A Comedy On This Day: Pardon The Expression - The Pensioner (14 July 1965)

 Very little in the way of overt jokes in this episode, which really functions as a character piece for Swindley, who meets an old man in the park and offers him a temporary job in Dobson & Hawks' greengrocers. Naturally the old man lets him down, giving away the stock to needy pensioners.

 Swindley responds to the disappointment with the characteristic decency and kindness that lies under his surface pomposity. Arthur Lowe has some nice, rather melancholy, moments to get his teeth into here and we learn a little about Swindley's wartime service in the Navy (but prosaically on a barracks ship, rather than at sea) and that his most treasured possessions are "my cello and my late father's silver snuff box." There's more continuity with Swindley's Coronation Street persona here than in much of Pardon The Expression.

 Ambitiously, the designers have constructed with a section of boating lake (with water) in the Granada studios this week. You would think this was fraught with risks, but having made it they then put it to good use, the episode concluding with Swindley and his new friend Jacob Elijah on a boat and casting off.

A Comedy On This Day: Pardon The Expression - The Host With The Most (7 March 1966)

 The department store comedy moves away from Dobson & Hawks for one week, when Swindley kindly volunteers to put his boss, Mr Hunt, up for the night. Like some other ITV sitcom episodes, the more interesting stuff is before the break, with the second half taken up with familiar farcical happenings of both men, in their pyjamas, locking each other out and alarming Dandy Nichols' next-door neighbour.

 The chance to see Swindley at home in the Act One set-up, however, gives the episode an unintended tangential depth. We don't normally think about Swindley being a single man, because the plots concentrate upon his position as a well-meaning fussy store manager and don't ever really investigate his possible interest in women. Seeing him in his element at his home-for-one gives him a greater vulnerability and makes the viewer more sympathetic towards him, I think. Its curious to see the objects that he surrounds himself with; a 'Love thy Neighbour' sampler he tells Mr Hunt that he embroidered when he was in the navy, the television with the nine inch screen that he bought in 1953 to watch the Coronation. Most melancholy of all is the cordon bleu cooking set and hostess trolley on which he prepares steak Diane for Mr Hunt (which he must have purchased on a Dobson & Hawks staff discount). Waiting for the inevitable fireball and culinary disaster is funny, but it does set you thinking about whether he's ever had somebody else visit that he could cook for.