Budgie
1971 - United KingdomAdam Faith had over twenty top-forty records to his name when he turned his back on the music
industry in the late 1960s, deciding to branch off full time into acting, which he'd already
experienced both in the movies and on stage. It was a move that led to him landing one of the best
remembered roles on British television in the early 1970s -that of cheeky cockney and loveable
rogue Ronald 'Budgie' Bird. Budgie was a small time crook, a petty thief, a chancer who always
dreamed of getting rich but mainly had to content himself with the slimmest of pickings. Even his
most ambitious schemes wouldn't have put him on Scotland Yard's 'most wanted' list and they all-
without exception, had an unerring habit of going completely wrong. His ill-fated schemes included
him buying 24,000 stolen ball-point pens, hoping to turn a quick profit - only to find that they
had "Government Property" stamped on them; trying to arrange a pornographic film show in a hotel
only to discover he had been sold a Laurel and Hardy movie, and being paid to house some smuggled
illegal immigrants, whose upkeep ended up costing him more than he was ever going to make out of
the deal...and even then the immigrants fled before he got paid!
The location for many of these doomed schemes was London's Soho area surrounded by
seedy strip joints and dirty book shops-hardly a place for a small time crook to build an empire,
especially when the area already had an emperor in office. Local gangster Charlie Endell (Iain
Cuthbertson) seemed to rule the roost here and Budgie would invariably end up running Endell's
errands. Endell seemed to be the only person who was willing to give Budgie any work safe in the
knowledge that he had, in Budgie, a ready made sap to take the rap. Budgie was, what you would
call a born looser. He couldn't even be faithful to his own girlfriend, Hazel (Lynn Dalby), who
had patiently and loyally waited for him to finish his prison sentence-only to find that whenever
the chance presented itself Budgie would rush off to be with his estranged wife Jean (Georgina
Hale) the Soho tart without a heart.
Yet in spite of his apparent lack of worthy qualities Budgie had a certain charm about him and his naturally optimistic disposition won him a legion of fans. This was due, in no small part to the irresistible performance of Adam Faith and the knowledge the viewer had that Budgie would never willingly hurt anyone, because beneath the surface here was a crook who retained a few morals...even when it ended up costing him. Faith's portrayal of the irrepressible modern day Artful Dodger made Budgie the first TV criminal with the audience on his side.
Created by Keith Waterhouse, and written by Waterhouse, Willis Hall and Douglas
Livingstone, the series was produced by Rex Firkin and Verity Lambert and ran for two series
before a serious accident to Adam Faith precluded any chance of a third. Seven years after the
series finished Cuthbertson re-created his role in Charles Endell Esquire, however, after
only two episodes were shown an ITV strike put it off the air never to return. Budgie was
intended to be made fully in colour but yet another strike by technicians at London Weekend
Television meant that the first four episodes were only made in monochrome. Viewers last saw
Budgie going back to prison-this time for an offence that he didn't commit. Ever the loser...we
still loved him.
Published on November 30th, 2018. Written by Laurence Marcus for Television Heaven.