Nuts in May

[callmemadam]

There’s been a lot of publicity about the release of the Mike Leigh at the BBC DVD set. Of all Mike Leigh’s films, my favourite is Nuts in May and with good reason.

You are a young couple about to set off for a camping holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. It will be a long slow trip from Surrey in the 2CV so the friend who is accompanying you sleeps over, ready for an early start next morning. You open some beers, switch on the television and watch Nuts in May, about a young couple on a disastrous camping holiday in Dorset.


Alison Steadman as Candice Marie

Unlike Candice-Marie and Keith, we had a lovely time but we always associated the film with the holiday and for years, whenever the three of us met up, we would quote lines at each other.


Camping seventies style


Hair wash in t'beck. Felicity Kendal wore a shirt just like that one in The Good Life.


The menfolk wash up.

Since writing this, I’ve realized it’s complete b***s as the holiday must have been in 1975 and the film didn’t come out until 1976. Still, we did go on holiday and watch the film together and joke about it ever after and as the sole survivor, I can tell it any way I like. I'd still like to see the film again, not least for Alison Steadman's performance. It seems to me that after Abigail's Party, all her roles, including Mrs Bennet, have something of Abigail in them; this is quite different.