memories of snogs, giggles and grumps!
It’s time for a trip down memory ane this week as Lionel (Geoffrey Palmer) and Jean (Dame Judi Dench) remember he good times in the last ever episode of the charming BBC1 Comedy, As Time Goes By.
Cosying up in front of a log fire, the childhood sweethearts chat about their lives together in a special farewell programme, featuring highlights from the show’s 10 year run. And it’s not just dotty Jean and crotchety Lionel who are getting all misty-eyed — the episode brought back plenty of memories for actor Geoffrey Palmer, too.
‘I remember when Judi and I had our first screen kiss. It was in the countryside and we had to do take after take as we couldn’t stop giggling,’ says Geoffrey, 75, who also worked with Judi on the 1997 films Mrs Brown and Tomorrow Never Dies.
‘All I could think was, “Oh, my Lord, I am snogging a Dame of the British Empire!” My abiding memory of As Time Goes By will be the laughter. You can’t help it working with someone like Judi. The result is that we appear with embarrassing regularity on BBC1’s Auntie’s Bloomers...
So why did the two stars decide to end the series?
‘We never expected it to go to more than two series,’ continues Geoffrey. ‘But nine series later we are still here. We both came to the decision to get out while it’s still good. We’ve been amazed how popular the show is, especially in the States. I think they just like the British prissiness and pompousness of it.’
The veteran actor made his TV debut in the Fifties, but real success didn’t come until the Seventies when he pIayed Leonard Rossiter’s barmy brother-in-law in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. — He then made his name as Ben in the sitcom Butterflies starring opposite Wendy Craig. Like Ben, As Time Goes By’s Lionel can be decidedly grumpy.
‘I suppose that I do tend to look fairly miserable on TV,’ says Geoffrey, who is married to Sally and has two grown up children. ‘I’ve done a lot of work where I have had to be crabby.
‘Judi says that people often ask her if I’m like that in real life. But I’m not at all. It’s just that over the years I've begun to disapprove of people who get laughs by giggling at their own jokes. So I've resisted that and would rather get the guffaws by looking stony-faced. It seems to have worked so far!'
Thanks so much to Marie Wilson for sending me this article which appeared just before the final show aired in the UK.Return