http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituari...se-1751593.html

 

Vince Powell: Prolific sitcom writer who co-created 'Love

Thy Neighbour' and 'Bless This House'

By Anthony Hayward

Saturday, 18 July 2009

 

With Harry Driver, Vince Powell formed one of British

television's most prolific and successful sitcom writing

partnerships.

 

At their height in the 1960s and 1970s, the pair created

some of ITV's most popular comedies, from George and the

Dragon and Nearest and Dearest to Never Mind the Quality,

Feel the Width and For the Love of Ada, which featured some

of Britain's biggest stars, such as Peggy Mount, Sid James,

Hylda Baker, Jimmy Jewel, Joe Lynch, Irene Handl and Wilfred

Pickles.

 

But the extremes of Powell and Driver's comedy - and of what

was deemed acceptable in those less politically and socially

aware times - were exemplified by two of their most

archetypal domestic sagas. Bless This House starred Sid

James as Sid Abbott, who found himself in a generation-gap

battle with his teenaged son and daughter (played by Robin

Stewart and Sally Geeson) while being hounded by his wife

(Diana Coupland), who invariably outsmarted him. Although

Sid's interests were ABC - ale, birds and Chelsea FC - the

comedy was essentially harmless.

 

At the same time, Love Thy Neighbour was being screened.

What is most startling is that there was apparently little

controversy about such a sitcom, featuring Jack Smethurst

and Kate Williams as Eddie and Joan Booth, a white couple

living next door to the black Bill and Barbie Reynolds

(Rudolph Walker and Nina Baden-Semper), and exchanging

racist insults. "Nig-nog", "sambo", "white honky" and

"snowflake" were among those traded, but Powell and Driver

insisted they were simply mocking prejudice itself - on both

sides of the racial divide.

 

Powell was born Vincent Smith, the only child of poor

Catholic parents, in the Manchester suburb of Miles Platting

in 1928. His mother died when he was five and his tailor

father remarried two years later. The young Smith, who

attended St Bede's Catholic College, regularly played truant

to watch films at the local cinema and visit the theatre,

where his love of comedy was fostered by variety acts such

as George Formby, Gracie Fields and Jewel and Warriss.

 

On leaving school at the age of 15, he became an apprentice

at an engineering works, where he met Kevin O'Flaherty. The

two friends both wanted to be singers and attended a talent

show at the New Manchester Hippodrome. Seeing the quality of

opposition, they decided to form a comedy double act and

performed locally in the evenings.

 

After service in the Royal Navy as a probationary sick berth

attendant on HMS Mauritius (1945-47), Powell decided to

follow his father into the tailoring trade and found a job

with Hector Power, in Manchester.

 

Keen to resume his stage act, he advertised in a newsagent's

shop window for a straight man. Harry Driver responded and,

together, they became Hammond and Powell, Smith deciding

that his surname was not appropriate for a variety

performer. The duo performed in clubs by night while both

continuing their day jobs, Driver working as a trainee

manager with Marks & Spencer.

 

The double act appeared to be finished when Driver

contracted polio in 1955, spent 18 months in hospital and

was paralysed from the neck down. But, as Powell continued

his day job, the pair switched to writing, with Driver at

first dictating his words but later hitting the keys of a

typewriter with a knitting needle clenched between his

teeth. After Driver was solely commissioned to contribute

scripts to Granada Television's airport drama series

Skyport, the pair were among the writers of the sitcom

Here's Harry (1960-65), which established the comedian Harry

Worth as a star.

 

Then, Powell and Driver were hired as Coronation Street's

first storyline writers, once the decision had been made to

extend Tony Warren's folk opera about the residents of a

Northern terrace after the first 13 episodes. They also

wrote scripts themselves for the serial, with Powell

responsible for 32 alone and four jointly with Driver

between 1961 and 1967.

 

With another of the soap's writers, John Finch, Powell also

wrote a stage play, the comedy Coronation Street on the Road

(1964). Powell and Driver then scripted separate episodes of

another Street spin-off, the television sitcom Pardon the

Expression (1965-66), which transplanted the pompous Gamma

Garments haberdashery manager Leonard Swindley (Arthur Lowe)

to a branch of the national chain-store Dobson and Hawks as

assistant manager.

 

They teamed up to write five episodes of the fantasy

adventure series Adam Adamant Lives! (1966-67), starring

Gerald Harper as the Edwardian hero Adam Llewellyn De Vere

Adamant, before establishing themselves as a successful

partnership with George and the Dragon (1966-68), which they

created together. The sitcom starred Peggy Mount, cast to

type as the fire-breathing Gabrielle Dragon, housekeeper to

the country gentleman Colonel Maynard (John Le Mesurier),

with Sid James playing the chauffeur, George Russell, whose

amorous advances she fended off - loudly.

 

Powell's experience as a tailor was useful when he and

Driver then created Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width

(1967-71), starring John Bluthal and Joe Lynch as the Jewish

jacket-maker and Irish trouser-maker running a business in

London's East End. The comedy came from the two men's

differing beliefs, with tailoring being their only common

bond, and a film version followed in 1973.

 

The writing partnership was by now working at full throttle,

also creating Nearest and Dearest (1968-73), which teamed

the music-hall comedians Jimmy Jewel and Hylda Baker as the

warring brother and sister Eli and Nellie Pledge, who

inherited a Lancashire pickle factory. Soon, other writers

were brought in to script episodes, as happened with Powell

and Driver's future creations.

 

Next came Two in Clover (1969), with Sid James and Victor

Spinetti as two insurance company clerks-turned-farmers, For

the Love of Ada (1970-71), starring Irene Handl and Wilfred

Pickles in a comedy of twilight-years love, Bless This House

(1971-76) and Love Thy Neighbour (1972-76). The last three

were all spun off into feature films.

 

The death of Driver in 1973, as a result of weakened lungs

caused by polio, was a blow to Powell, who finished the

sitcoms they had begun for ITV, which also included Spring

and Autumn (1972-6), starring Jimmy Jewel as a cantankerous

widower.

 

Thames Television had put the pair on an exclusive contract,

earning £50,000 a year between them. Powell's salary then

doubled as a result and, for tax reasons, he lived for a

year in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, in the South of France, near

Villefranche-sur-Mer, which had been his regular holiday

destination since visiting it with the Royal Navy.

 

He found it difficult to carry on alone, without Driver to

bounce ideas off, but had mild success with his next

creations, The Wackers (1975), featuring Ken Jones and

Sheila Fay as father and mother in a half-Protestant,

half-Catholic Liverpool family, My Son Rueben (1975), with

Lila Kaye and Bernard Spear as a Jewish mother and her

ageing bachelor son both running a dry-cleaning business,

Rule Britannia! (1975), about English, Scottish, Irish and

Welsh shipmates reuniting after 25 years, and Odd Man Out

(1977), starring John Inman as the inheritor of a stick-rock

factory.

 

Powell found a winning formula again with Mind Your Language

(1977-79, 1986), featuring Barry Evans as the teacher of

English to mature foreign students - although it was

eventually cancelled by Michael Grade, then LWT's deputy of

controller of entertainment, who considered the racial

stereotyping offensive. The series was briefly revived seven

years later.

 

Other Powell creations included Young at Heart (1980-83),

with John Mills and Megs Jenkins as the pensioners

struggling to come to terms with retirement, and Bottle Boys

(1984-85), starring Robin Askwith as an inept milkman.

 

The writer also contributed scripts to the David Jason

sitcom A Sharp Intake of Breath (1980-81), Full House

(1985-86) and Slinger's Day (1986-87, featuring Bruce

Forsyth as a supermarket manager). He wrote almost half of

the episodes in the long-running Johnnie Mortimer-created

Never the Twain (1981-91), which starred Donald Sinden and

Windsor Davies as rival antiques dealers.

 

For many years, Powell penned Cilla Black's scripts for

Blind Date and Surprise Surprise. He also wrote an

Australian version of Love Thy Neighbour (1980) and

co-devised the celebrity charades game-show Give Us a Clue

(1979-97).

 

Powell's autobiography, From Rags to Gags: The Memoirs of a

Comedy Writer, was published last year. His first two

marriages ended in divorce. He had a son with his second

wife, Judi Smith, and a son and a daughter from his third

marriage, to Geraldine Moore, who survives him.

 

Vincent Smith (Vince Powell), writer: born Manchester 6

August 1928; married three times (two sons, one daughter);

died Guildford 13 July 2009.

 

sorry but i found his material :mellow:

 

very unfunny..... comedy for idiots.

 

thank god for footlights and the alternative scene.