Goodbye Mrs. Slocombe

[WhoGuru]

Mollie Sugden, better known to us older folks as Mrs. Slocombe has died. She was and still is my favorite part of "Are you being served?"

I was going to link a vid however, even though I know she's only talking about her cat, I wont risk someone else being offended. If you get bored, search YouTube with Mrs. Slocombe and watch the vid. Top result usually.

Rest in peace Mrs. Slocombe and your ever talked about never seen husband in that great department store in the sky. Going up!

[Si-Shen]

Awww I loved that show.. tis a sad sad day indeed.

[DarkRider]

So sad...

[charlescrowe]

... who's next? it's definitely a bad year to be a celebrity...

[Tyana_Rie]

Ground floor: perfumery

stationery and leather goods

wigs and haberdashery

kitchenware and food. Going up!

First floor: telephones

gents ready-made suits

shirts, socks, ties, hats

underwear and shoes. Going up!

Second floor: carpets

travel goods and bedding

material, soft furnishings,

restaurant and teas. Going down!

First floor: telephones

gents ready-made suits

shirts, socks, ties, hats

underwear and shoes. Going down!

Goodbye Mrs. Sclocombe, I'll miss listening to you talking about your... cat

[WhoGuru]

Ground floor: perfumery

stationery and leather goods

wigs and haberdashery

kitchenware and food. Going up!

First floor: telephones

gents ready-made suits

shirts, socks, ties, hats

underwear and shoes. Going up!

Second floor: carpets

travel goods and bedding

material, soft furnishings,

restaurant and teas. Going down!

First floor: telephones

gents ready-made suits

shirts, socks, ties, hats

underwear and shoes. Going down!

Goodbye Mrs. Sclocombe, I'll miss listening to you talking about your... cat

Awww lovely Tyana!! I caught several episodes last night on a local channel. One of them was even a ....cat...episode. Where she's asking her neighbor to look through the letterbox? One of my all time favorites!

[Tyana_Rie]

Awww lovely Tyana!! I caught several episodes last night on a local channel. One of them was even a ....cat...episode. Where she's asking her neighbor to look through the letterbox? One of my all time favorites!

I wish they'd show more britcoms over here, I hate American Sitcoms.

I think britcoms are much much funnier.

Fawlty Towers? Classic stuff you can't get anything funny like that on American TV,

it's all about double entendres, and half of the jokes have

been used so many times I can tell what the punchline is before they even say it.

[WhoGuru]

OMG I adore Fawlty Towers!! We own the whole series on boxed set! Know most every episode by heart and still laugh like loons every time we watch. Britcoms are MILES better than american sit coms. Honestly. The humor is so much more intelligent!!

[Tyana_Rie]

OMG I adore Fawlty Towers!! We own the whole series on boxed set! Know most every episode by heart and still laugh like loons every time we watch. Britcoms are MILES better than american sit coms. Honestly. The humor is so much more intelligent!!

I'm not sure which is the funniest episode, the One with the Dead Guy,

The one with the Germans or the one with the Psychiatrists.

And you're right, I've got the boxed set of Fawlty Towers and Monty Python's Flying Circus

and I still laugh at all of them, no matter how many times I've seen them.

I usually set myself up for a MPFC and Fawlty Tower Marathon, currently getting

ready for a Start Trek: Original Series (I don't like all the others) marathon.

Then after that a Frank Zappa listening marathon, (in chronological order

Starting with 1967's Freak Out) that takes a couple of days, with 66 or more CD's

A good movie starring John Cleese is called Clockwise, and it's typical of how he writes comedy,

like a symphony (is how he described it) because it starts off slow and builds and builds

And that's how the movie is, starts off slow, and he slowly starts getting himself into

one predicament after another until everything is such a mess.

That's ONE thing that irritates me about British Television, there are only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers,

had that have been on American TV it would've been on for at least 10 years, but over there,

they have like 6 episodes a year and basically the shows only last like two years.

Father Ted is another hilarious britcom, if you can rent it first to check it out, it's hilarious.

Sad thing about that show, is they ended it after 3 years and at the final cast party the guy

that played the main character dropped dead of a heart attack

[WhoGuru]

Python, Flay Otters, Star Trek, Zappa AND Father Ted? You are singing my tunes man! We also own all of Father Ted! Oh if only I could quote Father Jack!! Somehow I think the big guy would smack me if I did! British comedy wins. Hands down. Now if only they LASTED longer! *sobs* There just aren't enough episodes of my favorite shows!

and my hubby owns pretty much all of Zappa. He's one of his idols.

[Tyana_Rie]

Python, Flay Otters, Star Trek, Zappa AND Father Ted? You are singing my tunes man! We also own all of Father Ted! Oh if only I could quote Father Jack!! Somehow I think the big guy would smack me if I did! British comedy wins. Hands down. Now if only they LASTED longer! *sobs* There just aren't enough episodes of my favorite shows!

and my hubby owns pretty much all of Zappa. He's one of his idols.

Cool! Someone else who knows about Father Ted!

My Favorites are when Mrs. Carbury goes off on her tirade about the Greeks

while slipping on the ice with her two shopping bags,

and the "Kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse" episode.

Those ALWAYS get me laughing out loud

[Relic]

Never heard of her...

although I do indeed own and love Fawlty Towers, Father Ted and Monty Python.

While we Brtis may make funnier sitcoms, you Americans make much funnier animations like futurama or family guy. Although we can really discuss those here... especially the latter!

[Tyana_Rie]

"I hear you're a racist now, Ted!" followed by his parishioner's pledge to also be racist when he could find the time but he was a busy man. I loved that episode for the sheer number of increasingly contrived gaffes the poor, put upon Ted was making! It's hard to choose a favourite, though, what with that, the disco where the only record the DJ brought was The Specials' "Ghost Town", the "Night of the Nearly Dead" where a legion of grannies was stalking the Daniel O'Donnell-alike, anything where Fr. Jack says "feck" a lot (I hasten to add that this is not a synonym for a very similar word and is not actually considered vulgar: I'm not sure of its origins, though I would hazard a guess that it may share something in common with "feckless").

And since I also tend to like crossovers of any type, an honourable mention of that (typically) cringeworthy episode where Ted keeps bumping into Richard Wilson just as he has cause to utter Victor Meldrew's (Wilson's character in another sitcom) catchprase "I can not believe it!", eventually causing Wilson to become violent.

I think that's exactly what I love about Britcoms, is the calm understatement while dripping sarcasm, like what you mentioned.

"I hear you're a racist now Father"

"Only the farm takes up most of the day, and at night I just like a cup of tea, I might'nt be able to devote myself full time to the old racism"

I LOVE that accent, whatever it is, it sounds like a mix of Scottish (especially on the words "Farm", "Lust", "Cup" and "Racism") and English, with a hint of Brogue

It's THAT casual off-hand understated delivery that makes it so hilarious

Also, some lines are delivered with such subtlety that you can miss them at first.

Like that insane guy in the first episode with the unibrow who's sitting on a wall and wants to talk to Father Ted

and Ted isn't really paying attention and the guy says "I killed a man Father"

That slips by on the first listening/watching but ends up being hilarious in the context if you catch it the next time around

Ah... thanks for clearing up the 'feck" too, I always wondered about that word.

It made that Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep episode pretty funny when they're all in the tent and Ted is running through his "mystery solved summation"

and the crowd starts mumbling and always at the end when things are quieting down you hear a "fecking hell"

[Relic]

I LOVE that accent, whatever it is, it sounds like a mix of Scottish (especially on the words "Farm", "Lust", "Cup" and "Racism") and English, with a hint of Brogue

It's simply one of the many forms of the Irish Accent!

[Tyana_Rie]

It's simply one of the many forms of the Irish Accent!

Forgive me for pressing the issue, but as a voice actor, I need to ask.

The words I mentioned "Farm, Lust, Cup and Racism"

the way "I" hear them is "Fairm" "Loost" "Coop" and "Ryacism" those are extreme spellings, and really should be toned down,

but that was the only way I could "spell" them and make someone "See" what I "hear"

The reason I guessed a bit of Scottish was because I watched a show called "Chewin' the fat"

a Scottish BBC show (funny as hell!) and I noticed some words pronounced somewhat the same as

the farmer in Father Ted.

The woman on the show said "Father" but it sounded like she said "Fayther" (well, a bit in between Father and Fayther)

So I wrongly assumed the accent of the Farmer in Father Ted was Scottish

I swear, If I ever traveled to the Isles I would do so, just to HEAR everything, rather than SEE anything

I could keep my eyes closed, travel to England, Ireland ,Wales and Scotland and just drink up the dialect,

I've always been fascinated by accents, dialect etc since I was a child.

My first experience with a super heavy accent was listening to a Pink Floyd album called "Umma Gumma"

and a track called "Several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict"

Well, I didn't know what the heck a "pict" was back then, but the track was a bunch of wierd noises, and some guy

yelling stuff, and I could'nt understand a word he said.

Then I listened to it more and more and started making out the words, it was an extremely heavy accent.

This is what I "Thought" I heard.

"Neva he claid, neva he claid"

after listening to it a few times I heard this:

"Never he cried, never he cried"

[Tyana_Rie]

To be honest, I think that's fair enough: the moment I read those words I thought "Belfast", even though it's not necessarily the accent of the Fr Ted actors. There is a definite similarity between some Northern Irish and some Scots accents at times, though, and once in a while I do sometimes struggle to figure out where someone hails from. What you describe is also seen in my regional accent (north east England) where you might get two vowel sounds instead of one, e.g. "face" often sounding like the non-rhotic "fierce" and why Gateshead is sometimes jokingly spelt "Gyetsheed". There is a word for that but I can't remember what...

YES!!! Your example of "face" and "Fierce" pretty much summed up what I've been trying to say!!

Thank you!

And the Gyetsheed thing, I definitely heard "Heed" instead of "Head" on the scottish show "Chewin' the fat", when one guy said "turn your heed"

I've also heard "Pesh" Peshed" etc...

They even have a recurring sketch called "Gony nay dee that"

To be honest, I laughed a lot more the second time watching the shows, because I picked up more of the accent,

this time around, when two guys were arguing and one guy was constantly saying "No ya did'nae" I didn't hear "noyadidnay"

I heard "No You did'nt"

as a side thing, that show has a couple of guys that go to Glasgow just "for the banter".

They'll order stuff or take a taxi, and pay the person just to listen to them.

I appreciate you taking the time to let me know about the accents.

I'm always worried about asking about accents, because some people might think it offensive somehow,

shrugs...

[Relic]

Well... a lot of Ireland and and Scotland have the same ancestry back in the Viking Era as far as my knowledge goes.

Indeed I agree, some bits of the accents share a lot of attributes, but there are so many variations of both, you can't really define them so.

[Tyana_Rie]

See if you can catch some episodes of Rab C Nesbitt - great example of some fairly impenetrable Glaswegian there

Oh my god yes!!!

I watched one episode and had to stop, for me, it would've needed subtitles, I just could'nt get it.

[Nic-V]

Must admit I don't have a clue who she was

[WhoGuru]

I love watching Father Ted and just listening to them speak! and yes, I sit there and try to mimic the accents, in between bouts of laughter. Feck off cup!!

[Tyana_Rie]

I love watching Father Ted and just listening to them speak! and yes, I sit there and try to mimic the accents, in between bouts of laughter. Feck off cup!!

You're not kidding.

I've played MPFC over and over again to try to get that accent.

the one Graham Chapman saying "Oi don't loik the sound of these here boncentration bamps"

From the North Minehead By-Election sketch.

Love that accent

[WhoGuru]

Ah I love Mrs. Doyle. I tongue tie myself trying to mimic her. Her accent just grabs me every time she speaks! LOL