A lot of the people and shows referenced here are very familiar; this is the TV output on which I grew up. It’s a thrill to find out what went on behind the scenes of Blue Peter, Newsround and Jackanory and dramas such as Grange Hill and The Box of Delights, not least when what we’re told is a bit salacious. The job tended to involve long hours and lots of chain-smoking for not much money. There was an enviable degree of creative freedom, but some extraordinary clashes of ego and personality, and occasional bust-ups.
While much of it is about the practicalities of making television for a mass audience, it’s really the story of the people involved. Several of the many contributors are unguarded in what they say about former colleagues, particular shows and even the children who took part. We learn, for example, that one girl looked like a hippo on screen and that a particular group of children who appeared on The Really Wild Show smelled so strongly of cannabis that it confused a sniffer dog.
One constant theme, I think, is the sink-or-swim method of recruitment. The process of finding presenters and child actors often involved people already know to the producers: relatives, colleagues working in the office, people they happened to meet during filming (an example of the latter: Blue Peter presenter Simon Groom). Yes, there was some auditioning, too, but it all feels a bit haphazard, with a tendency to cast particular “types”. Once they’d got the job, some onscreen personalities were clearly not well supported, either. There was not much duty of care.
Some stories here are shocking, such as the claim that no women wanted to work with Rod Hull and Emu as he/they would assault them, or the account of one (former) child actor who almost drowned while filming. I had no idea that Blue Peter presenter Diane Louise Jordan faced so many challenges, in part because of things going on in her life off-screen. And there’s something a bit sacrilegious about some colleagues airing their dislike of Floella Benjamin (pp. 281-2).
A few things prompted me to look up further detail. For example, the book details the impact on the cast and crew of Record Breakers when presenter Ross McWhirter was murdered, but doesn’t tell us why the IRA targeted him. Reading up on McWhirter’s political views and associates only makes it more extraordinary that he and his twin brother Norris were fixtures of children’s TV.
Inevitably, I think, some of the later material here hit less hard as it concerns shows and personalities whose names I didn’t recognise, from a time long after I’d outgrown children’s TV and had not even a passing acquaintance with what was on. It’s all good material, just without the same emotive impact for this particular reader. I suspect different parts of the book will hit differently, depending on the reader’s age.
This isn’t meant as criticism; it’s just that this book has made me think about my own relationship with and response to all the culture spawned from the BBC’s East Tower. The book is just as rich and varied and nuts.
*
For my own purposes, researching the life and career of Terrance Dicks, it was interesting to see what the book says about The Bagthorpe Saga, a six-part dramatisation “completed … for transmission” by Christmas 1980 and broadcast between 25 March to 29 April 1981.
“The first two novels in Helen Creswell’s The Bagthorpe Saga — a humorous series about an eccentric and dysfunctional family living in the country — were adapted by James Andrew Hall. Andrew (as he was known) was a writer then very much in vogue. In the spring of 1979, he had generated a good deal of publicity with his controversial and autobiographical Play for Today, Coming Out [tx 10 April 1979], the angsty story of a homosexual writer and the various men in his life. He was also a regular contributor to the Sunday classic serials. ‘I enjoy writing for kids,’ he said. ‘I think it helps that I haven’t got any of my own. I’ve never really grown up in some respects. When I’m working on an adaptation, [it’s] with a mental note to be true to the other writer’s work, which is always difficult — don’t impose too much of yourself on it, which is not always easy. I just type everything out — tippy tap tip tip tip.” p. 236.
This is welcome detail as I’m currently a bit short on material related to James Andrew Hall; last summer, the BBC’s Written Archives Centre declined me permission to go through the files they hold on him.
But I know he and Terrance enjoyed a successful collaboration over several years. Terrance inherited him (and Alexander Baron) on the Sunday classic serials. Hall had been working in television since the mid 1960s, while also publishing novels. But he’d only recently worked on the Sunday classic, dramatising The Mill on the Floss (1978-79) and The History of Mr Polly (1980), both produced by Barry Letts. He must have followed Bagthorpe with his 13-part dramatisation of Great Expectations, which began broadcast on 4 October 1981 and was the first of the classics script edited by Terrance.
Hall went on to dramatise Dombey & Son (1983), The Invisible Man and The Prisoner of Zenda (both 1984) for Barry and Terrance. Then, when Terrance took over as producer, Hall dramatised Brat Farrar and David Copperfield (both 1986), as well as The Franchise Affair (1988). The latter was Terrance’s final production and the last Sunday classic serial produced by the drama department.
In some sense, he was victim of a coup. Two weeks after The Franchise Affair concluded, the same Sunday evening slot boasted the first episode of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As Marson says in his book, this was the first Sunday serial made by the children’s department since 1962 (p. 410). I wonder how long the coup lasted. There were more Chronicles of Narnia in 1989 and 1990 but did children’s continue to make Sunday classics beyond that? I need to investigate…
While his regular gig on the Sunday classics came to an end, James Andrew Hall continued to work for the children’s department; Marson says his scripts for the dramatisation of Black Hearts in Battersea (1995-96) by Joan Aiken under-ran (p. 504).
Richard has been very helpful in answering my various questions about aspects of all of this; more to follow in my own book.
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