[AT] Grace and Favour

[Indiana Robinson]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Gene Dotson <gdotsly at watchtv.net> wrote:
>    H.L.
>    I wasn't familiar with him either. I did a google search and came up
> with "Grace and Favour". Seems to have a lot of characters from the British
> comedy " Are You Being Served". The Morris Moulterd character was played by
> Fleur Bennett. This character is a farmer and grounds keeper at the Grace
> Mansion, owned by the family who also own the Grace Dapartment store.
>    I am sure Farmer will elaborate more.
>
>                Gene
>
>
>>
>> Just a thought some folks might not know who Morris Moulterd, referenced
>> in
>> your tag line, is. Care to explain who this great man was.
>>
==============================


Close... "Grace and favor" was a sequel / later extension of the Brit
TV comedy "Are You Being Served" set after old Mister Grace died and
the store closed. The surviving staff then retired to an old Tudor
manor house and farm left to them in trust in Mr. Grace's will.
They often change the names of British shows for the American market
and here the show is known as "Are You Being Served Again".  The loud,
brusk and country wise farmer at the Manor was Maurice Moulterd played
by Billy Burden. His very attractive farm girl daughter Mavis was
played by Fleur Bennett. One of Moulterd's common scenes was to enter
the kitchen of the manor at meal time and announce in a loud voice
"sorry to barge in when you have your snouts in the trough" which
usually annoyed the cityfied former London residents.
There were three old tractors used in the series. One was a not super
old Fordson Major Diesel which was used to pull a very interesting
trailer in one episode, was just driven in another and sat behind the
characters in yet another. There were two tractors in a potato
planting scene. One I don't recall at the moment but it was a three
point tractor and I think it had a loader on it. It was making furrows
to plant in. The other tractor looked to be some kind of McCormick
made for the English Market??? It resembled something like a 10-20 /
15-30 but later and on factory rubber. The hitch looked very much IHC.
It ran in the potato planting scene with unbelievable amounts of
billowing black smoke. In another episode it was used to pull the big
trailer filled with very soupy muck and Mavis Moulterd supposedly
using a 3 prong pitchfork to toss out the soupy stuff. Using it would
have been tantamount to pushing a rope...
Diana and I are hooked on many of the old British TV comedies and I
bought this complete series on DVD a couple of years ago. It just cost
too much to acquire many of them but we now use Net-flix and are
happily watching dozens and dozens of them a month for about $20 a
month.
This series would barely be rated as PG here today but I have seen
Brit sites rating it as soft porn. Not sure why.
On a side note: I have seen Moulterd's first name spelled both as
Morris and as Maurice. I'm not sure which is correct. In the grand
scheme of the universe I don't suppose it really matters.
:-)
BTW, son Scott who is currently up to his eyebrows in adding on to and
remodeling his house just sold his Allis 190XT project tractor to some
fellow with a John Deere front plate on his truck. It has been in one
of my barns for several years now but he actually made a few bucks
profit selling it. He is also trying to sell his good 1755 Oliver. He
got too busy at his job to do any farming and I retired. He would like
to replace it with a smaller utility tractor. His house project is
about 75% done.


--
"farmer"

"Good clean muck never hurt nobody!!!"
Morris Moulterd


Hay and Straw Exchange (Buy it, sell it and trade it.)
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/HayandStrawExchange


Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com