Adventures of a Plumber's Mate

• Elaine Paige attempted to have her name removed from the advertisements for the film after she became famous in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita”.
• William Rushton was a late replacement for Jimmy Edwards.
• Last live action film of Arthur Mullard.

• Miscellaneous: Elaine Paige is shown as playing “Daisy” in the end-credits, yet throughout her scenes she is referred to as “Susie”.

2) The only thing which distinguishes this final instalment of theAdventures film trilogy is that the budget has reached a new low andthere's a pall of palpable depression, brutality and despair hangingover the whole proceedings. In this episode, the incompetent and rathernasty little misogynist protagonist Sid South (whose first pick-up hereinforms us has got a small dick) owes rent, bills and debts to agangster bookie. The bookies are demanding payment with extrememenaces, so in between fixing people's plumbing (his unhappily pursuedtrade), Sid tries a variety of dodgy money-making schemes, none ofwhich do him any good.

What is fascinating is the sheer contempt that everyone shows everyoneelse in the film (with the exception of Sid's personality-less barmaidon-off girlfriend), and the dilapidated feel of Britain in the late 70s(the "winter of discontent" was just around the corner). With its pettygangsters roaming around throwing their weight about, and its centralcharacter desperately unable to better his financial position, Britainresembles one of those post-Communist Eastern block countries, a drearydog eat dog landscape in which everyone is mean-spirited, quick toanger, aggressive and anxious. The only thing that brings anyone anyrespite is the odd bout of loveless sex, performed with all the finesseof fumbling adolescents.

Adventures of a Plumber's Mate is billed as a comedy, but apart from acouple of very obvious comic moments provided by natural clowns likeStephen Lewis (as ever doing Blakey from On the Buses) and ClaireDavenport (as a violent masseuse), there's not a laugh to be had infrom the whole soul-destroying hour and a half of the film; it isn'teven paced like a comedy, more like a particularly bleak Play forToday. This is the product of a defeated nation, with the odd bout ofsad-sack snickering punctuating the sound of millions of days in thelife gone sour.

3) For once, a protagonist who doesn’t smoke! I swear, they love theircigarettes in Great Britain, and it seemed in every sex comedy, someone islighting up.

One of the movies from the British-made "Adventures" series, this one isactually a good one. A likeable Lothario plumber named Sid is havingtroublepaying the bookies and must get 1000 pounds paid to them or "else". Inbetween plumbing jobs, he works for a small-time crime boss who gives him"jobs" to do, and they all go wrong for him. As with all movies in thisseries, people go naked, but here, there aren’t any sex scenes for once,butthere are some funny scenes created from the situations the plumber getsinto.

Stephen Lewis, who played Inspector Blakey from "On The Buses", has asmallrole as Sid’s boss, the aptly named B.A. Crapper. Yes, this is a veryBritish film, with some people’s accents being very difficult to decipher,but it’s still worth seeing, although it’s probably unavailable in theU.S.If you live in a British Commonwealth country, you’ll findit.