Worzel Gummidge 3.9 – A Cup o’ Tea and a Slice o’ Cake

Back when I first started scheming and plotting and planning this blog, I hoped that some good soul would restore, remaster, and rerelease Worzel Gummidge, the anarchic and hilarious children’s comedy starring Jon Pertwee as a troublemaking scarecrow. I wrote about it in this 2017 post after reading Stuart Manning’s thunderously good book about the show. The dual problems were the cost of the out-of-print set and what are said to be some very substandard prints.

Several months ago, many people crossed their fingers after Manning shared the news that a complete set of the negatives of all 31 episodes had been located. Time crawled, and then in late September, Fabulous announced a one-off release of the program’s Christmas special, remastered from the newly found prints. Originally shown in December 1980, one week after the third series concluded, it’s a double-length story with musical numbers, guest stars, and surprisingly few good gags.

I’m not sure which has been the greater disappointment: the subsequent announcement – actually more of an “understanding” than an “announcement” – that the rights owners decided against the expense of remastering the other 30 installments, or that “A Cup o’ Tea and a Slice o’ Cake” was so dry that I only chuckled about three times. I was dying inside because I just knew that our son was not enjoying this.

And I was wrong!

He didn’t guffaw like he normally does, but while some of the songs left him restless, he otherwise enjoyed this nonsense quite a lot. The only part that left him really cold was Billy Connolly’s appearance as Bogle McNeep, leader of a crew of Scottish scarecrows with pine cone noses, and that’s because he couldn’t understand a single thing that Connolly said. To be fair, only about 70% of it landed with me as well. I learned what Hogmanay is today, anyhow!

There’s a lot in this episode that should have worked. Several recurring players, including Michael Ripper, Thorley Walters, Wayne Norman, Bill Maynard, and in her fourth and final appearance as Saucy Nancy, Barbara Windsor, have small appearances. But even Saucy Nancy’s big pantomime musical number, with cardboard cutouts of pirates coming to life, was not particularly funny to me. Even my favorite line from the episode, when Worzel declines to put on his Sherlock Holmes head, sailed past Marie because she hadn’t yet got a grip on Worzel’s comedy West Country accent.

But our son was pleased enough that when I grumbled that this wasn’t half as funny as the episodes that I’d seen before, he said “Then I definitely want to see them, because this was hilarious!” I did warn him that the visuals won’t be any good, but we did just successfully struggle through those lousy prints of The Hardy Boys’ third season. The new, unremastered set is £30 cheaper than the previous one, so I’ll pick it up and it will join the rotation a few months down the line.