Waking this morning to news Rodney Bewes had died aged 79 brought realisation he was an actor I had watched (admittedly in one particular role) virtually my entire life.
Without question he will be best remembered for his portrayal of Bob Ferris in first ‘The Likely Lads‘ (1964-66) and then ‘Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads‘ (1972-74), the latter one of the genuinely outstanding situation comedies of the past fifty years.
Set six years on from the original series, the sequel reunited Bewes with original co-star James Bolam (Terry Collier) who returns to his native north-east after spending five years in the army. In their time apart Bob has made (in his words) ‘some modest progress,’ having a car, a steady office job and is about to move into a home of his own with bride-to-be Thelma Chambers (played wonderfully by Brigit Forsyth), their relationship flourishing without Terry to hamper it.
In his haircut, clothes and aspirations Bob is representative of the new decade while Terry comes back wanting a return to old haunts and old habits, which provides the main theme of their resurrected friendship.
& TERRY (James Bolam)
There is the occasional moment of slapstick but the laughs are mainly in a superb script which time and again emphasises the difference between how things are and how they were. Twenty years later there was an attempt to conjure Bob and Terry for the 90s in ‘Men Behaving Badly,’ but it lacks the same wit and originality, chasing laughs in a forced and obvious way.
Quite simply Bob and Terry are not funny people. They are people who say funny things – and there lies the fundamental difference between the two programmes.
The original series is set in an unspecified town in the north of England and can be seen in a progression of northern-based television programmes that start with ‘Coronation Street’ and runs through others such as ‘Z-Cars‘.
By the time the lads return in ‘Whatever Happened,’ the location is more defined as Newcastle or somewhere close by – the many football references an obvious clue.
Indeed for ‘Auf Wiedersehen Pet‘ another of their brilliant creations, the writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (a Geordie and avid Newcastle United supporter) continue the Newcastle connection with the characters Dennis and Neville (an amalgam of Bob) and Oz – who is Terry redrawn and amplified for the 80s.
One of the areas in which Clement and La Frenais excel with their script in ‘Whatever Happened,’ is honing in on the nostalgic element that begins creeping into male conversations as the age of thirty approaches – reference frequently made to a time when the football was better, the music was better and the beer was better.
Enter any public house this weekend and you can be sure to see two older men sat at a table doing exactly that – inadvertently playing the roles of Bob and Terry or James Bolam and God bless him, Rodney Bewes.
This article was first published on 22/11/2017.
NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller available as an Amazon Kindle book.