Carry On At your Convenience (1971)
The
Carry On team throw caution to the wind and present an hour
and a half of good, clean lavatorial humour.
This was the first
sign of impending decline in the series and the major flop during
a seemingly indestructible purple patch.
Cascading with lavatorial gags, references, and, indeed,
lavatories, everything in the film is totally over-played and
flamboyantly characterised. While I'm All Right Jack was a
huge box-office success, Convenience died a death.
However, the Boulting Brothers satire was a cleverly written
social comment on the unionists' problems, giving both management
and workers eccentric figures.
Kenneth Williams is W.C. Boggs, the troubled owner of a small
company trying to manufacture fine tolietware. Williams represents
the established world of British industry, clinging on to
authority while facing threats to traditional ideals.
The incompetent management are constantly at loggerheads with a
bolshie union, led by the ultimate workforce hero, Sid Plummer
(Sid James).
Williams' son, Lewis (Richard O'Callaghan), is the
young romantic lead who chases and eventually wins the girl,
Myrtle (the lovely Jacki Piper), who is also Sid's daughter, thus
joining work-force with management.
 Shop
steward Vic Spanner (Kenneth Cope of Randall & Hopkirk:
Deceased fame) finds himself at loggerheads with the
management of W C Boggs & Sons toilet factory, and is also
suffering pangs of jealousy because Myrtle is dating the manager’s
son.
The film goes through every corny gag in the book, while the
team delight in overtly stereotyped performances.
There is a
domestic running gag between Sid and his wife, Beattie (Hattie
Jacques), and their budgie Joey (who has a very lucrative talent
for picking winners in horse races), creating the tongue-in-cheek,
1970's 'women in their place' attitudes towards Beattie's lazy and
bumbling antics.
After the factory day-trip-to-Brighton finale, the unionists
are slapped on the wrist and all's right with the world.
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