Lives of The Ladies: Village People
Hinge and Bracket's fictional home life, referred to constantly in their shows, is further developed in the radio and television series. The invented back-story has the ladies residing in the village or small town of Stackton Tressel in Suffolk, which, in the words of Bracket, lies 17 miles from Bury St. Edmunds "as the crow flies, though there haven't been a lot of crows this year". Here, the ladies share a house called Utopia Ltd. They also share their home with three cats, Sandy the Goldfish and Milton the Budgie. Evadne is not keen on the pets, or more accurately, on Hilda's sugary attitude towards them. In one story from the television series, Sandy the goldfish is banished to a bucket under the sink when Evadne borrows his bowl to use as a crystal ball for her "Gypsy Mona" spot at the village fête.
The ladies otherwise amuse themselves with recitals of Gilbert & Sullivan, Noël Coward and Ivor Novello ("Dear Ivor"), and employ an eccentric housekeeper, Maud, played in the radio series by character actress Daphne Heard (and, on her death, by Jean Heywood). Maud is characterised by her bovine devotion to "Dame 'Ilder", a barely disguised antipathy to Evadne, and a general suspicion of men. She is particularly wary of men with beards, men with moustaches, and foreign men (Evadne's French friend André, played in the radio series by André Maranne, is suspected by Maud of being a white slaver). Maud systematically breaks, steps in, ruins or otherwise bungles every aspect of her household duties, and is indulged by Hilda because of her history as Hilda's dresser from their days with the "Rosa Charles Opera Company". Evadne is constantly at loggerheads with Maud, who retorts with observations such as "we can't all be musical". The TV series did not feature Maud in person, although a couple of references were made to her in the first two episodes of Dear Ladies Series 1.
Dame Hilda drives around in her shiny open-top vintage Rolls, while Evadne is more than happy to rely on her faithful old tricycle and cart, (usually unaware that all the fruit and vegetables just bought from the local greengrocer are falling out of the back of the trailer). Fellow villagers are known by such unlikely names as Methuen Hawkins (pharmacist) and Tewkesbury Ptolman. They make guest appearances in the ladies' concerts, most notably baritone (and butcher) Tewkesbury Ptolman, who appears in a number of the shows "by kind permission of Christopher Underwood".
Theirs is a genteel English post-war world of cucumber sandwiches, bell ringing, church fêtes and ladies' bowls matches, all served with a liberal helping of old-fashioned values recalled, and a sprinkling of double entendres. But the ladies do not always play fair: in one episode, Hilda and Evadne organise the refreshments for a "friendly" inter-village football match, manned by two teams of Stanley Matthews look-alikes and intentionally poison the visiting team.
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