Worzel Gummidge
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Worzel Gummidge is a British children's character, a walking, talking scarecrow, who originally appeared in a series of books by Barbara Euphan Todd. Worzel first showed up in 1947 on the BBC's Children's Hour with Worzel played by veteran radio actor Philip Wade, John by John Clark, Susan by Rosamund Barnes, and Earthy Mangold by Mabel Constanduros. Later, Worzel came to be played by the late Denis Folwell, who was to find fame as Jack Archer in the BBC's perennial soap opera The Archers.
A television adaptation of Worzel Gummidge was produced by Southern Television for ITV, written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, and starring Jon Pertwee as Worzel and Una Stubbs as Aunt Sally, a life-size fairground doll. The Crowman, who made Worzel and some of his other scarecrow friends, is played by Geoffrey Bayldon (better known for his starring role as the title character of Catweazle). Occasional guest appearances were made by Barbara Windsor as Saucy Nancy, a ship's figurehead and Lorraine Chase as Dolly Clothes-peg a shop window mannequin. Four series totalling 30 episodes and one extended Christmas special, were made between 1979 and 1981, when Southern lost its franchise. The new franchise-holder, TVS, was not interested in renewing the show, and a deal with HTV fell through.
The programme remained in limbo until Television New Zealand commissioned Worzel Gummidge Down Under in 1987, which was shot in New Zealand and ran for two series totalling a further 22 episodes. Only Pertwee and Stubbs remained from the original cast, with Bruce Phillips joining the cast as the Crowman (Geoffrey Bayldon declined to re-create the role, partly because he didn't want to be type-cast in the part, but partly because he didn't want to work so far away from home) and Sarah Chandler joining as one of the children.
Sadly, the magic of the original series was not re-created with this vastly inferior sequel. Even Jon Pertwee himself was unhappy with the scripts, which he stated did not have "the underlying morality" of the originals. Aunt Sally found herself a human boyfriend in this new series, which infuriated Pertwee - he considered this beneath the series. Although trying to laugh the programme's deficiencies off, Pertwee was not happy and said that when Michael Grade, newly appointed head of Channel 4 which co-financed the programme, ordered its axing "...I was dry eyed."
[edit] Story line
Worzel is a scarecrow who gets bored standing around in Ten Acre Field all day and often wanders into the village of Scatterbrook to see what's going on - and to see what mischief he can get up to. In the first episode he befriends a pair of children who spend most of the series trying to clear up the messes he creates. The children - John and Sue Peters - were played by Jeremy Austin and Charlotte Coleman. A highly talented young actress, Coleman went on to secure considerable achievements in the acting profession; she became the (anti) hero of ITV's Educating Marmalade and its sequel, Danger Marmalade at Work, in which she played the titular character, Marmalade Atkins. She went on to star in a controversial - but brilliantly made and highly successful - BBC adaptation of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, but tragically died at the age of 31 due to her long standing asthma condition.
Worzel is not very bright because his head is a turnip (or rather, a set of interchangeable turnips for different occasions - thus, should the plot require Worzel to sing, he would put on "My singing head."). He is madly in love with the Aunt Sally doll, but she considers herself a lady and far too good for a common scarecrow. She considers herself far superior to "an ignorant hay bag" like Worzel, yet she is just as un-intelligent as him. She once spoke of buying clothes from "... a posh boo-took ..." (boutique) "... in Paris ... that's in Spain, you know!"
A good deal of the show's entertainment value comes from the interaction between Worzel and Sally, played with relish by Pertwee and Stubbs. Worzel was the finest performance that Pertwee ever gave. He is virtually unrecognisable - and not just due to the absolutely superb make-up that was applied to him in a gruelling six hour process every day - and the audience is invited to cry along as much with Worzel as laugh as him. It's not for nothing that he has often been referred to as "the tragi-comic scarecrow." Yet, despite the dreadful way she treats Worzel, it is very hard to actually dislike Aunt Sally, and in the episodes that Una Stubbs - another superb performance - doesn't appear, she is sorely missed. Upon Pertwee's death in 1996, Una was to comment "He was a big man in every way."
