50 Moments That Made Dad’s Army: #23 Cardinal Puff

Soldiers and alcohol go together like rifles and bayonets – except for Captain Mainwaring, who has a long standing aversion to booze on account of his brother who likes it far too much. True he takes the occasional sweet sherry and there is a bit of doubt as to why Walker slips him the odd bottle of scotch. But basically the good captain doesn’t drink.

The same can’t be said of Captain Square who, on all the available evidence, only survived his time in the desert with El Lawrence because he was pickled in whisky. So when the Home Guard go on a training camp and Mainwaring finds himself spending the evening in the officers’ mess with a bunch of old soldiers, things are bound to get interesting.

This is from the Episode Fallen Idol, from the fourth series when Dad’s Army was pretty much at its peak. First screened on 18 December 1970, just before the Christmas special Battle of the Giants, another episode in which Colonel Square features heavily. So sit back, enjoy the clip and raise a glass to the health of Cardinal Puff.

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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