Top 10 Funniest Allo Allo Moments

#10: The Airmen Pop Up

This is our very first run-in with Fairfax and Carstairs, the trapped airmen who are stuck in France for the duration of the war. They knock on René’s window cleverly disguised as onion sellers – possibly the least deranged disguise we see in the entire show – and struggle to communicate owing to their complete lack of French. Things go awry when they assume that René is demanding a watch as payment, and of course, Michelle is nowhere nearby to translate for them. Some of their other most memorable disguises include pretending to be nuns and pretending to be a pantomime cow. They do eventually get back to England, only to return to France for the D-Day landings and get themselves captured.

#9: French Lessons

In truth, we could have put any of Officer Crabtree’s scenes on here, as he remains one of the most memorable sitcom characters of all time thanks to his absurd pronunciations. In this episode, he’s come up with another disguise for the airmen, dressing them up as police officers like himself. He’s trying to keep them safe just until their latest escape plan can come off, with Michelle in the middle of a long scheme to send them back to Blighty via a homemade hot air balloon. To this end, he teaches them to say a few words in his own appalling French dialect, which goes just about as well as you’d expect.

#8: Nun in the Sky

The hot air balloon didn’t work, so what about a kite? They’re not trying to escape France with this scheme – that would be ridiculous, of course – but rather, carry out a spot of espionage to stop the Gestapo from interfering with their radio. They outfit a makeshift kite with the equipment they’ll need and launch it, attempting to open communication with London again, but as you’d expect, nothing goes to plan. When René lets go of the wire, Mimi, disguised as a nun, is accidentally pulled into the skies above France. The German Army officers witness the flying nun but don’t point her out to the General, who’s looking the wrong way.

#7: The General’s Bedroom

The General spends his war service holed up in his luxurious, French chateau for the most part, and more than once do the Resistance attempt to infiltrate it. In this memorable incident, Maria has got herself waylaid in the chateau as part of a scheme to make a copy of the Fallen Madonna, only for the General to take her prisoner. Everybody converges to try and help her escape and/or retrieve the invaluable sausage, including René, who ends up stuck under the bed when Helga arrives. She presents the General with a striptease – one of many she performs for only the most spurious of reasons, while Maria and René look on helplessly.

#6: Escaping the POW Camp

While trying to tunnel underneath a prisoner-of-war camp, farcical situations contrive to send the entire cast inside – but, of course, they don’t want to stay. Everybody disguises themselves as British airmen so that the Germans don’t think they’re actually working with the Resistance, and they concoct an even more absurd plan: to launch themselves over the fence using a seesaw, making René jump onto it over and over again. The Resistance emerges to convey the escaped prisoners – who, of course, also include the German officers – to safety. As usual, René is inadvertently vital to the Resistance’s success.

#5: The Wheelchair Bomb Goes Wrong

Once again, the tyrannical General Klinkerhoffen finds himself the victim of an assassination attempt, this time as Monsieur Alfonse tries to poison his wine. After almost poisoning himself and then mistakenly making the General spit out his own wine, everything falls to Fanny, who’s in a wheelchair equipped with a bomb. But the bomb isn’t rigged properly after the detonator falls off, launching the wheelchair and Fanny away into a field. And all because she lost her ear trumpet and couldn’t hear the alarm clock go! Well, it was probably a good thing they broke the detonator; the old bat would have been blown up otherwise.

#4: Death by Firing Squad

After a much earlier botched attempt on Klinkerhoffen’s life, René gets caught and sentenced to death. The corrupt officers don’t want René to die – because he’s helping them with the painting and because he’s able to get them luxurious food and drink via the café – so they load the firing squad’s guns with blanks. But René doesn’t know this, and nor does Lieutenant Gruber, who’s devastated by René’s loss despite having to give the order himself. But the most memorable bit is, of course, when they go to hear René’s last words and he uses Michelle’s iconic catchphrase. For much of the rest of the series, René is forced to pretend to be his own twin brother – also named René.

#3: The Gestapo Dance

It’s time for the social event of the season: the annual Gestapo dance in Berlin! But who is Herr Flick going to take as his partner? Helga, of course, but only after he first demonstrates it. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as erotic as Helga’s myriad stripteases, following the tune of the hokey cokey while he sings about razing villages to the ground and worships Heinrich Himmler. It’s just the type of absurdity we’ve come to expect from Flick and his long-running love affair with Helga, if it can be called that, considering he hardly reacts to her advances, even when he demands them.

#2: Exploding Chickens

Michelle’s latest mission is to hand over her bottle of “Bols” gin to René so that she doesn’t have to carry it around with her, all the better considering it doesn’t contain gin, it contains nitroglycerin. However, everybody in the café wants a glass of gin for themselves, and Edith starts pouring measures out when René leaves it unattended. It has some, shall we say, unusual effects. René finds out that Maria has doused the chicken feed in it and taken it to the coop outside. They get there just in time to witness all six of the hens exploding one after the other, leaving only the extremely smug cockerel intact.

#1: The Dance of the Hitler Youth

You’ve seen the Gestapo dance, but what dance do people perform when they’re still too young to join the Gestapo? This one, of course! Yvette and Maria also get roped into the bizarre dance, performed as a diversion so that René can deal with yet more copies of the “Fallen Madonna”. It’s all very odd, though, devolving into an elaborate, playground slapping game while all the officers look on lecherously; even Gruber gets in on it. But they make the grave mistake of not inviting Herr Flick – who, as we’ve already established, is a fan of dancing – getting into his bad books.

Let us know in the comments what your favourite “’Allo ’Allo!” catchphrase is!