Lewis & Co.

Case, case. Card, card. Sample, sample.

It’s early 1973 and the world is about to get its first glimpse of Phantom warbler Michael Crawford‘s camp, beret-wearing nightmare Frank Spencer. Children all across Britain in both the 70s and 80s knew about Frank’s mannerisms and ineptitude and his catchphrases were rife in the playgound. Whether it was ‘Ooh Betty’, simply ‘Ooh’ on its own or complaints of his cat having done a shit in his hat, it was ubiquitous at that point in time. If you’re looking for cross-pollenation, Frank has been referenced in other shows such as I’m Alan Partridge, The Office and One Foot in the Grave.

So let’s start at the top. Lewis & Co. are an ironmongers in town (unspecified, despite my research) and Frank goes for an interview with Mr. Lewis himself about an area sales manager job. To cut a long story short – it doesn’t work; he breaks the lift, pisses the existing staff off and generally fucks the place up. If you aren’t familiar with the show, this is all perfectly normal.

Now, I can’t state with any conviction that I know of any top level ironmonger brands. Certainly not in the United Kingdom. We probably just import it all nowadays, don’t we? This country, etc. Due to that, I headed in a more high street direction. So your Screwfixes, your Homebases, your Toolstations. I ended up blending a couple of them. Namely one that’s orange and one that’s blue. Tried to put a little nub at the top to represent a beret.

Whether that all works is up to you. I’m viewing this all as Lewis & Co. if they survived to the modern day fully intact. Without wanting to sound too depressing, 1973 is over 50 years ago now… so it probably didn’t.

On a slightly more upbeat note, sorely-missed sitcom theme tune composer Ronnie Hazelhurst managed to get the show’s title letters into its theme via piccolos and Morse code. Legendary behaviour, I think we can all agree.