Are You Being Served, Sir? by John Inman

I became a huge fan of Are You Being Served last year.  I wish I had been smart and watched it when PBS would broadcast it for so many years, because I would have had a chance to tell so many in the cast how much I loved their work, and how much I admired their talent.  Instead, fans lost John Inman in 2007 and Wendy Richard & Molly Sugden last year.  I wonder how I can contact people like Frank Thornton…

Anyway, if you haven’t seen this show, I highly recommend it for fans of British comedies.  I also like the spinoff series, especially when it settled into what it should be – how it should be different – and especially for the chemistry between Humphries and Mavis.  I wish we could have seen a few more seasons to see how things would have resolved.

Since I did come into it late (as I’ve done with so many things like The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes, and more), I did a search for items and came across a lot of great videos, books, and sites.  I was really glad that I stumbled on the ones who did a tribute to John Inman, who because so famous, deservedly so, here and in his home native England.  As someone said, he became famous in all these places not for special effects, scandals, putting himself in the media with his life, but for playing a character well and for being such a good human being himself.

But the reason I started this post was because I found that a lot of tributes used a song he released that I didn’t know about.  At the height of Mr. Humphries fame, Inman released an album with the title track  Are You Being Served, Sir?.  It’s a novelty song, and you can’t miss that signature John Inman “I’m free!”

If you’re a fellow fan, let me share it with you.

Here are the lyrics.  I know I mixed up a few.

I’m going to post the full song after this snippet.  I’m doing it this way because this first one is such a unique video.  It’s by an animation film student who started making this video in 2007.  People have left a lot of comments asking that he finish it, me included, but with so much time gone by, I’m guessing it won’t happen:

Here’s the full version:

The 45 is for sale on ebay and one seller in the UK has the full album (I’m debating with myself on them!)

Enjoy!