Free Les Dawson's Cissie and Ada by Terry Ravenscroft

LES DAWSON’S CISSIE AND ADA

    Copyright © Terry Ravenscroft, 2011

    Cover artwork by Tom Unwin

    A RAZZAMATAZZ PUBLICATION

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    About the author

    The day after Terry Ravenscroft threw in his mundane factory job to write television comedy scripts he was involved in a car accident which left him unable to turn his head. Since then he has never looked back. Born in New Mills, Derbyshire, in 1938, he still lives there with his wife Delma and his mistress Divine Bottom (in his dreams).
    email [email protected]
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    twitter http://bit.ly/t0mVyB
    website www.topcomedy.co.uk

    Also by Terry Ravenscroft

    CAPTAIN’S DAY
    FOOTBALL CRAZY
    JAMES BLOND - STOCKPORT IS TOO MUCH
    INFLATABLE HUGH
    DEAR AIR 2000
    DEAR COCA-COLA
    STAIRLIFT TO HEAVEN
    I’M IN HEAVEN
    THE RAZZAMATAZZ FUN EBOOK
    ZEPHYR ZODIAC
    (Will be published early in 2012)

    Sample pages of each of these titles can be read at the end of this book.

    ****

    LES DAWSON’S CISSIE AND ADA

    FOREWORD

    Les Dawson's Cissie and Ada is a collection of some of the scripts I wrote for Les when I worked as his scriptwriter during the years 1978 to 1983, originally on two series of the BBC's 'The Dawson Watch' and subsequently on three series of 'The Les Dawson Show'. Les was Ada Shufflebottom of course, and Cissie Braithwaite was played by Roy Barraclough, who later went on to star as Alex Gilroy in Coronation Street.
    Les Dawson, British comedy's finest, was a joy to know, in real life exactly the same person you saw on your TV screens. Writing comedy scripts isn't the easiest of occupations , but writing Cissie and Ada was easier than most scriptwriting jobs I undertook because as a boy I grew up amongst women much like Cissie, and especially Ada, hair-curlered Ena Sharples-like harridans who would habitually spend a good part of their day standing on their front doorsteps commenting to each other about the disgusting state of the curtains at number 29 over the road - “She’s had them up since D-Day” - before going on to do a demolition job on the character of the woman at number 14 who was 'no better than she should be' and 'too thick with her lodger for my liking - well I heard her bedsprings going at three-o-clock this morning and her husband's on permanent nights'. As a twelve-year-old I actually heard one such woman say to another, when discussing a neighbour who had been generous with her favours to American GIs during the war, “She had more soldiers than Eisenhower.” Naturally this found its way into one of the Cissie and Ada scripts, years later.
    These female characters were based on people Les Dawson knew in real life. To further portray the reality of northern, working-class women, Cissie and Ada would sit with folded arms, occasionally adjusting their bosoms by a hoist of the forearms. This is of course typical of pantomime dame style, an act copied faithfully, as Les would be the first to admit, from Les’s hero Norman Evans, who had made famous his act ‘ Over The Garden Wall’.
    My abiding memory of Les is of him standing at the BBC Club bar during the hour between dress rehearsal and show time, having already had a couple of double scotches, whilst the show's producer Peter Whitmore looked anxiously on, hoping against hope that Les wouldn't order another. Les ordered another. "Don't you think you've had enough, Les?" said Peter, “We've a show to do remember." Les bade the barman fulfil his order, turned to Peter, and in the voice of a great Shakespeare tragedian actor said: "I can't go on alone." Priceless.
    Another story, which demonstrates Les’s razor-sharp wit, occurred shortly after Les had left Yorkshire Television for the BBC. The Beeb’s powers-that-be had come up with a show format for Les, ‘The Dawson Watch’, and in their infinite wisdom had saddled him with four writers fairly new to television scriptwriting. They were Andy Hamilton, Tom Magee-Engelfield, Colin Bostock-Smith and me. After the first