Oh No It's Selwyn Froggit - The Complete Series [DVD]

Product Information

He was born Walter Williams in Heath End, Farnham, Surrey, the son of a gardener, also Walter, and Edith, a laundry worker. The family moved to Leicestershire, where he attended Kibworth Beauchamp grammar school. At the age of 11 he was already earning more than his father by doing comedy turns in clubs. a b c d e f "Where are they now? Heartbeat actor Bill Maynard". The Daily Express. 17 January 2015 . Retrieved 9 March 2016. Selwyn was a deeply jovial man who has somehow deluded himself into thinking that he can fix anything. Unfortunately, the reverse was true.

a b Shaw, Karen (21 December 2015). "A scoundrel, thespian, CHEEKY CHARMER | Bill Maynard". Northern Life . Retrieved 1 June 2020. The series was filmed in Skelmanthorpe, a West Yorkshire village at the foot of the Pennines between Huddersfield and Barnsley. On stage she proved adept in musicals including Little Me (Prince of Wales, 1984-85), Stepping Out (Duke of York’s, 1985-86) and Follies (Shaftesbury theatre, 1987-89), in which she gave a showstopping rendition of Who’s That Woman as an ageing but still glamorous hoofer proving she’s still got it with light-footedness, expert tap, cussed verve and sassy elan.Watching as an adult, its hard to miss the bleakness of the show though. Looking at it post Eighties it shows a narrow way of life and outlook, peopled with characters of limited horizons. The Pilot Episode shows why some characters were wisely changed: The office characters (with their sexual overtones)wisely discarded, the Mother greatly softened and the homosexual suggestions of the older brother removed with the introduction of a girlfriend. Looking at this episode the Family seem like a bunch of genetic misfits. Selwyn should be a sad case, a socially inept, stupid middle aged man with no love life(ever) but Maynard, as stated, saves this situation remarkably. Maynard was working as an assistant buyer for a Leicester clothes wholesaler when he met Muriel Linnett. They married in 1949 and had a son and a daughter. He worked in local repertory companies and then went to Butlins holiday camp, Skegness, where he met the comedy actor Terry Scott. In 1955 the two of them appeared on TV in Great Scott, It’s Maynard. After this he had his own comedy and music show, Mostly Maynard, which lasted five episodes.

Her 1962 marriage to the hairdresser and music impresario Carol London (real name Cyril Smith) ended in divorce. In 1966 she married the jazz pianist and musical director John Lee; he died in 2001. Her two children, Sarah and Morgan, survive her.

Andrews, Celia (22 February 1977). "Oh yes, Selwyn is just my type". Western Daily Press: 3 . Retrieved 3 March 2023. Bill Maynard, who has died aged 89, was well known as an actor and comedian, especially as a member of the cast in five Carry On films and in the popular television series Heartbeat. Behind the scenes he had a reputation as a hell-raiser. His Carry On parts began in Carry On Loving (1970) and he appeared in four of the cruder Confessions series in the 70s. He had his own show on BBC Radio Leicester until 2008 and was still working well into his 80s. Retrospectively, Oh No It's Selwyn Froggitt has been described as "a kind of Billy Liar for nutters" in The Guinness Book of Classic British TV. [42] In 2010, Michael Coveney of The Guardian wrote that the series exhibited Alan Plater's "gift of writing supple, salty dialogue for working-class characters", as with Plater's scripts for Z-Cars and its sequel Softly, Softly. [43] The series was an influence on Victoria Wood. [44] Like I said, 'Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt' grew out of a pilot, the same series of pilots which saw the birth of 'Rising Damp'. Selwyn Froggitt from the fictional Yorkshire village of Scarsdale is one of life's idiots. He has too much energy and too much time on his hands and cannot go through a day in life without messing something up. He works as a labourer and lives at home with his overbearing mother ( Megs Jenkins from 'Worzel Gummidge' ) and his brother Maurice. Romance was on the scene when Maurice started dating the lovely Vera Parkinson ( played first by Rosemary Martin, then by Lynda Baron ) Maynard considered Froggitt's interest in reading The Times an important part of the character, explaining "I wanted him to be intelligent, always anxious to improve himself. The easy route would've been to use old clichés, like malapropisms and spoonerisms, but that would have made the character too one-dimensional. By getting him to read The Times and be an ardent student of dynamic word power, we gave him the breadth to spread the comedy over a wide range of subjects. We wanted people to laugh with him, not at him". [10] Maynard characterised Froggitt as someone who causes havoc simply due to "his tremendous enthusiasm and his willingness to help his fellow man", rather than "an idiot". [11] He identified "a lot of drama and a certain amount of pathos" in the character. [11] Commission and writing [ edit ] The series was Alan Plater's first sitcom