Wind Your Neck In

'Neck' is an episode from the first series of 'Tales Of The Unexpected'. When posh slut Joan Collins gets her unfaithful head stuck in one of her wealthy husband's prized sculptures, he decides to remove her from her predicament - and his life - at a stroke.

Funny / Tragic

'If a bucket of paint falls on a man's head, that's funny. If the bucket fractures his skull at the same time and kills him, that's not funny, it's tragic, and yet, if a man falls into a sausage machine, and is sold in the shops at so much a pound then that's funny. It is also tragic. So why is it funny? I don't know.'

Slam In The Lamb

'Lamb To The Slaughter' is probably one of the best known episodes of 'Tales of the Unexpected'. When pregnant housewife Susan George finds out that her policeman husband is leaving her for another woman, she flips out and caves his skull in with a frozen leg of lamb. When his colleagues arrive, she feigns complete innocence, but asks them if they wouldn't mind eating the roast she's prepared...'Find the weapon; find the killer' pontificates Brian Blessed, as he gleefully shoves the evidence down his throat. Still, it least it stops him shouting for a bit.  

Interesting Punishment

'My friend, the late Ian Fleming, the James Bond man, was really responsible for the story you're going to see now. We were staying the weekend at a house in Vermont and at dinner the roast leg of lamb was so dry and tough that Ian looked across to me and whispered 'This ruddy thing must have been in the deep freeze for ten years. She ought to be shot'. 'No' I said 'not shot. I think there must be a more interesting punishment than that', and that's how the idea for this story began...'

Strange And Perverse

'The Night Digger' (aka 'The Road Builder') is an effective, atmospheric thriller in which a young man (Nicholas Clay) blags his way into a falling apart mansion in Windsor and forms relationships with the occupants, a downtrodden, middle aged spinster (Patricia Neal) and her blind, manipulative adoptive mother (Pamela Brown).

The young man is very handy around the house and garden but, as a school kid, he was traumatised by being unable to perform when sexually assaulted by some voracious, elderly gypsy ladies (yes, really), so now he's a sex case who uses a long leather strap to get his kicks, before killing and dumping the bodies of his female victims in the foundations of a motorway.   

With music by Bernard Hermann, 'The Night Digger' is actually rather good in a slightly slow way. Nice cast (including the ever barking Graham Crowden), and a fair few dark twists and turns courtesy of scriptwriter Roald Dahl (Neal's husband) make this an interesting tale of the (mostly) unexpected.

The Night Digger

Derek in Disguise

By 1982, Roald Dahl had stopped doing his own introductions to 'Tales of The Unexpected', but the show carried on regardless for several more series. Here's Derek Jacobi in 'Stranger In Town', a great episode where a flamboyant but mysterious clown like figure turns up one day, becomes an instantly recognisable 'character' and then, when everyone knows one face, suddenly reveals another...

Filmed entirely on location in Norwich (the series was one of Anglia TV's most successful productions) the show is packed full of great vintage shots of the Fine City (tm), a place where I lived for several years in very happy circumstances. The flamboyant but mysterious clown like figure even stays at the Maids Head Hotel, where myself and Mrs. U-W had our wedding reception. Ahh.

Jelly Tot

For Dolly Dolly Dave, the only Apiarist I know.

I Drank Them, One By One...

"Back in the Winter of 1959, I saw in a shop window in New York a little white jar with a notice on it saying 'Royal Jelly, 2oz, $350'. I'd never heard of the stuff. The shop told me it had magical properties and it undoubtedly has. So I wrote a story about it. Years later, Dick Van Dyke, who had read the story, sent me from France a box of small glass phials containing pure Royal Jelly. I drank them, one by one, but I'm not going to tell you what they did to me, or I'll ruin what you're about to see now."

You'll Never Want To Leave

Funny Story

"I personally think this story is funny but, if your sense of humour doesn't happen to be the same as mine, then I'm afraid you're going to be a bit disturbed by what goes on. And by the way, if any of you attempted to think it's all pretty far fetched, then you should stop and think and ask yourself seriously whether such a thing as this could really happen. The answer is yes, of course it could, even to you."

I Was Not Expecting That