It’s unlikely you’d hear the line “If my pussy isn’t attended to by eight o’clock, I shall be stroking it for the rest of the evening” on prime-time BBC1 these days, or indeed even after the 9pm watershed.
But there is much about Are You Being Served? that would be alien to a 2026 audience. Running from 1973 to 1985 over (what were the odds?!) 69 episodes, the department store-set sitcom was massively popular and became a part of the three-channel Britain of its time, and is thus very far from the 21st century version of this country – in a multitude of ways.
Whereas race and religion may be the main dividing line of modern-day Britons, class was probably the biggest back in the day (and may still be at the heart of our current culture wars when you scratch beneath the intersectional surface). On the big screen the war between workers and bosses was portrayed in the likes of the splendid I’m All Right Jack and The Angry Silence. There’s a bit of that in Are You Being Served?, but what is most evident between members of Grace Brothers staff is a constant needling and general discord; one thing that struck this viewer was how spiky the characters were to one another, how bitchy, how… discontented. This might seem like a trivial point, but I’m not sure it is: nowadays people who work together are, generally speaking, nicer to each other. The real bitching, moaning and whining can be saved for social media or a therapist.
In the first three series the brown-coated working man intruding on the shop floor is Mr Mash, played in an annoying and affected manner by Larry Martyn. He was replaced by the more likeable Arthur English as Mr Harman, but the character was similar, an irritant to management, and floorwalker Captain Peacock, thanks to his immersion in 1970s trade union speak. While the writers don’t make their antipathy to socialism as clear as the makers of, say, Carry On At Your Convenience did, there is very moderate sympathy for socialism. The BBC Comedy department back then was a very different place to what it became a decade or two later.
Are You Being Served? isn’t actually a great show. There are perhaps only five or six excellent episodes, with ‘German Week’ and ‘The Club’ contenders for best instalment. Comedy dates more quickly than most genres – only a few old sitcoms, perhaps Rising Damp, Father Ted, The Office, I’m Alan Partridge and a few others retain their pungency. But Are You Being Served? is kept afloat by its ensemble cast, who operate with affection and rapport. There is one character who shines through – Young Mr Grace, whose supreme uniqueness is wonderful. Actor Harold Bennett was aged 74 when he started playing the role; his hands often shake, presumably through infirmity, and when he has to be held up to stop him falling down, you suspect that this may not have been too far removed from reality.
As tiresome as it feels to even address it, what would make the youth of today fall off their chair in disgust if the show was on a mainstream channel now? Well, there’s the episode where the cast black up for a musical number (the last of several ethnicities they celebrate – yes, celebrate – in that episode, in a succession of good-humoured dress-ups). There are the secretaries, who are invariably luscious and flash their underwear. Penny Irving, Debbie Linden and Miss Nude 82 Candy Davis did the honours; we shall not see their like on BBC1 again. Back then, ‘dolly birds’ could easily transition from glamour modelling to proper acting on TV watched by millions – in puritanical 21st century Britain they’d likely be blackballed before they got to the audition.
Third/fourth-wave feminists: restricting female employment for the last quarter of a century or so.
A mention also needs to be made of camp salesman Wilberforce Humphries, as splendidly played by John Inman. Was it a positive or negative portrayal of gay men on screen? For this observer, it’s a positive, 100%, totally, no-way-not, no discussion. And that’s because there is not one single line in the entire series, all 69 episodes, where one of Mr Humphries’ colleagues – or a customer – says the least thing derogatory towards him: no matter what outrageous campery he comes out with, no matter what blatant admission of his about preferring the company of men to women, they never admonish him, they never call him names, they never curl their lips or screw up their faces. Their attitude is one of acceptance, and a million grannies who took the show to their bosoms never felt antipathy towards him either.
And there’s Mrs Slocombe’s pussy; we need to talk about Mrs Slocombe’s pussy.
Actually, sod it, we don’t. It’s a glorious, hilarious double entendre, delivered in innocent fashion but with verve, and it made the audience laugh like drains. Which sort of sums up Are You Being Served?’s fabulousness, and it’s enough to make it endearing and valuable.
Russell David is the author of the Mad World Substack.
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Comedy is always subjective and goes in and out of style with most older comedies currently being out of style (will they ever make a comback?)
You are wrong though about a couple of things; work colleagues are still routinely nasty to each other but in different ways to AYBS and Miss Brahms did twice cast aspersions on Mr Humphries once calling him ‘a fairycake’ and saying ‘you live in a fantasy world’. Yes, I’ve watched every episode numerous times….
My fav quote is:
‘I respond to no man’s finger’ Mrs Slocombe
Also I forgot the episode where Mr Grainger wrote down what he really thought of all his colleagues – his comments on Mr Humphry weren’t read out but resulted in the paper being torn up and Mr H camply jumping up and down on it whilst gibbering leaving the viewer in no doubt about the contents.
Unless you have worked in a department store you don’t know how true to life AYBS really was! In 1978 I moved from Yorkshire to London (I’m back in God’s Own County now) and in 1980 I got my first retail job working for Wedgwood in Barker’s on High Street Kensington. My manager was a forceful lady (a failed actress) who had a huge chip on her shoulder because our ‘exclusive’ department was next-door to (dare I say it?) Budget China!
From there I moved to the Wedgwood Room in DH Evans on Oxford Street, but being employed by Wedgwood, rather than a particular department store, I would often be asked to help out in other Wedgwood Rooms if they were short staffed. I worked at Dickins & Jones (Regent Street and Richmond), Swan & Edgar (Piccadilly Circus), one horrendous afternoon in Harrods (God-awful place!) and various other stores.
They all had a Gay Mafia (I’m not of the marrying kind myself) but I was regarded as suspicious being an outsider. There were many Mr Humphries, often in menswear, and I worked with a Mrs Slocombe lookalike in Dickins & Jones in Richmond. Yes, she frequently talked about her pussy in her Mollie Sugden Lancastrian accent. All the other characters were there including a female Captain Peacock in one store.
You couldn’t make AYBS now because British comedy has been dumbed down so much to merely political ranting , which simply isn’t funny. Another reason is that department stores are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and most of the places where I worked have now been converted for other uses. I loved department stores, both visiting and working in them. They had an air of luxury about them like 1930s cinemas. You don’t get to glide up highly polished escalators, or walk on deep pile carpets, when shopping online. Neither can you go to the Palm Court restaurant for lunch or afternoon tea. Ichabod! The glory has departed!
Really intersting, I agree it’s sad that Department Stores and the caracature assistants (some customers too were in the know) are no more. Once in DH Evans I asked about stainless steel Kings Pattern cutlery – the response was pure Mr. Humphries, a sigh, hand on heart and ‘oh no Sir, not in DHE – try D’Barnums!’ (pronounced just like this)