went into its first lockdown, and became the highest-selling issue ever. Just saying. I refer to the forthcoming new series, which had been broadcast some months before this went to print. ‘At time of writing’ is a terribly useful phrase.
If scarecrows walk and talk, they do it only by themselves, by the light of the moon, when all the world’s asleep.
Children’s fictional heroes are terribly, terribly important. Unlike their real-life counterparts they never age, never change and never let us down. They can be flawed, but they will always beat adversity by being brave, compassionate, generous and clever. Worzel Gummidge was none of these things and how we loved him for it.
Based on the series of books by Barbara Euphan Todd the television adventures of this disreputable scarecrow kept millions entertained and enthralled as each week he would cause self-centred mayhem. It’s fair to say that the source material was greatly improved during adaptation by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, who wrote mostly new adventures for Worzel between 1979 and 1981. This is not to wholly dismiss Todd’s works, her early books are highly entertaining although there is a palpable drop in quality and innovation as the decades pass. The television series gave Worzel a whole new life, and yet it very nearly never happened.
Enter Jon Pertwee, still famous as the Third Doctor and currently on television as the host of Whodunnit?, a panel show which focussed on the lighter side of murder. He had been discussing a Worzel film with Waterhouse and Hall which had evolved into a TV project. With justifiable confidence Pertwee approached his former employers at the BBC who turned him down, content that their children’s programming remit was satisfied by making another 83 series of Rentaghost. Similar rebuttal was received from Thames, but eventually Southern took up the series.
In many ways this was the best possible result. The regional commercial television system meant that each broadcaster had to potentially work harder than the compulsorily-funded BBC. Producer James Hill assembled a highly experienced and talented team to make the show entirely on film at a time when a mixture of videotaped interiors and filmed location shots was the industry standard. Regular viewers have probably never noticed this, but Infinity readers watching for example seventies Doctor Who will immediately be struck by the difference in picture warmth and quality when the Doctor exits the TARDIS onto an alien planet. Wholly filmed shows were traditionally the domain of big hitters such as Euston Films, so it was a considerable coup for Worzel to be made this way, which combined with the bucolic setting and Wolfgang Suschitzky’s gorgeous cinematography engendered a delightful atmosphere of summery nostalgia. It may have been a children’s show but it never looked or felt childish.
We join the story as Mr Peters brings his children Susan and John to stay at Scatterbrook Farm, located in an unspecified English county. In the books they are recovering from a bout of whooping cough, whilst the TV version hints strongly that their mother has recently died. Coming across a scarecrow they speak to it, like many children would. Unlike many scarecrows this one not only answers back but also follows them home, introducing himself as the eponymous Worzel. The children spend much of the next four series trying to hide Worzel and his frequent misdeeds from their father, the farmer and the police. Worzel’s maker the Crowman initially denies his creation’s autonomy (with that beautiful title quote), but soon has to take the children into his confidence as Worzel becomes less and less controllable.
Jon Pertwee was always the only choice to play Worzel and proclaimed it his favourite part. “It wasn’t like Doctor Who where I was just another actor playing the part. I created it and it’s by far the best thing that I’ve ever done”. Without denigrating his marvellous Doctor it’s easy to see why he preferred Worzel – he’s clearly loving every second of it. His performance is breathtakingly good, from the rustic burr to the sheer physical magic of his shambling presence. His comic timing is impeccable and he makes Worzel a genuinely believable and sympathetic character, impressive considering that he’s a scarecrow, and not a very nice scarecrow at that. As well as being staggeringly stupid he is self centred, dishonest, ungrateful, lazy, petulant and spiteful. Or in Pertwee’s words “He’s sullen, touchy, vulgar, rude…a truly terrible character”. He’s certainly no great shakes as a scarecrow, rarely at his post in Ten Acre Field, preferring to sleep or wander around the village stealing things. And when he is at work he tends to find the crows intimidating. All in all he’d much rather be having a cup o’ tea an’ a slice o’ cake. Yet however exasperating he becomes, the audience and the children adore him. Even the Crowman shows genuine distress when he has no option but to sentence Worzel to death.
Yes, you read that right.
One frequent problem with many children’s shows is the propensity to make the target audience’s identification figures unintentionally dislikeable, with the result that some of the most loathed characters in genre television are the very ones we are meant to empathise with. Fortunately the juvenile leads here are exemplary, with Charlotte Coleman and Jeremy Austin turning in attractively naturalistic performances which steer well clear of cloying sentimentality and priggishness.
As the Crowman Geoffrey Bayldon was superb casting, and despite the apparent character similarities gives a very different performance from his Catweazle. He thought the scripts “were marvellous” and accepted the part “at the drop of a hat”. His Crowman is a mysterious, magical, even at times slightly sinister presence, in the tradition of such folklore figures as the Green Man and Pan. Despite frequent provocation he seems to feel both affection and responsibility for Worzel. It is with a heavy heart that he helps the scarecrow to commit suicide.
Yes, you read that right.
Amongst the other human regulars we find a pre Are You being Served? Mike Berry giving a lovely performance as the slightly hopeless Mr Peters, bouncing off the more solid Norman Bird and Megs Jenkins as the farming Braithwaites. Hammer regular Michael Ripper plays the perpetually angry Mr Shepherd with Joan Sims making occasional appearances as the light-fingered aristocrat Mrs Bloomsbury-Barton. Which leaves us with one rather notable regular character to discuss.
When the definitive list of screen bitches is compiled, Aunt Sally must surely perch near the top. A vain, greedy, manipulative bully, she has all of Worzel’s faults but none of his charm. This is where the series really deviates from the books, in which she is Worzel’s actual aunt. Oh, and he’s married in those as well but let’s not worry about that. As a wooden fairground doll (albeit one whose purpose is to have balls thrown at her) she considers herself superior to Worzel in every way and never fails to remind him of her perceived superior standing. Were she merely a snob she could still be tolerable, much like Frasier Crane or on a far less sophisticated level Hyacinth Bucket. But Aunt Sally is also unbelievably cruel, and the object of her attacks is almost always poor old Worzel.
All scarecrows have a morbid and perfectly understandable fear of fire. During their very first meeting Aunt Sally constantly taunts and threatens Worzel with burning, and thereafter loses no opportunity to belittle, frame and generally humiliate him. And yet she became a major part of the series, arguably second only to Worzel. As Pertwee said “she was beastly to Worzel…yet the public adored Aunt Sally”. Producer Hill described her as “the nastiest character I can ever remember coming across”. Una Stubbs’ performance is wonderful, effortlessly portraying a ghastly grotesque who can’t see how utterly ridiculous she is. And in a writing masterstroke she is gradually revealed to be thoroughly damaged, to such an extent that she believes her own fantasies, retreating into a world of make believe whilst being stored in a dusty old attic. Much as we dislike her bullying of Worzel we can’t quite hate her. And why does Worzel put up with it? Because the poor old fool is head over straw heels in love with her.
In the host of supporting scarecrows and mannequins inhabiting this world, we also meet Saucy Nancy, a ship’s figurehead and surely the part Barbara Windsor was born to play, her male equivalent Jolly Jack (the excellent Bernard Cribbins) a bizarrely-accented Connie Booth as another Aunt Sally and the oft-mentioned but rarely seen Soggy Boggart. Worzel even gets a surrogate mother (Beryl Reid) and a real nephew, who turns out to be that most feared of all seventies television archetypes – a punk rocker.
Delightful details abound such as the revelation that scarecrows speak a language called Worzelese and refer to English as “Yakkity”, since to them our conversations sound like pure “yakkity yakkity yak”. When two scarecrows meet they must follow a formal greeting protocol which includes doffing hats and bowing, accompanied by a series of phrases in Worzelsese, the strict grammatical rules of which can be found in the 1980 number 33 chart single Worzel’s Song.
Jon Pertwee’s distinctive make up was created by Marion Durnford and differs considerably from the original book illustrations where Worzel sports a root vegetable head. This look was abandoned as it would have obscured most of Pertwee’s face, and also it’s frankly terrifying. The concept of a living scarecrow being so inherently unsettling it is hardly surprising that apart from Worzel’s Oz-based predecessor fictional straw men have tended to be somewhat on the sinister side. Even so there are some surprisingly scary scenes, the opening episode being shot in part like a horror film, with an unseen Worzel stalking the children during a thunderstorm. In series two Worzel tries creating his own scarecrow who comes out quite literally half-baked. Named Dafthead he’s a disturbing looking creature who talks mostly gibberish, yet still outwits Worzel at every turn. Talking of heads Worzel has a variety at his disposal, which also allows Pertwee to exercise his vocal talents. These include a brave head, a dancing head, and most usefully a remembering head, or it would be if he could remember where he left it. Switching heads is a simple if visually distressing matter of twisting one off and shoving the other one on. Add to this Worzel’s frequent dismemberments and disembowellings and you’re guaranteed a few sleepless nights. All of which are quite tame compared to the story of Worzel’s death sentence…
Having finally exhausted the Crowman’s patience Worzel finds himself on trial, accused of dereliction of duty, using his thinking head as a football and most heinously of knocking off the Crowman’s hat. Scarecrow justice dictates that he is tried by a jury of his peers, resulting in nightmarish shots of scarecrows stomping across the countryside to convene at the barn court.
Thanks to his young friends Worzel escapes execution (by compost heap, naturally) but his darkest day is yet to come. In series four’s The Jumbly Sale, convinced that he’s maimed Aunt Sally, a grief-stricken Worzel begs the Crowman to return him to the earth. He is granted a final cup o’ tea an’ a slice o’ cake, then escorted at midnight to the steaming compost heap by two grim sentry scarecrows (one of whom is Pertwee’s son Sean) in an episode dripping with funereal menace.
Not that it was all teatime terror of course. The series is very, very funny, encompassing slapstick, wordplay (the revelation of Aunt Sally’s middle name is glorious) and a wide repertoire of visual jokes. Children would delight in the chaos caused wherever Worzel goes whilst the adult audience appreciated the frequent pricking of pomposity. And no matter what your age, very little beats a well-timed pie in the face gag. At the centre of all this was Worzel, a classic comic character with a stock of physical and verbal tics including “I’ll be bumswizzled” and “bozzimacoo”, the latter of which sounds quite insulting in French.
Neil Cameron’s incidental music adds much to the episodes with Aunt Sally’s signature motif being particularly charming. The irresistibly jaunty theme tune was by George Evans, the closing titles accompanying Worzel’s journey home. During the second series these were altered to include him falling off his post, and as with Alberto the frog’s milkshake it would vary, giving viewers the chance to guess which way he would fall – backwards, forwards or the rarer straight downwards collapse.
Music featured more centrally in the 1980 Christmas special A Cup o’ Tea and a Slice o’ Cake which was a lavish feature-length musical, produced with far more love and care than most festive offerings of the 80s, where tinsel or overseas filming frequently substituted for decent scripts. Interestingly, a separate stage musical was also running in Birmingham at the time of broadcast.
Worzel was popular with both viewers and critics alike. Notices for the second series included The Times’ reviewer declaring themselves to be ‘wonderfully entertained’ and the Daily Express awarding it ‘10/10 and a gold star’. Perennial waiting-room favourite Punch praised the show for walking ‘the knife-edge of whimsy-whamsy…without ever falling in’ and indeed we haven’t looked at Worzel’s emotional core. For a supposed children’s show to deal with topics such as loss, unrequited love and alienation is unusual, for it to be done so well is exceptional. This is no cheap “Roddy I lost our baby” mawkishness but genuine feelings, sensitively expressed. Three episodes of the final series end with characters in tears, including possibly the saddest moment in the entire show.
Introduced in series three, Dolly Clothes-Peg was a cockney shop window dummy who quickly strikes up a close friendship with Worzel, only for a jealous Aunt Sally to ruin things. Series four’s The Return of Dolly Clothes-Peg sees Dolly visiting Worzel with the intention to propose, which perfectly demonstrates Worzel’s ability to work on several levels. Everyone knows Worzel and Dolly belong together, the child audience can see that they’re best friends, whilst the adults appreciate how much in love they are. Everyone knows this, that is, apart from Worzel. In the closing scene he has to choose between Dolly and Aunt Sally, with the Crowman explicitly telling Worzel that he’ll be happy with Dolly and miserable without her. Of course he scampers off after the dreadful Aunt Sally, and Dolly walks out of his life in tears. Worzel’s heart may be made of straw but it’s just as fallible as ours. As Lorraine Chase (who played Dolly) says “it taught children…that life isn’t easy. If I had children, I would show them Worzel, because everything about life is in there”.
After four series of consistently high quality the same system which gave Worzel such class acted against it as Southern lost their licence. Plans to make a new series in Ireland were scrapped late in the day thanks to the mandatory 1980s strike action. Our final glimpse of Worzel was a good one though, him and his friends enjoying a birthday knees-up with the Crowman blowing a mean soprano sax. And while Jon Pertwee continued to make hugely popular personal appearances as Worzel it did seem that his television days were over.
But everyone knows nothing short of a bonfire or compost heap can kill a scarecrow, and in 1987 Worzel Gummidge Down Under saw him resurface in New Zealand. A coproduction between producer Grahame J. McLean and Channel 4 transplanted Worzel and Aunt Sally to “Zoo Nealand” for a further 22 episodes. James Hill returned to direct with the first series being written by Waterhouse and Hall, although they often simply reused their unmade scripts which might explain the unusually high number of Irish residents in the small town of Piwakawaka. Worzel’s new child friends are Manu (Olivia Ihimaera-Smiler) and Mickey (Jonathan Marks), although the pressures of production necessitated the occasional substitution with cousins, friends and so on.
Geoffrey Bayldon was unavailable to reprise his role as the Crowman, and was also sceptical about the quality of the writing, saying “the scripts were not as good at all…I was glad I didn’t do it”. Rather than recast the part actor Bruce Phillips was hired to play a different Crowman, it having been established that there was a worldwide network of Crowmen. He’s really very good indeed, playing a similar yet subtly different character, struggling to keep his bickering charges in line. Charmingly Bayldon wrote him a letter of welcome and later said “he was wonderful as the Crowman”. High praise indeed, and Phillips is a definite highlight of the revamped series.
Whilst time spent with Worzel is never entirely wasted and the Down Under series are fine on their own terms they do suffer terribly when compared to what went before. Without the creative team from Southern it looks cheaper and feels, well, like a children’s show. New writers were brought in for the second series but the magic of the original was mostly absent. To make matters worse when it was eventually broadcast in the UK it went out at 1130 on Sunday mornings with no publicity, much to Pertwee’s annoyance. The subsequent low ratings inevitably ensured its cancellation.
Since he loved the part so much it’s fitting that Jon Pertwee’s final television appearance was as Worzel in 1995, to celebrate 40 years of ITV. He died the following year and was cremated with a toy Worzel figure attached to his coffin.
Rumours about a new series came and went until last year when a contemporary adaptation was confirmed, scheduled for broadcast over Christmas 2019. Recent remakes have proved to be somewhat hit and miss affairs, for every Paddington there’s a Dad’s Army waiting in line to sully the memory of the original. At the time of writing not much has been confirmed apart from the absolutely inspired casting of Mackenzie Crook as a very different-looking Worzel.
However this new series turns out it’s good to know that there is still an audience for Worzel. The episodes are all available on various DVDs and in the absence of a remastered boxset are well worth seeking out. I’d strongly recommend treating yourself to a nice cup o’ tea an’ a slice o’ cake and spending some time with this most endearing scarecrow hero.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to acknowledge the help provided by Stuart Manning’s The Worzel Book (Miwk publishing).
EPISODE SELECTION
Worzel may have had trouble counting beyond one, but here are five of his best outings.
THE SCARECROW HOP (series one episode seven)
Worzel goes to the local dance, leads the villagers in a boisterous scarecrow reel and persuades Aunt Sally to marry him. We also learn that scarecrow weddings always have a cake, but for throwing, not eating. All highly entertaining, and the scene where the Crowman comforts a distraught Worzel is something very special, showcasing just what great actors Pertwee and Bayldon were.
THE TRIAL OF WORZEL GUMMIDGE (series two episode four)
You’ve got broad slapstick with Worzel throwing potatoes to scare off birds, terrifying scenes of scarecrows roaming the countryside and an ingenious last-minute solution to the small matter of Worzel’s imminent execution.
VERY GOOD WORZEL (series two episode five)
Worzel as a butler. Aunt Sally as a maid. Worzel’s pet squirrel escaping at a formal luncheon. John le Mesurier. What more could you ask for?
A CUP O’ TEA AN’ A SLICE O’ CAKE (Christmas special)
A cracking Christmas musical with guest appearances from Barbara Windsor, Bill Pertwee and Billy Connolly as Scottish scarecrow Bogle McNeep. As well as some great songs this contains the gorgeous idea that scarecrows act as guides for Father Christmas. Unless they’ve wandered off to find Aunt Sally…
THE RETURN OF DOLLY CLOTHES-PEG (series four episode five)
There’s a lot of fun to be had watching Aunt Sally try to ruin Dolly’s visit, and seeing them both compete for Worzel’s affections. Lorraine Chase’s captivating performance helps make this an outstanding episode. Just be prepared for your heart to get broken.