It is perhaps not surprising that I, a middle-aged American woman in the Year of Our Lord 2019 have never seen Steptoe and Son. (It’s considerably more surprising that I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a full episode of Sanford and Son, its American remake.) It is odd, however, that I’m pretty sure the only three movies I saw him in were all movies I originally saw on The Disney Channel. I could’ve done him last month, for horror; he was in AIP’s Witchfinder General, with Vincent Price (also known as The Conqueror Worm). I could do him in June, for Pride, it turns out, and there is indeed a performance of his I should track down where he plays an elderly man dying of AIDS.

But as a child, I saw three movies on The Disney Channel with him. (Actually, I’m not a hundred percent sure I saw In Search of the Castaways in those days, but I probably did.) He helped Hayley Mills escape from a volcano and cannibals in In Search of the Castaways, and he worked for a vet in Scotland in The Three Lives of Thomasina. Both standard Disney fare, as far as it goes, and I think the second one is an interesting little piece that deserves more attention than it gets. Though Brambell isn’t anything outstanding in what is, honestly, an extremely busy movie.

The third movie is one that I know I saw young and am pretty sure I first saw on The Disney Channel, though I could be wrong. But for a while, Disney was playing Beatles stuff, as I recall. As in, I’m quite sure I saw the Beatles cartoon on The Disney Channel, making me one of the few people my age to have seen it at all. And I’m pretty sure that’s where I first saw both Help! and, relevant to today’s discussion, A Hard Day’s Night. Both of which my mother ended up buying for us despite her own disinterest in The Beatles.

I’m given to understand that the repeated “but he’s very clean” is a reference to Steptoe’s being frequently referred to as dirty. I didn’t know that as a child, though, having at the time never even heard of the show. It still works, though, as a sort of “well, you can say that about him at least” recurring thing. “John McCartney” is a grifter, an agitator, and a crank, but he’s very clean. Even if he’s only thirty years older than his “grandson.”

Honestly, it’s such a strong performance that it’s a memorable performance in a Beatles movie. He steals his scenes, and that’s not easy to do in a room with those lads. He did have a fine and illustrious career, one of those Staples of The BBC careers, but he’s also on the list of It Wouldn’t Matter If He’d Never Made Anything Else careers, because once you’ve done Paul’s Very Clean Grandfather, you’ll be remembered for it as long as people watch movies.

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