However, more dramatic character roles eventually came, including the lead role of Delilah, an ageing model and actor, in the TV drama Sight Unseen (1977), an episode in the She anthology series. Here Liz essayed a touching performance of faded beauty. In 1988 she again drew on personal experience – she had cancer three times – to bring poignancy to the character of Mrs Dewey, an elderly woman dying of cancer, in Eskimos Do It (1988), part of the BBC2 Screenplay series. The previous year she had had a small but intense role as the gin-soaked mother Mrs Brent in Miss Marple: Nemesis. Manchester mill worker Percy is not new to London, visiting to see his beloved United play whenever they have a fixture in the capital. This cup final weekend, however, the 30-something virgin's eyes are opened to a whole new world and lifestyle, up close and personal. The Boxes’ time had passed. They were middle-aged people at a moment when middle-aged people suddenly seemed very old indeed – a trend that the movies, as ever, ruthlessly exaggerated.’ Stephen Tompkinson gives a wonderful performance as the gauche Percy, who expresses the mannerisms of a by-gone age, where a man never curses in front of a lady. He gives Percy an adolescent innocence, which only makes his admission of feeling inadequate all the more painful.

To my unformed mind, the conversation between Percy and Cyrenne was the love story of the century. I was utterly transfixed. And then (no spoilers) the ending.Other television roles included Doris Entwhistle in the sitcom Fairly Secret Army (1984-86), starring Geoffrey Palmer, and she had guest appearances in many series including The Avengers, The Goodies, Jason King, Robin’s Nest, Rumpole of the Bailey, Birds of a Feather, Last of the Summer Wine and Foyle’s War.

Whereas Muriel Box was approaching sixty when she made Rattle, Charles Dyer was only in his mid-thirties but they combine, in opening out the play for the screen, to make the material stupidly condescending – especially in the soccer supporter element. Box inserts – for ‘realism’ – shots of an FA Cup Final crowd yet there’s not a hint of anyone in Percy’s party caring in the least what happens to their team at Wembley. Unless I missed it, we never know what does happen – though much of the film’s audience in 1964 would have been well aware that Manchester United had won the Cup the previous year. The northerners’ day trip to London is presented as an only-here-for-the-beer works outing. Good Neighbor Sam (1964) Anxiously awaiting a divorce from her husband, beautiful Janet Lagerlof (Romy Schneider) is suddenly plunged into a complex situation when… Cyrenne (Michelle Collins) initially appears cold and distant towards Percy, but gradually begins to empathise with his isolation. It soon becomes obvious that her tall stories about her privileged upbringing are a shield with which she fends off a painful past of sexual abuse. Ladies Who Do (1964) Charwoman Mrs Cragg (Peggy Mount) retrieves a discarded cigar from the wastepaper basket of city tycoon James Ryder (Harry H… FIONA MOUNTFORD for THE EVENING STANDARD says, "Leaden production finds no way in to any well spring of deep-running emotion." ELISABETH MAHONEY for THE GUARDIAN says, "A flat piece with little to engage us." CHARLES SPENCER for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH says, "Tompkinson is in superb comic form....Collins, too, is deeply touching as a woman who has invented a romantic fantasy life because the memory of childhood abuse is too painful to live with." SARAH HEMMING for THE FINANCIAL TIMES says, "Its structure is creaky and repetitive, its plot development clunky." IAN JOHNS for THE TIMES says, "Dyer's clash between the worldly and unworldly carries few sparks hereI saw the "The Rattle of A Simple Man" probably in the North Atlantic in December of 1965 and still sit up when I hear or read the name of Diane Cilento. She and the movie made that big an impression on me! I've certainly been a fan of British film ever since. The play concerns Percy, a 42-year-old Manchurian soccer fan who depicts these quaint sensibilities; not to be vulgar in front of a lady; respect one's elders, and always be loyal to the family.

Muriel Box and her sister Betty are among the subjects of Rebecca Cooke’s very interesting and enjoyable book Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties (2013). Cooke mentions Rattle of a Simple Man (‘a second-rate comedy’) only in passing but something else she writes about Muriel and her producer husband Sydney rings particularly true after you’ve watched this film:

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

I haven't seen it since. Who knows if I'd rate it as highly the second time round? However, it's stayed in my memory all these years, especially the way Corbett transformed himself from his part in Steptoe and Son to this naïve put upon virgin. Charles Dyer's 1962 play "Rattle Of A Simple Man" is set at the beginning of the sixties, when football fans' still wore rosettes and spun wooden rattles. It was the days before the sexual revolution, or as Philip Larkin wistfully wrote in Annus Mirabilis "Sexual intercourse began in 1963, which was rather late for me."'Sex' was still a word parents whispered when they thought their children were not listening, and even such an innocuous word as 'bottom' could be a cause of embarrassment for some, especially in the north of England.