Here We Go round the Mulberry Bush

A sex-obsessed teenager attempts to join the Swinging Sixties set and lose his virginity in this Stevenage-set coming-of-age comedy.

“A period piece that’s good for fashion spotters, architecture lovers, social issues, music fans and, of course, anyone who loves quirky British cinema.”
Cinedelica, 2010

Clive Donner’s film is set in that most unlikely of ‘swinging’ places – the ‘new town’ of Stevenage – and confirms what anyone who was young in the 1960s knew; everyday life was mundane and boring, with the ‘swinging scene’ always somewhere else, just out of reach.

Set during the height of the Swinging Sixties, this enduring favourite tells the story of Jamie (Barry Evans in a career-defining performance), a grammar school sixth former and part-time delivery boy, who is anxious to experience the ‘permissive society’ first hand.

With its modish credit sequence, coloured filter fantasies and soundtrack full of songs by the Spencer Davis Group, Stevie Winwood and Traffic, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush perfectly captures the sights and sounds of 1960s Britain.

Sex comedies of a more risqué kind would become a staple of British cinema in the 1970s, with the Confessions series (1974-7) and the Adventures series (1976-8, the first of which starred Evans) proving particularly popular.