It Ain't Half Hot Mum
British sitcom
It Ain't Half Hot Mum is a British sitcom about the adventures of a Royal Artillery Concert Party, broadcast on the BBC between 1974 and 1981, and written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft. It was set in British India and Burma, during the last months of the Second World War in 1945.
Series 1 (1974)
editMeet The Gang [1.1]
edit[First lines of the series]
- Solly: All right, fellas, all right, let's try it again. And this time, get it right! Remember, this is supposed to be a sophisticated number! You're all smart, New York men about town!
- Mackintosh: How can I be sophisticated in this heat? I'm sweating like a pig!
- Gloria: Just do what I do! Imagine you're sweating champagne and diamonds!
- Solly: All right, Gloria!
- Mackintosh: We won't actually have to put the studs in, will we?
- Solly: No, of course not.
- Gloria: Oh, really, you great big sweaty butch idiot!
- Mackintosh: Look, pal, I've warned you once before...
[Mackintosh lifts Gloria up underneath the arms, Solly splits them up]
- Solly: Knock it off!
- Gloria: He nearly did!
- Gloria: It's typical, you always come in on my line!
- Sergeant Major: You enjoying your tea, Gunner?
- Graham: Yes, thank you...
- Sergeant Major: WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON?!
- Sergeant Major: what's your name, Gunner?
- Parky: Parkins, sir.
- Sergeant Major: Where have you been? The rest of the draft arrived yesterday. You are twenty four hours late.
- Parky:Well, you see...
- Sergeant Major: SHUT UP!
Series 2 (1975)
editThe Natives Are Revolting [2.3]
edit- Sergeant Major: What's going on here, then?
- Solly: I thought we'd have a parade, Sergeant Major.
- Sergeant Major: Shut up. Why?
- Graham: Well, we... we rather wanted to parade, Sergeant Major.
- Sergeant Major: All right, Mr la-di-da Gunner Graham, if you wants a parade, you gets a parade! [sniggers] Right, lovely boys, Squad 'SHUN! Four paces forward, MARCH! Left, right, left, HALT! ABOUT TURN! Right, now the sun is out of my eyes, I can see you proper. And a bunch of poofs you is.
- [The Sergeant Major has just spotted the stones outside the battery office rearranged to say 'British Pigs Go Home']
- Sergeant Major: Bombardier?
- Solly: Sir?
- Sergeant Major: Who did this?
- Solly: No idea, sir, nothing to do with us...
- Sergeant Major: Shut up. Bearer?
- Rangi: Sergeant Major sahib?
- Sergeant Major: Who did this?
- Rangi: N-n-n-nothing to do...
- Sergeant Major: Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!
- Col. Reynolds: Feeling better now, Sergeant Major?
- Sergeant Major: Yes, thank you, sir. I'm sorry about that. It was just the sight of... 'British Pigs Go Home'!
- Col. Reynolds: Yes, yes, most aggrivating.
- Sergeant Major: What is that?
- Solly: Looks like the Indian National Flag, Sergeant Major.
- Sergeant Major: The Indian National shut up. They've done it again. They've done it again. GET IT DOWN! GET IT DOWN!
About It Ain't Half Hot Mum
edit- Seventies comedies would not be allowed on television screens today because they were so racist and offensive, the outgoing head of Ofcom has said.
Ed Richards, who stands down as chief executive of the media watchdog at the end of this month, said programmes from a previous generation were no longer suitable for today’s more enlightened audiences.
Although he did not name names, comedies like Love Thy Neighbour, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and Mind Your Language have all been criticised in recent years for their racial stereotyping. - "There are comedies from the seventies which had certain racial stereotyping in the[m], which are unimaginable today and if they were shown people would find them offensive and that wouldn't just be people from black and ethnic minority communities, it would be everybody," Mr Richards said in an interview with The Independent newspaper.
- Sarah Knapton "Racist 1970s comedies would be banned now, says head of Ofcom" The Telegraph (29 December 2014)
- The cited article is "Ed Richards: Parting view of Ofcom chief... we hate jokes on the disabled" The Independent (28 December 2014)
- It is without doubt the funniest series that David Croft and I wrote. Of course, it is also the show that we're not allowed to talk about any more
- People complain that the language was homophobic, and it was, but it was exactly how people spoke. And I should know - I was in a Royal Artillery concert party that travelled around India. We had a sergeant-major who hated us. He'd say: 'No man who puts on make-up and ponces about on a stage is normal - what are you?' 'We're a bunch of poofs!' we'd reply. And those experiences are ones that enabled me to write It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.
- [On the casting of Michael Bates, a white actor, as the Indian bearer, Rangi Ram] At the time we found it impossible to find an Indian actor who could perform the role, to be perfectly honest [Query from the interviewer, Stuart Jeffries: "In a country of 500m people?"] Yes. But Michael was ideal for the role. He was born in India, spoke fluent Urdu, had been an officer in the Gurkhas and he'd served with the Chindits behind Japanese lines in Burma.
- Interview of co-writer Jimmy Perry cited in "Some like it hot" The Guardian (3 February 2003)
- But the 1970s sitcom is also a repository of our nightmares. [Love Thy Neighbour, another sitcom with obsolete attitudes to race, and Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech viewed as "shorthand for British racism"] It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Jimmy Perry and David Croft's comedy about a British Army concert party in India between V-E Day and V-J Day, fulfils a similar function. We remember the white actor Michael Bates in brownface, shrieking and nodding under a turban, and Windsor Davies’s sergeant major bemoaning his command of "a load of poofs" – and we know we're seeing something that a modern audience would find hard to distinguish from The Black and White Minstrel Show.
- Matthew Sweet "From TV's crown jewels to racist nightmares: can the 1970s sitcom be saved?" The Telegraph (14 August 2021)
