Iconic Comedy Locations Homage

[Tony Tony Tony]

Was musing in another CaB post about an iconic comedy location I pass on a regular basis. Made me realise I have happened across a few in my travels. I will start with the time myself and a colleague were on business in Doncaster and took time out to visit the Hairdressers shop that doubles as Arkwrights store in Open All Hours. For some reason fireworks were being let off in the back yard despite it being around mid day and nowhere near Bommie Night.

My best one would have to be the time I was driving through Harrow and took a detour so I could visit Mentmore Close to give my car a good thrashing a la Basil Fawlty. I only used a tiny branch to do the deed in deference to the local residents shrubbery as I wager they may well be fed up with Cleese buffs re-enacting the scene.

As they say in Letterbocks... Can any of you readers beat that?

[Captain Crunch]

Bristol has most of The Young Ones buildings still just about intact, little guide here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/hi/people_and_places/newsid_7683000/7683587.stm

[Avril Lavigne]

I happened upon this guy's video of Norman Wisdom film locations recently and I loved the juxtaposition of the video content & his choice of soundtrack. I'm glad there's finally a relevant thread in which to share it with you all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQJefL78hIA

[Tony Tony Tony]

I happened upon this guy's video of Norman Wisdom film locations recently and I loved the juxtaposition of the video content & his choice of soundtrack. I'm glad there's finally a relevant thread in which to share it with you all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQJefL78hIA

Loved the juxtaposition too. Reminded me of the odd old movies they used to show on the Old Grey Whistle Test when they didn't have the band live in the studio.

[gilbertharding]

I don't know if it counts as a location, but when in Torquay the other year we made sure to drive slowly past the famous Gleneagles Hotel. Gone now.

While typing the above, I remembered the same holiday when we stayed the week a stones throw from the beach which featured every week in the titles of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (although I have a feeling it's rebranded as Broadchurch Country).

[Jerzy Bondov]

Was musing in another CaB post about an iconic comedy location I pass on a regular basis. Made me realise I have happened across a few in my travels. I will start with the time myself and a colleague were on business in Doncaster and took time out to visit the Hairdressers shop that doubles as Arkwrights store in Open All Hours. For some reason fireworks were being let off in the back yard despite it being around mid day and nowhere near Bommie Night.

My best one would have to be the time I was driving through Harrow and took a detour so I could visit Mentmore Close to give my car a good thrashing a la Basil Fawlty. I only used a tiny branch to do the deed in deference to the local residents shrubbery as I wager they may well be fed up with Cleese buffs re-enacting the scene.

As they say in Letterbocks... Can any of you readers beat that?

Well I've just fucking realised I used to walk past the place where Basil Fawlty thrashes his car every other fucking weekend without realising it

[famethrowa]

I travelled 10,316 miles to go to the red phone box in Local Hero. Totally worth it.

[shiftwork2]

Every Friday night I drive past signs to Linton on the way to Norwich.  Never actually been there as it's too small to have a hotel and anyway all of that was filmed in Watford I believe.  Still, it is forever IAP.

[Brundle-Fly]

Isn't there now a strategically placed bollard on the corner of Mentmore Road to stop fans recreating the Basil car thrashing scene up on the pavement?



Living in London, there are too many to mention but here is a great Stanley Baxter sketch set in my local Holloway Odeon cinema. Looks filmed around the early to mid-1970s?

https://pengetahuan.club/video/stanley-baxter-the-duchess-of-brendagh-at-a-golden-gala-hd-h544d4u275p424k5d375r3.html

[Bronzy]

I live down the road from where Limmy dances on top of a rock in Limmy's Show. Go past it all the time.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G3zriuWpVjo

Another Limmy's Show location is the building in the lizard sketch. It's in Glasgow city centre and I go past it often, chuckling to myself as I always imagine it taking off.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Q4dqYUNSY

[Glebe]

Wasn't a lot of OFAH filmed in Bristol? Then of course there's Holmfirth in Summer Wine.

One of those recent Dad's Army 50th anniversary docs on Gold mention Thetford Forest as being one it's common locations, I think that's it in the end credits, always thought that looked like a lovely location.

[Captain Crunch]

Yes they used the outside of the Lockside Cafe on the Cumberland Basin as, whatever their cafe was called and the outside of the old granary building as the nightclub in THAT episode where he falls through the bar. 

Sadly the former has succumbed to that tedious fucking horrible paint job that has infested the area:



But the Granary still looks good in all its 'Bristantine' glory:

[shiftwork2]

One of those recent Dad's Army 50th anniversary docs on Gold mention Thetford Forest as being one it's common locations, I think that's it in the end credits, always thought that looked like a lovely location.

Yes.  There's a little Dad's Army Museum in Thetford and a statue of Captain Mainwaring.  Bit of a stretch tbh.

[Glebe]

Yes they used the outside of the Lockside Cafe on the Cumberland Basin as, whatever their cafe was called and the outside of the old granary building as the nightclub in THAT episode where he falls through the bar.

DEL BOY FALLS THROUGH THE OLD GRANARY BUILDING.

Yes.  There's a little Dad's Army Museum in Thetford and a statue of Captain Mainwaring.  Bit of a stretch tbh.

Oh yeah, saw a pic of statue on Wiki.

[Mr Banlon]

In the earlier (grandad) seasons of OFAH, a lot of the 'in and around Nelson Madela house' stuff was filmed on the South Acton Estate in west London.
Reggie Perrin's house was just up the road from Acton in Beaufort Close, Ealing.

[Brundle-Fly]

Reggie Perrin's house was just up the road from Acton in Beaufort Close, Ealing.

"Morning Joan. Eleven minutes late due to avoiding being killed by falling rubble."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD2Avws8JIw

[Gulftastic]

When we went down to that London for our Challenge Cup weekender the year after Rik Mayall's death, we made a pilgrimage to the Bottom bench in Hammersmith.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Back when I lived in Queens Park I used to visit the local pub that was used for the pub scene in Spaced. And there was a bakery they used in Catastrophe which I've also been in to. But if it's not on my door step I can't be arsed.

[Brundle-Fly]

Go to The Norfolk Arms in Leigh Street, Bloomsbury, London and you can sit outside boozing dead opposite this place.

[Gulftastic]

Go to Leeds City Square and you can recreate the opening credits of The Gaffer.

Although when he pulls away, his car has magically transported to Kirkstall, either Woodside Place or Woodside Avenua, then he is seen turning from Kirkstall Road onto Kirkstall Lane, then he is going up Kirkstall Hill towards Burley Road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J_RX0dJFkE

[Glebe]

'00s Irish dramady Bachelor's Walk was filmed around Dublin's Bachelor's Walk, surprizingly!

[thenoise]

When I lived in London I took the bus up to King's College London Hampstead Campus to take some shitty exam I've made fuck all use of since.  When the bus made one of it's not infrequent stops in traffic during the over 1 hour journey, I was surprised to spot a location from a comedy I had introduced my housemates (loved it) and girlfriend (hated it) to only that week.  It was the butcher's shop from 'The office' sketch from The Day Today - where the fellow says he would stab the American life coach guy with 'this knife' if he ever comes in there.  If you are every in the area, it's somewhere on whatever bus you would take from The Stand to Hampstead.  It looked just the same in 2003, but that was fucking ages ago so fuck knows what it looks like now.

[Mr Banlon]

My local chipper/chinese (Mr Lau's, now the Sun Sun in Hayes) was featured in Sex Lives of the Potato Men

An iconic comedy, for all the wrong reasons.

[Brian Freeze]

I lived in Padfield for a while, just under the bridge and a very very short walk from Royston Vasey for nearly two years. Never watched the show while I lived there and kind of wish I had now, there's shedloads of places I recognise now.

But not the shop though. Haven't looked where it is. Might do later. Great post this.

[Brundle-Fly]

Want to recreate Jez and Mark looking at themselves on a large telly in a shop window from the opening titles to Peepshow?  Visit Middeys restaurant at: 26, The Broadway, Crouch End, N. London?  It might put some diners off their pizzas though.

[Bobtoo]

I took my wife and son on a mystery tour to here a few years ago.

DSC_4487 by RichardB5, on Flickr

[Norton Canes]

Used to go to Elm Hill in Norwich a lot, to visit the role playing game shop there. Turns out it's where Monty Python filmed the Beethoven sketch. Oh and used to cycle to the remote and exrtemely rustic Norfolk village of Heydon, which I have just discovered is where they filmed the Village Idiot sketch.

[Mr Banlon]

Python locations : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5rExOUynZM

[famethrowa]

I live down the road from where Limmy dances on top of a rock in Limmy's Show. Go past it all the time.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G3zriuWpVjo

Another Limmy's Show location is the building in the lizard sketch. It's in Glasgow city centre and I go past it often, chuckling to myself as I always imagine it taking off.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Q4dqYUNSY

I'd love to go to YOKER

[MattD]

I travelled 10,316 miles to go to the red phone box in Local Hero. Totally worth it.

Classic.

In other phone box related moments, growing up we would holiday every year just a quarter of a mile from the phone box in Withnail & I (a quiet little village called Bampton in Cumbria).

Only years later did it come to pass that much of this secluded area was the location for such an iconic film.