50 Moments That Made Dad’s Army: #21 Sergeant Frazer

 

Have you noticed how often Frazer crops up in these clips? Until I sat down to collate the 50 moments I had not realised just how much John Laurie’s eye-rolling, doom-laden performance contributes to the show.

Here he is again in the episode A Wilson (manager), in which Sergeant Wilson’s promotion leaves a vacancy that, due to a mix-up, results in everyone except Pike being given three stripes. Naturally they all rise to the challenge, and none more so than Frazer who wastes no time in honing his parade-ground technique.

I love this scene for so many things: Frazer’s gradual build of rage at his invisible troops, the Verger’s reaction when he observes the performance and, mostly, because it introduced me to the invaluable Scots phrase ‘peely-wally’!

 

50 Moments that made Dad’s Army is a series of blog posts each focusing on one moment that helped define the popular comedy series. There will be one post for each of the 50 days leading-up to the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of the first episode of the series on 31st July 1968. 50 Moments that Made Dad’s Army is brought to you by walmington-on-line.co.uk and copyright of all video clips belongs to the BBC.

 

 

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