Production Number: 3787
Videotape Number: VTR/ABC/3954 Cast
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Uncredited cast:
The rehearsal script also included the speaking roles of Leslie, an office boy at Chummytoys Ltd, and the head waiter of a restaurant, neither of whom were credited in TV listings |
Production
Series based on an idea by Roger Marshall & Anthony Marriott
Theme Music composed by Robert Earley Story Editor: Richard Bates Floor Manager: John Wayne |
Stage Manager: Denis Redwood
Production Assistant: Jacqueline Davis Designed by Roy Smith Producer: Don Leaver Directed by Jonathan Alwyn |
Rehearsed from Thursday 17 September 1964 at Rehearsal Room 2A, ABC Television Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex
Camera rehearsed from Tuesday 29 September 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
Recorded on Wednesday 30 September 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
Camera rehearsed from Tuesday 29 September 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
Recorded on Wednesday 30 September 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
TV World Synopsis
12.15: Reynolds, “Saloon Bar”, K’s Head, E.C. “Suspects wife – doesn’t want evidence – just his name. If marriage became unfashionable, I’d starve.”
Click here for detailed synopsis
Click here for detailed synopsis
Transmission
Saturday 20 February 1965, 9.10pm (ABC Midlands, ABC North, Southern and Ulster)
Saturday 22 May 1965, 10.10pm (ATV London, Border, Channel and Westward)
Sunday 11 July 1965, 11.05pm (Scottish)
Saturday 31 July 1965, 10.10pm (Tyne Tees)
Saturday 14 August 1965, 9.50pm (TWW)
Tuesday 7 September 1965, 10.35pm (Grampian)
Saturday 22 May 1965, 10.10pm (ATV London, Border, Channel and Westward)
Sunday 11 July 1965, 11.05pm (Scottish)
Saturday 31 July 1965, 10.10pm (Tyne Tees)
Saturday 14 August 1965, 9.50pm (TWW)
Tuesday 7 September 1965, 10.35pm (Grampian)
Archive
Rehearsal script – held in the BFI Special Collections
Story Notes
This humorous episode is the first of two instalments of Public Eye to be written by Terence Frisby (1932–2020), an actor, theatre playwright and director who was born in New Cross, South-East London. The second son of railwayman William and musician Kathleen, Terence Peter Michael Frisby was educated at Dartford Grammar School, before leaving at the age of 16 to become a tailor’s apprentice. He remained in that profession for six years before gaining a place at the Central School of Speech and Drama, where he trained as an actor. Between 1957 and 1966, he worked in repertory theatre under the stage name Terence Holland, a name he also used for his early television roles in the ATV medical soap opera Emergency Ward 10, the BBC anthology series Detective and the BBC pre-school children’s programme Play School. He broke into television writing with Guilty, a 1963 episode of the BBC anthology series of contemporary television plays First Night. His other contribution to Public Eye was the even more comedic You Should Hear Me Eat Soup, later in Series 1. On the subject of Soup, the writer’s greatest claim to fame would follow a year later, when his romantic stage comedy There’s a Girl in My Soup opened on Monday 25 April 1966 at Wimbledon Theatre. It transferred to London’s West End a few months later, where it ran for 2,547 performances until 1973, making it the longest-running comedy in the history of the West End. Frisby’s script for the 1970 film adaptation, which starred Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn, won that year’s Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for the Best British Comedy Screenplay. His later television writing included the situation comedies Lucky Feller (for London Weekend Television) and That’s Love (for TVS), the latter of which won the Gold Award for Comedy at the 1991 Houston International Film Festival.
Frisby’s first Public Eye script was initially entitled Kill a Wife with Kindness, but by the time the episode was recorded at the end of September 1964, it had been renamed I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found. The line of dialogue that provided the revised title was spoken by the office boy Leslie in Act One and was originally scripted as “I just went to borrow a rubber and look what I get.” The notion of extracting an obscure phrase from the script and using it as the title would henceforth be applied to several scripts submitted with more conventional titles, including Checkerboard, which became But the Joneses Never Get Letters; The Good Fortune of Arthur Gates, which was retitled A Harsh World for Zealots; and Shakedown, which went out as ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’. The titles of the scripts recorded prior to I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found (Nobody Kills Santa Claus, You Think It’ll Be Marvellous – But It’s Always a Rabbit and the pilot version of Dig You Later) had already followed this convention and did not need to be changed.
The rehearsal script contains two speaking parts for which no performers are credited in ABC promotional material or contemporary TV listings. These are Leslie and the head waiter, each of whom appears in one scene only – respectively, the design room scene in Act One and the restaurant scene in Act Two. It is possible that Leslie’s character was amalgamated with that of Victor Fletcher, with Victor delivering the all-important title line, and that the waiter’s role was either cut or reduced to a non-speaking part.
In the script, the Paggots are called the Piffards.
Unusually, Terence Frisby refers to most of his male characters (with the exception of Marker and Mr Paggot) by their first names, rather than their surnames, in his script’s speech prefixes and directions.
Frisby’s first Public Eye script was initially entitled Kill a Wife with Kindness, but by the time the episode was recorded at the end of September 1964, it had been renamed I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found. The line of dialogue that provided the revised title was spoken by the office boy Leslie in Act One and was originally scripted as “I just went to borrow a rubber and look what I get.” The notion of extracting an obscure phrase from the script and using it as the title would henceforth be applied to several scripts submitted with more conventional titles, including Checkerboard, which became But the Joneses Never Get Letters; The Good Fortune of Arthur Gates, which was retitled A Harsh World for Zealots; and Shakedown, which went out as ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’. The titles of the scripts recorded prior to I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found (Nobody Kills Santa Claus, You Think It’ll Be Marvellous – But It’s Always a Rabbit and the pilot version of Dig You Later) had already followed this convention and did not need to be changed.
The rehearsal script contains two speaking parts for which no performers are credited in ABC promotional material or contemporary TV listings. These are Leslie and the head waiter, each of whom appears in one scene only – respectively, the design room scene in Act One and the restaurant scene in Act Two. It is possible that Leslie’s character was amalgamated with that of Victor Fletcher, with Victor delivering the all-important title line, and that the waiter’s role was either cut or reduced to a non-speaking part.
In the script, the Paggots are called the Piffards.
Unusually, Terence Frisby refers to most of his male characters (with the exception of Marker and Mr Paggot) by their first names, rather than their surnames, in his script’s speech prefixes and directions.
Production Notes
The rehearsal script identifies this as Ep.3, its position in recording order.
The director of this episode was the unassuming Jonathan Alwyn (1930–2021), who was born in London and who had directed series such as the legal drama Boyd Q.C. and the spy series Top Secret for Associated-Rediffusion, before moving to ABC in 1962. There he worked on The Avengers, the anthology show Jezebel ex UK, the crime drama The Protectors (not to be confused with the later ITC series of the same name) and other programmes, including directing Alfred Burke in the Armchair Theatre play Power and Glory (broadcast on Sunday 14 April 1963). “Jonathan Alwyn had the quietest [studio] floor of any director,” recalled Burke in January 1995. Alwyn would go on to direct five further episodes of Public Eye, as well as directing and producing popular programmes such as the horror anthology Mystery and Imagination, the historical crime series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, the police procedural Juliet Bravo and the crime drama Bergerac.
The director of this episode was the unassuming Jonathan Alwyn (1930–2021), who was born in London and who had directed series such as the legal drama Boyd Q.C. and the spy series Top Secret for Associated-Rediffusion, before moving to ABC in 1962. There he worked on The Avengers, the anthology show Jezebel ex UK, the crime drama The Protectors (not to be confused with the later ITC series of the same name) and other programmes, including directing Alfred Burke in the Armchair Theatre play Power and Glory (broadcast on Sunday 14 April 1963). “Jonathan Alwyn had the quietest [studio] floor of any director,” recalled Burke in January 1995. Alwyn would go on to direct five further episodes of Public Eye, as well as directing and producing popular programmes such as the horror anthology Mystery and Imagination, the historical crime series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, the police procedural Juliet Bravo and the crime drama Bergerac.
To introduce the character of Sheila Reynolds in Act One, the rehearsal script ends the previous scene, set in the design room at Chummytoys Ltd, with a close-up of a photograph of Sheila being held in Leslie’s hand. This then mixes into a close-up of the woman herself in the Reynoldses’ living room.
In the script, Sheila poses in a blouse “with her shoes off” for photographs taken by her husband, Colin. However, surviving stills (see left) show that, in the final production, she wore a grey men’s shirt (presumably one of Colin’s) and flat shoes. From Saturday 20 February 1965, BBC1 revised its evening schedule so that Public Eye now straddled the Corporation’s prestigious new Sherlock Holmes series, starring Douglas Wilmer as the eponymous consulting detective, which commenced at 8.35pm, and The Rogues, which was pushed back to 9.25pm. |
Home and Away
The rehearsal script contains two exterior scenes: one in the street outside the King’s Head public house, when the enraged Colin dashes out near the end of Act One, and the other outside Raymond Franks’s house immediately afterwards. These scenes were probably achieved in the studio rather than on location. Certainly the script suggests that Raymond’s front door should be a studio set.
Act Three of the script begins with a sequence of still images, presumably showing Sheila and Mr Paggot out socialising, as mentioned in subsequent dialogue. Some of these images may have been taken on location.
Act Three of the script begins with a sequence of still images, presumably showing Sheila and Mr Paggot out socialising, as mentioned in subsequent dialogue. Some of these images may have been taken on location.
Many a Slip
During the first pub scene in Act One, the barmaid charges Marker one and a penny (one shilling and one penny) for half a pint of bitter. However, on all subsequent occasions, including later in the same scene, the price is quoted as one and two (one penny more). That’s inflation for you!
Who Wants to Be Told Bad News?
The ABC press release for I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found seemed somewhat defensive about the fact that the latest episode of Public Eye, which had hitherto been touted as a thriller series, was predominantly humorous in tone. It was felt necessary to compare it to such hits as The Avengers and the films of Alfred Hitchcock: “A crack cast of polished comedy actors can lift a thriller onto a special plane, as Mr Hitchcock and other film directors discovered some time ago. ABC established the comedy-thriller tradition on TV with The Avengers and now continues it with Public Eye, which has Avengers story editor Richard Bates in charge of scripts and Avengers men Don Leaver and John Bryce as producers.” (John Bryce had taken over as producer from the tenth episode to be recorded, You Should Hear Me Eat Soup, when Don Leaver returned to his preferred pursuit of directing.) The specific members of the “crack cast” referred to in the release were Peter Sallis, who guest starred as Colin Reynolds, and Nyree Dawn Porter, who played his wife, Sheila. The document revealed that Sallis had left for Broadway after recording this episode, to play Dr Watson in the new Sherlock Holmes musical Baker Street, “for which a success of My Fair Lady proportions is predicted. So it may be some time before we see him back here again.” Baker Street did not, in fact, prove as enduring as My Fair Lady. It ran for a total of 311 performances between Tuesday 16 February and Sunday 14 November 1965, so Sallis was back in the UK in plenty of time to return to Public Eye as Eddie Meadows in 1971’s The Man Who Didn’t Eat Sweets and to create his star-making role as Norman Clegg in the BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine (1973–2010). It was also noted that New Zealand-born Nyree Dawn Porter had risen to TV fame after appearing in ABC’s musical Armchair Theatre play His Polyvinyl Girl in 1961 and “was a notable Madame Bovary” in the BBC’s 1964 adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s novel. The actress would go on to achieve even greater acclaim for her subsequent work, including leading roles in the BBC historical drama The Forsyte Saga (1967) and the ITC action thriller The Protectors (1972–1974).
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TV World (13–19 February 1965) published a piece about actress Valerie Bell in its People column. This noted that the casting of the 24-year-old as a barmaid was appropriate given that her father was a publican. “It’s a funny thing,” she said, “although I spent my childhood in Dad’s pubs, I never pulled a pint until I got this TV part.”
To accompany the ABC transmission on Saturday 20 February, the Leicester Mercury printed an image (see above) of Nyree Dawn Porter as Sheila Reynolds, “the wife of a businessman who dabbles in photography.”
The TV Comment column of Glasgow newspaper The Sunday Post was a combination of viewer letters and the opinions of TV editor Alan Stewart. “Hope it’s not going to get bogged down in the seamy side,” worried Stewart on 18 July, after seeing Scottish Television’s first two episodes of Public Eye – The Morning Wasn’t So Hot and I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found. “Call girls one week, love affairs the next,” he continued. “Let’s have some honest-to-goodness crime.” However, viewer Jim Murray of Langside disagreed. Further up the same page, he declared, possibly referring to the hard-hitting The Morning Wasn’t So Hot rather than the humorous I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found, “A story both creditable and realistic. It looks like being a huge success.”
Mrs A. Robertson of Stirling felt much the same way. Her letter appeared in rival Glaswegian paper the Sunday Mail the same day. “What a pleasant change Frank Marker is from James Bond-ish characters like Napoleon Solo [in the American spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.],” enthused Mrs Robertson. “This detective could almost be true,” she added, before echoing Alan Stewart’s opinion from the previous week (see The Morning Wasn’t So Hot): “He gets no glamour girls, no secret weapons, no fantastic set-ups – just £6 a day, a lot of hard, plodding work and an appreciative audience. Long may he sleuth.”
Peter Forth of the Western Daily Press, in his preview of the TWW screening on Saturday 14 August, considered I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found to have both “an intriguing title and an intriguing plot”.
To accompany the ABC transmission on Saturday 20 February, the Leicester Mercury printed an image (see above) of Nyree Dawn Porter as Sheila Reynolds, “the wife of a businessman who dabbles in photography.”
The TV Comment column of Glasgow newspaper The Sunday Post was a combination of viewer letters and the opinions of TV editor Alan Stewart. “Hope it’s not going to get bogged down in the seamy side,” worried Stewart on 18 July, after seeing Scottish Television’s first two episodes of Public Eye – The Morning Wasn’t So Hot and I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found. “Call girls one week, love affairs the next,” he continued. “Let’s have some honest-to-goodness crime.” However, viewer Jim Murray of Langside disagreed. Further up the same page, he declared, possibly referring to the hard-hitting The Morning Wasn’t So Hot rather than the humorous I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found, “A story both creditable and realistic. It looks like being a huge success.”
Mrs A. Robertson of Stirling felt much the same way. Her letter appeared in rival Glaswegian paper the Sunday Mail the same day. “What a pleasant change Frank Marker is from James Bond-ish characters like Napoleon Solo [in the American spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.],” enthused Mrs Robertson. “This detective could almost be true,” she added, before echoing Alan Stewart’s opinion from the previous week (see The Morning Wasn’t So Hot): “He gets no glamour girls, no secret weapons, no fantastic set-ups – just £6 a day, a lot of hard, plodding work and an appreciative audience. Long may he sleuth.”
Peter Forth of the Western Daily Press, in his preview of the TWW screening on Saturday 14 August, considered I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found to have both “an intriguing title and an intriguing plot”.
Nobody Wants to Know
This is the longest of the Series 1 scripts, at 91 foolscap pages. It would have required considerable cutting in order to fit the programme’s 55-minute time slot (including commercial breaks). The scripts for Series 1 generally ran longer than those for Series 2 or 3, possibly because the writers had expected the show to occupy a full one-hour slot. The full list of page extents for the Series 1 scripts is as follows:
All for a Couple of Ponies
Nobody Kills Santa Claus They Go Off in the End – Like Fruit Dig You Later I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found But the Joneses Never Get Letters A Harsh World for Zealots ‘And a Very Fine Fiddle Has He’ My Life, That’s a Marriage You Think It’ll Be Marvellous – But It’s Always a Rabbit Protection is a Man’s Best Friend The Morning Wasn’t So Hot You Should Hear Me Eat Soup You Have to Draw the Line Somewhere Have It on the House The Drug Merchants (not produced) |
75 foolscap pages
82 foolscap pages 76 foolscap pages 68 foolscap pages 91 foolscap pages 79 foolscap pages 74 foolscap pages 78 foolscap pages 66–70 foolscap pages* 66 foolscap pages 74 foolscap pages 75 foolscap pages 73 foolscap pages 71 foolscap pages 85 foolscap pages 81 foolscap pages |
* This is an estimate of the script’s original extent. The surviving copy runs to 65 pages, but at least one page is missing from the end.
One incident that I had no hesitation in omitting when summarising the script for this website occurs just before Marker’s second meeting with Colin in the pub. As the barmaid pulls him a half of best bitter, Marker leans forward and “stares speculatively” down her blouse. Their eyes meet, and Marker smiles, weakly. “Er… yes,” he babbles, “Lovely weather, considering.” Coldly, the barmaid asks him for one shilling and two pence. “Bit warm, though, don’t you think?” adds Marker, awkwardly. “Very,” agrees the barmaid, still icy. There is an uneasy silence, which Marker eventually breaks. “Oh. Yes. One and two. Um… won’t you have one?” The barmaid smiles sweetly, getting her own back. “Thank you very much, sir. I’ll have a double gin and It.” (Short for gin and Italian, and sometimes known as a sweet martini, gin and It is a cocktail of gin and sweet vermouth.) Marker winces, but says, “Oh, good.” The barmaid tells him what he owes. “Another five and three, please, sir.” Marker pays her. It is at this point in the script that Colin bursts in. I like to think that this sequence would have been dropped during rehearsals. I certainly hope it was, because Marker’s lecherous behaviour is decidedly out of character.
In Act Two of the script, it is not made clear how much time elapses between Colin telephoning Raymond to reveal that he knows about the affair and Colin inviting Marker to a celebratory meal. Marker has not yet billed Colin for his work, yet Colin has had time to buy and move into a new house, which Sheila has redecorated. A period of a few weeks would seem to be the most reasonable fit.
One incident that I had no hesitation in omitting when summarising the script for this website occurs just before Marker’s second meeting with Colin in the pub. As the barmaid pulls him a half of best bitter, Marker leans forward and “stares speculatively” down her blouse. Their eyes meet, and Marker smiles, weakly. “Er… yes,” he babbles, “Lovely weather, considering.” Coldly, the barmaid asks him for one shilling and two pence. “Bit warm, though, don’t you think?” adds Marker, awkwardly. “Very,” agrees the barmaid, still icy. There is an uneasy silence, which Marker eventually breaks. “Oh. Yes. One and two. Um… won’t you have one?” The barmaid smiles sweetly, getting her own back. “Thank you very much, sir. I’ll have a double gin and It.” (Short for gin and Italian, and sometimes known as a sweet martini, gin and It is a cocktail of gin and sweet vermouth.) Marker winces, but says, “Oh, good.” The barmaid tells him what he owes. “Another five and three, please, sir.” Marker pays her. It is at this point in the script that Colin bursts in. I like to think that this sequence would have been dropped during rehearsals. I certainly hope it was, because Marker’s lecherous behaviour is decidedly out of character.
In Act Two of the script, it is not made clear how much time elapses between Colin telephoning Raymond to reveal that he knows about the affair and Colin inviting Marker to a celebratory meal. Marker has not yet billed Colin for his work, yet Colin has had time to buy and move into a new house, which Sheila has redecorated. A period of a few weeks would seem to be the most reasonable fit.
With thanks to Jonny Davies, Andrew Pixley, the BFI Special Collections, the British Newspaper Archive and Network Distributing.
The Missing Markers is a not-for-profit fan website written and edited by and copyright © Richard McGinlay. All rights reserved.
Public Eye (the ABC years) is copyright © StudioCanal. No attempt to infringe this copyright is intended.
The Missing Markers is a not-for-profit fan website written and edited by and copyright © Richard McGinlay. All rights reserved.
Public Eye (the ABC years) is copyright © StudioCanal. No attempt to infringe this copyright is intended.