The secret endings of classic sitcoms

The fates of some of Britain's best-known comedy characters have been revealed by the people who created them.

And for the world of sitcom, where nothing usually changes from one episode to the next, the writers planned some surprising plot twists.

Harold Steptoe killed his dad Albert, Rising Damp's well-spoken Philip wasn't an African prince after all and the vicar of Dibley flirted with lesbianism.

Steptoe and Son writer Ray Galton said: "It turns out that the son murdered the old man, which is just what he'd been threatening to do every week for all those years."

"It wasn't a pre-meditated crime, it was very much a spur of the moment thing. But he certainly intended to do it because the old man had made his life so intolerable and this was the only way out."

Harold fled to Rio but eventually returned to the rag and bone yard in Shepherd's Bush - only to find it had been taken over by the National Trust.

Now, 19 years after the original series ended, Galton has written a play, Steptoe and Son: The Wasted Years, in which an elderly Harry is confronted by the ghost of his dad.

The fate of the pair is revealed in tomorrow's Radio Times, which also asked other sitcom creators what eventually happened to their characters.

Eric Chappell has also written a play based on his classic, Rising Damp, which ended in 1978.

It reveals that well-spoken lodger Philip wasn't an African prince at all. He spent his later years still living in his dingy bedsit with landlord Rigsby.

Meanwhile, Vicar of Dibley writer Richard Curtis says Dawn French's character Reverend Geraldine Grange considered becoming a lesbian to lend her support to gays in the clergy.

But he also toyed with the idea of making her the first female Archbishop of Canterbury.

And Norman Stanley Fletcher, the star of Porridge, continued going straight, becoming a housekeeper on a country estate belonging to "an ageing rock star like Bill Wyman".

Published: 20 Oct 2003