Island Life Magazine Ltd January/February 2006 | Page 11

INTERVIEW
more.
“I was so delighted and so naive that I thought the
£400 was for the whole series, not just for the first
one!” says Raymond. “Up to that point I had never
earned more than £10 in my life for a one-minute
comedy sketch”

Raymond Allen with
one of the original
scripts from the hit show.

However, he wasn’t on the home strait yet. The
series was bought by the BBC in 1971, but it took
two more years to find an actor willing to play the
part of Frank Spencer. It was turned down by both
Norman Wisdom and Ronnie Barker, among others,
before the young Michael Crawford agreed to take
it on in 1973 – even though he’d never been
associated with comedy before.
The series was such a massive hit that it ran to
three series and 3 Christmas shows – a total of 22
episodes for Raymond to write.
He recalls going to London for rehearsals but says:
“I have no fond memories of it at all. London is
all right for a day out, but I am not a big city
person – I much prefer the Isle of Wight – and so I
never got involved in all that fast world of TV.
Perhaps my career might have gone differently if I
had”.
There’s no doubt, though, that Some Mothers has
been good to him. The show, which ran on the
BBC for five years until 1978, when Michael
Crawford decided not to do any more, celebrated
its 30th anniversary with a commemorative book
in 2003, and is still repeated on TV screens in 60
countries.
Asked why he thinks it was so successful,
Raymond is reflective: “Comedy is someone else’s
embarrassment or tragedy,” he says.
“Frank is quite a sad character and I think most of
us can empathise with him. I’ve suffered periods
of depression myself throughout my life, and
many of my earlier serious plays were about life’s
losers.
“However, it was only when I turned the writing
around and made the sadness into comedy that
the success came”.
Following Some Mothers, Raymond sold some oneoff plays, but found the infamous sit-com cast too
big a shadow over any new ones he tried.
“I got used to people saying ‘We don’t like it as
much as Some Mothers’” he says. “It seems to
have become impossible for me to follow it”.
He still gains satisfaction, though, from the fact
that viewing figures for the repeats are virtually as
high as those for the original screenings 30-odd
years ago.
“It’s extraordinary how it’s still going,” he says.
Around the time of the 30th anniversary he was
asked to appear at events as Frank Spencer’s
creator, and from time to time he still gets asked
to do talks on the series.
“Sometimes I feel as if I’m being wheeled out like
something from ancient history” he jokes, “when

people invariably introduce me as coming
from the “Golden Age of TV!”
It was certainly an age that present-day
writers would find hard to imagine. It
may have been only three decades ago,
but when he started out on his high
profile TV writing career, Raymond didn’t
even have a telephone … and here on the
Isle of Wight at that time, there was a
three-year waiting list for a line, if you
didn’t happen to be a doctor or other
high-ranking personnel.

Haylands village, the wind whistling
through the broken panes and angry
locals knocking on the door to ask how
much longer he’d be.
As he outlines such colourful tales, full of
angst and pathos, it’s not difficult to
discern the ghost of Frank Spencer
wafting through the conversation.

“A TV sit-com writer most certainly didn’t
qualify!” he says.
In the end, they rushed him through with
a phone line in just two years!….during
which time he had to conduct important
script conferences with the BBC in a
vandalised phone box near his home in

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