What a carry on

James Walton suggests reading George Orwell in order to understand the appeal of Carry On films

Recently, we’ve been hearing quite a lot about how the winds of revolutionary change blew through Britain in 1968. Which doesn’t really explain why, in 1969, the highest-grossing film at the UK box office wasn’t Midnight Cowboy, The Wild Bunch or Easy Rider — but Carry On Camping. (It didn’t get any better for British cinéastes, incidentally: in 1971, the nation’s favourite movie was On the Buses.) Not that the film in question completely ignored the turbulence of the times. Towards the end, you may remember, the presence of hippies on a neighbouring field caused the solid schoolgirl-chasing yeomen of Britain to come together and drive them out.

Then again, perhaps the bit you remember best from Carry On Camping has nothing to do with 1960s’ cultural wars at all. Instead, it may involve the pinging off of Barbara Windsor’s bra — just one of the many Carry On scenes that’s become part of our collective national memory, along with such moments as the Brits calmly finishing their dinner under fire in Carry On Up the Khyber, Wilfrid Hyde-White with a daffodil up his bottom in Carry On Nurse and (all together now:) ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me’ in Carry On Cleo.