No Sex Please, We're British

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No Sex Please, We're British is a British comedic play written by Alistair Foot and Anthony Marriott and first staged in London's West End in 1971. It was unanimously panned by critics, but miraculously still ran for nearly a decade to packed audiences. It did not share the same success with American audiences, running for only 16 performances on Broadway in early 1973. However, it still remains popular in community theatre.

Contents

The farce surrounds an assistant bank manager (Peter Hunter) who lives above his bank with his new bride Frances. When Frances innocently sends a mail order off for some Scandinavian glassware, what comes back is Scandinavian pornography. The two, along with the bank's frantic chief cashier Brian Runnicles, must decide what to do with the veritable floods of pornography, photographs, books, films and eventually girls that threaten to engulf this happy couple. The matter is considerably complicated by Eleanor (Peter's mother), Mr. Bromhead (his boss), Mr. Needham (a visiting bank inspector), and Vernon Paul (a police superintendent).

A film version starring Ronnie Corbett as Brian was made in 1973. There were many alterations to the script, including significant changes in dialogue, plot elements and, most notably, to names: "Eleanor" was changed to "Bertha", "Mr. Bromhead" was changed to "Mr. Bromley", and "Peter" and "Frances" became "David" and "Penny", respectively. Michael Crawford, who played the role of Brian Runnicles on stage, turned down the movie version.

  • BBC News ran a documentary series on BBC2 in 2005 called No Sex Please, We're Teenagers.
  • A 2003 episode of the American sitcom Frasier was entitled "No Sex Please, We're Skittish".
  • In the third series of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, CJ considers calling his novel about ants No Sex Please, We're Ants. Other considerations included Watership Anthill, Lord of the Ants and Ant of the Flies.
  • At the end of the third radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the narrator announces that "Zaphod Beeblebrox is now appearing in 'No Sex Please, We're Amoeboid Zingatularians'".
  • The title is often referenced in the media in news articles where opinions are "no" and usually involve British people. Such random examples can be seen in actual headlines "No Sex.eu Please, We're British" [1], "No 'Toothing' Please, We're British" [2], and "No Sex Please, We're Virgins" [3].
  • A 1990 computer game version of the cartoon Count Duckula was released for the Commodore Amiga called 'No Sax Please, We're Egyptian', sharing its title with the cartoon's first episode. Episode 12 of series two repeated the reference in its title: 'No Yaks Please, We're Tibetan'.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.