John Alderton - Kng of Light Comedy

My collection of TV Treasures features several faces from Seventies situation comedy but in the first half of that decade, John Alderton was the king of the genre. Usually paired with his real-life wife Pauline Collins, he was one of the most recognisable faces on both BBC and ITV. Richard Briers, Ronnie Barker, Mollie Sugden, Diane Keen and Richard O’Sullivan were also pretty ubiquitous but I’d like to celebrate the humble man from Humberside.

My first recollection of the actor dates from my junior schooldays, Please Sir!. We didn’t watch much ITV so it’s not a giant leap of imagination to surmise why Mum and Dad shared the series with two young children.. As teachers, they probably watched with a mix of sympathy with the newly-qualified Mr Hedges, played by Alderton, and relief that their own classes could not possibly be worse than Fenn Street Secondary Modern’s 5C. However, it was hardly A Clockwork Orange. Penned by Esmonde and Larbey, who’d later create The Good Life, it was pretty tame stuff. The fact that the pupils appeared considerably older than 16 was presumably lost on me, but it did nothing to allay fears about future life in ‘Big School’!  I reckon I felt sorry for the hapless but well-intentioned classroom ingénue but, for all the pupils’ cheek, the comedy was mercifully redeemed by a measure of mutual respect; that and the classic theme tune.

After reprising his role in the inevitable cinema spin-off, Alderton left mid-term. He soon showed up again on the Beeb in My Wife Next Door. This proved extremely popular on Tuesday evenings and made the name of co-star Hannah Gordon. In fact it was she, not Alderton, who achieved the ultimate accolade of a guest role in the Morecambe and Wise Christmas show in their heyday No disrespect intended to Hannah but Alderton would have been a brilliant performer in one of the plays wot Ernie wrote. Perhaps he was considered too lightweight? Whatever, it didn’t seem to harm his own career, although My Wife…ran for only one season. It was another smoothly ‘safe’ comedy and its humour also appealed to millions of viewers when repeated in 1979.

He was back in single-series sitcom suburbia for No Honestly, this time without Hannah Gordon but in the company of real-life spouse Pauline Collins. My 1974 diary faithfully records I watched it but I have no mental recollection other than Lynsey de Paul’s hit theme tune..

They were also concurrently in harness for ITV’s Upstairs Downstairs, she as a maid, he as the chauffeur. This saga of aristocrats and their servants in early twentieth century London was a staple of our household’s weekend evening viewing for five years and even I became swept along by the storylines. It was hardly a comedy but along with Mr Hudson, Mrs Bridges, Rose et al, the characters portrayed by Alderton and Collins were extremely popular before leaving service after two series. The parent series ended in 1975, but the pair were reunited in 1978 to reprise their roles, in Thomas and Sarah. Now a sixth-former with different tastes in television, I watched with little enthusiasm. It was, after all, more to Mum’s taste than mine but I expect that the lure of John Alderton was too strong to resist.

He seemed to specialise in tall, gawky and socially awkward characters, and none fitted the blueprint better than Mr Mulliner who in various guises cropped up in many stories by PG Wodehouse broadcast on the BBC in the late 1970s. I have much fonder and clearer memories of the delightful Wodehouse Playhouse despite it inhabiting the rather twee and antiquated world of the Twenties English upper-crust. I was even moved aged 15 to describe it as “sheer brilliance”, praise indeed. The first two series also featured – surprise surprise! – Ms Collins in a variety of roles opposite the star Alderton but she had left by the ’78  season which opened with The Smile That Wins. I even tried to copy that smile. Not in any misguided hope of romantic conquest I should add. I’d have needed advice on more than how to grin.

In the Eighties and Nineties, John Alderton was mostly lost to TV, and Pauline found movie fame as Shirley Valentine. One exception was Channel 4’s Father’s Day in 1984 which for reasons long since lost in time really appealed to me. Unfortunately I can find no clips on YouTube, unlike Forever Green which I never actually saw.

Enter the new millennium and Alderton began to creep back into my consciousness, guesting in the occasional drama. He was in a 2001 Dalziel and Pascoe mystery then a few years later in the first series of Doc Martin as a silver-bearded sailor. My interest in Clunes, Catz and the Cornish scenery didn’t extend into subsequent series but it was an unexpected pleasure to see this particular TV Treasure putt-putting in a dinghy across sun-kissed waters and into the Doc’s surgery. Forty years earlier it would surely have been John Alderton in the Martin Clunes role. Time has not been kind to the former’s ‘70s comedy creations but he remains a peerless and ageless actor with an easy charm and feather-light touch.