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"He says and does the things that all of us would like to do, but are too
shy, self-conscious and respectful to. Being rude to those in authority, being
selfish... there is something of Worzel in all of us." So said Jon Pertwee of
the character he most loved to play, scarecrow Worzel Gummidge.
The character first appeared in the novels of Barbara Euphan Todd, became a
radio star in the 1940s and briefly came to television for the serial Worzel
Gummidge Turns Detective (BBC, 1953). After the death of Todd in 1976,
screenwriters Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall bought the rights, hoping to make a movie version and attracting Pertwee to the idea of the lead. With British
moviemaking in the doldrums, the team took the concept to television, where it
quickly became a hit.
The series invented Worzel's Zummerset dialect Worzelese and his
interchangeable character heads, also replacing Worzel's written love interest
Earthy Mangold with Aunt Sally (Una Stubbs), a snobbish coconut-shy with delusions (she had
been Worzel's real aunt in the books). The fated relationship between the two
formed the heart of the series - Worzel always kind and considerate and she
thoughtlessly spurning his advances unless there was a cup o' tea an' a slice o'
cake in it for her.
The series was broadly a comedy of cake fights and falls into rivers with
guest stars ranging from Barbara Windsor to Billy Connolly, but it - and Worzel
himself - always possessed a humanist nobility. It was shot entirely on film and
possessed an occasionally macabre visual sense.
Ending after four successful series, Worzel returned six years later in a New
Zealand co-production, Worzel Gummidge Down Under (Channel 4, 1987-89) but failed to catch the imagination as before, airing in
a Sunday morning slot inaccessible to family audiences.
Alistair McGown
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1. Two Aunt Sallys (2:18)
