Ask The Archivist is a regular feature allowing you to put your Alan Ayckbourn related questions to the playwright's archivist Simon Murgatroyd.
If you have a question regarding any aspect of Alan's work, email it to: admin@alanayckbourn.net (labelled Ask The Archivist) and we'll publish any interesting questions.
Question: Did Alan Ayckbourn really write television sketches for Ronnie Barker? (see yesterday's blog entry for context!)
Answer: Yes, he did. Although it's not well-publicised, Alan Ayckbourn wrote linking sketched for the show Hark At Barker. However, as Alan worked for the BBC at the time and the programme was on ITV, his contribution was never credited as being written by Alan Ayckbourn. The full story (reproduced from www.alanayckbourn.net) can be found below.
In 1964, Mr Whatnot became the first Ayckbourn play to transfer to London's West End. It starred Ronnie Barker as Lord Slingsby-Craddock, who would soon afterwards start on a path which would see him become one of the UK's most popular and well-remembered television comedians.
Following the short-lived West End run of Mr Whatnot, Alan applied for a job at the BBC as a radio drama producer, based in Leeds. He would still write and direct the occasional play, but his full time employment between 1965 and 1970 was with the BBC.
In 1969, Ronnie Barker's second television series was commissioned, Hark At Barker (following The Ronnie Barker Playhouse in 1968). It was a sketch show based around one of Barker's most famous creations Lord Rustless, an incomprehensible, cigar-smoking and sex-obsessed member of the aristocracy who lived at the stately home Chrome Hall. The character was so popular it would recur in the BBC series His Lordship Entertains and essentially re-appeared in Futtock's End and in several sketches for the popular comedy series The Two Ronnies.
The character, according to Barker (see below) was unashamedly based on Lord Slingsby-Craddock from Mr Whatnot and when it came to Hark At Barker, the comedian approached Alan to write some material for the show. Alan was under contract at the BBC and not allowed to write for other organisations (and definitely not the BBC's competitor ITV!), which he deftly solved by writing under the pseudonym of Peter Caulfield. The show had a similar format each week with Barker first introducing the episode as a continuity announcer before switching to Lord Rustless at Chrome Hall, who would pontificate on a chosen subject for the week frequently interspaced with comedy sketches. Alan apparently wrote much of the linking material that featured Rustless in his stately home.
Hark At Barker ran for two series between 1969 and 1970 with Alan writing for both series. With the exception of his only screenplay, Service Not Included, this remains to date the only time that Alan has written specifically for television.
Ronnie Barker on Alan Ayckbourn's involvement with Hark At Barker
Ask Barker if the role of Lord Slingsby-Craddock was a prototype for one of his most enduring creations, Lord Rustless, and he answers the question before it's finished.
"Yes he was. Absolutely. He was Lord Rustless mark one, definitely. I did a character at Oxford rep and it was a part that was supposed to be done by a woman and Frank Shelley, who was running Oxford rep and was God there, said, "No we won't play it as a woman, because we haven't any women. Ronnie, you can play it as an old man." So I started doing this old chap and it was very successful and it worked very well. That character stayed at the back of my mind and he became Lord Rustless, because I enjoyed playing him so much. He's also in The Picnic and By the Sea, but he just mutters in those. He's not called Lord Rustless, no-one's called anything. But to me he was Rustless. He was one of my favourite characters. When I did Hark at Barker - that was him, albeit with sketches. Alan Ayckbourn wrote all the links for that show but I don't think he admits it. He called himself Peter Caulfield, but I don't know whether he would like people to know that was him or not. He liked the character in Mr Whatnot, so he knew what the character was about. Rustless was really giving a lecture to the audience on a subject, such as "communication" or "servants" or something and he would illustrate it with sketches, which enabled me to pay lots of different parts.'
(extract from The Authorised Biography Of Ronnie Barker, Bob McCabe, BBC Books, 2004)
To submit your question to Ask The Archivist, email Simon Murgatroyd at: admin@alanayckbourn.net labelled Ask The Archivist.
