Peter Tinniswood

1937-2003

  • I Didn't Know You Cared
  • Tales From Witney Scrotum
  • Other Works

    I Didn't Know You Cared

    Tales of life with the Brandon family and in particular Uncle Mort and his nephew Carter. I'm surprised at the lack of Web material for this cult BBC2 TV series in the late 70s, based on the books. (Shown on UK Gold early in 1995 and again in 1996.) I think the series suffered from starting at about the same time as the Last Of The Summer Wine on BBC1 (also set in Yorkshire but with a broader appeal; started 1972).
    First Season - 1975
    Robin Bailey: Uncle Mort
    Stephen Rea: Carter Brandon
    John Comer: Leslie Brandon
    Liz Smith: Annie Brandon
    Anita Carey: Pat Brandon
    Bert Palmer: Uncle Stavely (I 'eard that, pardon?)
    Second Season - 1978
    Keith Drinkel: Carter Brandon
    Liz Goulding: Pat Brandon
    Third Season(?) and radio
    Peter Skellern: Carter Brandon

    Tales From Witney Scrotum

    Wonderful spoof cricketing tales told by the Brigadier, based on life in Witney Scrotum and in particular its cricket club. Full of references to cricketers past and present and public figures in general.

    Extract from Tales From Witney Scrotum

    The Brigadier meets the author off the train at Graveney Junction...

    The headlamps of the trusty Lanchester picked out the startled eyes of badger and hare and Minor Counties umpires up to no good.

    We passed through the villages of Milton Abbas and Milton Arthur. We wheezed our way slowly up the steep incline out of Crowe Magna and at the summit paused to give a moment's respite to the panting Lanchester.

    And there below us slumbering peacefully in the damp tuck of the valley lay the village of Witney Scrotum.

    I could dimly make out the lights of the Golf Ball Museum and the glow from the eternal bonfire in old Grannie Swanton's garden as she burned yet another remaindered copy of Miss Jilly Cooper's The Book Of The Green Wellie.

    The Brigadier handed me his hip flask filled to the brim with home-made gin distilled, as he told me later, from a pair of redundant binoculars, and presently we commenced the descent into the village.

    How familiar the scene.

    How the heart soared and fluttered as we entered the outskirts of Witney Scrotum.

    Nothing had changed.

    Oil lamps burned faintly in the windows of the cottages of the long-defunct gimlett and tremlett makers, who once long ago in the days of their prime had supplied the implements for toad circumcision the length and breadth of the nation.

    We passed the water meadows at Cowdrey's Bottom, skulking darkly in the deep black shadows cast by the massive buttresses of Botham's Gut.

    The night shift at Fearnley's Mill was hard at work turning out yet another special consignment of thatched space invader machines for the Belgian royal family.

    The village idiot, old Ben Stansgate, was relieving himself contentedly in the Ned Sherrin memorial horse and cattle drinking trough outside the Baxter Arms.

    Old Squire Brearley sat high astride the wrought iron gates outside his exquisite Queen Anne mansion baying at the moon, and outside the Cricket Bag Repository Prodger the poacher waved gaily at us and exposed himself.

    Other works

    Thanks to : John Day, Keith Baylis, Jacqui Barnes

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