A Stitch in Time

An accident in a butcher's shop lands Norman Pitkin and Mr Grimsdale in hospital. Pitkin knocks over as much as he usually does. Then he meets a little girl called Lindy: her parents were killed in a plane crash and she has neither spoken nor smiled since. Pitkin decides to reach her, and the hospital administration wants nothing of the sort. Directed by Robert Asher, this is one of the best loved entries in the Norman Wisdom run and went high in the British box office lists that year. The mould is the same again: Pitkin is clumsy, nobody takes him seriously, and he does the right thing anyway. But here the sentimental line gets ahead of the comedy, and the film is counted among Wisdom's most affecting works. Black and white. Edward Chapman is Mr Grimsdale again.