Think of this an an LP. On one side we have “Charlie” (John Cleese) as the repairman travelling the length and breadth of the city fixing things that have gone wrong. For a week or two he tries to stay loyal to his product, but after a while realises this is only causing him a world of pain with the now disgruntled customers so he starts to blame the salesman, or the kit itself, or head office for it’s endless cost-cutting and efficiency drives. Indeed, by the end of his visit it’s highly unlikely that the buyer would ever take a free gift from his employers again much less actually pay for anything new. Now flip the record over and this time Cleese is the owner of a record player that has gone bust. A repair man arrives with an altogether different attitude. This fella (Jonathan Lynn) takes a more responsible approach that’s based as much on reminding the customer that he’s had good use from this gadget for years and instead of it being cheap and cheerful it’s indeed a fine bit of equipment that a modest amount of restoration work will fix immediately. In one scenario, the customer leaves narked and unsatisfied with the company, in the latter an whole alternative approach leads to one who might just think of buying new stuff before the engineer has even left the house! Accentuate the positive, as they say! This is quite good fun with a less domineering effort from Cleese as he takes part engagingly and delivers some of the traditional head-scratching one-liners quite convincingly. Essentially, it’s about attitude though, and suggests none too subtly that if you approach something with a glass half empty attitude, then nobody will leave the encounter happily. Even now, fifty-odd years later, that message still has some miles on the clock.
