MAYOR BUMBLE: I do feel that Councillor Fiddler has a point there, considering our very high seasonal rainfall figure.
PRODWORTHY: Oooh really, Mr Mayor? Personally, I think it is quite an average one.
FIDDLER: If you think nine inches is an average one, you’ve been spoilt.
I’ve always had rather an, erm, soft spot for Carry On Girls. When I was younger, it was because I fancied Margaret Nolan. Now I’m older, it’s because I really fancy Margaret Nolan.
Nonetheless, one thing which struck me on my recent watch is how successfully the film manages to have its cake and eat it. Sure, Sidney Fiddler and Hope Springs make a successful getaway, and their grinning faces are the final thing we see in the film, but don’t forget that Operation Spoilsport was also a success; the feminists get their own victory too. Even Connie Philpotts manages to get her money. Everybody wins, in some form or another, and that’s one of the things which gives the film its charm.1
But as ever, we’re not here to discuss the film properly in any sensible way. What interests me today is the following sequence of newspaper headlines, after the filming of the news report descends into chaos:
You know where this is going. Which real newspapers did the production use in order to make the three props for the above scene?
Daily Express
First of all, the Daily Express. This is an adapted front page from the Monday 26th February 1973 edition:
The beauty queen story takes the place of a piece on the upcoming marriage of Jeremy Thorpe. So many jokes, so little time.
The replacement story that Carry on Girls uses is narrower than the original, so the “Jail for man cleared in death riddle” was pasted in from elsewhere to fill the gap. That story was originally published in the inside pages of the Thursday 1st February 1973 edition.
Daily Mirror
Onto the Daily Mirror, which oddly enough uses an inside page, rather than the front. This uses the edition published on Thursday 29th March 1973:
The Carry On Girls story replaces a case of a travel company obviously trying it on. Meanwhile, the picture of our beauty queens was originally of Hayley Mills, which is attached to a completely different story about her appearing in The Pallisers.
This is probably the best of the three mocked-up pages; the font used for the headline is perfect.
Daily Mail
Finally, the Daily Mail. This was also the edition published on Thursday 29th March 1973:
The beauty queens story replaces the original Mail article about… benefit cheats. Some things never change. Meanwhile, our picture of the beauty queens replaces one of Hayley Mills again.
Most interesting to me though, is the subheading at the top. In the original paper, it was “Government refuses to stop the ‘sex snoopers'”; in this case, the “sex snoopers” were people investigating unmarried women being “supported by men”. Carry on Girls adapts this to “Sex snoopers bring beauty contest to halt”, with “sex snoopers” in this sense meaning Prodworthy and her gang checking up on Patricia Potter! Reusing this piece of language is presumably one way the prop makers attempted to make the story read a real edition of the newspaper.
Which is fantastic. But maybe not quite as fantastic as the new body text they wrote underneath.
“A beauty parade was brought to an abrupt halt yesterday by a sex mix-up over contestant Patricia Potter.
The contest, being held at Fircombe, has been organised by Councillor Fiddler. His only statement last night was, “Up to this point, I have had no trouble about sex with any of the contestants.”
Amazing.
With thanks to John Williams for some picture research, and Tanya Jones for being someone I can watch Carry on Girls with on a regular basis.
Thought experiment: imagine a version of the film where Sid foils the feminists, in the same way that he does with the hippies at the end of Carry on Camping. It would add a deeply unpleasant note to the film, and render it almost unwatchable. ↩
3 comments
Zoomy on 4 September 2024 @ 5pm
They used a month-old Daily Express? I would have thought they’d create all three newspapers at the same time, but maybe that one was done first as a sort of test run?
This kind of trivia is what makes this blog so special!
John J. Hoare on 4 September 2024 @ 9pm
Yes, I was wondering about that. It would have been so neat and tidy if all three had been the same date. Things never are neat and tidy, sadly…
Leigh Graham on 5 September 2024 @ 11am
Conveniently, the newspaper articles were published the day after the event happened. In reality it could take days or weeks for this type of “local” interest story to get to the tabloids. This is why – in those days – articles of that type of origin often did not specify the date the events happened, allowing people to assume they were recent, even if they were weeks ago. When I was a teenager the school staged a production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, where the headmaster played Herod, dressed and performing as Elvis. A couple of weeks later there was an article in the Sunday Mirror, 15 February 1976 “HEAD WITH A WIGGLE!” mentioning “The famous Elvis wiggle, the curled to lip … hip-wiggling impersonation of Elvis Presley.”