Eric Sykes Kinnear, Beryl Reid, and Norman Rossington. It was his last screen appearance with Hattie Jacques. The film employed an idea drawn from the British showbiz tradition in which extras used the word "rhubarb" to simulate low-level background dialogue, which had also been a running joke in "The Goon Show". In 1981, Sykes wrote, directed, and starred in the offbeat comedy "If You Go Down in the Woods Today" for Thames, with a cast including Roy Kinnear, Fulton Mackay, and George Sewell. During 1982, Sykes played the Chief Constable in the slapstick police comedy film "The Boys in Blue", which starred
Hattie Jacques on stage, radio, screen and record made her film debut in an uncredited role in "Green for Danger" in 1946, before working in a number of minor roles in a series of Dickens adaptations. From 1958 to 1974 she appeared in fourteen "Carry On" films, where she was "usually cast as formidable hospital matrons (at least four) or man-devouring predators". Jacques had a long professional partnership with Eric Sykes, with whom she co-starred in two long-running television series, "Sykes and a..." and "Sykes". The couple also produced an album and a single in 1962; a stage show followed between 1976 and 1979, "A Hatful of Sykes".