Carry on at Your Convenience

There's trouble brewing at Wm.C. Boggs' lavatory factory, where work-to-rule union rep Vic Spanner (Kenneth Cope) seizes every opportunity to bring out the workers on strike (especially if the local football team is playing at home): unless foreman Sid Plummer (Sidney James) can keep production going, the factory may have to close for good.

Times have changed a lot since the 1970s, the decade that saw Britain plagued by industrial action, and Carry On At Your Convenience's once topical 'union workers versus management' storyline now seems very dated. Even so, this film still delivers plenty of laughs thanks to spirited turns from most of the series' regulars (Babs Windsor is the only notable performer missing), lots of quality innuendo, and a script that wisely moves the action away from the shop floor, first to the Plummer home, where Hattie Jacques' budgie proves a winner at the gee-gees, and then to Brighton seafront for the factory's annual drunken day out.

The team is on cracking form here, Sid James guffawing for all he's worth while patting lovely Joan Sims on the bum whenever possible, Kenneth Williams putting in a fun turn as factory owner Mr. Boggs, the unwilling subject of his secretary's amorous advances, and big lunk Bernard Bresslaw copping off with a busty blonde in Brighton. Best of all, as far as I am concerned, is the presence of top Carry On crumpet Jackie Piper as pretty tea girl Myrtle, who sports tiny blue hot-pants for the trip to the coast and briefly strips to her bra and knickers after marrying the boss's lucky son Lewis (Richard O'Callaghan).