May I be excused?
55 years ago, on 31st July 1968, the first episode of classic sitcom Dad’s Army was broadcast on BBC1.
Created by Jimmy Perry and co-written by him with David Croft, the series was based on Perry’s own wartime experiences in the Local Defence Volunteers, later known as the Home Guard. It was also influenced by the films of comedian Will Hay, in particular Oh, Mr Porter! which featured a pompous ass, a young man and an older man. The pompous ass inspired the character of Captain Mainwaring; the young man became Private Pike; and the third member of the trio became the oldest member of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard: Private Charles Godfrey, played by veteran actor and playwright Arnold Ridley, born 7th January 1896.
In Nicolas Ridley’s biography of his father, Godfrey’s Ghost: From Father to Son, he writes: ‘I was born when my father was fifty-one. It seemed to me so much of his life had been lived already. His distant childhood in Bath. The horrors of the First World War. The astonishing success of his first play, The Ghost Train. The life of a celebrated playwright. Wealth and fame. After which, an interval of alcoholism, a doomed affair, a first divorce, financial ruin, calamitous and complete. He returned to France to fight in another war. Shellshock, blackouts, nervous collapse. Through most of my childhood he lived the hand-to-mouth existence of an ageing actor, struggling for small parts, harried by bank managers, bullied by bailiffs, pursued by implacable tax inspectors. Ours was quite unlike the plush life he had known at the height of his success. So my admiration for my father had – and has – little to do with his public achievements. He was, for me, remarkable because he was my father; and because through love, courage and the kind of well-grounded philosophy that doesn’t recognise itself as such, he lived his life so valiantly and well.’
Then, in 1968, when Arnold Ridley was 72, came Dad’s Army, an Indian summer to his career and a renewal of his fame. As a character, Private Godfrey has always been a Dad’s Army favourite. Gentle, fumbling, innocently willing, Godfrey was particularly popular among the very old and the very young. ‘My sister cried last night when the bank manager was rude to you,’ wrote a ten-year-old boy. ‘He shouldn’t have been because, although you’re very stupid, you do try.’ The deferential, weak-bladdered bachelor, residing with his sisters Dolly and Cissy in Cherry Tree Cottage, was a part Ridley loved to play – although, aside from his gentlemanly demeanour, the character bore little resemblance to Arnold Ridley himself.
Godfrey’s Ghost was written by Nicolas Ridley partly to separate Arnold the man from the image of Private Godfrey – to create for Nicolas’s own son, Chris, a truthful picture of the grandfather he never knew. The original print version published in 2009 interweaves Arnold’s story with Nicolas’s own and reflects on aspects of the father-son relationship. Released by Fantom in 2011, the audio adaptation is an abridged version of the book that places Arnold’s life and career more squarely in the foreground. The story is illuminated by numerous extracts from Arnold’s own unpublished memoir.
Godfrey’s Ghost: From Father to Son, read by Nicolas Ridley with Terry Molloy, is available from Fantom now on CD and to download. Also available is an audio production of Arnold Ridley’s hit 1923 comedy thriller The Ghost Train, performed by a cast including Katy Manning and Ian Fairbairn.
