If There Weren’t Any Blacks You’d Have to Invent Them

1 9 6 8 (UK)
1 x 55 minute episode
1 9 7 4 (UK)
1 x 55 minute episode

This thought-provoking comedy/drama from prolific writer Johnny Speight (best known for the character of Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part) examined how people are pigeon-holed based on religion, colour, or sex.

Set in a cemetery, a diverse assortment of characters is introduced, representing nearly every prejudice imaginable.

Nothing escapes as Speight targets the church (Catholic and Anglican alike), the army, medicine and the law, and even attacks the liberals and tolerationists – on the ground that they need their feelings of guilt as much as the intolerants need their “blacks” – until the original point seems lost in a welter of condemnation.

Among the bizarre characters are a doctor who replaces women’s legs with artificial models designed by Christian Dior, a Vicar on a campaign to ‘Keep Heaven White’, a blind man who accuses a camp young man of being black, a backwards man who refuses to look about him and an officer who has his own way of recruiting potential soldiers.

The drama was one of the first programmes broadcast by London Weekend Television, transmitted during the company’s first weekend of operation in August 1968. The BBC and Associated Rediffusion had both previously bought the script, but neither produced it due to its controversial nature.

The provocative production won LWT their first award when it won the Best Script and Best Actor (John Castle) Award at the sixth international television festival at Prague in 1969.

The story was remade in colour in 1974 and broadcast by LWT on Sunday 3 March.

What had been shocking in 1968 was now either commonplace or amusing (or both), altering the play’s moral direction and transforming it into a pseudo-surrealist lampoon of The Establishment.

The superb cast included Richard Beckinsale, Leonard Rossiter, Donald Gee, Geoffrey Bayldon (Catweazle), Vicki Michelle and an early appearance by Bob Hoskins.

The Sexton
Ronald Radd (1968)
Bob Hoskins (1974)
The Undertaker
Frank Thornton (1968)
Geoffrey Bayldon (1974)
The Vicar
Laurence Hardy (1968)
Ken Wynne (1974)
The Officer
Moray Watson (1968)
Lewis Fiander (1974)
The Private
Leonard Cracknell (1968)
John Nightingale (1974)
The Blind Man
Leslie Sands (1968)
Leonard Rossiter (1974)
The Backwards Man
Jimmy Hanley (1968)
Donald Gee (1974)
The Young Man
John Castle (1968)
Richard Beckinsale (1974)
The Priest
Paul Hardwick (1968)
James Grout (1974)
The Doctor
Derek Godfrey (1968)
Michael Bryant (1974)
The Senior Nurse
Valerie Leon (1968)
Karen Boyes (1974)
Nurses
Carol Perdeck (1968)
Genevieve (1968)
Carol Redhead (1968)
Ann Weston (1968)
Vicki Michelle (1974)
Susan Morrall (1974)
Pat Peters (1974)
The Girl
Nerys Hughes (1968)
Pam Scotcher (1974)
The Young Man’s Jewish Mother
Amelia Bayntun (1968)
Mary Henry (1974)
The Judge
Kynaston Reeves (1968)
John Welsh (1974)
The Workman/Musician
Peter Craze (1968)

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