User:Fantr/sandbox

"Confessions" is a book and film series about Timmy Lea and his brother-in-law Sid Noggett by English novelist and screenwriter Christopher Wood writing as "Timothy Lea". The books became a popular 1970s British film series and made a star of lead actor Robin Askwith.

History
The Confessions books were not the first of their kind. Stanley Morgan's Russ Tobin books had first appeared in the late 1960s. Like Timmy Lea, Russ Tobin held a variety of jobs - a new one in each book - and seduced a number of women in each book.

Advertising executive Christopher Wood had published two semi-autobiographical novels to polite reviews but meagre sales. Eager to find a commercial success, at lunch with his paperback publisher Anthony Cheetham (at Sphere paperbacks), Wood pitched an idea of paperback originals about a jack-of-all-trades and his sexploits based on the premise that sex-starved English women were throwing themselves at labourers. Wood himself previous to joining the ad agency had held a variety of jobs, e.g. postman, ice-cream salesman, etc. Cheetham's eyes lit up and he instructed Wood to proceed. When pitching the idea, Wood promised the book could sell a million copies.

The first book Confessions of a Window Cleaner - credited to "Timothy Lea" - appeared as a paperback original and quickly sold out as did several reprints. The sequel, Driving Instructor, also sold out and garnered a reprint.

The books soon became a publishing phenomenon. By 1973 Wood's first several Confessions books had sold almost a million copies. By 1978 Sphere paperbacks had sold over 3,500,000 copies of Wood's first eight Confessions books and James's first nine. Sphere's revenues almost tripled between 1975 and 1980 owing in large part to the Confessions books.

Oddly, Sphere paperbacks was part of the Thomson Empire. According to Sphere's managing director Edmund Fisher (1975-1979), chairman Roy Thomson did not want the publication "of dirty books or books about gambling and we respected that."

Ireland, Rhodesia, South Africa and Malawi banned the books.

Characters
Wood set Window Cleaner in Clapham, London where he himself was born and raised.

"The Lea family of Clapham, London, live in a state of dilapidation and urban renovation unique to the 1970s."

"clumsy sexual adventures of a British working class everyman"

Like many British sex comedies of the 1970s the narrative involves a male protagonist who gets into compromising situations with a succession of women. According to scholar Jeremy Tambling, the theme of the books "is the hero's inability to control the wantonness of his penis."

Technique
Each Confessions book took Wood approximately five weeks to complete.

Wood writes the books in the first-person voice and uses the present tense. "True to some kind of Dickensian boy-makes-good theme, the book[s] even begin with chapter summaries, outlining the hero's exploits."

Film scholar and university lecturer Leon Hunt notes that "The first two novels are, dare one say it, 'realist' in style, but they broadened into postcard caricature as they went on. The films pushed this further, and Askwith modified Timmy into a more comically stupid character.

Critical assessment
Christopher Martin Jones believes Wood's books are superior to the films.

Novelist Peter Ackroyd was one of the few "serious" critics to review a Confessions book, though his review was hardly sympathetic. "Miss Cartland's only rival must be, at the more sweaty end of the paperback trade, Timothy Lea. His Confession of a Private Soldier is the latest in a series of 'sexploits' for blokes like you and me. Our Tim is now out of the clink or nook or chokey (where, you remember, we left him in what they call group therapy) and is ready and willing to regale us with another saga of life below the belt. It is in the "And so I said to her. . ." public bar vein; some monosyllables in search of an author. The moral — if that's not too highbrow and pouffy a word — seems to be that deep down, or low down, we're all really 'the same,' and that you need only mention a few unmentionables to get a stock titter. Mr Lea, if I may be formal for just a moment, spends a great deal of space, if not effort, trying to prove that he is not and has never been a "poufdah," or ginger as they are known in the trade. There is no intellectual stuff about character or plot and Lea gets down to the heart of the matter with a series of birds, slags and bints. He is not, unfortunately quite as good at pillow-talk and he treats his prose as he treats his partners: it lies there helpless under his onslaughts, panting, broken-backed and pleading with him to stop. The policy of the paperback novelist par excellence is to cultivate illiteracy because it's good for sales. But back to Lea, or rather his "mighty wurlitzer" or "old man" or "Percy," by which he attaches himself to young ladies as quickly and as briefly as possible. For someone who is attached to the best opposite sex that men have, he spends a great deal of time insulting and escaping them. The women he exults over are all either birds of prey or sisters of the Gorgon, and sex is only a little better than a journey through a cement mixer. Lea can't wait to get back to the boys, of course, and in this particular case it is the Army (you remember, or rather Lea reminds us, that place where horrible little men say, "You horrible little man!"). All good dirty fun, with a lecherous WRAC and some night exercises. There is a general grubbiness about the book, like a large and nervous wink. It is as if a machine called Percy (no disrespect intended) was churning out a keyhole view of modern cliches. There is a flatness and inanity about the writing which comes from trying far too hard; if I hear another joke about 'thespians' or 'immaculate contraception' I shall cancel my subscription for Christmas crackers. Or, as somebody puts it somewhere. "One more crack out of you and you'll get a bunch of fives up your hooter." Blimey, mate. But the worst is to come, when the cheeky chappie is discharged from the Army after infiltrating a strip show into an American air base: "Sid winks at me and the train goes into the tunnel." Are all those good resolutions about to break? But that's the beginning of another paperback.

Rival book series
Sphere Books published the first eight Confessions books. Anthony Cheetham, who had encouraged Wood to write the first Confessions book, left Sphere to start Futura books for Robert Maxwell's British Printing & Communications Corporation. Wood joined Cheetham at Futura. Sphere commissioned Laurence James to write twelve further Confessions books, as by "Jonathan May". James thought the books were fun to write at first, but became "very tedious".

"They were fun days. That's the only series I've ever quit on. The publisher wanted me to keep going and I couldn't stand it any longer. It was too much of a strain. I don't know how comedians can do it. It was like having Sybil Fawlty standing behind you, nagging you in the back, saying 'Say something funny,' all the time. And in the end I quit. I did eleven and then they persuaded me to come out of retirement and do one more which was Confessions From the Olympics and I did that one. But never again."

James says that the Confessions books were probaby his "maximum earnings" as a writer. "I mean, they were really good, very funny and hugely successful. God, the first one I did sold probably 450,000 - that was Shop Assistant, the first one of mine. But even right down at the end when they were tailing off they were still selling 70 or 80,000. They were just huge. Absolutely massive."

James was a fan of the singer John Stewart and "put in lots of references to playing John Stewart music, actually naming him and urging people to buy his records."

According to Tambling, "The Jonathan May series rely on jokes provided by the readers (largely male, from the lists of readers thanked) making a distinction between 'naughty' and 'dirty' jokes, and refusing racist jokes (but this does not extend to anti-Scots jokes). There is a double illusion: that of the readers and publishers and writer carrying on a collective enterprise of writing off-the-cuff present tense adventures; and that of the realist text, where a continuity is assumed from book to book[.]"

Scholar and author Martin Christopher Jones derides the James series saying, "Jonathan May's exploits make Timothy Lea sound like Casanova."

Readers respond
Both Wood and James refer to reader responses. Laurence "And the fan mail that they attracted. 'Cos I used to solicit fanmail and ask women readers to send me underwear. And they did. Hundreds of them. It was very weird. People will ring you. People will try and make contact. It's an amazing, amazing fact. Some of the mail I got from CONFESSIONS. I mean, women were seriously sending me photographs of themselves, phone numbers, details of when their husband wasn't there, the fact that they were divorced and would I please come and... It was really sad, it was really genuinely sad because they believed the books and they believed that Jonathan May really existed and he was the guy on the front cover of all the books, this good looking young stud who talked about his funny sexual adventures and how he could keep it up all night long. And you think, boy, wouldn't they be disappointed to know about this middle-aged family man with his growing family. Ah, strange days."

James claimed in 1978 to have a "huge carrier bag full" of knickers that female readers had sent him.

Spin-off works by Christopher Wood
With the success of the Timothy Lea books, came several spin-off series. As with the Lea books, the protagonist is credited as author.

Wood had the brainwave of writing a female counterpart to Timmy Lea, a suggestion his publishers eagerly accepted. First up were the "Penny Sutton" books, about an airline stewardess. (This was his second series to feature a female protagonist as he started the Penny Sutton books a year previously with The Stewardesses.) Then came the better known "Rosie Dixon" series. Like Timmy Lea, Rosie Dixon goes from job to job in each book. At least one of the Dixon novels - Confessions From an Escort Agency - mentions Timmy Lea. Ireland, South Africa, Rhodesia and New Zealand banned several of the books.

Although Wood wrote nine Rosie Dixon novels, only the first was filmed, Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse (1978) based on Confessions of a Night Nurse. Justin Cartwright directed the film based on Wood's own script. The character Penny Sutton, Rosie's best friend in the books - renamed Penny Green in the movie - was the star of an earlier series of similar novels which depicted Penny as an airline stewardess. Unlike the Confessions films, Night Nurse was not a financial success.

Wood also wrote three "Oliver Grape" novels. Oliver is an oversexed teenage boy who not only can't lose his virginity, he can't give it away with Blueshield Stamps. He has a dad who builds a cabin cruiser called Spirit of Wormwood Scrubs in the back garden. A competition-mad Mum who is always filling the house with crates of baked beans. A sister who can run faster than any boy in the neighbourhood – there isn't one who's got away from her yet. A brother who makes David Bowie look like a square, and Gran – Adolph Hitler in skirts who is not adverse to using kung fu against other grannies. The final volume, It's a Knock-up!, features an in-depth television programme where the participants discuss if Rosie Dixon and Timothy Lea's books qualify as art.

From book to screen
In need of reading material when traveling from Paddington to Folkestone, producer Greg Smith purchased a copy of Window Cleaner at a station bookshop. "When I got off at the other end I had decided that I wanted to make it into a wonderful movie," Smith said.

Smith, convinced he could make Timmy Lea the "Alfie of the 1970s", failed to interest any major distributor to finance a film adaptation. Finally, Columbia pictures agreed. Columbia studio head David Begelman was looking to invest money in low-budget British films that could turn a profit.

At this same time, the producers sought someone to play Timmy Lea. The Michael Klinger archives contain a draft memorandum of agreement with actor Robin Nedwell. Several other candidates including Richard Beckinsale, Richard O'Sullivan, Nicky Henson and Dennis Waterman declined the part. Robin Askwith had appeared in bit parts in a number of film and television roles before two key appearances in 1973. The first was in appearing in Antony Balch's Horror Hospital. In the same year Askwith also appeared in a Carry On film, Carry On Girls. These appearances led producers Norman Cohen, Greg Smith and Michael Klinger to offer him the starring role in Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

Anthony Booth played Sid Noggett, husband to Timmy's sister Rosie (played by Sheila White in the films). Booth's daughter Cherie considered her father's apperance in the films "embarrassing".

According to Cherie Blair, Booth's daughter, these films were the source of misery to her. Jibes by fellow classmates were the least of her troubles.

To round out the cast the producers hired distinguised veteran actors like John le Mesurier, Dandy Nichols, Windsor Davies, Irene Handl, Liz Fraser, Joan Hickson among others.

Window Cleaner's reception
Costing only £150,000 Window Cleaner became the most financially successful British movie of the year and Britain's number one box office earner. Reviews were dismal - some critics said the film set the British film industry back twenty years. Alexander Stuart in Films and Filming believed "Confessions of a Window Cleaner might well be re-titled Confessions of the British: what they don't know about making films, making erotic images, making people laugh and making love. We probably don't clean windows too well either." However, the Evening News awards voted Robin Askwith the most promising newcomer.

Window Cleaner has been called, "perhaps the best known and most successful British sex film" of the era. Audiences flocked to the film making it Britain's top-grossing film of 1974. The film made Robin Askwith a star in the UK. Despite the film's success in many international markets, it flopped in North America.

When the films were originally released they were regarded as very risqué and essentially soft core pornography, owing to the amount of nudity involved - generally female, with Robin Askwith being the only male shown naked. However the sex scenes themselves are more suggestive than explicit, being essentially played for laughs. Nonetheless, it was not until 1997 that Channel 5 became the first British terrestrial channel to show the entire series of Confessions films. At this time the Daily Mail newspaper was very critical of the sexual content of Channel 5's late night schedule, referring to Channel 5 as Channel Filth and the Confessions series as "Films from the darkest days of British cinema".

Window Cleaner's success led to three sequels, Confessions of a Pop Performer (based on Confessions of a Pop Performer) in 1975, Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976) and Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977).

Sequels
Window Cleaner is Wood's favourite Confessions film because it was the first film he ever wrote, though thinks that Pop Performer is more fun – "and the music grows on me!"

The end of the series and proposed unmade films
Although Holiday Camp would turn out to be the last film in the series, a fifth and a sixth film, Confessions of a Plumber's Mate and Confessions of a Private Soldier, had been planned in 1977. Filming was set to begin on Plumber's Mate at the end of February 1978. Robin Askwith even expressed a desire to direct Private Soldier, but neither film materialised. In November 1977 the studio canceled plans for future films. Columbia Pictures president David Begelman, who had been very supportive of the British film industry and who had green-lit the first Confessions film, had been implicated in a cheque-forging scandal and was fired. His successor had no interest financing low-budget, profitable British films.

Michael Klinger rejected a script based on Confessions from a Haunted House. Plans to shoot a made-for-video Confessions film in the 1980s also came to nothing, as did a proposed 1992 film, "Confessions of a Squaddie", which was proposed with action due to take place in post-Gulf War Kuwait.

During the 1980s, Michael Klinger entered into a production deal with The Cannon Group.

Another method of obtaining funding for the Smith adaptations in the 1980s was an attempted return to the bread-and-butter strategy of the 1970s, with a proposed reboot of the Confessions franchise as part of a package deal with Cannon films, the Smith adaptations being made concurrently with the low-budget low comedies. As with Rank, the deal never came off and the films remain unmade. [...] Others came surprisingly close to being made, such as the Confessions reboot. The latter, described by Klinger as "a pretty insignificant part" of the proposed Cannon deal, morphed from low-budget remakes to an international proposal, retitled The Kangaroo Kid. It was to have an American star and be set in Australia - to capitalise on the Crocodile Dundee (1986) craze of the time. Correspondence and script drafts related to this project are fascinating as they demonstrate the difficulties of attempting to internationalise a very British sex-comedy in a post-feminist, post-Aids era. It may be surprising that Klinger would choose to revive the Confessions franchise, until one considers that, in reality, he was attempting to revive the bread-and-butter strategy that had served him well in the 1970s, and that the films were to be used to entice backing for more prestigious projects. It is perhaps more surprising that Klinger would attempt to internationlise the franchise in the way he did, until one considers that Australia was offering tax breaks to filmmakers at the time. Klinger was a businessman with an extraordinary nose for business opportunities, and documents suggest he was always on the look-out for a good tax break. The Kangaroo Kid was to take advantage of tax breaks in Australia. page 117

a series of sex-comedies that can be seen as Klinger's bread-and-butter movies. The diminishing returns from the franchise reflected the twilight of Klinger's career, characterised by his unsuccessful final film, Riding High (1981). page 111

the lowest of British low comedy, the Confessions series. 114

Klinger took his executive producer role on the *Confessions* films very seriously. Indeed, Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1973) seems to have been subject to a good deal of confusion in its initial stages. Director Val Guest felt compelled to write to Klinger as "the only person I get any real sense out of," while producer Greg Smith postponed production until Klinger's return from the South African set of Gold". As already noted, the *Confessions* series were Klinger's bread-and-butter films, but he was a strong presence throughout the series' production. It was Klinger who spotted that the series had lost its way, remarking that the "believable family background" of the earlier films was a fateful absence in the script for Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977). He also dismissed the derivative and cliche ridden script for the as yet unmade Confessions from a Haunted House as "Carry On Confessions With the Cat and the Canary" before complaining that he felt as if he were "operating in a vacuum". […] The Confessions films were, after all, Greg Smith's pet projects.

Page 115

Despite his conscientiousness on the *Confessions* films, they were not films that he sought to champion - at least in relation to his own emerging reputation as a producer. In the mid-1970s, Klinger produced a self-promoting newspaper *The Klinger News*, which detailed the producer's past glories, current undertakings and future plans; upon reading the first of these, Greg Smith wrote a gently mocking letter to Klinger regarding a seemingly glaring omission: "I've spotted the "deliberate mistake" in *The Klinger News*! You don't mention the *Confessions* films... Do I win a prize?" Page 115-116

Rival film series
The Ups and Downs of a Handyman was the first and only film in what was meant to be a rival series. The second planned film - The Ups and Downs of a Soccer Player - was never made, though a script exists by John Sealey and future bestselling author Ken Follett. Two drafts exist at the Ken Follett Collection in the Saginaw Valley State University's Melvin J. Zahnow Library Archives.

Stanley Long made three "Adventures of a ..." films, the most successful rival to the Confessions series. These are Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976), Adventures of a Private Eye (1977) and Adventures of a Plumber's Mate (1978). Unlike, the Confessions films, the Adventure films did not feature recurring characters. Instead the leading man in each film was named after a cardinal direction (e.g. "North" "West" "South").

In 1979 Confessions From the David Galaxy Affair came out co-starring Anthony Booth. (Attempt to tie it in with official series?)

Long aversion to sex scenes (cite)

Theatrical adaptations
Wood was busy writing for the James Bond film and book franchise and so welcomed the opportunity to earn additional revenue without effort. Val Guest, who had directed the first Confessions film, wrote the play.

Stage appearances

 * The Further Confessions of a Window Cleaner - "UK Tour" (1977)
 * The Further Confessions of a Window Cleaner - "Rhodesia" (1978)
 * The Further Confessions of a Window Cleaner - "New Zealand Tour" (1980)
 * The Further Confessions of a Window Cleaner - "UK Tour" (1980)
 * Confessions From A Health Farm - "New Zealand Tour" (1981)

"Timothy Lea" (Christopher Wood) series

 * Confessions of a Window Cleaner (August 1971)
 * Confessions of a Driving Instructor (March 1972)
 * Confessions from a Holiday Camp (October 1972)
 * Confessions From a Hotel (February 1973)
 * Confessions of a Travelling Salesman (1973)
 * Confessions of a Film Extra (1973)
 * Confessions From the Clink (December 1973)
 * Confessions of a Private Soldier (March 1974)
 * Confessions From the Pop Scene (August 1974) (retitled Confessions of a Pop Performer in August 1975)
 * Confessions From a Health Farm (November 1974)
 * Confessions From the Shop Floor (December 1974)
 * Confessions of a Long Distance Lorry Driver (May 1975)
 * Confessions of a Plumber's Mate (July 1975)
 * Confessions of a Private Dick (December 1975)
 * Confessions From a Luxury Liner (March 1976)
 * Confessions From a Nudist Colony (July 1976)
 * Confessions of a Milkman (November 1976)
 * Confessions of an Ice Cream Man (March 1977)
 * Confessions From a Haunted House (April 1979)

Spin-off "Penny Sutton" (Christopher Wood) series

 * The Stewardesses (April 1973)
 * The Stewardesses Down Under (December 1973)
 * The Jumbo Jet Girls (December 1974)
 * I'm Penny, Fly Me (August 1975)
 * Penny Sutton, Supersonic (December 1976)

Spin-off "Rosie Dixon" (Christopher Wood) series

 * Confessions of a Night Nurse (May 1974)
 * Confessions of a Gym Mistress (September 1974)
 * Confessions From an Escort Agency (February 1975)
 * Confessions of a Lady Courier (June 1975)
 * Confessions From a Package Tour (September 1975)
 * Confessions of a Physical WRAC (January 1976)
 * Confessions of a Baby Sitter (May 1976)
 * Confessions of a Personal Secretary (September 1976)
 * Rosie Dixon, Barmaid (January 1977)

Spin-off "Oliver Grape" (Christopher Wood) series

 * Onward Virgins (1974) (later reissued as Forward Virgins in 1975)
 * Crumpet Voluntary (December 1974)
 * It's a Knock-Up! (April 1975)

Rival "Jonathan May" (Laurence James) series

 * Confessions of a Shop Assistant (1974)
 * Confessions of a Travel Courier (March 1975)
 * Confessions from the Beat (May 1975)
 * Confessions of a Games Master (October 1975)
 * Confessions from a Strip Club (January 1976)
 * Confessions of a Housewife (May 1976)
 * Confessions from a Sex Clinic (January 1977)
 * Confessions of a Stunt Man (May 1977)
 * Confessions of a Gasman (September 1977)
 * Confessions of an Astronaut (March 1978)
 * Confessions from a Stud Farm (July 1978)
 * Confessions from the Olympics (May 1980)