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Hive mind help! Legal tender and an old episode of Minder

Started by Grant Goggans, 02 March, 2017, 04:20:20 PM

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Grant Goggans

Help me, Hive Mind, your currency has confounded me.

I picked up the complete box set of Minder for a ridiculously low price a couple of months ago and finally sat down to start watching them.  I've read about it for years, but never seen it. I loved the first episode - Arthur Daley is a brilliant character! - but the second, shown in 1979, baffled me.

Here's the situation: A fellow fresh out of a four-year prison sentence needs some minding and decoy assistance so he can retrieve a buried £50,000 without old goons finding him.  The character, Stubbs, gets the box in the end, and, with four other characters in the room, distributes the money.  Terry and Arthur get a couple of hundred for their trouble, and then go out for a drink.

Terry guilts Arthur into buying the drinks, and Arthur tries to pay with some of the recovered notes.  But the barman won't take them.  The notes are £1 Series C notes, as seen on page 19 of this helpful Bank of England PDF ( http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Documents/withdrawnrefguide.pdf ) and are no longer legal tender.  They were withdrawn over the summer.  They'll have to go to the "Bank of England," fill out forms, and trade them in.  Arthur just dumps about £200 in the charity jar.

Okay, so the ex-con might not have heard about the change in notes while he was in prison, but how did this totally escape the other four people in the room?  Not one of them says "Oh, wait, those are old notes."  Terry and Arthur seem to have never heard of this problem at all; the barman explains it to them.  This can't have been some sneaky thing the government pulled.  Surely this was on the news and every bank had signs up for weeks... so surely the audience watching at home in November 1979 would have instantly seen the problem when the cash was revealed, right?

Which leads to the next question.  Arthur and Terry still have about £200 and they just dump it.  Why not... take it to a bank to trade it in?  I got from the conversation that it has to be a (or the?) Bank of England, and not a Lloyds branch, but... they're in London, not some remote island.  This would just take a couple of hours.  Even if somebody demanded "Why didn't you turn this money in before now?", that would easily be answered by "Had it saved in a trunk in the shed, and forgot about it."

So what should have been a twist ending didn't make much sense.  Since American currency almost never gets retired - "wheat pennies" from the 1930s routinely show up as change - I've never experienced this but I can't fathom why the characters were surprised.

Dunk!

Well it's over a ton, but under a monkey so probably not worth da bovver.

Dunk!
"Trust we"

Dandontdare

#2
Indeed that's eight ponies!

Bank notes are often changed and old ones stop being legal in shops etc after a certian time - they can still be exchanged for new versions (I think this can be done at any bank, as opposed to only the BofE) These notes were pre-decimal - when we changed from opounfds and shillings to decimal currency in 19069-71, some old coins and notes carried over (albeit at adifferent value) and were gradually phased out in the following years - fr years an old shilling was worth 5p and an old florin (2 shillings) 10pI think Arfur and his mates were probably more worried about the notes being connected to the original blag and so didn't want to go near a bank and fill in forms with their name and address on.

I miss pound notes - you always felt like you had more money with a wad of notes rather than a fistful of coins. Scottish notes are completely different but ARE legal tender in England - although try telling that to ignorant shopkeepers!

I was once asked in the late eighties by an American tourist at Heathrow to explain "pounds and shillings" to her - so I did - two farthings in a ha'penny, twelve pennies in shilling, two shillings and sixpence in half  a crown, twenty shillings in a pound -she seemed satisfied as she went on her way to enjoy the delights of England  - was it naughty of me to fail to mention that these had ben phased out about 20 years earlier in favour of decimal currency?  >:D

Frank

Quote from: Grant Goggans on 02 March, 2017, 04:20:20 PM
Okay, so the ex-con might not have heard about the change in notes while he was in prison, but how did this totally escape the other four people in the room? ... This can't have been some sneaky thing the government pulled.  Surely this was on the news and every bank had signs up for weeks... so surely the audience watching at home in November 1979 would have instantly seen the problem when the cash was revealed, right?

Which leads to the next question.  Arthur and Terry still have about £200 and they just dump it.  Why not... take it to a bank to trade it in?

Dan's right. Notes are phased out gradually, so it's common to see old notes in your change, alongside their successor. The fancy new plastic Fivers, with their hologram windows, are currently mingling with their torn and grubby paper predecessors.

The information that a specific note is finally being withdrawn from circulation is usually relegated to a small mention on page 30 of newspapers, so it's just about believable the characters thought they were an older (but still valid) style of note.

Shoving the notes in the penny jar is a dramatic conceit *. If you want to make it work in-universe, Arfur and Terry are quick buck merchants; they do what they do because they don't have the temperament to fill out forms and follow the rules.


* in the same way characters in movies throw away guns when they're out of bullets, as if they're now useless

sheridan

Quote from: Dandontdare on 02 March, 2017, 06:04:04 PMIndeed that's eight ponies!

Bank notes are often changed and old ones stop being legal in shops etc after a certian time - they can still be exchanged for new versions (I think this can be done at any bank, as opposed to only the BofE) These notes were pre-decimal - when we changed from opounfds and shillings to decimal currency in 19069-71, some old coins and notes carried over (albeit at adifferent value) and were gradually phased out in the following years - fr years an old shilling was worth 5p and an old florin (2 shillings) 10pI think Arfur and his mates were probably more worried about the notes being connected to the original blag and so didn't want to go near a bank and fill in forms with their name and address on.

See also the Future Shock / Time Twister The Startling Success of Sideways Scuttleton!

QuoteI was once asked in the late eighties by an American tourist at Heathrow to explain "pounds and shillings" to her - so I did - two farthings in a ha'penny, twelve pennies in shilling, two shillings and sixpence in half  a crown, twenty shillings in a pound -she seemed satisfied as she went on her way to enjoy the delights of England  - was it naughty of me to fail to mention that these had ben phased out about 20 years earlier in favour of decimal currency?  >:D

And was it Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams who explained the relations between pennies, farthings, shillings, crowns and pounds and that there was opposition to decimalisation because one hundred pence to a pound was too confusing.

Frank

Quote from: Dandontdare on 02 March, 2017, 06:04:04 PM
Arfur and his mates were probably more worried about the notes being connected to the original blag and so didn't want to go near a bank and fill in forms with their name and address on.

Doh! I missed this part of Dan's post. This is obviously the correct explanation.



Jim_Campbell

Quote from: sheridan on 02 March, 2017, 08:36:06 PM
And was it Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams who explained the relations between pennies, farthings, shillings, crowns and pounds and that there was opposition to decimalisation because one hundred pence to a pound was too confusing.

It's a footnote in Good Omens that I think you're thinking of, so Gaiman and/or Pratchett in some combination.
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sheridan

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 02 March, 2017, 09:17:47 PM
Quote from: sheridan on 02 March, 2017, 08:36:06 PM
And was it Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams who explained the relations between pennies, farthings, shillings, crowns and pounds and that there was opposition to decimalisation because one hundred pence to a pound was too confusing.

It's a footnote in Good Omens that I think you're thinking of, so Gaiman and/or Pratchett in some combination.

That sounds right - must re-read that some time soon...

Grant Goggans

Thanks for the insight, everyone.  It's a fun series, and I'm looking forward to watching some more episodes this weekend.

Dandontdare

If your "complete" set includes the series after Denis Waterman left, I wouldn't bother with those - but the early ones are great. Keep that cockney rhyming slang dictionary to hand and let me know if you have ever seen a more wooden actor than Dave the barman.

Tony Angelino

Arthur Daley was an invertebrate liar.

He was also one of he inspirations behind Del Boy. I think I remember John Sullivan saying so in an interview.

Buttonman

I remember that episode and agree it seemed far fetched - Arfur would be more likely to try and pass on the notes to some mug rather than stick them in the charity jar. If they are dodgy won't Dave get the same earache when filling in the forms?

It is a great series - early Chisholm episodes give way to the rival coppers with their inept sidekicks. Look out for Terry's tasty stripper girlfriend and the repetitive scenes like Dave getting beaten up or Arfur's lock up/ car lot being raided by the cops or bad guys. Leave it out!

Favourite episode was probably when Arfur was on a jury and tries to get an obviously guilty old lag off to the annoyance of his fellow jurors.

Dunk!

I hope you move on from Minder to Rumpole of the Bailey.

Of the same period but superior in all ways.

Dunk!
"Trust we"

Grant Goggans

Oh, I've loved Rumpole for many years.  WGBH started the Mystery! anthology series specifically to accommodate it and give it a showcase in the US, because it didn't quite fit with their existing Masterpiece Theatre anthology.  (That was the 70s.  These days, of course, the programs have merged, "2000 AD and Starlord"-style.)  I'm not aware of Minder even being offered to American stations by Lionheart or other agents, much less shown anywhere here.  All of Rumpole was shown on Mystery! and has long been available on R1 DVD, along with Mortimer's novelizations and follow-up novels.

The Minder set I got has ten series and the feature-length specials.  There is a "Terry only" set of series 1-7 which for some reason doesn't have the specials and which cost £5 more on Amazon.

JamesC

I love the theme song to Minder. My brother's friend had the single and there was no B side - just completely smooth vinyl on one side. Weird.