Carry on remembering Joan

6:17pm Thursday 27th March 2008

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IT is time once again to pay tribute to Joan Sims, Essex's greatest contribution to film comedy. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the first Carry On film - which went on to become the most successful comedy series in British cinema history.

Carry On Sergeant appeared in 1958, and was so successful a follow-up, Carry On Nurse, was hurried into production in the same year. Joan made her series debut in that film, as the perky nurse Stella Dawson.

The Laindon actress immediately joined the immortals. Her character was responsible for one of the best-remembered scenes in any Carry On.

The celebrated moment involved an overbearing patient, "the Colonel", played by Wilfred Hyde White. Nurse Dawson finds her revenge by sticking a plastic daffodil deep into a part of the Colonel where daffodils don't normally grow.

The scene was immediately identified as the perfect symbol for the cheerful vulgarity of the Carry On films.

It became such an icon the film company imported two million plastic daffodils from Japan to promote ensuing Carry Ons.

Joan went on to appear in 24 of the comedies. Only one other performer, Kenneth Williams, exceeded that record, with a total tally of 26 appearances.

Joan also broke a Carry On record, achieving the greatest unbroken run of performances (from Carry On Cleo in 1964 to Carry On Emmanuelle in 1978).

In terms of span of years, she also again came in "just under" Kenneth Williams - the sort of double entendre you have to treat with care when talking about Carry On films. Williams appeared in the series over a period of 21 years, Joan just over 20 years.

All these figures appear courtesy of a new book released by the Essex publisher Apex to celebrate the 50th anniversary.

To call the Official Carry On Facts, Figures and Statistics exhaustive would be like calling Sid James's smirk suggestive - it understates the truth considerably.

The book contains everything any Carry On lover could ever wish to know in a lifetime of revisiting the films, right down to the numberplates of the cars appearing in front of the camera and details of the stars' birthdays.

One statistic missing, though, is the number of performances Joan Sims gave in her Laindon home-town.

The acting started early. Born and raised in Laindon station, where her father was station master, Joan started her career with an unusual audience - train passengers.

In her autobiography, she recalls giving impromptu performances on the station platform as the trains pulled in and out. The commuters, no doubt glad to break the monotony, watched the little actress with amusement.

"Even then," she recalled, "I realised I raised laughs more easily than tears."

She cut her teeth in amateur drama at home in Essex, before training at RADA and moving on to the professional stage in London.

Throughout her career, the running gag about Joan - who specialised in wannabe roles - was "she has ideas above her station".

When they sent Joan the script for Carry On Nurse, Carry On producer Peter Rogers, and director Gerald Thomas, already recognised qualities in Joan that were ideally matched to their strain of humour.

She could do stiff upper lip (Carry On Up the Kyber), scheming (Carry On Cleo), cheeky (Carry On Nurse), sexy (Carry On Teacher), pretentious (Carry On Screaming), sexually frustrated (Carry On Camping), or all these things rolled into one (Carry On Up the Jungle).

Every script managed to introduce her inimitable trademark, the Joan Sims giggle.

Perhaps her best-remembered appearance was as Lady Ruff-Diamond, the memsahib married to Sid James in the days of British Imperial India.

It was in Carry On Up the Khyber she gave vent to a line that is probably better remembered than any other Carry On joke.

As revolting tribesmen bombard the British governor's quarters with artillery fire, the Ruff-Diamonds demonstrate their stiff British upper lip by staging an elegant dinner party.

A well-placed shell brings the ceiling down on to the dining-table. Lady Ruff-Diamond emerges from the rubble and dust, stiff upper lip intact, with the line: "Oh dear, I think I'm getting a bit plastered".

The Carry On films lost their way in the mid Seventies, culminating in the dismal flop Carry On England. Joan, like other regulars, switched her talents to television.

She turned in some fine comic performances in shows like Only Fools and Horses, but nothing else achieved the world-wide popularity of the Carry On films.

On Joan's death in 2001, her Carry On colleague Barbara Windsor summed up her talent and her contribution to the legendary series. "To me she was the last of the great Carry Ons.

"She was there at the beginning, she was there near the end.

"Her talent was wonderful; she could do any accent, dialect; she could dance, sing, play dowdy and glam."

Then ,in a final tribute to Joan's best known feature, she added: "We laughed all the time, and when Joan was around, we giggled.".