This article by Keith Macdonald was published in the Manchester Evening News on 12 October 1991. The Wilt segment formed part of a longer article.
THE filming of Tom Sharpe’s novel Wilt, starring Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, which is screened tonight, had more than its share of problems, not least because a life-sized inflatable doll looms large in the story.
Producer Brian Eastman says: “The production designer was forever worried about being stopped by the police for a minor traffic offence. If they’d opened his boot they’d have found a load of inflatable dolls.”
Author Tom Sharpe says Wilt had its origins in a trip to Yorkshire when he was working on a book.
“I was travelling with a girl who taught at the same college as I did,” he says. “One night, driving along this lonely, single-track road, I said, ‘What are we having for dinner tonight?’ and she said ‘M&S tinned chicken.’ I said ‘Not that again. I can’t eat that.’
“She made me stop the car, which I did, and she got out and walked off down the road. I thought she’d get over her huff and come back. To cut a long story short, she didn’t, so I went to the police.
“They took a statement from me at 11 o’clock at night and every time I got to the bit about Marks & Sparks tinned chicken, it baffled them. They kept asking me if all I said was ‘not Marks and Sparks tinned chicken again?’
“By the time I’d been through it several times, I could see myself in court and the judge saying ‘What did he say? Marks and Spencers’ tinned chicken?’
“Fortunately, she turned up. She’d got a lift with a lorry driver. But it set me thinking. I mean, if she hadn’t appeared, I might have been out away for murder. So the question that lay behind Wilt was ‘What do you do if you’re completely innocent but you’ve got yourself into a situation where all the evidence is against you?’”