Never Mind The Quality Feel The Width

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Never Mind The Quality Feel The Width was a British television sitcom which was first broadcast in 1967 as an episode of the popular anthology series Armchair Theatre, and then became a series of half-hour episodes. A total of 39 episodes were aired, across three series. It was originally made for the ITV network by ABC from 1967-1968 and was then carried on by Thames Television when ABC and Rediffusion London merged to become Thames.

The plots revolved around two tailors in business together. Manny Cohen, played by John Bluthal was Jewish, and Patrick Kelly, played by Joe Lynch, was Irish. A prominent character in the series was Rabbi Levy (Cyril Shaps) from the local synagogue.

It is worth noting that the show was not felt worthy of national distribution, so it was not broadcast in areas such as the Northeast of England, possibly because the producers thought the humour would not travel. The production company, Associated British Corporation, had the ITV franchise for the Midlands region around Birmingham but the show was also seen in London.

One episode featured Manny and Patrick were trading the rights to display their pictures around the shop. When Patrick had two pictures of the Pope on the wall while Manny had one of Moshe Dayan, Manny's comment was "It's the going rate. Two Popes to one Moshe."

Another episode had Patrick, a fine singer, filling in at the synagogue for a sick cantor, on the occasion of a visit by the Chief Rabbi. Carefully coached to sing phonetically in Hebrew, Patrick nervously performs, every moment being milked for comedic value. Finally the Chief Rabbi congratulates Patrick on his singing, but reveals he knows something is up. When asked how he knows, he replies, "Simple. At the end of the service you genuflected and crossed yourself!". The episode title was "The Not-so-kosher Cantor".