General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968 film)

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is a 1968 British coming-of-age comedy directed and produced by Clive Donner, in which a sex-obsessed Stevenage teenager tries and fails to lose his virginity amid the permissive society of the Swinging Sixties.¹^•² It was adapted by novelist Hunter Davies from his own 1965 novel, with additional dialogue by Larry Kramer, and stars Barry Evans in his screen debut as Jamie McGregor.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director / producer	Clive Donner, who made the film after completing What's New, Pussycat? (1965)²^•³
Writers	Hunter Davies (screenplay and source novel, 1965); Larry Kramer (additional dialogue)²
Stars	Barry Evans (Jamie McGregor), Judy Geeson (Mary Gloucester), Angela Scoular (Caroline Beauchamp), with Sheila White, Adrienne Posta, Vanessa Howard, and Diane Keen⁴
Runtime / genre	96 minutes; comedy; color, 1.85:1²
Setting	Stevenage New Town, Hertfordshire, one of the London overspill new towns²^•⁴
Release	UK January 1968; United States March 4, 1968⁴^•²
Cannes	Listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, which was canceled over the events of May 1968 in France⁵

Spoilers

Plot and protagonist

Jamie McGregor is a virginal grammar-school sixth former and part-time grocery delivery boy living with his parents on a Stevenage housing estate.¹^•⁶ Frustrated that he has not lost his virginity, he appeals for advice to Spike (Christopher Timothy), an older ladies' man, and pursues several local girls: Linda (Adrienne Posta), whom he has known since school; Caroline Beauchamp (Angela Scoular), whose parents (Denholm Elliott and Maxine Audley) are a pair of older swingers; Paula (Sheila White); and Mary Gloucester (Judy Geeson), a classmate who seems unaware he exists.⁷ Jamie confides his thoughts directly to camera, and he never finally succeeds in his quest, remaining forever on to the next thing, admitting "I've had enough of bits and pieces!"; Mary, for her part, tells him "I'm not a nun, you know."⁸^•¹⁴

Production and setting

Davies wrote the screenplay in December 1966, pausing work on another book; the novel had been bought by United Artists, and Davies had hoped the film would be shot in Carlisle, where the novel was set. The filmmakers instead chose a gleaming new town in the South that no feature film had then used, and Stevenage was selected partly because it fell just within the union-agreed 30 miles from London, sparing overnight allowances for cast and crew.⁴

Locations. The film was shot on location in Stevenage New Town, Hertfordshire. Featured buildings include the Stevenage Clock Tower in the town center, which was the first purpose-built traffic-free shopping zone in Britain; the sailing scenes at the "Botel" were filmed on Grafham Water, Huntingdonshire.² Local residents recall school scenes shot at Bedwell secondary modern and scenes on Jessop Road, and the exterior of Southgate House, including its mural, appears in the film.⁹^•¹⁰

Crew. Cinematographer Alex Thomson had shot only one feature before this one, the Israeli comedy Ervinka (1967); the film became a showcase that led to a highly successful career, later including an Oscar nomination for Excalibur (1981).³ The film marked the screen debut of Barry Evans, who later found television success in Doctor in the House and Mind Your Language (1977–1979).³

Music

The soundtrack is full of songs by the Spencer Davis Group, Stevie Winwood, and Traffic, and the BFI credits it with perfectly capturing the sights and sounds of 1960s Britain.¹ Traffic, Stevie Winwood's new band, released a single of the title song, written by Winwood, ahead of the premiere, and the soundtrack album, rushed out just after the film's opening in early March 1968, includes the score performed in the film by Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group.¹¹ The Spencer Davis Group appears in the film as the group at the church dance.⁴

Censorship and versions

British cinemas received a much-trimmed version of the film, in which dialogue was altered, certain sexual references were removed, and Mary's topless moments in the bathing scene were deleted in full, while foreign territories got the complete version.² The cut cinema print was often shown on BBC1 and the uncut version on Channel 4, and the 2010 BFI Flipside DVD and Blu-ray release features both prints, alongside an alternative censored version.²^•¹²

Reception and legacy

The film was listed in competition at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was canceled amid the events of May 1968 in France.⁵ Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert grouped it with the new British comedies he called the true heirs of the beach-party boom.¹³ Renata Adler of The New York Times judged that Donner "directs quite beautifully" from a pictorial point of view, of what a new fantasy of mod love and courtship might look like, though not from the viewpoint of spoken language or narrative.⁷

The BFI places the film in the lineage of Free Cinema and 1950s social realism, noting its occasional unfiltered appearances by non-professional actors, and calls it a valuable archive of new town planning and of a time when children played unlooked-for in the streets.⁸ The BFI also frames the film's irony: it is set in the unlikely swinging location of Stevenage, confirming that for most young Britons everyday life was mundane, with the swinging scene always somewhere else, just out of reach.¹ During the 1970s, Britain produced still bolder sex comedies, notably the Confessions films (1974–7), which featured Evans in the lead, and the Adventures films (1976–8).¹

Dating note

Sources differ on the film's year: the BFI and Cannes list it as 1967, while IMDb, Reelstreets, and trade-press coverage of the soundtrack place its release in 1968, with a UK release in January 1968 and a US release on March 4, 1968.¹^•²^•⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026