Source: Radio Times, 15-21 August 1998 edition.

Wartime memories inspired David Croft and Jimmy Perry's sitcom, but the casting helped, too

TV DEBUT: 31 July 1968

"The way it was told to me, Jimmy Perry was going past Buckingham Palace and recalled that during the war the Home Guard mounted Guard there," says David Croft.

"He thought the subject was a possible for situation comedy, and put it to me via my wife, Ann, who represented him in those days as an agent. It was easier then to get a series on screen. Nobody gave you reams of advice on how to do it: rewrite this, cut that, expand the other. We simply decided to collaborate and get on with it. Obviously, we set out to write a success, but its popularity surprised everyone because it was a quiet spell-there was nothing much else planned for production.

There's a confused story that, I think, was started by the BBC director-general of the time that John Le Mesurier was originally going to be Captain Mainwaring and Arthur Lowe was to play the Sergeant. I don't remember - quite frankly, we went through all sorts of stages. Certainly the idea of a public school - educated man being sergeant to the pompous, idiotic Mainwaring seemed rich in material. Perhaps that was why we changed the roles. I know Jimmy wanted the part of the spiv (Private Walker), but having one of the writers giving himself a role doesn't make for a happy cast, so we scrapped the idea. He does turn up in the final episode of the first series, called Shooting Pains, (showing on Tuesday, with Barbara Windsor also making an appearance) as music hall comic cheerful Charlie Cheeseman, and brilliant he is too."

Jimmy Perry says:

"I was a turn that got lucky. I never intended to be a writer, always a performer, but one day I thought, "I must have a decent part. 'I know what, I'll write a sitcom with something in it for me.' I wrote a draft script and called it The Fighting Tigers. Dreadful title. But we had it accepted within a week. I'd been a boy of 15 with the Home Guard myself - didn't even have a uniform to begin with. The point was the public had forgotten about the Home Guard. I thought it time to remind them.

Captain Mainwaring was based on a combination of a bank manager I knew and the head of a building society in Watford, of all places. And as far as casting, the only person I had anything to do with was Arthur Lowe. I took David out to Windsor where Arthur was in a play called Baked Beans and Caviare. He was dreadful in it, it was not his sort of thing at all, but David backed me and Lowe became Mainwaring. Jimmy Beck got the part of the spiv after Michael Mills, head of light entertainment, told me I had to decide which side of the camera I wanted to be on. I wanted both, hated making the decision. But there you are, old boy, can't have everything. Not bad, though, to have created Dad's Army."

David Croft and Jimmy Perry were talking to Cordell Marks.

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