Dobermans Sister

I am the proud owner of a huge boxed set of every single episode of Bilko, yes its a pirated set of every single episode of Bilko (about 180 in total) but who cares anyway, I paid about £10 with my own money for it from a pirate with an eBay store.

Bilko was the late saturday evening programme of choice for me, Ned and our dad in the 1970′s after we’d all been out with our separate groups of friends and returned home worse for the drink, we’d pull up our comfy seats and watch an episode of Bilko as our mother ran around organising cups of coffee for her drunken husband and her drunken sons.

And it was Bilko who invented a phrase that needs no further explanation to me, it has entered our family language and both Ned and I know exactly what the other means when we say the words “Dobermans Sister”.

The episode in question involved the motor pool being invited to a dance with everyone having a date except Bilko and in the episode Doberman promised Bilko that his sister would accompany him to the dance and assured him that unlike Doberman, his sister was beautiful – Doberman being of course the short, fat, ugly and stupid one who played Bilko’s sidekick.

Of course she wasn’t beautiful at all, in fact Dobermans sister was played by the same actor who played Doberman, in drag, and in other episodes Doberman also played his own mother, the whole family were short, fat and ugly.

Fast forward several years and after our mother had passed away our dad moved himself to Benidorm, that Spanish den of failed British variety acts all seeking work in the thousands of showbars in the Spanish Las Vegas populated entirely by British pensioners.

He shared an apartment with his lifelong friend and Northern Club Compere of 1969, Brian Hessian and between them they haunted the showbars 24/7, and there were a lot of showbars to haunt, our dads last seven years on this earth were spent in a whirlwind of booze and entertaining, singing songs for beer in bars and never returning to the apartment until the dawn of the next morning – not for nothing were they known as “The Odd Couple” after the Jack Lemmon and Walter Matheau characters.

On the last occasion that I flew to Benidorm to drive our dads car back to the UK for the summer, he picked me up at Alicante airport mid-morning and on the hour long drive back to Benidorm was in tears of laughter as he described one of Brians “ladies” from the night before. Brian had found himself a rich widow and as he was always skint he was always ready to take advantage of a rich widows purse for a night out.

We arrived at the apartment at around noon just as Brian emerged from his bedroom, a glassed-in area of the balcony, Brian slept on the apartments balcony as it was really only a one bedroom apartment, and upon questioning, his description of his date from the night before needed only two words …

“Dobermans sister”