Island Life Magazine Ltd January/February 2006 | Page 10

INTERVIEW

Raymond Allen was the
creative skill behind
F r a n k S p e n c e r. . .
“Comedy is someone else’s embarrassment or tragedy”
Jackie McCarrick talks to Frank Spencer creator Raymond Allen
He lives modestly and quietly in Ryde, no more than a mile from
where he was born, is a regular at the Wight Writers Group, and
likes nothing more than attending writers’ weekends.
He’s been working on a stage play for a couple of years – but
Raymond Allen admits that his biggest writing success over 30 years
ago has proved a hard act to follow.
In fact, the royalties from Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em – which he
penned in the 1970s and which went on to achieve cult status, still
being repeated in countries all over the world to this day – continue
to provide him with a comfortable living.
And, as he says, when money is no longer a motivator, it can be hard
to turn out a best-seller.
Money certainly was a motivator for the younger Raymond, who
remained faithful to his dream of being a writer by plugging away at
it all through his 20s, despite rejection after rejection falling through
his letterbox.
He had wanted to write all through his years at Ryde Secondary
Modern School, which is why he started out as a cub reporter for the
old Isle of Wight Times at the age of 16. But this was not the “real
writing” he wanted to do, and so after service in the RAF, he

Frank and Betty as we all
remember them from the
70’s hit show “Some
Mothers Do Ave Em”.

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returned to the Island and took low-paying menial jobs washing
dishes in hotels and cleaning at Shanklin’s Regal Cinema, so that
with some financial help from his parents, he could continue to
write.
He wrote around 40 serious plays – and was knocked back with 40
serious rejections – before turning “in desperation” to comedy sketch
writing.
“At least I was selling these, but there wasn’t much money in it” he
recalls.
Hence he tried his hand at a sit-com, which he sent to ITV – and
received an ego-shattering put-down in return.
“They said that to be a sit-com writer I needed three things: a sense
of humour, an ear for dialogue … and talent!” he recalls, now able to
laugh at the painful memory.
If he hadn’t had another sit-com script already written, he reckons
he might have given up in despair there and then – but since he had
nothing more to lose, he sent that second one to the BBC.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
His one-off script about the dopey, hen-pecked Frank and his wife
Betty was bought by the BBC – who instantly asked him to write six