CheapShow - EP 263: The Great Dangerous Davies 40th Anniversary Walk
Episode Date: January 7, 2022We're back! To celebrate the start of a brand-new year, CheapShow has decided to make a very special podcast. This week, to celebrate its 40th anniversary (ok, we just missed it but...) Paul and Eli a...re taking to the streets of Northwest London to try and track down the locations of a film no one has probably even heard of! In 1981 a TV movie called "Dangerous Davies" was broadcast, starring Bernard Cribbins, based on a series of barely popular books. As it turns out, it was filmed in the area Eli grew up, so he decides to use this expedition as an excuse to revisit some of his old childhood haunts... and Paul has to put up with it! Is this our most pointless episode to date? Probably! Come join the Cheap Chaps on yet another walkabout episode that quickly strays from the path. See pictures and/or videos for this episode here: https://www.thecheapshow.co.uk/ep-263-dangerous-davies-walk And if you like us, why not support us: www.patreon.com/cheapshow If you want to get involved, email us at thecheapshow@gmail.com And if you want to, follow us on Twitter @thecheapshowpod or @paulgannonshow & @elisnoid Like, Review, Share, Comment... LOVE US! Oh, and you can NOW listen to Urinevision 2021 on Bandcamp... For Free! Enjoy! https://cheapshowpodcast.bandcamp.com/album/urinevision-2021-the-album MERCH Official CheapShow Merch Shop: www.redbubble.com/people/cheapshow/shop www.cheapmag.shop Thanks also to @vorratony for the wonderful, exclusive art: www.tinyurl.com/rbcheapshow Send Us Stuff CheapShow PO BOX 1309 Harrow HA1 9QJ
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello, welcome to a very special Cheap Show. I'm Paul Gannon and I'm Eli Silverman and on this rainy January afternoon we're taking a special little walk today because we're going to follow the path and visit the locations of one of Britain's greatest films, isn't that right?
Uh, yeah, Apart from the...
The word greatest.
And...
Film.
Yes.
Because today, Cheap Show is going on an out-and-about,
walkabout, stroll-sojourn through the alleyways,
corners and streets of north-west London
as we investigate and explore the world of Dangerous Davies.
The Last Detective. A movie that was released in 1981 starring Bernard Cribbins and we're today going to take a look
at the sights and sounds of that film, its locations and a few opinions on this wonderful
majestic film itself. Let's just stop here for a second. We're going to just stop here for a second.
We're on what was called Black Path. Yes this is this is a path in West Hampstead, runs from West Hampstead
up to West End Lane, but by the side of the rail track, what is the Thameslink Rail now,
and we are standing actually opposite the platform of West Hampstead-Thameslink. Here comes the train.
that's the EMR connect this this path was not called the black path in my youth when I came down here with my dad it was my one of my original sorry guys as well as covering the locations in
the film we are going to be covering a lot of biogeographical detail from my life Eli Silverman
yeah right so no but now look dangerous Silverman
indeed
and I've got a hat
you do
you have
you've got your little
touch of frost hat on
let's just say
happy new year
to all the listeners
to our show
happy new year
unless you listen to this
out of context
months or weeks
or days
or even years later
happy new year
now do you see the colour
I'm doing a little bit
of detective work here
just like dangerous would
yeah yeah Paul do you see the colour of this wall black and do you see they colour? I'm doing a little bit of detective work here, just like Dangerous would. Yeah, yeah.
Paul, do you see the colour of this wall?
Black.
And do you see they've painted all the walls black?
Black.
So I think they renamed this, it's a railside sort of path, cut through, you might call it.
I think they renamed it the Black Path when they did the...
Shut up! This is what today's episode is going to be full of!
What, you talking about the fact that it's called Black Path because we're walking on a path that has been painted black?
I think they tried to rebrand this path as the Black Path
when they did some refurbishing.
It makes it sound ominous, though.
I know, but they made a mistake.
Don't go up the Black Path, boys.
Exactly.
For you will be taken.
Now, another little anecdote about Black Path.
We'll be walking...
That's a short intro.
Paul, we're going to be walking past my primary school,
Beckford, on this walk to get up to our first location,
which is the porn shop in the film.
Yes, we will be breaking down the film as we go on this walk today.
Just because of the route we have to take, though,
the porn shop isn't the first location in the film chronologically, is it?
No, we will not be taking a chronological walk route of the film Dangerous Davies.
This is more of a kind of whimsical trip through northwest London.
Now, back in the 80s, when I was getting into graffiti, New York graffiti,
I had a book, Subway Art.
It was a very famous book of photographs of New York,
early hip-hop graffiti from New York.
And I came down here with my dad, and we were looking for graffiti
because it was just starting to emerge, that kind of graffiti.
And on one of these walls here, Paul,
there was a copy of a piece by Seen,
who's a very famous original writer,
which had Seen and the two E's
are like lowercase E's,
but they're like eyeballs.
It's a very famous piece.
No, I'm done.
Fuck this.
I can't.
Listen.
I can't do this.
I can't have you already.
Well, fucking,
let's talk about the fucking film then.
This is a very important episode where we talk about one of the great lost British classic movies.
Now, can we just prove, can we say it's not?
It fucking is.
Well, we should warn people.
This is The Walk.
It's on YouTube.
And are you going to be...
Shut up.
Shut up.
Because it's already been two minutes and we haven't gone to the credits yet.
And I just wanted to have a nice, concise intro where we say,
Oh, come along with us as we walk.
Okay, come along with us.
Instead it's like, our daddy used to walk me down the back.
And we used to look for graffiti.
You know what, Paul?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is cheap.
Oh, this fucking train.
Yard off!
I'm not going to go up to fucking New Brighton in the Wirral with you.
Like you want to do.
And listen to you witter on if you won't listen to me.
Mate, I don't mind your wittering, but please keep your wittering
to the appropriate segments of the show.
This is the cold open, which is literally
cold, because I'm freezing on a wet day. I'm freezing my
nags off. Right, so, anyway.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, Cheap Show. Welcome
to Cheap Show's walking tour of
North West London to celebrate the
40th anniversary of Dangerous Davies. So, here we are at our first location
on our non-chronological walk of the Dangerous Davies film.
Eli, where are we?
We are at number 38 Mill Lane, NW6,
just across from a building called Gondar Mansions,
and I think that's a reference to a local street name as well.
Gondar! The Magn and I think that's a reference to a local street name as well. Gondar!
The Magnificent.
Yes.
Maybe.
Maybe a reference to some kind of mythical hero.
Gondar the Testicular.
A huge, bollocked warrior.
Warrior from Gondar.
Who nestled women in his balls.
And men.
He didn't mind.
He didn't mind.
And ponies.
His balls were welcome for all.
And horses.
He used to keep his horse under his nutsack.
I would.
I would.
I'd lick his hairy nutsack.
Literally 30 seconds.
We are at 38.
Now, this is a building I've known my whole life.
As we walked up the Black Path, Paul, didn't we?
Which was a top alleyway.
A nice liminal space.
Now, before we go any further,
because I know you want to go off on one of your little
I remember life tangents, right?
And that's fine.
But I just want to do a little bit of background
of what Dangerous Davies is for people who don't know.
So, randomly a few weeks ago,
Eli and I were just strolling through YouTube's forestry,
looking for something to catch our attention, and a film popped up called Dangerous Davies.
The Last Detective.
Which is how the character, the book, is known, written by a guy called...
The book is called The Last Detective.
Yes.
But the film is Dangerous Davies, The Last Detective.
And the more successful TV adaptation that came five years later...
No, much later, like end of the 90s, early 2000s.
It was a TV show with Peter Davidson.
Was known as The Last Detective.
And it also starred Sean Hughes as well in a rare acting role.
In that version, was the detective known as Dangerous Davis
or did they just drop that entirely?
I think he was referred to as Dangerous Davies.
So the book was written by Leslie Thomas.
He was a Welsh writer,
mostly known for a thing called The Virgin Soldiers,
which I don't know too much about,
but also he wrote these stories called
The Last Detective, Dangerous Davies.
Because his sidekick, played by, what's his name,
is Welsh in this, isn't he?
Bill Maynard is Welsh, whereas in the TV series,
they got Sean Hughes, who is, as we all know, Scottish.
So, no, he's Irish, you fucking listen.
He's in the fucking Never Listen,
proving my fucking point, innit?
Sean Hughes is Scottish.
And you were...
And then for a minute, yes.
I just want to talk about my fucking primary school.
The point is, you were like, yeah, whatever Paul says,
whatever, I want to talk about me.
I don't care if I'm even factually incorrect for a moment.
Anyway, people can look it up themselves.
But yes, he has a Welsh sidekick in the film
who is played by Sean Hughes, who is Irish,
in the later...
No, he has a Welsh sidekick in the film.
Yes.
Played by a Welsh man.
That's what I said.
Is it?
Yes.
I wasn't listening to you.
You weren't fucking listening to me.
Let's go walk around West London.
Wait, wait, so...
The film came out in 1981, the first film,
a TV movie based on these books.
Now, Dangerous Davies is a character who is like the last of the detectives, they say.
You know, he's like that whole bit of kind of gumshoe feel to him.
And he's called Dangerous Davies not because he is himself a dangerous man,
but because every time he puts himself in a situation, he gets the shit beaten out of him,
or he falls down a hole, or he has an accident.
I think the word is hapless, isn he he always gets injured and he gets injured during
the film three or four times doesn't he gets beaten up put into a bin many times and i think
at this point we should mention the sort of casual racism that will greet you if you do try and watch
this film we'll go into that a bit later but yeah now it was directed by val guest for tv now val
guest is actually a director of note, British director.
Here's some of the films you may have seen of his.
The Day the Earth Caught Fire.
You know that one?
That's from the 50s.
Yeah, the one with the Earth getting close to the sun.
He also did a section of Casino Royale.
He was a writer on that.
That was a disaster.
Actually, no, it was a hit, but it was...
It was a hit, that film.
Yeah, it was a modest hit.
I did not know that.
But obviously its reputation preceded it.
Ah, The Boys in Blue, Cannon and Balls movie.
Oh, wow.
Which in itself was a remake of an old Ealing comedy, I think.
And was it... I've not seen that.
Is that any good?
Or is it a terrible, terrible thing?
It's one of those weird, very 80s, strangely inert comedy films
about two bumbling detectives, coppers,
who end up saving the day of a crime.
But were Cannonball any good as comic actors?
I mean, look, personally speaking, I think so,
but I also think the script and the story doesn't have...
It's got too much... There's no inertia to it.
Well, there's too much inertia, you mean.
What's inertia mean?
The tendency to come to...
Oh, I don't know.
The point is it's slow.
If I said I'm full of inertia,
you'd mean I'm slow.
True.
Which means there's too much inertia.
Too much inertia.
Wait there, wait there.
I just want to say a few more things.
So he also did
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
and famously Confessions of a Window Cleaner.
Oh, wow, he did that?
So he's done a big old mix of stuff in his time.
Very British stuff.
Never crossed over to Hollywood, it looks like.
No.
And this film was made for TV in 1981.
Detective Constable Dangerous Davies is not known for his finesse
but often finds himself on the receiving end of violence in various forms
only thrown into cases where others fear to dread
or to shake up the natives with his bumbling
Natives
Exactly, it's even in this, the natives
because there's a whole bit, there's a voiceover at the beginning of the film
where he refers to the natives of West London where it's set
I'll put a clip in at the end of this segment
It's problematic
We should just mention the film isn't great No,, it is great. It's one of the lost British
classics. This is what Paul tries to pretend because he wanted to go on a walkabout and
drink some whiskey. But it's quite drab, boring. You know what, I would say this, it wasn't
boring. And I'll tell you why it wasn't boring, because we got through it. We did and you
guessed correctly who the baddie was.
Oh yeah
because whenever someone says
and guest starring
famous actor
who's in the film
for three minutes
it kind of gives it away
that they mean
that actor is the baddie.
Well you thought
it was the vicar
by the canal at first
didn't you?
We'll get into the vicar later
as the choir boy said.
No but Paul
I want to just finish this off.
So he's given a job
to find and flush out a criminal
recently returned from abroad.
But in his research, he inadvertently stumbles upon
the case of a 15-year-old murdered girl.
His compassion for the missing girl and his parents
draws him into an obsession with solving the case
and ultimately results in unexpected repercussions.
Yes.
So here we are at our first location,
but not chronologically our
first location so tell us now about it. Now we're at 38 Mill Lane. I went to primary school for just
a couple of years after I got expelled from the Steiner School and before I went to boarding school.
I went to the school just around the corner. Why did you get expelled from the Steiner School?
corner why did you get expelled from the steiner school do we really want to get into that now no no basically because i was a bad boy and i didn't i didn't i didn't um i wouldn't stick
with the program the steiner rudolph's little legs lord no he was very prescriptive in what
people were allowed to do and i rebelled against it and then my dad had a massive argument with
my class teacher and that was basically the end and there there was a there was a protest in the school they mounted a protest that's how
laughed i was paul what protest to keep you in or keep you out keep me in
i was already out they're not going to do a protest to keep me out are they i don't know
they all had banners and stuff that they made we want eli back it was unfair basically it was
unfair but probably in the was unfair, but probably,
in the course of my life,
probably a good thing that I got expelled.
Anyway, I went here,
which was a state school,
and it was this old Victorian school building,
which you saw just now, Paul.
It's a nice-looking building.
And now it's called West Hampstead Primary School.
When I was there, it was called Beckford,
for some reason.
Beckford Primary. And then we saw the actual original name
was Broomsley Road School, was it?
Broomsley Street School, which is a street that runs by the side of it.
So basically I'm very familiar with this area.
And this building...
The shop we're outside of right now,
why are we standing outside of this particular one?
It appears in Dangerous Davis as the...
Porn shop.
As a porn shop where one of the suspects from the girl case owns it, doesn't it?
And what's it called? What's the porn shop called? I love this title.
This shop, which is now called LCAV Bespoke Smart Home Solutions, Paul,
in the film is known as the Garden of Ooh La La.
With about seven O's. Seven O's. I think you can tell it's a fake sign the minute you Ooh-la-la. With about seven O's.
Seven O's.
I think you can tell it's a fake sign the minute you see it in the film.
Yeah, I mean, it's like, what porn shop would call themselves
the Garden of Ooh-la-la?
You'd call it Grumbles or something, wouldn't you?
Something quick.
You know, I wonder if that was what the shop was called
in the original novel.
Probably.
I get the impression the book is humorous.
It's not like a straight-laced detective chandelier-esque novel but that's the strange thing isn't it it it tries to be
humorous and he's sort of like he's a bit slapstick he gets into the scrapes and stuff
yeah and there's but then there's this uneven tone because the crime at the at the heart of
the story is of murder of a child yes do you know what i mean and it's kind of dark and it's sort
of that's i think why it doesn't quite work a lot in I mean? And it's kind of dark and that's I think
why it doesn't quite
work in one of the ways.
It's also boring and
drab.
And also there's a
scene where for no
reason they just let
a horse run around
in a house as a
prank for the landlady
and then it cuts
instantly to let's
investigate this
horrible murder death.
Exactly, yeah.
Anyway, so it's
meant to be sleazy.
It's a porn shop.
And also the person
who is running the shop
is another one of these problematic, stereotypical characters
because he is what we used to call a hanky-dropping poof or something.
It's a very flamboyant homosexual performance
from a man who, I guarantee you, is the straightest actor in London.
So it's all these things where you...
The guy's just gone in.
He's just gone in. He's just gone in.
He's probably thinking... He knows anything about dangerous stages.
Do you think we should tell him about the legacy of this building
and how it used to be a fictional knocking shop?
Well, he had some kind of terrible neo-mullet,
so I don't think we should talk to him at all.
Nah, fuck him.
But, so, yeah, one of the little threads of the plot
leads to this pawn shop, and Davis David goes in
and then, like, starts playing with a sex toy
until he's blown it up.
And then he gets stopped by the suspect
and he goes, that will explode all over you!
Or something, doesn't it?
It'll kill you! So I don't think anyone in the history
of the world has ever died from an exploding sex doll.
I would guarantee
that you were wrong about that.
Well, if anyone knows anyone who has died...
I bet you look up the Darwin Awards over the last three years.
I bet there's been two or three people.
This guy tried to blow it up with nitrogen
and then he was having a cigarette.
You can just see it, can't you?
And a little whiff of the ash.
Fag ash.
A whiff of the ash?
A whiff...
Nitrogen!
From the cigarette went up the snuff of the lady dog.
You're so wrong about every detail
whenever you try and vamp.
No, I was saying the cigarette...
Nitrogen, Paul, is an inert gas.
It's the opposite of an explosive gas.
Is it?
I thought nitrogen was really...
Nitrogen is 70% of the air we breathe.
Helium.
And then you said a wisp of ash!
A wisp of ash!
Cigaretteisp of ash. It's helium. A wisp of ash. Cigarette ask.
Ash.
I'm glad you're having fun.
Oh, man.
Well, anyway, here's our first location.
Now, quick thing, before we sign off on this,
I'm going to embed the movie on our website,
the webpage for this episode,
and there will be pictures of our adventure as we go.
I'm going to try and match up some of the sights with the camera shots and things like that.
So we're going to do our best to give you the most informative walk and talk
with some facts and fancies about dangerous Davies.
Now, have we done enough here? Is this it?
Yes, just to say, there's been a number of things over the years, this shop,
the Garden of Oolala, but I remember it was a Christian science place at one stage as well.
So not that much of a difference then.
Anyway, shall we?
What's the next location we're going to head to, Paul?
You don't know.
I don't know because you're in charge of the route.
Right.
The next location we'll be heading to, Paul, is Queen's Park.
Oh, no.
First we'll go to the library where he does all his research with his sidekick which is Kilburn library in Queens Park and then
we'll and then we'll go up to the park all right cool and I'll fill you in a
few facts and fancies about the dangerous Davies but hey until then
let's wander on our walk continues I didn't know it was not and I didn't
know what gases are what are the gas that's really explosive well you just
call it a volatile gas.
All right.
What's in the sale? Everything, love, absolutely everything. Depends what your requirements are.
Well, I'm not sure what they are. Oh, you lads have to get yourselves an estate, don't you?
Japanese ticklers, slightly sharp soil?
Where's Dave Boot?
Dave Boot? Oh, oh, Mr Boot. He's taken his motorbike to the garage.
Detective Constable Davis. Get him, eh?
So as we make our way to our next location,
Eli has decided to take us on another step on his magical fucking mystery tour of his life.
So where did we just walk past your original family home?
We walked down Fordwich Road and then along St Cuthbert's Road,
which was my original family home, was there,
and you saw we had a big old house there.
It was a big old house, and he had an au pair,
and Mama used to take him for peaches.
We're not talking about the au pair.
Peaches.
Anyway, but now we're in the estate, Templar Estate,
which is behind where St Cuthbert's Road, sort of on the block.
And it's a sort of grand kind of very plain buildings, aren't they?
Well, they're built for purpose,
which is to be big, huge boxes for people to live in.
Yes.
You know, there's nothing glamorous about them.
And there used to be a playground
where they put some more sort of council houses,
but I was saying to Paul,
I used to roller skate or play in that playground,
and it was at the back of my house.
My dad used to stick his head out and go,
Eli! Eli!
And then all the kids would take the piss out of me
because he had an American accent.
Eli's dad is shouty.
Yeah, basically. He's dad is shouty.
He's American dandy.
Yeah, basically.
Something like that. And then you go,
OK, daddy boy,
I'll come skitter-skatting on me little...
That's exactly how I sounded.
It's uncanny.
You roller-skated all the way home.
Yes.
And, papa, may I play with the children?
We've walked down through the Templar estate
and we're passing a number three on one of these buildings which I distinctly remember as a child was they kicked a hoarder out
there was someone who died or had to be moved who was a big overweight guy who
hoarded and it hit the flat and some for some reason the flat was open and all
the kids local kids including me had access to it and it was full of crap
like a hoarders place like it stank really bad like
but there was all these these piles of comics marvel and i was into those at the time and it
was like we grabbed some and we came out i'm sure it was number three so you stole the comics from
a dead man it was a child i didn't know any better looking back on it i realized he must have been a
hoarder or had mental health problems and got moved out. But we were just like, hey, it's over.
But the upside is you got fucking Iron Man 1976 out of it or something.
You know what I think I found was some Indiana Jones comics.
Oh, do you know what's spooky?
So I'm not going to go into all the details,
but we had to clean out a room recently, me and my partner.
We had Indiana Jones comics?
Loads of Indiana Jones comics.
That was quite a long run, the Marvel Indiana Jones.
They did quite a lot of them, didn't they?
Well, these were all like...
The comics I've got came out before Temple,
so it was all featuring the characters of Raiders,
and it was all like, to be honest, a little bit racist.
It's all like Indiana Jones dealing with
Umaguma tribes and stuff like that, you know what I mean?
Why does racism keep popping up all the time?
The world was so racist.
The world still is racist,
because when we run out of things to hate people for legitimately,
we just fall back on fucking lazy broad stereotypes.
Whilst we're on that topic,
at the beginning of The Dangerous Davis,
the last detective film, Paul...
Rat!
Oh, yeah, I saw a rat.
Oh, mate, it was a big...
It was a huge... I thought it was a cat.
Oh, my God.
But it was... There it is, it went again.
Where?
It ran across those steps and then straight back,
but it was a huge fucker.
Anyhow...
Whoa!
Anyhow, at the beginning
of the Dangerous Davis
film
he gets called
to deal with a man
who won't leave
his lodgings
no
and the man
is a black individual
and
and to make sure
people know that
outside the colour of his skin
they dress him up in like
faux African
kind of tribal wear
yeah
yes
and it's all very problematic and cringy.
But then, funnily enough, they must have had some awareness, the filmmakers,
because the next scene is Dangerous Davis entering the police station
and there's a black officer there.
And so it's like, you know what I mean?
They're obviously aware, but it's... I don't know.
I don't know if that was in the novel.
Well, here's the thing.
I think, because he's a Welsh writer,
I wonder if he's a Welsh writer imagining what North West London was like.
Yeah.
Or whether he actually lived here,
and part of it is slightly autobiographical in terms of the areas.
I think maybe, because it is very specific,
the kind of...
It is set in North West London,
and there are specific places, aren't there?
Well, that's why we watched it,
because we kept sitting there going,
oh, where's that road? What's that? Who's that? Where's that?
Is that there anymore? You kind of have this...
Yes, which is the delight, which is the pleasure of the film,
that we got pleasure from noticing the places.
Now, also, just to mention, Paul, what was I going to say?
I was talking about a rat.
Oh, no, we saw...
And then we were talking about the racist guy...
Oh, yes. Now, when he puts borders. And then we were talking about the racist guy. Oh, yes.
Now, when he puts a bin on his head, does he?
Bernard Cribbins puts a bin on his head because he knows he's probably going to get whacked.
And that's why they called him in to do it.
Because he seems to be the...
He's like a stuntman police officer, isn't he?
Is there a chance a policeman will get beaten?
Send in dangerous Davies first.
Anyway, what ends up happening is he gets smashed over the head
by the occupant with a mirror, right?
And then all the other police officers, like the bobbies,
rush in and stand on top of the mirror
and stand on top of Dangerous Davies and trample him.
And then in the next scene he goes,
oh, it wasn't the guy who hurt me,
it was all the police officers treading on me,
which is foreshadowing, Paul, of the denouement of the film,
which is his boss is the actual...
Don't you think that could be seen as sort of foreshadowing?
It's like the police are the baddies.
The rot is within.
He gets hurt by the police.
It is foreshadowing.
It's foreshadowing.
I'm going to say foreshadowing.
I think it was more down to the fact that they just wanted a daft little intro
where he gets beaten up for a laugh.
Yes.
Which happened four more times throughout the film.
Yes, and gets tiresome as fuck.
Anyway, this is the Templar Estate, Paul.
There you go.
I grew up around here.
Great.
Again, I hope this episode's scored by Madonnas.
This used to be my playground, because fucking hell,
every single one of these walks has been attached to an Eli story memory.
I remember when I was walking down the street,
and Papa would take me for a little walk.
I never called him Papa.
Come on, now, next location.
Do you know what I will say, though?
It's funny, because we talk about Brexit and immigration
and all this stuff now, and we think it's a hot topic.
At the beginning of the film, it's like...
So, yeah, the whole beginning of the bit talks about how
everywhere in London people are at war with each other,
the Irish and the things...
Arabs, Jews.
And the Arabs and Jews and the...
And very sort of unfortunate.
Indians and... You know what I mean?
And he talks about warring African tribes,
which is very unfortunate, really, isn't it?
And he says, and then the few remaining original English.
So there's this whole post-colonial sort of sentiment behind it, isn't there?
It's funny, it's the same sentiment that still exists 40 years on.
Yeah, because it's a bullshit sentiment.
It's post-colonial, it's Brexit, yeah, exactly.
It's this idea that Britain was once this kind of very precise,
very white, very kind of...
It's a country, the country it's never been.
Yes.
Because it's always been a bastard nation,
made up of the hundreds and hundreds of different other countries
that have swarmed through here at one point.
So, you know, it's an interesting snapshot of a London, of a Britain,
that has this idea in its head of a country that never really existed.
Yes.
And that's the interesting thing about Daniel Stavies, in many respects,
is that he puts himself as like the kind of the last lone gunman on the horizon of old and
new Britain.
Yes, but he's not a racist, he's a compassionate, he's portrayed as a compassionate man isn't
he?
No, he's not, but the environment, the world that they're building up is kind of like Britain
is not the country it used to be. Yes, because of all these people.
There's still a few good old British people,
and Dangerous Davies is one of them,
but actually his character is a bit more empathetic.
Well, a lot more empathetic.
Now we're coming round onto Shoot-Up Hill.
This is Shoot-Up Hill.
Opposite Kilburn Station.
And where's our next location?
Our next location will be Kilburn Library in Queen's Park, which is where he does it with his sidekick,
who is played by...
Bill Mayhew, I think it was.
I can't remember now.
I've said it before.
Yes.
All right.
No, no.
I've said it before.
I fucking said it already.
I fucking did, though.
This is Kilburn Station.
Many a time we came past here to buy drugs
from a dodgy place above a stupid wall.
Just down there.
That's shut.
Anyway, look at this.
It's a beautiful metropolitan rail bridge from 1914,
which is beautiful, isn't it?
What's it say?
Something metropolitan?
It says Metropolitan Railway.
Well, that's when it was a railway.
Yeah, but the Met doesn't...
The funny thing is, that's for the Met, the Met line,
and it doesn't stop here in Kilburn, does it?
No.
It goes past, doesn't it?
If you get the fast train up to Harrow,
you can get the Met line up to Harrow, can't you? And it just goes through this station. That's a lovely bridge, isn't it? No. It goes past doesn't it? It goes if you get the fast train up to Harrow you can get the
Met line up to Harrow can't you? And it just goes through this station. It goes straight through.
That's a lovely bridge isn't it? Just take a picture of it. Yeah I'll take a picture. Take a lovely little
picture because yeah it used to be a main line rather than a part of the underground.
So yes so we're going to move on to our next location now. Join us there why don't you?
Have you ever thought how many people around here are actually at war with each other?
We've got two religious lots of Irish,
hostile African tribes, Indians and Pakistanis,
Jews and Arabs, and some of the original British.
Magic life for a copper.
Excitement, glamour, and for me,
the start of an incredible story.
Right, so here we are in our next major location.
Oh, it's dripping.
It's drippy, but we are at a bandstand in Queen's Park,
northwest London, where one of the scenes of the film took place
with Bernard Cribbins and Pam St Clement
starring as Mrs Norris the mother of the deceased child and you all might know Pam St Clement as
in Britain in Britain as Pat from EastEnders leave it Frank that was that was the role wasn't it and
she was actually quite a well-spoken, sort of posh-speaking person
who was a stage actress as well.
Did you know that?
Yes.
And did Shakespeare and was proper highfalutin stuff.
And having looked at the scene again today, Paul,
she really is a bit over-egging
all the sort of cockneyisms she's putting in.
Like, bleeding, gourd, she says.
Oh, gourd bleeding.
That place,
that day on the job place with the nurses looking for a job,
gourd blimmit. Gourd
gourd nose it.
Blimmit.
Rivet, rivet.
So, in this scene, he is
talking, because the basic plot is
he accidentally finds this kind of cold case
of this missing,
presumed dead girl.
And blah, blah, blah.
He talks to the mother who, you know, quite rightly, she's like,
oh, they never caught him.
You're not going to catch him.
I think it was this guy.
It was that guy.
You know, it's a moving, powerful scene.
It's a scene that covers a few locations because they walk around the park and they also go into a caf, don't they?
Which we'll go to in a minute, because we believe it is still there.
They have a cup of tea at the caf.
Do you think I should get a cup of tea, just for the sake of...
I think you should.
...realism?
Now, this is Queen's Park.
Again, a park I used to come to a lot.
And I used to work in Queen's Park.
And you used to work near here.
A few years ago.
It's quite...
It's like Hampstead or something, isn't it?
In that Queen's Park is sort of, it's like the upmarket end of Kilburn.
Do you know what I mean?
Well, if you walk off the High Street, because we just came from the High Street
and it's kind of, you know, seeing better days, that fucking High Street.
And you come off it and all of a sudden you're in this kind of quiet,
almost countryside-y little nugget of London.
The park was actually opened in 1887
and the station opened two years later.
So it's all part of the development of this part of London
in the Victorian era.
You know what's funny?
It's like we just watched that scene back
to get a grip of where we are and where everyone was.
And it feels like it's the exact same day.
It's that grey, cold...
It's so drab, yeah.
It's a very cold, wet, drab day today.
Yes.
We haven't done a cold, wet, drab cheap show
unless you count the previous 250-odd episodes. It's a very cold, wet, drab day today. We haven't done a cold, wet, drab cheap show,
unless you count the previous 250-odd episodes.
This bandstand was refurbished because it's much bearer than when we saw it in the film just now.
Well, that was 81, and this sign says here 87 for the centenary,
so they may have done it around then.
So a few years later, six years later, it got a new fence, basically.
It's got some ironwork.
What do you think of the ironwork, Paul?
I hate it.
Do you know why?
Because I think if they hadn't have coloured in those flower things,
it would have looked all right.
But as it stands, it looks like we're outside the shittest ride
at Southport Pleasure Beach Rides.
Yeah, it does.
It's not a great paint job.
It looks like we're about to go on the Hungry Caterpillar mini roller coaster for kids.
It's got that kind of feel to it.
And do you know there is a golf course here in Queen's Park?
Do you know that?
No.
Like a mini putter putt.
Well, it's not mini or crazy.
It's just small.
Like a pitching putt?
Yes, that's right.
You know your golf terms, don't you?
Well, my dad used to go to a pitching putt near me.
It's only nine holes.
It's sort of half the size of a normal...
But it's where you can get your practice in.
Yeah. Improve your backhand. It's only nine holes. It's sort of half the size of a normal. But it's where you can get your practice in. Yeah.
Improve your backhand.
No, that's tennis.
I'll get my backhand
every night.
Backhand.
I wank.
I'm trying to say.
There's not enough
wanking in this episode.
Where's she going?
She's going over the fence.
Oh, you can go through it.
Oh, you can go through there.
Should we do that?
Maybe.
Can we?
Yes.
Oh, she's, no.
It's happened.
She's going for a jog. Can't we? I want to go through that. Why? It doesn't Maybe. Can we? Yes. Oh, she's... No. It's happened. She's going for a jog.
She's a jogger.
I want to go through that.
Why?
It doesn't go anywhere, I don't think.
Because it's exciting!
I'm having an exciting psycho-geographical time
and you will not ruin it.
Today you won't ruin it, Paul.
Right, I've got other stuff to say.
Oh, God.
Maureen Lipman.
Where are we going to fit her in?
How are we going to fit her in?
I'd like to fit her in.
When we get to the other bit where we maybe go past
what we think might have been the place where they filmed his house.
Oh, with the horse.
And the library.
We can mention it there because it's meant to be all in the same area.
We couldn't find Maureen Lipman's flat
because when we did an image search for that particular block of flats she's in,
it came up with a thousand other generic blocks of flats that could be similar.
And the place in Cardiff.
So we think it may have just been a second unit thing
where they just said,
we just need the exterior of...
But his car arrives, doesn't it?
His car.
And it looks...
The weird thing is,
it looks like there's a lot of empty space around the flat.
It looks like North West London.
It could easily be.
I honestly thought,
honestly, it was a flat in Bournemouth.
Because it had this weird kind of Bournemouth flat feel.
I don't know.
Anyway, the point is,
we'll talk about moureen fucking Lipman later
when you get your fucking rod out
and give yourself a backhand or something.
Spoiler alert.
Maureen Lipman camel toe.
Sweatsuit camel toe.
All right, fucking calm yourself.
So we're at the bandstand.
This is where we thought we'd come to the scene
where Mrs Norris and Dangerous Davies
decide to have a cup of tea and a chat about the case.
And you know what?
Now that we're here, isn't it lovely?
It is lovely.
It's a bit cold.
It's a bit nippy on the tits.
Now we're going to look and see
how much of the original calf survives
because it's quite different, the bandstand, isn't it?
Well, it was white in the film, wasn't it?
It was white and there was none of this fence work
which they put in for the 87
centenary, obviously.
I liked it more plain.
Do you know what I mean?
Do you know why I think
they put a fence around
it?
To stop naughty kids
having their wicked fun.
Kids can get it through.
I mean, it's a very low
fence.
Even I can get over
that fence.
No, you couldn't get
over that fence.
You couldn't.
Oh, that?
Yeah, you couldn't.
I can get in there.
I'll get in there.
Go on, get in there now.
He's going up the steps.
His little legs, will they go over the big fence?
I shouldn't do this.
You are?
I shouldn't do this, should I?
You used to say you could, though, didn't you?
I can.
Yeah, but until I see you do it, it's just all words, isn't it?
There you go.
Hey, he's over.
He's on.
Police.
Police, naughty boy.
The naughty boy police.
It's a bit of completeness. We've done it now.
They don't actually go in here in the film, do they?
No, they just walk past it.
It's completely useless, yeah. So I'm stuck in here now.
Yeah.
So let's go on to the calf now and see if it stands.
Because even in the 81 film, the calf's in pretty bad condition.
Because half the signs on the wall have fallen off.
And even then, I think the wall have fallen off and like even
then i think the wall's ice cream advert was like at least a decade out of date it looks really in
bad shape so it definitely will all be gone all the original detail from the film well let's have
a let's have a quick walk past then and we'll you can join us there even though they're going
nowhere they're sitting down listening where they like it. They come along. It's all shuffle. Shuffle. They're all shuffle shuffle.
Let's give them a bit of an ASMR shuffle walk.
No, that doesn't... You're doing it wrong.
It doesn't sound like... Go on, then.
No, that's too heavy-footed. It needs to sound like this.
They're skipping, you idiots.
HE SINGS Come on, off to the calf. All right, let's go to the calf, then. You're skipping, you idiot.
All right, let's go to the caf, then.
Do you happen to know where Mr Boot is these days?
Finchley or Mill Hill or somewhere like that runs one of them sex shops.
Does he?
Suit him, it should.
Did they give you her clothes back here, Finchley?
Police?
Yes, I got them back.
White blouse, green miniskirt, white socks and shoes.
You still got the clothes, Mrs Norris?
Yes, but they're hidden away. I'm not showing them to you nor nobody else.
I understand.
Can I have another cup? There's a place over there.
Yes, I can do one myself.
It'll go on expenses, won't it?
No, I'll fiddle it, make a profit.
And here we are at the Park Cafe.
Yes, and it has seen a lot of changes since 81,
when the film was made.
They've done a whole extended bit where the characters in the film were sitting
is now indoors, but it was outdoors in the film, Paul.
Yeah, which means that where they were sitting
to have their conversation
would just be where that kind of,
what's that awning is?
It's a canopy.
Canopy.
No, that's something you eat.
Is it?
Yeah, like a shrimp toast or something.
Miniature shrimp toast.
I don't mind if I do.
Canopy, canopy.
Or a little vol-au-vent.
That's more 80s, isn't it?
They were all over the place.
Everyone had vol-au-vents.
Vol-au-vents were crazy, all up in everyone's face in the 80s, weren't they?
Especially at Christmas.
Yeah.
And they're disgusting.
Yeah, they're horrible.
It's like a little pastry bowl full of mushroom puke.
You know what I mean?
In a nutshell.
No, in a pastry bowl.
It's fungi starting.
Not a nutshell, Paul.
And in fact, stop saying in a nutshell, and then I'll stop making jokes like that.
All right, in a nutshell, I'll stop.
No, because we're outdoors.
We're not in a nutshell.
Are we?
Maybe all of the world is a nutshell. Maybe the world is a nutshell, I'll stop. No, because we're outdoors. We're not in a nutshell. Are we? Maybe the world is a nutshell.
Maybe the world is a nutshell.
So, there's the tennis courts.
There's the tennis courts where they sat.
Because it's still there.
That's how we've managed to position them from the film.
It's definitely the tennis courts were behind them, weren't they?
Yeah.
And then that's where she walks off that way towards the end.
That's right.
Because she walks off that way.
Because he goes, do you think he did it?
And she goes, oh, I don't know. Bloody Jack the Sodding Ripper bleeding. Well, no, because she tells him that way because he goes uh do you think he did it and she goes oh i
don't know bloody jack the sodding ripper because she tells him about the pawn shop owner so the
next scene is the pawn shop so we've done the locations in reverse order because because of
what we had to do but this scene is followed by the garden of ooh la la which is another that's
what uh what my old mum used to call her Fanny.
Oh, your dad was up inside my garden of Oolala last night.
Oh, you shouldn't have done that.
Oh, Eli, let me tell you about the day you were conceived.
Well, your dad got right into my garden of Oolala.
And then the garden gates of the garden of Oolala.
And then he splashed a load of fucking volivons up me.
Don't talk about my dad.
You're the one.
Hey, mate, you are the one going, here's where I used to live.
That was a great thing.
We were up that street where you used to live.
You went, this is my house.
I used to climb out the window.
Now, wait there.
Two doors down.
This is the house I used to climb out the window.
Wait, no.
It's this one.
We went to three different houses before you decided which one was yours.
They all look the same, don't they?
They're Victorian two-up, two-downs or whatever.
Where's your dad coming now?
Shut your mouth.
That looks like him, doesn't it?
Oh, fuck off.
It does, actually, doesn't it?
I've seen your dad.
It doesn't look a lot like him.
I've peeked on him.
I've peeked on him
when he's been working at Oxfam
and every now and then
I keep thinking,
should I go in
and introduce myself
and say, yeah.
Because it's funny
because when I went in,
on sight,
I would never have thought
that was your dad.
There's not a huge
facial similarity.
Less now.
Less now.
You know how it changes
different times in your life. Like if you look at a picture of my dad when he was my age, wow. Yes and I think
that's generally true of people. Well I would say... When you're at the same age as
your father or your brother you look very similar at that age. Do you see what I mean?
Yeah. So I went in and I saw this little man and he was looking at
books and going in out the back room to change stock.
And when he started speaking, that's when he gave it away
because he had that kind of soft Atlantic twang,
kind of American twang, softened by years of British...
He speaks English-English.
The dialogue is English-English.
So when he speaks, he puts the U's in the words, like through or...
Yes, you can hear the U's.
No, but... Of course not.
But he speaks with a soft American accent.
Yeah.
But the actual...
You know what I mean.
The word...
He wouldn't say diaper.
He'd say nappy.
Yeah.
For example.
So anyway,
did that man look like him?
No, he didn't.
Also,
we're going to talk about...
There's a police station.
We're going to go look at the library
where Davis does his research.
With his Welsh mate. Yes. Yeah. We're going're gonna see that that's Kilburn library yeah which is confusing because it's not in Kilburn it's in Queen's Park but it's known as
Kilburn library which means this whole area was probably more known as Kilburn
before they built the park in the station you know yeah but on the corner
there is a police station and I used to go there when I was a little guy.
I used to go there and do police lineups for a tenner.
And you'd turn up half an hour before, do the lineup, and they'd give you cash.
Were you ever worried about being fingered for a criminal by accident
because you just looked like the person they happened to be looking for?
Fingered for a criminal by accident.
It's true. You were never fingered for a criminal by accident. It's true, you were never fingered.
No.
Were you ever fingered as a result of doing the police line-up for a tenner?
I was... Were you ever fingered for a tenner?
If I was fingered, Paul,
obviously, I don't know what you've been watching too much,
Hollywood films or something,
but you can't get arrested for a crime
if you are one of the line-ups who isn't the suspect, can you?
It doesn't matter if
they finger you they just go oh you know it's just it's bad evidence yeah yeah all right well
you never worried though it's definitely actually definitely was him and then they may ask me about
my whereabouts at the time which they didn't but the thing was they were all proper junkies
what the police no the people a lot the other people doing the line-ups with me.
They were very much sort of, yeah,
they were exchanging opiates
and Valiums and stuff and talking about
methadone and stuff, I seem to remember. They all
seemed really nice. It wasn't like
unfriendly. The druggies? Yeah, the druggies.
And it was almost like a little community
vibe with all the people who did the line-ups.
Alright, well, I haven't seen you in a while.
Yeah, basically.
Last time I saw you, you were fingered for a crime.
Yeah, that type of stuff.
And also, I think there was a rule where if they cancelled it or something,
they'd still have to pay you,
and then they'd have to pay you 15 quid for the next one
or something like that.
So they were all trying to work it
to get as many line-ups done in a day as you could
so you could get the money.
How many could you do in a day?
Two or three, maybe?
Really?
Laughing, 30 quid.
I guess.
Anyway, so that's my little memory there.
We'll walk past that police station, Paul, on our way to the library.
We're going to look at the library next.
Yes.
And that is unchanged since the days of the film.
We might see if we can stroll by the lodgings of Dangerous Davies.
We'll look down the street where I think it is, but again, the houses are all quite similar. But we'll see what we can stroll by the lodgings of Dangerous Davies. We're going to look down the street where I think it is,
but again, the houses are all quite similar.
But we'll see what we can see down there.
Then we're going to get on the canal
and we're going to look at the psychic lady
who has the murdered girl's bicycle in her...
Oh, yeah.
That's quite a distinctive building, and I believe that's still there.
All arches, all based on round arches, her whole place,
and it's on the canal. Then we're going to end with the cemetery well we walk continue going
up the canal to where this where it goes through the cemetery there's a distinctive water tower up
there is that the big one of the big seven or something they say cemeteries big seven kensal
uh rise cemetery yeah there's others there's like highgate and oh kensal green sorry it's
kensal green not kensal Rise is the other side.
Yeah, Kensal Green Cemetery.
Yeah, the Magnificent Seven is what they're known as.
Highgate, that, and Nunhead in South London,
which would be a nice place for us to go,
because apparently you can go to Nunhead
and it's like one of these parts of South London that's on a hill,
and you can see it all the way across the city to Highgate.
Yeah.
Wasn't that on purpose, though?
It was built to be a place opposite i mean they the
magnificent seven came about because they had a huge crisis at the time too many too many dead
there was a story at one point where i think it was near crouch end they wanted to build a huge
black pyramid for the dead that would have been i'm gonna have to get the facts for that but i'm
pretty sure the plan was to build a huge super mausoleum
near Crouch End to put loads of dead people.
Well, there were two necropolises built, cities of the dead,
and you can get the train lines were built to them.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, I don't know where they are, but they're sort of outside.
I wonder if that's where the idea of a ghost train came from.
You know, the idea of a train carrying the dead to a mausoleum.
I think that's probably...
These days, they just call it the fucking Northern Line.
They're not...
Come on, I'm going to laugh.
Let's get out of here.
No, I just want to finish with one little other bit of trivia
about Queen's Park.
Queen's Park Rangers.
Have you heard of that football team?
I have heard of them.
This is Queen's Park that they're based on.
It's not really a fact so much as a...
All right.
I don't know what you want.
They're not based around here anymore,
but they still keep the name
for the Queen's Park.
No, the old QPR.
Yeah, they moved to another fucking...
Yeah.
They go.
Something like that, innit?
Football talk.
Let's make our way, Paul, now.
Which way are we going now?
We're going to Kilburn Library
in Queen's Park
and we're going to have a little look
and see the police stations there,
see if there's a...
Yeah, see what we can find.
See if we can do a line-up
because I could do with a tenner.
Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.
Tell you what, I've got a tenner on me.
How about I line up and finger you?
Turn the thing off. Put you up against the back of a policeman's wall
and I give you a fingering.
And why don't you fucking fist me?
I'll finger you for a big crime.
Fist me?
I'll have to pay you 50 quid.
Get some saline gel on your glove and fist me.
It's £10 a finger.
I'd have to not spend 50 quid on you, mate.
I'm worth it.
Rams car.
Always used to come around and mooch about when Celia was there.
Always had his hands on her bottom, that sort of thing.
But he'd try with any female between the age of eight and 80.
I must go.
If you want me, tell Josie she works at Antoinette's.
That hairdresser's in the I Street.
Yes, I will.
I'm sorry it's been so painful for you.
I hope I can do something.
One thing.
Do you think Ram Scar could, of course, see his death?
God knows.
He was checked out by the police.
So was Jack the Ripper, I expect.
Right.
Kilburn Library, next to Kil... Well, it says Kilburn Library next to Kilburn Police,
but it's actually in Queen's Park.
That's right.
There are two libraries in North London, Paul,
called Kilburn Library.
One is over there in the borough of Camden,
but this here, we're in the borough of Brent.
Funny, it's a very distinctive building
and it is used by Dangerous Davis
to do research.
He meets his mate here who's very good
at research, isn't he? The Welsh guy.
What tends to happen is he follows a lead,
he gets beaten up, he goes to the hospital
and then he meets up with his mate at this library
to then fold the plot on so they can go to another
place, get beaten up, end up in a hospital
and then move on. It's quite repetitive
and boring as a film. It's only until I watch it on the second go did I realise that that was a structure. He walks in, gets beaten up, end up in a hospital and then move on. It's quite repetitive and boring as a film. It's only until I watch
it on the second go did I realise that that was the structure.
He walks in, gets beaten up,
goes to the hospital, meets his mate, figures it out under the clue,
goes and has an investigation,
gets beaten up, goes through the
repeat. You know, an interesting
detail, Paul, if you look up at the
top of this library, there's a little thing that says
knowledge is power. And that's funny in
relation to the film, because in the film it's about uncovering knowledge that's been buried
deeply and the baddie is the one who's in power so the knowledge he has of his own crime is is
powerful well i'll go further right he joss ackland spoiler warning for 40 year old film
but joss ackland's it is it's his own fault he gets nicked because if he hadn't
put Dangerous Davies
on that case
which was tangentially
related to the murder case
the subplot case
which is about a gangster
isn't it
well it's like the A plot
suddenly just disappears
and the B plot
becomes the actual plot
and so if he hadn't
have sent him on
he would never have
had his case revealed
and the crimes
exposed
so the knowledge
yes
knowledge is power so and he didn you know exposed yes knowledge is power yeah so and he
didn't have knowledge no he had power but he didn't have knowledge didn't now it's a nice
building um we just poked our heads inside it's the exact same location and also you know that
you know like four or five scenes set here you know they were all filmed on the same day yes
right and it was like, this is scene 76
and you've got like a head bruise now
and your head's wrapped up and you've got a leg in a cast.
It's the continuity change because of his injuries,
his various injuries.
There must have been a box to the side between takes
where it was like, right, this is the latest that worked.
This is day this, this is...
There weren't a lot of huge gaffes.
The whole thing has a sort of cheap feel.
It's a TV movie feel directed by a guy who'd been filming since the 50s.
Yes, but they do actually use real interiors, don't they?
It hasn't got that TV feel where it's like outside is on film
and then as soon as they go inside it's the TV cameras.
It doesn't have that.
No, it looks like a little TV movie.
Maureen Lipman.
Paul, the elephant in the room is Maureen Lippman's camel toe
in this film
her sweatsuit camel toe
Maureen Lippman has a sort of
cameo role as one of the witnesses
she was friends
of the murdered girl, they were friends weren't they
was it, I thought she was
dallying around with the main bad guy
who you thought was
no, no, no, she was her friend she was friends of the murdered girl with the main bad guy who you thought was... No, no, no. She was her friend.
She was friends of the murdered girl
and knew the bad guy through...
Who was she married to?
Because there's a whole thing about her husband.
Oh, she was married to...
Yeah, she was married...
I don't know.
Anyway, the point is...
It's a very complicated plot.
I think it was Maureen Lippman's
sort of stock-in-trade character
at the time, wasn't it?
It was a sort of frustrated,
sort of suburban...
Housewife. Housewife. She plays a widow, obviously, in this film. at the time, wasn't it? Was a sort of frustrated, sort of suburban... Housewife.
Housewife.
She plays a widow, obviously, in this film.
She likes green, doesn't she?
She likes green.
It's very sort of nouveau riche, isn't it?
It's chintzy and it's sort of...
Everything in her flat looks like it's been painted
in avocado bathroom green.
And it's very much coded as nouveau riche
because there's the whole gaudy sort of pineapple lamp
in her scene, and that's very much a sort gaudy sort of pineapple lamp in her scene
and that's very much
a sort of
a status symbol
sort of thingy
an affixation of like
the newly rich
yes
which goes back
to Wren's time
even her pussy
has died green
in the film
hasn't it
she has a blue
green cat
she has a green cat
yes
she has a great
green pussy
she does
that apparently
has been neglected
for a while
no wonder if it's gone green.
She tries to seduce Davis in the lift after they'd had several creme de menthe.
Green. Again, green.
Now, we've tried, Paul, on this walk today,
to gather stuff that they ate and drank in the film.
Suet pudding, creme de menthe.
And scotch.
And scotch.
We got the scotch, everybody! Cme de menthe. And scotch. And scotch. We got the scotch,
everybody!
Creme de menthe
is impossible to find.
It's weird.
It's very out of fashion,
I guess.
You know what?
When you say creme de menthe
to me,
all I can see is
like Abigail's Party
1970s,
you know,
vol-au-vents.
And it's disgusting.
I once got drunk on it
because it was the only thing
we could steal
and I vomited.
I bet your sick smelt like fucking drain cleaner.
Minty sick.
Minty green sick.
Now.
Mild green, minty vom vom.
So she plays this sort of character she played a lot,
Littman, in this, but she's quite young.
She seems quite zesty.
In her, like, 30s or something?
Early 30s, she must have been.
Yeah.
She's quite hot, is what I'm trying to say.
It's weird because every scene of them together
is a build-up on the last one in terms of booze,
where he's always bringing in booze to a pub.
They go to two pubs or something,
and then it's like, do you want to come back to that place?
Well, she tries it in the lift, doesn't she?
And she presses him into her...
She unzips her tracksuit,
because she's wearing a green tracksuit.
It's sort of a shell suit sort of track suit number
a proto shell suit
proper camel toe
showing through
and
oh not proper
just a bit
a hint of
a hint of tongue
if everyone hasn't
picked up on this
I fancy Maureen Lipman
in this film
I'm sorry
she does
she don't half give me
the awen in this film
I bet you'd like to
cancel her
culture
do you know who
she reminds me of
bringing pickles into this I thought you were going to say her culture. Do you know who she reminds me of bringing pickles into this?
I thought you were going to say your mum there for a minute.
Shut up about my mum.
Mrs Aylsham.
Who's that?
On the pickle jar.
You know, sweet pickle halves or whatever.
Hot dills.
You know, Mrs Aylsham.
She's like the woman who's like, looks like Maureen Lipman.
This is all beginning to make sense.
The pickle connection between your little dirty pickle and Maureen Lipman's...
No, can I just also add, it's not dirty, my little pickle.
It's very clean.
It is very salty, though, and bitter to bite.
Warty.
Right, come on.
Right, let's go and try and find Dangerous Davies' house.
Now, this may be the least successful part of the whole scouting mission today.
Well, there are a few locations we can't go to,
such as the lady who lives in the caravan site,
the policeman's wife who's out in the middle of nowhere,
and then there's also the psychiatric ward,
which is filmed outside in a country.
Two locations, one for the entrance to it and one for the back.
It's like he drives up to a county lane, up the thing,
and then when they cut to the actual location,
you can see the main road and all the cars and stuff.
It's obviously two different places. And then the main road and all the cars and stuff it's like
it's obviously
two different places
and then the mad old woman
the mad old woman
with the gun
remember
stick them up
yes
come with me
yes
it's like
yeah
distasteful to the treatment
of mental health
and stuff
but then
everything is not
is problematic these days
isn't it
when you look back on it
but that's its charm
the locations aren't
problematic are they
it's a lovely library
it's fine knowledge Knowledge is power.
So let's go find our next one. We're going to go down
Bronzebury Road, if you see just there to the left.
And it's definitely in
this sort of area between Queen's Park
and Kilburn High Road where his house
is. But it's impossible to know the exact
location. Let's see if we can see a house that looks similar.
Let's be detectives ourselves and see if we can track
down this location.
Let's see how it goes.
Oh, Maureen Lipman, I'd like to mourn in your lean lips.
No, I've got one, I've got one, I've got one.
What?
Oh, Maureen Lipman, I'd like to split your lips, man,
and stick it in between them.
And I want to do it.
Maureen Lipman, I want your quim.
Put it on my lip, man, lip, man, lip.
LAUGHTER Boring Lipman, I want your quim. Put it on my Lipman, Lipman, Lipman.
Here you are.
Thank you.
Did anybody see you come up?
No, I don't think so.
Oh, good.
I mean, they're just so nosy.
It would have been all over the flats.
Move, Limey. Come on. I've never seen a green cat before.
Be pricey to get her dyed. Mind you, makes a talking point at dinner parties.
Yeah. Well, I suppose I'd better tell you why I'm here.
Well, I know I haven't been wicked, but not in a way the police will be interested in anyway.
been wicked. We're not in a way the police will be interested in anyway. So we've been up and down Bronsbury Road, we've had a good look and no dice for the
lodgings of Dangerous Davies. Although we came close we think.
It's definitely around here somewhere because the rest of the film is set around here Paul.
So it's just logic isn't it?
It's just logic. We could traipse up and down all the live long day and never find it, and I don't want to.
A little detail about Bronzebury Road.
Amy Winehouse used to live here.
Did she?
She moved back to Camden, yeah.
Even though this was in 1981,
the character of Dangerous Davis
is portrayed as living in a lodging house
where he gets his meals cooked by the landlady,
which obviously was a thing.
Do you think that is a thing now? if you were an unmarried man and you you know you didn't have
a lot of money you'd live in lodgings and then the woman of the house would make would make you
dinner weird to think it is weird because like it's such a it's such a specific part of like
british culture from like post-war
i think because i think it's a very much a post-war thing because there's a lot more single
men i guess or whatever or lodging houses changed but remember the old films of like no irish no
blacks no whatever outside of lodging yeah it was definitely that kind of deal she's portrayed again
as a sort of stereotypical sort of battle axe and she gets the suet pudding and
she spoons out a whole loads of it and it's a massive suet pudding isn't it i mean you even
we have failed to locate any suet pudding in london i mean i'm sure you could get someone to
send you one but by the way anyone do not send suet pudding i don't want it we're not going to
have it i'd love suet pudding i'll put sauce on it oh saucy suet pudding i'll
put my knob in it i'll cook my knob in the saucy suet pudding i will not cook my knob i do not cook
my not let this peter out mate until i won't peter out i'll get my peter out and put it into a suet
pudding right good well now there's people looking at us because now you're shouting pecker and suet
pudding out loud is in my pudding right it's all slimy from the gravy. I was going to say, that scene in Dangerous Davies
where the lady and the lodger,
who he has a contemptuous relationship with
because later on he pushes a horse into her house
that he found on the street.
Him and his psychic when they're drunk.
There's a lot of drinking as well.
A lot of drinking in this.
But not in a kind of cool way.
In a kind of sad British pub kind of way.
Every day just standard drinking all the time.
Nulling out the existence of your life kind of drinking.
But the scene is very, very, very similar,
which means it was a trope of its time,
especially to British comedy and drama,
in Carrying at Your Convenience.
Because you remember that?
There's the old battle axe woman who runs the...
And she's like, there'll be dinner.
If you don't come down for your dinner, you'll miss it,
and I'll feed it to the dog.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. So it's very much a trope-filled sort of thing. and she's like there'll be dinner if you don't come down for your dinner you'll miss it and I'll feed it to the dog yeah yeah
okay yeah
so it's very much
a trope filled sort of thing
and he
he doesn't want
the suet pudding
does he Davis
he spoons it into a napkin
when she's not looking
doesn't he
yeah
but he does like
he has a sandwich
at some point
so at least he's eating
it's a food
it's a film more about booze
than food
put it that way
the suet pudding
does look kind of disgusting
well it looks like what it is.
An upside-down pasty cake
with a lot of grizzle in it.
A pasty cake, yeah.
It looks like a pasty cake.
Invent something...
Like a honey tea.
Pasty cake.
And a honey tea.
Yeah, well.
To Paul's fucking misremembered dishes
of the past cookbook.
Oh, it's a sort of fish thing.
If you don't shut up, I won't share any of my jellied flan with you.
Yeah, jellied flan.
Right, so where should we go next then?
You know, just one last thing on suet pudding, Paul.
I like it.
I like the sound of it.
You like the sound of suet pudding?
It's nice.
Gravy and meat in fatty, flowery suet.
It's the sound of suet.
We don't have creme de menthe either.
We've mentioned that we're not getting creme de menthe,
nor could we get it, because it seems to be, again,
a very particular age-era specific drink.
Now, we're going from here, from our failure to find his lodgings house.
We knew it was a bit...
It's a crapshoot, isn't it was a bit... It's a crapshoot,
isn't it? It was a bit of a crapshoot.
But we are going to see if we can find
the psychic's house on the canal
now and make our way up that canal
to... Our final destination.
Kensal Green Cemetery.
Join us, won't you?
Did you put that horse
in my house? Did you two do it?
There's horses poop everywhere, everywhere,
everywhere, up the passage, up the stairs, in the front room.
Better get the jumping sheet ready. I think she's going to topple out any minute.
We're on the bus.
We're taking the 187 a few stops because we were a little bit tired and old
to go to our next location and we were just pontificating over how shit our lives
were when we lived or worked around Queen's Park.
Yeah and we went past what used to be Jugg's Foods which is the worst job I
ever had making a pre-packaged food lasagna and chili and so forth for pubs and it was it was three pounds fifty an
hour and I stank of off meat all the time some would say I still do I can
vouch for that now let's get off the bus Paul because we have we need we have to
get off the bus here we're Kendall rise station go off the bus
sweet all right we'll do that then find out where the canal bus here, Kensal Rise Station. Get off the bus. Sweet.
Alright, we'll do that then. We need to look at the map
and find out where the canal,
Regent's Canal closest entry point is
to here. Yeah, because
in the film there's a little alleyway between shops
that goes down to it. Whether that's real or not
we don't know. Again, I don't think we'll find
that, but I think we can find
the psychic's house.
Oh yeah, that's right
we're looking for that maybe that's the school but that building that school
that's good you think that's the police station it could be because it looks
like and it comes onto the same oh just for the record when I worked in
Queen's Park I was working for like a thing called text me TV an overnight
sky channel where people could text in and chat it was my job to curate the
chat and then I'd have to curate the chat.
And then I'd have to race home at six in the morning to try and catch the first bus.
And so Sundays were always my asthma mornings
where I had three minutes to run a ten-minute distance.
I almost invariably never got to the bus in time,
but I did always have an asthma track trying.
So I fucking hated that job.
Ten at night till seven in the morning.
Similar to what I do at the BBC in many respects.
My life's not changed at all.
Is this Chamberlain Road we're on now?
Bolton Gardens.
Chamberlain Road, yes.
North West London.
That's where we are.
Outside.
So I think that...
Look at that school.
And you tell me that doesn't look very similar to the location.
Let's check on YouTube.
We'll check on YouTube now.
So we just got off the bus.
Yeah, Jugg's Foods, wow.
There was these big, I had a cauldron with a big metal paddle,
and they'd give you a big tray of basically rotten beef mince
that stunk of egg, you know what I mean?
Slightly grey, about to turn.
Yeah, it was about to, it turned, mate.
It turned the corner, and you had to slop it in and cook it all up in there. Didn about it turned mate it turned the corner and you had to
slop it in
and cook it all up
in there
did the fucking 360
and walked out the door itself
do you know what
this says though
that's where we started
look where we are now
me and you
podcast giants
one minute
we're texting
dirty old ladies
to encourage them
to use an online
TV platform
or we're staring
bad mints in a pot, you
too could be
doing a podcast.
All jokes aside, Paul,
I was thinking today, I am very grateful that
I get to do this and thank you so much everyone
for supporting us
in these endeavours. Whether it's with Patreon
or whether it's just a retweet or spreading the word,
it really does mean the mostest.
Mostest. Most gardens. Most in gardens. If we're talking about synchronicity, whether it's just a retweet or spreading the word it really does mean the mostest mostest most
gardens stop most must in gardens okay we're talking about synchronicity yeah when i got
boost we were talking about this episode yeah and we i looked up kilburn library the location and
then i got my booster notification boosted shot and it said kilburn library no it was the other
one it turned out to be the other one but But I thought, what are the odds of that?
It's a dangerous Davis location.
It wasn't.
It turned out not to be.
It was the one that's in Camden Borough rather than the Brent Borough one.
For a moment.
Right, I'll tell you what.
I'm going to take a quick pause.
I'm going to think about this school.
Are you going to take a pause?
Yeah, just look at my phone.
Where are you going to take it?
In a nutshell.
I'm going to put it in my asshole.
Up my asshole.
I'm going to finger you.
It's what's going to happen.
Look at the skies coming live.
It's all happening.
We need to get down to the Rita's Canal and find the actual locations.
You're just speculating that this might be the school
that stood in for the police station in the film.
Well, you know what?
I'm just going to say it is.
I'll check it later.
I'll put pictures on the website to see if it collaborates our information.
Take some photos of that.
Oh, I'll take a photograph of that school on the off chance it ends up being...
I'm going to do it now.
And then we need to get to the canal.
All right, well, let's all fucking do it.
Fine, we're going to do that right...
Right, somebody digs down under an already prepared grave,
buries her, then another body is buried on top.
Yeah, I've been thinking about that myself, but I've changed my mind.
Why?
Because she was seen walking along the towpath that night with a man in a dark suit.
You see, that night, Mott, I got a witness.
She's a witness?
Well, he was a witness. He must be dead by now.
I mean, nine years ago, he was over 90.
But he made a statement at the time, and it was never recorded.
I've checked through the files. I've looked right through, and it's not even mentioned.
A man in a dark suit.
And no hat. So it needn't rule out PC Fennel and PC Dudley for example.
I mean from a distance the uniform would look like a dark suit.
And he could have been carrying the hat.
Or even left it in the van.
Watch your knickers.
So we have had trouble once again finding one of the locations which is the flat of the sidekick
who is played by Patsy Rowlands in the film who is a carry-on star.
She was in a few of the carry-on films.
Again, my favourite one, Carrot Your Convenience.
Is she in that?
Yeah.
And is that the one that has the landlady in the lodging house as well?
Yeah, the Scottish landlady.
Do you know it'll be closed?
I'll lock the door at 11 o'clock
and you won't be coming in,
you wee shitey bastard.
Something like that.
That's the other strange thing
about the film,
isn't it, Paul?
That it had,
although it's,
what's in here?
It's just someone's
dance studio.
Dance studio.
We're on the Grand Union Canal.
Oh yeah, that's where we are right now.
And I'm looking for the location,
which I thought I recognised
when I saw the film,
but I was being a bit
over-enthusiastic, wasn't I?
I'm beginning to think it's in a different part of London altogether.
It might be, but it looked like it had a canal at the back.
I thought it might have been against the Thames, if I'm being honest.
That's the other thing about the film I wanted to say, Paul.
Although it's 1981, it has a very sort of...
Oh, it's all posh round here.
It's all warehouses turned into...
Look, there's a Spider-Man.
Spider-Man.
See the Spider-Man?
There's a Spider-Man, man.
Do you want to take a picture of that?
I can't.
Good, let's not do it then.
Here's a metal Spider-Man.
Right, what was the bit you wanted to talk about with the film?
Although it's set in 1981, it has a very old-fashioned, dreary,
sort of almost 1940s feel to it.
Do you know what I mean?
Or like the 60s, like the carry-on era,
that post-war sort of, you know, poverty and drabness.
You know?
It's Depression-era Britain, isn't it, really?
It doesn't have any yuppies or any of those things
that you'd associate with the changes that were happening in the 80s.
Do you know what I'm saying?
It's a very working-class kind of story, isn't it?
Yeah. And it's interesting because there's so much we haven't talked about in the 80s. Do you know what I'm saying? It's a very working class kind of story, isn't it? Yeah. And it's interesting because there's so much we haven't talked about in the film.
Mostly because some of it takes place outside of London, like when they go visit the crazy old man
and when they go visit the psychiatric place because the policeman who's lost his mind
but then conveniently for the plot gets it all back to give very important evidence
which was solved the film 90 minutes ago if he hadn't have been mad.
This is a little note for them. I think there's too many different characters and not enough action in the film
isn't there no every action scene is bernie cribbins walking in getting hit by a bunch of
men and then put into a bin and thrown in the river and there's do you know what i'm saying
though there's too many characters and not enough sort of plot you know yeah well it's like most of
these murder mysteries the plot is more about you think you learn more about the plot by talking to the characters,
but by and large, you don't.
Yes.
But I will say this. I will say this.
I've got some facts. I want to get these out of the way, right?
Because I thought this would be interesting.
Here we go.
Where's that top trivia gone?
Trivia.
It was the last film of actor Bernard Lee.
And Bernard Lee was more famously known as M from James Bond.
Of course, I forgot, yes, and he plays the desk sergeant, isn't he,
in Dangerous Davis' police station.
But he does seem on the way out.
I mean, he's mumbled his lines, he doesn't seem at the top of his game,
he seems very elderly.
I think his last film was Moonraker, which was just before this.
Well, this is his last film, his last Bond film was Moonraker, which was just before this. Well, this is his last film, but his last Bond film was Moonraker,
and he looked noticeably old in that.
And in this, he's very shaky.
Yeah, because it's funny, because in Bond, he's like,
Bond, come over here, Bond.
Sit down.
Go on, blast it.
All the stupid hair, brain, skin.
He's lost all of that sort of robust, that forthrightness,
that strength in his ways.
But then the character's much more kind of like,
yeah, you know, all right, then Davis, how you doing?
It's that kind of role, isn't it?
I guess, but do you know what I mean?
You can see he's not a well man.
I wonder if this was one of those small roles they gave him
to help pay for his medical bills or something for,
you know, like it was one of those.
Yeah, but he obviously wanted to do it, so, you know, good on him.
No, no, no.
It's not a terrible thing.
No, not at all.
It's not the last film ever, but...
A couple of lines, a couple of days,
and you're working with Cribbins and Joss Ackland
and half the cast of a carry-on film.
Apparently, during the first flashback scene in the film
where Celia Norris, the girl who was murdered,
is cycling across the road,
she goes by two Austin Maxis.
However, that scene is set in 1965
and the Austin Maxi wasn't launched until 1969.
Error there, one, I think, for the film boffins.
Yes, but those flashbacks are all filmed in black and white.
They use that technique, don't they, to separate it.
Yeah.
Crazy credits.
Initial caption in the opening credits reads,
this is the story of a man who became deeply concerned
with the unsolved murder of a young girl.
He was a born stumbler, but very patient and very dogged yes he's meant to be he is like that archetype that sort of
the colombo the sort of disheveled but but um determined detective isn't he yeah it's a very
much an archetype of that of the police stories of that time and also it's funny that he's not
he's not a private detective or a private investigator.
He works for the police force, doesn't he?
He's got a sad gumshoe thing going on.
Yes. A bit like...
Like you with that hat on.
The hat no one likes.
No, they don't.
I've been called on Twitter today
a tinker,
LL Cool J
and a touch of frost
yeah
which is what you look like
it's a fucking hat
do you know what I mean
just what
I have to
conform to everyone
what everyone does
just drab
that man who walked past
just didn't like your hat either
remember he said
he attacked me in patois
that guy yes
yeah it's not about your hat
I don't blame him
was it about my hat
I don't know you said it was about my hat? I don't know.
You said it was about your hat.
I'm paranoid now about my hat.
Shall I take it off round here?
No.
Why, do you think you're going to get beaten up for a hat-related crime, a hat crime?
Well, they'll say, you know, you're too big for your boots with that hat.
No one ever said to you, you're too big for any boots.
Now, listen.
There's a quote here.
Madam Tantarella, I couldn't see a future for us together, Dangerous Davies.
If you couldn't, who could?
She's the psychic.
What made you propose marriage to a woman like that,
says Mod Lewis, talking to Dangerous Davies about his wife.
And Dangerous Davies says, it was a lack of conversation.
It was an awkward silence.
I couldn't think of anything else to say.
Yeah, so he's divorced, isn't he, in this story?
Sad sack man.
It's a bit, you know, sad.
So let's just update them on the location.
We are now on the Regents Canal, is it?
It's not the Grand Union, it's the Regents.
I don't know.
If you follow this canal round, you get to Paddington
and then you get to the zoo and then you get to Camden.
This, we could get all the way to Camden on this.
So it's the Regents, I believe but we're heading towards the final destination where green cemetery
yes where a major plot point is discovered there oh here's some more facts both bernard lee and
roy stewart start together and live and let die i don't care about that the character was revived by
peter davidson in 2003 the same storyline was used for the pilot episode of that, so maybe we should watch the pilot episode and see how it stacks up.
We should.
What else? It is the last film of Lucy Griffith, don't know who that is, the last film of Avril
Andrews, don't know who that is, the last film of Roy Stewart.
It's a lot of people's last film, isn't it?
Yeah. Dangerous Davies' car was an Austin 8 Tourer, registration MFC664, probably built
for military use, but later remade as a civilian vehicle.
He also has a dog, doesn't he?
Yeah, in a kind of Columbo way. He has a dog that gets in the way but doesn't do much.
And the dog sort of tries to attack him when Maureen Lipman tries to get off with him.
Perhaps the dog is jealous because he can smell Maureen Lipman's lips.
Or sweaty camel.
No, no, no.
The dog was not in the film or out of the film
because of its approximation to Maureen Lipman's Quinn.
I think it was.
Oh, anachronisms.
In the scene on the train,
so there's a scene where they get the Bakerloo line,
don't they, somewhere,
and he has a fight with the guy who...
Oh, yes, a lot of lovely footage of the old tube carriages.
That's what I love in that scene,
where most of the film,
Dangerous Davies is getting beaten up,
but in that one,
he somehow manages to find
an abandoned section of a tube train
on the Bakerloo,
where he can beat the shit out of a pawn shop owner,
throwing him up and down the aisle.
It's hilarious.
Also, he throws him,
and it's like he's got superhuman strength,
the way the guy throws himself.
I almost nearly heard the million-dollar man sound effect
as he was throwing people.
Anyway, in the scene on the train, there are several football fans wearing rosettes, but these had gone out of fashion long before 1980 when the film was made.
Additionally, the scarves that the fans wear are of a type that, like rosettes, were not
in fashion in 1980.
That's what I mean.
It's anachronistic.
The whole vibe of the film doesn't feel like the 80s.
No, it feels like they've tried to make a film set in the 50s or something.
Yes, but it is set in the 80s.
It couldn't exist not in the 80s.
But I think that's Val Guest.
I think that's because he was a very old man at the time.
And he was probably directing films that needed a youthful zing.
And he couldn't deliver it because he was too busy making everything like the Lavender Hill mob.
You know what I mean? It's that kind of feel.
Interesting.
Anyway, we're closing in on our
final locations so we'll see you when we get there but this is just a nice little time we need to
talk about the praises of bernard cribbins so we'll talk about that at a later date look there
it is there's the ramp there is the ramp oh we're getting there now it's the other side of that ramp
isn't it all right we're getting there people might be wondering about the water tower paul
yeah but look we need to get a photo of the water tower before the light dies.
We'll do it.
We'll do it.
Stop chattering and I'll stop snappering.
All right?
Oh, God.
Something came up there.
Oh, we've been to the charity shop.
We need to talk about that.
I went to a charity shop.
I got a board game.
On Harrow Road.
I got a chameleon board game for £3 when it goes for about £20.
Oh, yeah.
That was in Forbidden Planet the other day.
Remember I was telling you about it.
I bet we can find it in a charity shop for nothing, and I was right.
Booyah!
I've found another copy of Come to a Party Vol. 2,
which has some radiophonic at-a-party stuff,
and also this.
Bob and Ray Spario Spectacular.
Is it one of those things where they use the pan of the sound
to make you feel like you're a party or something?
I don't know. It sounds interesting.
They've got the thing and Bob and Ray visit Dr Akbar at the castle.
They've got these scenes and music.
I think Dr Akbar reeks of this is going to be problematic.
Well, maybe.
But look, and also the cover is drawn by that Mad Magazine artist.
What's he called? Kirby. Something Kirby, isn't it?
Not Jack Kirby, but that other Kirby guy.
Jack something of his.
Davis. Jack Davis.
There you go.
Yeah. So that's what drew me to it as well,
because he does all that Mad Magazine work.
Do you recognise the style?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In those kind of splash pages he did with a spoof of a movie,
it was always that kind of art.
Yes, yeah.
All right, well, anyway, we went to a charity shop and got some good ones,
so you'll see those in a future episode, no doubt.
Right, I'm going to turn this off,
and we're going to go to the water tower and the last bit in the cemetery.
Oh, I'm looking forward to the cemetery.
It's going to get all dark and spooky by then, mate.
Dark and spooks.
We're going to have some whiskey as well.
Yay.
That's what Dangerous Davis like to drink.
Large scotch, he says.
We're doing it in remembrance.
Large scotch, he says. Large scotch, he says. We're doing it in remembrance. Large scotch, he says.
Large scotch, please.
Right, so in remembrance of Davies Davies Davies.
He makes one...
Davies Dangerous.
He makes one serious mistake, to my mind.
Of creme de menthe and suet pudding.
No.
I would have had some of that suet.
That's another mistake.
I would have tucked into that suet pudding because it looked nice.
All right.
And also I would have tucked into more inlitment.
Right, OK.
Well, we're moving on from that point on.
Why does he...
Why?
I mean, how often does he get an opportunity like that?
She's a young lady.
She's...
Mate, he was a gentleman and he was...
You know, she was throwing himself out.
They were both drunk.
They could have been...
You know, they would have regretted it.
He was doing the right thing.
And then at the end, it looks like he's fucking a dog in the stairwell.
Remember that? Because everyone comes out and goes... end, it looks like he's fucking a dog in the stairwell. Remember that?
Because everyone comes out and goes, I'm not.
And he literally says...
What's he doing? He's fucking a dog.
That's what I mean. The dog was in it.
Yeah.
That's why they call him Dangerous Davies,
because he was a dog fucker.
Oh, God.
Yes, I think I've told you everything, officer.
Don't you bloody...
Officer, me, booty!
You're like all those police bastards. I told you everything, officer. Don't you bloody officer me, booty!
You're like all those police bastards, all for yourself in the end. You're gonna do me over just because I made you look small.
No, I wouldn't do a thing like that, booty.
Not when we're having such a useful chat.
But I'll tell you something for your own convenience. If you don't think of a bit more of that story, the bitch you left out,
I'm going to chuck you down to the other gangway next time,
then I'm going to come and stamp on you because you took the mick out of me
in front of all those people, is that clear?
What else, then?
The night, booty, the night of July 23rd, 1965, that night.
We had it. Six, that is.
Sorry, say again?
Yeah, if we can find that gate, we'll end there.
Eli's having a wee by a tree.
We're just going to...
So here we are on the canal side.
Lots of canal boats.
On the other side of this canal is
Kensal Rise Cemetery. Did you say of this canal is Kensal Rise Cemetery.
Did you say Kensal Rise?
Kensal Green Cemetery.
One of the magnificent seven.
And on this canal path, a couple of major events happen.
One is they catch a man stealing from an allotment,
which is on this side of the wall.
The opposite side from the cemetery.
And that's where eventually they find out that a disused allotment uh greenhouse is used to
hide the body that's where she's buried yes um and there's a skeleton shot in it they discover
the skeleton it looks like something they got in a halloween shop but there's that and then there's
the bit where he gets a bin on his head beaten up and then thrown in the canal and then he gets
rescued by a by a vicar and the distinctive water tower is still there but now it has been converted
into some kind of
home. It's been
wooden panels. Either a studio or office or something
but it is still there
and it's hard because there's been a lot of growth obviously
in the last 40 years of the trees. And a massive
fucking Sainsbury's. It's obscured but that
beautiful Victorian era ramp
is still there. That kind of bridge
the Victorian bridge work.
It's called the Colford Bridge or something.
It's sort of like where the canal used to go off
and they used to deliver probably goods underneath it.
Yeah, very likely.
This was the lifeblood of Britain,
the canals that would take the stock up and down the country.
You say that, but in fact, they built all these canals,
but the trains came in like 20 years later and they built all these canals and then the trains came
in like 20 years later and they were made defunct yeah and instead it became the uh the veins of a
country the canal it became the veins of the country running through up until the 70s and 80s
a lot of these canals were completely in in the ones inside cities were totally disused and like
were sort of wastelands and no-go areas
before they turned them into sort of you know parks and places for people to walk and stuff
and for either crusty art students to buy a long boat and live out on the or you know middle class
people who want to break from the rat race and buy a little lovely little boat to live on which
is fair because i had a friend who did that she bought a boat because she hated living in london and working in london we haven't had any
whiskey yet i'm gonna have some whiskey on the finale of this of this walk because i'm mate can
i just be honest with you i'm fucking knackered you're fucking knackered just tired we've been
we have walked quite a lot around paul and you know we've done well we we've seen some uh we've
seen some sites it's a lovely little stretch of the canal by the graveyard here, isn't it, really?
Oh, aye.
Oh, aye.
Industry going on here.
Maybe you can hear that drilling.
So on the left-hand side of us we have growth, allotment, birth, food, power, energy.
And on the right, death.
The end.
The end.
And in the middle, the water.
The lifeblood flowing
through this great country of ours, this land of hope and glory, this sceptred isle, this
beautiful green, green grass of home.
That's not the message of the film. If anything's the message of the film, it's like, we're
rapists, and now we're in power, sort of thing, you know?
Well, if there's a message of the film, it's we're cops and we're bad and we do bad things.
Yes, you see what I mean?
But that's just one...
To be honest, that's just one bad egg.
So there's a whole run-down drabness.
The background that the film is set in is so run-down and drab.
Everything's browns and greens and greys.
Everything's got this kind of sepia tone to it.
Look, look, sun's going down, it's getting dark
and we're hopefully going to have just enough time
to get into the graveyard.
What we misconstrued as a bridge
tends, looks like now, to be a power centre.
Can I take a map and see if there's anywhere...
Otherwise we have to walk back.
There must be somewhere to cross the canal up here.
There must be. Badger Cheshire.
The name of a boat.
I'm just reading stuff on a boat.
Let's drink a drink.
We haven't drank.
No drone zone. Danger of death.
So don't fly your zone drone over there.
You can't.
I guess they could catch you if they catch your drone
with a big net
the drone
and then it feeds through
the radio waves
into you
and electrocutes you
no I think
they're just two separate signs
close to each other
one to say
don't fly your drone over
and one is to say
don't climb over
and come in
like don't go fetch your frisbee
or your kite
or your drone
or your drone
that's why you don't want to
what if your drone came down
then you try to
climb in
and then you got
then a little girl at some point will go Billy no as you get electrocuted what if your drone came down and then you tried to climb in and then you got...
Then a little girl at some point
will go,
Billy, no!
As you get electrocuted.
It's very much got that vibe
around here, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Of a children's foundation.
What were they called?
Safety film.
Education safety film thing, yeah.
Don't pick up a hot sparkler.
Don't go playing in train tunnels.
Now, Paul,
you wanted to say some words about Bernard Cribben.
I think now's a good time to talk about Bernard Cribben.
It's funny, because Bernard Cribben is like the British Bretty White, I think,
in terms of everyone loves him, he's still going after all these years,
he's still acting, he's been in Doctor Who, you know,
carry-on films, theatre, comedy.
He must be in his 90s now.
Yeah, easily. And I just think in this role, it's interesting must be in his 90s now. Yeah, easily.
And I just think in this role, it's interesting,
because you know he's known for comedy.
He's known for being a kind of...
Well, he had comedy, but he also was like a working man's hero
because he had those,
Right, said Fred, of us together,
and he had a kind of common man's touch.
Yes.
And I think it was interesting,
because I think this film is him trying to...
Not to say take it seriously, him trying to not to say taken seriously
but trying to do something adult
trying to be a bit more serious
and adult
yeah
but his charm
undercuts
the sort of seriousness
you don't believe
that he's really unhappy
do you know
do you know what I mean
again it's tonally
it's wrong
and I think the casting
is part of what's wrong
I mean he's one of the best things in it
but he's miscast
is what I'm saying
well here's the thing
I think he's perfect in it and that's why it didn't take off, though.
His version of that character didn't take off.
The Peter Davidson.
The one that, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that was because they could, you know,
give it a new spin for an edgy new generation.
It's not, this isn't your Bernard Cribbins last detective.
That's what I mean.
This whole film was so anachronistic
and sort of backward-looking and just, you know,
and that's part of what makes it interesting for me.
But I will say this, I will probably buy him in the role
than Peter Davison. Really?
Because Peter Davison has this kind of
warm, chumly, but slightly
kind of weak. Fake.
Phony. Feeble kind of
masculinity,
which I don't know would
suit the character, but we haven't read the books,
we don't know. These are all interpretations.
Perhaps it's because of his reputation as being more of a comic actor,
but yeah, it doesn't seem to fit with the grittier elements of the story.
Oh, there's a bench there. Let's sit down on the bench
and have a drink and a smoke, and then we can get to the graveyard
when it gets all dark and spooky. How about that?
How about that?
But anyway, I think he's good in the role.
I just think the script and the tone is all over the place.
And I think they relied on him to boost the comedy scenes,
but didn't give him much direction, I think, when it came to the drama scenes.
And the comedy scenes weren't great either.
The comedy scenes are...
We're going to stick a horse up in a hall.
We're going to stick a horse in a house.
That's the comedy.
And getting hit by a bin.
With animals, they must have had a nightmare shoot
that day
with the horse
do you know what I mean
like
you know someone came out
the next day
and said
did you know your horse
did a big shit
and piss in my hallway
because you got him frightened
because there was no animal
safety people on
but again it's another
anachronistic thing
he says it's the
rag and bone man's horse
come on it's the 80s
I didn't see rag and bone men
no I did
when I was growing up
you did
yeah
I saw one or two
they were about
they were they were a thing still the hangover yes but it's an anachronistic element and there's
so many of those hangovers from the earlier period that's still in the film and that's
like that you know what i'm saying to be fair that you could about to disappear the rag and
bone men i reckon by the mid 80s they must have disappeared by then the horses were out and the
vans are in and all that stuff. So, yeah.
Interesting.
There's so many anachronisms when you think about it.
Let's get on this whiskey.
Let's do that.
No, we don't want to talk about your cock.
Why?
Because just like Dangerous Davies, it's ill-judged.
No, just like Davies. How did my cock get...
Shut up, you twat.
All right, hang on.
Let me think of a good put-down.
You have nothing.
Your penis is like the film Dangerous Davies
in that it's long, reminds me of the old days
and made me feel sad.
Shut up.
That's what you always say about everything.
That's your go-to metaphor.
What?
For everything.
Made me feel sad.
Made me feel sad.
Fucking have an original thought, Paul.
All right, your penis makes me feel good.
No.
In fact, actually, you're not having any whiskey now
for that attitude.
Come on. What? It's my whiskey. Yeah, in fact, actually, you're not having any whiskey now for that attitude. Come on!
What?
It's my whiskey!
Yeah, but you made the mistake of giving it to me, so now I'm in charge of it.
And if I say you're not...
What?
Tell me that my put-down was good.
It was very good.
Your put-down was very good and I felt very belittled.
Thank you.
Now we can have whiskey.
We'll see you.
What do you get whiskey out of?
I've got a little cup in me bag thing, so I'll sort that out.
I'll be fine.
Cup in me bag thing?
I've got a cup in me bag thing.
And I like sitting by this fire on a boat.
It's nice.
It's very, what do they call it?
Wintry?
Evocative.
Yes, it's very evocative.
Wintry.
It's very wasteland-y on that side.
You've got old industrial bits and tubes and gangways and planking and stuff.
It's the Neverworld part of London that you kind of go through on a train
and don't realise.
Like Wilsdon Junction, whenever you pass through that,
it's like, where are all these fucking warehouses
and long stretches of empty concrete parks?
It's all around here.
It's where all the commerce came in, you know.
Oh, there's the train overground, and there's another train.
I think that's the line you take when you go back up to...
It might be, yeah.
Right, let's have a nice sit down, a smoke, a whisky and we'll go to our last location.
Hopefully we can get within a snifter of it.
We just need to check if there's a bridge further up.
We just need to check it.
So we're going to do that and get back to you.
Under the water tower to the bridge there.
Back the way we came.
Either way, you'll hear us one way or the other one last time on this beautiful and
I think respectful to the 40 year legacy of Dangerous Davies.
Ah, now. If I put the toe of the pick in there, we'll see if it'll shift a bit.
It's good and solid. It's been fixed for too long.
Let's both have a go, all right?
Right.
Right, now.
Now what?
Now what indeed.
Have your torch. Never touch. Oh, senior.
What a bloody rotten trick.
And so here we are at the end of our long journey.
Mr Silverman, we're at the back end of the cemetery.
Kensal Green Cemetery.
We couldn't get in because it's way past
lockout time and we're late now.
I told you
earlier that lockout time was
bound to be dusk, which is 4.30
and that's when it was, Paul. Hey, do you know what else you said?
What? Let's go get fucked on a bench
car. Let's have a little drinky
woo-woo. And I was like, come on, mate, let's be professional, let's get this sorted a bench. Come on. Let's have a little drinky woo-woo.
And I was like, come on, mate.
Let's be professional.
Let's get this sorted so we can do it. You asked me via text last night to bring scotch.
And I brought the scotch, and we've had some scotch now, yeah?
And do you know why we had the scotch, Paul?
Because this podcast is about Dangerous Davis,
The Last Detective, released in 1981.
Yeah.
Which was filmed round here.
Yeah.
Yeah?
Comes round here. It comes Yeah? Yeah. Comes round here.
It comes round here and films round there.
And you said we should drink not only scotch, not only scotch,
but creme de menthe. Yeah, well,
we couldn't get that, could we? Thank God.
Yeah. And I look for
it, Paul. I know. That's my level of
dedication to this. I look for it too.
So don't try and tell me, oh, Alki
Eli, he's always with the bad influence on me.
You love it.
You supped it down.
You love to sup at the whiskey teat.
I'll sup you and finger you in a limo.
Oh, that's good.
No, that's really original.
Eli's pissed everyone because he's had a little bit of scotch.
And I didn't touch a drop because I'm a good boy.
I can't believe you're alive.
I am doing this.
So we're at the back end of a cemetery where the dead are
and I can see graves.
Yes, we can see.
We're looking into the cemetery.
Can you see graves?
Because, yeah, I can't.
Well, no, I thought it was graves
but it was bollards.
That's St Mary's Cemetery there
which is a little smaller cemetery
attached...
Within or without?
Within.
So it's part of it?
Yeah, interesting, isn't it?
Did it bleed in?
Did it start off as a little one there?
Maybe that was the original...
You're touching my cemetery.
Perhaps because they had that crisis
where they had to build the Magnificent Seven.
Yeah.
Perhaps this was the original site of a cemetery,
the St Mary's bit,
and then they had to build Kensal Green.
You see what I mean?
So it just bled on.
You don't mind if our cemetery touches yours, do you, mate?
No, we have to build a massive cemetery
because we've got too many corpses.
It's not like...
No laughing matter, Paul.
There's too many corpses. Like, imagine like... It's no laughing matter, Paul. There's too many corpses.
Like, imagine that.
You go to Sainsbury's, go, I'll mine the corpse.
Walk around the corpse.
No, because they didn't have Sainsbury's in the 1800s, did they?
Yes, they did.
No, they didn't.
It started in the 1800s, Sainsbury's.
Look that up right now and tell me.
That's where you're fucking wrong.
Tell me if it did.
That is where you are fucking wrong.
Hello, Google.
Google.
When was Sainsbury's made?
Listen to me.
He hasn't even got his phone on.
What a cunt.
What a lying cunt.
When was James Sainsbury's founded?
When was James Sainsbury's founded?
What was that you said?
James, fuck your mouth.
James Sainsbury's.
I'll fuck your mouth right up.
I'll finger your mouth.
Oh, God.
In a line-up.
Anyway, any last thoughts?
Yeah, you can't work a phone.
What, do you want me to look up?
When Sainsbury's was founded. You fucking sausage-fingered prick.
I surmise that Sainsbury's was founded in the 1800s.
I'll just do it now.
I can't.
Just you do it.
Okay, Google.
When was Sainsbury's founded?
1869.
Boom!
Boom!
So was my reference to Sainsbury's, was it correct?
Yeah, but it was.
It was.
Yes, it was. In terms of the times,, was it correct? Yeah, but it was. It was. Yes, it was.
In terms of the times, man, it was correct.
Yes?
Thank you.
The point is, though, right, Mr Silverman,
that you were saying there were so many dead in Sainsbury's.
When Sainsbury's back in the day was one shop
that sold a fucking loaf of bread and a lamb joint,
it's not exactly like the same fucking thing now.
It's a lamb joint.
He's done it again.
What have I done?
That is not an example
of something they would sell.
A lamb joint.
It literally is a joint of lamb.
I'll have a lamb joint
and a honey tea.
I'm weird, man.
I don't live in this world of food.
I know no food.
What are we doing now, then?
What's going on?
Where are you going?
Back up to the Harrow Road
because we're making
too much of a noise here.
Come on.
You're the one shouting
like a fucking drunken twat.
I know, and I love to, and I want to continue.
So you'd rather do it on the high street then, would you?
Shouting, fucking finger my line up on the high street.
You're not, I haven't said the word finger in the last ten minutes.
I like the word fingering.
Yes.
Now, Paul, tell them what's coming up at the end of the show
or something about what's coming next week or something.
Well, I don't know.
Here we are at the end of our tour.
We've gone to the locations of the film
Dangerous Davies
as I say
you can go to our website
thecheapshow.co.uk
where you'll see pictures from our walk today
and also a link to the movie itself
if you want to
for any reason
watch that film
you might not
but we thought we'd celebrate 40 years
the wonderful work of Bernard Cribbins,
Pam St Clemens, Joss Ackland, Bill Mayhew.
We looked after them all.
And Val Guest, of course.
And Val Guest.
Their work shined in this film,
and we thought we'd celebrate it to kick off 2021.
No.
Two.
Two.
2022.
I can't believe you did that. Let me take over. Thanks, everybody. Get off.. Two. 2022.
I can't believe he did that.
Let me take over.
Thanks, everybody.
Get off.
Don't touch it.
Thanks, everybody, for listening to Cheap Show.
I'm Eli Silverman.
You'll see us next week.
What will we be doing next week, Paul?
What will we be doing?
More wacky adventures, Mr. Silverman.
We'll probably just do something nice, like a Tales from the Dance Floor,
or we'll do a game,
or we'll do something normal and regular
and in the house of mashing eggs.
Paul, I didn't mention.
What?
Next week, I can't do it.
So I've got Roger Gynora to come in, yeah?
Roger Gynora is coming in.
Is Gynora still around?
And he does such a good me, you know?
It's natural.
It's not like you're impressed with me.
Well, what the fans don't know
of Cheap Show is
he's stepped in a few times
without them knowing.
Yes, so don't tell them.
I'm just saying.
This is off...
You're telling them?
Roger Gynora's coming in next week.
All right?
So you stopped me
wrapping up the podcast
to interrupt
by telling me something
and the audience
that you don't want them to know.
Can I just...
No, I've wanted it to be a bit.
You can't...
Just fucking turn it off.
Right, well...
You've ruined this.
You've ruined it?
You've ruined it for me.
You've ruined it because you don't know how to get into a cemetery.
How are we going to know?
I don't know.
That's a fossil shop.
There's fossils there.
That's a fossil shop.
That's a great way to end the podcast.
I've had a brainwave.
What do you mean, fossil shop?
Puzzle.
Bastards. to end the podcast I've had a brainwave what do you mean fossil shock puzzle bastards why are we going
to there
I don't want to
I want to just
end the podcast
let's do it
this is a great
place to do it
anyway
thank you for
listening to Cheap
Show
thank you for
continuing to
support us
we'll be back
next week for
more economy
comedy fun
you can support us on patreon.com back next week for more economy comedy fun.
You can support us on patreon.com forward slash cheap show.
Give what you can,
but only if you can.
I'm not interested.
No, it's just tat.
It's not just tat.
This place is full of fucking tat.
I will kill you.
I will fight you.
It's full of crystals and tat.
Fuck off.
It looks like a student fucking union.
It looks like a student...
Everything you think about is just mired in about 20 years ago
when you fucking used to be able to get hard.
Bye, everybody.
You've pissed me off.
Right.
No, you can't make it nice.
I was trying to wrap up all professional,
and instead you thought you'd point out a fucking shop
selling rocks with fairy lights wrapped around it.
It's better than what?
Bullshit crystals.
You could just be looking at normal veg.
What a load of fuck.
We might be looking at normal veg.
Say finger again.
Go on, that'll be good.
Eli.
Go on.
Yes?
I wanted to get you a necklace,
but I said I got you a finger ring instead.
And did you make that up?
Yeah, I just did.
So that's how we're ending with my great wizard gag.
And we'll see you next great whizzer gag.
And we'll see you next time on Cheap Show.
We hope you've enjoyed the celebration.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Take care.
Oh, and at the Cheap Show pod on Cheap Show,
I'm at Paul Gannon Show.
Eli is... Eli Snoyd on Twitter, E-L-I-S-N-O-I-D.
And join us next week.
And remember...
Bye.
That's a pod.
You can't think of anything.
Good.
Have you got anything?
No.
I didn't say I had, though. Oh's a pod. You can't think of anything. Good. Have you got anything? No. I didn't say I had, though.
Oh, shut up.
And remember, life is cheap.
Knowledge is power.
Yeah, that was Edward.
Bye, everyone.
That man thinks I was shouting it in.
I was like, goodbye.
Fuck that! Take me home. Oh.
It's very funny.
You ready to do it?
Oh, my back.
Listen, you press the button, do you?
I want you.
What?
I want you.
No, I'm...
Listen, I'm not free.
I promise you, you know.
Don't you like them or smell them?
Not good enough for you, are you?
Oh, yes, they're super, Ed.
They're really super.
I can't...
Please, put them away. No more.
Ena.
Ena.
Oh, come here.
Come over here.
Come on.
Come on.
Oh.
Get him. Get him. What are he doing? Come on. Get in!
Sir, it's you, right, you senseless burk.
I hope the bloody dog screws you.
Please, lady, don't put our dears into his head.
No, she was kidding.
She was only kidding.