Great Britain

• Get Charlie Tully

Dick Emery immortalised the line 'Ooh.. you are awful... but I like you' when he introduced blonde, buxom Mandy to viewers in his highly successful television series. Week after week, people waited for the punchline which prompted the playful thump that knocked her unsuspecting inquisitors for six. In this hilarious film written specially for the screen in 1972, the talented magician in the art of masquerade, with his unique brand of camp humour, romps through his stable of character impersonations, weaving them in and out of every tight spot with a skill and speed that leaves you gasping for breath. The life of a con man is never easy. When Charlie (Dick Emery) is on the loose, he never lets the chance to make a quick buck slip through his fingers. It's this fatal compulsion that lands him safely in jail, blissfully unaware of the full force of the Mafia gearing themselves up to recover, on behalf of a famous Italian car-manufacturing family, the half million pounds that he persuaded them to part with in his most spectacular coup. However, Charlie's determination to collect the money, now stashed away in a Swiss bank account, is somewhat hampered by the fact he hasn't got the number. His partner in crime, suave ladies' man Reggie (Ronald Fraser), gasps his last before passing it over. He perseveres, not at all deterred by the fact that tracking down the number involves the photography, often clandestine, of a certain part of the female anatomy. In fact he positively enjoys it, particularly when it belongs to the gorgeous Jo Mason (Cheryl Kennedy), though her brother, local villain Sid Sabbath (Derren Nesbitt), does not plan on letting him get away too lightly when he finds out what's going on. Charlie presses on in a series of hair-raising escapades; where like the proverbial cat, he seems to have nine lives, and manages to have a lot of fun on the way. Someone up there seems to like him. In fact, the moral is you can't keep a good con man down. ANNETTE BROWN