''The Melting Pot'' is a British television situation comedy starring

Spike Milligan Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was an Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British Raj, British India, where he spent his ...

. It was written by Milligan and his regular collaborator

Neil Shand Neil Hodgson Shand (3 March 1934 – 14 April 2018) was an English television comedy writer. Early life He was born in Luton to parents from Glasgow, the son of a Vauxhall employee and a dressmaker. Neil was the eldest of three boys. Career R ...

. The pilot episode was broadcast only once by

BBC1 BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and Flagship (broadcasting), flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includ ...

in June 1975, with a full series recorded for transmission in August 1976, but never broadcast. Milligan played Mr. Van Gogh (in

brownface Brownface is a social phenomenon in which a white or light-skinned person attempts to portray themselves as a "brown" person of color, but less overtly and with a lighter complexion than traditional blackface. It is typically defined as a racis ...

) alongside John Bird as Mr. Rembrandt, father and son illegal Asian immigrants who are first seen being rowed ashore in England, having been told that the beach is in fact

Piccadilly Circus Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End of London, West End in the City of Westminster. It was built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with Piccadilly. In this context, a ''List of road junctions in the Unite ...

.Mark Dugui
"Race and the Sitcom"
BFI screenonline. Retrieved 12st November 2018. They hitch a ride to London in a lorry advertising Italian-made Yorkshire puddings, and find themselves in a bookies thinking it is a restaurant. After being redirected, the duo end up at a boarding house in the fictional Piles Road, London WC2, run by Irish coalman Paddy O'Brien (Frank Carson) and his voluptuous daughter Nefertiti. The rest of the tenants include a black Yorkshireman, a Chinese cockney and a Scottish Arab. The "Melting Pot" of the title refers to the district of London where they have arrived. The pilot episode, produced by Roger Race, was broadcast on BBC1 at 9:25 pm on 11 June 1975, and was followed by a recording of a full series of six episodes to be broadcast in 1976. Roger Race was replaced as director by Ian McNaughton, who had previously worked on Milligan's '' Q5'' and '' Q6'' series. However, the series was never transmitted. Milligan speculated that the programmes were perhaps insufficiently funny, or that cast changes made following the pilot episode had been an unwise decision. However, the popular consensus seems to be that the BBC disliked the racially insensitive nature of the series as a whole. A book of the scripts of the series was published in 1983 by Robson Books, with illustrations by the cartoonist

Bill Tidy William Edward Tidy, MBE (9 October 1933 – 11 March 2023) was a British cartoonist, writer and television personality, known chiefly for his comic strips. He was noted for his charitable work, particularly for the Lord's Taverners, which h ...

, and Milligan later reused some of the situations and characters in his 1987 comic novel '' The Looney''. The pilot episode remains in the BBC's archives in the form of a low-band

U-matic U-matic, also known as -inch Type E Helical Scan or SMPTE E, is an analog recording videocassette format developed by Sony. First shown as a prototype in October 1969 and introduced commercially in September 1971, it was among the earliest vi ...

video recording, while the seven-episode series was preserved on the original broadcast standard video tape.

Cast

*Spike Milligan as Mr Van Gogh: an illegal Pakistani immigrant * John Bird as Mr Rembrandt: Van Gogh's son, also an illegal immigrant *

Frank Carson Hugh Francis Carson KSG (6 November 1926 – 22 February 2012) was a Northern Irish comedian and actor from Belfast. He was best known for being a regular face on television for many years from the 1970s onwards, appearing in series such as ' ...

as Paddy O'Brien: an Irish Republican landlord and coalman *

Alexandra Dane Alexandra Dane (born ''c''. 1940
''London Evening Standard'' (12 April 2012). Retrieved 31 ...

as Nefertiti Skupinski: landlady and O'Brien's voluptuous, South African-bred daughter *Wayne Brown as Luigi O'Reilly: a black Yorkshireman (listed as a Coloured North countryman in the ''Radio Times'') *

Harry Fowler Henry James Fowler (10 December 1926 – 4 January 2012) was an English character actor in film and television. Over a career lasting more than six decades, he made nearly 200 appearances on screen. Personal life Fowler was born in Lambeth, so ...

as Eric Lee Fung: a Chinese cockney

spiv A spiv is a petty criminal in the United Kingdom who deals in illicit, typically black market, goods. Spivs were particularly active during the Second World War and in the post-war period when many goods were rationed due to shortages. According ...

John Bluthal John Bluthal (born Isaac Bluthal; 12 August 1929 – 15 November 2018) was a Polish-born Australian actor and comedian, noted for his six-decade career internationally in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. He started his care ...

as Richard Armitage: an Orthodox London Jew *Anthony Brothers as Sheik Yamani: an Orthodox Arab who speaks with a Scots accent as he has been learning banking at the

Bank of Scotland The Bank of Scotland plc (Scottish Gaelic: ''Banca na h-Alba'') is a commercial bank, commercial and clearing (finance), clearing bank based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is part of the Lloyds Banking Group. The bank was established by the Par ...

, Peckham *

Robert Dorning Robert Dorning (13 May 1913 – 21 February 1989) was an English musician, dance band vocalist, ballet dancer and actor. He is known to have performed in at least 77 television and film productions between 1940 and 1988. Origins Robert Dorning ...

as Colonel Grope: an ex-

Indian Army The Indian Army (IA) (ISO 15919, ISO: ) is the Land warfare, land-based branch and largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Commander-in-Chief, Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head ...

, alcoholic racialist *

Bill Kerr William Henry Kerr (10 June 1922 – 28 August 2014) was a British and Australian actor, comedian and vaudevillian. Born in South Africa, he started his career as a child actor in Australia, before emigrating to Britain after the Second World W ...

as Bluey Notts: an Australian bookie's clerk, a crude racialist *

Alister Williamson Alister Williamson (17 June 1918 – 19 May 1999) was an Australian-born character actor, who appeared in many British films and television series of the 1960s and 1970s. A big, craggy-faced man, he would usually be found playing gruff police in ...

as the Australian bookie *Freddie Earrle as an Orthodox Jew *

Rita Webb Olive Rita Webb (25 February 1904 – 30 August 1981), later known as Olive Rita Thompson, was an English character actress, mainly in comedy roles. She was the eldest child of Henry Augustus Webb (1880–1926) and Rose Jeannette Keysor. She had ...

as the daily helphttps://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/2fc384a2064a49969934a41416b35107

References

* *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Melting Pot (TV series), The BBC television sitcoms 1970s British sitcoms 1975 British television series debuts 1975 British television series endings Television shows set in London British English-language television shows Television shows about racism

Cast

See also

References

External links