The Navy Lark: Volume 34 The Classic BBC Radio Sitcom

Four vintage episodes from the classic seafaring sitcom, including the original pilot episode and the final regular episode

Operation Fag End (‘Working Their Passage’) 5 April 1959
New head honcho Commander Povey is heading to the island to inspect the crew – just as Pertwee’s consignment of 50,000 smuggled cigarettes is about to arrive…

The Bugged and Burgled Beer (‘Bugging’) 1 October 1967
Pertwee has a purchasing problem: the two cases of beer he sold to his customers have ended up in Povey’s custody. Can a bugging device help him recover his haul?

Number One’s Anniversary (‘Biff Boff Boffing Their Way Through’) 11 July 1971
With his first wedding anniversary approaching, Mr Murray is in a bad mood – and Captain Povey is in trouble after switching the photos of two applicants for his wife’s advertisement for an au pair.

Captain Wilberforce Pertwee (‘Having a History Lesson’)18 January 1976
After Pertwee’s ingenious defence gets Phillips acquitted at a court martial, he recounts how he got his inventiveness from his wily Great-Great-Grandfather Wilberforce Pertwee.

Starring Jon Pertwee, Leslie Phillips, Richard Caldicot, Stephen Murray and Tenniel Evans, with Dennis Price, Ronnie Barker, Michael Bates, Heather Chasen, Pamela Buck, Norma Ronald and April Walker.

The Navy Lark is the second longest-running comedy in British radio history (the topical Friday night show, Week Ending, which ran from 1970 to 1998, is currently the longest). In 1958, writer Laurie Wyman announced that he wanted to build a series around talented comic actor Jon Pertwee. Having secured Pertwee as the lead, he looked for other main characters and is quoted in the Radio Times as saying 'I felt we needed an idiot, and there was no one better at playing idiots than Leslie Phillips - so we got him.' The first episode of the series went out on 29 March 1959 and, from the start, the light-hearted and affectionate spoof on the Senior Service won many fans - some of the highest order! On the occasion of the show's 21st anniversary, for example, the crew were asked by WRNS to put on a special performance. They duly obliged, and in the audience that night at the Royal Festival Hall was Her Royal Highness the Queen Mother. Sir Charles Lambe, who was the first Sea Lord at the time, had also visited the studio during rehearsal. The crew of HMS Troutbridge were a motley bunch: Jon Pertwee, who actually served in the Navy during the Second World War, played the conniving Petty Officer and was established as a household favourite by the series. Leslie Phillips was the vague chinless wonder Sub-Lieutenant. His parrot cry of 'left hand down a bit' has passed into A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, whose author Eric Partridge writes 'within two years, it was a standard piece of Navalese'. The young Ronnie Barker (long before attaining fame as a television comedy actor) also appeared in the series, playing two parts: (Un)Able Seaman Fatso Johnson and Lieutenant-Commander Stanton. The Navy Lark gripped the nation for the best part of twenty years. Its signature tune, composed by Tommy Reilly and James Moody, was the jaunty Trade Wind Hornpipe and did much to contribute to the popularity of the series. The key to the show's popularity, though, was its irreverent but essentially gentle humour and, most of all, the many-voiced talents of its stars. As Leslie Phillips remarked in 1987, 'I caused more damage to Naval property than the Navy had done in two world wars'. The final episode was broadcast on 18 January 1976. However, the crew all jumped on board one last time for a Jubilee Special on 16 July 1977.