Showing posts with label 1000th Episode Celebrations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1000th Episode Celebrations. Show all posts

Wednesday 24 June 2009

1985: Diana Davies And Richard Thorp On Mrs Bates And Alan Turner...

"Well, he's a bit of a nasty person on the screen, but in real life he's quite likeable," said Diana Davies of Richard Thorp, as the pair were interviewed by Richard Whiteley for the Emmerdale Farm 1,000th episode TV special celebration in 1985. The "quite likeable" was said tongue in cheek - the two were in very jovial mood, and appeared to have an excellent rapport.

When Mrs Caroline Bates turned up as Alan's "temp" secretary in 1984, nobody suspected that this was the beginning of one of the show's best-loved comic partnerships. But with Mrs Bates ever-ready to see through Alan's bluster to the wally underneath, great fun was had by we lucky viewers.

And many of us actually began to like Alan as a result - which was a tremendous change as, since his arrival in 1982, he'd aroused feelings of irritation and even, sometimes, vehement dislike amongst viewers.

"You've taken a bit of stick in real life as the 'JR' figure, haven't you?" said Richard Whiteley to Richard Thorp on the 1,000th episode celebration programme.

"Yes, I have - and particularly at home," replied Richard Thorp. "My wife always insists Alan Turner leaves the room before she has a chance to chat to Richard Thorp!"

Richard Whiteley: "But I hear that when you go into restaurants, people have left the restaurants and taxi drivers wouldn't give you lifts?"

Richard Thorp: "Oh, yes, yes - 'Not you, you walk!' they say!"

Richard Whiteley: "What we all want to know, really, are you two going to get it together ever do you think?"

Richard Thorp (suddenly becoming Alan Turner): "That's down to you, Mrs Bates. I think you can answer that one."

Diana Davies: "Well, we don't know, we just think it's probably not a very good idea because it's good fun the way it is now."

Richard Whiteley: "What about just something for now on this special occasion?"

Diana Davies: "All right."

Richard Thorp, after the kiss, becoming Alan Turner again: "That's in lieu of a rise - you don't get everything for nothing!"

Tuesday 23 June 2009

1985: Walter Speaks!!

Al Dixon - Woolpack Walter, 1980 to 1985,

I've received an e-mail from somebody apparently called Tibbles.

Tibbles has recently viewed the 1985 TV special celebrating 1,000 episodes of Emmerdale Farm, which featured actor Al Dixon, the show's silent Walter character in the early-to-mid-1980s.

Why, asks Tibbles, did Richard Whiteley, the show's presenter, state that Al Dixon had not spoken a word during 13 years in Emmerdale Farm, and yet Al Dixon did not actually first appear as Walter until 1980?

It's probably an error, Tibbles - although it is possibly a slightly garbled reference to Al Dixon's first Emmerdale Farm role - he appeared in a photograph as Jacob Sugden, alongside Sheila Mercier as Annie. The photograph stood on the farm's mantelpiece in the very early days.

So, Al Dixon had played two silent roles in Emmerdale Farm.

Sheila Mercier revealed in her autobiography, Annie's Song (1994):

It was decided there should be a photograph of Annie with her late husband, Jacob, on the mantelpiece [at Emmerdale Farm] and they chose Al Dixon to pose for a picture with me. I was absolutely furious because I thought Annie should have a great lion of a man for a husband, not a tiny, weedy thing like he was. I took it out on Al and couldn't bring myself to be nice to him, although he was terribly nice to me. I still couldn't forgive him for daring to be my husband.

Mr Dixon became Walter in September 1980 and was last seen on-screen in December 1985. There were some delightful clips on YouTube in recent years showing a totally different actor being a Woolpack Walter in the late '70s. The actor playing "old Walter", listed in a 1976 TV Times special, was Geoffrey Hooper. Mr Hooper's Walter was, apparently, occasionally known to speak. The story of Walter, as far as we know it, is covered in more detail here.

The wonderful thing about the 1,ooo episode celebration was that we actually heard the '80s Walter (Mr Dixon) speak! Had he ever been tempted to speak in the show? asked Richard. "Oh, many times!" said Mr Dixon.

A toast to all the good folks at the Woolpack!
.

"Daily Mirror", 23 May, 1985.


"TV Times" tribute to Al Dixon, 1986.

Saturday 21 June 2008

Annie Sugden And Sheila Mercier

From the Emmerdale Farm Celebration Edition 1000 Episodes Magazine, 1985.

Annie Sugden

Ever since she was widowed thirteen years ago, Annie Sugden has felt responsible for Emmerdale Farm and the Sugden family. Life has not been easy for her, coping with financial crises, warring sons and the loss of her only daughter. But she has faced the problems courageously. She's a strong, level headed woman, loyal to her family but not blind to their weaknesses, and she speaks her mind when she feels it's called for. Annie's honesty is usually appreciated and people often turn to her for advice, but the years haven't dulled her sense of humour. She enjoys a joke as much as anyone in the family.

Sheila Mercier

"Annie Sugden has changed a great deal over the years," said Sheila Mercier. "At the beginning she was very terse. She was the head of the family and let everyone know it. She ruled with a rod of iron. She'd had a tough life. She'd had a rough ride with Jacob, who used to drink the money away and sit in the Woolpack until all hours. Jack didn't live at home then and it was Annie who kept the farm together. Until Henry Wilks came along they were poor farmers, living hand-to-mouth.

"But now things are different. Jack has made a success of Emmerdale and Henry's interest in the farm and Annie herself has made her relax. She's mellower now."

Sheila Mercier enjoys playing Annie and has learned to live with the fame it brings her.

"People often stop you in the street and say 'Oh. I'm sorry I thought I knew you.' Or they call out 'Oi! Are you Annie Sugden?' Others write to Annie asking her to solve their problems."

Ocasionally though, the attention is unwelcome.

"I do think it's rude when people interrupt your meal to ask for autographs," said Sheila. "And once a woman with a bag of fish and chips ran after me shouting 'Oi! Oi! Annie! Sign this fish and chip paper for me!' "

Sheila has been interested in acting for as long as she can remember. Her whole family was in love with the threatre. Her mother had a beautiful singing voice and spent a great deal of time organising shows to raise money for the church.

"My brother Brian Rix and I used to hide under the piano and listen to them rewhearsing," said Sheila. "My father was a ship owner and he didn't go on stage himself, but he used to make all the scenery. We had a little cottage in the grounds of our house where he kept all his stuff and he was always sawing and hammering and painting. He loved it."

When her mother wasn't putting on shows, she was throwing lively parties at which everyone did his party piece. Sheila's speciality was the dramatic poem.

"My favourite poem was called 'Ojistoh", about a Mohican woman who is captured by another tribe. It's quite exciting," said Sheila. "I learned it at elocution lessons when I was eleven, and when I recited it the mistress said 'That girl will be an actress.'

"The funny thing is, years later when I was in the airforce I was asked to do something for a concert. I couldn't think of anything to do until I remembered 'Ojistoh'. Anyway, in the audience that night were some tough Glaswegian boys from the Argyll and Sutherland Regiment and when I launched into 'Ojistoh' they started to laugh and they laughed me off stage!" It was Sheila's worst theatrical disaster.

Spotted at drama school by Sir Donald Wolfitt, she was invited to join his company and spent a great deal of time staying in seedy digs while they toured the country.

"The funny thing is when you're young you don't seem to mind," said Sheila, "and the landladies could be kind. In Norwich one of the other girls and I were staying with a Mrs Pigani who discovered that we liked Welsh Rarebit. It turned out to be her husband's speciality and we had it for supper every night!"

Since then Sheila has worked in countless productions, including comedies with her brother Brian Rix. These days, however, she's happy to swap the irregular hours of the theatre for the more settled life of television.



Sunday 6 April 2008

1985: Frederick Pyne Pays Tribute To The Late Toke Townley

From the Yorkshire Evening Post supplement Emmerdale Farm 1,000! - 1985:

Frederick Pyne, Matt Skilbeck in Emmerdale Farm, paid tribute to Toke Townley, the much-loved Grandad Sam Pearson in the show, who died in 1984.

Unlike some members of the cast I had not known Toke Townley before we started work on "Emmerdale" in June 1972. "Grandad" and "Matt" in the story soon developed a relationship of friendship and mutual understanding with, I believe, only one quarrel which was quickly forgiven and forgotten.

I am happy to say that the same was true of Toke and myself in real life except that we never had even the one quarrel.

We were never extremely close friends because Toke was essentially a loner as, to some extent, I am too. But we shared mutual interests in music, opera and theatre.

I remember taking him to see Beethoven's "Fidelio" at Leeds Grand Theatre and Verdi's "Othello" at the Palace Theatre, in Manchester. He had seen neither before and he was as thrilled and enthusiastic as a young lad with a new train set.

His needs were usually very simple and his praise always most generous. I once gave him tea, bread and butter and boiled eggs at my house and he told everyone at work about it as though I had given him a three-course cordon bleu meal.

This was partly because he was totally impractical at such things, but mainly because of his wonderful generosity of spirit. He rarely criticised fellow actors and he would travel far and wide to see them.

If he saw something he didn't like he would say: "Well, you see, it's not my sort of play."

This generosity showed up in his gifts to charity. I have a reputation for scrounging money for charity but I was never afraid to ask Toke.

Many a time I did not need to ask - he was already opening his wallet and asking me what I was collecting for. Sometimes I was quite astonished at the amounts he would give.

Of course, Toke wasn't all goodness - none of us is. He could have his dislikes and he could have very tetchy moods but I was extremely lucky; I only witnessed those moods; I was never the subject of them.

I always admired his tremendous energy and his terrific sense of fun and the absurd. It was nothing for him to give us notes on our performances in mock Russian and he would, completely seriously, talk the most ridiculous rubbish all morning but always with that mischievous twinkle in his eye that was so uniquely his own.

Or he would pretend that "Emmerdale" was a ballet and give us new steps to perform. "I think it will come to life," he would say, "when we get the full orchestra."

During breaks in the rehearsals in the farm kitchen set I quite often deliberately sit in "grandad's" chair and just quietly think about him.

Is this a form of prayer for him? I don't really know. What I do believe is that he is truly at rest because, although he was restless (because of his boundless energy) in life, he lived his last years in happiness and contentment with his work, his friends and his love of music and the theatre.

There could be no more fitting memory of him than the furnishings for the Green Room at the new Leeds Playhouse bought with the money from his memorial fund.

We loved him, we miss him and we shall never forget him.

Back on this 'ere blog, I have been undertaking a little reseach into Mr Townley's background and have so far come up with the following:

Toke Anthony Townley was born on 6 November, 1912, in the Dunmow, Essex, area of Eastern England. He died in September 1984. Because of advance filming, his Emmerdale Farm character lived on until late November - the character died on the 27th of that month.

If anybody has any further memories of Mr Townley and/or Grandad Pearson to share, I would be delighted to hear them!

Walter - The Mystery Man!

Did you guess who the mystery man featured a few posts back was? Yep, it was Al Dixon, Beckindale's second silent Walter actor, who made the role his very own from 1980-1985.

The article above, from the 1985 Yorkshire Evening Post's Emmerdale Farm 1000! supplement, reveals that Mr Dixon was actually born in Lancashire, and went to Leeds during the war as part of a group called Fred Musson's Select Entertainers. The group thrilled the crowds at open-air shows in Roundhay Park.

Friday 28 March 2008

Seth and His Boss!

From the Yorkshire Evening Post's 1985 supplement - Emmerdale Farm 1,000!

Somebody recently turned to Stan Richards with a quizzical look and asked: "Why is it you talk right posh when you're on the telly?"

Stan, who is as much a part of Barnsley as Arthur Scargill's ceremonial pit lamp, couldn't come up with an answer.

Apart from the now legendary woolly hat and a change of spectacles, the real Stan Richards isn't very far removed from the fictitious Seth Armstrong of "Emmerdale Farm".

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two down-to-earth characters is all that Woolpack ale Seth pours down his neck. Stan can't stand the stuff.

He has to grin and bear it as he swigs his way through scene after scene in anguish with Amos.

But as soon as the cameras have stopped rolling he screws up his face in disgust and swills his gums with a glass of scotch.

Those gums have become his stock-in-trade, not only as a highly-popular Seth, but over more than 30 years they have made him a sought-after toothless grin around the working men's clubs of the North.

"It isn't a gimmick," he says. "I just don't like wearing false teeth. And now I don't have to."

The role of Seth has come like a pools win for the lad from the mining town who still calls corrugated iron "wriggly tin".

He was originally signed up for a mere five episodes. "They must have liked me because they kept asking me back," he says. He is now one of the series well-loved fixtures and fittings.

That unmistakable face, set off by a magnificent handlebar moustache, means a lot of writer's cramp signing autograph after autograph.

But Stan never grumbles. At 54 he remembers the days as a struggling stand-up comic.

Going even farther back, he recalls his start in showbusiness. At the age of 15, as a pupil of Barnsley Grammar School, he used to enjoy a pint and a Woodbine while playing the piano around local pubs.

One of his first jobs was as a Ministry of Labour clerk. But he was transferred to London, which didn't do for a pure-bred Northerner.

"I couldn't stand the place," he says. "I packed up my job and came home."

After that he went to work in the accounts department of the local disinfectant factory and that's where he remained until 1965, when he decided to go full-time professional as a solo comic.

Television bit parts bolstered his earnings and he now boasts of acting alongside Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman.

That was a 10 -second appearance as an hotel porter in the film "Agatha".

He still keeps his hand in with working men's club dates, although it means strenuously long hours after doing a stint in the studios or on location.

Stan is a realist whose lifestyle has hardly altered since he found "Emmerdale" stardom.

"I was born and bred in Barnsley," he says with that pride which seems to accompany everyone who was born and bred there.

"To me it is the greatest place in the world. That is where I intend to stay.

"As far as the neighbours and my mates down the local are concerned, I'm still Stan Richards, an ordinary chap with a wife and six kids.

"I think they're all happy to see me successful. But nothing's changed."

He knows that one day Seth Armstrong or the series might cease to exist. As he tells his club audiences: "I used to be a clairvoyant, but I had to give it up due to unforeseen circumstances."


"You're a very, very nasty man," an elderly lady once told actor Richard Thorp as he sat in a genteel tea-room...

Richard, of course, is the "JR"-type manager of NY Estates in "Emmerdale Farm", but in reality he is a quietly-spoken, gentle man with a ready smile and a deep-throated chuckle.

Seth Armstrong's boss, and the bane of the gamekeeper's life, escapes to his beautiful old Tudor home in Sussex each weekend to join his wife, Noola, a TV floor manager.

The couple love animals and have two dogs, eight ducks, 14 chickens and numerous "wild" pets.

Richard tells an amusing "Emmerdale" story about a horse...

"I admit I'm a bit on the stout side and I had to get on a horse in one scene. The director said 'Action,' I hoisted myself into the saddle - and the entire production crew crew fell about laughing.

"I sat bemused until they explained that the horse, which was facing directly into the camera, had pulled a face when I climbed aboard."