Dinnerladies
dinnerladies was a British television sitcom set entirely in the canteen of a factory in Manchester.
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Anita: (after Bren telling Bob she's just doing some bacon) You know you were asking about bacon? We haven't got any at the moment but Bren's just doing some.
(Stan sees Dolly and Jean about to move one of the tables)
Monday [1.01]
- Norman: I fell off a diving board in Guernsey!
- Philippa: Would this be a good moment to talk about Scottish country dancing?
- Jean: No it wouldn't!
- Bren: Twink, what's the soup?
- Twinkle: Minestrone
- Bren: Well why's it not on the menu?
- Twinkle: Can't spell it!
- Tony: I quite like women in a sad, baffled sort of way! But can we get a grip? Out of a workforce of five, at any given moment one will have pre-menstrual tension, one's panicking because she's not, someone's having a hot flush and someone else is having a nervous breakdown because her HRT patch has fallen in the minestrone!
- Jean: [Annoyed] That was a one off!
- Philippa Morcroft: Pressure at work can affect your sex life, they did a questionnaire [reading] "Are you to busy to have an orgasm?"
- Jean: Orgasm? I've not blown my nose since Wednesday!
- Jean: (to the Stripper) Can you play the accordion?
- Stripper: Well, you could see what a liability that could be naked, might trap a nipple.
- Jean: Last big wedding Keith's Auntie ate a coaster.
- Dolly: What?
- Jean: Keith's Auntie Margo ate a raffia drinks coaster. She thought it was a high fibre biscuit. She had to be held back from moving down the table and buttering two more.
- Jean: I thought about trailing greenery for the reception, but Keith's anti-ivy.
- Bren: I didn't know Keith had an Auntie Ivy.
Royals [1.02]
- Royal: (to Anita) Are you an immigrant?
- Philippa: No, Anita's British!
- Royal: Oh, good. So you don't find it too cold here?
- Anita: [crying] I SAID NIPPLES!
- Royal: How do you feel about wearing a uniform?
- Anita: I think we can all see the sense in it, for hygiene. And it protects your nipples!
- Tony: (to Twinkle) Do you want to get a job in an upstairs window in Amsterdam, or shall we try and cling on to our slim little foothold in catering?
Scandal [1.03]
- Sheila: Where's my Clint?
- Sheila: I've got high blood pressure and water retention. Do you know what that gives you?
- Bren: Boiling water?
- Dolly: Why do people have to spit? That ruined Titanic for me, the spitting! The iceberg couldn't come fast enough after I saw that!
Moods [1.04]
- Enid: Did you get that skirt from a catalogue?
- Philippa: No.
- Enid: Pity. You could have sent it back.
Party [1.05]
- Petula: What did Edith Piaf use to say?
- Bren: A handbag?
- Petula: No, that was Edith Evans! No, it was - non, je ne regrette rien. Rien regriette...
- Bren: Who is Babs?
- Petula: Babs? She's from Urmston!
- Jean: (to Tony) Breathe in! Can you smell my Charlie?
- Dolly: I hadn't budgeted for chips calorie-wise!
- Petula: Do excuse me, I man a helpline at midnight.
- Babs: I've come from Urmston.
- Tony: Have you?
- Babs: There's two ways to get there.
- Twinkle: We're off clubbing! Have a great night, oldies!
- Tony: Have you not got coats?
- Twinkle: Coats? How sad are you?
- Twinkle: (reading the Christmas party invite)" What does that mean, sake from six thirty? (pronouncing it sake)
- Dolly: Sah-ke!
- Twinkle: I'm not being sarky, I'm asking!
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- Anita: I fancy devorai!
- Dolly: As a guest?
- Anita: As a fabric for my dress!
- Dolly:It sounded like an ethnic boyfriend! Devorai Singh, Devorai Patel...
- Tony: Do some flipping work!
Nightshift [1.06]
- Jean: (while looking in the newspaper for a new job) Something like cleaning, light housework, housekeeping. Here's one, light house-keeper wanted.
- Bren: (Bren leans over to look at the paper) Lighthouse. Keeper.
- Nicola Bodeux: What would happen if I asked for a herbal tea?
- Jean: Nothing.
- Nicola Bodeux: You mean you wouldn't be fazed by such a request?
- Jean: No, I mean you wouldn't get one.
- Nicola Bodeux: I'm warning you, I don't mince my punches.
Catering [2.01]
- Stan: Men and women have different brains.
- Dolly: Yes, it was in the Daily Mail. Women can't fold maps, and men can't get interested in headboards.
- Jean: It's like taking Telly Savalas for a shampoo and set.
- Twinkle: Telly who?
- Anita: Shampoo and what?
Trouble [2.02]
- Jean: Well we can't all stand around lobbing toast about. Some of us have personal problems.
- Jane: I know we do! But we don't bring them to work! I lost 8 tropical fish last week in a power cut!
Holidays [2.03]
- Babs: Do you remember where I'm from?
- Bren: Urmston.
- Babs: No, I'm from Urmston!
- Petula: I'm just saving some oxygen for the foetus. (to "foetus") Alright, baba?
- Customer: Do you have that yogurt for your intestines?
- Dolly: No.
- Customer: It's advertised with singing bacteria.
- Dolly: Where was this?
- Customer: Well, this was in Carlisle.
- Dolly: Well, Carlisle! That's a much more gullible part of the country!
Fog [2.04]
- Bren: I thought you said he looked like Richard Madeley!
- Jean: I meant Richard Whiteley!
- Tony: So, you're not pregnant, then?
- Bren: Not unless sperm can get through a sash window.
- Stan: It's one of several neglected areas in my life. I've got no sex life, no frying pan and I'm halfway through a tube of toothpaste I absolutely cannot stand!
- Anita: Aww, I can help you out, Stan!
- Tony: Aye aye?
- Anita: I could lend you a wok!
- Stan: They used to call me Coppernob!
- Twinkle: What colour was your hair, though, Stan?
Gamble [2.05]
- Dolly: Bob's sister, who usually keeps my present pretty much at bath cube lever, has upgraded me to a cafetiere!
- Bren: You mean you've opened it already?
- Dolly: Well, how else do I know what price range I'm batting back against?
Christmas [2.06]
(Twinkle gets a horse figurine from Dolly for Christmas)- Jean: I got you that two years ago!
- Dolly: Did you?! I suppose if I'd been on HRT I would have remembered!
Anita: (after Bren telling Bob she's just doing some bacon) You know you were asking about bacon? We haven't got any at the moment but Bren's just doing some.
- Bob: What are you on, a two minute delay?
(Stan sees Dolly and Jean about to move one of the tables)
- Stan: Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay!
- Jean: Is the bus reversing?
- Bren: Tony didn't tear it. It was Martin.
- Jean: Ooh, this gets better. Who's Martin? Should we have had a bet on him?
- Bren: He's my-
- Jean: Calor Gas man?
- Dolly: Mother's boyfriend?
- Philippa: Chiropodist?
- Anita: Stick insect?
- Bren: Husband.
Minnellium [2.07]
- "'Dolly: And it would be nice if we could all spare a thought for the coming of our Lord.
- Twinkle: Oh, not him again. We'll be back on Ragtag and flipping Bobtail in a minute! Can I just finish my coffee?
- Philippa: Never mind your bloody coffee. Get in the bloody bloody bloody frigging car!
- Anita: I don't like 'fart face'. Even after 9:00.
- Stan: A little baby. What a stupid thing to leave on a fire escape!
- Bren: That's what it is. I wish I'd met you before.
- Tony: Before I had chemo?
- Bren: Before I married an alcoholic? I dunno. Twenty years ago? No, not twenty years ago, I had a perm!
- Tony: Twenty years ago, I think I did!
- Tony: Any baby of Petula's would look like something out of the Beano!
- Tony: Did you drive in Anita? How was the traffic?
- Anita: The traffic?
- Tony: Yeah, you know, cars on the road, passing each other?
- Anita: Didn't come that way.
- Tony: Yeah, of course you didn't.
- Phillipa: Oh, is it going again? No, it's okay. Contact lenses.
- Dolly: No, I liked you in glasses.
- Phillipa: Oh, did you?
- Dolly: Hm, they diminished your nostrils.
- Jean: I'll tell you about the time Keith's Auntie Betty from Cockermouth found two albino gerbils under the spare bed.
- Phillipa: Aww. Did they mate?
- Jean: Well they didn't, what with them being two angora bed socks.
Christine [2.08]
- Dolly: (about Christine) She's fascinated with what she calls "The City Beyond the Water".
- Jean: Halifax?
- Twinkle: (to Tony) Oh ha ha, Jeremy Somebody!
- Bren: Jeremy who?
- Twinkle: I dunno, I didn't get to bed until five!
- Anita: Who's that?
- Bren: That's Christine.
- Anita: And what's that smell?
- Bren: That's Christine as well.
- Bren: (about the smell) Have a whiff of raw bacon, it takes the edge off it.
- Twinkle: Who was it? Christine?
- Bren: Yeah. Might be nerves.
- Twinkle: Might be mushy peas!
- Christine: (to Dolly) Your aura is amethyst. Mine's white, the next one up, we have a bond.
- Tony: And this is Jean.
- Christine: (to Jean) No there's no spark there. You're hardly showing an aura at all.
- Christine: This is the old country way - whisking towards the heart.
- Jean: Which silly old country person told you that?
- Tony: At the moment we're stuck with Niffy Nora the Aura Explorer.
- Christine: You're quite shallow, aren't you Brenda. No offense meant!
- Bren: No, but lots taken.
- Christine: I wonder if this would be a good time for me to leave.
- Twinkle: Yeah. Push off and take your bum with you.
Gravy [2.09]
- Petula: What ward am I on?
- Paramedic: 8.
- Petula: It's mixed isn't it?
- Paramedic: Yes.
- Petula: Oh, might have a bit of sex. Though after Richard E Grant you don't really want to bother with a load of shagged-out pensioners.
- Tony: Anita, have you got your yogurts out?
- Anita: Sorry?
- Tony: Let me rephrase that, 'can' you get your yogurts out?
- Anita: Do you mean yogurts as in breasts?
- Tony: No, I mean little pots of milky stuff with fruit in, this being a canteen.
- Anita: That's okay. I have no objection to doing that.
- Tony: Anita?
- Anita: Yeah?
- Tony: Feel free to get your breasts out.
- Anita: When our neighbour died, when the (she draws a box in mid air)
- Twinkle: Coffin?
- Anita: Went through the (mimes looking through curtains and draws them in mid air as well)
- Jean: Curtains?
- Anita: They played the theme music from Countdown!
- Bren: Did it make you cry?
- Anita: No, I never watch it!
- Dolly: (after the ambulance men leave an old woman in a wheelchair in the canteen) I wouldn't get too close, Bren, there could be two slap heads under that blanket!
- Twinkle: Do you mean smackheads?
- Dolly: There could be two drug addicts under that blanket, ready to leap out!
- Jean: They'd have to be pretty small!
- Dolly: They are small! Once people are on heroin, square meals fly out of the window, it was in the Daily Mail!
Toast [2.10]
- Petula: I'm sorry I haven't been a very good mother. You can't be good at everything and I was A1 with a hula hoop.
- Tony:: Your not too upset, are you, Bren?
- Bren: (shakes head quickly)
- Tony: Then why are you smoking?
- Bren: God, sorry! Haven't done that in awhile.
- Tony: You're not turning into your mother, are you?
- Bren: Maybe I'm possessed. [Mimicking her mother, 'Petula'] Alright, everybody?
Cast
- Brenda (Bren) Furlong - Victoria Wood
- Petula Gordino - Julie Walters
- Dolly Bellfield - Thelma Barlow
- Jean - Anne Reid
- Anita - Shobna Gulati
- Phillippa Moorcroft - Celia Imrie
- Twinkle - Maxine Peake
- Tony Martin - Andrew Dunn
- Stan Meadowcroft - Duncan Preston