When Bernard Fox was asked to play a womanising witchdoctor on an episode of the popular American sitcom Bewitched, he decided against the usual stereotypes — at least the usual stereotypes for witchdoctors, opting instead to base the character on his recollections of a rather eccentric officer he had met while serving in the Royal Navy in Ceylon.
One evening, Fox was on duty when six members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service arrived. “So I went to this officer,” Fox recalled, “and I said: ‘We’ve got six WRNS, what shall I do?’ And he said: ‘Oh, I don’t know, give ’em a hot bran mash, some clean straw, and bed ’em down for the night.’ And I thought: ‘What a great way to