Mary Elizabeth Jennifer Rachel Yiddell Abergavenny Slocombe
| name | Mollie Sugden |
| date of birth | 21 July 1922 |
| sun (zodiac) sign | Cancer (the Crab) - water sign |
| ruling planet | the Moon |
| character name | Mary Elizabeth Jennifer Rachel Yiddell Abergavenny Slocombe |
| tenure on the show | 1972-1984 |
| Slocombe's status | senior salesman 1972-1984 |
| catchphrases | "and I am unanimous in that" "weak as water!" |
Known more simply as Betty Slocombe, Mary Elizabeth etc. etc. is a character played by the awesome Mollie Sugden. Unlike Mr. Humphries, whose part was quite small in the earlier episodes of Are You Being Served?, Mrs. Slocombe was either the most featured character or the second most featured character in EVERY episode of AYBS?, making her overall the most featured member of the Grace Brothers clothing department staff. The focus on Mrs. Slocombe is quite appropriate as Sugden's talent is already evident in the pilot episode. Sugden's mannerisms, facial expressions, and her accent which shifts from upper-class to Scouse at random, all make Mrs. Slocombe one of the most ludicrously funny characters on television.
Mrs. Slocombe has two main gags: first off, as a cat lover, she consistently talks about Tiddles, her bundle of fluff, but this causes quite a few problems in that Betty insists on referring to her cat as her pussy. Not only does this make for interesting, ridiculous mental pictures when Mrs. Slocombe recounts her pussy's latest escapades, but it causes mishaps when she is talking to people (like her next door neighbor Mr. Akbar) who aren't used to her choice of synonym for "cat." Mrs. Slocombe's second gag is that her hair color changes EVERY single episode: it is never her natural color, but always dyed some outlandish shade of green, pink, blue, yellow, or purple (there were a few episodes when it was a semi-natural looking brown color). In fact, in the earlier years Sugden's hair was bleached and redyed for each episode; later on she wore wigs. Her most memorable hair was in "Roots," when her wig was dyed red, white, and blue, and in "It Pays to Advertise," which showed her sporting a wig colored peach, with red, pink, and blue locks of hair on each side of the wig, right above her ears.
If one is to generalize Mrs. Slocombe, one could say that she is a not-so-slight-exaggeration of any ordinary person: lying about her age (she's born in 1926 but says in 1983 that she is in her "very, VERY early forties"), lying about her measurements ("thirty-six, twenty-three, thirty-six"), and, perhaps most importantly, pretending to be more upper-class than she actually is. Her main gripe with the clothing display units Mr. Mash and Mr. Harmon bring to her department is that they are "common" (and she is usually justified in thinking so), and her affected upper-class/posh accent degrades into the more "common"-sounding north-country when she is angry or doesn't feel the need to be posh. She affects to be a prude as befits her age and (supposed) class ("why anyone would want to buy a picture of a nude man; oh I think it's awful") but she frequents pubs with her best friend Mrs. Axelby in order to check out and be checked out by guys. She goes on holidays on the continent in the hopes of getting her bottom pinched (and perhaps something more!), yet after she is unsuccessful at it she claims that only lower class women would ever have things like that happen to them!
Mrs. Slocombe assumes that the men in the pub are polite to her out of respect, not because she is getting older and less attractive ("I find that manners and getting better and better"). She is consistently the "butt" of Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spooner's (and to some extent Mr. Harman's) jokes: jokes about her weight, her age, and her looks. These situations are hilarious in that Mrs. Slocombe's reaction to being insulted is funny in itself; being insulted will produce the best Slocombe rebuttals: "And a special switch for Mr. Lucas to shut his atomic cakehole" and "Would you like my pump up your proboscis?" Her best rebuttal is in "The Father Christmas Affair", when she elegantly/casually deposits a bowl of junket (curds and cream) onto Mr. Lucas' silky mop of brown hair. Digression: Seeing as her three last names are "Yiddell Abergavenny Slocombe," our Betty must have had quite a past; but it's a past the audience will never know about. We do know, however, that she was born as Rachel Yiddell on 1926 in Blackpool, that she and Captain Peacock had a thing going in 1964, and that Mr. Slocombe left home (he was taken by the fraud squad!). Also, Mrs. Slocombe was not on great terms with anyone in the men's clothing department and was not even that close to Miss Brahms, her assistant, but after a few years she becomes quite good friends with both Mr. Humphries and Miss Brahms. She seemed to be sort of attracted to Mr. Lucas in the beginning of the show, but that part of her disappeared (or was it kept hidden as befitted her age and class?) as Mr. Lucas continued being rude to her.
Mrs. Slocombe is the bravest of the staff: in "Big Brother" she foils a would-be "robber" even when the dashing/macho Captain Peacock hesitates ("weak as water!" she calls him), and in "The Hero" she steps in during a wrestling match between Mr. Humphries and Mr. Franco to save Wilberforce (and she knows the names of all the wrestling moves, too!). And in "A Personal Problem" Mrs. Slocombe literally goes out on a ledge to help Captain Peacock. Oh: in addition, Mrs. Slocombe takes to heavy drinking at times, but when she gets drunk she invariably thinks that the queasy feeling comes from her hat being too tight, or the tonic water in her g&t having gone bad. Mrs. Slocombe is at her funniest when a little pissed!
Along with Mr. Humphries, Mrs. Slocombe is one of the most loved of the Grace Brothers staff. We all love to watch how Mrs. Slocombe gets (or tries to get) what she wants and we can all sympathize/empathize with who Mrs. Slocombe is, as we can perhaps see a bit of ourselves in her.
| ORIGINAL WORD | BETTY'S CHOICE |
| apoplectic | apoploptic |
| Carribean | Carribino |
| centimeter | centipede |
| having sex | committing misconduct |
| nitty-gritty | gritty-nitty |
| obstreperous | obstropolous |
| organism | orgasm |
| ostracized | ostrichsized |
| sitting | sat sitting |
| standing | stood standing |
| willy-nilly | nilly-willy |
| Slocombe Secrets: Mrs. Slocombe was hospitalized for an ingrown toenail (?) in 1984; her pussy had to be left in the temporary care of a cousin in Scotland. She has odd luck in matrimony - she once incorrectly assumed that "Young" Mr. Grace wanted to marry her and nearly embarrassed herself badly - she also almost married Mr. Humphries once, and was left at the altar by a Greek man, Mr. Metaxis (who had gone back to Greece to his wife!). The sometimes-mentioned Mr. Slocombe spent his weekdays not working, feeding birds in the park. He was taken away from Mrs. Slocombe suddenly, without any warning at all - the fraud squad came at eight o'clock in the morning. Her only living relation is a rich American uncle, Wendell P. Clark. After being sacked due to her age, Mrs. Slocombe worked as a floor cleaner, window washer, and cook before being reinstated to her former position as senior salesman. She also makes her own perfume, and once concocted a perfume that attracted the opposite sex. |
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