50 Moments That Made Dad’s Army: #38 Ching-Ching

 

Sometimes it is the little things that make a great comic moment. You wouldn’t think there is much humour to be extracted from using a public phone box (remember those?). But the dad’s Army team proved the opposite in the episode The Lion has ‘phones.

Faced with the need to get get messages from patrol back to HQ (the church hall) quickly they quickly discount boy-scout runners, heliographs and tick-tacking as impractical. Instead they settle on the old-fashioned telephone. The trouble is Pike is banned from using them for fear of contracting mastiffs, and Godfrey is hopeless with machinery.

So Mainwaring decides to settle the problem with a lecture and practical demonstration. With Wilson playing the part of the telephone operator and the whole platoon providing ‘ching-ching’ sound effects the chances of any actual calls being made are slim – at least until Mrs Pike purns up with Frank’s scarf.

 

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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