As another reviewer has noted, 'The Sandwich Man' seemed to turn up with alarming regularity on Saturday afternoons on B.B.C.-2 in the '70's. It was made at a time when British film comedy was changing; the family-friendly Norman Wisdom and 'St.Trinians' knockabout farces were giving way to ruder, more adult-oriented fare. The director, Robert Hartford-Davis ( known mainly for exploitation pictures ) co-wrote the movie with its star, ex-Goon Michael Bentine.

Anyone who went expecting this to be like 'Its A Square World' would have been disappointed. It basically consists of sketches, linked by Bentine ( in the role of pigeon fancier 'Horace Quilby' ) as he wanders around London wearing sandwich boards advertising a firm called Finkelbaum and O'Casey. Most of the time he is detached from the madness around him. He encounters, amongst others, Norman Wisdom as a boxing priest, Stanley Holloway as a park gardener, Harry H.Corbett as a theatre manager, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Fred Emney as a pair of drunken toffs, Terry-Thomas as a scout master, Ian Hendry as a motorcycle cop, Michael Medwin as a sewer man, Ronnie Stevens as a bowler-hatted drunk, Ron Moody as a rowing coach, and Bernard Cribbins as a camp photographer.

There is a sub-plot involving a Sikh band called 'De Sikhers' trying to get to a jazz festival ( they arrive to find the venue has been closed down by the police ) and Suzy Kendall and David Buck play a couple of lovely young things who have fallen out because she refuses to give up her modelling career once they are married.

A lot of the gags work, others do not. The style of humour shifts every few minutes; from slapstick ( an out-of-control lawn mower terrorises a park ) to surrealism ( Buck's car must have come from 'Q Branch' as it takes to the Thames at the end and passes under Tower Bridge ) and back again. At one point, Quilby encounters a man sitting on a magic carpet which rises into the air ( as magic carpets are wont to do ). It turns out said carpet is resting on the prongs of a fork-lift truck. And what about the scene in Billingsgate market where a pair of women ( Diana Dors and Anna Quayle ) discuss medical soap operas while we see fish being gutted? My favourite gag has David Lodge as a foreman in charge of a gang of workmen digging a hole. He asks for tea, but by the time the cup reaches him, the men have shaken it about so much it is empty.

It is a family film, though undermined slightly by the bizarre closing credits which feature over-cranked footage of wrestlers and close-ups of girls' bottoms which look as though they belong in a different movie.

What 'The Sandwich Man' does rather well, even when it is not particularly funny, is exploit the Swinging London phenomenon of the time. You feel that London in the year 1966 was the best time and place in human history to have existed. That alone is enough to earn it a place in my collection.

It's very rare that a film makes me genuinely happy, especially as I wasn't expecting anything from it. 'Sandwich' is a virtually forgotten comedy, full of a lovable and naive optimism, but it has dated much better than acknowledged (kitchen-sink) British classics of the era. The plot is agreeably simple, a serene 'Ulysses', as we follow a day in the life of a sandwich man, Horace Quilby, walking through London, passively plying his firm's wares, encountering a variety of eccentric locals on the way. What marks this day out from the usual routine is that Horace , a pigeon fancier, has a bird due home from a race; hopes and fears for her fuel his peregrinations.

Michael Bentine is one of the less famous Goons, and there is very little of their absurdist aesthetic here, although a sequence involving a drunken stockbroker running amok in Hyde Park points towards Monty Python. This film is less a comedy than an anthology of comedy - each new character Horace meets represents a different kind of comedy, be it verbal, situation, slapstick, farce etc. (perhaps mirroring 'Ulysses'' mode of narration). The film is packed with many famous TV and film comedians, including Terry-Thomas, Norman Wisdom and Harry H. Corbett.

This comedy can be seen as a counterpart to Patrick Keillor's 'London'. Horace is a Benjaminian flaneur, someone who has the time to ramble through the city, exploring its by-ways as well as its more famous sights. It would be understandable if any viewer switched off the film after a couple of minutes when the first characters seem to be upsetting racial stereotypes, but that would be to misunderstand the film. Every character is a stereotype, fixed in a certain place or image, except for Horace, who navigates this city and its peoples.

His freedom reveals the breadth and variety of the city, as he meets aristocrats and workers, priests and bhangra-jazz players, models and housewives, as well as traversing on land and water, or travelling in vehicles and walking. The film is all about connection, the fruitful chaos that makes up city life when different cultures, attitudes etc. collide. The film both celebrates and contains this chaos - Horace may observe and enjoy it, but he is also instrumental in repairing ruptures, and the end is a very moving celebration of a multi-cultural society, espeecially poignant in hindsight, when we remember the horrors of racism and Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' in the upcoming decade.

London has rarely looked more beautiful, not in the Swinging sense, just as a city in the sunshine, with its gorgeous parks, gleaming rivers, picturesque buildings. Like 'Ulysses' or 'Berlin - Symphony of a City', the film narrates a day in the life, in this case expressing a sense of organic wholeness. Don't come to this film for bellyaches, although the park (with a malevolent lawnmower) and river sequences are hysterical; 'Sandwich' is more of an amiable, loving poem, a time capsule of a period that probably never was.

I enjoyed this film very much - in a simple-minded sort of way. It's a very strange mixture of different types of comedy, in fact you could guess that the "script", such as it is, was written to fit whichever film and TV actors Micheal Bentine could persuade to do turns for him.

There are some longeurs, especially a sequence about a heavy-handed motorcycle cop, but never mind because a few minutes later another famous face pops up to amuse us. My favourite characters were the Sikh jazz musicians ("De Sihkers" - groan !) and Norman Wisdom's Irish priest, who tries to instruct a group of boys about gymnastics. Half the fun is in realising that in today's politically correct world, characters like these would never reach the screen - more's the pity. Incidentally, I can imagine Spike Milligan coming up with both the above stereotypes, so maybe the falling out between him and Bentine was more to do with personalities than material.

This film seems to have been made entirely on location around London (and I spotted Tolworth Tower in the escapologist sequence, which is near where I grew up),and you can tell it was made in a great hurry with very little money.

But who was the intended audience? Surely in 1966, at a time when adult cinema-goers were getting used to more sophisticated and subversive films, this one couldn't have held much appeal. In fact its resemblance to the Children's Film Foundation shorts (also funded by the Rank organisation) makes me think that this was intended to be shown at "Saturday morning picture shows" for kids. There is nothing here that a child couldn't understand (though I'm not so sure about the comment,"He's buying me a black jacket, not a red one ! He's kinky, not a communist!"). And what on earth are those wrestlers at the very end all about ???

This film is now available on DVD, curiously in 4:3 picture ratio - is this the only print available ? and it's 90 minutes of innocent fun. If you're still not sure what sort of comedy it is, think:

The Beatles' film "Help". The TV silent classic "The Plank". "Some mothers do 'ave 'em"

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