Barker Nights
Sundays at 9.40pm
G.O.L.D.'s Barker Nights continue this month and the jewel in this already gleaming comedy array is Seven Of One, a series from 1973 which features seven different comedy stories, designed to serve as pilots for future sitcoms.
In Open All Hours, we meet Arkwright, a miserly shopkeeper and his nephew (David Jason), while Prisoner And Escort features Norman Stanley Fletcher, a career criminal and his life inside alongside lags. Both led to hugely successful classic comedy series.
My Old Man sees Barker play an embittered former train driver who is forced to leave his condemned home. He decides to go and live with his daughter and her husband by the railway.
Spanner's Eleven tells the tale of an ailing football team and its trainer, cabbie, hot dog salesman and chauffeur, Norman Spanner, while Another Fine Mess stars Roy Castle alongside Barker. They play Laurel and Hardy impersonators who start to experience a strange convergence of worlds.
One Man's Meat co-stars Prunella Scales as a wife who forces her husband to go on a starvation diet, while finally, I'll Fly You For A Quid features a Welsh family, the Owens, who discover that their grandfather backed a winner on the day he passed away. All they have to do now is find the betting slip. A real treat for fans of the great man.
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Open All Hours
It's not often that a simple trip to the grocer's leaves you vulnerable to a bout of the giggles, but with Arkwright and Granville behind the counter it's a c-c-c-certainty.
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Porridge
You may not think that there's a lot of fun to be had when you're languishing in prison, but you'd be wrong.
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Ronnie Barker profile
He served time in Porridge, ruled the till in Open All Hours and gave us fifteen years of laughs in The Two Ronnies.
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Are you a superfan of Arkwright?
A valiant champion of commerce and hard work, Arkwright is one of the greatest comedy heroes.
