‘I WONDERED WHO'D BE THE FIRST TO SPOT THAT’

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Karl Kuroski for his wide-ranging support in the researching and reworking of this paper, and grateful to Felix R. Schulz and Deborah Sutton for their comments on the penultimate draft.

Notes

1. For cartoons in the Daily Mail and the Evening News, see The British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent, http://opal.kent.ac.uk/cartoonx-cgi/ccc.py

2. See the searchable database of the UK National Inventory of War Memorials, http://www.ukniwm.org.uk/

3. See, for example, The Dambusters (1954), Reach for the Sky (1956), Dunkirk (1958) or Sink the Bismarck (1960). Whisky Galore was based on Compton MacKenzie's novels, and was inspired by a real-life incident of 1941 when the SS Politician ran aground on the Hebridean island of Eriskay with a sizeable amount of whisky (and cash) aboard, which was swiftly seized by the islanders. The whisky and Hebridean identities are the real stars of the film, however, rather than the Home Guard.

4. Recruitment was consistently under target. The Home Guard was finally stood down in Dec. 1955, and officially discontinued on 31 July 1957. For cartoonists’ interpretations see, for example, Lee (21 July 1950); Niebour (27 July 1950). For the humorous constructions of the Home Guard in the Second World War see Peniston-Bird and Summerfield (‘“Hey, You're Dead!”’).

5. A wife is relieving her husband who has set up guard on a beach: ‘London Laughs. Flu Invasion’: ‘You can disband yourself again, Wilyum [sic]. It's not Germans they're expecting, it's germs. The 'Ome Guard won't be needed.’

6. The cartoon shows a resolute if dishevelled armed countryman exclaiming, ‘Ah! – never got a chance of a shot at a Nazi when I was in the Home Guard.’

7. Jimmy Perry interviewed by Nick Clarke for ‘Look, Duck and Vanish’ BBC North East, BBC Radio 2, 15 May 1990, Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, 11225. See also Webber 12.

8. BBC Written Archive Centre (WAC) T12/880/1, Dad's Army. There was only one complaint from a J.W. Camp: ‘I do not think that most hard-working officers and N.C.O.'s of the Home Guard like to be shown as a rather inept crowd, quite useless against the German Paratroopers they were expected to tackle.’ 3 Aug. 1968.

9. BFI, Comedy and Variety, http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/tv/100/articles/comedy.html (accessed 23 Mar. 2005).

10. BBC WAC T12/880/1, Dad's Army. L.E. Tindall, 20 Jan. 196[9].

11. Waterhouse suggests that to teach individuals to be English, ‘Plonk them down in front of a big white screen and show them, in succession, One of Our Aircraft is missing, Passport to Pimlico, and any episode of Dad's Army.’

12. BBC WAC T12/880/1, Dad's Army General, 23 May 1968, Michael Mills, Head of Comic Light Entertainment, to Controller, BBC1.

13. Leverhulme Project, letter interview with Nigel Grey, Jan. 2000 (88). Numbers in parentheses refer to text units.

14. Leverhulme Project, letter interview with D.E. Brundrett, 26 Feb. 2000 (107).

15. http://www.newspapersoc.org.uk/Default.aspx?page=776 (accessed 17 Oct. 2006). The National Readership Survey estimated that 47,771,000 individuals over the age of 15 read a newspaper in 2005. http://www.nrs.co.uk/open_access/open_methadology/2003openmethodBody.cfm (accessed 17 Oct. 2006).

16. The coverage ranges from 2 Jan. 1982 to the present, although this varies by publication. The ‘UK Newspaper Stories’ group file contains the content of all newspapers carried on LexisNexis that are published in the UK. These include Belfast News Letter; Belfast Telegraph; The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday; Daily Post (Liverpool); Daily Record & Sunday Mail; The Daily/Sunday Telegraph; Eastern Daily Press; The Evening Standard (London); Evening Times (Glasgow); Financial Times (London); Global News Wire; The Guardian (London); The Herald (Glasgow); The Independent and Independent on Sunday (London); Irish News; Liverpool Echo; Manchester Evening News; Middlesbrough Evening Gazette; The Mirror (The Daily Mirror and The Sunday Mirror); Morning Star; The Northern Echo; The Observer; Regional Independent Media: The Scotsman & Scotland on Sunday; South Wales Echo; The Sunday Express; Sunday Herald; Sunday Life; UK NewsQuest Regional Press: This is Buckinghamshire; This is Cheshire, etc. up to and including This is York; Wales on Sunday; The Western Mail; Yorkshire Evening Post; Yorkshire Post. http://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/news_and_business/index.asp?business_home.html

17. The database cannot return more than 1,000 hits, so that the number of references in 2002, 2003 and 2004 are off the top of the scale.

18. LexisNexis registers 21 hits for the search term ‘Dad's Army’ between 1 Jan. and 31 Dec. 1986. Of these, four are double entries and are counted here only once.

19. LexisNexis registers 89 hits for the search term ‘Dad's Army’ between 1 Jan. and 31 Dec. 1992. Of these, seven are double entries and are counted here only once.

20. The project drew on oral interviews with 69 men and 32 women, of which Penny and I conducted 29 in person, and 29 through written correspondence and telephone: the remainder are held in the sound archive of the Imperial War Museum.

21. This was repeated by BBC2 on 28 Dec. 2001 as part of a Dad's Army special, the centrepiece of which was the screening of two hitherto lost episodes – ‘Operation Kilt’ and ‘The Battle of Godfrey's Cottage’ – from the second series. http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/d/dadsarmy_7771975.shtml

22. The papers do not agree whether this is William Hague on Robin Cook, or John Major on Tony Blair. In Davies (11 Dec. 1998), this quotation is ascribed to John Major, but seven months earlier, an anonymous author in the Birmingham Post (14 May 1998) cited Hague as above.

23. Leverhulme Project, correspondence from Nigel Grey, 17 Apr. 2000.

24. Jimmy Perry interviewed by Nick Clarke for ‘Look, Duck and Vanish’ BBC North East, BBC Radio 2, 15 May 1990, Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, 11225.

25. Fisk described the army of Algerian peasants as ‘a Dad's Army of threadbare militiamen with ragged trousers, tattered boots and engraved hunting guns or old French service rifles from World War II’.

26. Schweik is a character in the novel of the same name by Jaroslav Hasek; Excused Boots was a character in The Army Game.

27. Leverhulme Project Interview, John Shuttleworth, 21 Mar. 2000 (521).

28. Leverhulme Project Interview, James Kendall, 27 Oct. 1999 (169).

29. Leverhulme Project Interview, Lois Baker, 16 Dec. 1999 (1036–40).

30. Leverhulme Project Interview, Marion Bourne, 3 May 2000 (1015–51).

31. Original viewers of Dad's Army had swiftly written to point out that the Force had become increasingly more efficient and well-equipped over time. BBC WAC T12/880/1, Dad's Army. Letters from Barbara Summers, 19 Aug. 1968; Mrs Isobel Pickering, 27 Aug. 1968.

32. Leverhulme Project Interview, Alfred Claxton, 12 May 2000 (1088).