Television TV

Up Pompeii!

  1. Home
    2. >
  2. Television
    3. >
  3. Up Pompeii!

This Memory is looking a little short on nostalgia! Have you got anything you could add?

If you watch Up Pompeii! now you wonder how did they get away with it then! Frankie Howerd starred at Lurcio (slave to Ludicrus) - and there would be plenty of asides from Frankie making comments about the plot, scenery, etc. "Carry on" type double entendres came thick and fast and it all added up to an absolutely hilarious show!

Suggest an update

Author of this article:



Contributors to this article:

  • There are no contributors yet

Message boards

Discuss Up Pompeii! on the message boards

Do You Remember Up Pompeii!?

Do You Remember Up Pompeii!?

  • LouiseOC
    on
    Still pretty funny after all these years. My favourite episode is the one where Lurcio organises a sex strike to stop the men going to war.
  • Anonymous user
    on
    I first saw this when I was nine and I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen, though I couldn't have been able to understand half of the jokes! What I liked was the way Lurcio knew he was a fictional character and spoke to the audience - I'd never seen anyone "break the fourth wall" before... except René in "Allo Allo!" I suppose (also directed by David Croft), but that was just at the start of episodes, not all the way through. Best episode may be Frankie Howerd having to play Caesar as well as Lurcio and running round changing costumes, getting hopelessly confused (a screen falls down, deliberately, and you see a BBC dresser, in modern clothes, helping him into his toga!). Or it may be "James Bondus", with George Baker (considered as Bond for the actual film series), and the stolen plans for the giant catapult. "Master, have you looked in all your drawers?" "I am not wearing any!" Or it may be Howerd forgetting his lines during one of the first episodes and being allowed to ad-lib for about a minute while all the other actors stand there! Genius. Frankie Howerd first played a Lurcio-type character in a long-running stage show called "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum". Both this and "Up Pompeii!" were loosely based on the classical works of Plautus. So when Lurcio said it wasn't a cultural show, he was probably wrong!
  • Anonymous user
    on
    I used to see this at my Gran's on a Friday night when I went to stay. My mum and dad would never have let me watch it! It was very 'Carry On' and all of the jokes were double entendres (not very subtle ones!). Frankie Howerd was perfect in it - it was just the right vehicle for his type of humour, and the funniest parts were his asides to the audience. The show mainly consisted of his attempts to deliver 'the prologue' to the audience, which he never managed to do, due to constant interruptions from a parade of characters, such as the lovesick son of his employer (Nausius) and his sex-mad employer's wife (Ammonia). Marvellous - totally British, and part of our heritage !!

Do you remember these?