50 Fun Facts About Dad's Army

Which south-coast seaside town is home to Captain Mainwaring's Home Guard platoon in Dad's Army?

Walmington-on-Sea was nearly Brightsea-on-Sea: the BBC's head of comedy disliked the first name in the script and had it changed before filming began.

What is Captain Mainwaring's day job in Dad's Army, the post that makes Sergeant Wilson his deputy twice over?

Bank manager Mainwaring outranks his chief clerk Wilson behind the counter and on parade, and young Pike works at the same branch as a junior clerk.

Which trade does Lance Corporal Jones ply in Dad's Army, supplying the delivery van his platoon uses as transport?

Butcher Jones was a handy friend to have under rationing, and he is so proud of his delivery van that he resents every modification the platoon makes to it.

Which actor, earlier known as Coronation Street's Leonard Swindley, played Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army?

Arthur Lowe had an odd clause in his contract: he would never have to remove his trousers. He also refused to take his scripts home.

Which Dad's Army actor, who played gentle Private Godfrey, also wrote the hit 1920s stage thriller The Ghost Train?

Arnold Ridley had the idea after being stranded for an evening at a railway station near Bristol, and his play was filmed several times.

Which wartime entertainer, half of a famous double act, sang the Dad's Army theme tune shortly before his death?

Bud Flanagan was paid 100 guineas for the recording, and the pastiche was so convincing that many viewers believed it was a real wartime song.

How is Captain Mainwaring's surname correctly pronounced in Dad's Army, though a rival officer says it as spelt?

Mannering is right, yet Captain Square of the neighbouring platoon keeps saying the name exactly as it is spelt, one of many slights its owner endures.

Which item does Private Pike's mother make him wear over his Dad's Army uniform to ward off illness?

A scarf in claret and blue became the character's trademark, and the young actor was invited to choose it himself from the BBC costume department.

What is Sergeant Wilson to Private Pike, as Dad's Army writer David Croft confirmed on the last day of filming?

His father, Croft told the actor who played Pike, settling a question the scripts had only hinted at through Wilson's closeness to the boy's widowed mother.

Which symbols top the arrows advancing on Britain in the animated opening titles of Dad's Army?

Swastikas on moving arrows replaced the first plan, real footage of refugees and Nazi troops, which the controller of BBC1 ordered out as offensive.

Which Norfolk town, where Dad's Army filmed most exterior scenes, has a statue of Captain Mainwaring on a bench?

Thetford stood in for the streets of the fictional resort, and the town's old fire station now houses a museum devoted to the series.

Which trade does the dour Scot Private Frazer follow in Dad's Army, having kept a stamp shop in the first episode?

Undertaker suited the gloomiest man in the platoon, who was already making coffins as a hobby while the first episode had him keeping a philately shop.

Which historical nickname does air raid warden Hodges throw at Captain Mainwaring throughout Dad's Army?

Napoleon mocks Mainwaring's short stature and bossy manner, and in one episode the captain dreams he really is the emperor, beaten at Waterloo.

Which actor, once married to Carry On star Hattie Jacques, played the languid Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army?

John Le Mesurier called himself a jobbing actor and appeared in more than 120 films, yet his only award was a BAFTA for a 1971 Dennis Potter play.

Which actor was only 48 when he began playing the elderly Lance Corporal Jones in Dad's Army?

Clive Dunn was one of the youngest in the cast, so he took on the slapstick his older colleagues could not manage, and in 1971 he had a number one single.

Which Dad's Army episode has the platoon guarding a captured U-boat crew overnight in the church hall?

The Deadly Attachment is arguably the best-known episode: the German captain starts a list of men he will hunt down after the war, and Pike's name ends up on it.

Which wartime leader insisted the Local Defence Volunteers, the force seen in Dad's Army, be renamed the Home Guard?

Winston Churchill found the first title uninspiring and overruled officials who objected that a million armbands with the old initials had already been printed.

What is the first name of Captain Mainwaring's domineering wife, who is never seen on screen in Dad's Army?

Elizabeth is known only through her husband's sheepish telephone calls; the nearest viewers come is her outline in a bunk in the couple's Anderson shelter.

Which widow, a regular customer at his shop, does Lance Corporal Jones marry in the final episode of Dad's Army?

Mrs Fox is given away by Captain Mainwaring with Sergeant Wilson as best man, and the series closes on the platoon's toast to the Home Guard.

Which co-writer based Dad's Army on his own teenage service in a Hertfordshire Home Guard battalion?

Jimmy Perry joined up at 16, and his mother's fretting that he would catch cold on night duty went straight into the character of young Pike.

In Dad's Army, Lance Corporal Jones endlessly recalls serving under General Kitchener in which country?

Sudan saw Jones twice: first as a boy soldier with the Gordon Relief Expedition, then as a grown man on the campaign of the 1890s he loves to relive.

Private Frazer, the gloomy Scot of Dad's Army, says he grew up on which Hebridean island?

Barra, in the Outer Hebrides, is where Frazer says he grew up before a career in the Royal Navy took him south to settle on the English coast.

Private Godfrey of Dad's Army, a conscientious objector in the First World War, won the Military Medal serving as what?

A stretcher bearer at the Somme, Godfrey carried wounded men to safety under fire, a past the platoon learns of only after treating him as a coward.

In a lost Dad's Army episode, the army discharges conscripted spiv Private Walker because he is allergic to what?

Corned beef fritters were the only rations left for the recruits, so the army sent Walker straight back to the platoon and his black-market sidelines.

Why is Private Pike turned down for military service when his call-up papers finally arrive in Dad's Army?

A rare blood type came to light when he gave blood, yet Pike kept the news to himself until the platoon had thrown him a going-away party.

Which Dad's Army actor had played the crofter in Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 thriller The 39 Steps?

John Laurie, the platoon's Frazer, was a Shakespearean actor and a noted speaker of Burns's verse, and the Hitchcock part came in only his third film.

Which Dad's Army actor, who played spiv Private Walker, died suddenly in 1973 during the sixth series?

James Beck was 44, and the writers wrote Walker out of the television series, though other actors took over the part on radio and on stage.

Which actor took over the role of Captain Mainwaring for the 2016 Dad's Army feature film?

Toby Jones led an all-new platoon, with Catherine Zeta-Jones as a German spy who poses as a journalist writing about the Home Guard.

Which Carry On actress replaced Janet Davies as Mrs Pike in the 1971 Dad's Army feature film?

Liz Fraser was imposed by the backers, Columbia Pictures, one of several studio changes, such as filming in Buckinghamshire, that left the regular cast unhappy.

Which title did Dad's Army carry in its first script, before the BBC's head of comedy renamed the series?

The Fighting Tigers was dropped by Michael Mills, who also changed the town's name and several characters' surnames and suggested adding a Scot.

Which War Secretary's 1940 radio broadcast called for the volunteers who became the force shown in Dad's Army?

Anthony Eden asked men aged 17 to 65 who were not in the forces to enrol at their local police station, ready to face enemy paratroops.

Which England fast bowler guest-starred in The Test, a Dad's Army episode about a cricket match with the wardens?

Fred Trueman plays a ringer signed up by Hodges, but he pulls his shoulder and retires hurt, and Godfrey of all people wins the match with a six.

Which future EastEnders star had a recurring Dad's Army role as Private Walker's usherette girlfriend?

Wendy Richard played the cinema usherette Edith Parish from 1970 to 1973, then moved on to the department-store sitcom Are You Being Served?

In a 1974 public information film, the Dad's Army platoon showed viewers how to cross the road using what?

Pelican crossings were demonstrated by the platoon in character but in a modern-day setting, one of several times the cast appeared in character away from the series.

Besides serving as verger, Mr Yeatman leads which uniformed youth group in Dad's Army?

Sea Scouts answer to the verger as their Scoutmaster, a man who fawns on the vicar and regularly sides with Hodges against the platoon.

Which neighbouring town supplies the rival Home Guard platoon led by Captain Square in Dad's Army?

Eastgate's Captain Square is a former regular soldier who served with Lawrence of Arabia, and he rarely passes up a chance to belittle Mainwaring.

What happened to the BBC's master tapes of several early Dad's Army episodes, leaving gaps in the second series?

They were wiped so the tape could be used again and storage space saved, a routine BBC economy; two of the lost episodes turned up again in 2001.

Which Welsh actor played the scheming U-boat captain taken prisoner by the Dad's Army platoon in 1973?

Philip Madoc appeared in only one episode, yet when he died in 2012 BBC News chose a clip from it to accompany his obituary.

Private Frazer of Dad's Army served as a ship's cook at which First World War naval battle?

Jutland is Frazer's great boast as a former chief petty officer, though he spent it in the galley of HMS Defiant, a warship invented for the series.

With which relatives does the elderly Private Godfrey share Cherry Tree Cottage in Dad's Army?

His sisters Dolly and Cissy are hard-of-hearing spinsters, and Dolly's upside-down cakes are a running joke whenever the platoon needs feeding.

What is the first name of Captain Mainwaring, the pompous commander of the Dad's Army platoon?

George Mainwaring has a profligate brother, Barry, a hard-drinking travelling salesman in novelty toys who punctures the captain's tales of a grand family.

Why did Captain Mainwaring of Dad's Army see no combat in the First World War, to his lasting embarrassment?

He arrived too late: Mainwaring reached France only in 1919, after the Armistice, and served there with the Army of Occupation.

Where was Sergeant Wilson educated, a privilege that fuels Captain Mainwaring's class resentment in Dad's Army?

A public school called Meadow Bridge educated Wilson, whose father worked in the City and who was raised by a nanny, while his captain was a scholarship boy at the local grammar.

Which actor played Captain Mainwaring when the Gold channel remade three lost Dad's Army episodes in 2019?

Kevin McNally starred opposite Robert Bathurst's Wilson in remakes shown fifty years after the BBC first broadcast the original episodes.

The closing credits of Dad's Army, with the cast crossing a smoky battlefield, pay homage to which 1944 war film?

The Way Ahead followed a platoon through its training, and it featured the actor who later played Frazer, whose walk in its end credits the sitcom appears to copy.

Which first episode of Dad's Army opens with a 1968 prologue before flashing back to the platoon's formation?

The Man and the Hour starts in the present day as a condition set by a BBC controller, who worried that the comedy belittled the real Home Guard.

Which 1980s sitcom was a later hit for the writing duo behind Dad's Army?

Hi-de-Hi! repeated the Home Guard comedy's trick of mining real memories: one of its writers had worked as a Butlin's Redcoat.

Which regiment's band plays the march version of the Dad's Army theme heard over the closing credits?

Coldstream Guards musicians also accompanied the singer on the opening version, and their closing march ends with a siren sounding the all-clear.

Which 1976 American pilot, made for the ABC network, tried to remake Dad's Army for viewers in the United States?

The Rear Guard never got beyond its pilot, and the original tapes are thought to have been wiped, though the director kept a copy.

Which Welsh newspaperman joined the Dad's Army platoon in the seventh series, after the spiv Walker was written out?

Cheeseman, played by Talfryn Thomas, worked for the town newspaper and stayed with the platoon for only a single series.