Budgie

1 9 7 1 - 1 9 7 2 (UK)
26 x 60 minute episodes

ITV's Budgie was written by Keith Waterhouse and had Adam Faith in the title role, playing Ronald 'Budgie' Bird - a chirpy cockney, just out of prison, and scraping a living on the edge of the law. Budgie was an eternal failure and every scam, and every attempt to make his fortune landed him further and further into trouble, either with the police, or with his untrustworthy sometime boss, the cynical Charlie Endell, a respectable club owner on the surface, and underworld villain below it. 

All attempts to put Budgie on the 'straight and narrow' by his girlfriend Hazel and awful ex-wife Jean were in vain, and with an unflappable optimism, he bounced in and out of Prison on a regular basis as the series progressed, always shunning regular employment and clinging to the fringes of the Soho underworld, along with his "mates", Laughing Spam Fritter and Grogan.

Despite being used and pushed around, the long-haired delinquent remained an eternal optimist, meandering through life dreaming up worthless ways of making his fortune, ducking and diving and incurring the wrath of the local heavies.

Budgie brought us more dodgy 'erberts than you could shake a truncheon at in what was in many ways a superior forerunner to Minder.  

And what about the huge fashion trend that was the 'Budgie jacket'. Black and white panelled jackets that you had to have to be 'one of the boys'?

Two series, each of 13 episodes, were made, and in 1979, Iain Cuthbertson reprised his role in Charles Endell Esquire, but after only two episodes screened an ITV strike put it off the air, never to return.