Dick James Lucas

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name	Trevor Bannister
date of birth	some time in 1936
character name	Dick (James) Lucas
tenure on the show	1972-1979
Lucas' status	junior salesman 1972-1979
catchphrase	"if you don't ask, you don't get, do you?"

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The handsome, virile, always tardy, sarcastic, "mean as well as being oversexed" rude-but-lovable Dick Lucas is played by Trevor Bannister. The most featured character (along with Mrs. Slocombe) in the first years of Are You Being Served? (originally the show was to center around *him*), Mr. Lucas was soon overshadowed by Mr. Humphries and Mrs. Slocombe's developing personalities. By the time Bannister left the show in 1979 to pursue his stage career, he had been reduced to having a medium-sized role as Mr. Lucas; however, the audience loved (and loves) the most junior member of the Grace Brothers clothing staff no less.

As the "cheerfully lecherous" junior salesman on the men's counter, Mr. Lucas can be thought of perhaps as the bratty little brother. His rudeness and sarcastic remarks, held slightly in check during the first few episodes, comes out full force later on: after that, no one, not even Mr. Humphries, who is his closest friend on the Grace Brothers staff, is safe from his ridicule. Bearing the brunt of his insults is Mrs. Slocombe, who is constantly teased about her age, looks, and weight. In fact, at the very beginning of the show Mrs. Slocombe was quite friendly to Mr. Lucas, but as his rudeness came out more and more the pair soon developed a love-hate (or is it a hate-hate?) relationship. Yet for all his insults and witty talk, which can get tiresome after a while, Mr. Lucas remains popular and lovable.

The reason why Mr. Lucas (called James in "The Clock" but more appropriately called Dick in "The Old Order Changes" and "Shedding the Load") remains lovable despite an annoying penchant for rudeness is that as normal human beings we can sympathize with him. Being the junior salesman and subject to the archaic rules about seniority he almost never has a chance to make commission, and when he does get a potential customer they either want the gents or a measly hankerchief. Thus Mr. Lucas' only power is that of his witty, wisecracking tongue.

Furthermore, in the pilot episode Mr. Lucas is not only sarcastic, but helpful and awkward as well, being the new guy on the staff. He is continually getting into trouble for fracturing archaic protocol, intentionally or otherwise, and is invariably late to work. Mr. Humphries has many a time showed Mr. Lucas the ropes and covered for him in tight situations. Mr. Lucas is at his best when he tries to explain himself out of difficult situations (usually involving his tardiness). Because of one of his explanations, one man now thinks of gloves as actually being "continental novelty footwarmers designed to helped the fuel crisis in the Middle East" And since Mr. Lucas' "poor crippled mother" is usually involved in his reasons for being late to work, the Grace Brothers staff probably have this impression of Mrs. Lucas as being an *extremely* debilitated, *extremely* unfortunate woman.

At the show's start Mr. Lucas and Miss Brahms had a sort of Calvin-and-Susie type relationship (well, not really, but both relationships *are* common in their laughter value...). In the second episode Mr. Lucas writes a rather crass-sounding note to Miss Brahms, the first line of which is also the episode's title: "Dear Sexy Knickers." The resulting hilarity as the note passes through the wrong hands is almost too much! However, the interaction pattern between Shirley and Dick (what's in a name?) usually goes like this: Mr. Lucas "flirts" with Miss Brahms by being rude ("you should [get picked up] at the front entrance; you'd meet a nicer class of person") and Miss Brahms responds in kind ("I shan't be seeing you then, shall I?"). Yet though they act this way to each other these two good-looking junior salespersons are seen dancing together in "The Clock" and they have a date planned in "German Week" (Miss Brahms' excuse is that she'd rather go out with Dick than do her mother's laundry) as well as in other episodes, such as "Big Brother." This love-hate aspect of Miss Brahms and Mr. Lucas' relationship decreased as the show went on. Mr. Lucas was even seen to flirt with Mr. Humphries in the beginning of the show: he gooses Mr. Humphries in "Dear Sexy Knickers" and lends Mr. Humphries his arm to hold on to in "The Clock" ...and Mr. Humphries himself admits to "working on" Mr. Lucas' normality! Yet like his love-hate thing with Miss Brahms, this part of Mr. Lucas' behavior to Mr. Humphries was also phased out. The most logical explanation is that as Mr. Lucas became less and less essential as a character so did the random aspects of his relationships with the other characters.

At times one may want to "smack his chops" ...but most of the time we'd rather kiss them, because we sympathize with the junior, because he's cute, because he's got a great voice (that endearingly cracks when he's in trouble), and because we'd like to get away with some of the stuff he says!