My late grandfather was a bin man for forty years and he thought 'The Dustbinmen' a great show, in fact he could put names to all the characters. Jack Rosenthal's scripts are wonderfully surreal, packed with terrific one-liners and its reasonably fair to say that the humour was on a different level to most I.T.V. comedies of that period such as say 'On The Buses'. It was only after he left and other writers took over that it went into decline. The cast were outstanding too, particularly the late Brian Pringle as 'Cheese & Egg' and Tim Wylton ( later to play 'Rodney Sillitoe' in 'A Bit Of A Do' ) as the gormless Eric. What tends to be overlooked about the show is how massively popular it was, often rivalling 'Coronation Street' in terms of viewing figures. Watching it recently on D.V.D. I thought it stood up very well, with only the annoying ( and obvious ) canned laughter letting it down. If people cannot enjoy a series like this anymore, its very sad.
Review of The Dustbinmen
