Bill Paterson admits he almost turned down role in Dad’s Army remake

FOR Bill Paterson and his fellow cast members, appearing in the movie of Dad’s Army was not just another acting job.

“The idea that we were the keepers of the flame was at the forefront of all our minds,” says the 71-year-old Scot.

The much-loved comedy ran for nine TV series during the 1970s, and made characters like Captain Mainwaring, Corporal Jones and Sergeant Wilson part of our cultural history.

So when the idea of an updated movie version was first mooted, Bill was more than a little unsure about accepting the role of the grizzled Private Frazer.

“I thought it was akin to repainting the Sistine Chapel,” he laughs. “But my agent told me to look at the cast list before I turned it down.

“When I saw that people like Michael Gambon, Toby Jones, Bill Nighy, Tom Courtenay, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sarah Lancashire had already signed up to be in it I thought: ‘Well, they’re not going to scrap the film if I say no, so I might as well join in.’”

The film, which has Mainwaring and his hapless Walmington-on-Sea platoon on the lookout for a German spy rumoured to be on the prowl on the South Coast ahead of the launch of D-Day, was received warmly by critics and is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Part of Bill’s reticence to be involved came from the fact that the show held a special place in his heart, having been one he regularly sat down to watch with his dad when he was a teenager.

“I got on very well with my dad, but during the 1960s, we didn’t share much in common,” he recalls.

“But we bonded over two television shows — The Phil Silvers Show and Dad’s Army.

“My dad had been too old to enlist at the war’s outset, but had joined the Local Defence Volunteers force — the name first given to the Home Guard — in Clydebank, as soon as it was formed.

“And he found the series utterly truthful. For him, it was like watching a documentary.

“We’d had this rug in our house from when I was a boy and I remember one day, after watching an episode of Dad’s Army, my dad told me the story behind it.

“He’d made it himself from off-cuts of wool threaded through a hessian backing while sitting around on his anti-aircraft gun.

“It had been sold to him by some spiv, who had realised that there were these men sitting around these batteries with all this time on their hands looking for something to do, so had come up with these rug-making kits.

“It was classic Walker from Dad’s Army, the spiv always looking for a way to make money out of any situation, and my dad loved that.”

Bill also has a memory from his younger day of meeting fellow Scot John Laurie, who played Frazer in the original series and made the catchphrase “we’re doomed” famous.

“I was at the same table as John and Dr Finlay’s Casebook actress Effie Morrison for a live Hogmanay broadcast, back in the days when they were live, before they got a bit out of hand,” he smiled.

“He was full of life and happy, quite different to the image he had from playing Frazer, but, as a man who had appeared alongside Laurence Olivier in Henry V, Richard III and Hamlet, he was not particularly pleased that the great fame of his life had come for something he didn’t think was of the quality of his great Shakespearean parts!”

Dad’s Army is available on DVD and Blu-Ray now

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