Are You Being Served? sharp-tongued, witty responses, along with his trademark catch-phrase "I'm free!", were enthusiastically embraced by many audience members, and the character evolved into a gay icon in popular culture. Despite this, Inman pointed out that Mr Humphries' true sexual orientation was never explicitly stated in the series, and David Croft said in an interview that the character was not homosexual, but "just a mother's boy". In an episode of the spin-off "Grace & Favour", the character is further described as neither a "woman's man" nor a "man's man" and as being "in limbo". The characters (Mr Humphries especially) sometimes broke the
Are You Being Served? either as an aside, or often for comic effect (e.g. an underling addressing a superior). The joke is that lower class people, even when married, addressed each other as Mr. or Mrs. Middle and upper-class people on familiar terms always use given or nicknames. The use of titles is therefore a pretention to being posh or refined. "Are You Being Served?" was initially broadcast from 1973 to 1985. Each series had between four and nine episodes. Counting the pilot episode, all episodes and specials from the series, and the film, the show ran for sixty-nine episodes and ten series. In