In this one-off television comedy, a hairdresser’s nautical fantasies threaten to collide with his mundane reality.
Sidney Cole (Frederick Peisley) is a ladies’ hairdresser with an elaborate Walter Mitty-like fantasy life. While he sets permanent waves for his clientele in the small river port of Dartsend, his mind is sailing the seven seas on his boat, ‘The Adventurer’, which he has built but never launched. His staff have come to accept his nautical dream world, where the salon is a ship and customers “come alongside”. This harmless delusion is put to the test when, bemused by drink, Cole is publicly goaded into vowing that he will sail his homemade craft single-handedly around the world, forcing his dream to impinge disastrously on his real life.
This single play by A.P. Dearsley is a gentle character comedy, typical of the studio-bound, live drama produced by the BBC in its early years. The humour is rooted in the central performance of Frederick Peisley as the fantasist whose harmless eccentricities are pushed to a breaking point. The production, staged for a single Sunday night broadcast, builds its world on the contrast between Cole’s humble salon and his grand maritime ambitions. The supporting cast, which includes Richard Pearson and Patrick Magee, populates a gentle English world that indulges its local dreamer right up to the moment he is forced to act on his boasts.
Broadcast: BBC Television, 1 Episode, Sunday, 31 July 1955
Written by: A.P. Dearsley
Producer: Chloe Gibson
Designer: Barry Learoyd
Main Cast: Frederick Peisley (Mr. Sidney Cole), Sylvia Coleridge (Miss Ada Green), Rowena Ingram (Judith Palgrave), Richard Pearson (George Jarvis), John Arnatt (Tom Roker), Patrick Magee (Harry Berks), Anna Walmsley (Myrtle), Gillian Maude (Miss Crane), Janet Barrow (Mrs. Cribling)
