10 Reasons Why Open All Hours Is Fantastically Funny

2. MC Stammer

We're not ones for mocking the afflicted, but Arkwright's stuttering leaves you in stitches. Having difficulty formulating his words adds an extra dimension to this character with a huge payoff. His only God is money, so that doesn't make Albert Arkwright the most likeable of leading men on first inspection, but the greedy edge is taken off completely by this flaw. Perhaps what makes it permissible to laugh with Barker here is the fact that his character sees the stammer as a topic to make light of. In the first episode Arkwright tells Nurse Gladys: "We were meant for each other. A man with a s-s-stutter needs a big target to make love to." And when he is stunned by the cost of a brand new washing machine in series two:

"Look at the p-p-price of this one. It's terrible is that! In my young day I could've bought a whole w-w-washerwoman for that. A big one... T-t-two hundred and twenty-twenty t-t-two, t-t-two hundred and twenty t-t-two p-p-pound t-twenty t-two p. I'm not paying that. I can't even s-s-say it!"

Like the perilous till, Arkwright's stumbling over his sentences is a recurring theme which still gets you every time.