“A Redbrick University in Britain’s new Elizabethan age: here are moulded the intellectual Drakes and Raleighs of tomorrow – fearless, independent . . . and state supported.”
This likeable and lively British comedy from 1957 revolves around Jim Dixon (Ian Carmichael), a junior history lecturer at a provincial university.
Jim is a well-intentioned misfit with a flair for deflating sham and pomposity, and top of his private blacklist is Professor Welch (Hugh Griffith), smug, overbearing head of the history department.
Invited to the professor’s home for a ‘cultural weekend’, Jim – a northern grammar school boy made good – leaves a trail of disaster in his wake . . .
The film ends happily with Jim getting the girl (Christine Callaghan played by Sharon Acker) but only after a chase-sequence involving a series of unconvincing studio shots.
Adapted from the first (and best) novel by Kingsley Amis, the film substitutes physical comedy for much of the novel’s satire.
Jim Dixon
Ian Carmichael Bertrand Welch
Terry-Thomas Professor Welch
Hugh Griffith Christine Callaghan
Sharon Acker Margaret Peel
Maureen Connell Mrs Welch
Jean Anderson Sir Hector Gore-Urquhart
Clive Morton Porter
Reginald Beckwith Cyril Johns
Kenneth Griffith Bill Atkinson
Jeremy Hawk Bob Roberts
John Cairney Miss Wilson
Penny Morrell
Principal
John Welch Professor Hutchinson
Henry Longhurst Registrar
Ronald Cardew Glee Singer
Ian Wilson
