Curry and Chips
1 9 6 9 (UK)
6 x 30 minute episodes
Set in the staff canteen and on the factory floor at Lillicrap Ltd, makers of seaside novelties, Curry & Chips was a Johnny Speight comedy about Kevin O’Grady – a newly arrived Pakistani immigrant with an Irish father, a genetic combination that resulted in his nickname of ‘Paki-Paddy’.
Played by a blacked-up Spike Milligan, Paki-Paddy suffered the racist taunts of his workmates, led by the liberal-minded but somewhat confused factory foreman, Arthur (Eric Sykes).
Sam Kydd featured as the malodorous Smellie, with Norman Rossington and Geoffrey Hughes as racist white Liverpudlians, and singer/actor Kenny Lynch as a black anti-Pakistani.
In addition to the liberal slinging about of racist terms, there was a good deal of (mostly harmless) swearing, one viewer noting that the word “bloody” was said 59 times in a single episode. Only Eric Sykes didn’t swear in the show – he simply refused to do so.
Produced and Directed by Keith Beckett, this sitcom was very much a product of the 60s. It tried (not always successfully) to deal with racism, bigotry and class hatred in a light-hearted manner, and this series would not (could not) have been made today.
Political correctness ensured that two similar series – The Melting Pot, also starring Milligan as a Pakistani (six episodes of which were made in 1975), and Jewel In The Crown, for which a pilot was shot in 1985 – were scrapped.
One episode of The Melting Pot was shown in June 1975, but the BBC refused to show the subsequent five episodes as the ingredients constituted way too much of a heady brew for the Beeb to handle.
Ironically Curry & Chips was LWT’s first sitcom made in colour . . .
Kevin O’Grady (‘Paki-Paddy’)
Spike Milligan
Arthur the Foreman
Eric Sykes
Landlady
Fanny Carby
Dick
Geoffrey Hughes
Kenny
Kenny Lynch
Norman
Norman Rossington
Smellie
Sam Kydd
