Show Notes
“You’re worth more dead than alive!”
We’ve talked a lot about Steptoe & Son – and its principle artistes – recently on Goon Pod and the sister show so it feels appropriate this week to air this interesting chat.
It is July 1973 and the second feature film based on the hit BBCTV sitcom about a pair of rag-and-bone-men has just come out. Unfortunately its release coincides with a much more popular film in the shape of Roger Moore’s maiden Bond outing Live And Let Die and most people go to see that instead. Although Steptoe & Son Ride Again worked better than the first film, as it anchored the characters in familiar territory, it did badly where the first had done well. Co-writer Alan Simpson said “I suspect the majority of people hadn’t liked the first one so didn’t go back for the second, which is a shame.”
When their aging horse Hercules has to be put out to pasture,father-and-son totters Albert and Harold Steptoe face galloping financial calamity. Falling in with Frankie Barrow, the ‘Godfather of Shepherd’s Bush’, Harold foolishly buys a greyhound, hoping ‘Hercules II’ will be the answer totheir pecuniary woes… only to discover the dog is extremely short-sighted and useless for racing. With money owing to Barrow Harold hits on a scheme which if pulled off would get Frankie off his back but would require him and his father to start a new life where nobody knows them (“I could be Harry Faversham”): they will fake Albert’s death and claim his life-insurance money.
From this fairly simple premise comes great comedy and some marvellous character work, not least from the two leads, Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett. They are ably supported by a cast which includes Milo O’Shea as a brandy-ridden sawbones, Henry Woolf as Frankie, Yootha Joyce as Harold’s Auntie Freda, Frank Thornton, Bill Maynard, Neil McCarthy, Richard Davies and, memorably, Diana Dors as a recently-widowed housewife wanting a bit of the other from a frankly terrified Harold.
Joining Tyler are Michael Livesley & Paul Carmichael, and while discussing the film the three regularly meander down conversational alleyways, chatting about the lost art of home taping, antiquated or regional profanities, the history of Live TV, the great British tradition of innuendo, and boomer nostalgia, while referencing the likes of One Foot In The Grave, The Goodies, Married With Children and even Bottle Boys! Plus they talk about their great love for the Steptoe TV series, the actors involved and even envisage Wilfrid Brambell squaring up to Frank Zappa!
This was recorded in October 2025 and originally put out as part of Goon Pod Film Club: Patreon.com/GoonPod
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