Sack Captain Peacock

This week I have been subtitling the third series of Are You Being Served? Its surprisingly funky cash-register theme tune aside (“Ground floor - perfumery, stationery and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food...Going up"), it remains a truly dreadful television programme, which for some reason my brother and I fanatically adored as children. Watching it again now I cannot for the life of me see what we could have found funny – we were far too young to understand the innuendo (“My pussy got all wet – I had to let it dry out in front of the fire!”) and as our only television set was a decrepit black-and-white model that you had to bash on the top whenever it went off the station, you couldn’t even see that Mrs Slocombe’s hair colour changed vividly from week to week.
But what strikes me more than anything now is the appalling inefficiency, work-shy attitude and over-staffing of Grace Brothers, all old-fashioned notions that have been forcefully eradicated from most consumer-driven business sectors of Britain today – almost to an opposite extreme of overworked, undervalued and underpaid multi-tasking employees. No one emphases this point more than the character of Captain Peacock, who struts around the shop floor of the ladies’ and menswear departments until he spots a customer (of which there seem to be only three a day), whom he then asks, “Excuse me, sir/madam, are you being served?” (which they inevitably aren’t) and then, in his own words, “guides” towards an appropriate member of staff. This then involves the ritualistic question “Mr Humphries/Grainger/Lucas, are you free?” (which they inevitably are – cue excruciating catchphrase “I’m free!”) and Captain Peacock leaves them to serve the customer. He never once roots out a pair of trousers or a tie for the shoppers himself. His other duties consist of sucking up to Mr Rumbold and scolding members of staff for being late. Considering how cash-strapped Grace Brothers invariably was, surely such a pointless role should have been wiped out as an essential cost-cutting measure? And, while on the subject of people who don't seem to do any work, why did Mr Rumbold need a secretary? She never turns up at the frequent, unconstructive after-work meetings, neither to take minutes nor serve the much-requested tea and buns, and seems to exist merely as sexual candy for Mr Rumbold’s ogling goggles. (As an aside, I was astonished to learn last week that Nicholas Smith is still alive – he voices the vicar in the gorgeous Wallace And Gromit In The Curse Of The Were Rabbit.)

Of course, there’s absolutely no reason to take anything one sees in Are You Being Served? as a realistic representation of department store life (or any life) in the 1970s. But the overstaffing and imbalanced distribution of duties that the series portrays do still exist in some corners of the world. Dave and I were in Cairo in February and everywhere we looked there were workers standing around doing nothing. In the supermarket in Maadi that we used to stock up for our overnight train journey to Luxor there were ten employees loitering around the baked goods section talking to one another, two of them lazily leaning on brooms, but there was only one person serving at the check-outs. In Cairo Airport, when we were awaiting our flight home, numerous men in uniforms hovered, idly watching the world go by, but only one man was operating the hand baggage X-ray machines, meaning that the queues to boardplanes were massive and every flight was leaving over an hour late through no reason other than gross inefficiency. Indeed, if one of the airport managers had sported a homburg, a red carnation and a snooty demeanour, I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.