Funny / Dad's Army

• Arthur Lowe's ability to say more with a glance then any comedy dialogue could manage.

Series 1 (1968)

• In "The Man and the Hour", Frazer tells Mainwaring that he works in a philatelists shop.^note  This was before Croft and Perry settled on making him an undertaker. Mainwaring asks him to spell that. Frazer replies, "S-H-O-P", which Mainwaring starts writing down before catching himself.

Series 2 (1969)

• In "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Walker" (as seen in the scripts and the 2019 reconstruction), the platoon get unwelcome news: Walker is being called up and must report for his medical in ten days.
  • Mainwaring tells Wilson to send a telegram to the War Office saying "DESIRABLE WALKER NOT CALLED UP YET". Walker hands Mainwaring a coin and tells him, "Have this one on me!" (referring to the cost of sending the telegram). Wilson holds out his hand for the coin, but Mainwaring pockets it instead.
  • Unfortunately for the platoon, the Brigadier who receives the telegram has been asked by his brother-in-law (commander of a PT unit) to ask Home Guard units if they have any talented long-distance walkers who haven't been called up yet to put together as a morale booster, so he gets completely the wrong idea from the telegram, leading to a Who's on First? conversation when Mainwaring and Wilson show up for an interview:
    Brigadier: Come sit down, gentlemen, [as Mainwaring and Wilson do just that] I can spare you five minutes, just give me the details. [picks up pen and paper] What's this walker's name?
    Mainwaring: I beg your pardon, sir?
    Brigadier: The walker's name, man.
    Mainwaring: It's Walker, sir.
    Brigadier: No, I know that, I want his name.
    Wilson: His name's Walker, sir.
    Brigadier: What, d'you mean to say you have a walker named Walker?
    Mainwaring: Well, yes, sir!
    Brigadier: Hm! [to Captain Cutts, his adjutant] That's unusual, eh Cutts?
    Cutts: Oh, I don't know, sir, I knew a butcher named Butcher once.
    Brigadier: [long pause] Did you. [to Mainwaring and Wilson] Very well, then, what's his record?
    Mainwaring: His record, sir?
    Brigadier: Well, he has a record, doesn't he?
    Mainwaring: [sotto voce, to Wilson] Does he have a record, Wilson?
    Wilson: I don't think he's ever been found out, sir.
    Mainwaring: All right. [aloud, to the brigadier] No, no record, sir.
    Brigadier: Is he good?
    Mainwaring: Oh, yes, sir, he's very good.
    Brigadier: Well, how the hell do you know if he's good if he hasn't got a record!?
    Mainwaring: We- ah. Nnn. [tugs his collar] I don't think I quite follow, sir.
    Brigadier: Well, is he one of the London-to-Brighton walkers?
    Mainwaring: Oh no, sir, I think he's one of the Walmington-on-Sea Walkers.
    Brigadier: Sea walkers?
    Mainwaring: No, sir, J Walker.
    Brigadier: Jaywalker?
    Mainwaring: Yes! Joe Walker, that's his full name.
    Brigadier: I know his name, but how d'you know he's a walker?
    Mainwaring: [exchanges a perplexed look with Wilson] Because he told us so!
    Wilson: That's right, he said, "I'm Walker."
    Brigadier: No, surely he must have said, "I'm a walker."
    Mainwaring: Not A Walker, he said "I'm J Walker."
    Brigadier: [clearly eager to get rid of Mainwaring and Wilson] When's he due to be called up?
    Mainwaring: Quite soon, er, he gets his medical next week.
    Brigadier: Very well, leave it with me, I'll see what I can do. Good day. [waves them away]
    Mainwaring: Oh, thank you very much. [as he and Wilson stand, a yellow bulb flashes on a shelf behind them]
    Cutts: Ah. That's the yellow warning, it's an air raid. [opening the office door] You two gentlemen had better go to the shelter in the basement - just along the passage and down the stairs, just follow the others, clearly marked.
    Mainwaring: Oh, thanks. [to Brigadier] Well, erm... good day! [he and Wilson leave]
    Brigadier: A walker... jaywalker... those two are up the pole if you ask me! If my brother-in-law wants walkers, he's jolly well going to have to find them himself! [crumples up the letter from his brother-in-law and throws it in the wastepaper basket]
    Cutts: Hadn't we better beat it down to the shelters too, sir?
    Brigadier: With those two lunatics!? You can go if you like, I'd rather take my chances up here! [sits back in his chair and sips from a cup of tea on his desk]
  • By the time the all clear sounds, Mainwaring and Wilson have missed the last scheduled train back to Walmington, so they have to stay in the city overnight. Cut to the two of them lying either side of an attractive blonde woman named Judy. A wider shot reveals all: they've had to sleep on the platform in a London Underground station.
  • With time running short, Jones recruits Frazer, Godfrey, and Pike's help in arranging for Walker to fail his medical. The day before the test, Jones has Walker jump off the lowest two rungs of a ladder nearly five hundred times to flatten the soles of his feet (flat feet being one of the conditions that can get one disqualified from military service on medical grounds). On the morning of the exam, Pike leads Walker on a run around the town, and Jones gives Walker some carbolic soap to further accelerate his heart rate, followed by putting a blindfold on him to get his eyes to go out of focus for just long enough to fail the eye test, then spinning him around to make him dizzy. At 9:30 on the dot, they remove the blindfold and send Walker staggering into the recruitment centre. He staggers out again seconds later - his test isn't until the next day.
• In the third act of "Under Fire" (as also seen in the scripts and the 2019 reconstruction), a firebomb falls through the roof of the church hall, and the platoon's attempts to put out the blaze quickly devolve into a parade of ineptitude.
  • Jones' attempts to get a bucket of water consistently end in failure (and usually a thorough soaking). When he first tries to retrieve a fire bucket from the wall of the church hall, he accidentally tips the contents all over himself.
  • A miscommunication from Mainwaring as he tries to fight the fire with a hose attached to a pump in a bucket results in the hose being disconnected and Walker pumping water all over Godfrey's trousers (inevitably prompting him to ask if he might be excused). Jones returns with a second bucket of water, but slips on the church floor and spills it, so there's only a dribble to add to the bucket for the pump. "Every little helps," he insists; Mainwaring is unimpressed.
  • Pike remembers that there's a fire extinguisher on the hall stage, and he and Mainwaring run across to fetch it, but when Pike is too tentative in banging it against the floor to activate it, Mainwaring grabs it and smashes it straight through the trap door in the middle of the stage, getting a faceful of foam for his trouble. Jones returns with a third bucket and sees Mainwaring struggling with the extinguisher; while he is thus distracted, Godfrey grabs the bucket and excuses himself.
  • Frazer brings in a long-handled shovel, but he and Walker cause chaos in their attempts to manoeuvre it around the tight quarters of Mainwaring's office; at one point, Mainwaring ends up trapped between the exterior door and the door to the hall just as Jones finally returns with a fourth bucket, only to empty it over himself when Mainwaring unwittingly slams the door to the hall in his face.
  • Just as an enraged Hodges shows up to berate the platoon for repeatedly opening the door so that the lights inside can be seen by the attacking Luftwaffe bombers (he also recognises their supposedly German prisoner, Sigmund Murphy, as his Aunty Ethel's husband), Mrs Pike (who has brought young Frank his balaclava hat so that he doesn't catch cold) announces that she's put the fire out with a sandbag. But Pike brings news that more incendiary devices have fallen across the road, so he, Mainwaring, Frazer, and Walker rush into the hall to meet Jones... only for all five of them to slip and fall on the wet floor. In the final shot, Murphy and Wilson watch as Godfrey and Mrs Pike try to help the others to their feet; Murphy says that despite his Immigrant Patriotism, he's not sure how they'll win the war, and Wilson can't help agreeing.

Series 3 (1969)

• In the final act of "The Armoured Might of Lance Corporal Jones", Jones' van, newly converted into a troop transport that runs on natural gas instead of petrol, is recruited for use as an ambulance in an air raid drill by the newly-promoted ARP Chief Warden Hodges. Inevitably, the drill is a hopeless comedy of errors; Jones has forgotten the key to the back of the van, so he has to rush back to his shop to get it, while the rest of the platoon try to bend the unfortunate old man posing as a casualty^note  Played by a pre-Are You Being Served? Harold Bennett, before he was cast as recurring extra Mr Blewitt. through various doors and windows until Jones returns. Hodges tells him the signal to drive off will be banging twice on the van, but when the door won't stay open, he bangs it against the side of the van, causing Jones to drive off before they've loaded the stretcher. The stretcher bearers run after the van and eventually get Jones to stop, at which point Hodges tries to demonstrate the signal so Jones knows what to listen for - and Jones misinterprets the demonstration as the actual signal and drives off again. The old man finally has enough and climbs up off the stretcher, grumbling "I'll walk to the flippin' hospital!"
• In "Battle School", Mainwaring's shaky map-reading skills lead to the platoon missing dinner on their first night at the title camp, and they oversleep through breakfast the next morning. When they do finally get their first meal at the camp, it isn't much better than going hungry: tea, stew (that seems to be mostly gravy), mashed potato, carrots, rice pudding, and jam... all except for the first dumped into the same mess tin. The platoon members' expressions as their stew and vegetables get drowned in rice pudding is hilarious, as is Mainwaring's expression when a cigarette falls out of a server's mouth into the bucket of stew, and the oblivious server scoops it up and drops it into the captain's mess tin.
• In "Something Nasty in the Vault", a visit to the bank by Head Office representative Mr West is interrupted by an air raid. When West returns with Mainwaring, Wilson, and Pike after two hours in the air raid shelter, he snarls that the whole thing was a waste of time; they only heard one plane, and for all they know, it was one of their own. No, Pike insists, he could tell from the engine noise that it was a Dornier, and he imitates its high-pitched hum. Wilson adds that while German planes have a higher-pitched engine noise, which he also imitates by humming, the Royal Air Force have a deeper sound, which he demonstrates the same way. And then Mainwaring says that German planes have a "nasty, high foreign sound" - and he starts humming to demonstrate, with Wilson and Pike joining in seconds later. (At which point West has had enough and thumps Mainwaring's desk.)
• In the first act of "The Day the Balloon Went Up", the vicar confronts Mainwaring over a rude word written in crayon on the back of his spare harmonium in the church tower, in which the Home Guard sleep during breaks in night patrols. Mainwaring insists that his men can't be responsible and summons them to prove it (in the course of which he orders an increasingly exhausted Wilson to run up and down the tower stairs for various reasons):
  • Just the idea of the scene is funny enough; Mainwaring's brilliant idea for how to exonerate his men is to have them copy the word (implied, but not stated, to be a certain four-letter word starting with F) to show the vicar that none of them have matching handwriting. In other words, instead of a single obscenity on the back of the harmonium, there will be over a dozen repetitions of said obscenity.
  • The first "suspect" to exonerate himself is Jones:
    Mainwaring: Now, Corporal Jones.
    Jones: Sir.
    Mainwaring: Do you see that word? [points to the offending obscenity]
    Jones: Yes, sir.
    Mainwaring: Have you done that?
    Jones: Do you mean recently, sir?
    Mainwaring: [put upon] Did you write that?
    Jones: [offended] Mr Mainwaring, I never thought you would think I was even capable of such improper conduct!
    Mainwaring: Now, there's nothing personal about this, Jones, but I want you to take that crayon, [hands it to Jones] and copy those letters underneath.
    Jones: What, now?
    Mainwaring: Now.
    Jones: What, in front of the public?
    Mainwaring: In front of the public.
    Jones: In front of the padre?
    Mainwaring: Oh, get on with it!
    Jones: [crouches behind the harmonium; the rest of the platoon lean forward to watch, but he stands up again after a few seconds] It's no good, sir, I can't do it, sir.
    Mainwaring: That's an order, Corporal!
    Walker: 'Ere, perhaps he'd rather do one of his limericks, eh Jonesy? "There was an old lady called Vickers / Who often went out without-"
    Jones: [angrily] 'Ey, shut up! I told you that in confidence!
  • Jones' handwriting isn't a match, so the crayon is passed to Walker:
    Mainwaring: Right, you're next, Walker.
    Walker: [with a "bashful schoolgirl" pose and voice to match] My mum wouldn't like that, Mr Mainwaring! [Pike impatiently shoves him with his shoulder]
    Mainwaring: Come on, come on.
    Walker: [takes the crayon and copies the word with a flourish] Shall I sign it?
  • Walker's handwriting isn't a match either, so the crayon is passed to Pike:
    Mainwaring: Pike, you're next.
    Pike: [takes the crayon, then looks at the word, then back at Mainwaring] What's it mean, Mr Mainwaring?
  • But no further suspects can be questioned, as Jones finally succeeds in getting Mainwaring's attention regarding what starts as a Funny Background Event: the Verger repeatedly drifting past the church tower window, entangled in a runaway barrage balloon.
• In "Man Hunt" the platoon discover an abandoned German parachute in a tree. They then spend the remainder of the episode pursuing a presumed German saboteur across the countryside, when finally cornered he turns out in fact to be a Viennese ornithologist who believed they were chasing him to retrieve the egg he'd taken from the nest of a protected species... At which point the real German then bursts in the door and delivers this gem:

  "Why do you keep running away?! I have been trying to give myself up!"

• In "Sons of the Sea", Frazer — the ex-sailor — starts sulking when Mainwaring takes charge of the rowboat and proceeds to childishly gloat when they end up getting lost. When Mainwaring compliments Walker's lively attempts to keep everyone's spirits up, it moves Frazer to apologise, which in turn provokes this exchange:
  Mainwaring: Thank you, Frazer. Perhaps now you'll tell us where the north is?
  Frazer: I cannae do that, Captain.
  Mainwaring: Why not?
  Frazer: Because I don't bloody well know! You think I'd be sitting in this boat with you gang of Sassenachs if I knew the way?!

Series 4 (1970)

• "Boots, Boots, Boots":
  • Mainwaring is marching the platoon along the waterfront while Hodges points and laughs, especially when...
    Hodges: I shouldn't go too far that way Mr. Mainwaring, there's a great big- (Mainwaring disappears in a huge puddle) That's it! (the rest of the Home Guard rush to Mainwaring's aid while Hodges splits his sides laughing)
  • The barefoot football matches and seaside marches cause Pike to wake up screaming from a nightmare about having hideously swollen feet, so Mrs Pike decides to confront Mainwaring. When she arrives, Wilson is alone in Mainwaring's office:
    Mrs Pike: Have you seen Frank's feet?
    Wilson: I really haven't, er, noticed them recently, no.
    Mrs Pike: Ooh, they're in a terrible state.
    Wilson: Are they?
    Mrs Pike: He woke up screaming in the night.
    Wilson: Really? I didn't hear him.
    Mrs Pike: [horrified; through clenched teeth] ARTHUR!
    Wilson: [embarrassed] Sorry... [sits behind Mainwaring's desk and tries to look innocent]
    Pike: [after a moment's reflection] Mum?
    Mrs Pike: Hmm?
    Pike: Uncle Arthur lives miles away, how could he hear me in the night?
    Mrs Pike: [rolls her eyes] Never you mind about that, go and stand over there! [shoves him across the room, then marches over to Wilson] Now listen, Arthur!
    Wilson: Yes.
    Mrs Pike: You're going to tell Captain Mainwaring that I'm not having Frank going on any more route marches!
    Wilson: Mavis, I can't possibly do that!
    Mrs Pike: Well, if you don't, and Frank wakes up in the night again, [leans close and whispers loudly] you won't be there to hear it! [Wilson flinches and rubs his ear as Mrs Pike storms out]
  • A shoes clerk mistakes Wilson and Pike for father and son. Wilson denies it, whilst doing a face-rubbing sort of gesture, whilst behind him, Pike is (inadvertently) doing the exact same thing in synchronization!^note  According to Word of God, they are!
• In "Put That Light Out!", when on watch duty in the lighthouse, Jones manages to accidentally set off the light. Back on shore, Hodges has the biggest freak out in the series.

Series 5 (1972)

• In "A Soldier's Farewell", the platoon are in rowdy mood on the bus back to Walmington-on-Sea after a cinema trip, and Jones suggests they have a sing-song. So he leads them in a chorus of the (very ribald by 1940s standards) song "Roll Me Over in the Clover". A horrified Mainwaring quickly puts a stop to the singing for fear of upsetting the (female) conductor. The loudest to sing and the last to stop by far? Wilson.
• In "Time on My Hands", a Luftwaffe pilot bails out and gets his parachute entangled in the Town Hall clock; when the core seven (except Godfrey) climb the makeshift ladders to the clock to rescue/arrest the pilot, Jones grabs a pole to pull him in and causes the ladders to collapse, stranding them.
  • Once they have pulled in the pilot, Mainwaring writes a message to Godfrey and the crowd of civilians on the ground asking "How are we going to get down?"; to prevent the paper from fluttering away in a breeze, Pike puts it in a bottle and throws it down, nearly hitting Hodges (who is on a typical power trip as he tries to keep the crowd back). The irate warden takes a piece of chalk and writes a deliberately unhelpful reply: "How are you going to get down?" So Pike throws down a second bottle, almost hitting Hodges again...
    Mainwaring: What message was in that, Pike?
    Pike: None at all, I was just trying to hit the warden.
    Mainwaring: Good...
  • So Mainwaring decides to solicit ideas from the men, a decision he quickly regrets as Pike suggests that one of them could float down using the German's parachute, while Jones suggests tearing the parachute into strips and plaiting it into a rope (which a chuckling Wilson describes as a "plait-itude", to Mainwaring's disgust), and Frazer recalls a typically grim story of two lighthouse keepers in a remote part of the Western Isles whose stairs collapsed, stranding them for two months and causing them to Go Mad from the Isolation, to the point that they tore the lighthouse apart brick by brick to get back to ground level.

Series 6 (1973)

• The best one in "The Deadly Attachment".
  German Captain: Your name will also go on the list. What is it?
  Mainwaring: Don't tell him Pike!
  • When Pike's actor Ian Lavender appeared on the celebrity version of the game show Mastermind, when host John Humphrys asked him his name (part of the show's format), fellow contestant Rick Wakeman shouted "Don't tell him Pike." Lavender's reaction, inevitably, was "Never Heard That One Before."
  • Moments before, when the tense confrontation between Mainwaring and the U-boat Captain gets a bit... childish.
    U-boat Captain: I am making notes, Captain. And your name will go on the list. And when we win the war, you will be brought to account.
    Mainwaring: You can put whatever you like; you're not going to win this war.
    U-boat Captain: Oh yes we are.
    Mainwaring: Oh no you're not!
    U-boat Captain: OH YES WE ARE!
  • "And when we get back to Germany, you will be my prisoners. And then ... [smugly] we shall examine the list..."
  • The U-Boat Captain does not want any "nasty, soggy chips" with his fish and chips. He wants his chips crisp... "und golden brown." Mainwaring angrily tells him that if he gets soggy chips he'll eat soggy chips (prompting the Captain to start adding notes to his list). Later on, when the U-Boat Captain feigns illness, Walker remarks:
  Walker: I reckon it must be all those soggy chips you made him eat, Captain Mainwaring!
• "The Royal Train":
  • A bottle containing sleeping pills for Mainwaring's wife is broken after Pike accidentally knocks it over, leading to this exchange.
    Jones: (Picking them up.) Look at that Mr. Mainwaring, look sir! That's got all broken glass in them. That- You can't have Mrs. Mainwaring eating broken glass, that could be fatal that! That could mean instant death!
    Mainwaring: (Unconcerned) Yes... (pause) Well just, just dust them over a bit.
  • After finally getting the Runaway Train under control and into a siding out of the way of the train carrying HM King George VI, the platoon have no time to get back to the station at Walmington before the royal train goes through, so the core seven plus Hodges, the vicar, and the verger all line up by the side of the tracks. Then Walker asks Pike what the trough of water in the middle of the tracks is for, and Pike says it's to allow an engine to scoop water into its boiler without having to stop at a water tank. Inevitably, as the platoon present arms while the three civilians salute, the royal train roars past, and SPLASH!... all ten of them are completely soaked.
• When actor James Beck was taken into hospital before filming of "The Recruit", the last episode of Series 6, Walker got a Written-In Absence, leaving a note in his place on patrol to explain that he has gone to conduct "business" in London. Mainwaring reads out Walker's cockney slang in perfectly deadpan tones.

Series 7 (1974)

• The story of The Old Empty Barn from "Gorilla Warfare".^note There was nothing in it.
  • To clarify, Fraser asks Mainwaring if he's heard the story, the captain says no and calls the rest of the platoon to listen to the story. At this point characters and audience both are expecting one of Frazer's typical melodramatic and rambling stories. Then Frazer delivers the above punchline...

Christmas Specials (1975-1976)

• In "The Love of Three Oranges", Mainwaring wants to win one of three oranges that Hodges is auctioning. The problem is that Hodges makes it clear he won't let Mainwaring win (ignoring Mainwaring's bid for the first orange, then withdrawing the second orange when Mainwaring is the only bidder). So Wilson sends Pike to bid for the orange. The problem is that they don't tell Mainwaring. This results in Pike and Mainwaring each trying to outbid each other to get Mainwaring the orange until the single orange is going for 10 shillings. To put it in perspective in January 2024, that was worth roughly £31. What really sells it is the utterly delighted look on Hodges' face as the bids continue to climb.

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