The Dustbinmen

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The Dustbinmen was a British television sitcom made by Granada Television for ITV, which starred Bryan Pringle, Trevor Bannister, Graham Haberfield and Tim Wylton. The show was a spin-off from a one-off 90-minute TV Movie "There's a Hole in Your Dustbin, Delilah" (1968) written by Jack Rosenthal and directed by Michael Apted. This led to the sitcom which ran for three series between 1969 and 1970. Rosenthal wrote all of the episodes of the first two series.

Contents 1 Characters 2 Links with other programmes 3 Preservation and DVD release 4 Trivia

[edit] Characters

Cheese and Egg (Bryan Pringle), Heavy Breathing (Trevor Bannister), Winston (Graham Haberfield) and Eric (Tim Wylton) were the crew of dustcart 'Thunderbird 3' of the Corporation Clensing Department - the name obviously being an ironic reference to the spacecraft in Thunderbirds. Also known as 'Number 3 Gang',they throughout the day would collect dustbins and generally be rude to each other or anyone else. Cheese and Egg was the natural-born leader of the gang, with his knowledge, the gang could get out of sticky situations if they were lucky. Heavy Breathing was 'the one with the good looks'. He would spend most of the time pleasuring housewives to which he finds quite annoying. Winston was the die-hard fan of Manchester City Football Club and would see one of the players Colin Bell as a god. If anyone slagged his team, they would be for it! Eric was the sensitive one who spent most of time talking about television and saving to buy a colour tv for his mother.

The other main character in the series was the Inspector or as he was always known, 'Bloody Delilah. John Woodvine played the role in the first series. It was obvious that all inspectors at the Corporation Clensing Department were known as Bloody Delilah. From the second series onwards, Brian Wilde took over the role,but with a different character with a different real name 'Bernard Pooke'. He kept the nickname because, according to Cheese and Egg, "they're all bloody Delilahs". Another character that appeared in most episodes was Smellie Ibbotson (John Barrett). He was the scavenger on the tips to start with then was promoted as Bloody Delilah's abdog, reporting on who was sciving and what they were up to. Not everyone liked Smellie not just the fact that he was smelly, but also was difficult to understand as he had no teeth.

[edit] Links with other programmes

The Dustbinmen has links with other programmes, including ones from Granada Television. Coronation Street has mentioned a few times by Eric despite the fact that Graham Haberfield aka Winston once played Jerry Booth in the show. Julie Goodyear appeared in two episodes as a housewife, she later played Bet Lynch. Barbara Knox (at that time Mullaney) who later played Rita Littlewood/Fairclough/Sullivan played a housewife who read tealeaves. Jill Summers (Phyllis Pearce) played a cleaner in one episode. Peter Dudley (Bert Tilsley) appeared as a man in a hospital corridor in one episode and Bryan Mosley (Alf Roberts) once appeared as a doctor.

Jack Rosenthal left the show to concentrate on developing the sitcom The Lovers which co-starred Paula Wilcox. She appeared in two episodes of The Dustbinmen as Naomi, Winston's girlfriend.

There are links with Last of the Summer Wine too. Brian Wilde who played Bloody Delilah mk.2 played Foggy Dewhurst in the programme. John Comer who played Sid in the programme, once played a policeman in The Dustbinmen.

In 1988 Brian Wilde starred with Trevor Bannister in the BBC1 show Wyatt's Watchdogs, a sitcom about bickering neighbours trying to run a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

[edit] Preservation and DVD release

• The original play was shot on black and white film, apparently 16mm.
• Except for the animated titles, series 1 was shot entirely on black and white videotape.
• All subsequent episodes, including a short Christmas sketch, were made on colour videotape with exterior scenes shot on 16mm.
• Only the first episode of series 2 has survived in its colour version; the rest are preserved on black and white 16mm telerecordings with optical sound. These were obviously made for overseas sales, since the opening Granada Television logo is replaced by Granada Television International.
• Except for two episodes believed wiped, Series 3 and the Christmas sketch survive on colour videotapes of widely varying quality.

In 2005 the surviving material was released on Region 2 DVD by Network Video, a company that has gained a reputation for 'rescuing' obscure programmes and films from the vaults, alongside many better-known ones.

[edit] Trivia

In the closing credits the Granada "G-arrow" logo appears in black on a light coloured background before rapidly expanding, switching to its usual "negative" colours and returning to normal size. This seems to be the only instance of the Granada logo being toyed with in this way, since Granada reportedly disapproved of anything that might appear to trivialise its corporate image.