In this age of fake news, the spoof-friendly start of April seems like a particularly good time to take a look at one particular aspect of benign deception, as practiced in the worlds of radio and television: that of pseudonyms, used to disguise the identity of a writer, director or actor, for various reasons.

Actors are particularly prone to having names other than that which they were given at birth. Stage names can be invented just because the actor’s real name sounds a bit uninspiring to them or others, or hard to remember. Another hazard is that it may be the same as that of another actor: Actors’ Equity insist that actors do not have the same name as another working performer, to avoid the danger of confusion, or even deception. If you go to see a play starring that well-known thespian Freda Bloggs, you want to make sure it is that lady, not someone who shares her name but perhaps not her talent.

Occasionally an actor has begun their career before their name has been finalised, for example young Barbara Deeks was credited in a 1953 television relay of the stage musical Love from Judy, but when she next made an appearance, only a year later, she had been renamed the more familiar Barbara Windsor. Her later Carry On (and Six-Five Special) co-star Jim Dale was similarly first billed in the pages of Radio Times as the more mundane Jim Smith. In the same era, The Seventeen to Twenty Club, a Light Programme series in 1959, once played host to a ‘teenage celebrity’ called Gerry Dorsey – later better known as Engelbert Humperdinck.

Sometimes actors can also work in another field, and especially when that field is writing, it’s not unusual for them to use another name. One actor who started out under his real name before he adopted the stage name of David Baron, later became a playwright, and after a shaky start gradually built his literary reputation, in radio and television, as well as for the stage. He often appeared in his own plays, and while in some early radio productions he kept his stage name, when he became fully established he reverted to his real name, now a household one, of Harold Pinter.

Another literary name which has gradually become well-known is that of Gerald Wiley. Mr Wiley was a contributor of scripts to a number of late 1960s shows, and it was only when the quality was recognised and the cast members demanded to meet this talented man that Ronnie Barker admitted that Wiley was him. Barker used the Wiley name mainly for sketches, but he also contributed sitcom scripts from time to time, using names such as Jonathan Cobbald and Bob Ferris.

Then there is the mysterious career of the actor Walter Plinge. If you look him up in Radio Times you will find a long but not particularly distinguished career. His first credit is in 1929, and his last in 1967, which would be an enviable and respectable career for any actor. That first credit is as David Gardiner in The Mists of Morning, which is described as a sketch. Curiously enough another member of the cast is Ida Plinge, an actress who is never heard of again, at least in the pages of Radio Times. Even earlier, there was a performer called Fred Plinge who collaborated with Walter Weekes in a Plymouth local programme – again this was his only known broadcast…

Post-war Walter Plinge is listed for rather more productions, including regular roles in the serial Rocket to the Stars and a show called Answer Next Week. Work seems to dry up again for a while, and after an occasional job during the 50s and 60s Mr Plinge’s swan song is in The Perfect Fool on 7 May 1967. But don’t worry about him struggling in his old age – Walter Plinge does not exist…

There is a long theatrical tradition of the name Walter Plinge being used in plays, where an actor is playing more than one part, and the management want to make it look as if they have hired someone else for the additional role. There are also instances where an actor does not want to be credited for personal or professional reasons; and sometimes when a character is, for example, mentioned extensively but never in fact appears – the name make the audience believe they will turn up, until at the end it becomes apparent that they will not.

Of course other names can also be used for this ruse. The classic play George and Margaret by Gerald Savory goes to the extreme length of billing the non-appearing characters in the title!  At least when the play was presented on radio and television, there was no question of listing these characters with false names attached.

Walter Plinge has his customary equivalents elsewhere: George Spelvin is the American theatrical version, and Alan Smithee is the preferred Hollywood credit for aggrieved directors taking their name off a film. Credits of convenience have also been used from time to time on the BBC for writers, where for one reason or another their own names cannot be shown on a programme. Doctor Who seems to be particularly prone to this, with Norman Ashby, Guy Leopold, Stephen Harris, Robin Bland and Paula Moore being among the writers with fictitious names.

To their number must be added David Agnew, who as well as having two full credits on Doctor Who serials, almost uniquely had a life away from the series (Norman Ashby also 'wrote' an episode of Warship). Agnew first appears on a Play for Today in 1970 called Hell’s Angel, then on 1975 play Diane, and episodes of police series Target two years later. But Doctor Who would be his swansong.

The main writer behind the pseudonym was Anthony Read, who also worked on oil industry drama The Troubleshooters, and Z Cars. While he was script editor on Doctor Who, a replacement story was needed at short notice, and Read obliged using his usual nom-de-plume. In similar circumstances the following year, 1979, David Agnew was the ostensible author of City of Death – which was mainly the work of Doctor Who’s new script editor, one Douglas Adams. Confusingly, Read contributed one more script to the same season, but now under his own name, after leaving the BBC.

There can be a little wit displayed in a good pseudonym: Gerald Wiley hints at the subterfuge used, and playwright and screenwriter Clive Exton’s occasional pseudonym of MK Jeeves is borrowed from one of WC Fields's scripting pseudonyms, but just using the initials instead of the full original, Mahatma Kane Jeeves.

Another good example is the writer credited for the 1976 Doctor Who story The Brain of Morbius. It was originally written by Terrance Dicks, but major changes were made by the show’s script editor Robert Holmes while Dicks was on holiday and could not be contacted. Dicks later agreed Holmes could put it out under some ‘bland pseudonym’, and was amused to see in Radio Times that the story was duly credited to ‘Robin Bland’.

Names, which we see as so much a part of our identity, can at least in the world of radio and television be a bit more complicated. What’s in a name? as Shakespeare’s heroine, Juliet, asks. Sometimes quite a bit. Other times, nothing at all…

With a remake in the pipeline as part of the BBC’s tribute season to classic sitcoms, we look at Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’ brilliant 1970s comedy about the inmates of Slade Prison.

Clement and La Frenais had made their name with The Likely Lads in 1964, one of the first hit shows to be produced for BBC2.  When the series finished in 1966 after three seasons, they moved into writing feature films, Clement leaving his job as a BBC television producer to do so.

They returned to the BBC at the start of the 1970s with a follow-up series, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, a rare example of a sequel outshining the original.  At the same time, they were asked to contribute to a series of one-off comedies starring Ronnie Barker, called Seven of One, made in the hope of discovering a long-running hit.

Clement and La Frenais had two scripts accepted:  I’ll Fly You for a Quid, about a family of Welsh compulsive gamblers, and Prisoner and Escort, in which a convicted felon is being escorted to a remote Cumbrian prison by two warders.  The episode saw Barker’s character, Fletcher, attempt to escape after he arranges the breakdown of the prison van by peeing in the petrol tank.

Transmitted on 1 April 1973, Prisoner and Escort was basically a three-hander – the only other cast member was a cameo by Hamish Roughead as a police sergeant, whose voice was eventually re-dubbed by Barker.  Another voice Barker provided was that of the judge who sentenced him, which was played over the titles on every successive episode of Porridge, from when a full series began in September 1974:

“Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court and it is now my duty to pass sentence.  You are an habitual criminal who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner.  We therefore feel constrained to commit you to the maximum sentence allowed for these offences.  You will go to prison for five years.”

The series title was the result of much debate, with the pilot’s name irrelevant once we were inside the jail. One of the many pieces of underworld slang for imprisonment seemed to fit the bill.

Clement and La Frenais had been unsure at first whether they could write a whole series from the premise, as a research visit to an actual prison left them depressed at the atmosphere of hopelessness. 

But the series adviser, former convict Jonathan Marshall, gave them the clue they needed for the nub of the show, the phrase “little victories”. While the prisoners were unlikely to ‘win’ because they were locked up, there were always small ways they could get one over on the authorities.  The series' authenticity benefitted from Marshall's input, and with some of the extras having also been ‘inside’, the programme’s slang was always convincing.  That said, prison language had to be toned down, and the series is credited with popularising the phrase ‘naff off’ as a useful expletive, as well as the words 'nerk' and 'scrote'.

New characters were introduced for the series, the most important of whom was Lenny Godber (played by Richard Beckinsale), Fletcher’s naïve but personable first-timer cellmate.  Beckinsale was an experienced sitcom actor, who came to national attention in Jack Rosenthal’s ITV sitcom The Lovers, and who was (simultaneously to Porridge) appearing in Rising Damp with Leonard Rossiter.

Beckinsale and Barker established a rapport at once, which was demonstrated in one of the earliest episodes, A Night In (mistakenly billed as An Evening In in Radio Times).  Set almost entirely in their cell, it is a character piece where the old lag Fletcher gives Godber advice on how to survive the ordeal of prison.  As the series goes on, Fletcher acts as a father figure to him at times, not wanting Godber to end up like him.

The officers who escorted Fletcher to Slade were the other two main recurring characters.  Mackay and Barrowclough were opposite in character, the former was an ex-army martinet, the latter a dithering do-gooder who Fletcher saw as his route to privileges during his time in jail.  Both men were expertly played, by Fulton Mackay and Brian Wilde, bringing unexpected levels of nuance to their roles. 

Overall the series benefitted from faultless casting by its experienced producer/director, Sydney Lotterby.  As Richard Beckinsale’s commitments to Rising Damp meant that he was not available for the whole of the first series, Clement and La Frenais had scope to flesh out some of the other characters.  Among these were prisoners Warren (Sam Kelly), McLaren (Tony Osoba) and Lukewarm (Christopher Biggins) and prison governor Mr Venables (Michael Barrington), with whom Fletcher also planned to ingratiate himself.

The last episode of Series One saw Fletcher’s family introduced, notably his daughter Ingrid, played by Patricia Brake.  In this, Fletcher composes a letter for his fellow cons so they can reassure themselves of their partners’ fidelity while they are locked up.  Ironically it seems Fletcher’s own wife has 'strayed', which leads to him being granted compassionate leave… but things are not as they seem.

With the first series getting excellent ratings there was little doubt that another series would follow, and Clement and La Frenais’ tight plotting and brilliant dialogue ensured that it was as popular as the first.  New characters included the aged character Blanco, played by David Jason in two episodes.  Jason was a long-time associate of Barker’s (including another of the Seven of One pilots, Open All Hours) and often played much older men – he was a candidate to play Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army.

Another occasional character was Peter Vaughan’s 'Genial' Harry Grout, a crime boss who everyone dreads being asked a 'favour' by – there being no option to refuse.  Grouty’s character is a nod to Noel Coward’s Mr Bridger in The Italian Job, with his luxuriously furnished cell, albeit somewhat less refined.

The second series was followed by the first of two Porridge Christmas specials, No Way Out, in which Fletcher has an escorted visit to hospital, as part of Grouty’s plan to help another prisoner escape.  The plan goes wrong, but Fletcher manages a “little victory” out of it.

With no new series in 1976 (Barker making the first series of Open All Hours in the meantime), the next episode of Porridge was another Christmas special, The Desperate Hours, in which Fletcher is involved in a hostage situation in the governor’s office. 

The third and final series in 1977 saw the judge who had sent Fletcher to prison ending up there himself . He was played by Maurice Denham, despite the voice-over by Barker still being played over the opening titles.

Godber’s character had continued to develop, beginning a romance with Fletcher’s daughter in series two.  With the final series culminating in Godber’s release, a follow-up was planned, showing how Fletcher would survive on the outside.  Going Straight, co-starring Beckinsale, Patricia Brake, and a young Nicholas Lyndhurst as Fletcher’s teenage son, did not quite work, though it had its moments, such as in the last episode when Fletcher is almost tempted back to a life of crime.

There was one final outing for Porridge, the almost-obligatory 1970s sitcom feature-film spin-off, but as with most attempts to exploit television comedies it lost something in translation – though it is one of the better attempts. 

With the tragic death of Richard Beckinsale in 1979, there was to be no more of the Porridge franchise  - with one exception - the ‘mockumentary’ Life Beyond the Box in 2003, in which former associates of Fletcher recalled their relationships with the character, and 'Fletch' himself appeared briefly, now running a pub.

Porridge shows the consummate skill of Clement and La Frenais, in their ability to craft an excellent sitcom, does not date as much as some shows with its prison setting.  Like many of the best comedies it finds its characters in a situation which they cannot easily escape from – in a more literal sense than usual.  Despite the fact that the characters are mostly convicted criminals, we are able to empathise with them, in the way the British often identify with a ‘loveable rogue’. 

Clement and La Frenais used the success of Porridge to create a US version, On the Rocks,  while the original series was still running and  decamped to the States to do so.  Many episodes of Porridge were actually written beside a Californian swimming pool (it’s a hard life being a writer). 

While the American series was not a great success, they continued to be employed as script doctors in Hollywood, and also enjoyed further British TV success with the likes of Auf Wiedersehen Pet, but Porridge remains arguably their finest moment.

Tribute must be paid too to Ronnie Barker.  His versatility in playing both sketch characters and rounded sitcom characters is amazing, but Fletcher must surely be his greatest creation, giving degrees of pathos and insight rarely seen in comedy, while delivering Clement and La Frenais’ lines with impeccable timing.

Is Porridge up there with the greatest British sitcoms?  Tell us your favourite moments in the space  below…