Only When I Laugh

1 9 7 9 – 1 9 8 2 (UK)
29 x 30 minute episodes

This hospital comedy from Yorkshire Television centred on a group of long-stay patients – including aggressive lorry driver Roy Figgis (James Bolam), toffee-nosed hypochondriac Archie Glover (Peter Bowles), naive young Norman Binns (Christopher Strouli) – and haughty, irritable surgeon Gordon Thorpe (Richard Wilson).

This was James Bolam’s first comedy since Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? (in the interim, he had scored great acclaim as tough Jack Ford in the BBC1 drama When The Boat Comes In) and pitched him into a happy ensemble that frequently topped the ratings.

Only When I Laugh was set in an NHS hospital wherein a trio of very different patients was forever playing the art of one-upmanship and getting into scrapes with each other, at the same time causing grief to Dr Thorpe and Gupte (Derrick Branche), the luckless and easily flustered staff nurse from Delhi.

Roy Figgis revelled in the confines of the hospital ward, stirring up bad odour and using his limited medical knowledge and broad-ranging working-class opinions to wind up the other patients. In particular, he enjoyed teasing Binns, a hapless, innocent middle-class mummy’s boy, and Archie Glover,

There wasn’t much wrong with any of them, but the three leading players seemed destined to remain hospital (and dressing-gown) bound for the duration – with young nurses and a succession of visitors providing writer Eric Chappell opportunities to bring in other actors when necessary.

Only When I Laugh enjoyed a second lease of life when Channel 4 began two series of repeats in 1994/1995 that fared unexpectedly well.

Roy Figgis 
James Bolam
Archie Glover 
Peter Bowles
Norman Binns 
Christopher Strouli
Dr Gordon Thorpe 
Richard Wilson
Staff Nurse Gupte 
Derrick Branche

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