His Lordship Entertains

His Lordship Entertains was Ronnie Barker's second vehicle for his Lord Rustless character, first seen three years earlier in Hark at Barker on ITV. This time though, Rustless appeared in a series for BBC2. Hark at Barker had also included sketch inserts, whereas His Lordship Entertains was a sitcom.

Set again in the aristocratic Chrome Hall, which had now become a hotel. It once more starred David Jason as the 100-year-old Dithers and Josephine Tewson as Mildred Bates, two actors who would continue to have a working relationships with Barker. In fact all of the regular cast reprised their roles from Hark at Barker.

Barker wrote all the scripts under the pseudonym Jonathan Cobbald. He liked to refer to the show as "Fawlty Towers mark one" as it appeared on television three years before that other hotel bound sitcom.

Four episodes of the sitcom have been performed on stage by the University of Nottingham's New Theatre.

Archive status
For many years it was thought that the series had been entirely lost. However, the first episode of His Lordship Entertains, 'The Food Inspector', was recovered in 2009. In addition the scripts were published in Ronnie Barker's anthology All I Ever Wrote.

Cast

 * Ronnie Barker - Lord Rustless
 * Josephine Tewson - Mildred Bates
 * David Jason - Dithers
 * Mary Baxter - Cook
 * Moira Foot - Effie
 * Frank Gatliff - Badger
 * Mary Merrall - Mrs Ringer
 * Bart Allison - Mr Blunt
 * Gladys Henson - Mrs Ringer's Friend
 * Diana King - Harriet
 * Anthony Sharp - Sir Geoffrey Quick
 * Michael Knowles - Mr Smith
 * Walter Sparrow - Mr Flint
 * Patrick Troughton - The Sheik
 * Colin Bean - Guest
 * Pamela Cundell - Mrs Featherstone