21st August 1969, the BBC was running a whole evening covering the landing on the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin earlier that day, ITV was showing the most recent episode of 'On The Buses', I was in borstal at the time, and this was long before the days of prisoners having TV in cells, we had one television (black and white) in the recreation room, which we were allowed to watch for half an hour hour each night, there were only 3 channels to choose from, BBC, ITV and BBC2, and the 'screws' used to ask for a show of hands to see which channel we would watch on any particular evening. You may have thought, that because of the importance of the event, we would overwhelmingly vote to watch the moon landing ... you would be wrong, we voted almost unanimously to watch 'On The Buses' .. that was the popularity of the programme back then. Now, over 40 years later and watching it on re-runs, I can still see why we voted as we did. It was so ludicrous that it was brilliant, the characters were all of the seaside comic postcard variety, even back in the late 60's/early 70's, the idea of a 40 year old man living with his mother and dysfunctional sister/brother-in-law would be considered suspicious, and the notion that 2 middle aged and not particularly good looking men at that, would be able to 'pull clippies' young enough to be their daughters is the basic joke the series revolved around. It is good old fashioned, bawdy, slapstick fun, not meant to be taken seriously, and all the better for not being fettered by being made before the political correct brigade ruined entertainment as we knew it.
Review of On the Buses
