Image shows from L to R: Cyril Blamire (Michael Bates), William 'Compo' Simmonite (Bill Owen), Norman Clegg (Peter Sallis). And some of it was magic: that magic which sometimes strikes but all too often doesn't, the first crackle of which must be found in the scripts. Some of it was keen judgment - this is a show with a fine cast.

The BBC could never find anything to replace it. It would continue, with numerous cast and production changes, but always the same writer, Roy Clarke - and always Peter Sallis, playing quiet, contemplative former Co-op Lino salesman Norman Clegg - until 2010.īut what was the secret of Last Of The Summer Wine? How, and why, did this gentle sitcom, about 3 senior citizens recapturing their boyhood in the lush, sun-kissed Yorkshire Dales, grow from a grimy and surprisingly downbeat pilot into a widely recognised - and widely loved, though there were always plenty of critics, too - cultural institution? Some of it was simple luck. The series had begun over a decade earlier, when the pilot, Of Funerals and Fish, aired on the 4th January 1973. The show's haunting theme had been sung briefly before, by the Holmfirth Choral Society at the end of 1981's Whoops, and would be sung again - on festive outings, or to mark key events - although the lyrics would change, sometimes completely.

Thus cantillated The Mike Sammes Singers over the opening titles of Last Of The Summer Wine's feature-length 1983 Christmas Special, Getting Sam Home.

The Haunting of L by Howard Norman