Carry On Glamping (My Radio Interview about the Carry Ons)

I contributed to a BBC radio Nottingham broadcast that took place from Meadow View Glamping and Leisure, Stapleford, Nottingham.

My reason for being there was that they wanted someone to talk about the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Carry On Camping (1969)! It came as a bit of a shock to realise that the film is fifty years old. It suddenly brought home how often and how long I have been watching this film. I recall a classmate talking about the mother-in-law being chased by a ram in the final scene the day after the film had been shown on TV. (Which might possibly have been its first TV broadcast).

Although I mention Carry On Camping in my book The Holiday and British Film (2012), I devote a bit more space to the caravan-site-themed Carry On Behind (1975). This is mainly because the chapter it appears in is loosely focused on caravan holidays, but also because I wanted to highlight Behind as it isn’t so often discussed as much as Camping.

Back to the film itself in a bit. What was most startling about my recent experience was seeing how radio is produced these days. I turned up at the glamping site to meet the presenter (Mark Dennison) and two other members of the team.

They had got into the camping spirit! Between the three of them they had slept in one of the luxurious glamping pods; a modern pop-up style tent; and an old-fashioned scouting tent with metal poles.

Everything about the way the programme was produced was deceptively casual. The presenter was holding an iPad / tablet and a microphone, and was wearing a set of headphones. A clipboard with a few notes was close to hand.

Although he could hear the programme being broadcast (music, news reports, and so on...) neither myself nor the rest of the production team could. Occasionally the presenter would chat to the rest of the team - “we’ve got ten minutes till the news, we could have another record before then...” or suddenly go into radio mode and laugh and comment on something he had heard through his headphones that we weren’t party to.

It was impressive to see how slickly the whole thing was handled. To look so laid back but to be in total control of a live radio broadcast, sitting in a chair on the edge of a field in Stapleford was an eye-opener. It also proved that studios are almost a thing of the past.

As I waited for my turn I went over a few points in my head. Then the presenter started chuckling at a sound clip from Carry On Camping that the rest of us couldn’t hear. Suddenly a few words and the microphone was thrust under me. Here are a few things that we discussed in the interview:

Would the Carry Ons work today if new versions were released? 

Probably not. Although some fans (including myself) love the films on a nostalgic level - with a tinge of guilty pleasure - much of the humour the series is based on would appear very out of context today. It would be difficult to deal in such humour without offending a large proportion of people. Thinking nostalgically, I distinctly recall kids at school playing Odd Bod and Junior in the school playground after watching Carry On Screaming (1966). The radio presenter pointed out here that there were aspects of the films that kids could enjoy as well as adults.

I spoke about how it was quite incredible that a feature film had been produced mainly around the location of a muddy field, and that no British film would ever get away with that nowadays without criticism for being cheap.

I did also say that Carry On Camping is my favourite of the series. Probably due to its simplicity and the fact that after seeing it so many times I can predict the lines that are coming up. I spoke about seeing it at the old Phoenix Arts cinema in Leicester in the 1990s as part of the annual comedy festival and how the audience applauded at the film's conclusion. This is not the only time I’ve witnessed this in the cinema, but it is a very rare occurrence.

After about seven minutes the interview was over. It was the turn of the campsite owner to be interviewed. In his interview he said that opening the site was part of a move to make Stapleford an up-and-coming area.

What an experience - to witness this first-hand, and to see how radio is produced these days.

Carry On in Wellingborough

I was introduced to an interesting pub in Wellingborough, Northants. Highly regarded, the Coach and Horses has won numerous awards and judging by the interior decor (and the quality of the beer) it was easy to see why.

In creating the atmosphere of the pub, the owner must be something of a hoarder. Pump clips adorn almost every available space, alongside other breweriana.

What caught my eye, however, were the autographed photos of Carry On actors displayed on the walls.

Joan Sims, Jack Douglas, Kenneth Williams and Jim Dale

spot Hattie Jacques

Bernard Breslaw and Peter Butterworth snuggled amongst the pump clips

Although Babs, Hattie, Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Peter Butterworth et al were all present, believe me, this was no Whippet Inn.

The Queer Postcards of Donald McGill

In his well-known essay on the comic postcard, Orwell highlights a number of recurrent themes which McGill’s cards are reliant upon, namely: sex, home life, drunkenness, W. C. jokes, inter-working class snobbery, stock figures, and politics. Obscenity plays a large part in the humour of these cards, in the double entendres of the written text and in the visualisation of voluptuous women with ‘grossly over-emphasised’ breasts and buttocks, which he claims, are ‘caricatures of the Englishman’s secret ideal’ (Orwell, 2000: 198).

However, the McGill postcard museum at Ryde on the Isle of Wight reveals another theme that Orwell’s essay chooses not to highlight: homosexual stereotyping and androgyny. The short crop hairstyles of 1920s/’30s women and dandification of men, and the subsequent blurring of genders appears to have prompted most of these comic images.

Here are a few amusing examples...

Masculine women and feminine men

Seaside peepers take a closer look...

A woman golfer puts the men's noses out of joint

A postcard from the daring resort of Great Yarmouth!



The dandy



Link to the McGill postcard museum

Further reading: Orwell, George, 2000, Essays, London: Penguin