Spooks Ghouls & Freaks Fools

WITH ITS ECLECTIC cast, broad comedy and supernatural farce, Rentaghost was a mainstay of BBC children’s TV from the late ’70s to the mid-’80s and like nothing else.

- STUART MANNING

“Rentaghost was camp," says actor Christopher Biggins, approvingly. “It was so theatrical, it was so outrageous. I think that’s why the kids loved it so much. I mean, what other show has a pantomime horse?”

“A technician once described it to me as ‘Plonky actors standing in a straight line, bawling their lines out front,’” recalls the show’s producer, Jeremy Swan, with a smirk. “Well, that’s what I wanted.” Swan directed episodes in each of the nine series, and was the producer for eight years.

Rentaghost debuted in 1976. Writer Bob Block’s pilot script was originally titled Second Chance, reflecting the original, more downbeat, premise of perpetual loser Fred Mumford (Ivor The Engine voice artist Anthony Jackson) trying to forge success in death, having failed to do so in life.

DEAD SERIOUS

In surprisingly bleak territory for a children’s slot, Fred was said to have drowned on a cross-Channel ferry trip, with his body never found. His long-suffering parents, not knowing that their returned son was dead, were seen bemused, frustrated and occasionally even traumatised by Fred’s attempts to keep both his afterlife and Rentaghost’s day-to-day misadventures a secret.

Offering ghostly services to the public, Fred was aided and abetted by colleagues Hubert Davenport (Michael Darbyshire), a fussy Victorian gent decked out in peach, and Timothy Claypole (Michael Staniforth), a hyperactive medieval jester. Darbyshire was a veteran of the Players Theatre and performed vintage music hall routines on the BBC’s The Good Old Days.