by Wendy Mansfield
We were not sure what to expect from the title of this month’s meeting entitled simply “Dad’s Army”.
Was it a talk about how the real Dad’s Army functioned during the war, or about how it was originally set up or even a re-enactment of the brilliant TV series still being shown today on the television?
In the event Charles Garland turned out to be the BBC producer who had worked on all 80 episodes of the show alongside David Croft and Jimmy Perry. Charles told us first how he came to be working at the BBC after writing many letters asking for a job. He eventually became a television director working with various programmes ranging from producing opera with Sir Jonathan Miller to the Paul Daniels Magic Show and comedies such as “Hi-de-Hi!” The original title for the show was “ The Fighting Tigers” but this was not considered suitable and the show was eventually renamed “Dad’s Army”.
Charles then described how each actor was chosen for his particular role and how the series was filmed each week over a period of five days. In recent years Charles had the task of re-editing each episode down to 29 minutes and 50 seconds so that they would fit into the TV schedule.
This month’s competition was to bring “an interesting war memento” and members had ransacked their attics to find letters, leaflets and booklets issued to people at the time together with medals and everyday objects such as a switch and shoe-cleaning brushes!