The Black Sheep of Whitehall

Compilation of classic British comedy moments

Ministry of Information-sponsored comedy short showing wartime audiences how to deal with the threat of incendiary bombs.

A farce based on Arthur Wing Pinero's play 'The Magistrate' in which the son (John Mills) of a stern magistrate (Will Hay) visits a music hall against the wishes of his father. In true farcical style, the magistrate too ends up at the music hall, and before long all the characters are trying not to avoid each other... Mainly notable (a) because of its depiction of the music hall as seen by a generation which knew it intimately (b) because of its use of music hall acts of the time and (c) because it gave Will Hay his first film role.

Will Hay plays a bragging sea captain whose maritime experience actually extends to navigating a coal barge down inland waterways. His tall tales catch him out when he is co-erced into commanding an unseaworthy ship by an unscrupulous shipping agent who means to have it wrecked. This was the first film to couple Will Hay with both Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt.

The mirthful adventures of Police-Sergeant Samuel Dudfoot and his two constables, Albert Brown and Jeremias Harbottle, who stage a fabricated crime-wave to save their jobs---and then find themselves involved in the real thing.

Capt Viking and his incompetent fire crew accidentally foil a plot to steal the crown jewels.

Dr. Benjamin Twist (Hay) and his pupils become involved with art thieves on a trip to Paris. Hay’s seamy schoolmaster act is supported by a fine cast including Charles Hawtrey and Lilli Palmer.

While working as a porter Benjamin Twist mistakenly ends up on a cruise ship heading for the USA. Upon landing on the American coast Twist takes up work as a professor.

Will Hay plays the pennyless, bungling solicitor Benjamin Stubbins, who arrives at his office to find his insolent office boy (Graham Moffatt) with his feet up on the desk, reading a wild west magazine, which Hay confiscates so that he can read it later. Stubbins later takes a job from a group of Americans who claim they want him to track down some ancestors of theirs in Scotland. In reality however they want to use his office so they can rob a safe in the room immediately below his office. Stubbins takes the job (which is designed to keep him out of the office). In the end Stubbins realises his mistake and at a Christmas Eve fancy dress party he informs a group of carol singing policeman about the Americans nefarious activities

A disgraced school master, Benjamin Twist, is mistaken for a tough prison governor and assigned the charge of a prison for particularly hardened criminals. Believing he is being sent to a school rather than a prison, he celebrates accordingly only to find that his drunkenness accidently lands him on the wrong side of the prison bars. The Governorship is eventually restored to him, and he sets about popularising himself amongst the convicts by turning a blind eye to their shady dealings.

Comedy in which a bungling railway worker is given the job of stationmaster at a rundown station in rural Ireland, where his sidekicks are a toothless old gaffer and a portly young loudmouth. Hilarious adventures ensue, including a locomotive chase after gunrunners make off with a train.

The Very Reverend Richard Jedd has a problem: the church spire, now in a parlous state of repair, will cost nearly £1,000 to fix. When various money-raising schemes go awry, he is persuaded to waive his principles and bet what’s left of his savings on Dandy Dick, a 10-1 odds-on at the local races. A simple tonic to enhance the nag’s performance seems a good idea… but when the butler decides to intervene, the respectable clergyman finds himself in the middle of a doping scandal – and worse!

Will Hay, back in his role as a hapless teacher, is hired by a grim school in remotest Scotland. The school soon starts to be haunted by a legendary ghost, whose spectral bagpipes signal the death of one of the staff. Hay, assisted by Claude Hulbert and Charles Hawtrey, has to unravel the mystery before he becomes the next victim.

Wartime propaganda piece reporting on the success of the economic blockade of Germany in the early years of the war.

Schoolteacher William Potts is the double of a captured German spy, so he is sent to Germany by British Intelligence to obtain the plans of a new secret weapon, causing chaos in a Hitler Youth school in the process.

Alec Smart, who is engaged teaching in a prison, applies for the job of headmaster at a nearby public school to replace the previous headmaster who has been convicted of writing forged cheques and has just been sent to prison. Smart appeals to the Governor to write him a good reference which he pretends to. Afterwards he writes his real recommendation which is very negative about Smart's talents. The trustee who works as the Governor's secretary, Faker Brown, "accidentally" gets the two letters mixed up and delivers the one praising Smart. On the basis of the letter, Lady Dorking, the who runs the Board of Governors appoints Smart to the job. This angers her deputy, Colonel Crableigh, who had favoured promoting his nephew, the Deputy head.