His Lordship Entertains

His Lordship Entertains was Ronnie Barker's second sitcom vehicle for his Lord Rustless character, first seen three years earlier in Hark at Barker on ITV. This time though, Rustless had switched channels and was now appearing on BBC2. Hark at Barker had also included sketch inserts, whereas His Lordship Entertains was a regular sitcom.

His Lordship Entertains
StarringRonnie Barker
Josephine Tewson
David Jason
Mary Baxter
Moira Foot
Frank Gatliff
Country of originUnited Kingdom
No. of episodes7
Production
ProducerHarold Snoad
Running time30 minutes
Release
Original networkBBC2
Original release5 June –
17 July 1972 (1972-07-17)

Set again in the aristocratic Chrome Hall, which had now become a hotel. It again also starred David Jason as the 100-year-old Dithers and Josephine Tewson as Mildred Bates, two actors who would go on to have long working relationships with Barker. In fact all of the regular cast reprised their roles from Hark at Barker.

Barker wrote all the scripts under the pseudonym Jonathan Cobbald. . He liked to refer to the show as "Fawlty Towers mark one" as it appeared on television three years before that other hotel bound sitcom.

Four episodes of the sitcom were recently performed on stage by Nottingham University's New Theatre.

Archive status

For many years it was thought that the series had been entirely lost after the tapes were wiped by the BBC. However, the first episode of His Lordship Entertains, 'The Food Inspector', was recovered in 2009.[1] In addition the scripts were published in Ronnie Barker's anthology All I Ever Wrote.[2]

References
  1. "Missing Believed Wiped: Programme One". British Film Institute. Retrieved 7 January 2010.
  2. "Literature for "His Lordship Entertains"". IMDb. Retrieved 7 January 2010.
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