Handwritten Dad’s Army script set to make thousands under the hammer

An original handwritten script from Dad’s Army is going to auction in Bristol. 

‘Sergeant, Save My Boy!’ was an episode in the fourth series of the show which ran from 1968 to 1977. 

In the episode, Private Pike gets himself tangled up on barbed wire on a mined beach, and the platoon must work quickly to save him. 

Now David Croft's original handwritten manuscript for the episode is going under the hammer at the Auctioneum in Bristol on Tuesday 31 December. 

The manuscript largely matches the final episode, but with some occasional differences with lines and short sections of dialogue. 

The script is accompanied by a letter from Mr Croft dated 6 November 1995, in which he says: “I am enclosing a manuscript of a Dads Army programme. Unfortunately, the first page is missing but it is the MS of ‘Sergeant, Save My Boy’ which went out a couple of weeks ago and is the original in my own bad handwriting with alterations, baloons (sic) and afterthoughts. 

“I can write better than this but in trying to keep up with my thoughts, legibility goes out of the window. Having written it down, I would then have read it onto a dictating machine - with alterations - and my secretary would have copied it.”

A spokesperson for the auction house said it’s “a unique and important piece of British Comedy history".

The lot is expected to make between £5,000 and £8,000.