Meet the woman whose magical music brought Bagpuss to life
Sandra Kerr talks to RT about the ultimate storyteller, giggling mice and a new audio drama that captures TV's golden age.
A condensed version of this article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. The golden age of children’s television, and a happy place for many young viewers, are evoked in an instant by a moving new audio drama called Patchwuff, thanks in part to Sandra Kerr. So Radio Times spoke to the folk star whose music woke up Bagpuss, and is making magic happen again... “I was delighted,” says Kerr about her involvement in the new short story written by Andrew T Smith for Mulgrave Audio. “Especially after I’d read the script, which I thought was delightful and enchanting, but also poignant and relevant.” Patchwuff tells the tale of Peter, a boy whose best friend is a cloth dog made by his grandmother. Patchwuff is a "mopey mess of a mutt" with "a patchwork body stuffed with fluff and warm feelings". One day an important visitor to Grandma's house decides that Patchwuff’s stories should be brought to TV. The idea was sparked by the likes of Emily and Bagpuss, Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh, and Alastair Grahame and The Wind in the Willows, as Smith explains to RT. “What happens to the bond between a child and their best, not-quite-imaginary friend as time goes by? How do our memories of these formative childhood friends shape the people we become, and what comfort can they bring in difficult, grown-up times?” Joyous and nostalgic, the story is not afraid to enter the grown-up world, touching on ageing and dementia. The latter is summed up in a song called Forget-Me-Knot, so how did Kerr go about writing it? “The forget-me-knot is the symbol of the Alzheimer’s Society, and coming from a background of wonderful folk songs and ballads, I always have a reference point when I’m writing. "So many of our ancient songs and ballads have been couched in the language of flowers and plants. Forget-me-knot was my starting point and so was the ballad tradition of folk song. I based it loosely on a version of Scarborough Fair that we have in Northumberland called Whittingham Fair, and it has a beautiful tune. So I started there but went off in different directions.” View oEmbed on the source website Essex-born multi-instrumentalist Kerr, now 84, was a member of folk collective The Critics Group along with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, and for many years was a music lecturer at Newcastle University. Patchwuff's golden-age theme is reinforced by some spirited narration from former Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton – a casting coup that Andrew T Smith calls "a dream come true". "Val trained as an actress before she moved into presenting," he continues, "so I knew she could elevate what was on the page. The sheer sound of her voice carries a cachet as well – a warmth and feeling of safety for anybody who grew up with her work." "What a pleasure it was to hear that unmistakeable voice again," adds Kerr. "Perfect." The project emerged from Kerr's association with Mulgrave co-founder Bob Fischer, with whom Kerr presented a live event called Bagpuss and Beyond. And the soundscape for Patchwuff is a cosily familiar one thanks to instruments that were also used for Bagpuss, such as the concertina, autoharp and Appalachian dulcimer. “They were appropriate,” explains Kerr, “those small, intimate, friendly-feeling instruments that sound like you’ve always heard them, and don’t dominate the text or the lyrics. "Because folk song is about lyrics as well as beautiful tunes, and certainly for Bagpuss and for Patchwuff where you’ve got a very strong narrative, it needed songs that were intimate and gentle.” Kerr and fellow folk musician John Faulkner first got the gig for 1974 series Bagpuss after Oliver Postgate ("amazing and genius-like," says Kerr) heard and liked the music that the duo had created for Sam on Boffs’ Island, an educational show produced by Michael Rosen that Postgate and Peter Firmin had provided animation and puppets for. Postgate and Firmin's Smallfilms comprise some of the best-loved children's series of all time, including The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Pogles' Wood, Clangers and, of course, Bagpuss. "Oliver at that time was looking for a different kind of sound for a new series he was going to make. I don’t think he quite knew what he wanted but he said that in the past the music for Smallfilms had always been created quite formally. It had been composed and written down in manuscript form and then played by a small string orchestra or quartet or whatever. And he wanted a different sound for Bagpuss." It was Kerr and Faulkner's music that brought Bagpuss and his friends to life, accompanied the pink-and-white cat's fantastical stories, motivated the mice to repair the lost objects that Emily brought into her shop, and lullabied all the toys back to sleep at the end of each episode. Emily was played by Emily Firmin, the youngest of six daughters of Bagpuss co-creator Peter Firmin, who was responsible for many of the characters, props and drawings. "Peter was another delightful and hugely creative man," says Kerr. "I also ought to make a shout-out for Joan, Peter’s wife, who made a lot of the costumes and dressings for the sets. She was an extraordinarily creative craftswoman and not mentioned in any of the films." As well as helping provide the music, Kerr was also asked to voice Madeleine the rag doll, Bagpuss’s voice of reason amid all the chaos. “Yes, that was her role, and I was very happy with that. I came across a wonderful website where there was a Marxist analysis of the characters, absolutely wonderful, very funny, very clever, and it said that Madeleine was the earth mother who wore a striped dress, the socio-political significance of which has never been explored [laughs]!" Faulkner, meanwhile, voiced the banjo-playing Gabriel the toad. It’s no surprise that folk’s narrative tradition married so well with Postgate’s work. “Oliver was the ultimate storyteller, and when you hear him with that beautiful, brown, velvet, safe voice, it’s so enchanting. "We had enormous fun doing Bagpuss. If you listen carefully especially when we're singing the mouse rounds, you can hear us giggling because it was such fun to do.” Readers of a certain age, and also their children, will fondly remember the weekly, high-pitched chorus of "We will fix it!" In terms of the collaboration, Kerr explains: "We had masses of freedom in what we created, but sometimes he would send us a text, a lyric, and say he wanted some music for that. We would look at it and our minds would go, 'What has the tradition done here? What can we draw upon?' "Sometimes he’d say something like, 'I want a tune for mending split cabbages' or something and we’d find an Irish jig that felt like it was just the right thing. Sometimes he’d present us with a storyboard for us to improvise to. And other times there were part-lyrics which we would add to, or tweak, to make some variety in the kind of songs that we used." There was one exception that suddenly springs to Kerr's mind. "I have to come clean here, I have to fess up! The Porcupine Song was Oliver’s, pure and simple, start to finish. That was his lyric, that was his tune, the only one he created and it’s delightful and it was from that that we created Bagpuss's opening sequence of notes that you hear." These were clearly happy times for the creative Kerr. "I absolutely loved Oliver to bits, I just thought he was charming, he was fun, he was thoughtful, but that thoughtfulness was a really important aspect of his character for me. "I remember later on in the 70s when I discovered feminism and I was at my most strident, Oliver came to dinner and I think I challenged him about something he said – and, bless him, he was quite startled. But then he was totally conciliatory and thought back over what he’d said and I won’t use the word apologise, it’s not appropriate, but he did rethink the whole thing and I think that was the only time Oliver and I ever crossed tiny, tiny little Bagpuss swords!" Kerr still tours, often with her folk-star daughter Sandra and Sandra’s husband James Fagan. "Yes, I'm still performing, still waving my arms about in front of choirs, still trying to enthuse people to sing at workshops all over the place. So yes, life is still very exciting – and I just daren’t stop!" Occasionally on the road, she plays music from Bagpuss, to strong reactions: “There are always people who come up in tears saying how much they loved it when they were children, how hearing it again took them back to those times and how they saw Bagpuss as a place of security.” Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google Keep up to date on what’s worth watching with your favourite entertainment news from Radio Times – see more of our exclusive news and interviews featured prominently in Top Stories when using Google. Why does Kerr think it still resonates, as her poignant project Patchwuff is proving, decades later? “I think it’s because we love stories. There just isn’t time in the history of the world for everybody to tell theirs, so it’s great that we have stories that many of us can relate to. "We all had a favourite toy that was important to us and that we talked to, and I love the fact that it’s Patchwuff that teaches Peter and tells Peter stories. It’s the kind of turnaround thing that Oliver would have done, and did do in Bagpuss. "One of the things I loved was the way he would take something traditional like The Frog Prince and totally turn it upside down. The frog didn’t want to be a frog prince so he kissed the princess and she became a frog princess!" And as for the show about a saggy old cloth cat, "We knew it was special and fun and we knew it was a great coming together of traditions and creativity and ideas, but I don’t think at the time that we knew that over 50 years later, people would still be relating to it and talking about it and be moved by it. "People say, 'Are you tired of it?' No I’m not, I’m immensely proud of it. I mean how often does a creative artist get that chance in their life? The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Patchwuff and other Mulgrave Audio dramas are available from mulgraveaudio.co.uk. Their next play, A Very Yorkshire Wormhole, is out later this year and stars Jonathan Linsley – best known as Crusher from Last of the Summer Wine. 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Open All Hours creator reveals of his legendary sitcom: "It would never happen again"
Sir Roy Clarke on his important lunch with Ronnie Barker, a pairing made in comedy heaven and the gift of an idea.
Fifty years ago this month, a little corner store opened for business. Quintessentially northern but universally popular, Open All Hours was a hit for its stars and spawned a successful sequel, but in fact the bell above Arkwright’s door first tinkled in a pilot episode three years before in 1973. RT was lucky enough to gain a rare interview with its creator, Sir Roy Clarke... Last of the Summer Wine, Keeping Up Appearances and Open All Hours are just three of the hit shows that have kept Roy Clarke busy over the years. And so beloved are those comedies that he was recently appointed a Knights Bachelor for services to entertainment. Did the recent honour come as a surprise? “You can bet your bottom dollar!” says Clarke, 96. But what of the other birthday boy, Open All Hours: how did that come about? “The BBC put Ronnie and I together for a lunch to see if we could come up with something,” explains Clarke, “and in the course of that, Ronnie said, ‘I’ve always wanted to play one of these small shopkeepers.’ Well that clicked for me because my wife’s father was a grocer, she was raised in the trade, and when we were first married she ran a little shop, so I was comfy with the material and I went away quite happy with working on that.” The show was created specifically for Ronnie Barker for his 1973 comedy anthology series Seven of One, which also gave rise to Porridge. There was a three-year gap between pilot and series, so why the long wait? “Well, it was always Ronnie’s commitments.” As well as The Two Ronnies, Barker was also becoming established as “habitual criminal” Norman Stanley Fletcher in said cell-mate sitcom. So in Open All Hours, his skinflint shopkeeper Albert Arkwright, paired with David Jason as his naive nephew Granville, was a comedy dream come true. “It would never happen again,” says Clarke. “David happened to be just starting in his fame. At no other stage in time would it have been possible to have two stars of that magnitude in one show. So that was a huge bonus for me.” The team wasn’t quite complete, however. Nurse Gladys Emanuel, the focus of Arkwright’s permanent infatuation, was played in the pilot by Sheila Brennan and only subsequently by Lynda Baron. “The production didn’t think it worked, so they recast. Absolutely nothing to do with me.” It's not the only thing to change after that first instalment. Outside scenes of Arkwright's shop were initially filmed in Ealing, west London, but afterwards in Balby near Doncaster. The foundation was now in place for four series of fun, with ardent Arkwright constantly rebuffed by no-nonsense Nurse Gladys, and wet-behind-the-ears Granville perpetually thwarted in his own dating games by his accident-prone nature. It’s a tribute to Clarke that so many pre-fame actors queued up to play customers on the show, including Yootha Joyce (George and Mildred), John Challis (Only Fools and Horses), Liz Dawn (Coronation Street) and Barbara Flynn (A Very Peculiar Practice). “That was part of the gift of the idea, that in effect with the shop you’ve got a theatre. You’ve got the two regulars, Ronnie and David, keeping things always on a comedy level, then you’ve got your customers walking in. It was like old variety acts coming in, doing their turn and then going off again. It was a wonderful gift. “I think Ronnie, when he said that’s what he wanted to do, he sussed that, somehow. The instinct was there, telling him it was a good idea.” In fact, Clarke wrote another pilot for that springboard series Seven of One. It was called Spanner's Eleven and followed the misfortunes of a terrible football club. "Yeah, we won’t talk much about that!" he laughs. Open All Hours mixed slapstick, verbal dexterity and end-of-pier gags, as well as a smidgen of melancholy in Arkwright's end-of-episode ruminations. The show ran for four series and 26 episodes, until 1985. So what were some of Clarke's comedy inspirations, growing up? "I loved George Formby. I liked the American humour, I liked Crazy Gang and that sort of stuff." Clarke famously wrote all his early scripts in longhand. "I did. I used to when I had a legible hand, because typewriters in those days... I mean, if you had to make an alteration it was a huge labour. With pencil, at least you could soon scrub out and rewrite in a balloon or something, so it was easier." The show's “hero”, miserly, crotchety Arkwright, could easily have been unlikeable, so Clarke and Barker gave him a stutter. “For which I make no apology," says Clarke, "because he was big enough to handle that. In fact, he was so big a character, I think, Arkwright needed a little flaw. "Without a little humanity he would have been an appalling character, and that’s one of the wonders of people like Ronnie Barker that his decency came through, even with the terrible bloody things I gave him to do!” The decision to revive the show for Still Open All Hours in 2013 was a brave one, bearing in mind Barker’s death in 2005, but it was upheld by more than 13 million tuning in, and the show running for six series and 41 episodes – longer even than the original programme. “You tamper fearfully with a success,” says Clarke, “and it could have gone badly, but again, with David, you’ve got the talent that rescues it." Jason's turn as Granville, taking over the store following Arkwright’s death, was another winner for Clarke. It brought back running characters such as Wavy Mavis (Maggie Ollerenshaw) and Mrs Featherstone the "Black Widow" (Stephanie Cole), and introduced viewers to more comedy royalty in the shape of Brigit Forsyth, Johnny Vegas, Tim Healy, Sally Lindsay, Nina Wadia and others. In many ways it overcame Barker's absence by making his presence strongly felt. "Yes we did, that was deliberate. His photo was always there, and his presence was pretty huge, I think." Not to mention Arkwright's famous snapping shop till. "Of course," laughs Clarke. Although the BBC axed Still Open in 2023, Clarke has written a coda for the show in a documentary about Open All Hours and its legacy, to air on U&Gold later this year. "It's not a script really, it’s a piece to finish off the documentary, and it kind of winds it up." Two of his biggest successes, Open All Hours and Last of the Summer Wine, are both comic portrayals of northern life, but Clarke views them as separate entities: "Summer Wine is all expansive and hillsides and things, the shop’s a tiny theatre. And they both worked." Favourite episodes? “I liked Ronnie and the nurse going to a wedding... I like the funeral one, too, with Ronnie putting the buns in the hearse. But I like most of them, to be honest. It was such a pleasure working with that talent.” An official biography of Roy Clarke, Writing All Hours by Andrew T Smith, will be published by Ten Acre Books later this year. Roy Clarke Remembers... is on BBC Four on Tuesday 10 February at 7:30pm and afterwards on BBC iPlayer. 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On the 60th anniversary of Camberwick Green, we go inside its famous musical box
We celebrate the evergreen children's classic by exploring its life and legacy – and celebrating its memorable, magical music.
In January 1966, children were first introduced to a green and pleasant corner of England where troubles were never serious ones – maybe the sails of Colley’s Mill stopped turning, Tripp's Dairy ran out of milk or the soldiers of Pippin Fort were left minding Mrs Honeyman’s baby – but they captured young hearts and minds. Just 13 episodes of Camberwick Green were made, but the show’s afterlife, via repeats and in popular culture, means we still talk about it today. It was the creation of puppeteer Gordon Murray and animated by Bob Bura and John Hardwick. But a major key to its longevity is its happy, colourful soundtrack, from the musical-box introduction to all the individual character themes... "One person said he thought the music was like little opera pieces," John Phillips, son of the composer Freddie, tells RT. "At the end of the day he was an absolutely brilliant classical guitarist and composer." Freddie Phillips had worked for Gordon Murray previously, on A Rubovian Legend, and for German silhouette animator Lotte Reiniger in the 1950s. He would look for work by visiting a London pub frequented by the entertainment fraternity, nicknamed The Glue Pot. "Once you’d got your feet in, you couldn’t get out!" as John puts it. Gordon Murray created the fictional village of Camberwick Green to exist within the county of Trumptonshire, along with the locations of the show's two sequels: the town of Trumpton (1967) and village of Chigley (1969). Asked by Radio 4 in the 1990s whether the places were all supposed to be in Kent or Sussex, Murray replied: "There are mountains in the background so I would think it's probably in the middle of the country somewhere." Wherever it was, the gentle pastoral adventures were catnip to young tots, including the writer of this article. I loved seeing a different character emerge from the famous musical box, including go-ahead, hi-tech farmer Jonathan Bell, old-school Windy Miller and the ubiquitous Mrs Honeyman. For some reason, however, I would always fret at the sight of Windy Miller entering the front door of his mill and just missing the sails as they turned. I needn't have: he always timed it to perfection! The first record I remember being bought as a child was the "Welcome to Camberwick Green" LP and escaping to that happy, smiling village by way of its soundscape, and its calling-card ditties including: "If you want a doctor/Get Dr Mopp/For he can stop/A sneeze or a wheeze", or "Here comes a policeman/A big, friendly policeman/PC McGarry number 452". So how did Freddie go about writing their individual theme tunes? "He got a script of what was going on, and lengths of time, and then he'd write the music," says John. "In some cases he wrote the music first, then they made the puppets move to it. 'Riding along in a baker’s van, in a rackety tackety baker’s van…' You can just keep going [with the animation] till the music stops!" He recorded it all at home in West Ewell, Surrey. "He did up one of the bedrooms as a studio, with egg boxes pinned to the wall to dampen the sound. He had three recording machines, reel to reel. They were top-quality machines, but the BBC were so fussy, and if it didn’t pass their quality control they simply wouldn’t use it. So it had to be absolutely bang on... But it was quite difficult because the flight path for Heathrow wasn’t far away!" John, a teenager at the time, was a reluctant apprentice: "I used to have to help out by switching the machines on and off and making noises. And I’d be going, 'Oh Dad! Bloody hell, I’ve got to stay in!'" The noises John refers to are the show’s sound effects that Freddie also provided – for the sequels Trumpton and Chigley, too. "A great many of them were simply done." The Pippin Fort bugle? "A tuppeny-ha’penny plastic trumpet, a child’s toy." Windy Miller’s windmill? "There was a drum because it went ka-donk. That was a kid's drum. "There was a bricklayer. That was me in the back garden with a pile of bricks and a trowel, scraping the bricks and the trowel together to make it sound like I was laying bricks. The sound of a crane was a vacuum cleaner slowed down. The dustcart was his car, which was a Sunbeam Talbot. All done in the garage. It was all simple, home-made things." And the famous steam locomotive, Bessie, in Chigley? Freddie took a handheld recorder to the Bluebell Line when he was working at Glydebourne in East Sussex. As for the lyrics, they were "a bit of Gordon but mainly my father". One notable intervention came with the Trumpton fire brigade: "Gordon had started to write that and he hadn’t put enough Pughs in. It was 'Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb'. But my father said no, it doesn’t scan and rewrote it, to 'Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb'!" The calm and clear narration was provided by Play School presenter Brian Cant, who in a 1995 interview said, "I would do roughly three shows in a day. It was quite tiring work, especially the songs. Obviously we only ever recorded the songs once, but I wasn't a trained singer and so Freddie's range was limited when it came to composing them." John Phillips remembers this causing some difficulty for his father, but they got there in the end: "Brian Cant was merely a session man. He had no say-so, he would just turn up at the house, be told, 'Here’s what you’re doing,' do it, then go away." John says his father's musical gifts meant that he was very much in demand. Early television gigs included playing the guitar for Alan-a-Dale in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Also for the music of Coronation Street: "I think he got 30 shillings for it." As well as his radio and TV work he performed and recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the English National Opera and the Royal Ballet, and even went on tour to Czechoslovakia and Russia. "He did a lot of Play for Today," adds John. "He was never not busy, he’d always have plenty of work on. And he wrote an awful lot of stuff which just went into a library for use as background music. We put all his music onto CD and split it up into categories – music in the English style, music in the Latin-American style, abstract – and I’ve got 13 CDs." Freddie Phillips at one point worked with the war artist John Worsley: "They were looking to do another children’s programme, and it was going to be called Sly Boots and Twinkle Wits: two cats and church mice, and the unlikeable lawyers were going to be crows, LickPenny Crib and Co... "I’ve got the original music that they sent off to the BBC but the BBC weren’t interested in it. The songs were fantastic. One of them was Bats in the Belfry, they did it as sort of RAF officers: 'We’re bats, we’re definitely bats, and we flit in and out of the belfry/We mop up the midges, mosquitos and gnats, and flit in and out of the belfry!'" Freddie Phillips died in 2003, but his work on the Trumptonshire trilogy of programmes extends surprisingly far and wide in popular culture. There were homages by indie band Half Man Half Biscuit in the '80s, by Urban Hype in the '90s, more recently by Radiohead and in the loving tribute A Visit to Chiswick by Tiger Moth Tales (if you have any affection for the programmes, you won't regret checking that out). On television, "Quaker Oats used the windmill in an advert [in 2005]. When I told dad, he wasn’t bothered. He said, 'As long as I get the money! As long as they’re paying me.'" The spirit of Trumptonshire was also evoked, surprisingly, in a 2007 episode of Life on Mars, and the programme features prominently in a popular BBC trailer from Christmas 1998. As for why the programmes remain popular, Brian Cant once offered, "Maybe the shows were done with a bit more time and care and love than lots of programmes now, which are chucked on and shout at you..." And in a 1995 interview for Radio 4, Gordon Murray suggested, "There's no crime in Trumptonshire, it's a happy world." "A lot of people say, 'Well you shouldn't encourage children to think that the world's like that.' Some people throw their children into the deep end of the swimming bath at an early age and say, 'Swim' – you know, that's the way to learn, life's hard. Hard things are coming to you. I don't believe in that. I believe that you must protect your children while they are children for as long as possible, from this dreadful world we're living in. "I am very upset at the short length of childhood that children have. They don't have childhood for long and I think that's a wicked shame, because childhood is the most marvellous thing you've got to remember for the rest of your life." What's clear is that Camberwick Green and its spin-offs were “world-building” decades before that was a phrase. And Freddie Phillips’s hummable themes were a crucial part of that. "If it’s popular today it would be down to the music," concludes John Phillips, "because every other kids’ programme is now quite sophisticated animation. And when you think that you’ve got a character there with a ping-pong ball for a head and things like that, it’s so old-fashioned... But the music is timeless." Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley are available to stream on ITVX. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Jools Holland on walking back to New Orleans, breaking down barriers and one very big bang
The pianist and presenter recalls his explosive 1985 documentary, a time in television that no longer exists – and meeting his musical heroes.
They say you should never meet your heroes, but Jools Holland has been ignoring that advice his whole career. “Absolutely right,” says the musician, bandleader and broadcaster. “Although I’d rephrase that advice to ‘Don’t expect your heroes necessarily to be saintly figures’.” The friendly, enthusiastic host of BBC Two’s long-running music show Later... is looking back on his career, triggered by his new programme New Orleans Jukebox (Sunday, BBC Four). The heart of it is the reshowing of a Channel 4 film called Walking to New Orleans, which first aired 40 years ago, repackaged with eye-opening insights and performances of artists from that fabled US city, lifted from the BBC archives. Jools was 27 when he made the documentary, a spin-off from music show The Tube, which he co-hosted for more than four years. “It was a particular time and place in television which doesn’t exist any more," Holland tells Radio Times. "The Tube was a huge success and they had a budget to other things and they said, 'Jools, what would you like to do?' I said, 'I’d really like to go to New Orleans.' "I’d always loved the New Orleans music and it was a great opportunity for me to learn about it, but also to meet some of the people who were at the very heart of it." A reconnaissance trip proved successful. “It was very wintry and rather romantic, there were no tourists there and all the things in the film fell into place, in that all the important people in New Orleans music at the time were in it... We never did what we have to do today, which is to write out a script, work out exactly what’s happening. It was just like, ‘Well, go off and give it a go, see what you come up with!’” What they come up with was a fantastic, on-the-fly journey by Oldsmobile from Louisiana to the titular city (ie not “walking”), meeting music legends along the way. Lee Dorsey customises his car, Allen Toussaint pays touching tribute to Professor Longhair, the Gospel Soul Children sing roadside and Holland shares a piano stool with Fats Domino, whose song Walking to New Orleans provided the film with its title, though probably his most famous hit was Blueberry Hill. The "Domino effect" turned out to be a life highlight for Holland, not that everything went smoothly... American music festival producer Quint Davis introduced the two at the star’s house, when Holland was on his reconnaissance trip. "He had a huge pink mansion on the hill, literally, with powder-blue Lincolns being polished outside. He had this shotgun shack at the bottom, almost like an entrance lodge, and that’s where he liked to spend his time. He made me some food and he had a piano there. “Quint said, ‘Tell him what you’re doing, Jools,’ so being young and stupid and a bit nervous I spoke to him about the whole film. All I needed to say was ‘You’re the greatest ever, it would be fantastic if you could be in it,’ but I just went on and on. After about 20 minutes he looked at his friend on the sofa and said, ‘I can’t understand a word he’s saying.’ “So Quint said, ‘Jools, play him something on the piano,’ so I played him something and he said, ‘Ahh, you’re playing my music.’ I said, ‘I love your music, that’s all I’ve ever listened to.’ He said, ‘I’ll be in your film!’" However, the star’s heavy touring schedule meant the actual filming of their side-by-side piano duet had to wait till he was in London – even though it looks as though they're still at Domino's house! "When we filmed him it was actually in the dressing room of the Royal Festival Hall. So it was a little trick of the television there. You’re probably not allowed to do something like that now, pretend it’s his house when it's not, but anyway we were just trying to make the bloody thing work!" It makes for a joyous moment of television, as Domino enters into the spirit of things, his face lights up and the two embrace after their duet. “It was so great to have him and I did almost cry after we’d done it. I thought, ‘I can’t believe that’s happened.’” Delightful cameos abound, proving how well connected Holland was comedically as well as musically. There's Robbie Coltrane, and Stephen Fry on narrating duties – as well as Holland's Tube co-host Paula Yates. A longer edit of the film also featured Rik Mayall and guru of gobbledegook Stanley Unwin. After a Holland-written closing number called Dr Jazz, a lovely shuffle of a song that conjures up New Orlean allure, the film goes out with a bang: Holland and drummer Gilson Lavis walk towards a car, which then unexpectedly blows up. But the plunger wasn’t pressed until the pair were beyond a point indicating when the car was supposed to be detonated (marked by a twig on the road that was covered with twigs). “It was like the opposite of health and safety – it was dangerous and unhealthy! "I’ve learnt that the man that was in charge of it is no longer with us. He was great but he was so loose with everything. The reason we cut the roof off my car, it was supposed to be a convertible and then we got there and it wasn’t a convertible. He said, 'Well it’s no problem, we’ll just take the roof of it.' Everything was like that. "And when we blew up a car at the end, he made my mum do it. Because if he pressed the plunger and it went wrong, then it would be his fault and in America, with the suing culture... so my mum did it. He had no idea what to do and he was screaming at her to press the plunger and she was looking mystified, and we got closer and closer and closer until you know, you’ve only got one chance at this, we thought, 'We can’t stop and look back.' “When it went off it literally blew us back into the air. If we’d have been another few steps forward... I remember Gilson saying to me, ‘If you do another film, maybe I'll be doing something else next time!'” New Orleans Jukebox is dedicated to Lavis, his “dear friend”, who died on 5 November, aged 74. Holland says, “I’d known him from the very beginning” – they were bandmates in Squeeze – and explains how Walking to New Orleans had been, “importantly, for me and for him, a way of us getting back together. "Him coming there also rebonded us for the beginnings of what was my Big Band. Just after Walking to New Orleans went out, I started doing small shows on my own here and there, and I’d play a couple of solo songs on the piano and then I’d say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my big band to the stage' and just Gilson would walk on. He was the big band. And then it did morph into literally a big band." The Jools Holland Big Band later became his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, and Lavis stayed with him. Jukebox also includes BBC archive – much of it from Later... – of other famous New Orleans artists, from Dr John and Allen Toussaint to Mahalia Jackson and Louis Armstrong. “Many are sadly no longer with us but their spirits and the music, of course, carry on wonderfully.” Other artists to feature include Irma Thomas, the Neville Brothers and Trombone Shorty. Holland is tighter-lipped about guests on this year's Hootenanny: “I can’t reveal that at the moment, partly because I haven’t got the list in front of me but also I don’t think we’re supposed to say yet. But I think there will be a Rolling Stone, that narrows it down, and I’ll leave it at that!” Few TV and radio presenters have promoted music in all its forms with greater energy than Holland. And few were better qualified to interview the Beatles for their Anthology, a TV series that first aired in 1995 and which has now been spruced up and extended for streaming on Disney+. Holland has spoken about that to Radio Times... coming next week! <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/11/48shutterstockeditorial3234505z-643f3cd.jpg" width="4662" height="3072" alt="Mandatory Credit: Photo by Andre Csillag/Shutterstock (3234505z) Jools Holland and Sir Paul McCartney 'Later with Jools Holland' TV programme, Maidstone, Britain - 21 Oct 2013" title="'Later with Jools Holland' TV programme, Maidstone, Britain - 21 Oct 2013" /> Holland is still spreading the gospel of music, which, as his duet with Fats Domino proved, is always capable of breaking down barriers. "Absolutely right. Do you know, I’ve often said that and never used that example. But music is a language without any borders and that was it because it was a wordless language and he understood that I was his friend and loved him. Which I did." Jools Holland’s New Orleans Jukebox is on Sunday 16th November at 9.30pm on BBC Four and on BBC iPlayer, where viewers can also catch up on the autumn series of Later… with Jools Holland. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Back to the Edge: The inside story, with rare RT photos, of one of the greatest TV dramas of them all
Actor Ian McNeice digs deep into Edge of Darkness – 40 years old but still hailed by critics and viewers as a masterpiece – and Radio Times celebrates by mining its picture archive.
During the peak paranoia of the Cold War, 40 years ago on 4 November, viewers tuned in to what they thought was another detective drama. But Edge of Darkness was a TV game-changer, its private tale of a grieving CID officer opening out into a big, multilayered conspiracy. No one had seen anything like this six-parter by Z Cars creator Troy Kennedy Martin. In many ways, that still holds true – and at a time when the UK and US now prepare to “enter a golden age of nuclear”, Edge of Darkness has lost none of its criticality... “Absolutely. It was right on key, it really was,” says Ian McNeice, who played government agent Harcourt. “I was offered another job at the same time, but I remember reading that and then Edge of Darkness and thinking, ‘There’s no contest here’ because the script was so good, so interesting and so well written. I was gripped from the start.” For McNeice there was also the bonus of joining with his friend and housemate Bob Peck, taking the lead as Detective Inspector Ronald Craven. “That really was a huge plus. We have to thank Michael Wearing the producer because both myself and Bob were brought onto the production after he’d seen us in shows with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Neither of us had done much TV… "We turned up to meet [director] Martin Campbell and, really, he had nothing to go on! I think I just had one tiny bit on Warship [BBC, 1973–7] and that was that. But he took a hunch and went with it, which was amazing.” Was television work a problem after doing so much theatre? "I remember very early on I said to Martin, 'Look I haven't done much of this, you’ve really got to tell me if I'm doing too much or if you want me to take it down or whatever.' And he said, 'No I’ve already got that note from Bob, I'll be looking at both of you, don't worry!' So that was really nice." Most of the opening episode deals with the shocking murder of scientist Emma Craven (Joanne Whalley) and its impact on her detective father, Ronald. From the outset the photography is stunning, with the protagonist's grief captured in huge, unsparing detail. It sets the template for the show as a whole; even a chase into a London Tube station in episode two is filmed with the participants large in the frame. Watch out, too, for a logistically jaw-dropping, and far-from necessary, sequence in the finale at Gleneagles Hotel, which tracks one car leaving, another arriving and a helicopter departing all in one sweeping move. It's miraculously well planned. But then the work of cameraman Andrew Dunn was recognised at the Baftas. It was one of six gongs picked up by the programme, along with best drama series, music (Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton), editor, sound and, of course, for its leading man. And McNeice credits Peck for much of the series’ success: “He was a consummate actor; his performance is outstanding – it deserved the Bafta. Spielberg saw him in it and took him off to do Jurassic Park, which was amazing.” Sadly, Peck died from cancer in 1999, aged 53. "It was so very tragic and sad, and I don't like to have to recollect these things, but he was such a brilliant actor. "His father was a very dour Yorkshireman and he came down to see his son as Iago in Othello at the RSC, so I'd said, ‘Why doesn't he have tea in our little house?’ I got some scones, some jam and cream and I put them out on the table, made a pot of tea and I said, 'Would you like some cream?' and he said, 'No, cream’s fattening!' And he watched his son as Iago and, I kid you not, the only thing his father said after watching the show was, 'Seats were a bit hard.' That’s all he got!" In Edge of Darkness McNeice is paired for long spells with Charles Kay as Pendleton; he and Harcourt assist Craven in his investigation into Emma's death – while seeming to know far more than they let on. Their teaming reveals another reason McNeice is grateful to the producer. “Michael Wearing was tough on Troy Kennedy Martin, who had this trait of creating characters as he went along and enjoying doing so. It was Michael who said, ‘No, you have to stay with these two characters [Harcourt and Pendleton] all the way through. So thanks to Michael, Charlie Kay and I stayed with it.” I remind McNeice that the script describes Harcourt as a man who, "when he isn’t looking cross, seems permanently pleased with himself". "Yes I think that's very good. I didn’t realise at the time – I was only told this later – that when we were doing various takes, apparently Martin Campbell just couldn't help laughing at what I was coming up with, which was really sweet." It turns out McNeice contributed ad-libs to the script, including asking what was for pudding, plus the line “I thought I ordered oatcakes?” He adds, "They were little nuances that I was able to put in the script." McNeice had great chemistry with Charles Kay, who died in January aged 94. “He was just such a delight. He was another theatre person so we had a lot to talk about. My fondest memory of Charlie was when we were in Scotland on a bridge overlooking a loch and as we were talking quietly to each other, a helicopter flew over us and lifted Charlie Kay’s toupee and he went, ‘Woooh!’ [shoots hands up to his head]. It was the funniest moment from that sort of stern situation. I think they even managed to keep it as a sort of outtake because it was such a joy." Another Kay moment that stands out in McNeice's mind involved a long tracking shot that put pressure on Kay not to spoil. "It was in the early days of Steadicam and Martin Campbell was very fond of using it. They were in the Hilton Hotel [in London] and there's a scene where Bob Peck comes out of his room, goes through the hotel and into the lift, down below to the car park where Charlie Kay is meeting him and he has a line. "Charlie was absolutely terrified because this shot went on for some time, so he was left waiting for Bob to come out of a lift before he could say his line, and he knew that if he f****d up it, they’d have to go all the way back and do it again. I always remember that moment very well. He just said, 'I’ve had a hell of a morning,' and I said 'Why?' and he told me about this." BBC Four are marking the 40th anniversary with a repeat run introduced by McNeice, but 2025 has been a sad year for the cast, crew and fans of the show. In addition to Kay, it has also seen the passing of Joe Don Baker as CIA man Darius Jedburgh in May, and only last month John Woodvine, who played Craven's boss DCS Ross. McNeice shared many scenes with the larger-than-life, Texan-born Baker. “The thing about Joe was that he couldn’t really cope with the schedule, as British television is so swift. He was used to doing maybe one or two pages [of script] a day; here we were doing four or five and he was struggling to keep up. One particular evening he said, ‘Look, I have to have a break and you have to get me a hamburger!’ "So they stopped and they went to McDonald’s or somewhere like that, got him a hamburger, brought it back, he had the hamburger and went on with the rest of the shoot. But he was pretty much, you know, your American star coming over here, so you had to take him at face value. And I think we all felt a bit in awe in his wake really." Troy Kennedy Martin's murder mystery is so fascinating that it works on multiple levels, taking in trade unions, nuclear power, the ecology movement, the "Star Wars" defence initiative and even a touch of the supernatural, with Craven's grief apparently manifesting itself in visions of Emma. But the script was far from finished when McNeice came on board: "We all had pretty much a nightmare relationship with Troy because it was actually rewritten on the day, so you’d be handed dialogue that you didn't even have a chance to learn! "You would be turning up, you’d get to your trailer and on the desk would be new pages and you’d go, 'Why couldn't we have this last night?!' So it was always a bit sort of hit-and-miss… But the other thing is that, because it was so well written, you forgave him everything." The actors all raised their game for the project. Does director Martin Campbell deserve credit for that? "Oh I think so," replies McNeice. "Martin was known as Zebedee, the character from The Magic Roundabout, because he was bouncing up and down and absolutely frenetic. He would have no sleep, he would turn up at the location at about four or five in the morning to work out what he was going to do. "There was one particular day where he turned up and worked it out. He had a list that included an ambulance and a Rolls-Royce, various cars and extras... They weren’t on the call sheet and the assistants had to get them by a certain time in the morning. He worked it out on the day. He would go every morning and be there two hours before everybody else, working out how he was actually going to shoot it – and to me that was extraordinary." One small but mesmerising scene in episode three with characters milling about in the Commons prior to an inquiry highlights another Campbell trademark. "During that sequence – and I'd never seen it before – Martin would put his hand in front of the camera and that basically meant that someone was crossing. He did it so much, you know, just a hand across the camera, I mean outrageous stuff like that. For a long time I think the show was known as Edge of Frame as opposed to Edge of Darkness!" Radio Times spoke to Martin Campbell about his memories of the show when it was released on Blu-ray in 2019. McNeice can pinpoint the moment he realised he'd been involved in something ground-breaking. "I know exactly when that happened, because it went out over six weeks and I heard there was a rumour that they wanted to repeat it, so I rang the office and I said, 'We’ve just seen the final episode of Edge of Darkness and I hear that there's going to be a repeat. Could you tell me when it’s going to be?'" It turned out that after its broadcast on BBC Two it was repeated on BBC One just ten days later, thereby doubling its audience. "It was extraordinary and I knew at that moment that we had something very special by the fact that they repeated it so instantly. It had just taken off. And I was stopped in the street. It was so unusual for me to have this but people would recognise me and would want to talk about the show, it was amazing." McNeice adds, "Since then the amount of compliments I've had over the years from people who, for them, it's been one of their special shows, or they love it. It's been remarkable really." Unavoidably, there are aspects that anchor the drama in the 80s: its dial telephones and line-by-line computers, its largely male and white casting. But fears and attitudes remain, especially about nuclear power, its green agenda is more relevant than ever and the word "masterpiece" is still liberally applied to the series. “It was ahead of its time," concurs McNeice, "certainly the way it was shot, Joanne Whalley extraordinary, Joe Don Baker, all these wonderful performances... the best script you could ever want from Troy Kennedy Martin... everything was right about it.” McNeice, now 75, is still working – in recent years he's appeared as Winston Churchill in both Doctor Who and on stage in The King's Speech, as Louis XVIII in the Ridley Scott film Napoleon and as Alfred Hitchcock in the play Double Feature. And he describes Edge of Darkness as his big break. "It was my key to getting further along the line really. I have so much to thank it for. "Martin and Troy were very much 'out there' and mavericks of their genre. I was hugely lucky to work with Martin again. I went to do a film in Australia called No Escape with Stuart Wilson – there was this wonderful sequence where he had to run up a staircase with a machete or something like this. He did it two or three times, he was exhausted and on about the fourth time he sat down in his chair and said, 'No more, that’s it.' "So Martin Campbell threw down his headset and said, 'All right, get his stunt double!' So they brought his stunt double over and at the point where he was about to do it, from the chair came this voice, 'I think I've got one more in me.' And the next day all the actors on set, no matter what they had to do, were all saying, 'I think I've got one more in me, Martin.' They just had to walk across the set or something like that! So it was a very very funny thing." But back to Edge of Darkness, and as Harcourt, McNeice is honoured with the poignant closing speech of the story, pondering whether “the good in all of us will prevail”. Does McNeice think that it will? “It’s so hard to tell isn’t it? You’ve almost got to leave it up in the air... That’s where you leave it: up in the air.” Ian McNeice Remembers Edge of Darkness is on Saturday 1st November at 9pm on BBC Four, followed at 9:15pm by the first two episodes.
Let’s go round again! Dougal and pals at 60
On the big birthday of this children's classic, we celebrate the man who brought it and many others to life – genius animator Ivor Wood
Add The Magic Roundabout Story – Timeshift to your watchlist Sixty years ago on Saturday, a “film series from France” arrived on BBC One with little fanfare. In the first episode, a sad man called Mr Rusty lamented a lack of magic, and an absence of visitors to his roundabout. But within five minutes, a jack-in-the-box called Zebedee predicted a change in fortunes – and The Magic Roundabout soon had a massive following! Its pre-evening News slot, and clever, two-tier script by narrator Eric Thompson, made it popular with children and adults alike. Radio Times spoke to Josiane Wood, who worked on the French original – Le Manège enchanté, and many later projects – with her animator husband Ivor. Born in 1932 in Yorkshire to an English father and French mother, Ivor moved with his family to Lyon in France. Josiane was born in Egypt to a French mother and Russian father, and they also moved to Lyon, which was her mother's birthplace. “We got married in Lyon,” says Josiane. “We moved to Paris and Ivor at the time [in the 1960s] was working at La Comète, which was an advertising company. That’s where he met Serge Danot, and where it all started.” Former ad executive Danot created the show using stop-motion animation, assisted by Ivor, while Josiane wrote episodes “because they were stuck in the beginning for a scriptwriter. In those days we had a tiny flat outside Paris, I used to have a tiny typewriter, typing on an ironing board because we didn’t have tables or anything like that!” It took a month to shoot five minutes of film but Josiane didn't know what the animators could get the characters to do: “I didn’t have a clue how they were working. The chaps were shooting in Danot’s house in Malakoff [a suburb of Paris], and I remember going to them and saying, 'How can he move? Can he lift an arm? Can he walk?' "And according to that I was writing as I went along. So it was quite funny. But I have a little bit of imagination, so it worked.” There were other tasks, too: “We did a lot of the little flowers, the leaves on the trees. That was all thrown on the bed, working all night and day to glue everything.” In other words, they were frequently multi-skilling? "A little bit," Josiane laughs. "You know, when you have to, you do it!" Characters in Le Manège enchanté, which first aired in 1964, included a dog called Pollux, a girl called Margot, Ambroise the snail and Zébulon. A year later, after the BBC saw the show’s huge success in France, an English version used the same footage but it was now written and narrated by Eric Thompson. And those same characters became Dougal, Florence, Brian and Zebedee. “They were completely different,” says Josiane of the two versions. “I think Eric based it on what he was seeing on the films, and there was only one voice telling a story. In France we had different voices for each character.” Actor Eric Thompson was a regular presenter on children's series Play School, and creator Joy Whitby thought he would be perfect for the Magic Roundabout job. He had a warmth to his voice that reassured youngsters, and a dry wit in his scripts, often voiced through the Tony Hancock-like figure of Dougal, that entertained adults. As for all the props and models, Ivor made a lot of them himself: “He had a funny approach to everything: colourful and fun and a bit surrealistic.” Such was the craft involved that children were enchanted, and Dougal and co were soon everywhere – from wallpaper to cereal packets – especially when their escapades were viewed in colour in the early 70s. When in 1966 the programme was moved from its pre-6pm News slot to an earlier slot of 4.55pm, there was an outcry among adults not yet back from work. And the BBC soon reversed its decision. The popularity of the show merely mirrored the pattern laid down in France. As Serge Danot told Joan Bakewell on Late Night Line-up in 1968, his original series also had a wide-ranging audience: "De sept à soixante-dix-sept!" For this young fan, the show provided little, five-minute blasts of colour, comedy and fantastical escape. I especially enjoyed the sight of Dougal tucking into his favourite snack of sugar lumps, Mr McHenry whizzing about on his tricycle, Dylan (named after Bob Dylan) finding somewhere shady to have a snooze, and the trackless Train going off-piste. And I can remember making my own Zebedee, using a ping-pong ball, after watching Blue Peter. That wasn't the end of the Roundabout ride. A new series, narrated by Nigel Planer, was shown on Channel 4 in 1992, and there were two feature films, Dougal and the Blue Cat in 1970 and a 2005 CGI film, with Sir Ian McKellen, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams among the voice artists. Among the legions of fans of The Magic Roundabout is Tom Sanders, a director working in the animation business today. "The inclusion of Eric Thompson dubbing over the animation was a stroke of genius," he tells Radio Times. "This coupled with the eccentric, off-the-wall characters really resonated with the audience. "I think it also came from the heart and that shows. It was Ivor, Serge and the whole team’s first venture into TV and they really put their heart and souls into it. Serge found that hard to replicate afterwards, as many creatives do, but Ivor seemed to use this as merely a starting point to a hugely successful career." HERBIDACIOUS! Indeed, Ivor then began a fruitful association with author Michael Bond and producer Graham Clutterbuck, who set up a European office in Paris for animation company FilmFair – for which Josiane kept records and the accounts. "Ivor shot something in our flat in Paris to show Graham and Michael what could be done," she says. "I’ve still got the puppet of that time, funnily enough, and a little bit of the film, which is quite interesting. And they were really happy with that. "So we set up with Ivor a small studio next to where Edith Piaf was born. We did The Herbs there and [spin-off series] The Adventures of Parsley. Ivor was bringing the films over to London, commuting, really. So in the end the BBC and Graham said, ‘This is ridiculous. You’re working for us, why don’t you move to London?’ And that’s how we came over.” The Herbs (1968) proved to be another winner. Youngsters adored its colour, humour and songs – this time voiced by Gordon Rollings, another Play School stalwart. Each of Michael Bond's characters was the personification of a herb: Parsley was a shy lion, Dill a frantic dog, Sage a liverish owl, and so on. "Ah, they're lovely," agrees Josiane. And it wasn't just the human and animal characters that were distinctive but also the intricate miniature sets and props, from brick walls to greenhouses and iron railings. "We met Rafael Esteve, who is Spanish and he worked in the theatre, mainly. He was absolutely fabulous at doing what Ivor was asking as sets. He was very inventive and could use metal... extraordinary. An absolutely charming man." Only 13 fifteen-minute episodes were made (plus 32 five-minute instalments of The Adventures of Parsley), and even though it has not been shown on British television for years, The Herbs caused a stir again in 2023. The reason? Puppets were exhibited, rather appropriately, at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, causing a rush of nostalgia for visitors of a certain age. Despite some renovations that were done in the 1990s, all of the models were originals made by Ivor Wood. STANDING OUT IN A CROWD Paddington followed in 1976, with Bond loving Ivor’s idea to have cut-out humans surrounding a furry, 3D bear to make him stand out. "Michael refused a lot of pilot films because he didn’t like what was done," adds Josiane. "And then when Ivor came with cutout paper at the back he fell in love with that because suddenly Paddington, being the main character, was quite prominent, which had been the main issue." TIDY TITANS Another FilmFair classic that Ivor directed for the BBC, and that is remembered fondly to this day, is The Wombles. At the time Radio Times spoke to Wombles creator Elisabeth Beresford, and got a good insight into Wood's working methods on a visit to his studio in London’s West End. "I really couldn’t imagine myself ever doing anything else," he said. "I can come in here and shut the door and suddenly I’m in another world. I suppose I’ve never really grown up. Look at all the people who spend their lives doing work they don’t like, and we just come in here and enjoy ourselves." With their recycling nous and green philosophy, and despite their diminutive stature, The Wombles were soon massive, especially backed by Bernard Cribbins's narration and Mike Batt's music. The beauty, as ever, lay in the detail: the way old newspapers were used to line the Wombles' burrow, for instance, or the way their noses would wrinkle whenever they ate – like Paddington tucking into his marmalade sandwiches. Not that all of their children's TV hits were for the BBC. For ITV Ivor also worked on Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings (1974–6, with Cribbins and Batt involved again) and before that Hattytown Tales (1969–73). DELIVERING THE GOODS However, the success of the projects didn't preclude hardship from the Woods' world. In fact, they had to remortgage their house to finance production of Postman Pat. "Yes, very much so," says Josiane. "Ivor was still a freelance for FilmFair and [producer] Cynthia Felgate came to FilmFair and said, 'We have a project, why don’t you make it on your own? Why do you want to go through another company? You can do it.' So foolishly Ivor and myself said yes and then we realised the problems! That’s how Woodland Animation was created." But as we often saw in their programmes, there was a happy ending. Beginning in 1981, Postman Pat turned out to be a first-class production, running to the great enjoyment of big and small viewers for 184 episodes, with books and videos selling all around the world. Woodland Animation went on to produce Gran (1983), about an adventurous old lady and her grandson, Jim. It was created by Michael and Joanna Cole of Bod and Fingerbobs fame, and was narrated by Patricia Hayes, who said, "The programme is gentle, amusing and beautifully illustrated." Radio Times went behind the scenes to photograph Ivor with one of those lovely dioramas that his series were famous for. Then there came Bertha (1985–6), about a factory machine with a mind of her own – Roy Kinnear and Sheila Walker providing the voices – and finally Charlie Chalk (1988–9), about a happy-go-lucky clown, which was Josiane's favourite series. "Ivor wanted to do something a bit different and quirky. It was based on the Laurel and Hardy style. For the scriptwriting it was an American lady, Jocelyn Stevenson. It’s fun but in those days it didn’t take off because we were told by the BBC that the clown was out of fashion." Is there a theme that runs through Ivor’s work? “They had a lot of charm,” says Josiane, adding, “they were character-based and he was always trying something new.” And he never wanted children in the studio while he worked “because he didn’t want to break their imagination”. Does that include Ivor and Josiane's son Sean? "Oh no!" says Josiane. "Sean was part of it because he did help sometimes. The funny thing when he was at school, was that people used to ask what his father did. And innocently, he said, 'Oh he’s playing with dolls.' It didn’t go down very well, as you can imagine! [laughs]." But it was this 3D style of animation that appealed to so many, including Tom Sanders: "The tangibility, the fact that they are real objects moving on screen. It gives this homely, comforting quality that really makes you feel like you’re a part of their world for that short time. "Ivor’s visual storytelling is also a huge part of why these characters and shows are so endearing. They each have little quirks and nuances that make them unique, whether it's Pat’s limp – apparently the armature was made too short on one side – or Charlie’s eccentric cartwheels halfway through a walk." There are many who feel that more people need to know the name of Ivor Wood, who died in 2004. "Every generation since the 60s has grown up with one of his icons," adds Sanders. "Every decade has been spoilt by one of his incredible creations, and with new series of Postman Pat still being made today and The Wombles, under his designs, being remade as well, he continues to be a huge influence. So now I feel we need to show people behind the curtain and that there really was this incredible person behind their childhood and for this we should thank him." Incredibly, Ivor only won one award for his wonderful work, the silver medal at the New York Film and Television Festival in 1979 for Paddington. “He was a very humble man, very shy, and he didn’t really push that side,” says Josiane. It seems Ivor let his work do the talking – and it did, to millions all around the world. The Magic Roundabout Story is on Saturday at 7pm on BBC Four, followed by a 1968 episode at 8pm. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
As Dougal and friends turn 60, Radio Times explores the magic behind The Magic Roundabout
On the big birthday of this children's classic, we celebrate the man who brought it and many others to life – genius animator Ivor Wood.
Sixty years ago on Saturday, a “film series from France” arrived on BBC One with little fanfare. In the first episode, a sad man called Mr Rusty lamented a lack of magic, and an absence of visitors to his roundabout. But within five minutes, a jack-in-the-box called Zebedee predicted a change in fortunes – and The Magic Roundabout soon had a massive following! Its pre-evening News slot, and clever, two-tier script by narrator Eric Thompson, made it popular with children and adults alike. Radio Times spoke to Josiane Wood, who worked on the French original – Le Manège enchanté, and many later projects – with her animator husband Ivor. Born in 1932 in Yorkshire to an English father and French mother, Ivor moved with his family to Lyon in France. Josiane was born in Egypt to a French mother and Russian father, and they also moved to Lyon, which was her mother's birthplace. “We got married in Lyon,” says Josiane. “We moved to Paris and Ivor at the time [in the 1960s] was working at La Comète, which was an advertising company. That’s where he met Serge Danot, and where it all started.” Former ad executive Danot created the show using stop-motion animation, assisted by Ivor, while Josiane wrote episodes “because they were stuck in the beginning for a scriptwriter. In those days we had a tiny flat outside Paris, I used to have a tiny typewriter, typing on an ironing board because we didn’t have tables or anything like that!” It took a month to shoot five minutes of film but Josiane didn't know what the animators could get the characters to do: “I didn’t have a clue how they were working. The chaps were shooting in Danot’s house in Malakoff [a suburb of Paris], and I remember going to them and saying, 'How can he move? Can he lift an arm? Can he walk?' "And according to that I was writing as I went along. So it was quite funny. But I have a little bit of imagination, so it worked.” There were other tasks, too: “We did a lot of the little flowers, the leaves on the trees. That was all thrown on the bed, working all night and day to glue everything.” In other words, they were frequently multi-skilling? "A little bit," Josiane laughs. "You know, when you have to, you do it!" Characters in Le Manège enchanté, which first aired in 1964, included a dog called Pollux, a girl called Margot, Ambroise the snail and Zébulon. A year later, after the BBC saw the show’s huge success in France, an English version used the same footage but it was now written and narrated by Eric Thompson. And those same characters became Dougal, Florence, Brian and Zebedee. “They were completely different,” says Josiane of the two versions. “I think Eric based it on what he was seeing on the films, and there was only one voice telling a story. In France we had different voices for each character.” Actor Eric Thompson was a regular presenter on children's series Play School, and creator Joy Whitby thought he would be perfect for the Magic Roundabout job. He had a warmth to his voice that reassured youngsters, and a dry wit in his scripts, often voiced through the Tony Hancock-like figure of Dougal, that entertained adults. As for all the props and models, Ivor made a lot of them himself: “He had a funny approach to everything: colourful and fun and a bit surrealistic.” Such was the craft involved that children were enchanted, and Dougal and co were soon everywhere – from wallpaper to cereal packets – especially when their escapades were viewed in colour in the early 70s. When in 1966 the programme was moved from its pre-6pm News slot to an earlier slot of 4.55pm, there was an outcry among adults not yet back from work. And the BBC soon reversed its decision. The popularity of the show merely mirrored the pattern laid down in France. As Serge Danot told Joan Bakewell on Late Night Line-up in 1968, his original series also had a wide-ranging audience: "De sept à soixante-dix-sept!" For this young fan, the show provided little, five-minute blasts of colour, comedy and fantastical escape. I especially enjoyed the sight of Dougal tucking into his favourite snack of sugar lumps, Mr McHenry whizzing about on his tricycle, Dylan (named after Bob Dylan) finding somewhere shady to have a snooze, and the trackless Train going off-piste. And I can remember making my own Zebedee, using a ping-pong ball, after watching Blue Peter. That wasn't the end of the Roundabout ride. A new series, narrated by Nigel Planer, was shown on Channel 4 in 1992, and there were two feature films, Dougal and the Blue Cat in 1970 and a 2005 CGI film, with Sir Ian McKellen, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams among the voice artists. Among the legions of fans of The Magic Roundabout is Tom Sanders, a director working in the animation business today. "The inclusion of Eric Thompson dubbing over the animation was a stroke of genius," he tells Radio Times. "This coupled with the eccentric, off-the-wall characters really resonated with the audience. "I think it also came from the heart and that shows. It was Ivor, Serge and the whole team’s first venture into TV and they really put their heart and souls into it. Serge found that hard to replicate afterwards, as many creatives do, but Ivor seemed to use this as merely a starting point to a hugely successful career." HERBIDACIOUS! Indeed, Ivor then began a fruitful association with author Michael Bond and producer Graham Clutterbuck, who set up a European office in Paris for animation company FilmFair – for which Josiane kept records and the accounts. "Ivor shot something in our flat in Paris to show Graham and Michael what could be done," she says. "I’ve still got the puppet of that time, funnily enough, and a little bit of the film, which is quite interesting. And they were really happy with that. "So we set up with Ivor a small studio next to where Edith Piaf was born. We did The Herbs there and [spin-off series] The Adventures of Parsley. Ivor was bringing the films over to London, commuting, really. So in the end the BBC and Graham said, ‘This is ridiculous. You’re working for us, why don’t you move to London?’ And that’s how we came over.” The Herbs (1968) proved to be another winner. Youngsters adored its colour, humour and songs – this time voiced by Gordon Rollings, another Play School stalwart. Each of Michael Bond's characters was the personification of a herb: Parsley was a shy lion, Dill a frantic dog, Sage a liverish owl, and so on. "Ah, they're lovely," agrees Josiane. And it wasn't just the human and animal characters that were distinctive but also the intricate miniature sets and props, from brick walls to greenhouses and iron railings. "We met Rafael Esteve, who is Spanish and he worked in the theatre, mainly. He was absolutely fabulous at doing what Ivor was asking as sets. He was very inventive and could use metal... extraordinary. An absolutely charming man." Only 13 fifteen-minute episodes were made (plus 32 five-minute instalments of The Adventures of Parsley), and even though it has not been shown on British television for years, The Herbs caused a stir again in 2023. The reason? Puppets were exhibited, rather appropriately, at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, causing a rush of nostalgia for visitors of a certain age. Despite some renovations that were done in the 1990s, all of the models were originals made by Ivor Wood. STANDING OUT IN A CROWD Paddington followed in 1976, with Bond loving Ivor’s idea to have cut-out humans surrounding a furry, 3D bear to make him stand out. "Michael refused a lot of pilot films because he didn’t like what was done," adds Josiane. "And then when Ivor came with cutout paper at the back he fell in love with that because suddenly Paddington, being the main character, was quite prominent, which had been the main issue." TIDY TITANS Another FilmFair classic that Ivor directed for the BBC, and that is remembered fondly to this day, is The Wombles. At the time Radio Times spoke to Wombles creator Elisabeth Beresford, and got a good insight into Wood's working methods on a visit to his studio in London’s West End. "I really couldn’t imagine myself ever doing anything else," he said. "I can come in here and shut the door and suddenly I’m in another world. I suppose I’ve never really grown up. Look at all the people who spend their lives doing work they don’t like, and we just come in here and enjoy ourselves." With their recycling nous and green philosophy, and despite their diminutive stature, The Wombles were soon massive, especially backed by Bernard Cribbins's narration and Mike Batt's music. The beauty, as ever, lay in the detail: the way old newspapers were used to line the Wombles' burrow, for instance, or the way their noses would wrinkle whenever they ate – like Paddington tucking into his marmalade sandwiches. Not that all of their children's TV hits were for the BBC. For ITV Ivor also worked on Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings (1974–6, with Cribbins and Batt involved again) and before that Hattytown Tales (1969–73). DELIVERING THE GOODS However, the success of the projects didn't preclude hardship from the Woods' world. In fact, they had to remortgage their house to finance production of Postman Pat. "Yes, very much so," says Josiane. "Ivor was still a freelance for FilmFair and [producer] Cynthia Felgate came to FilmFair and said, 'We have a project, why don’t you make it on your own? Why do you want to go through another company? You can do it.' So foolishly Ivor and myself said yes and then we realised the problems! That’s how Woodland Animation was created." But as we often saw in their programmes, there was a happy ending. Beginning in 1981, Postman Pat turned out to be a first-class production, running to the great enjoyment of big and small viewers for 184 episodes, with books and videos selling all around the world. Woodland Animation went on to produce Gran (1983), about an adventurous old lady and her grandson, Jim. It was created by Michael and Joanna Cole of Bod and Fingerbobs fame, and was narrated by Patricia Hayes, who said, "The programme is gentle, amusing and beautifully illustrated." Radio Times went behind the scenes to photograph Ivor with one of those lovely dioramas that his series were famous for. Then there came Bertha (1985–6), about a factory machine with a mind of her own – Roy Kinnear and Sheila Walker providing the voices – and finally Charlie Chalk (1988–9), about a happy-go-lucky clown, which was Josiane's favourite series. "Ivor wanted to do something a bit different and quirky. It was based on the Laurel and Hardy style. For the scriptwriting it was an American lady, Jocelyn Stevenson. It’s fun but in those days it didn’t take off because we were told by the BBC that the clown was out of fashion." Is there a theme that runs through Ivor’s work? “They had a lot of charm,” says Josiane, adding, “they were character-based and he was always trying something new.” And he never wanted children in the studio while he worked “because he didn’t want to break their imagination”. Does that include Ivor and Josiane's son Sean? "Oh no!" says Josiane. "Sean was part of it because he did help sometimes. The funny thing when he was at school, was that people used to ask what his father did. And innocently, he said, 'Oh he’s playing with dolls.' It didn’t go down very well, as you can imagine! [laughs]." But it was this 3D style of animation that appealed to so many, including Tom Sanders: "The tangibility, the fact that they are real objects moving on screen. It gives this homely, comforting quality that really makes you feel like you’re a part of their world for that short time. "Ivor’s visual storytelling is also a huge part of why these characters and shows are so endearing. They each have little quirks and nuances that make them unique, whether it's Pat’s limp – apparently the armature was made too short on one side – or Charlie’s eccentric cartwheels halfway through a walk." There are many who feel that more people need to know the name of Ivor Wood, who died in 2004. "Every generation since the 60s has grown up with one of his icons," adds Sanders. "Every decade has been spoilt by one of his incredible creations, and with new series of Postman Pat still being made today and The Wombles, under his designs, being remade as well, he continues to be a huge influence. So now I feel we need to show people behind the curtain and that there really was this incredible person behind their childhood and for this we should thank him." Incredibly, Ivor only won one award for his wonderful work, the silver medal at the New York Film and Television Festival in 1979 for Paddington. “He was a very humble man, very shy, and he didn’t really push that side,” says Josiane. It seems Ivor let his work do the talking – and it did, to millions all around the world. The Magic Roundabout Story is on Saturday at 7pm on BBC Four, followed by a 1968 episode at 8pm. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
As the jewel in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's crown celebrates its 60th birthday, Mark Braxton examines the programme's lasting impact.
Add Thunderbirds to your watchlist Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's imperishable TV creation Thunderbirds is 60 today, and how apt that it should be celebrating its diamond anniversary. Because, rather like the hardest known naturally occurring material, the concept is such an ingenious one that time cannot wear it away. Based on a rock-solid foundation of square-jawed heroics and humanitarian principle, the show could hardly go wrong, you would think. But it has exceeded expectations, not just being reinvented for the modern age, but still dazzling new generations with its old-school blend of marionettes and models. I will happily serve as "Exhibit A" with regard to the show's ability to capture the imagination of successive generations. As follows... Although Thunderbirds launched on 30 September 1965, my first contact would have come during repeat screenings in the 1970s. From this distance, exactitude is impossible, but two moments do snap into sharp focus. The first is watching The Uninvited on London Weekend Television on a Sunday morning. That's the episode where Scott in Thunderbird 1 is shot down over the Sahara, and he and two archaeologists find a lost civilisation based in a pyramid. It was a 100-per-cent thrill ride, and it ensured I was a fan for life. Edge-of seat perils, Bond-style gadgetry, a dash of espionage, a villain both hissable and hilarious, and Tracy Island: the coolest playground in the world with its movable swimming pool and lift-and-slide rocket entries. What kid didn't love all that? The second memory is my grandmother taking me to a puppet show in a village hall in Cookham, Berkshire, when I was a toddler. Of the show itself, I recall very little, but the thing that really captured my attention was a puppet-scale pink Rolls-Royce outside. That sleek six-wheeler leads me neatly on to the world of merchandise that surrounded the programme. Because Fab 1, as it was called – Lady Penelope's specially adapted, machine-gun-toting Rolls-Royce – was just one of a squadron of toys, models, books, comics and games that young fans would save up their pocket money for, or more likely add to their Christmas wish lists. When Thunderbirds was off the air, one of the main ways kids could "keep the magic going" was in the glossy, precision-tooled comic TV Century 21. Here the adventures of the Tracy boys and their extended family, Lady Penelope and Parker, were brought to vivid and colourful life by a number of skilled illustrators. Among them was Frank Bellamy, whose beautiful work for Radio Times, especially in connection with Doctor Who, remains a highpoint in the magazine's history. But souvenirs came in many forms, and from what would now be considered unexpected sources. Breakfast cereals, for instance. And I remember being overjoyed to do "swapsies" with a schoolfriend which meant that I left his house with a vivid green plastic model of chief Thunderbirds villain The Hood. It was one of six characters given away with Kellogg's Sugar Smacks. My quest for completion was such that, once I'd seen all 32 episodes of the TV series, and even the first feature film Thunderbirds Are Go, I made a special effort for the sequel Thunderbird 6. Learning from my local paper that there was to be a special screening in a distant village hall, I managed to get a lift there, but cycled all the way home. The excitement from seeing that movie gave me wings for the journey back. At the time it would have been inconceivable that I'd one day get to meet one of the show's creators, and to add my applause to the standing ovation given for the other, but that's what happened. The first time I met Gerry was at a "Mini-Con" on 16 August 1981 at a community centre in Lane End, Bucks. I'd worked my way through the Anderson series that followed Thunderbirds, and in those days I was a huge fan of Space: 1999. With high hopes, I took along a poster I had designed for that particular series, and plucked up the courage to show it to him. He wrote the word "Approved" and autographed it, making not only my day but probably my year. Many years later, at a Fanderson convention in 2015, Sylvia gave a candid and highly entertaining talk about her career. I didn't get to talk to her directly – she was quite frail then – but her speech drew the entire hall to their feet in recognition of her contribution to television. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. As full-time education receded and the world of work beckoned, you might think that my videos of Thunderbirds (yes, this pre-dates DVDs and Blu-rays) might start to gather dust on the shelves. But children came along, and of course, one of the many joys of parenthood is getting to treat them to some of your old TV favourites! So perhaps I started them off with some Bod, Mr Benn and Bagpuss, but soon of course, I introduced them to the adventures of the Tracy brothers. And it was a good time to do it because there was a huge International Rescue renaissance going on in the 90s and noughties. The first run of BBC screenings averaged six million viewers a week, and Radio Times recorded the comeback in 2000 with four collectors' covers. And that's to say nothing of the whole Tracy Island phenomenon. When the Thunderbird HQ became the most coveted Christmas toy of 1992, leading to a stock shortage, Blue Peter came to the rescue with an astonishingly popular "make it yourself", plus accompanying factsheet. View oEmbed on the source website Later on, my wife and I even took our children to a glitzy London premiere of the 2004 film Thunderbirds. They weren't too concerned about the director Jonathan Frakes – Star Trek: TNG's Riker – milling about, but they did have their caricatures drawn, and were given Thunderbirds made from balloons. A decade later, the story came full circle for Thunderbirds' 50th anniversary. A new TV series combining CGI and model sets, Thunderbirds Are Go, premiered in 2015, and three "Anniversary Episodes" were made in Slough, the home of the originals. So I got my fanboy moment by seeing how they came together. The same end of Stirling Road was occupied by a new generation of film-makers who adopted the puppets-and-models approach of their forebears. "The chance to make Thunderbirds is one of my dreams come true," producer and director Stephen La Rivière told me. "But this for me is also a way of paying tribute to people whose work I’ve really admired." It was a joy to see puppeteers bringing life to Scott Tracy and Lady Penelope, to chat with modellers in the workshop and to get a sense of what it must have been like back in the days of AP Films and then Century 21. From 1957 to 1969 they operated a conveyor belt of TV classics, from Stingray to Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, plus of course the jewel in the Anderson crown. And it's a tribute to those craftsmen and women that two classic episodes of Thunderbirds were spruced up for special screenings in UK cinemas... not in 1965, but in 2025! No wonder it's the Andersons' biggest show. The story has come full circle on a personal note, too, with me writing this. My friends and I were so inspired by Thunderbirds, back in the day, that we would reenact moments from it in our games, and later try to emulate their craftsmanship in the Super-8 films that we made. In a speech I gave at the wedding of one of those friends, I said: "We learnt everything we know today from watching Thunderbirds when we were kids." Not literally true of course. But in spirit, it was bang on the money. Thunderbirds, Thunderbirds Are Go, The Anniversary Episodes and the documentary Fab at 60 are all available on ITVX
Thunderbirds are go again... not that they ever really went away for the show's long-standing fans
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's imperishable TV creation Thunderbirds is 60 today, and how apt that it should be celebrating its diamond anniversary. Because, rather like the hardest known naturally occurring material, the concept is such an ingenious one that time cannot wear it away. Based on a rock-solid foundation of square-jawed heroics and humanitarian principle, the show could hardly go wrong, you would think. But it has exceeded expectations, not just being reinvented for the modern age, but still dazzling new generations with its old-school blend of marionettes and models. I will happily serve as "Exhibit A" with regard to the show's ability to capture the imagination of successive generations. As follows... Although Thunderbirds launched on 30 September 1965, my first contact would have come during repeat screenings in the 1970s. From this distance, exactitude is impossible, but two moments do snap into sharp focus. The first is watching The Uninvited on London Weekend Television on a Sunday morning. That's the episode where Scott in Thunderbird 1 is shot down over the Sahara, and he and two archaeologists find a lost civilisation based in a pyramid. It was a 100-per-cent thrill ride, and it ensured I was a fan for life. Edge-of seat perils, Bond-style gadgetry, a dash of espionage, a villain both hissable and hilarious, and Tracy Island: the coolest playground in the world with its movable swimming pool and lift-and-slide rocket entries. What kid didn't love all that? The second memory is my grandmother taking me to a puppet show in a village hall in Cookham, Berkshire, when I was a toddler. Of the show itself, I recall very little, but the thing that really captured my attention was a puppet-scale pink Rolls-Royce outside. That sleek six-wheeler leads me neatly on to the world of merchandise that surrounded the programme. Because Fab 1, as it was called – Lady Penelope's specially adapted, machine-gun-toting Rolls-Royce – was just one of a squadron of toys, models, books, comics and games that young fans would save up their pocket money for, or more likely add to their Christmas wish lists. When Thunderbirds was off the air, one of the main ways kids could "keep the magic going" was in the glossy, precision-tooled comic TV Century 21. Here the adventures of the Tracy boys and their extended family, Lady Penelope and Parker, were brought to vivid and colourful life by a number of skilled illustrators. Among them was Frank Bellamy, whose beautiful work for Radio Times, especially in connection with Doctor Who, remains a highpoint in the magazine's history. But souvenirs came in many forms, and from what would now be considered unexpected sources. Breakfast cereals, for instance. And I remember being overjoyed to do "swapsies" with a schoolfriend which meant that I left his house with a vivid green plastic model of chief Thunderbirds villain The Hood. It was one of six characters given away with Kellogg's Sugar Smacks. My quest for completion was such that, once I'd seen all 32 episodes of the TV series, and even the first feature film Thunderbirds Are Go, I made a special effort for the sequel Thunderbird 6. Learning from my local paper that there was to be a special screening in a distant village hall, I managed to get a lift there, but cycled all the way home. The excitement from seeing that movie gave me wings for the journey back. At the time it would have been inconceivable that I'd one day get to meet one of the show's creators, and to add my applause to the standing ovation given for the other, but that's what happened. The first time I met Gerry was at a "Mini-Con" on 16 August 1981 at a community centre in Lane End, Bucks. I'd worked my way through the Anderson series that followed Thunderbirds, and in those days I was a huge fan of Space: 1999. With high hopes, I took along a poster I had designed for that particular series, and plucked up the courage to show it to him. He wrote the word "Approved" and autographed it, making not only my day but probably my year. Many years later, at a Fanderson convention in 2015, Sylvia gave a candid and highly entertaining talk about her career. I didn't get to talk to her directly – she was quite frail then – but her speech drew the entire hall to their feet in recognition of her contribution to television. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. As full-time education receded and the world of work beckoned, you might think that my videos of Thunderbirds (yes, this pre-dates DVDs and Blu-rays) might start to gather dust on the shelves. But children came along, and of course, one of the many joys of parenthood is getting to treat them to some of your old TV favourites! So perhaps I started them off with some Bod, Mr Benn and Bagpuss, but soon of course, I introduced them to the adventures of the Tracy brothers. And it was a good time to do it because there was a huge International Rescue renaissance going on in the 90s and noughties. The first run of BBC screenings averaged six million viewers a week, and Radio Times recorded the comeback in 2000 with four collectors' covers. And that's to say nothing of the whole Tracy Island phenomenon. When the Thunderbird HQ became the most coveted Christmas toy of 1992, leading to a stock shortage, Blue Peter came to the rescue with an astonishingly popular "make it yourself", plus accompanying factsheet. View oEmbed on the source website Later on, my wife and I even took our children to a glitzy London premiere of the 2004 film Thunderbirds. They weren't too concerned about the director Jonathan Frakes – Star Trek: TNG's Riker – milling about, but they did have their caricatures drawn, and were given Thunderbirds made from balloons. A decade later, the story came full circle for Thunderbirds' 50th anniversary. A new TV series combining CGI and model sets, Thunderbirds Are Go, premiered in 2015, and three "Anniversary Episodes" were made in Slough, the home of the originals. So I got my fanboy moment by seeing how they came together. The same end of Stirling Road was occupied by a new generation of film-makers who adopted the puppets-and-models approach of their forebears. "The chance to make Thunderbirds is one of my dreams come true," producer and director Stephen La Rivière told me. "But this for me is also a way of paying tribute to people whose work I’ve really admired." It was a joy to see puppeteers bringing life to Scott Tracy and Lady Penelope, to chat with modellers in the workshop and to get a sense of what it must have been like back in the days of AP Films and then Century 21. From 1957 to 1969 they operated a conveyor belt of TV classics, from Stingray to Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, plus of course the jewel in the Anderson crown. And it's a tribute to those craftsmen and women that two classic episodes of Thunderbirds were spruced up for special screenings in UK cinemas... not in 1965, but in 2025! No wonder it's the Andersons' biggest show. The story has come full circle on a personal note, too, with me writing this. My friends and I were so inspired by Thunderbirds, back in the day, that we would reenact moments from it in our games, and later try to emulate their craftsmanship in the Super-8 films that we made. In a speech I gave at the wedding of one of those friends, I said: "We learnt everything we know today from watching Thunderbirds when we were kids." Not literally true of course. But in spirit, it was bang on the money. Thunderbirds, Thunderbirds Are Go, The Anniversary Episodes and the documentary Fab at 60 are all available on ITVX Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
How the spectacular Space: 1999 set the bar sky-high for TV sci-fi
As the high-reaching Gerry and Sylvia Anderson show turns 50, RT talks to family and fans about dreams, nightmares, lofty aims and a lasting legacy.
There are high concepts and there are high concepts. Fifty years ago a shiny-new, big-budget science-fiction show took the Moon, with hundreds of people on it, and blew it out of the Earth's orbit. It blew many formative young minds, too... On 4 September 1975, the then most expensive British series ever, Space: 1999, exploded onto TV screens. It had grand ambition, huge guest stars, acclaimed effects – and was a massive gamble from creators Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Yet 50 years on, it is still celebrated as a masterwork by a fanbase that reaches far and wide. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/08/shutterstockeditorial4815174a-94abfeb.jpg" width="2367" height="1564" alt="Editorial use onlyMandatory Credit: Photo by Shutterstock (4815174a) Christopher Lee, Gerry Anderson, Sylvia Anderson, Barbara Bain and Martin Landau. Behind the scenes 'Space 1999' Series 1 - Earthbound. TV Programme. - 04 Dec 1975 EPISODE 5 -EARTHBOUND - A vessel of alien pacifists, bound for Earth, lands on the moon. They are greeted as friends by all- except Commissioner Simmons who sees their vessel as way to return home." title="'Space 1999' Series 1 - Earthbound. TV Programme. - 04 Dec 1975" /> Through the 1960s, the couple had scored hit after hit with their futuristic Supermarionation shows, from Supercar and Stingray to Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. So a £2.6 million production – shot at Pinewood Studios and fronted by husband-and-wife stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain from Mission: Impossible – was a huge deal. “It was everything that Dad and Sylvia had dreamt of and probably simultaneously their worst nightmare because of the pressure involved,” Gerry’s son Jamie tells Radio Times. “They wanted to escape the world of puppets for humans and they did it with UFO.” That 1970 show looked set for a second series after initially favourable US ratings. But production company ITC Entertainment pulled the plug, so the Andersons channelled the extensive preproduction work for "UFO2" into a brand-new project. “It was looking like everything was going to fall over,” says Jamie, “then suddenly they managed to rescue it from the ashes and turn it into something of almost film level with these amazing American stars. But with that comes a lot of pressure – pressure on an already fractured marriage and producing partnership.” What emerged from the turbulence was extraordinary: the design was eye-catching, the stories gripping and the special effects unbelievably good for 70s television. The hard-edged, high-contrast space shots reminiscent of 2001: a Space Odyssey were no accident. Brian Johnson, a model-maker on that film, was now in charge of the special effects on Space: 1999, a show that influenced George "Star Wars" Lucas. So, what were Gerry’s aims for Space: 1999? “Spectacle, philosophy, exploration, all of those kinds of big, heavy, lofty aims and themes," says Jamie. And such ambition extended to the premise, which carried an environmental, forward-thinking message. It concerned the mass dumping of nuclear waste on the Moon, leading to a cataclysmic explosion that propels the satellite and the 300-plus scientists based there into deep space. The thrills of each episode were teased in a signature "This episode" montage near the start of each story, backed by a grabby theme tune by stalwart Anderson composer Barry Gray. Ronald D Moore later employed the same taster technique on Battlestar Galactica and credited it to 1999. View oEmbed on the source website The "exorbitant" premise – the result of an imposition from ITC high-ups when UFO2 was still being planned and they nixed any more Earth-based stories – was an astonishing one. And some scientifically minded viewers scoffed at it. But the set-up proved to be one of its greatest virtues. "If you look at it in a kind of lunar way," says Jamie, "you’ve trapped characters on a barren, grey rock in a massive void. OK, well that feels somewhat limiting, but once you start looking out and go, 'Well anything might be out there, literally anything' then yes, it's enormously freeing. By escaping the Earth and its gravitational pull it definitely gave writers free rein to explore what it means to be human in an expanding, infinite universe. So yeah, what an amazing playground and lot of people played quite well and quite creatively in it." The playing fast and loose with science – every sci-fi show does it – makes perfect sense in the context of a show more concerned with firing the imagination. As writer and story consultant Christopher Penfold said in a 2002 interview: "Space fiction stories are mainly thought of as action adventure. What we were engaged in on Space: 1999 was of course action adventure, but it was also 'ideas adventure'." Penfold, one of the programme's architects, added, "We weren't afraid of big ideas in series one, it was what drove us on day to day, it gave us a huge sense of excitement." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/08/2AMPHEC-copy-8e4c4f8.jpeg" width="4252" height="3220" alt="2AMPHEC COSMOS 1999 SPACE : 1999 1975-1977 serie TV creee par Gerry et Syvia Anderson saison 1 episode 1 Barry Morse Barbara Bain Prentis Hancock Clifton Jone" title="COSMOS 1999 SPACE : 1999 1975-1977 serie TV creee par Gerry et Syvia Anderson saison 1 episode 1 Barry Morse Barbara Bain Prentis Hancock Clifton Jone" /> Sylvia’s daughter Dee was 18 when filming began. “I loved visiting the set,” she says. “It was so different to the former series and I was older then so it was great fun with real actors.” She’s not sure her mum and Gerry agreed: “They were used to working with puppets who never had tantrums or answered back!” She adds, however, “My mother was a people person. Many of the actors loved her and she was the main casting director alongside Michael Barnes. She was especially good at casting and this continued many years after with her role at HBO. She had a keen eye for talent.” It's fascinating now to speculate on how different Space: 1999 might have been had ITC not insisted on American leads. "She did take risks when casting," says Dee, "and sometimes got into trouble for her 'outside the box' ideas. But they mostly worked out. She had a keen eye for talent and liked actors like Albert Finney, who knew their craft and always brought depth and authenticity to the role. She would've easily cast an actor like Finney." Over 24 episodes, an A-list guest cast lined up to appear, including Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Margaret Leighton, Ian McShane, Jeremy Kemp, Joan Collins, Julian Glover, Isla Blair, Richard Johnson and Leo McKern. There was also a roster of accomplished directors, who made their marks in unforgettable ways, including Ealing veteran Charles Crichton, action specialist Ray Austin and gifted surrealist David Tomblin, who went on to work with Steven Spielberg and Richard Attenborough. Many reports have emerged over the years of delays in production – most episodes overran, the pilot by several weeks – but one hold-up was deliberately engineered. Roy Dotrice, who played the conniving Commissioner Simmonds in two episodes, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews, who invited him to appear on This Is Your Life. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/08/Eamonn-Andrews-Sylvia-Anderson-Gerry-Anderson-This-is-Your-Life-surprise-for-Roy-Dotrice-copy-c30cdec.jpeg" width="3000" height="2074" alt="*Eamonn Andrews, Sylvia Anderson, Gerry Anderson, This is Your Life ! surprise for Roy Dotrice copy" title="*Eamonn Andrews, Sylvia Anderson, Gerry Anderson, This is Your Life ! surprise for Roy Dotrice copy" /> Dotrice provided fans with an unforgettable episode of the show. Look away now if for any reason you've not see it yet – and you really need to! Its fans include journalist Samira Ahmed. "The episode Earthbound is burned into my memory," she tells Radio Times. "Commissioner Simmonds hammering on the glass walls of his space 'coffin' when he realises he hasn't gone into hibernation!" Ahmed, who now hosts Front Row on Radio 4 and Newswatch on BBC1, adds, "I used to watch it on Saturday mornings on LWT on my own, and was utterly transfixed by its existential crisis mood... There was a great sense of spiritual mystery and horror about it – adventures in ESP and things like that." Ahmed taps into another appeal of the show when she says, “I loved the aesthetics and tech of Moonbase Alpha.” Many admired the look: the gleaming white panels of Alpha itself, the colour-coded sleeves of its personnel's uniforms, the clever functionality of their stun guns and comlocks, the beautifully designed but credible workhorse that was the Eagle spacecraft and the vibrancy and weirdness of the worlds they visited. The Alphans had encounters with time warps, a black hole, their future selves, and aliens benign and homicidal. There are many stand-out stories; among them are: Guardian of Piri, in which a weird planet ensnares Alpha and even its computer in a deadly trap (production designer Keith Wilson was the hero on this one); Force of Life, where a technician is absorbed by a ball of energy that sucks all the power from the moonbase; The Last Sunset, a demob-happy instalment where the Moon gains an atmosphere; and Death's Other Dominion, blending an ice planet, a Shakespearean fool and Brian Blessed as an immortal doctor. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/08/ETY6N1-copy-efea710.jpeg" width="7579" height="5024" alt="ETY6N1 Space 1999, Science Fiction TV Series, filmed at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, 25th September 1999. The series ran for two seasons. Starring Barbara Bain as Doctor Helena Russell and guest starring Brian Blessed as Dr. Cabot Rowland." title="Space 1999, Science Fiction TV Series, filmed at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, 25th September 1999. The series ran for two seasons. Starring Barbara Bain as Doctor Helena Russell and guest starring Brian Blessed as Dr. Cabot Rowland." /> One outing appears on the lips of nearly all fans, including Jamie Anderson's. "Dragon’s Domain! It’s so over the top in its horror, it's so scary and is the one that gets mentioned so often. It's a great creature and is just a very punchy episode." But then, according to Dee Anderson, "I think 'scary' sells and adds to the drama of a storyline. Space 1999 is no exception." And what was her personal favourite? "The Testament of Arkadia – the link to life on earth, maybe the original human race? For my mum, she always said it was not only about discovering the universe but the place humanity had in the universe... Her stamp was on that show and I loved it." Space: 1999 was just getting into its stride towards the end of season one, but the immense stress on the producers took its toll. Gerry and Sylvia split, Sylvia left the show and American Fred Freiberger took over as producer for a more action-driven, far less thought-provoking £3.7 million season two. Amid a raft of drastic changes, he replaced Barry Morse as science officer Victor Bergman with Maya, a shape-shifting alien played by Catherine Schell. Freiberger was the producer of the final and least popular season of the original incarnation of Star Trek, and fan consensus has it that his overhaul of Space: 1999 was also largely to its detriment. One infamous story that he wrote himself, about a planet of talking trees, he named after the town he once drove past, calling it The Rules of Luton. Season two is so different to the first run in character and composition. Might it not have been better to call the show something else? "Yes," nods Jamie. "Just call it Moonbase Alpha, do something, yes!" Samira Ahmed agrees that "Season one is better in every way, but I did love Maya best – she was like a female Spock, who had the hot Italian boyfriend [Tony Verdeschi, played by Tony Anholt]. Role model! My favourite episode was the The AB Chrysalis because it combined growing destructive threat with exploring a new planet. I loved the bouncing communication balls. The transformations were, I now see, very silly, but at the time I loved the idea of Maya transforming into a chlorine-breathing creature. It had a kind of logic!" As for the Andersons, the show itself was unlikely to have been top of their priority list. “It was a difficult time for both of them," says Dee, "but in those days the woman was easily cancelled. And in this case it was Sylvia who was excluded in spite of her years of amazing work. She was written off as if she hadn't existed and there was no mention of how she saved the company on many occasions. Most people I speak to admit that after she was no longer involved, the series lost its soul.” Jamie adds, "Because of the time, it was going be much more likely that of the two, the male producer would be the one to come back, if we’re honest about gender attitudes in the 1970s. "I wonder to what degree [the breakdown in relations] brought a certain kind of cosmic chilliness, if you know what I mean... But in many ways it’s a testament to their professionalism that they managed to keep it going and actually produce this incredibly expensive, high-profile, high-pressure show." For all their differences, it's clear that both seasons of the show attracted a galaxy of admirers. Celebrity fandom reached new peaks in 2019 when Samira Ahmed appeared on Celebrity Mastermind's Champion of Champions dressed in a yellow-sleeved Alpha costume and won outright after hitting full marks on her specialist subject (Space: 1999, naturally): “If the questions hadn’t been so wordy, I’d have answered more,” she says. The look and feel of the future – even if the year the show was set in is now 26 years ago – have appealed to many in space-adjacent industries. Jamie Anderson has been to Nasa and the European Space Agency and met “people whose lives were changed completely by it... "They had guys who had been sending stuff to actual Mars and they sent this mission round the Moon and they’re going, “Oh, I love the Eagle so much” and “My favourite episode was this”... Meeting them means the most to me because it means so much to so many other people.” So who is the person he’s been most surprised to learn is a fan of the show? “Brian Cox!” The professor and documentary-maker, and his fellow Infinite Monkey Cage co-presenter on Radio 4, Robin Ince, were both guests on the Gerry Anderson Podcast in 2020. It was here that Cox said, "When I go to parties, I’m dressed as Martin Landau from season one… I had to have it made.” Cox also summed up the intellectual appeal of Space: 1999 by adding, “One of the things that I always come back to, particularly in our live shows but also in the documentaries that I make, is this central question about what it means to be a fragile, finite human in a vast and potentially eternal and infinite universe. That is the only interesting question actually worth asking... And that’s what Space: 1999 is about, self-evidently, and it’s not an accident, I suspect. I think it is that: a serious attempt to explore some serious philosophical questions." After her Mastermind triumph, Samira Ahmed says, "I discovered how many high-profile fans there are – Frank Skinner, Duncan Jones and I think Edgar Wright..." Award-winning screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, Skyfall) also turned out to be a fan, and appears in a new ITVX documentary about Space: 1999. “Dad would have loved that,” says Jamie. “From the sciences to creative stuff, there can’t be many shows that have had that level and breadth of influence." Last September, fans flocked to the "London: 1999" celebration, where original members of cast described the appeal of the show. "We had some of the best writers of space series, with ideas that had never been seen before. That's what I liked most about it: the futuristic way these guys fulfilled a lot of dreams." That proved to be a poignant summation by Clifton Jones, aka David Kano, who died this June, aged 87. As Space: 1999 was a co-production with Italian broadcaster RAI, it was sprinkled with Italian stars throughout the first season. Carla Romanelli, who played Melita in Space Brain, engaged fans with her enthusiasm at London: 1999 when she said, "Sylvia and the writers and all of them, they made people dream. Everybody was working to give intelligence, to give visions... What is beautiful to see is that you’re here. We are honoured that you are here with us. Thank you!" And Catherine Schell (Maya) was quick to depict a harmonious team on series two. “We had a lot of laughs,” she said when I reminded her about stories of her corpsing on set. She admitted she got into trouble for laughing – “and so did Martin [Landau]!” She recalled that during the making of the 1974 film The Return of the Pink Panther, she couldn’t help giggling at lead actor Peter Sellers; director Blake Edwards loved this and left the scene in. Did any of the regulars form friendships with the guest-stars? “Yeah, I really liked Brian Blessed,” Nick Tate (Alan Carter) told me. “I've worked with Brian on several projects.” Blessed was in Space: 1999 twice, in Death’s Other Dominion and as Maya’s scientist father Mentor in The Metamorph. “Then I did The Day After Tomorrow [also known as Into Infinity], which was the pilot for a television series that the BBC was going to buy, and I had to lead with Brian in that show and I enjoyed being with him immensely. He was a mountain climber. A very impressive fellow. I loved him.” It's clear the show ignited a passion that has never gone away. Nick Williams, chairman of appreciation society Fanderson, calls it "one of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s greatest creations". He adds, "To me as a 12-year-old boy it was the gateway to ‘serious’ science-fiction. "Space welcomed me into a scientific community, as the Alphans worked out how to make the best of a perilous situation not of their making. More than in anything I’d seen before, Moonbase Alpha, the Eagles and other equipment were ‘real’, and the characters flawed and vulnerable." Full disclosure now: Space: 1999 was also the writer of this article's favourite show. To me the programme embodied escapism in its purest form, and season one was like an anthology where every episode had a different mood, and something else to say. It opened up my world and led to friendships and fan clubs, meeting my heroes and so much more. As Victor Bergman once so memorably said while raising a glass of 60-year-old brandy, "To everything that was." The documentary Space 1999: 50 Years Out of Orbit is available on ITVX, along with all episodes of the show. Rewind TV is screening series 2 from 24 March 2026. Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Fawlty Towers legend Connie Booth sets the record straight on sitcom writing credit with ex-husband John Cleese
"When people quote back words from the script, instead of flattered I felt counterfeit."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. As John Cleese and Connie Booth’s towering creation nears its 50th birthday — with a functioning fire extinguisher to hand, bearing in mind all those candles — you’d think there was no more to be said on the subject. Cowboy builders, Waldorf salads and “Don’t mention the war” have entered the national lexicon, the show was voted the greatest British sitcom in a 2019 Radio Times poll and the hit stage show that began in the West End last year has now been filmed for U&Gold. But RT reached out to writer/star Connie Booth about the imminent celebrations, and she has this to say… “In the year and a half it took to write Fawlty Towers, John and I never imagined the impact the show would have. On its 50th anniversary, I’d like to take the opportunity to get something straight. John wrote the dialogue. “Before that dialogue was written, he and I developed the plots. Each episode took about a month to contrive. Out of the ridiculous complications of farce, his brilliant lines emerged. When the issue of billing arose, I thought ‘Written by John Cleese, storyline by us both’ would’ve been fine for me. John said they didn’t do that in TV comedy and insisted on co-authorship.” Booth, who left acting in 1995 and worked as a psychotherapist until she retired, adds: “Yielding to John’s generous offer turned out to be a kind of poisoned chalice. For half a century, I’ve been receiving praise for lines which John wrote. When people quote back words from the script, instead of flattered I felt counterfeit. "I’ve had to say, ‘No, John wrote that.’ Because I’m American, this disclosure about the pitch-perfect dialogue may be self-evident, but at this celebration of our work, one of the things I wanted to celebrate was the truth.” Cleese and Booth were married at the time of the first series in 1975 but divorced before the second aired in 1979. Just 12 episodes were made, yet the breakneck farce, peerless playing and polished lines ensured long-term success. Booth, of course, also played the hotel maid and general assistant Polly to Cleese’s splenetic proprietor Basil. She was the oasis of calm amid the chaos. Last year when Cleese spoke about their writing sessions, he told RT: “I remember I suggested a line for Sybil, and Connie said, ‘A woman wouldn’t say that.’ And I thought, ‘I didn’t know that.’ "She was invaluable there: she was better on character, I was better on plot. I can get caught up in plot and then start putting the character maybe slightly off centre and she was always the one who said, ‘No no, that’s not right for the character at that moment.’ “Connie was an extraordinarily good actress. If you watch her in the scenes like I was the other day, in The Germans, nobody’s looking at her at all, they’re all looking at Basil. She just plays it so beautifully… So having all those instincts was incredibly helpful.” What’s clear is that with theatre audiences now rocking with laughter, Fawlty is still funny at 50. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Add Fawlty Towers to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
"Quatermass is about residual humanity winning out... Everyone can identify with it"
Nigel Kneale's seminal creation is about so much more than science fiction, as Toby Hadoke reveals in his new book about the thrilling origins of a television and film classic.
A shorter version of this article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. For many, the name “Quatermass” evokes powerful thoughts and images. Tales of scientific derring-do and monstrous discovery; of infected astronauts, epic excavations and stone circles. It delves deep into our past and reaches far into the future – the eponymous programmes retooled the still-young medium of television in the 1950s and exert an influence that's still felt today. Professor Bernard Quatermass, to give him his full name, was the dignified epicentre of a series of seismic dramas from fêted writer Nigel Kneale. They began with The Quatermass Experiment in 1953, which followed a first crewed flight into space (this was eight years before the first human orbited Earth) and the rocket’s return, with just one of the three astronauts surviving – and that man, Victor Carroon, metamorphosing into a deadly alien threat. It spawned highly regarded BBC sequels Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59), film adaptations of all three by the Hammer horror studio, and an ITV revival in 1979. It launched a career for Kneale that also included his adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954), shocking for the time; satirical drama The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968); and his spine-tingling Christmas ghost story The Stone Tape (1972). But that initial six-part drama, broadcast live from Alexandra Palace, is examined in forensic, thrilling detail by The Quatermass Experiment: the Making of TV’s First Sci-Fi Classic, which conjures a palpable sense of time and place. And despite that title, the book’s author Toby Hadoke says that Kneale “wasn’t writing cult television, he was writing television for a mass audience. "What is key is that he tells science-fiction stories using the instruments of horror, so you don't, for example, have conversations with aliens. The aliens are largely unreachable, nebulous, sometimes even dead, but their effects live on, so it's all about their effect on the characters. He postulates science-fiction, otherworldly or ghostly reasons for why we are the way that we are." Hadoke continues, “He explores the human condition through ‘genre’, which means it’s accessible. You don’t always know that you’re watching science fiction with Nigel Kneale because it takes place in a plausible world with real people. He taps into something that’s within us, so everyone can identify with it. That’s his genius.” The book – 36 years in the making – has been a labour of love for Hadoke, who began his research in 1989. “I was young and wanted to be an actor, so as much as anything it was an excuse to write to actors. And that’s what I’m pleased to be able to include in the book, to pay back all those lovely people sadly no longer with us, who wrote back to an enthusiastic 15-year-old.” Hadoke, an actor, writer, stand-up and broadcaster, is clearly much too young to remember the programme’s first transmission, so what was his first contact? “Quatermass was the thing that my mother’s generation had watched and it was occasionally the late-night film that I was too young to stay up for.” Then a friend gave him the BBC video of Quatermass and the Pit in the 80s. “I was astonished at not just how good it was, story-wise, because Kneale’s imagination is brilliant, but just how good the productions were. This wasn’t Saturday teatime family stuff. They were directed by Rudolph Cartier, who was a top man at the BBC, and they were lavishly budgeted.” As for that all-important central name – a masterstroke as it transpired – Kneale chose “Bernard” to refer to astronomer Bernard Lovell, then he looked under Q in the London telephone directory for further inspiration. Prior to that, Hadoke reveals, “It was going to be ‘Professor Charleton’. I don’t think we would be whispering, ‘I remember Charleton’ in hushed tones! Quatermass is a brilliant name." So unusual, in fact, that AI seems to have trouble transcribing it, hazarding everything from "Quite a mess" to "Crater Mouse". Hadoke adds, "Quatermass sounds unusual – the Q sound and the number of syllables – but as with all of Kneale's work it somehow invokes something from the past rather than something futuristic, which makes it atmospheric rather than spangly. "There's a bit in the book where I trace its etymology… but then, Kneale was very good at pithy things that could make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Remember that line in The Stone Tape where they find the Christmas card and the kid writes, 'What I want for Christmas is please go away'? So economical but it's just enough... And there's a line in Quatermass and the Pit where he goes, 'Captain Potter, you'd better warn your men: things may happen.'" Kneale's talent, then, was "to terrify the audience, but with economy”. As Hadoke's fascinating book explains, there was a change of title to the series, too. "It wasn't originally going to be called The Quatermass Experiment, it was going to be called The Unbegotten and then Bring Something Back. But the fact that the name became central to what we would now call the brand, I think, is vital." Hadoke’s book traces Kneale’s interest in both horror and storytelling back to his childhood on the Isle of Man, “to its oral tradition of ghost stories, curses and standing stones”. And he shows how The Quatermass Experiment stood out like a sore thumb in a year of optimism: with the Queen crowned, Everest conquered and British Comet jets flying people around the world, Kneale sounded “a sour note”. The shocking conclusion, with Victor Carroon now a mass of thrashing tendrils, even occurs in Westminster Abbey, the scene of Elizabeth II’s coronation just weeks earlier. As Hadoke explains, however, “The climax of The Quatermass Experiment is not about guns and explosions, it’s about residual humanity winning out, and about rationality winning out over irrationality. "We have to make progress to go forward but as the opening line of The Quatermass Experiment has it, 'An experiment is an operation designed to discover some unknown truth. It is also a risk.' So is the risk-taker an irresponsible charlatan, or is the risk-taker a brave pioneer? Probably a bit of both. And I think he gives equal weight to that duality." Viewers who grew up with Doctor Who know the debt it owes to Kneale. Hadoke is an expert on that series too and, pressed on the subject, he is happy to get into the nitty-gritty. "Some Doctor Whos like The Idiot's Lantern by Mark Gatiss are a conscious homage to Quatermass and indeed The Lazarus Experiment, which Gatiss didn't write but he’s in, which has a conclusion very like that of The Quatermass Experiment. "With season 7 of Doctor Who (in 1970), you could do a shot-by-shot comparison of the similarities of Spearhead from Space to Quatermass 2. And when they were exiling the Doctor to Earth they did look at Quatermass because they knew that that had been successful and they were having to make Doctor Who work without going into space." But even US series like The X-Files and major Hollywood films like Alien have similar DNA: “Consciously and subconsciously, Kneale's work is never far away from anybody wanting to make good science fiction. So his influence is huge and, I think, a lesson in how to treat [sci-fi] like proper drama.” Kneale was so intent on realising his vision that he even had a hand in making his monster, sticking garden vegetation onto a glove that he then thrust through a photo of Westminster Abbey for the serial’s climax. Primitive, perhaps, but in hazy black and white, it was remarkably effective. “What I love about that,” Hadoke enthuses, “is that if you’re a writer and it’s your baby, you do go the extra mile!” The charming details of this moment in the programme's creation were supplied to Hadoke by Judith Kerr, who was Kneale's fiancée at the time and subsequently sold millions of copies of her books about Mog the cat and The Tiger Who Came to Tea. "I had a lovely long day with Judith where she gave me chapter and verse... they went around plucking bits of bush here and there and decorating this gardening glove but she told me something I hadn't realised – and then I saw some photos that confirm this. Nigel operates the glove in episode 5 but then in episode 6 when the monster got a bit bigger, the fronds of it sticking around the corner of the set were also operated by Nigel and Judith. She went on to be his wife and then to have a career that probably eclipsed his – and he was hugely famous in the 50s and 60s." The popularity of the BBC’s Quatermass trilogy was reflected in the ratings. Experiment rose from 3.4 million for episode one to 5 million in the last; II from 7.9 to 9 million; and Pit from 7.6 to 11 million. This was significant, prestige drama, which became part of the national conversation. “Kneale and Cartier were at the forefront, they weren't just sort of jobbing BBC people, they were television pioneers. "What they were doing paved the way for the television that we have now,” concludes Hadoke. “It resonated, and in both directions: it could invoke primal fear but also look forward to the future – and what horrors may lurk there.” To order The Quatermass Experiment by Toby Hadoke (Ten Acre Films, £19.99) for £18 including p&p, call 03302 232 639 or visit the online Radio Times Shop. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Celebrating Neil Innes: From the freewheeling Bonzos and Monty Python to "Prefab Four" the Rutles
Yvonne Innes reflects on life with her husband, the gifted musician, comedian and pasticheur par excellence.
When Rutland Weekend Television (RWT) began on 12 May 50 years ago, few could have foreseen its impact. But this cheerfully low-fi sketch show that launched “Britain’s smallest television network” was a chance for Monty Python’s Eric Idle to spread his comedy wings post-Flying Circus. The core cast included David Battley, Gwen Taylor and Henry Woolf, but it was Idle’s pairing with resident musician Neil Innes that was to prove fortuitous. A gifted songwriter with a wry and ingenious way of looking at the world, Innes was admired for the many projects he became involved with. Yvonne Innes tells Radio Times of the time her husband was hired for the gig… “One day Eric phoned up and said, ‘Neil, could you come [to TV Centre], our warm-up man’s not turned up?’ Neil said, ‘I don’t do warm-ups.’ Eric said, ‘There’s 25 quid in it’ and Neil said, ‘Done!’” Of course, Neil’s role would be more substantial, playing all the Marx Brothers one week, looking and sounding like Johnny Cash or Elton John the next. “Neil liked nothing more than being stretched,” says Yvonne. “Physically, mentally, any way you could stretch him, he loved it. Also he and Eric were finding out what each others’ strengths and weaknesses were. They were a fantastic team for a while.” Neil had a way with a couplet – "If all the trees were candles, and who's to say they're not/The world would be a birthday cake and we could eat the lot" – and could evoke an artist without doing slavish impersonations. Here he is on RWT in Elton mode... View oEmbed on the source website She adds, "Neil was very happy doing Rutland and it seemed a logical thing to do after working with the Pythons. Neil had a lovely time, he loved the challenge of writing a different song each week and the relationship was really close." Such memories are conjured by Yvonne in Dip My Brain in Joy, her recent biography of Neil, who died in 2019 aged 75 – they’d been married 53 years. She admits writing it was a challenge, but the process proved to be cathartic. "When it came out I had lovely comments… I’ve heard from people I’ve not heard from for years." The Innes/Idle connection goes back to pre-Python days. As a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (later the Bonzo Dog Band then just the Bonzos), Neil had worked with Idle, as well as Terry Jones and Michael Palin, on ITV’s Do Not Adjust Your Set from 1967 onwards. Later on in 1974, he was invited to join the Python troupe for the last series of Flying Circus, for which he wrote “The Most Awful Family in Britain”, with Graham Chapman, and an “An Appeal on the Behalf of the Very Rich”. He also performed his own composition, When Does a Dream Begin, which sowed a TV seed for later on. Meanwhile, Neil was taking part in the Python stage shows, whose audiences responded warmly to his song How Sweet to Be an Idiot, and co-starred in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975, also providing memorable songs for the film. But back to Rutland Weekend Television, and one song that would give Innes a whole new devoted audience. Yvonne takes up the story... “Somebody had the idea, ‘Let’s do a Beatles thing,’” says Yvonne, “and Neil made a pastiche of their early music. He did it very easily.” That song was I Must Be in Love by the Rutles, accompanied by speeded-up film of the group and introduced by Idle’s reporter, who struggled to keep up with the mobile camera crew. Idle showed that clip in America on Saturday Night Live. "It produced such a huge postbag the next day that they decided to go ahead with a film," says Yvonne. And so All You Need Is Cash was born in 1978. “When we saw the film back, I realised that it was going to be quite big because they looked fantastic!” In fact the movie, written by Idle, and its soundtrack by Innes, were adored by the public. "It was a very professional thing and of course there were so many fans by that time that I think they almost thought they were the Beatles!" Yvonne first met Neil in 1962, the year surreal legends the Bonzos were formed. “Neil invited me to see his band. I assumed a band was four guys in nice clothes with guitars and drums. When I got there, there was absolute chaos and pandemonium. "There were so many instruments everywhere – on the floor, on the ceiling, just hanging anywhere, over the backs of chairs. They had to get the pubs’ attention – they did all their first gigs in about six particular pubs in London and they were always incredibly noisy. So the Bonzos put this dustbin in the middle of the floor – we didn’t know what it was for – and they started off with Rule, Britannia! At the end of it the bin exploded and there was silence!” Despite or perhaps because of such unorthodoxy, the group endeared themselves to the public and scored a top-five hit in 1968 with I’m the Urban Spaceman – written by Innes and produced by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym Apollo C Vermouth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/05/GettyImages-150029359-03a068b.jpg" width="5294" height="3467" alt="British comedy group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performing on the BBC TV show 'Top Of The Pops', London, 28th November 1968. Left to right: Dennis Cowan, Vivian Stanshall (1943- 1995), Neil Innes, Rodney Slater, 'Legs' Larry Smith and Roger Ruskin Spear. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)" title="Bonzos On TOTP" /> Neil shared a love of wordplay with the Bonzos' leader, Vivian Stanshall, yet they were very different characters. How did they get along? "They enjoyed their time together. They were both wordsmiths and Neil used to get inspired by some of Vivian’s amazing sentences and I think also Viv had an admiration for the way Neil actually managed to keep his life together as well as write these songs and get the words right. There was a mutual admiration. Obviously, like all really talented people, they had spats." The Bonzos still have legions of fans, and there was simply nothing like them. "That's why people like Ade Edmondson, Phill Jupitus and Stephen Fry held them dear," says Yvonne. The same applies to the Rutles, whose fans included George Harrison and his wife Olivia, with whom Neil and Yvonne became friends: “George loved the Rutles," remembers Yvonne, who reads me a Harrison quote about being spoofed... “The Beatles for the Beatles is just tiresome. It needs to be deflated a bit, and I loved the idea of the Rutles taking that burden off us in a way. Everything can be seen as comedy, and the Fab Four are no exception.” Yvonne continues: "He was so encouraging to Neil. At one point Neil said, ‘Shall I do this, do you think it’s too similar?’ and George said, ‘These are your songs, they’re not our songs.’ He was brilliant.’ "I got to know George and Olivia quite well through my main job as a garden designer – they needed some help with their garden." This was at the Harrison home in Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire: “Olivia is very good on perennials, George was an amazing tree man.” From Beatles to Rutles, back to Rutland Weekend Television. Now celebrating its 50th birthday, RWT proved influential in more ways than one, with Neil then being able to fly solo in the ingeniously titled song-and-comedy series The Innes Book of Records (1979–81) for BBC Two. Whimsical and creative, the programme also had guest turns from the likes of Stanley Unwin, Jake Thackray and Sir John Betjeman. "It was fantastic, he absolutely loved it," says Yvonne. "He worked so well with Ian Keill and Andrew Gosling, the two directors. They created a little team because they were working so much. Three series, six shows in each series and six songs in each show." As with previous endeavours, Neil's love of words was clear. "He was just a very bright guy and he absolutely loved language. He didn’t just write songs, every single word had to be right. "I’ve got these lovely memories of him... when we lived in France for five years we had this huge bit of land, and he would loosely tie a sarong on his hips, with an open shirt, a ciggie in one hand, a large glass of red wine in the other, walking around the land, looking for one word, one lyric to the song and it had to be the right one. Supper would be of no consequence, it was this word he was after." There was more TV work, as well as a move into children's entertainment, in the 1980s when Neil succeeded Tom Baker as presenter of The Book Tower, played the Magician in Puddle Lane, then wrote and voiced cartoon series The Raggy Dolls, all for ITV. And through it all there was live music – Neil was gigging well into his late 60s. “He didn’t strut his stuff at all. He loved it when fans came up and he made such a fuss of them. There’d be a line of 100 and Neil would talk to every single one… he was just really humble; it was one of his huge attributes.” Dip My Brain in Joy: a Life with Neil Innes by Yvonne Innes (Nine Eight Books £22) is available from RT Books for £20 incl p&p — visit radiotimes.com/shop20. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Falling in the mud and following your dream... self-sufficiency sitcom The Good Life at 50
Climate - Sustainable contributions within wider content
As the popular BBC comedy lights the candles for a landmark birthday, star Felicity Kendal and fan John O'Farrell sum up its evergreen appeal.
In April 1975, a deceptively traditional-looking sitcom first aired on BBC One. But The Good Life turned out to be way ahead of its time with its underlying theme of quitting the nine-to-five for a home-grown, ultra-green lifestyle. Tales of pig midwifery and posh frocks, harvesting in a quagmire and disastrous am-drams became comedy legend. Respectable early ratings soon doubled, a Christmas episode drew 21 million and is still shown annually, the swansong was recorded in front of the Queen – and the show made stars of its core quartet. Richard Briers was that suburban revolutionary, Tom Good, and Felicity Kendal, who played his supportive and cheerful wife Barbara, recalls how she landed the role: “I was in a play called The Norman Conquests in the West End, Richard was in the audience and after the show he came round and said he thought it was great, which was really nice because he was a very famous, wonderful actor that I didn’t know at all but I knew about. "He said, ‘I’m going to do this little television series, may I send you the script for the part of the wife? It’s a new series, it may not do well because it’s a very unusual subject.’” The Good Life’s producer, John Howard Davies, also went to see the play and thought Kendal would be perfect casting, as he did Kendal’s Conquests co-star Penelope Keith for the part of the Goods’ haughty neighbour Margo. Kendal tells Radio Times, “I felt thrilled and very lucky to be working on a BBC sitcom, a new one, with Richard Briers, and Penny Keith who I’d been working with for the last nine months anyway, so we were already mates. They cast Paul Eddington [as Margo’s executive husband Jerry], who I had worked with on two television shows. I loved working with him." The cast chemistry, and the character interactions, made the show a national, beloved institution. And according to Kendal, the dynamic was good from the start: “Dicky Briers was one of the great human beings that was also an actor. And we all worked well together. "It was not a done deal that it would do well, but we invested in it because we liked it rather than we thought, ‘This is a snazzy job!’ It wasn’t at all – the BBC didn’t pay very well then. But it just worked and it was a very special job for all of us." The show was written by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, who'd already had hits for ITV with the school sitcom Please Sir! and its sequel The Fenn Street Gang. The Good Life was designed as a BBC vehicle for Richard Briers, one in which a plastic-toy draughtsman turns 40 and, instead of having a midlife crisis, breaks out of the rut and goes back to grass roots. In episode one we see Tom Good pack in his job, plough up his lawn and set out to become "as damn-near self-sufficient as possible". There was something genuinely thrilling at seeing the Goods thumb their nose at societal norms by keeping pigs and chickens in suburbia, generating their own electricity and weaving their own clothes. At the time Bob Larbey told Radio Times, "It’s a cliché, but good comedy writing does have a serious base to it... We try to make the situation real, so that when Briers is worried the rain might spoil his bean crop, then you should be concerned for him and not simply feel that he’ll be saved in the next line by the script. You need this reality for the laughs." The Good Life has cultivated countless fans over the years, among them bestselling author John O'Farrell, who tells Radio Times: "Like all the great sitcoms, The Good Life isn’t really about the situation, it’s about the characters, and the very best only come to life when great writing connects with great acting like it did in this classic show. All four central characters feel like they could never have been played by anyone else, and The Good Life elevated them all to the status of instant national treasures." O'Farrell worked on Spitting Image and Have I Got News for You and has co-written musicals including Mrs Doubtfire. "As a writer," he says, "I sometimes used The Good Life as an example of a show in which the audience never worry about the unanswered questions. "A commissioning editor might say, ‘but we need to know why neither couple have kids’ or ‘we need to know the attitude of the neighbours on the opposite side’, but in truth no one ever worries about that. Audiences accept the universe they are presented and enjoy it on its own terms." Friction can often form the basis of good comedy, and as Kendal elaborates, "The whole principle was that there were these two different couples. One was traditional, the other was much more hippie. So they wrote these slightly extreme combinations. "But one of the things people found attractive was showing the way that good couples worked together. It’s like Friends in America... People want to be like that, we want love affairs to work, we want friendships to work." Called on to muck out the pigs or dig hundreds of spuds, Barbara often wore overalls, dungarees and oversized togs, while Margo glammed up next door. Did Kendal mind this? “I loved it, I was always a tomboy. I wore men’s watches and boy’s jackets... I was never very happy with the short, frilly things one had to wear in that period. "When I arrived in the '60s [born in the West Midlands, Kendal lived in India from the age of seven but returned to England at 17], it was all very girly-girly and it never, I felt, suited me. That was the style but, left to my own devices I was always in jeans and a T-shirt.” Nevertheless tabloids still used terms like “sex bomb” to refer to Kendal on the show... “We lived in a strangely easy, lenient way in those days, people weren’t deeply offended by things so easily as they are now and if somebody said my goodness, you look really sexy in that, it was taken as a compliment, not as an affront to one’s dignity. "It was a very much more non-judgemental time, so it didn’t occur to me to be offended – or it didn’t occur to me that I was the sexiest girl in the world. It was neither what I was after, nor was I offended by it. It’s like somebody saying, ‘You’re very funny’ or ‘You’re really scary’.” The central lifestyle being followed by the Goods struck a chord with its audience, however. John O'Farrell remembers, "As a teenager I loved Tom and Barbara, to the extent that I bought the book on self-sufficiency that was popularised by the show. My parents took me to see Felicity Kendal play Desdemona at the National Theatre, but disappointingly Othello was nothing like The Good Life!" And though he thought the Goods cool and anti-establishment, he wonders, while watching the show through a modern lens, whether "Tom made this massive life decision without really consulting his wife and perhaps today she would just send him to therapy!" As for favourite episodes, Kendal says, “Some were more fun to do than others because they were more physical, with funny stunts, falling in the mud, the windbreak going down, the night shoots, and anything to do with the animals.” Popular episode The Wind-Break War depicts a misunderstanding that leads to arguments between the neighbours. It ends, famously, with all four celebrating their friendship with Tom’s peapod burgundy, but originally that was not the case... “It was scripted that the boys got drunk and the girls didn’t. One of the things the BBC thought was, ‘We can’t have our beloved Barbara and Margo getting drunk,’ so there was a little bit of resistance to changing it. But in the end they trusted us and John Howard Davies said, ‘No I think it would be much better if they all got drunk!’” That episode also introduced grumpy jobsworth gardener Arthur Bailey, played by Timothy Bateson, who made the mistake of answering back to his employer (Margo). It's a moment that stuck with John O'Farrell, even if his perspective has changed: "As I have got older I have grown to love Margo and Jerry – and slightly agree with the way they find their neighbours a bit smug and annoying! Jerry is wiser than anyone gives him credit for, Margo is so much more vulnerable than she first appears. "The 1970s was a time of coming change in the UK, and when Margo berates Arthur Bailey, making him stand on newspaper, it is a foreshadowing of how Margaret Thatcher is about to treat the entire British working class." But The Good Life wasn't just about the laughs; there was drama, and tears, to be mined from situations such as the Goods saying goodbye to their pigs, a storm turning their vegetable garden into a swamp, Tom's head being turned by an old schoolfriend of Barbara's and the very real prospect of moving house. And what looked like being the finale still has the power to shock. In Anniversary, the friends are about to toast Jerry landing the top job at his company, JJM, only to return to the Goods' house and find that it has been vandalised, and they have been burgled. Jerry even offers Tom his old desk job back. “I think they wrote it beautifully," says Kendal. "Instead of it being ‘Let’s go out on the biggest joke ever’, it was a bit of reality. It’s also a risk when you have a dream." Nevertheless, we did see the Goods back on their feet in two subsequent outings including the Christmas special. And it was a relief to many that Tom hadn't gone back to the nine-to-five but stuck to his self-sufficiency guns. "It wasn’t preaching anything really except to try to live the life you want to live," says Kendal. "It wasn’t even that this is the only way to live, you’ve got to do this or that, but follow your dreams, basically." The Good Life ended with, effectively, a Royal Command Performance in 1978. The show's most high-profile fan, Her Majesty the Queen, was in the studio audience for the recording of When I'm 65. “We were terrified, only because we didn’t want to let anybody down!" remembers Kendal. "The way we worked was extremely casual – if we made a mistake we’d sort of fool around on the set and, I wouldn’t say use rude words but we would play silly-arse with each other and make fun of whatever the other had done, and we all had to do [the scene] again. There was this kind of tradition that we didn’t go straight through very often, we nearly always had a bit of a blip and went back. "So that – which we had honed to a fine art – we couldn’t really do because we didn’t think that was quite appropriate. We were a bit nervous that things would go wrong in the wrong way. But in fact as soon as we got into it, it was a lovely audience and it was just great.” After 30 episodes, the Surbiton sitcom finally came to an end. "It could have gone on indefinitely," says Kendal, "except that we all felt that it couldn’t get better, frankly, than when we ended it. "The acting was a lot of fun and games, and we would tease each other on various levels, but my fond memories are actually when we were all getting ready or rehearsing, or we would all go out to an Indian meal once a week after we recorded. And we had a tradition of going to each other’s houses for a meal. That combination, which still happens in good companies, is the joy of being in this business." Kendal is still working – she was seen in the hit TV show Ludwig last year – and aims to go back to theatre work after a summer break. Looking back to the '70s and '80s, she recalls “a glorious period of the BBC. I did a lot of work for them, it was a time of great freedom and it was such a looked-up-to establishment. We’d go driving into [TV Centre at] White City and feel incredibly privileged to be working there. Hopefully it’ll get back its mojo one day.” After 50 years, The Good Life remains one of the most treasured of all our sitcoms. Its acting is impeccable, the scripts perfectly tooled and its DIY, grow-your-own subtext has never been more on-message. But more than that, it leaves you feeling happy (it's very much this writer's "Desert Island Sitcom") and is utterly loved by viewers. Kendal thinks this is because it reaches out to the audience like “a big hug. I’m terribly proud of it. The way it was written is the major thing; without the writing you’ve got nothing to play with. "It also had a fundamental lesson – we got it back in Covid, but we’ve lost it again now – that every day is special and the simple things are worth a great deal more than all the millions and the diamonds and the posh cars and the big houses. That is not a way to happiness – it helps, but it certainly isn’t a recipe for any kind of peace in your mind. And I think this is what The Good Life was saying: you don’t need all that stuff to have a great time.” BBC Four will be showing The Good Life weekly from 1st April – all episodes are on ITVX Premium. John O’Farrell’s latest novel Family Politics is available now (published by Penguin, £9.99). Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Creating a classic... the story behind an evergreen Radio Times cover
We contacted the artist who painted the ingenious and popular 1977 Christmas cover and discovered exactly what inspired it...
It is December 1977. The big BBC programmes on Christmas Day are Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game, the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show (guest stars Wings) and the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show (the one with Penelope Keith and an acrobatic South Pacific routine). Over on ITV there's Stars on Christmas Day with the unlikely billing of Bing Crosby and Don Estelle, plus the film Young Winston. But few things are getting us excited for the occasion like the Radio Times cover. At first glance it’s a big, snowy Christmas tree, but on closer inspection it’s a whole world of festive adventure. Children build a snowman, carol singers knock on doors, a dog scrabbles at a gate (the tree's "bucket") and the moon shines brightly behind a church (at the top of the tree). It's a brilliant concept, rendered in delightful detail. As one reader put it soon afterwards, "I should like to congratulate Pauline Ellison on her most beautiful cover." Indeed, annual posts of vintage covers on social media in recent years have revealed the 1977 front page to be one of the most popular in the magazine’s 101-year history. So Radio Times decided to reach out to the artist to ask about its origins. "The Christmas tree village is not entirely the product of my imagination," Pauline tells us. "In the spring of 1977 I went with my husband – the landscape painter Poul Webb – on a working trip to Provence, a fairy-tale land then, with castles and fortified villages perched high on rocky peaks in beautiful valleys. "In one of these villages, slightly below me on a narrow outcrop, I saw a monastery built in the shape of a cross. Of course we've all seen cruciform churches, but this was a whole settlement of living and working buildings, as well as a church, so it took a moment to perceive." As to the cover's creation, Pauline, now 78, continues: "The image was difficult to make, I had to airbrush the background first – not my favourite medium – but the only way to achieve the soft tonal graduations in 1977. A good deal of walking backwards from my drawing board and squinting went on, trying to balance the two meanings of the image. "I thought I had finished, stood back and realised I'd not included a single television aerial, the way TV was relayed back then. The ever vociferous readers of Radio Times would have had something to say about that, I thought. Easily remedied though!" Pauline describes her work as "watercolour, tones and colour", with a fondness for plants and animals. Born in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in 1946, she was educated at Bradford, Leicester and Cambridge Schools of Art. She has illustrated magazines and newspapers in Europe and America, and books for the likes of HE Bates and science fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin. Pauline's RT cover certainly had the spotlight shone on it 47 years ago. "I was delighted the image was taken to BBC Television Centre and used to advertise the Christmas programmes, the rostrum camera moving down into the lighted windows and then out into the programme trailer. So the image was often on TV over that Christmas, as well as in print." And she believes there's "something universal in this 'looking into windows', a fascination with the lives of others". There were a few detractors, however: "The image provoked a lot of discussion in the letters pages of Radio Times, among other things among birdwatchers as to whether the robin would still be out at dusk. "I hadn't even considered this, just seeing the robin as an essential element in a Christmas landscape, but maybe, being insectivorous, the robin would be the hungriest bird in the snow, still out searching for food? Eventually, in February the editor called time on this row I'd unwittingly started!" Nevertheless, "Christmas Tree Village" is indisputably an all-time great, and that timelessness is put into context by a case of second thoughts by its creator. "Originally, in the foreground, I'd drawn a girl with the dog on a leash, but later I realised that anchored the image in time, and I wanted it to float free, so I removed it. The right decision, I think." You can see more of Pauline's work via Artist Partners Ltd at https://www.artistpartners.com/portfolios/pauline-ellison. This year's Christmas double issue of Radio Times is out now – order your copy here. Did you know you can now order a previous edition of Radio Times magazine with our new back issues service? Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
John Cleese reflects on 50 years of Fawlty Towers ahead of UK stage tour
The comedy icon talks to Radio Times about being Basil, the best place for farce, "hair-raising" TV recordings and the democracy of humour.
The falling moose heads, wrongly shaped chips and fire drill fiascos of a gone-to-seed Torquay hotel are the stuff of TV legend, in a sitcom voted the greatest ever by a Radio Times poll. Now Fawlty Towers’ frantic antics are playing to packed houses in the West End, in a play so successful it’s being teed up for a regional run. RT spoke to John Cleese, 85, who’s adapted it for the stage. “The great lesson I’ve learnt is that nobody ever knows,” says Cleese on a call from Los Angeles about the huge reaction to Fawlty Towers – The Play. “It’s all guesswork. I mean, the first episode of the TV series was greeted by the Daily Mirror with 'Long John, Short on Jokes' and The Spectator hated it! “My moment of great happiness was when we started doing the stage auditions. The sheer quality of the people... I was astonished. We could have had three Basils, a couple of Sybils and three Manuels, they were so good. And I thought: it can’t really go wrong because (a) the material is fundamentally funny and (b) the theatre is absolutely the best venue for farce.” Fellow Pythons Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam came to the first night: “I was thrilled, they really loved it." The play, which interweaves three episodes (The Hotel Inspectors, The Germans and Communication Problems, plus a smidgen of one other) works like a dream, with its ingenious take on a familiar set, pacey direction and huge laugh count. Even the cosy, string-quartet theme tune by Dennis Wilson gets a good workout, and you may spot the odd dislodged letter. It took me right back to appointment-to-view evenings in front of the family television, when we young ones laughed until we hurt, and couldn't wait to discuss the episode at school the following day. Endlessly quotable, the show famously overran the traditional 30-minute sitcom slot due to its packed plotlines. The play opened at London’s Apollo Theatre in May, the run was extended to next March, and a UK tour will follow that in the 50th anniversary year, but it may surprise many to learn that the stage show debuted in Australia in 2016. Was that basically the same production? "Absolutely right, yes," says Cleese. Was there ever a eureka moment that he should turn it into a play? "It was a slowly evolving idea, various people had been making suggestions about a film, somebody wanted to do a musical, which would have been a disaster... But I had sold the theatrical rights to [producer and promoter] Phil McIntyre." This was around 2015, prior to testing out the show Down Under, with Caroline Jay Ranger directing. "She had that template from Australia so that when she settled into doing the show in London, some of the uncertainties were removed because first of all it’s one set – that’s a big help – and secondly we’d already done the show once and had pretty much done any rewrites that were necessary. So we were dealing with something that was already very well rehearsed." It seems a very flexible format; could other episodes be adapted? Plans are afoot, apparently. "I was so impressed with Adam [Jackson-Smith, who plays Basil], I said, would he like to work with me on another version. We could take three other shows and he’s already come up with a very good suggestion.” Porridge and Likely Lads co-writer Dick Clement once said of good casting, “It’s the best favour you can do yourself." Would Cleese agree? "Yes. Absolutely. I mean when I saw Adam I just thought this is extraordinary. During the whole process when I was going in and watching a lot of performances and making suggestions, they come up and ask you questions and you say one word, and they go, 'Ah!' And they got it. It’s too easy when you’re working with people as good as that. "People say, 'How do you feel about seeing it performed?' It’s hard for people to believe but I see myself much more as a writer than a performer. And therefore when I write something it doesn’t surprise me if somebody else does it, because I’m coming at it from that angle." Prior to turning the sitcom into a stage play, did he have meetings with his first wife Connie Booth, with whom he co-wrote the original series? "Obviously I mentioned it to her, she was perfectly happy, but Connie retired from showbusiness a long time ago. She’s kept a very low profile since she became a therapist. But yes we talked to her about this because of course there are contractual matters so she needed to be contacted to get her permission." But then Fawlty Towers, despite its ramshackle architecture, was built on firm comedy foundations. In 2019 a panel of experts voted it the greatest sitcom of them all in a Radio Times poll. Looking back, Cleese says, "To say one show is better than another is really a question of taste in humour but what you can say, it’s one of the best. It’s up there with a Ronnie Barker and it’s up there with Blackadder and it’s up there with The Young Ones and that’s the important thing. "It’s in that small group of exceptional comedy programmes. But The Good Life, you see, that was an excellent comedy. Not as funny because it’s not farce, it’s a different type of comedy. What I love about farce is it’s basically always about the protagonist having done something that he or she but usually he has to cover up, and his attempts to cover it up get more and more complicated and so the emotional level is much higher than it is in ordinary light comedy, which means that the laughs are bigger." Fawlty Towers ran on BBC2 for just 12 hilarious, precision-tooled episodes. Its married co-writers/co-stars Cleese and Connie Booth divorced after the first series in 1975 but continued to work together on the second in 1979. Describing their writing process, he says, "Creative people are no more or less intelligent than the average reasonably intelligent people, but they know how to play, that is to say they know how to just let go and just have ideas and see where they go, without knowing whether they’re right or not. It’s a very experimental thing. "In a sense it’s a little bit like doing improvisation without an audience. So when you’re working like that you can’t say there’s much of a plan. All you’re doing is listening to each other and trusting your sense of humour and suddenly you think, 'Oh, that would be funny.' And then you start working on that." Cleese adds, "I don’t think Connie thinks this is true, but I always felt at the beginning I was writing Basil and Manuel and she was writing Sybil and Polly. And it was very helpful because I remember I suggested a line for Sybil, and Connie said, ‘No, a woman wouldn’t say that.’ And I thought, ‘I didn’t know that.’ "She was invaluable there: she was better on character, I was better on plot. I can get caught up in plot and then start putting the character maybe slightly off-centre and she was always the one who said, “No no, that’s not right for the character at that moment. "Connie was an extraordinarily good actress; I saw a production of hers when she did The Glass Menagerie, the Tennessee Williams play, at Cambridge... she broke your heart. "If you watch her in the scenes like I was the other day, in The Germans, nobody’s looking at her at all, they’re all looking at Basil. She just plays it so beautifully, she’s a very fine actress, so having all those instincts was incredibly helpful for somebody like me who’s quite good on plot but not so good on character.” And does Cleese recall any nerves during the first TV episode to be recorded, nearly 50 years ago, on 23 December 1974? “I felt reasonably comfortable. It was a much simpler storyline than the other episodes because the main thing about the pilot is to establish the characters. And a lot of it was played at a slightly slower pace than later episodes. "I just remember performing it to a reasonable reaction from the crowd – not great, but very reasonable – and I’m just thinking, 'Well this is OK, at least it isn’t embarrassing.' And one or two of my friends raved about it afterwards when I had a drink with them and I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, well maybe it’s better than I thought!’ I mean, it never occurred to me that it was going to get bigger viewing figures than Monty Python. "Before the pilot was put out as a first episode [on 19 September 1975] a couple of small scenes were re-recorded, which were to do with Connie’s character – we made her an arts student rather than a philosophy student – and then they were cut into the pilot that we recorded." Cleese admits that, such were the time restrictions, studio recordings could be stressful. "In those days you had to record the half-hour in two hours. And if you’re changing sets and costumes and also going back because the camera missed this or the actor got that line wrong, trying to get that done in two hours is pretty hair-raising. "I began to realise after a time that even completing a show was an accomplishment, even if it wasn’t a very good show. So what you’re up against is the clock, and when you’re up against the clock and always looking at your watch – as I was, thinking, yes that’s fine we’re on schedule but we’ve dropped behind a bit, maybe we won’t be able to re-record that thing I got wrong in the first scene – when all that’s going on, you’re not really relaxing and playing. Most of that happens in rehearsal." However, recalling various casting triumphs among both regular cast and guest stars does give Cleese a sense of satisfaction: "There were moments when I looked at people and I thought, 'How perfectly cast is this?' "My abiding memory was dear Ballard Berkeley [who played the Major], who was cast by John Howard Davies [the original producer and director]. We had John doing the first six shows. He was an extraordinarily good child actor; he was a big star and went off and joined the navy. Although he was never as good on his cameras as some people, he was wonderful on casting and had extraordinary instincts. "He came up with Ballard Berkeley and he also came up with Pru Scales [as Sybil Fawlty]. I had already marked Andrew [Sachs, as waiter Manuel] down because I’d seen him in an Alan Bennett play with Alec Guinness, Habeas Corpus. "In The Psychiatrist episode, we had Basil Henson and the wonderful woman who was Brian Rix’s wife – Elspet Gray, I thought she was really fabulous – and you just think, 'How lucky we were to have these people.' "Bernard Cribbins was up there at the very, very top, I think his performance was quite extraordinarily good [as pedantic Mr Hutchinson in The Hotel Inspectors], but I don’t remember anyone being weak... there was one actor who had a lot of trouble with his lines, and we got him through by sometimes recording one line at a time [laughs] and nobody’s ever noticed it because we did a lot of editing on those shows. "I used to spend 20 hours editing each show because if you just tighten this up and you just say, 'No we don’t need those two lines' and then that transition is a little clumsy so let’s do it this way... if you do that lovingly, with literally every minute of the show, you finish up with Fawlty Towers!" A TV sequel written with his daughter, Camilla Cleese, is still in development, “but it’s been slowed down because we’ve got so many other things going on.” Future projects include a musical of A Fish Called Wanda (the 1988 comedy film Cleese wrote) and a movie about Hollywood lookalikes. "We’ve had problems there because people in Hollywood, the good ones, get booked up about three years in advance." With all that going on, what does Cleese do to unwind? "My guilty pleasure is watching live sport on television. I just love it. I love cricket: I love Somerset and I love England." With the play, Cleese is happy to be part of a group creating laughter – he agrees we need it more than ever, and it's something he realised while watching the opening night of The Play from his box. "Afterwards the atmosphere in the theatre was so lovely, everybody was happy, people were smiling at each other, nobody was pretending that they were more important than someone else... "I think humour is a very democratic thing, it’s very hard to be stuck up and superior if people are laughing, in fact it’s impossible, which is why a lot of very pompous, stuck-up people mistrust laughter because they can’t keep their pomposity up." This particular Fawlty fan thanks Cleese for all the laughs over the years. "Oh, what a nice thing to say. I’m always happy when people say that to me. Thanks very much, bye-bye!" Fawlty Towers – The Play is at the Apollo Theatre in London until 1 March 2025. Tickets are available at Ticketmaster and Love Theatre, as well as fawltytowerswestend.com. The UK tour begins September 2025. Tickets go on sale from Monday 2nd December on ATG Tickets. Head to our Going Out section for the latest releases, including our mammoth guide on the best West End shows, musicals and plays to watch in London.
"It doesn’t take long to realise why Hammer took the world by storm"
Some 90 years after the studio was founded, documentary director Benjamin Field discusses Hammer horror's frightening formula, the Lee-and-Cushing chemistry, plus finding stars in unlikely places
Add Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters to your watchlist Sky hasn't missed a trick, and it's certainly crafted a treat, this Halloween with a peek between the bubbling flasks of Hammer Film Productions, which was founded 90 years ago. Hammer has become a synonym for horror, a name known even by people who haven’t seen a single one of its movies, and Heroes, Legends and Monsters charts its hair-raising history. It's an evocative, sharp-fanged tribute, full of thrilling detail and incisive input. “They were phenomenally important. They moved the dial,” says Benjamin Field, the award-winning director and producer behind the project. “There were no colour horror movies pre-Hammer. And contemporary horror is the way it is today because Hammer opened the doors to let them in.” View oEmbed on the source website Reinventing a genre made famous by Universal in the 1930s, Hammer scored huge hits including The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy, but also with sci-fi (The Quatermass Xperiment) and pre-historic epics (One Million Years BC). “Essentially they had a repertory company of crew and actors,” says Field, “who turned up time and again to make these films, films that were adored.” Field admits he came late to the party. “Growing up a child of the 80s, they just didn’t feature on my radar. In October last year, that all changed and I got introduced to Hammer. It was a real moment for me. "The first thing that I really noticed was how stylish it was... I saw The Curse of Frankenstein – a good place to start. Wow, it was stunning! The sets are glorious, the colour is lush and lurid. It’s an attack on the senses. The music plays a massive part of that, of course. It feels like a revolution from what went before, and it doesn’t take long to realise why Hammer took the world by storm." Hammer's HQ from 1951 to 1966 was Bray Studios in Berkshire, and the films would draw extensively on the grounds and, in particular, Oakley Court country house, for their gothic ambience. Crucial to the 50s and 60s heyday of Hammer was the pairing of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as, typically, a brilliant but misguided scientist and a shambling monster, respectively. The actors’ sparky chemistry and double-act charm was apparent when they were reunited in 1994 – the lovely picture below was taken for an RT interview published just a week before Cushing died. “The combination of having two incredible performers was essential for Hammer’s success,” explains Field, who adds that it was also partly a fluke. “Christopher Lee just needed to be a tall guy to get a part in The Curse of Frankenstein but the studio lucked out and then very accidentally got a guy who had great presence who could act. “Cushing had done work for the BBC, he was greatly admired, but prior to that he’d been a successful theatre actor. Lee was a great mime artist, another theatrical skill. Director Terence Fisher let the actors play the scenes out, cutting minimally. He kept them paired for as long as possible. It became a magic formula – the results were electric.” When Radio Times interviewed the stars in 1994, they defended Hammer's films from criticism. "Our way of doing these films elevated them above being shabby shockers," said Lee, "but the press still said the British film industry should not be represented by ‘films of this kind’. "Well, ‘films of this kind’ were made by the most successful independent production company in the history of British cinema and probably the world. Why are they still showing them, again and again?" "Exactly," agreed Cushing. "These films are still showing and new audiences think they were only made a couple of years ago. People come up to me and say, ‘Excuse me, are you Peter Cushing’s dad?' I say, ‘No, I’m his grandfather.' Today’s generation say they prefer the Hammer pictures because they left a great deal to the imagination. There was no foul language, no gratuitous violence and, in the end, good always triumphed over evil." The documentary also reveals candid contributions from some of Hammer's leading ladies, Madeline Smith, Martine Beswick and Caroline Munro, and from famous fans who also happen to be Hollywood directors: Tim Burton, John Carpenter and Joe Dante. “But sometimes,” says Field, “you find stars where you don’t expect to.” He refers to key Hammer figures like producer Anthony Hinds, make-up pioneer Phil Leakey, composer James Bernard and cinematographer Jack Asher, who “painted with light”. But then, team effort is vital to Field, a co-founder of the company behind the documentary, Deep Fusion Films. "The team you build around you are vital and I’m so glad that this film champions the Hammer team who built a legendary company from the ground up. I’ve done that using my team who have done wonders for me over the last few years. "It’s very easy to put praise on those who hold ‘star appeal’ but much like the documentary itself, I want to point the finger behind the scenes and highlight the amazing work of the researchers and crew that I work with tirelessly to pull off a doc of this scale." He name-checks Dick Klemensen and Wayne Kinsey, who helped pull the project together with their "encyclopaedic knowledge of Hammer". Of Hammer's legacy, Field continues: “Things really only started to have a downturn once the team started to split up.” He refers to the studio's tawdry, exploitative period in the early 1970s – one that coincided with a crumbling of censorship barriers, and the “monsters” of the documentary's title points to both fictional and real-life monsters. Field agrees, however, that during the Cushing/Lee era for which it is most famous, Hammer was prolific, with well-crated stories in which good conquered evil. "One hundred per cent – Hammer’s output during the heyday was immense. "They found a formula that worked and they made films with an intriguing balance of business acumen and creative productivity. But it was a balancing act. I firmly believe that Hammer was only able to have a heyday due to the crew they had with them at exactly the right time." Ultimately, he hopes that people will see the films in a new light after watching the documentary. “Hammer’s crew were just doing their job, but as far as I’m concerned they were defining the future of horror."
Sky documentary goes behind the screams of Hammer Film studios for its 90th birthday
Director Benjamin Field on Hammer horror's frightening formula, the Lee and Cushing chemistry and finding stars where you don't expect to.
Sky hasn't missed a trick, and it's certainly crafted a treat, this Halloween with a peek between the bubbling flasks of Hammer Film Productions, which was founded 90 years ago. Hammer has become a synonym for horror, a name known even by people who haven’t seen a single one of its movies, and Heroes, Legends and Monsters charts its hair-raising history. It's an evocative, sharp-fanged tribute, full of thrilling detail and incisive input. “They were phenomenally important. They moved the dial,” says Benjamin Field, the award-winning director and producer behind the project. “There were no colour horror movies pre-Hammer. And contemporary horror is the way it is today because Hammer opened the doors to let them in.” Reinventing a genre made famous by Universal in the 1930s, Hammer scored huge hits including The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy, but also with sci-fi (The Quatermass Xperiment) and pre-historic epics (One Million Years BC). “Essentially they had a repertory company of crew and actors,” says Field, “who turned up time and again to make these films, films that were adored.” Field admits he came late to the party. “Growing up a child of the 80s, they just didn’t feature on my radar. In October last year, that all changed and I got introduced to Hammer. It was a real moment for me. "The first thing that I really noticed was how stylish it was... I saw The Curse of Frankenstein – a good place to start. Wow, it was stunning! The sets are glorious, the colour is lush and lurid. It’s an attack on the senses. The music plays a massive part of that, of course. It feels like a revolution from what went before, and it doesn’t take long to realise why Hammer took the world by storm." Hammer's HQ from 1951 to 1966 was Bray Studios in Berkshire, and the films would draw extensively on the grounds and, in particular, Oakley Court country house, for their gothic ambience. Crucial to the 50s and 60s heyday of Hammer was the pairing of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as, typically, a brilliant but misguided scientist and a shambling monster, respectively. The actors’ sparky chemistry and double-act charm was apparent when they were reunited in 1994 – the lovely picture below was taken for an RT interview published just a week before Cushing died. “The combination of having two incredible performers was essential for Hammer’s success,” explains Field, who adds that it was also partly a fluke. “Christopher Lee just needed to be a tall guy to get a part in The Curse of Frankenstein but the studio lucked out and then very accidentally got a guy who had great presence who could act. “Cushing had done work for the BBC, he was greatly admired, but prior to that he’d been a successful theatre actor. Lee was a great mime artist, another theatrical skill. Director Terence Fisher let the actors play the scenes out, cutting minimally. He kept them paired for as long as possible. It became a magic formula – the results were electric.” When Radio Times interviewed the stars in 1994, they defended Hammer's films from criticism. "Our way of doing these films elevated them above being shabby shockers," said Lee, "but the press still said the British film industry should not be represented by ‘films of this kind’. "Well, ‘films of this kind’ were made by the most successful independent production company in the history of British cinema and probably the world. Why are they still showing them, again and again?" "Exactly," agreed Cushing. "These films are still showing and new audiences think they were only made a couple of years ago. People come up to me and say, ‘Excuse me, are you Peter Cushing’s dad?' I say, ‘No, I’m his grandfather.' Today’s generation say they prefer the Hammer pictures because they left a great deal to the imagination. There was no foul language, no gratuitous violence and, in the end, good always triumphed over evil." The documentary also reveals candid contributions from some of Hammer's leading ladies, Madeline Smith, Martine Beswick and Caroline Munro, and from famous fans who also happen to be Hollywood directors: Tim Burton, John Carpenter and Joe Dante. “But sometimes,” says Field, “you find stars where you don’t expect to.” He refers to key Hammer figures like producer Anthony Hinds, make-up pioneer Phil Leakey, composer James Bernard and cinematographer Jack Asher, who “painted with light”. But then, team effort is vital to Field, a co-founder of the company behind the documentary, Deep Fusion Films. "The team you build around you are vital and I’m so glad that this film champions the Hammer team who built a legendary company from the ground up. I’ve done that using my team who have done wonders for me over the last few years. "It’s very easy to put praise on those who hold ‘star appeal’ but much like the documentary itself, I want to point the finger behind the scenes and highlight the amazing work of the researchers and crew that I work with tirelessly to pull off a doc of this scale." He name-checks Dick Klemensen and Wayne Kinsey, who helped pull the project together with their "encyclopaedic knowledge of Hammer". Of Hammer's legacy, Field continues: “Things really only started to have a downturn once the team started to split up.” He refers to the studio's tawdry, exploitative period in the early 1970s – one that coincided with a crumbling of censorship barriers, and the “monsters” of the documentary's title points to both fictional and real-life monsters. Field agrees, however, that during the Cushing/Lee era for which it is most famous, Hammer was prolific, with well-crated stories in which good conquered evil. "One hundred per cent – Hammer’s output during the heyday was immense. "They found a formula that worked and they made films with an intriguing balance of business acumen and creative productivity. But it was a balancing act. I firmly believe that Hammer was only able to have a heyday due to the crew they had with them at exactly the right time." Ultimately, he hopes that people will see the films in a new light after watching the documentary. “Hammer’s crew were just doing their job, but as far as I’m concerned they were defining the future of horror." Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters is on Thursday 31 October at 9pm on Sky Arts. Catch up on Now Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
As Stingray turns 60, we go behind the scenes of the classic sci-fi series that's still making a splash
Gerry Anderson's son Jamie on exploding tanks, love triangles and trans-media pioneering... Mark Braxton wishes Stingray a very happy birthday!
With the words "Stand by for action", a thrilling new children’s series launched on ITV on 4 October 1964. Stingray was a sophisticated puppet show created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who had given the world Fireball XL5 and would go on to dream up Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Joe 90. "Anything can happen in the next half-hour," we were promised – and it often did. Over 39 episodes, we followed the intrepid submariners of WASP (the World Aquanaut Security Patrol) and their encounters with undersea civilisations, mechanical fish, deadly plants and even the Loch Ness Monster. Spearheading their defence of Earth's oceans was the swift, atomic-powered combat submarine Stingray, which was designed by the show's associate producer Reg Hill. Gerry’s son Jamie Anderson tells Radio Times that the development made production company AP Films pioneers. "For the teams responsible for making the transition from black and white to colour, it was a massive pain in the arse!" A fact-finding mission to the States to learn from another studio working with colour resulted in the realisation, as Jamie puts it, "Oh God, we’re going to have to repaint everything, change everything! "So it was a huge challenge, but I think it became the 'unlock' to longevity. If they had shot Stingray and Thunderbirds [1965–6] in black and white, which everybody else was doing – mainstream channels and content at the time – it wouldn’t have had its long-term wins. "Thunderbirds wouldn’t have been designed so much around colour in terms of [the different] craft, there’s no way you’d have had Captain Scarlet – well, what’s the point in having Spectrum, it’s just in black and white! So it’s a real turning point." This, coupled with a step-up in the Supermarionation and special effects, gave the show staying power on repeat viewings, including on BBC Two in the 1990s. "That '90s resurgence was so key, and was such a testament to the work done by the whole team," says Jamie, 39, managing director of the Anderson Entertainment company that is building on Gerry’s legacy. "I was a kid among other kids who were finding out about those shows for the first time. They thought that it had been made for them recently – there was no concept that they were already watching a 30-year-old piece of television!" AP Films shot Stingray in new studios built inside a converted factory unit in Slough. After setting the preceding show in outer space, it was a conscious decision to bring the action down to earth. "There is so much about the deep sea that is essentially a mirror to deep space that it still has the kind of mysterious elements of Fireball XL5, while still making it more on your doorstep," says Jamie. "There’s something very distant about looking up at the stars, and yet as a kid you’ve been to the beach, you can imagine just looking out there and seeing Stingray bobbing along the horizon or a Terror Fish diving out and back in again. It brought the mystery of space but the relatability and proximity of the seas." Setting the show in water did have its drawbacks, however. "In the early days, one of their tanks burst and flooded the studio," explains Jamie. (A cartoon from the mid-'60s drawn by special effects director Derek Meddings depicts Gerry with a cigar in the end of his snorkel, and Sylvia dressed as a mermaid.) Wedge-shaped water tanks were built for sea-surface model shots to give a permanent ocean horizon, and both models and puppets were suspended on wires for underwater scenes, which were filmed through a tank filled with small, different-coloured fish to give the illusion that all the action was happening under the waves. There was a greater emphasis on action. "It is all about conflict, so the stakes are raised from the opening titles onwards," says Jamie. "They were grabbing audiences and keeping them hooked in a new way." Character dynamics were also more complex compared with previous series. There was Commander Samuel Shore, head of the WASP HQ Marineville, who had been seriously injured in a submarine crash; his loyal daughter Lieutenant Atlanta Shore; Lieutenant 'Phones' Sheridan; and the Stingray submarine captain Troy Tempest, whose affections are torn between Atlanta and Marina, a mute woman from the underwater kingdom of Titanica. "The love triangle always surprised me because it doesn’t feel like a kids’ thing," confesses Jamie. "You’re not that interested in grown-ups being icky and 'eughhh' when you’re seven or eight years old, but it was still interesting. "That’s the precursor to the dual-level writing of Thunderbirds, with the stuff that appeals to Mum and Dad and stuff that appeals to the kids. "But even with the father/daughter tension between Shore and Atlanta, there’s an added element there... and again with the slightly comedic duo of [undersea king] Titan and [Surface Agent] X20, you can see in Stingray the prototype relationships that you’ll go on to see in Thunderbirds." Some sequences, like the skating scene below for the festive special A Christmas to Remember, look impressive – and defy explanation – even today. Jamie says that this was all part of the impetus to make the puppets more lifelike, even as Gerry and Sylvia moved toward their dominant goal, which was to make live-action series and films. View oEmbed on the source website "There must be a point at which the puppeteers' drive to do amazing, lifelike things would have been approaching Dad’s desire for live action. And whether he was pulling them a bit further and pushing those boundaries, or whether it was a happy place between the two parties, I’m not sure. "But how the hell did they do that skating sequence?! It would be tough doing it now." Two major contributors to Stingray were composer Barry Gray and special effects maestro Derek Meddings, who, according to Jamie, tackled the show and those that followed with drama, gravitas and a serious approach. "Neither was approaching this as a kiddies’ show, neither was trying to do stuff on the cheap — they were both well funded and supported, which really helped — but they both brought an experimental and intellectual rigour to their different roles. "I don’t think I would take Barry’s work as seriously without the visuals and the drama that Derek brought, and Barry’s work elevates all of Derek’s as well. "And though they probably very rarely spoke to each other except at end-of-shooting parties and stuff, they were, bizarrely, working hand in hand and pushing things forward. "At the time, I very much doubt there was anybody else in the British film industry who was doing as much as Derek was in special effects, or as much as Barry was to elevate what was ostensibly a kids' show. "Theoretically, having a massive soundtrack on a puppet/miniatures show could potentially make the visuals seem smaller somehow – and yet everything Barry did there was perfect, elevated every element and never made it seem small. He was an incredibly smart guy." View oEmbed on the source website Stingray is still big business for Anderson Entertainment, 60 years on, with a brand new overarching story for books and audio called Stingray: Deadly Uprising, while there are comic anthologies and a tech manual in the pipeline. But the model for such extensive promotion lies deep in the Anderson ethos – Stingray and the shows that came before and after it were promoted lavishly in TV Century 21, a comic that was loved by fans in the '60s and is still spoken of with reverence six decades on. "We’re now talking about multi-platform trans-media projects and shared universes," says Jamie, "and, well, they were doing it from 1964 onwards! "They got into the habit of teasing new series as they were coming up, which was an absolutely genius thing, with [merchandising mogul] Keith Shackleton and [writer/editor] Alan Fennell being ridiculously smart and avant-garde in their approach. I think that the cross-pollination was amazing." So, does Jamie have a favourite character? "X20 as the comedy foil is so key that he has to be up there... The Peter Lorre voice, the ridiculous caricaturing and the quivering wreck to mighty Titan was such nice, light relief." As for his top-rated episode, "Unusually, because it’s so silly, I think it’s probably The Loch Ness Monster. It’s one that I recall watching so many times as a kid and there’s something exciting about actually taking Stingray away from its usual place and ferrying it around – and then the reveal of what the monster actually is. "There’s something really multilayered about that that I really enjoyed... I like those episodes where you slightly break the format." But then again, Stingray was and remains a big favourite among fans. Nick Williams, chairman of appreciation society Fanderson, says, "Quite rightly, Thunderbirds is seen by many as the pinnacle of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Supermarionation productions. "But Stingray is, in many ways, just as fantastic. The 39 half-hour adventures with Troy Tempest and crew as they tackle underwater foes were superb, perilous, but fun. "As with all things Anderson, Stingray is a technical tour de force. Perfecting filming the models and puppets 'underwater' was a masterstroke, and, of course, being filmed in colour meant longevity that the series's predecessors wouldn’t enjoy." Richard Farrell, editor of Andersonic magazine, adds, "A kids’ puppet series set in an extension of the early '60s Cold War, complete with underground bunkers, unprovoked missile attacks and spies lurking on an adjoining island, might on the face of it seem somewhat grim. But Stingray’s sheer elan makes it one of the Andersons’ most watchable productions. "Its colourful action is more than enough to keep youngsters rapt, but that soundtrack and some genuine humour between such lovable characters has imbued it with a broader appeal and an enviable longevity." In common with many other Anderson TV adventures, there was no real conclusion. But that was because the production team was always hoping to make more, explains Jamie. "The hope was always that it would continue for another series and they’d just keep on and on – but [media mogul and financier] Lew Grade always wanted something new." In this case, the successor proved to be Thunderbirds. Jamie adds, "Stingray is another solid bit of warm nostalgia, with action and adventure that persists, thankfully. It’s the first of the Anderson shows that maintains a ‘passing between generations’ element, where parents and grandparents share it with future generations. It’s the blend of the colour, characters, effects and music that has made that possible." A condensed version of this feature appears in the latest issue of Radio Times. The original series of Stingray is available on ITVX; merchandise is available at shop.gerryanderson.com; a weekly Gerry Anderson Podcast co-hosted by Jamie Anderson is released every Monday. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guideto see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
As Play School turns 60, one of its star presenters looks back on the pioneering preschool show
Derek Griffiths on the thuggish cockatoo, his least favourite toy – and a show that is remembered with fondness around the world.
As the legendary children's programme Play School turns 60 on 21st April, a pang of nostalgia will touch the hearts of millions. The show ran for 24 years from 1964 and would have been an introduction to television for countless young viewers. The weekday BBC2 series, which later earned itself a daily BBC1 repeat, offered simple preschool pleasures such as stories and songs, games with the famous toys (Big and Little Ted, Humpty, Jemima and Hamble) and indelible tunes such as the main theme and the rotating clock. Via the square, round or arched window, it also opened up the world for tots by showing short films of biscuits being made in a factory, for example, or kite-flying in China. Creator Joy Whitby introduced her programme to Radio Times readers with the words: "Are you an exhausted parent of a child under the age of five?" Although the programme had a robust educational core, Derek Griffiths tells Radio Times that it was a "relaxed format". The actor and musician, now 77, adds, "I enjoyed entertaining kids and adults, so Play School was a family show for me." Griffiths worked on the show for ten years from 1971. A pair of presenters would guide viewers through each day's activities – the hosts were constantly rotated and included many other future stars such as husband-and-wife Eric Thompson and Phyllida Law, Carmen Munroe, Brian Cant, Johnny Ball, Toni Arthur, Carol Chell and Floella Benjamin. So how did Griffiths get the gig? "A presenter, Miranda Connell, saw me in panto and told me I was right for Play School. Sadly I didn't know of it! The producers then saw my show and I was invited to audition." Griffiths brought an impressive range of skills to the show, from amazingly flexible physical acting to comedy and mime – his influences include Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau, Jerry Lewis and Jacques Tati. View oEmbed on the source website He also had great musical gifts – Griffiths is a singer, writer and multi-instrumentalist. Was he able to bring any of his ideas to the Play School table? "I wanted to bring jazzy pop songs in, to make kids dance around the room. And I heard that they did!" Other shows to benefit from Griffiths's dexterity were the spin-off series Play Away, not to mention Cabbages and Kings, Ring-a-Ding!, Heads and Tails and Bod, whose theme tune remains one of the most fondly remembered from the 1970s, and where Griffiths composed all of the individual character themes. "I had bought a penny whistle, and wondered how I could introduce it as a lead instrument..." View oEmbed on the source website Bearing all this in mind, his answer when asked what people would be surprised to learn about him is itself surprising: "Shyness." But back to Play School, and his inanimate co-stars. Hamble was always his least favourite toy. "Because she reminded me of a BBC boss I did not get on with!" Humpty, on the other hand, was one of the more popular toys, and made the front cover of Radio Times in 2018, along with two Clangers and Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton. Any bêtes noires among the Play School pets? "The cockatoo [who was called Katoo]! It was a thug and bit everyone, and caused ructions by screaming during recordings. I failed miserably in teaching it to swear." Are there any funny moments, perhaps not recorded, that Griffiths remembers from his time on the series? "Dear Sarah Long and I were dressed up as tramps. Towards the end of the show, we said our goodbyes, and there was a pause. I said in desperation, 'Let's take all our clothes off'... another desperate pause, then stiffled guffaws from the crew." So who were the most mischievous members of the cast? "Johnny Ball and I together were a riot! They soon separated us." Sarah Long and Johnny Ball are pictured with Griffiths in our first picture. And being seen in such a niche role clearly caused him no difficulties in finding work later on. "I was an actor, doing plays, films, TV dramas, and was warned doing Play School would prevent me getting adult work. It didn't." Indeed, aside from his film and theatre work, Griffiths went on to appear in Casualty, Holby City, Doctors, Coronation Street (as Freddie Smith), Midsomer Murders, Small Axe and Unforgotten. And retirement doesn't enter the equation: "I've just finished voice recordings of a comedy drama series with Toyah Willcox [The Space Race]." He also helped the wonderful Floella Benjamin get a job on Play School. Now a Baroness, she is to receive the Bafta Fellowship at the Television Awards in May. "Flo and I were in a West End musical, The Black Mikado. She sang, and had a captivating personality. I told her to apply. She did." Griffiths enjoyed working with all his co-presenters. They were, he says, "a very talented and warm, supportive family of artistes". And why does he think memories of the show are conjured up with such affection? "Play School to this day is remembered with genuine warmth around the world. I’m always stopped and thanked, even on the edge of a desert in Namibia, where I was forced to sing a rendition of my song Rikki and His Aeroplane!" Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what else is on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
On the 60th birthday of Vision On, we celebrate a creative powerhouse that inspired a generation
The BBC's weekly wonder wasn't just a much-loved entertainment show, it also launched countless careers and gave us Pat Keysell and Tony Hart and Aardman and Sylvester McCoy...
Vision On was always a gem in the children's TV schedules – and now it's a diamond, 60 years old on 6th March. Between 1964 and 1976 it entertained children – and let's face it, their parents – with a quickfire and visually exhilarating mixture of comedy, creative ideas, multi-format animations, mime and viewers' artworks. It was also (full disclosure) this writer's favourite show as a youngster. For my short-trousered self, Tuesdays were the highlight of the week. In school break times, my best friend and I would draw pictures related to, and inspired by Vision On, in excited anticipation of that day's new episode. In later years other friends and I would try to mimic the show's high-speed comedy hero, The Prof (more of whom later), and his gag-packed comedy adventures, in our own Super-8 films. No two episodes were the same, and each one was lapped up by its eager audience, but it wasn't just viewers who appreciated the series' genius. It sold all around the world, from Australia to America, and from France (where it was called Déclic) to Israel (where its title translated as "Magic Magic"). It won the Prix Jeunesse International award in 1972, as well as BAFTAs for children's programmes in 1971 and for specialised series in 1974. Joan Bakewell, writing in Radio Times in 1976, said the programme was proof that "grown-ups don't need to be confined to an adult ghetto. I find Vision On one of the most upbeat, original and refreshing things I ever see on television." "It was a wonderful programme to work on," says Vision On cornerstone Clive Doig, who adds, "We were a very happy team." A friend of Radio Times, and supplier of the magazine's Trackword puzzle since 1980, Clive worked on 96 episodes of Vision On plus some specials, mostly as a director but on the final series as producer. "Back then quite a lot of people didn’t know how television was made," says Clive, 83. "At the time a chap I was speaking to over the fence at the bottom of my garden, said, 'I love that programme, I watch it every week.' I said, 'Actually I direct that' and he said, 'What do you do for the rest of the week?' He thought I only worked for half an hour a week!" Clive is steeped in classic British television. He joined the BBC straight from school in 1958, operated a camera on Hancock's Half Hour and was a vision mixer (an "instant editor" cutting between the different cameras) on the first series of Doctor Who and Dad's Army, and also The Likely Lads. He joined Vision On when he was on attachment to children's programmes. Devised in 1964 by BBC producers Ursula Eason and Patrick Dowling, Vision On evolved from a series called For the Deaf, which had run for 12 years from 1952. "The resident director did his back in so Patrick asked if I would like to direct the fourth episode of that series," explains Clive. "I said yes I would, and he then said you can direct the lot. I directed every one since then. "That first series that I worked on in 1971 won a BAFTA, and then in 1974 for the best specialised series, beating Dr Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, which was quite extraordinary!" Though originally intended for the hard of hearing, it was also, as Clive puts it "for everybody else because it was so visual". As Radio Times described the programme on day one, it was a series "where pictures speak louder than words". Input came from far and wide. "We had a little cottage industry of regular contributors: animation artists, film directors who made little visually interesting films, many stop-motion film contributors... "One film source was a couple of students and their names were David Sproxton and Peter Lord. Patrick and I saw their output, a line-drawing animation of a kind of Superman who did all sorts of surreal things like moving a manhole and then, having moved the manhole, he just falls down it. "We said, 'Yes, please be regular contributors.' When I was watching one of their rushes of this Superman, at the end of it they'd tagged on another little bit of film. It was stop-motion of a cube of plasticine that turns into a cat, which then ate its own tail and disappeared. So I really loved that. They did a few more and one was a character that became Morph... And of course the superhero was called Aardman. They were super, super-brilliant." Aardman Animations, as they became, would be the world-conquering producers of Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and many other hits. Other fixtures of Vision On included comic-strip-style mini-stories involving captioned conversations between Humphrey the Tortoise and a little girl called Susanne; or between The Burbles, invisible creatures who lived in a grandfather clock; the animated unearthings of The Digger on a construction site; and a cartoon cuckoo who was always losing the numbers from its clock. For the hearing demographic of the audience, all of these were enlivened by clever use of signature tunes. "Gillian Rose was in charge of music," says Clive. "She was one of the PAs and she chose most of the music for all the little bits of film we had, so we had a music PA, we had a props PA, we had all sorts..." And so to the core team of Vision On... Pat Keysell had made her TV debut on For Deaf Children. Having trained in mime at the Central School of Speech and Drama, she introduced that art form to the show. And she resigned as a production assistant in the BBC drama department so that she could go freelance to present Vision On, for which she used sign language as well as speech to bridge the gap between hearing and non-hearing viewers. If Vision On had catchphrases, Keysell delivered them both: "Now, it's time for The Gallery" before the popular two-minute exhibition of viewers' art, and "I'm sorry we can't return any of your pictures but we give a prize for all those we show" after it. "Wonderful Pat Keysell! Pat was terrific as the front presenter," says Clive. "When I was first assigned to Vision On, she had been there for many years. I think she really enjoyed breaking away from a rather plodding, stultified programme [For the Deaf] into a madcap programme of surreal ideas and visual comedy. "She was basically – maybe in a motherly sort of way – taking the viewing children on a journey of visual delight. Her manner and presence, with the slight madness of the rest, was reassuring to the viewers. She was a delight to work with, never upset or having thespian needs of favour or grandeur." View oEmbed on the source website Keysell assisted with the show's mime sequences, first with Ben Benison and when he left, future Doctor Who star Sylvester McCoy – billed in those days as Sylveste McCoy. "Ben was a great mime artist and he decided to leave the show because he felt television wasn't big enough for it – he was a stage mime and therefore television kind of constricted his movements. It was a reasonable request. "Patrick said we've got to fill his place, do you know of anybody? And I'd just been to see Ken Campbell's Roadshow outside the Tower of London where a young man was playing around and his name was Sylvester McCoy. And I brought him into the show. "If you left the camera on Sylvester he carried on acting and playing whatever it was. Some people would get to the end of what they had to do and that was it and they'd turn away. Leave the camera on Sylvester and he'd go on for hours [laughs], so it was quite difficult to edit him down!" McCoy at first played a character called Epep, or Pepe, in a backwards world that Keysell discovered through the studio mirror. Clive recalls, "To ensure Epep looked perfectly normal walking and acting backwards, we had to shoot it backwards – turning the film camera upside down, and then reversing the double sprocketed film – so Pat had to perform all her scenes actually backwards. Even opening and closing a gate was a tremendous acting task, and she was quite brilliant. What I required her to do was so difficult, but she never complained!" Of course, critical to the success and longevity of Vision On and its spin-offs Take Hart and Hartbeat was the brilliant artist and educator Tony Hart, who died in 2009. "Everybody absolutely adored Tony," says Clive, "and they should have had a memorial programme to him from all the artists and directors and architects and designers who were influenced by his type of art. And his type of art was amazing in the fact that he could take any little objects and turn them into great paintings. "We also used airfields, as well as beaches in Weston-super-Mare, Sandown and others, and the fire-station at Bounds Green [north London], shooting from cherry-pickers, cliffs and towers for his amazing huge drawings with white-lining machines. All he needed was the corners of the frame. We put little pegs in for the corners of the frame that the camera was taking from its tower or from its cherry picker or from the top of a cliff. He drew absolutely amazing drawings just from visualising what the angle was. "For some of his beach pictures he rode a motorbike with a rake on the back – the camera positioned on a cliff – and he drew a full-scale mermaid. The sea came in and washed it away, which was wonderful because that was his principle: his art was in the making and the finished article was only shown for five seconds on TV and then what happened to it? It was destroyed. It was kind of destructive art, as it were, although they were all so beautiful. "He was absolutely superb to work with. Anything you asked him to do, he would do." That included the programme's logo. By mirroring the title, Hart came up with a creature called Grog – neither grasshopper nor frog, but perhaps a cross between the two! "A lot of people didn't realise that it was actually the name of the show, reversed." Completing the cast of regular players was the late Wilf Lunn, who engineered astonishing Heath Robinson contraptions that went through many motions merely to, say, open a door or ring a bell. Clive, who is speaking at Lunn's memorial in Huddersfield next month, says, "I wouldn't call him mad but he was an eccentric, amazing inventor. "His models were just extraordinary as well as the machines he did especially for Vision On and later for Jigsaw and also for my programme Eureka. His studio was the most amazing collection of bric-a-brac and wonderful designs… "There were extraordinary events. At the end of the long [sequence of] machinery, balls whirling around, there was always an explosion or a balloon popping. Sylvester was watching one time and Wilf had warned the bang would be large. The cameramen were OK with their cans on but Sylvester put some cotton wool into his ears. "The bang went off, we finished the recording and Sylvester took the cotton wool out of his ears and put it back in the box. Wilf said, 'Where did you get that?' and he said, 'From that box.' And Sylvester had put guncotton in his ears!" One spark from the machine and his ears really would have been burning! "That's not a story that safety officers would like to hear!" Humour was a big ingredient in Vision On and keeping the gag rate high on a weekly basis was David Cleveland in the gurning, lab-coated guise of The Prof. Week after week his mini masterpieces of surreal comedy were a major highlight and employed all kinds of trick photography. Film-maker turned film archivist Cleveland, now 81, says a minute on screen could equate to a whole day's filming. Take a look at this clip and you'll appreciate why: View oEmbed on the source website "Our films were really cartoons but with a real person in real surroundings," he tells Radio Times. "They were all done in spare time and at weekends. The Prof stories were thought up at meetings in my house amongst much laughter between me and Tony Amies, and later with David Wyatt when he joined in 1971. Then we would go away and work on whatever we had to prepare. "Tony was the wizard behind many of the special camera effects and writing gags, and David Wyatt joined us to help make the films as we had to make so many to fulfill the annual contract. They took a lot of time!" Seeing his first Prof sketch on Vision On in early 1968 gave Cleveland the confidence to ask out Christine Smith, an employee from the BBC Film Library in Ealing. They married in 1969 – she made many of the props for The Prof – and are still living in Manningtree, Essex, just a mile from where his films were shot. "We took it very seriously and wanted to get the best we could with the limitations we had. But yes, we laughed when I fell over, or an explosion did not go off properly. Only last week I met a person who said he laughed out loud when I knocked the world sideways with a big hammer and fell out of the screen – he had seen it on the internet. I loved doing them. "I think I was inspired when quite young, watching all those silent film comedians which I had in my film collection at the time – Chaplin, Keaton, Larry Semon – and fantastic Hollywood cartoons as well." Cleveland is proud of his involvement in Vision On, or "brilliant programmes" as he calls them. "They were so watchable and not dependent on the spoken word – just visual fun. I wish there were more programmes like that. I was so lucky to have that chance to make funny films, and stayed with it until Vision On was retired in 1976. Clive Doig took us on to make Cid Sleuth films for his Jigsaw programme – where David Wyatt and I concentrated more on comedy which I wanted to do." It was a joyously creative time for creator and viewer alike. The affection with which Clive Doig talks of the show makes it clear Vision On holds a special place in his heart. "I don't think it should have finished in 1976, it could have gone on for at least another four or five years." Nevertheless, afterwards Clive was able to introduce his fondness for words and puzzles to series including Jigsaw, for which he won a BAFTA in 1981, and to create educational shows such as Beat the Teacher and, with Jeremy Beadle, Eureka. He remains amused by an incident when Vision On won the Prix Jeunesse in 1972. "I arrived a day late at the festival in Munich. Monica Sims, the BBC's head of children's programmes, had written my name as a delegate for the reception. I had long hair, a beard and a cap and I was given a lady's brooch, which said 'Fraulein Olive Dong'. I pointed out that I was not of that gender, and a German said, 'This is your badge, you wear it!' The way Monica had written my name the 'C' looked like an 'O' and the 'i' of 'Doig' looked like an 'n'." Olive Dong has been Clive's pseudonym ever since. Finally, why does he think Vision On is so fondly remembered by the public, even 60 years later? "I suppose because of its surreal, anarchic visual feel. It was something that children could also copy and do themselves. You know, 'Let's take some of Mummy's lentils and rice and make a picture – and make a mess!' – because they've seen it on TV. "And of course viewers loved seeing The Gallery, where we had something like 3,000 pictures sent in a week, a whole team would go through them and then we would be sent about 50 to 100. "Then Patrick, Tony and I would go through that 50 and choose the 12 that we'd show on the programme. And the thing about Tony is that he could always tell if there had been an adult hand in the two-year-old's painting!" Vision On, Clive Doig and The Prof are featured in the documentary From Andy Pandy to Zebedee: The Golden Age of Children's Television. It's available to watch now on BBC iPlayer. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our full TV Guide and Streaming Guide, or visit our Entertainment hub for the latest news. Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. 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What's pink and white and now gold? It's Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss, and he's celebrating his 50th birthday
He's the most important, the most beautiful, the most magical... saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world. And Emily still loves him.
Some children's characters are like TV treasure. Only 13 episodes were ever made of the 1974 series Bagpuss, each one lasting just 15 minutes, yet the show occupies a cherished place – a comfortably plump cushion, if you will – in the hearts and memories of all who watched it. And now those warm feelings that the mere mention of Bagpuss evokes are golden – the stripy cloth cat with a love of storytelling and sleep turns 50 next Monday. His influence stretches far and wide. In 1999, Bagpuss came top of a poll to find the nation's favourite BBC children's programme (and in 2001, he was fourth out of 100 greatest kids' shows in a Channel 4 countdown). He has appeared on postage stamps, he was referenced in the sitcom Spaced and was the title of the first episode of comedy drama Man like Mobeen, and Lady Di was seen to be watching the show in royal drama The Crown. To mark the anniversary, Radio Times magazine spoke to artist Emily Firmin, the show’s human star and daughter of the co-creator, about its lasting legacy. "I was just the right age to bribe with sweets to appear in it," laughs Emily, over how her seven-year-old self came to be involved. She’s the youngest of six daughters of Peter Firmin who, with his friend Oliver Postgate under the company name Smallfilms, made revered programmes for children including Ivor the Engine, The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Pogles’ Wood, Clangers and, of course, Bagpuss. She played the little girl called Emily – seen in sepia photos at the start of the show – who owned the shop Bagpuss & Co, which "didn’t sell anything". Instead, it displayed lost or broken objects that were then repaired by the marvellous moggy and his friends – rag doll Madeleine, Gabriel the banjo-strumming toad, wooden woodpecker bookend Professor Yaffle and six mice carved on the side of a "mouse organ". As the toys awoke, the sepia yesteryear magically became a colourful present. Bagpuss and Co was essentially The Repair Shop 43 years early; while the show itself prefigured Toy Story by two decades. Everyone remembers the "once upon a time" that conjured up what look like Victorian days, the autoharp glissando that cast a spell on its toys, and our hero’s gigantic yawn. Also the jaunty folk songs that helped tell the stories and were sung by Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner. All the introductory photographs were taken at the Firmins' home in Kent – the shop front was in fact the bow window of the dining room. "My parents’ house was pretty much a farm film studio," says Emily, "so my dad worked in an old cow shed and Oliver’s studio was a pig sty, originally. Next door to him was my stable, where I kept my horse. People ask, 'What was it like?' Well, that was what it was like. I didn’t realise people lived in other ways! "I do remember being taken out with my mum to go and choose some very ugly Victorian shoes, which are no more, but the dress that my mum made is in The Beaney museum in Canterbury." It’s one of many props and models in an exhibition of Smallfilms’ work that Emily helped put together. "Even Basil Brush’s understudy is there. Not many people realise that my dad made the original Basil Brush." Emily’s mother, Joan, was a vital contributor to the series, too. "Oh, yes. These days she’d be like an art director, or art consultant. I mean, my dad did most things, but my mum had a super-duper electric sewing machine at that time. "In the Owls of Athens episode, there’s a big tapestry that she made with it. She advised my dad on how to do some stitches for making Bagpuss and various other things. And knitted the skins for the Clangers." So, were all the Firmin daughters asked to help out with the different productions? “All my sisters helped out in various ways, like colouring in or making things for certain shows, but I didn’t really do anything. Though, I remember delivering something to Blue Peter once, and helping Dad on another show with Floella Benjamin. We’re all arty, but I didn’t get to help in that way." And did appearing on television make things awkward for Emily at school? "Then, most people didn’t have a colour television. Even our school, because I went to school about a mile down the road and they let me go home to watch myself in colour. Even though I was in ‘black and white’ anyway [laughs]. "At secondary school more people knew about Bagpuss, but I don’t think it really affected me [in that way]. He’s been in my life since being seven, so I’ve grown up with him." One particular perk of her upbringing sounds like heaven for a child. "When Oliver would get the rushes back from Kay Laboratory in Red Lion Square in London, we’d get cups of tea and go and sit on his old car chair – he’d taken the back seat of a car out and put it in his studio – and we’d all sit around eating my mum’s cake and drinking cups of tea and watching unedited first shows!" Does she have other memories from those days? "My father’s studio was very messy – he’d pay me to pick up all the bits of screwed-up paper. We all had little jobs like that. "Also, going in the barn and the Clangers set being there, and I'd be looking after my horse. I could hear Oliver working on sound next door, which was odd. But that was the norm." But back to the birthday boy. In a 2015 interview, Peter told Radio Times, "Bagpuss was a character that I had in my head. I’d drawn him and named him, but I hadn’t got a role for him. "It was Oliver’s idea that cats sit in shop windows and bask in the sun… then we asked, 'Who should run this shop?' and he looked around and there was Emily, aged seven at the time, and he said, 'You’ve got her already, she’s there!'" Does Emily have any favourite episodes? "I do love the Hamish McTavish and the prickly porcupine – I love that one, and Old Uncle Feedle. I mean there are so many, they’re all good." Peter and Oliver were great believers in recycling for their programmes. Gabriel the toad was made from Peter's mother's old coat, the Clangers' doors were made of squashed foil plates, and the Iron Chicken was constructed from Meccano. "I suppose it was just using what was around," says Emily. "The barn had pots of boxes of bottle lids in case he could make a wheel from them. Even Oliver’s use of Meccano for his cameras is amazing. I think he actually made his own first camera, years ago." Though Oliver, Peter and Joan are no longer with us, their work lives on – the first generation to enjoy all the Smallfilms has passed their enthusiasm on to their children, and so on. So, how was Emily influenced by her parents? "In every way. Both of them. My mum was a bookbinder and taught paper crafts. And now, we’re papier-mâché artists: I don’t live far from my parents’ old house with my partner Justin Mitchell and we have a company called Total Pap, where we make three-dimensional papier-mâché pictures and 3D mini sculptures." You can find them on Facebook and Instagram. "We’re all pretty arty in my family. My dad had a printing press – we’ve got two and my sister’s got one. Dad's was an 1861 Albion Press, ours is from 1865 and enormous so we can do really huge prints, which we do regularly. We have exhibitions of our work and we permanently exhibit some of it in the local restaurants in Canterbury. "Mum and Dad also encouraged us to try ideas out. And my dad had a love of nature – we’re big dog-walkers, into nature, things like that. I still walk in 'Pogles’ Wood'. I love going up there. It’s actually Blean Woods at the back of Oliver’s old house. It's a very nice forest." Emily is referring to a stop-motion Smallfilms series that first aired between 1966 and 1968, following a short, six-episode series simply called The Pogles that was first broadcast in 1965. It was shot by Oliver outdoors, but changing weather conditions plagued production, so Peter created a woodland scene indoors. "Not many people remember it – there are a few people, my age group, that do remember it. But I suppose it’s going to fade out of history eventually." Emily and her partner also do work for Hospices of Hope, which provides palliative care services in south-eastern Europe – it was supported by Postgate, and it continues to be by various Bagpuss projects. "Oliver funded the building of a hospice wing in Romania, but he didn’t want to go because he wasn’t well enough. So Justin and I volunteered to go out and be there for the opening, and we’ve supported Hospices of Hope ever since. "They started in Romania and they’ve got a hospice in Serbia, Moldova... there's a lot of teaching, training people in those countries, and I think they’ve been helping Ukraine, as well." It's just one more example of the amazing legacy of Bagpuss. So, what is it that Emily thinks makes the show so special? "It’s a many-faceted programme where all the different characters introduce whatever it is that they’ve found – or I’ve found! "It’s stories within stories, with a lot of imagination. Everyone loves the programmes. If they grew up with them... they’re real fans!" Who knew a saggy cloth cat could work such magic? But clearly he still does. And it's not just Emily who still loves him. There are two episodes of Bagpuss and a Timeshift documentary, Oliver Postgate: a Life in Small Films, on BBC iPlayer; the series also features on Radio 3's Words and Music on BBC Sounds. The series is available on Blu-ray and DVD, and to stream on BritBox and ITVX. Details of a crowdfunding project to publish Bagpuss: the Complete Scripts by Oliver and Daniel Postgate are available on Unbound. A range of commemorative products includes special 50ps, stamps and plushes – visit Coolabi. If you're looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide or visit our Drama hub for more news and features. Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Meet the puppeteer who gave life to Captain Scarlet and Lady Penelope
Mary Turner worked on pioneering programmes from Thunderbirds to Joe 90. Here she explains the process – and shines a light on the shows' legacies.
Sixties series like Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons were special then and are remarkable today. They were programmes of impeccable craft, brimming with technical ingenuity and packed with edge-of-seat thrills. Video, DVDs and streaming platforms like BritBox have kept the love going for these models-and-puppet shows from husband-and-wife team Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. There are now even popular weekly repeats of Thunderbirds on Talking Pictures TV. As Scalextric launches its slot-car version of FAB-1, Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls-Royce from Thunderbirds, Radio Times Magazine spoke to puppeteer Mary Turner, now 90, about bringing “Lady P” and other classic characters to life. Mary’s interest in the craft began after the war when her artist mother signed up for a puppetry class at the local polytechnic: “After a term she came home with this little figure on strings, a marionette, and I was amazed at what it could do. I think I was caught up on it then.” Mary studied sculpture at art college, and taught for two years. “I saw on the television that this series had started called The Adventures of Twizzle. That was Gerry’s first one [in 1957, with Arthur Provis; together they formed AP Films], and it was quite different from any other puppet series that had been on, more innovative and generally much better. And I thought, that’s what I’d like to do.” Her friend and fellow member of the Puppet Guild Christine Glanville, who worked at AP Films, told Mary the company wanted puppeteers for a new show called Torchy the Battery Boy. Mary got the job, and she also began to sculpt the character heads, from the next project onwards (western series Four Feather Falls in 1960). To begin with, the programmes were made in the ballroom of a house overlooking the Thames at Maidenhead, but as techniques were refined and the shows became bigger, the production company moved to new premises in nearby Slough. It was when Gerry married Sylvia and they made shows together that the public really paid attention, from Supercar and Fireball XL5 to Stingray and Thunderbirds, whose secret agent Lady Penelope and her cockney chauffeur Parker were an instant hit. And it was Mary who helped create the elegant Lady P. “Sylvia was the one interested in the characters and characterisations of the puppets, whereas Gerry was more to do with the special effects and technical side. She would describe what sort of character she wanted and then you would do your best to follow her direction. "At some point we’d paint up the plasticine head that we’d modelled and put it on screen to see if there was anything that could be done to improve it." In other words, the puppets had a screen test just as live actors would! Mary adds: “Sylvia was very fussy about Lady P. She wanted a sophisticated lady; I modelled what I thought would be best, and I’d take it to her and she’d want a bit done here and there. “Eventually we were both happy with it, so it was modelled up and made in fibreglass, as they all were. Sylvia got a wig made at a proper wigmaker’s, we put the wig on and we both looked at it and decided that it was definitely starting to look like Sylvia herself!” So Mary puts paid to the story that Lady Penelope was based on Sylvia, and says she just ended up resembling her. "Yes, there are lots of stories around... One I heard was that she was based on a local hairdresser. Well, I’d never been to the hairdresser there anyway! So it wasn’t based on Sylvia but it became like Sylvia." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2023/11/G65XCP-e88dd29.jpg" width="2279" height="1609" alt="The Television Society Silver medal awarded to "Thunderbirds", the television puppet series, for work of outstanding artistic merit in front of the camera, is shown by Gerry Anderson and his wife Sylvia at the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, London." title="The Television Society Silver medal awarded to "Thunderbirds", the television puppet series, for work of outstanding artistic merit in front of the camera, is shown by Gerry Anderson and his wife Sylvia at the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, London." /> Mary believes Sylvia’s input to the shows should be credited as much as Gerry’s. “So much was due to her. He took centre stage for some reason. In the early days when we were making the films it was more that men were the head of whatever you happened to be doing.” Mary and her colleagues brought the characters to life from a puppet "bridge" constructed above the sets. "The puppets were quite heavy but that was just as well because when the strings are eight foot long and you’re high up above them, they need to have a bit of weight.” And occasionally, things could get a little hairy on the bridge. “Sometimes there had to be a fire in the shot and the special effects men would come in with these oily rags, set fire to them and you can imagine the smoke that came up into our faces. We weren’t given masks or anything like that!” Overall, she says, it was a happy environment to work in: "Especially at the beginning. We were young and keen and anxious to do our best." The company name changed to Century 21, and Supermarionation series kept coming, with Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Joe 90 and The Secret Service (whose hero Mary modelled on its voice artist, Stanley Unwin, famous for his gobbledygook language). But the transition from caricatured puppets to more proportional ones wasn't liked by everyone. "I didn’t, personally. They were no longer puppets, they were more like mannequins, but then Gerry and Sylvia wanted to get into live action and I suppose that was more appealing to them to go in that direction." The strings were finally snipped on these unique productions in 1969. A sad day, as Mary recalls: "I had to go into the workshop, there were three or four working in there, and tell them that we were all going to be made redundant. I think they’d guessed anyway by that time. "The studio had to be cleared out and put back to what it was, which was a shell of a factory, and things were left lying around. The manager who was left there to clear the place out said, 'If there’s anything you want here, take it because it will only be thrown away.' And there were a whole lot of puppet heads on top of a sort of indoor roof. So we collected up a few." Among those that Mary took home were Lady Penelope and Gordon Tracy from Thunderbirds, and Captain Scarlet. Post-Supermarionation, Mary teamed up with the company's cinematographer John Read and they embarked on animation projects using a rostrum camera, before returning to puppet work on the popular children’s shows The Adventures of Rupert Bear (1970), Here Comes Mumfie (1975–8) and Cloppa Castle (1978–9), with Mary now directing. She later worked on the 1986 Jim Henson fantasy film Labyrinth. "Just for a short time. It was very interesting, but I preferred working on the series. Because it was such a big thing and there were so many people about, you didn’t have a definite thing to do." But back to Thunderbirds. Mary is impressed by the Scalextric FAB-1 slot car – “It looks very good. The detail is nice” – and says of the Anderson adventures she worked on: “They were successful because each series was that much better than the ones before. And they were something really different from what other people had been doing.” Things came full circle in 2015 when Mary got to work on Thunderbirds once more, on three new episodes made in the traditional way, in the same road in Slough that had been home to Supermarionation's heyday. And she was back on the puppet gantry in 2019 for an episode of Endeavour whose storyline involved a puppet company. On both she teamed up with her former colleague, original Thunderbirds director David Elliott. Elliott, who died earlier this month, once said: "Mary was the puppeteer. Anything you wanted, no matter how awkward, and boom – it was done." Film-maker Stephen La Rivière, who orchestrated the puppet work on both projects, is equally impressed with Mary's talents: "The Supermarionation puppets were curious theatre/film hybrids, with long wires, which meant that although they looked like stars, they behave like divas. Mary has the magic touch to make it look like no effort at all. "Even more impressive are her sculpting skills – imbuing these oddly proportioned characters with heroism, beauty, and charm. With a long career, Mary is this country’s most successful puppet talent." WIN A FAB-ULOUS PRIZE BUNDLE worth £263.99! Two RT readers will each receive: a new Scalextric FAB-1 Slot Car (worth £53.99), with working lights and Lady Penelope and Parker, signed by Mary Turner and David Graham, who provided the voices of Parker and Brains; a Scalextric Knight Rider vs Back to the Future Racing Play Set (worth £160); and a Thunderbirds Complete DVD Box Set (£50). To enter, go to radiotimes.com/thunderbirds – closes 11:59pm Friday 15th December. (You can order the Slot Car from https://uk.scalextric.com/products/thunderbirds-fab-1-c4479) Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
As Blackadder turns 40, Howard Goodall reveals musical secrets of classic comedy
The composer and broadcaster on playing with history, blasting off into the charts with Red Dwarf, the difficulty of musicals - and writing for streaming.
Seeing the word "Blackadder" conjures up a whole battalion of memories... the snivelling schemer with a savage haircut, a petulant-child queen ("Pooey!"), giant turnips, and increasingly desperate attempts to flee the Trenches... But linking them all across time is an instantly recognisable signature tune from a master of the genre, composer and broadcaster Howard Goodall, who now looks back on this colossus of comedy – which turns 40 next week – and his initial ideas for it. “I thought the stylistic touchpoint was probably Errol Flynn as Robin Hood," Goodall tells Radio Times. "You know, heroic 1950s film version of a person – very grand and pompous and over the top”. But although the series first aired on 15 June 1983, Goodall in fact wrote the music in 1982 for the pilot The Black Adder, which was recorded in front of a studio audience on 20 June that year but never transmitted. “It was kind of a first part of the theme everybody knows now," adds Goodall, 65. "When we came to do the actual series a year later, John Lloyd the producer said it felt like it needed a second bit”. Goodall was already known to its creators Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson (also the star) – they met at Oxford University and together toured student revues in the late 70s. His introduction to TV music came via satirical sketch show Not the Nine O’Clock News in 1980. “After about the third programme of the first series Rowan came home one day – I was living in the same house as him in Kilburn – and he said, ‘We want to do a song but we’re rubbish at our instruments, could you come and help us.’ So from that point on I came in and we did a song pretty much every week. “I continued to work with Rowan on most things and then the idea came up for The Black Adder. They asked if I’d be interested in doing it. Obviously, yes, because I didn’t have much else on, being a young struggling composer in Kilburn!” After the medieval first series, the show leapt forward in time for its next three series, so how did Goodall approach each dynasty? “It was never straightforwardly ‘of each period’. While [Blackadder II] was slightly Elizabethan in its style and instrumentation, we added elements that were not at all Elizabethan. Slightly wacky, and the singing at the end was accompanied by an electronic rhythm machine. "And when we got to the Regency period [Blackadder the Third] we had an electric guitar." When I admit that this is my favourite, Goodall says, "It was slightly influenced by Paul Simon’s album Graceland, and the sort of South African groove that became very fashionable at the time. But often what happens with these things is that you the composer think, 'Oh, people will get this reference' and mostly they don’t [laughs]." Asked for his favourite version, Goodall says, “I get the impression from other people that the final thing I did with just a piano and the bass drum for the last Blackadder in the trenches is the most emotional of all of them. It’s hard not to like that a lot...” Was that scene, in which the troops go over the top, difficult to get right? “The truth is that when they finished filming it in front of the studio audience, there was a bit of a ‘What do we do with this?’ I remember John Lloyd talking to me about it. I said, ‘What if I were to do something slower and more reflective with the tune?’ And he said, ‘Why don’t you record it and we’ll see if it fits with what we’re trying to do.’ "So I recorded it without having seen [the final visual treatment]. When they put the music onto the slow-mo and the poppies, it was very effective and moving… Also very last-minute-ish! It was like four days after the studio and one or two days before it was transmitted." That final moment of Blackadder Goes Forth undoubtedly paved the way for the saga's enduring popularity, by making it live long in the memory. And in 2019 the show came fourth in a RT poll of industry experts to find the greatest British TV sitcom. The importance of getting the music right leads us onto his beautiful, pastoral setting of Psalm 23 for the rural sitcom The Vicar of Dibley. "It’s probably of all my themes the one that’s had the biggest life outside of the programme," he says. "Choirs perform it all over the world, it’s often performed, I’m sad to say, at funerals, and for many people under a certain age it is the tune of The Lord Is My Shepherd that they know, whereas when I grew up there were two or three others. "It has become the prevalent one for a certain generation of people. That’s obviously because of the amazing relationship with the programme but it’s performed by choirs around the world where they don’t know the programme. That’s a lovely thing to have happened." So how did that clerical engagement come about? "I went along to chat with the team in a rehearsal. I discussed a lot with them what it was, and because of my background as a chorister, and the fact that I’ve written choral music, I felt relatively at home with that environment. But what struck me about it was-- basically the community is the joke. And no one wanted to make fun of the fact that she was a vicar, that she believed in God or anything like that. So my suggestion was that we go slightly the other way. "Generally, with the comedy themes I’ve done, I’ve tried not to crack another joke, not to do 'funny' music. The music I feel has to be: if it was a drama of the same subject but with no gags in it, that’s what your music would be.” He adds, "For me the best theme tunes often come slightly at an angle to the thing you’re doing. You think of MASH, it’s not really what you’re expecting." Another of his big hit themes is for the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, which for two series had a big, grandiose trumpet and organ piece at the beginning and a "Phil Spector-ish" pop number at the end. A song he wrote for one episode, with lyrics by the show's creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, called Tongue Tied, even got to number 17 in the UK charts. "It was never my idea that that should be released," says Goodall. "They just did it. I remember going to my publisher who said, 'Did you know we let Danny [John-Jules, who sang it as the Cat] and Craig [Charles, who played Lister] release that single?' I asked, 'How’s it doing?' 'Well go down to HMV, I think it’s in the top 20!'" View oEmbed on the source website But then, in his younger days, Goodall had harboured pop-star ambitions: "When I was a teenager I was in a band that had an album and a record deal that was never particularly successful. It’s a bit of a cliché, when you’re 17 in a band at school, that you want to be a pop star." It hardly matters. TV themes and incidental music (you'll also know Mr Bean, The Thin Blue Line, The Catherine Tate Show and QI) are just one string to his bow. There are also musicals, from the Ivor Novello Award-winning The Hired Man, co-written with Melvyn Bragg, to Bend It like Beckham. What does he enjoy about writing those? "I think music and a story can be a fantastic combination. And you can often do things in a musical you couldn’t really do in a play... What you’re always trying to do in a musical is bring another dimension that isn’t there in the thing you inherit. It’s an interesting challenge and when it works it’s a wonderful thing to witness. "But I do these shows knowing that you’re taking on a big, risky form. Some really break through and become something of great importance to millions of people. But there are so many musicals written at any one time other than those big blockbusters. Some crack through, some don’t and some work on a different level... it’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing." So it would seem – he currently has two in the works! "When you’re the composer of a musical, and sometimes the lyricist as well, you get much more say what happens with that music than you would if you were writing a film score, where you’re in the service of another team. When you’re doing a musical, the composer has much more clout, and that’s quite nice although it’s more responsibility as well. It’s a two-edged sword." Then there are his acclaimed documentaries, much loved by Radio Times readers, including How Music Works, The Story of Music and, in 2017, Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution – though he explains that these may become a rarity. "It’s hard to say who would now commission a programme like that because the landscape has changed. I’m not whinging, it’s just true. In the 80s, 90s and early 2000s when I started making my programmes, BBC2, and after that BBC4 and Channel 4, used to make music documentaries for normal viewing, like you would a history documentary or a natural history programme. That was one of the things they did. "Now you don’t really have that as the part of the normal diet of those broadcasters. What you have instead are single film documentaries that the big streamers make from time to time, which are on one subject. Persuading Amazon that I want to make a documentary about some other album, the first thing they’d say is, 'Is this going to work in America?' Sgt Pepper is quite unusual in that respect as it’s something I understand because it comes from Britain and I know the people involved and the music and the musical sources incredibly well. "But my rule always is: it’s not what you like, it’s whether you think there’s something new to say about these things. For example, I’ve always wanted to do something about Songs in the Key of Life, which I think is an absolute landmark. There are documentaries about it but nowadays, trying to get permission to have access to that material is phenomenally difficult. It’s not that they don’t want to give you permission, it’s that they’re being asked every day of the week. It’s more hassle for them to say yes and do deals than it is just to say no." For the sake of Stevie Wonder fans and pop-doc enthusiasts everywhere, let us hope he is wrong. But in any case, there's no rest for the Goodall: he's currently writing music for a "thrillerish" series. "When you do a film that’s 110 minutes long, that may be, at maximum, 30 minutes of music. But if you do a modern streamed series like the one I’m doing at the moment, it’s [adopts robot voice] nine hours of content! It’s a huge amount of work. So I’m doing this and nothing else until September [laughs]." But back to "the birthday boy": Blackadder. It's always a thrill for comedy aficionados to imagine what it was like being in the room where it happened. Howard Goodall doesn't have to imagine – he attended those infamous rehearsals. He says: "I was very friendly with everybody and knew them by then quite well. But I remember thinking that once the larger inner-core cast got settled, i.e with Stephen and Hugh as very important parts of it alongside Rowan and Tony and Tim, while it was fantastic to have such a group of people working together in one room, it was – I would say, creatively on the verge of chaos, because everybody was suggesting gags the whole time!” Goodall is clearly proud of his association with such a funny, witty and ultimately moving series, for which he also added incidental music, but only occasionally. As he sums up, "I’ve done a lot of comedy in my life, and my general rule is: if people are cracking gags, get out the way!" Howard Goodall appears in Blackadder: the Lost Pilot at 9pm Thursday 15 June on Gold. Blackadder: a Cunning Story is at 9pm on Friday 16 June on Gold. Seasons 1-4 of Blackadder can be found on BBC iPlayer. It is also available on BritBox - you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. Take part in the Screen Test, a project from Radio Times and the Universities of Sussex and Brighton, to explore the role of television and audio in our lives. Try Radio Times magazine today and get 12 issues for only £1 with delivery to your home – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Underground, overground, Wombling free at 50! It's a big birthday for TV's eco-minded heroes
As BBC's tidy-minded Wombles celebrate their golden anniversary next month, Mike Batt looks back on a very furry, very musical, success story.
“They’re furry, they collect rubbish, they live under Wimbledon Common...” Fifty years ago, Radio Times introduced The Wombles to readers ahead of its debut on 5th February 1973. Based on books by Elisabeth Beresford, directed by Ivor Wood, narrated by Bernard Cribbins and with the catchiest of theme tunes by Mike Batt, the programme and its endearing stars immediately caught on with the public. Their encounters with everyday objects like umbrellas and tyres, as though seen through the eyes of children, were invested with warmth and humour, not to mention a dash of social commentary. After two series and 60 short episodes, there was a big-screen outing in 1977 and a '90s comeback. And the broad sweep of characters meant that every young (and old) viewer had a favourite, from practical Tobermory to brainy but shy Wellington, bossy Bungo, ever-hungry Orinoco, athletic but not-the-sharpest Tomsk, kindly Madame Cholet and the old and very wise Great Uncle Bulgaria. So it was a case of "today, Wimbledon, tomorrow the world", while the Wombles' gift for making good use of the things that they find proved to be admirably pioneering. Composer Mike Batt, meanwhile, extended the franchise hugely by turning the recycling burrowers into a band – they enjoyed six top-20 hits in two years. Radio Times caught up with Mike, who is still working at 73, to look back on the popular programme and assess its legacy. The Wombles’ enduring popularity shows what a far-sighted concept it was in the first place. You must be proud of your connection with the project? I am very proud of my association with the Wombles project. It brought me my first hits and frankly, made me a wealthy young man after five years of playing “dodge-the-bank-manager”. Had we not had these hits, the characters would still be much loved, but would never have become an abiding national treasure. So my role in igniting “Womble mania” and adding a certain amount of my own whimsicality into the characterisations is something of which I’m proud. How did your involvement come about? I was freelance, after leaving my job as head of production (A&R) at Liberty/United Artists, aged 19. I made my living doing arranging, and also TV jingles. One day my jingles agent said, "There’s a production company making a kids’ TV series for the BBC, called The Wombles." They asked to see me. I went along and met Ivor Wood, the genius animator and creator of the look of the Wombles – they had looked simply like teddy bears in the first book. He asked me for a tune. I suggested perhaps a song might inject a bit of fun and give some info about the characters. He thought that might be worth a try. What aspects of the story/characters fed into the music? I loved the characters. That’s why I embraced them so readily. I liked their green ethos, their Britishness, the way they walked... To me, they Wombled along, even though the first book never used the word as a verb until I did, with "Wombling free". They were only "free" because it rhymed with "...are we"! The rompy sort of rhythm of the first song comes from my general impression of them as friendly, furry, eccentric types. Did you ever meet The Wombles' creator, Elisabeth Beresford? I met her many times. She and Max, her husband, and two kids lived in a very posh house, just off Wandsworth Common. Max had been a star TV presenter, tennis commentary being his speciality. His star was waning and Elisabeth, or Liza as everyone called her, was becoming the star of the family now. To keep him happy, they made him chairman of their company, Wombles Ltd. He was an austere figure. I visited Liza in later years at her home on the island of Alderney. Their wealth had not been well managed and she lived a simple life. But she retained the twinkle and joy of the Wombles even in old age. Bernard Cribbins and Ivor Wood were also major factors in the show’s success. How would you describe their contributions? Bernie and Ivor were crucial to the success. Ivor took the book drawings and redesigned the characters – later to be tweaked by my mum when she made the band’s costumes. His “take” on them and the pacing of the animation were so clever and “right”. Bernie did the same with the dialogue. He once told me that almost all the dialogue was ad-libbed, because Liza’s scripts were very minimal. His little grunts and sighs, and remarks that tumbled out as he voiced them, were half the charm. It made it witty, and appealing to grown-ups, too. What was your finest pop-star moment as a Womble? So many great memories but I think the absolutely finest moment was not until Glastonbury 2011 when we did a full, one-hour live set on the Avalon stage. Not mimed to a track but fully live, with three or four “humans” in civvies to add to the live sound. We shocked the organisers by drawing a massive crowd, at least twice as big as expected; bigger than the Pyramid Stage. It was so well received even by audience members who weren’t alive in the '70s. It was exhilarating. I was always Orinoco, the lead singer. It was incredibly hot wearing a costume, particularly in humid August in New York. And it was a challenge trying to stay in character and ignore the sweat streaming into your eyes. Such fun though. Do you have a favourite song? My favourite song changes every day. Maybe an obscure one like Nashville Wombles, or the James Bond Womble song To Wimbledon with Love, from the albums. For readers who aren't on social media and won’t have seen your Pinned Tweet, could you recount your story of pulling into Wimbledon Tube station in 2018? I was on the Tube one night on the way home to Wimbledon. Some young drunks got on, and it was a little bit intimidating. As we pulled into Wimbledon one of them started singing, "Underground, overground..." (They didn't know who I was.) I said nothing, but felt better! Was there a specific moment when you decided your future would be in music? I was totally unaware of being musical until I was 10 and I started picking out tunes on an old piano my dad bought. I am completely self-taught, except a Polish kid at school taught me to play the accordion and so I was given a second-hand one for Christmas. Although I played piano twice a week in the pub at 14 (illegally) and joined a semi-pro band, it wasn’t until just before I left school after A-levels that I decided to be a singer, songwriter and composer rather than go to Sandhurst to join the Army! You’ve worked with so many stars and so many orchestras. Does any collaboration stand out in your memory? It might seem odd because it’s not with a singer or even my own material, but conducting the recording of the first-ever 20-bit digital performance of Holst’s The Planets suite with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was a big musical buzz. Also I was invited to conduct the LSO on several occasions in the '80s – magical memories for me. So I guess the highs are mostly orchestral. But I’ve loved all of it. So far! What are you currently working on? My main project at the moment is Croix-Noire, in collaboration with Jean-Charles Capelli. We’ve cast ourselves as characters in a drama, in which he plays Ace Hansel JR, a down-at-heel superhero, and I play old Colonel Talbot, his enabler and guardian. We commissioned a novel from the brilliant David Quantick, and created a comic-book series describing a very dark red light district in France, where “our” characters fight evil characters in search for the Unholy Grail so they can rule the world! We’d like to get it made as a TV drama. But it’s great to have the comics, album and a video game... Maybe it’ll be the next Doctor Who! Does the urge to create ever really leave? Never. I think I am as potent now, or more, than when I was in my mid-20s. My list of projects to get done before I kick the bucket gets longer the older I get. If you asked me to write a symphony tomorrow – and I wish you would – it would be on your desk by next Wednesday. And finally, why do people love the Wombles so much? I think the British have always loved the absurd – Goons, Python etc – but the Wombles are lovably absurd. Cuddly and crazy. I think that’s why we like lazy young Orinoco and grumpy old Bulgaria. We are looking at ourselves, in a way! If you're looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide or visit our Drama hub for more news and features. Try Radio Times magazine today and get 12 issues for only £1 with delivery to your home – subscribe now. 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The Detectorists are back for a Christmas special after a five-year break – and its stars are buzzing
Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones on an "un-turndownable job", Roman gold, real treasure and the superpower of kindness...
Detectorists occupies a special place in the hearts of its fans. Discovering the show was like unearthing a gem in the schedules, so the return of the BBC’s BAFTA-winning sitcom for a feature-length special is like a pot of gold to its myriad admirers. Funny, sometimes sad, full of quiet wisdom and underscored with a love of the countryside, Detectorists flew in the face of more aggressive modern comedies. But after three small but perfectly formed series, it looked like we’d said goodbye to treasure-seeking metal-detecting chums Andy (Mackenzie Crook) and Lance (Toby Jones) in 2017. The final scene saw the friends showered with "pennies from heaven", having at last stumbled upon a sparkling cache, while Andy and his teacher-wife Becky (Rachael Stirling) won their dream home at auction. It seemed like a decisive full stop on the part of Crook, who is also the show’s creator, writer and director. So what changed his mind? "I tentatively said that that was it at the end of the third series because we left them in such a lovely place, and I thought I wouldn’t disturb them again unless I thought of a good story… And one occurred to me." That and seeing your friends again? "Well exactly. It’s a bit of a cliché that actors at the end of a project say they’re going to miss their friends but yes, I was going to miss Lance!" Filming for the special in and around Framlingham in east Suffolk concluded in September, but there’s a reunion of sorts going on for RT’s interview, with Crook, 51, joining in via Zoom and Jones, 56, live in the room. Their camaraderie, a mix of respect and ribbing, is delightful to watch, and theirs is clearly a prized friendship. So how did Jones react when he got the call? "I was surprised because I felt we’d ended it, as MacKenzie says, beautifully, but I knew that he wouldn’t do it unless there was a good enough idea. He took Rachael out for lunch first – which I still hold against him – then he took me for lunch and said Rachael’s up for doing it, thereby putting emotional pressure on me to say yes as well! "Then he told me the story and I thought it was brilliant. It is an un-turndownable job… there isn’t any problem with this show because the scripts are so good. That makes it very easy to say yes to." The actors, who are both married with two children, are in constant demand professionally. Having produced three chapters of his other countryside project Worzel Gummidge in 2021, Crook rejoined Mark Rylance for this year’s stage revival of Jerusalem. And Jones has added to his impressive list of roles in big franchises, from Harry Potter to Jurassic World, by starring with Harrison Ford in the new Indiana Jones film, set for a 2023 release. How do the Crook and Ford tales of raiding the past compare? "Very different," says Jones. "The action sequences in Detectorists are much lower-key and you’re part of a smaller crew. But in terms of good-looking leading men, I think it’s probably about the same, really." Crook and Jones had been in a handful of the same films but never shared a scene together until Muppets Most Wanted in 2014, playing museum guards. "That’s when it occurred to me that we be would good together as these detectorists," says Crook, who had first jotted down the story idea in 1999. "Mackenzie mentioned that he’d written something with me in mind and then he sent it to me," adds Jones. "He sent me the kind of dialogue we do under the tree [the usual location for their characters' tea break in the programme] and it was just so laugh-out-loud funny. I remember calling my wife and saying, 'You’ve got to read this dialogue,' and she was laughing her head off." I ask about Ricky Gervais, in whose sitcom, The Office, Crook played Gareth Keenan from 2001–2003, and who also appeared in Muppets Most Wanted, and I'm surprised by the answer. "Ah, do you know what, I haven’t seen him since then, which is approaching a decade ago. I’ve no idea, to be honest, if he’s seen Detectorists." But back to the Detectorists Christmas Special, where we catch up with Andy, Lance and the Danebury Metal Detecting Club, five years later. The fortune we saw them discover has gone elsewhere, and a wedge is driven between the pair over how to explore a new permission to detect on farmland. "I love the characters so much and it’s painful to put them in any horrible situations," says Crook, "but you have to have some sort of jeopardy for the drama. And they’ve always had this slightly fractious relationship, needling each other. They’re coming at the hobby from slightly different angles." The actors are sure they’ve never fallen out, although Jones adds, "He’s normally so incredibly accommodating and he’s always got about 200 per cent more things going on in his head than I have. All I have to think about is doing the scene and he’s got to think about shooting it. I’ll sort of go… 'Don’t you think it would be funny if I did this..?' but a couple of times I’ve got the sense that maybe I’ve just asked once too often!" Crook, who metal-detects in his spare time, holds up to the computer screen his favourite find to date, from the third century: "It’s a piece of Roman gold that I found on a farm where we filmed the third series – I don’t know if it’s a pendant or an earring – but it’s pretty crumpled. It was declared treasure but no museums were interested, so I got it back. It was valued at £100, somebody objected and it was revalued at £50. Bargain price, nobody wanted it!" Hobbies aside, are they like their characters? "Andy is really an exaggerated version, a sadder version, of myself," says Crook, "so I’m kind of playing myself, in a way." Jones chips in, "He’s got a low satisfaction threshold [both laugh]. Probably lower than you!" And what does Jones admire or dislike about Lance? "I admire his intelligence, his loyalty. Occasionally he strays but nonetheless I think he’s a very good friend. I think they’re both hopeful people. "Lance is pompous but not hugely pompous. He’s not a big head. He’s a bit of a know-all, but that’s a feature of the club: everyone is a bit of a know-all. That’s what the club should be called, the Know-Alls." Detectorists is such a fun, relaxing watch that you imagine the same is true of filming. Any gigglers among the cast? "There’s not a big problem with corpsing on set," says Crook. "I don’t know if that means that my scripts aren’t funny enough [Jones laughs]. "But Pearce Quigley [who plays Russell] is hilarious and whenever Toby and Pearce get together, I’ll look over and they’ll both be doubled over, gasping for breath, unable to speak…" "He’s just a naturally very, very funny actor," explains Jones. "Really everyone’s just laughing in admiration." But what about the public response to the show – did that surprise Crook? "It did. It’s been a sort of slow reaction, always building, and people are still finding it. It seemed to be a big comfort to people during lockdown, so it started as a cult audience of probably mainly metal detectorists and now it seems to have a big old fanbase." "What’s really interesting is when you go away on holiday," adds Jones. "I was on the TGV in France and this guy said, 'Welcome to our country' and I said 'Thanks very much' and he went, 'Detectorists!' [mimes a thumbs up]. I assumed it might be shown in Europe but several people came up to me in France and said they absolutely loved the show. I think it’s got a reach internationally." I suggest that there’s a lot of kindness in the programme… "Yes, thank you and that’s deliberate," replies Crook, "because I think it’s a superpower, almost. Kindness is underrated. If people were kinder in general, the world would be a better place." In the new episode we learn that Andy and Becky (Rachael Stirling) have lost Becky’s mum, Veronica. She was played in the show by Stirling’s mother Diana Rigg, who died in 2020, and one moving scene where Becky takes stock feels completely real. "It was important to me and it was important to Rachael to at least acknowledge it. She’s acting, obviously, but I could tell she was very upset at the same time, so I knew I’d got it on that first take and I didn’t make her do it again... They’ve had a tough year, Andy and Becky, for that and other reasons, and when we join them they’re on their way out of that tough period." The show's rich blend of personal dramas and intrigues from antiquity have a wide appeal among the great and the good. Digging for Britain host Alice Roberts makes a brief cameo in the Christmas Detectorists – but are there other famous fans? "I got a message from Anthony Hopkins, who loves our show," says Jones... "Stewart Lee wrote a really lovely email," adds Crook. What about Harrison Ford? "I wouldn’t be surprised," says Jones, "he just can’t stop with the archaeology." It's interesting to learn that the show wasn't always intended as a relaxed, sun-kissed amble through the countryside. "I don’t think I set out for it to be this sort of calm tonic that it’s turned out to be," Crook elaborates. "I found some very early notes I’d written, way before I even started writing scripts – metal detecting in the real world happens in the autumn and the winter months when there are no crops in the fields, so it’s a bleaker, colder hobby – and in these original pages of dialogue it was a kind of a bleak drama I suppose. "When we came to film the pilot it was on the hottest day of the year, and we realised we would be missing a trick if we didn’t do it in the summer." It turned out to be a masterstroke. The show features stunning photography of fields and trees and insects – but then, the world around us is clearly important to Crook: “One of my main passions is the natural world and environmental issues, and if it makes people appreciate the countryside then that’s a good thing. "It was the same with Worzel Gummidge. In that I could push the environmental message a bit further because that was kind of what it was about. But yeah, if I can just show some pleasant shots of the English countryside, that’s a bonus.” View oEmbed on the source website Tied in with Detectorists' subtle eco-message is the series' clever theme tune by Johnny Flynn. Did Crook have any input to that? "I was listening to his music while I was writing it and there was a track called Lost and Found, which I thought was really apt. I wanted to use that and then we found that using previously published music was really expensive, so he suggested he’d compose a theme tune. "I basically told [Flynn] the concept of the show. Two days later he came back, he left a voice message on my phone with this song perfectly formed, and with the lyrics coming from the point of view of the treasure underground calling out to the detectorists. I thought it was a work of genius, I still do. "It still amazes me what musicians can do because I’m not a musician myself, and it seems like alchemy to me. He and Dan Michaelson have composed a bunch of new tracks for this new episode as well." The musician's art may have eluded Crook but his projects speak of many talents. As his books for children prove, he's also an accomplished artist. In last year's Radio Times Christmas issue he shared an exquisite prop he had made for Worzel Gummidge. But Crook brushes off any suggestion that he's some kind of polymath: "If you want a list of things I can’t do, my wife will tell you..." [Jones laughs at this] So apart from each other, what else makes the actors laugh? On TV, for example? "Curb Your Enthusiasm, answers Jones. "I tend to rewatch that. And I find Asim Chaudhry really funny." "Charlie and Daisy May Cooper," chips in Crook. "Stath Lets Flats, Harry Enfield’s thing he’s just done about 100 years of BBC is an amazing piece of work – The Love Box in Your Living Room. It’s so dense with gags, I’m going to have to watch it again to pick up on them." And what's next for them both? Jones: "A Sam Mendes film, a thing on Netflix called The Pale Blue Eye and Indy." Crook: "Frustratingly I've got two projects I’m really excited about but neither of them are greenlit yet so I can’t really talk about them. One’s a historical film I’m hoping to direct and one is something I’m writing." But having now whetted our appetite for more Detectorists after this one-off, will it ever return? "I’m going to give the same answer I gave at the end of the third series: probably not," says Crook. Dot dot dot? "I guess dot dot dot... I mean where can you go after this?" Jones helps him out: "Movies… a franchise…" Crook warms to the theme: "We always talked about the live stadium show [laughter from both]." As the programme they enjoy making so much goes to prove, riches take many forms. And as to what constitutes real treasure, the stars agree. "Family has been a kind of treasure," says Jones, "in the sense that it’s an incredibly stabilising force for good and tempers the kind of craziness of my job… That and getting really well paid!" "My children are amazing me as they have done for the past 19 years," adds Crook. "They’re both teenagers and just bursting with ideas and creativity. My son’s at film school and is in a couple of bands. He’s found his tribe and he’s become a man… that’s amazing to me every single day." View Green Video on the source website Detectorists is on Boxing Day (Monday, 26th December) at 9pm on BBC Two. Seasons 1–3 are all on BBC iPlayer. If you’re looking for something to watch, check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide or visit our dedicated Drama hub. The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times View From My Sofa podcast.
David McCallum looks back on The Outer Limits, The Man from UNCLE and Sapphire and Steel
The 90-year-old actor has played time travellers, fought rogue spies and gone up against spectral shenanigans.
It's not every day that Radio Times gets to talk to someone with a 70-year screen career. And he's about to discuss some very famous TV and film titles indeed... "I have so many memories, so many people and places," David McCallum tells RT from his home in New York. Early film roles for the Glasgow-born actor included well-known British fare like the thriller Hell Drivers and Titanic drama A Night to Remember in the 1950s, while TV hired him for two roles in The Outer Limits, the hugely influential US sci-fi anthology series, in the '60s. "I was in Los Angeles – I hadn’t been there for very long – and because I was completely unknown there, I was looking for work. Joe Stefano, who wrote Psycho the Hitchcock movie, he created the [majority of season one's] Outer Limits scripts. It was shot on location at MGM but the studio work was all done in a very tiny little studio right off Sunset Boulevard, where we did all the interiors." In the 1964 episode The Forms of Things Unknown, McCallum played Hobart, an inventor who toys with time ("It was an interesting idea"), but the year before that, in The Sixth Finger, he was Gwyllm, a miner who becomes a guinea pig in an experiment to speed up human evolution. It was a part that required increasing amounts of make-up. "I would get there around four in the morning and Fred Phillips the make-up man and I would work until 8 o’clock putting on all that prosthetic. I could work until I had to take it off because it was too heavy. "We worked with another man who was instrumental in making the prosthetics for military personnel who, in various overseas wars, had lost limbs." As the script was running short, McCallum made a suggestion in a scene where the enhanced Gwyllm is flipping through books and then proceeds to play complex Bach pieces. "I remember the line was 'Playing the piano is a simple matter of mathematics and manual dexterity'!" In fact, McCallum might have pursued a career in music. "My father and mother were both musicians. I became an oboe player and my father offered to send me to Paris, to the Conservatoire, and study the oboe. By that time I was hooked on the stage and said, 'No, I’m going to go on the boards.' And I did." He has returned to science-fiction quite a bit over the years, fronting the US series The Invisible Man, co-starring in ITV's Sapphire and Steel (more of which later) and appearing in episodes of Babylon 5 and SeaQuest. So does he like it as a genre? "I’m more of a practical man," McCallum replies. "I was very happy to get to work and get paid for it, pay school fees and insurance, you know. This is the life of an actor, particularly in the early years before you get a little better known: your main concern is to make enough money to keep the family running. "Fortunately I married a young lady who was more talented than I was [his second wife, model and actor turned interior designer Katherine Carpenter] and so we shared the burden together and we’ve had a very successful relationship. In fact, we’ve been married for 55 years." But back to 1963, a year that ended up being a busy one for McCallum, with the release of the classic war film The Great Escape, in which he played “dispersal” expert Eric Ashley-Pitt. Does he have any outstanding memories? "Yes, the Odeon Leicester Square… the front rows of the upper circle all reserved for cast and crew. We sat there, that enormous red curtain parted, with Elmer Bernstein’s music playing… it’s a moment I can remember as if it was ten minutes ago. I mean, imagine you’re in a film like that and you’re seeing it, and everybody else is seeing it, for the first time. It was quite amazing." McCallum couldn’t quite escape PoW camps – he went back inside for the BBC series Colditz, which began 50 years ago. "Again it was a wonderful thing to play the part and he was a very interesting guy, the man that I played [RAF officer Simon Carter, based on real Colditz inmate Flight Lieutenant Dominic Bruce]. Pat Reid wrote the book on which the series was based – it was all very gung-ho and hail-fellow-well-met... "There’s a new book that’s come out [The Prisoners of the Castle]. It's a detailed study of Colditz and tells you all the terrible things that were going on between the individuals who were actually incarcerated and everything that the Germans and the war effort were doing at that time. It was an eye-opener to read that. "But back then, when I went to visit Colditz, it was in East Germany, so that was quite interesting and dramatic." Speaking of the Cold War, McCallum was already a huge star in the '70s, thanks to the spy series The Man from UNCLE (1964–8), playing Illya Kuryakin, a Russian agent to Robert Vaughn’s American Napoleon Solo. So what quantities of fan mail are we talking? "Oh, huge sacks of it. Obviously we couldn’t possibly deal with it ourselves, there was a whole department back then. "It was before social media and silicon chips, so it was practical matter of opening envelopes… the studio took care of it but I believe they got more fan mail than most." And presumably, he was recognised everywhere after that? "Yes, oh yes, I totally lost my privacy." Illya and Napoleon were very different characters who blended incredibly well. Was that the case off-screen with Vaughn? “We worked together and we went to our separate lives and that was it. I think I went out to dinner once with Robert. He invited me because he was a health food nut and used to go to a very early health food restaurant and I was dreadfully sick the next day. I thought, 'Health food is not for me, I’m going to eat my bacon and eggs.' I’m in my 90th year so whatever I’ve been eating seems to have worked!" Another great TV pairing was with Joanna Lumley in the supernatural series Sapphire and Steel, which ran from 1979 to 1982. Was that an enjoyable experience? "Enormously, because I got to meet Jo and Jo’s now a good friend. But what is very interesting in that relationship – six degrees of separation and all that – is that Joanna has a son and Katherine and I have a son, Peter, among other children... But there is a set of twins on this Earth, two ladies, and James in London, Joanna's son, was dating one of the twins and Peter here in New York was dating the other one. Now if that’s not a coincidence! So I think Sapphire and Steel had a life of its own and that’s one of the little comments that was coming down from an ESP place!" Sapphire and Steel is a chilling series that many enjoyed without fully understanding it. Was that the same for McCallum? “It was in the beginning but then I talked to Peter [Hammond] who was writing it and Shaun [O’Riordan] who directed it and I said, ‘My mother’s cleaning lady, Mrs Puttock, used to say she loved watching Sapphire and Steel but she didn’t understand a word of it. And I said the scripts from now on have to be made Puttock-proof. It’s terribly important that she understands it.' "In the family vernacular whenever I get a script that’s confusing, I say [to the writer], 'You’ve got to make this Puttock-proof.' And then of course I have to explain about my mother’s cleaning lady!" But perhaps McCallum's most successful series is the one he’s been in for 20 years: NCIS. "I have two shows left on this contract. I’ll be going out [to shoot it in California], health permitting, if and when they need me. I have a feeling it’s going to be the last two shows of the season. Usually they like to have everybody in those." And yet McCallum has mixed emotions about the work... "Travelling is not quite as easy but more importantly than that, when I get there I know very few people because the show of NCIS that I did with Mark Harmon [Leroy Jethro Gibbs] and Cote de Pablo [Ziva David] and a whole bunch of them, they’ve all moved on to other things. So when I go there it’s like being in a different show [laughs] and it doesn’t quite make sense any more. "But I have a wonderful relationship with my assistant Jimmy Palmer. Brian Dietzen [who plays Jimmy] is a wonderful actor. He’s just been a rock, a tremendous guy to work with." So is retirement not a word in his vocabulary? "Well Katherine retired many years ago but she’s still working. We both… retirement is a work in progress, shall we say!” The Outer Limits: The Complete Original Series Blu-ray Box Set will be released on 12th December and is available to pre-order now. All 34 episode of Sapphire and Steel are available to stream on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here.
John Duttine on 1981's The Day of the Triffids: ‘I do bump into people who say it scared the pants off them!’
Duttine on the BBC's acclaimed adaptation of the classic science-fiction story, the collapse of society... and the secret of Triffid power!
The BBC’s 1981 adaptation of the John Wyndham novel The Day of the Triffids is back! It's now on BritBox for a new generation to enjoy, as well as existing fans, enabling Radio Times to reappraise this acclaimed TV drama. The six-parter generates unease from the first moment, with the main character, Bill Masen, in hospital with bandaged eyes and everyone around him witnessing the spectacle of a meteor shower that will blind most of the world's population. Masen has worked on a farm where Triffids – mobile, carnivorous plants – are cultivated for their oil. But the poison from one of their stingers got into his eyes, hence being operated upon to restore his sight. On removing the bandages, he discovers a global catastrophe... Over the years, the intelligence of Wyndham's stories has been much admired and there have been many adaptations of his books – a 1962 film of Triffids plus another TV series in 2009, while The Midwich Cuckoos has only recently been serialised by Sky. But few have caught the public imagination quite so forcefully as the BBC's 1981 drama. Radio Times caught up with its star, John Duttine, to talk about the show. John, how did you react when you were first approached about the project? I was very excited. I was working at the BBC at the time so I was aware that it was doing the rounds. Then I was suddenly asked to go and see Ken Hannam, the director. Had you read the novel, or any John Wyndham, beforehand? That sort of science-fiction wasn’t my cup of tea, as it were, but I did get into it after that. It involved a lot of location work... It was great to get out and about. What I do remember is being able to film in the city of London at the weekend, when there was nobody about. Also in Surrey and Sussex – just up the road from where I live now. It’s a very serious piece, and it's played dead straight – were there any opportunities to let off steam? [Laughs] I don’t happen to recall any! How long did the whole thing take to shoot? Six to ten weeks I would think. I’m going back in time here. In the early scenes, in which meteor showers blind most of humanity, your character, Bill Masen, is himself blindfolded after an operation. Did you have to do much preparation for those scenes "in the dark"? That was done by [writer/adapter] Doug Livingstone to avoid some kind of preamble. We couldn’t do it by voiceover or subtitles, so he came up with the idea of me talking into a recording machine and describing what had happened leading up to that fateful night. That was novel and it was great – except that I couldn’t see and I had to learn rather a lot of monologue. How were the Triffids actually operated? By the men inside them! The special effects men who created them actually got physically inside the structure and moved them about. Were there a lot of technical hitches waiting for them to “play ball”? If I remember rightly, yes! Waiting for them to hit their mark. Although the story is ostensibly about flesh-eating plants, it still holds up superbly as a portrait of the collapse of society... I know what you mean, yes. It was a time of Margaret Thatcher’s early days, Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire”, so yes the world was in an apprehensive state, a state of flux, with Orwell’s “1984” just around the corner. And I think they were quite wise to make a film just to show the end of the world as we know it... But the lesson of history is that nobody ever learns. So even after an event like that or a nuclear war or a catastrophe, people will carry on doing the same thing over and over again, as we’re witnessing at the moment... With series like To Serve Them All My Days – in which you played a soldier-turned-teacher – also on the BBC, this was a busy time for you? My son was born in 1980 and Triffids was 1981, so it was a good time personally and professionally for me. Triffids is still a respected sci-fi drama 40 years on. There have been other Wyndham adaptations, but they haven’t caught on in the same way. Do you have a theory as to why the series stands up so well? That I don’t know but Dougray Scott did a version [in 2009], with Eddie Izzard, and I did watch it. I don’t know why that didn’t… maybe when I did it people were prepared to suspend their disbelief a little bit more than they are today. But I do occasionally bump into people who saw [ours] and said it scared the pants off them, men and women. You must be very proud of it? Yes absolutely. If it had been done with a bit more budget the Triffids might not have been quite so amusing, but as I say people still think that they were terrifying, so I can’t judge that one. Are you officially retired? I never say officially. I never say never. But I live down on the south coast now and I spend most of my time walking the coast. Do you have an overriding memory about filming the series? Yes, my dog Rufus was with me and I used to take him with me on location whenever I could — it was a good excuse because we were out in the countryside quite a lot. There was a girl of not more than ten or 12 years old [who played Susan] and she suddenly got what you might call stage fright or camera fright and she just clung on to Rufus because she made a friend of him and he didn’t mind. She wouldn’t go on set without the dog. So my dog got a part and he’s there on celluloid or videotape for ever! The Day of the Triffids is available on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free trial here. Check out more of our Sci-Fi and Fantasy coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now – subscribe now and get the next 12 issues for only £1. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.
Sir Michael Palin reflects on the "step into the unknown" that would become a comedy classic
Ripping Yarns, the masterly anthology series that Palin created with fellow Python Terry Jones, is 45 this week – and now on BritBox. So how did it come about? And which is Palin's favourite episode?
"There was this nicely unique formula with chances to do lots of little jokes – and I think that’s what makes them watchable again. There’s always something to see..." Sir Michael Palin is talking to Radio Times about Ripping Yarns, a comedy where anything could happen – and frequently did. It was set in an early 20th Century in which you could cross the Andes by frog, the most boring man in the world became a fêted bank robber and a plummeting football team reversed its fortunes by employing OAPs. Its arcane world of hopping contests and crusty colonials tore into a world of derring do made popular in The Boy's Own Paper. The rituals of boarding school, scarcely credible sporting heroics, displays of aggressive imperialism... all were ripe for affectionate ridicule in a show that was lapped up back in the day, and is now ready for reappraisal on, effectively, its 45th anniversary in its new home on BritBox. Ripping Yarns ran for just nine episodes – one season in September 1977 following a well-received pilot the previous year, then a three-part second season in 1979 – but it soon became embedded in the national consciousness, evolving from the seminal work of surrealism that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. Costing £34,000 per half-hour – double the average sitcom episode at that time – it was artistically filmed, full of period detail and great gags, and peopled with prestige actors. It came during a flowering of post-Circus creativity: John Cleese went on to Fawlty Towers, Eric Idle to Rutland Weekend Television, Terry Gilliam to fantasy films like Jabberwocky and Time Bandits, and Michael Palin and Terry Jones to their majestic upending of adventure tropes. I asked Sir Michael who had the initial idea for the Yarns. "Terry and I were looking round for something to write, and Terry had a book on his shelf, which I might well have given him because we exchanged old-fashioned books: it was called Ripping Yarns: a Collection of Tales. "Terry’s brother Nigel said, 'That might make a good idea for a series.' And when we were discussing it together we said, 'Let’s have a go' and I went away and started to write Tomkinson’s Schooldays in the style of those ripping yarns. So it’s a bit of a mix between Terry, his brother Nigel and myself." It's a period that Palin delights in remembering, a time when he collaborated with his great friend Terry Jones (who sadly died in 2020 aged 77), although he admits that the project was not devoid of awkwardness. "I always look back fondly on working with Terry because he was such a good companion and such a genial presence. But it was also quite difficult because I felt that if I was going to be acting in the Yarns, it would slightly change our relationship. I think Terry would probably like to have been involved as thoroughly as I was but there wasn’t room for both of us doing the same amount of work, so Terry ended up writing with me but not acting." In the event, Jones only appeared in the first story. "But relationships were changing then anyway really. John wasn’t writing so much with Graham Chapman and Eric had gone off to do his own series, Rutland Weekend Television. So it was a time of change but in terms of writing the Yarns, Terry was great because he was rather good at plot and I was better at character, I suppose, and so it was quite a good combination." Its fans are legion, especially among comedy cognoscenti. Bestselling author John O'Farrell, who was a lead writer for Spitting Image and Have I Got News for You, tells Radio Times: "I loved Ripping Yarns when I was a teenager growing up in Maidenhead, and was of course thrilled that our local paper made an appearance in The Curse of the Claw! "My favourite was The Testing of Eric Olthwaite – I loved that his father pretended to be French so that he didn’t have to talk to him. It’s actually very hard to write a boring character, without them just being, well you know, boring – but poor Eric was both funny and sort of lovable." Eric Olthwaite was a character that Palin loved inhabiting: "It was very enjoyable because he was such a sort of wonderfully odd, irritating person to play (laughs)." And in Python tradition, Palin took on multiple roles in most episodes: "The idea was that I should be the central performer I suppose – this was what the BBC wanted. And of course I enjoyed playing the characters I’d written. "This was a characteristic of Python: I think some of the best performances were by people who’d written the material as well. So I thought, 'I’ll guard this material carefully by playing it because I know how it should be done' (chuckles) – and all sorts of arrogant things like that. But Terry said that, 'Sometimes you tend to play the straight man in the middle, around which all the silliness happens,' and it was very fair point, because I like taking sort of odd and strange characters like the two brothers in Murder at Moorstones Manor. "But I was aware also that sometimes, as in something like Across the Andes by Frog, you’ve got a central character who’s quite straight. Mad but straight. And he’s the anchor of the whole lot really and if you don’t get his character and motivation just right, the characters around him aren’t going to work so well." The adventures were also blessed with a superb cast, from Liz Smith and Kenneth Colley to Jan Francis and John Le Mesurier. "We got some wonderful people," agrees Palin. "In Tomkinson we had Gwen Watford who was just so marvellous as the mother wandering into the sanatorium with her shoe trees (laughs). I mean she’s just so wonderfully sort of gently British and beautiful and lovely and carrying these shoe trees... it was hilarious. To get her and Ian Ogilvy as the school bully was terrific. A wonderful start." Any particular favourites? "I was delighted to get Denholm Elliot to play the seedy consul in Across the Andes and there were some great performers in Roger of the Raj, getting Joan Sanderson and Richard Vernon at either end of the table as a Lord and Lady discussing the toast. Absolutely excellent. And John Le Mesurier as one of the people in the room where various members of the dinner party were going out and shooting themselves for getting the etiquette wrong. That was terrific." The star did have reservations, however: "Sometimes I did have the feeling, and I know Terry did too, that we hadn’t got quite the right person to play it. We got a very good actor but very good actors don’t always trust the script and they try to make it funny their way – actually very often the real humour is by underplaying it completely. "That occasionally happened and on some mornings as I woke up early I’d think, 'Oh my God, ideally we’d have all the Pythons playing these parts,' because you never had to tell the Pythons how to hit the comic tone – they always got it right. It was an instinctive thing. But that was the thing about Ripping Yarns: it was different from Python. We were using straight actors and sometimes it worked very well, other times not so well." Doing something different was, Palin confesses, "a bit of a step into the unknown, quite bracing", particularly as the stories were self-contained. Writer John O'Farrell can testify to this: "When you make the early decision to do a different set of characters every week, there is no momentum gained, no regular characters for the audience to fall in love with. This actually occurred to me when I was writing Murder Most Horrid with Dawn French. With AbFab, Jennifer Saunders had created a show with characters that we grew to love week after week, whereas Dawn was starting from scratch every episode." That maintaining of impetus was a concern to Palin, too. "I know what John O’Farrell means. We only did nine in the end, mainly because the BBC said that they couldn’t afford to do any more because they were rather expensive, but I think that was a sort of code for saying that they weren’t getting quite the ratings! We found a different genre for each of the nine shows. Beyond that I don’t know where we would have gone." In the days before green screen, some of the action and stunts had to be performed for real. The 1913-set Whinfrey's Last Case for example, filmed in Devon and Cornwall, featured a clifftop drive in a period car. "We were really on the top of that cliff and it was quite dangerous. The joke was of course that the woman who was driving couldn’t see over the steering wheel, so you couldn’t see her at all: just a couple of hands on the steering wheel! This had to be done and it was done with a stuntman, obviously – but I was in the car. Nowadays with CGI and all that you’d probably get something that looks very impressive but didn’t have the feel of some of these great moments of effects, which worked very well and were quite hairy to do." The perils of location filming extended to being threatened with an injunction for gunshots fired at night in Roger of the Raj (a scene in which an Army regiment mutinies). "Yes! There was a tremendous amount of shooting. Joan Sanderson was given a proper machine gun, which was incredibly noisy. I have to say she really enjoyed firing it, you could tell! There was one great burst, then silence and suddenly you heard, 'Shut that bloody noise up!' I don’t know if we did get an injunction but the neighbours certainly weren’t happy." A fondly remembered Yarn, and one of Palin's favourites, is Golden Gordon, about the obsessive fan of the worst football team in England in 1935. Was it a tale born of bitter experience? "I’m not going to put anyone in the dock here (laughs) but I was born and brought up in Sheffield so I’ve supported Sheffield United. And with all the teams, every Saturday, when the results come it’s a time of high, nervous excitement. I’ve been though all that when we’ve been beaten at home by the bottom club and you just plunge into total gloom, so it was really exaggerating that – and of course with moments when they win, you feel the other way. "Funnily enough I dreamt that story up in Gabès in Tunisia filming Monty Python's Life of Brian. I was about to be crucified later in the day and I was walking along the beach early and I suddenly hit on this idea of the ultimate football supporter whose team always loses. By the end of a half-hour walk on the beach I almost had the full story. "I remember John Cleese was walking the other way and we stopped and I told him the idea and he chuckled and I thought, 'Well that’s a good sign.' [John] ended up making a brief appearance as a passer-by. He didn’t take much persuading – he thought it would be good fun and was very happy to do it. "There were some wonderful performances. One of the greatest was from David Leland, who was our friend who directed films himself, playing the manager who has a nervous breakdown – 'It’s not the shorts, it’s what’s inside them that matters!' – and you just get this team of derelicts looking bewildered as he races off, pulling his shorts off (laughs)." With comedy fans treated to both Ripping Yarns and The Life of Brian, it was a very fulfilling time for Palin, professionally. But there was plenty of "first-night" anxiety. "The trouble is, anything you do that’s new carries with it a certain sort of nervousness about how it will be received. With hindsight, Life of Brian had been very well received and was much admired and the Yarns are much loved, but at the time it was striking out in a different direction. "There was always a feeling that, 'We’re not doing Parrot Sketch, we’re not doing Cheese Shop, we’re not doing Spanish Inquisition, people are going to miss these things.' So you didn’t know how an audience would take to the new work until the material had been out. So although it was liberating to be doing so many different characters and writing really quite fluently, it was always tempered by the fact that, 'Is this the right thing to be doing?'" However, after the last Yarn to be filmed, the BBC pulled the plug. "John Howard Davies who was BBC head of comedy then – and funnily enough he’d directed the first four Pythons [Flying Circus episodes] – he just said we’re not going to do any more because we don’t have enough money. So that was it really, that was the reason they gave me. There’s always a feeling that perhaps if they had more confidence, if they really got it, if they really understood it, we could have done more. "I think what they meant when they said it was too expensive was that there was a great sense of place in all these, and we shot on film. Nowadays everybody does that – with comedy just as much as with drama – but they didn’t at that time. Drama got the money and comedy was supposed to be done really in a studio with a few plywood walls and all that. And it was obviously more expensive than Fawlty Towers, which had been much more successful. But I think it was part of the BBC’s thinking at the time, you know, that you shouldn’t spend that much on comedy series." Made with love and still enjoyed 45 years later, Ripping Yarns' legacy is assured. Palin must be proud of them? "Yes I look back on them very fondly because I think there’s a sort of spirit that people either get or they don’t get. Within them there are lots of really nice Pythonic little moments and jokes. George Harrison and a lot of the music set liked the Yarns very much and they liked Golden Gordon, particularly the exchange 'How’s Vera?' 'Not bad. Farting’s stopped.' They loved that. Joe Brown used to go around saying 'Farting’s stopped' all the time! "I don’t think they all worked quite as well as they should but they all were quite distinctive and have left a flavour behind, which I don’t think was matched by anything. No one’s really tried to do anything like that." And a final word from John O'Farrell: "It remains one of my favourite comedies from the period, a slightly overlooked gem from the Python alumni – and it deserves much wider exposure. Because any television comedy with Michael Palin should be made available to us 24 hours a day as a form of therapy for modern Britain." The entire Ripping Yarns are now available on BritBox UK.
The man behind the magic: a new documentary profiles the creator of Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet
What drove producer Gerry Anderson to entertain the world? A personal and moving new BritBox special made by his son Jamie is about to reveal all.
Years before humans had set foot on the Moon, one man and his team of TV technicians were sending them out into deep space to keep peace in a teeming galaxy, plunging them into deep-sea danger and propelling them to Mars to meet terrifying aliens. Post-69, he continued to enthral us, with swishing flying saucers, a wandering Moon, heroic Terrahawks and the officers of Space Precinct – and pushed the envelope in puppetry and special effects, then live action and CGI. But what inspired him to such technical and imaginative heights? The answers may not be what fans are expecting, and can be found in a candid new BritBox documentary, Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted, released on what would have been his 93rd birthday, and nearly 10 years after his death following a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Among those to be surprised was its presenter and producer Jamie Anderson – Gerry’s son from his third marriage. "The whole process has remodelled my vision of, and my thoughts about, Dad," says Jamie, 37, during an online chat with Radio Times from his home in Abertysswg, south Wales. So why did Jamie want to make it? "I go to conventions and have that lovely thing of people saying, 'Oh your dad was brilliant, he changed my life and he made my childhood.' I must have heard it 1,000-plus times and that’s amazing and I don’t want to stop hearing that... Same as I’m always happy to hear the Thunderbirds March when they play that on the radio and it’s never tiresome. But it’s about separating that public persona from the man behind it. "Quite often people say, 'Where did he get his ideas from?' and I knew some of the stories, the Mine Disaster [in Germany in 1963] that inspired Thunderbirds and that kind of thing, but it’s the step beyond that." The Gerry Anderson Podcast, which Jamie hosts with his friend, the actor Richard James, has also helped him look at his father's life and career in a different way by talking to guests including broadcasters Samira Ahmed and Matthew Sweet. "So when [director] Benjamin Field approached me and said, ‘Why has nobody ever made a documentary about your dad and his life?’, I thought, ‘That’s weird you know.' I mean, there have been documentaries but they always tend to focus on the outcome and the process but not the person behind it… "I had access to this archive which has either not been heard or not been seen before – or seen in a very limited way – and thought we could tell an honest story. And Ben from the very beginning said, 'I want this to be your dad’s story, it’s about his life.' This isn’t a list of achievements or a propaganda piece, this is: 'Who is this man who made so many childhoods?'" Anderson’s body of work is extraordinary and much loved: 18 TV series (including Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, UFO and Space:1999) and four feature films. He also gained and lost a fortune twice over, and had four children from three marriages – to Betty, Sylvia (his professional partner during the golden-age Supermarionation period) and Jamie’s mother Mary. The project has been a voyage of discovery for Jamie, who says he "didn’t really know" his father. "I always used to say he was a workaholic and I think the era in which he was born and raised had a lot to do with it – it’s very much that generation of children being seen and not heard. But I’ve learnt about the way that his childhood and parents impacted on him and that was echoed through his life… and two failed marriages and losing touch with those children. "By the time I was born there were so many influences in his life about how he wanted to parent, he was overprotective but disconnected. He wanted to be there but was very busy and so he expressed his desire to parent in a very peculiar way. "All these things have become really clear now and it’s been a wonderful experience. But sitting here now makes me very sad because I think in possibly an afternoon’s conversation, knowing what I know now, we could unpick so many things – which we have unpicked through this documentary." A Life Uncharted is a balanced, warts-and-all profile with input from Gerry's two daughters Linda and Joy, his ex-wife Sylvia who died in 2016, his widow Mary, and colleagues who describe him variously as "one of the most honest chaps I’ve ever met" and "a very evil man". It’s also deeply moving, and Anderson’s journey from a poor and miserable childhood to a period in which he commanded huge TV budgets and created adored series is an astonishing one. David Graham, who voiced Parker from Thunderbirds and was a long-time collaborator of Gerry's, sums up his contribution like this: "People like that don't come along very often who established a whole new genre in entertainment which is loved universally." The film is an unflashy contrast to Anderson's big spectaculars, but one concession to hi-tech is the use of 'deepfake' to re-create the likeness of Gerry, for the practical reason of visually presenting his frank audio statements. "Dad was always pushing tech," says Jamie. "He would have loved the idea of this being done, so I think it was only fitting. If he was able to give his blessing on it, he absolutely would, probably from pure technical fascination if nothing else." So what was the most surprising revelation for Jamie? "There are things that we learn about Dad’s relationship with his mum, and some of the ways that she behaved and things she said were just heartbreakingly awful. I don’t want to give it fully away but one in particular was just an awful thing to say to a child, and we kind of assumed that it’s the sort of thing that you’d never forget even as an adult. "In fact we found archive footage of him repeating almost verbatim what was said to him, but 65 years later. So it's clear what a huge impact it had even though he never really actively recognised it..." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2022/03/Screenshot-2022-03-21-at-15.15.21-a547185.png" width="1766" height="1166" alt="Jamie Anderson in the grounds of Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, familiar territory for his father and a place where his story came full circle" title="Jamie Anderson in the grounds of Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, familiar territory for his father and a place where his story came full circle" /> Born Gerald Abrahams in London in 1929, Anderson suffered dreadful antisemitism as a child. He idolised his older brother Lionel whose time in the RAF and training in the glamorous USA sparked Gerry’s love of both aviation and showbusiness. Lionel’s death in 1944 when his plane was shot down also had a lifelong effect on Gerry. So is there a theme that runs through Gerry’s shows? "Certainly things like family units and a unified world," Jamie replies. "Positivity, utopian futures… those things came out of an escape from a pretty terrible childhood: imagined worlds, looking to the future, looking to the sky…" As to which was Gerry’s favourite show, Jamie says: "Thunderbirds, because it was the pinnacle, it was the series that made his parents most proud of him, which was massively important to him. He had fondness for some of the later shows. He was always fond of [early 2000s stop-motion series] Lavender Castle, which is little known, not much spoken of, and had a sweetness to it, but he would never look back and be like, 'That was a brilliant show, I’m so amazing.' He would constantly find flaws." Thunderbirds was an undoubted high spot for Supermarionation and for his creative partnership with second wife Sylvia. And for a time their chemistry produced hit after hit. "I don’t think anyone can profess to know why any particular combination of people or creative ideas works. At the time it did," says Jamie. And as one contributor to the documentary puts it, "Gerry was the king of hardware, Sylvia was the queen of software." The disintegration of their marriage fed directly into their later shows including UFO. "The lead character, Ed Straker, is the head of a studio with his marriage collapsing," says Jamie. "It was Dad's art imitating Dad's life." And which is Jamie's favourite of his father's shows? "Mine is Terrahawks and I know that doesn’t appear in a lot of people’s favourites but it was my first introduction to Anderson!" Famously, Jamie was a big fan of Doctor Who, growing up. "Yeah, Dad hated it! Back in the early '90s when the BBC were reshowing Thunderbirds and Stingray, someone at the BBC got wind that I was a fan. He would go into the BBC for marketing meetings about the shows and quite often in the middle of a meeting someone would turn up with a box of Doctor Who VHS tapes for me [laughs]. Which I think they did on purpose just to wind him up. "But in the documentary 30 Years in the TARDIS he says on camera, 'The greatest tragedy of my life is that my son is a Doctor Who fan.' He just didn’t get it because he went to all these lengths to create these incredible-looking shows and to him, Doctor Who always felt a bit wobbly and cardboard-y, with bug-eyed, bubble-wrap aliens. And for some reason, of all the things his bloody son likes, it’s that! [laughs]" Today, Jamie straddles the two worlds: he's a producer, director and writer of audio plays for Doctor Who, but is also continuing the legacy of his father’s work. So how does it make Jamie feel that his father's shows have remained popular, decades later? "Oh it’s amazing. We get emails and messages all the time. People saying, 'I’ve just introduced my grandkids to it and they love it.' I mean that’s pretty incredible isn’t it? "There is such a high degree of effort and love that went into those shows from everybody involved that it’s helped to keep them timeless." And what are his hopes for Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted? "To get people to know Dad, really. Not just the name above the titles but Gerry Anderson the person. Suddenly you’ll see all sorts of things in every single series that are born of frustrations and tragedies and happiness and hopes within his own life. I can tell you now, if you watch the first episode of Thunderbirds after watching this documentary, it’ll be like watching it academically in 4K." Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted is on BritBox from 14th April – you can sign up for a 7-day free BritBox trial here. Anyone affected by dementia can visit alzheimers.org.uk or call 0333 150 3456 for more information. The latest issue of Radio Times is on sale now – subscribe now to get each issue delivered to your door. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.