Showing posts with label Tony Pitts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tony Pitts. Show all posts

Saturday 19 September 2009

Archie Brooks (Tony Pitts) - In The Beginning...

Archie Brooks, played by Tony Pitts, in 1984. Mike Conrad (Martin Barrass) had dragged him into decorating the back room at The Woolpack after Amos (Ronald Magill) had accidentally caused his gas cooker to explode, spraying hot casserole all over the walls.

Archie Brooks, of Hotten, was a genuine one-off - right from the time of his very first appearance in Emmerdale Farm in November 1983.

New Emmerdale Farm Producer Richard Handford took over from Anne W Gibbons in June 1983, and immediately decided to give Jackie Merrick (Ian Sharrock) more of a social life. Martin Barrass arrived as Jackie's pal, Mike Conrad. Mike looked on as Jackie lurched through his short-lived relationship with Angie Richards (Beverley Callard).

And then, with the Angie affair consigned to history, Mike came rattling up to Emmerdale Farm one day in his tacky old van (complete with mattress in the back for "entertaining" the local scrubbers, er, sorry - I mean "ladies"!).

Mike had brought with him a pal of his called Archie. Archie was a little on the odd side by local standards, with his Tom-from-the-Thompson-Twins style hairdo and ghetto blaster. But, this being Beckindale, Archie wasn't playing Mr Pharmacist or Party Fears 2 on his ghetto blaster - bless your heart no - he was playing Status Quo's latest dazzling hit, Old Rag Blues. He did get a little trendier by slotting in some Big Country later though.

Archie had great enthusiasm for popular music - spanning everything from Little Richard to Alexei Sayle's Ullo John! Gotta New Motor? He also played the electric guitar.

Archie distinguised himself on his first visit to Emmerdale Farm by being rather monosyllabic and "out of it", and by rocking back and forth on one of the kitchen chairs, finally overbalancing, and causing the chair to break.

He was soon back in Beckindale to play the guitar with local New Wave band The Giro Technics (the name was a clever play on unemployment giro cheques) at the Beckindale Christmas Show, and he joined Jackie and Mike in undertaking some deliveries of quarry stones for local baddie Harry Mowlam (Godfrey James).

When Harry wouldn't give the lads their agreed rate of pay, and the lads were trying to think of a possession of Harry's they could seize and hold to ransom to force him to pay up, Archie thought the answer was obvious: some quarry stones.

As Harry Mowlam owned a large quarry at Connelton, and was in no way short of stones, Mike and Jackie, needless to say, were not impressed by Archie's suggestion.

In early 1984, Archie and Mike undertook the job of decorating the back room at The Woolpack. Archie proved himself a pretty good decorator, but the job took longer than was originally envisaged because of Mike's tendency to skive and Archie's tendency to break off and write poems and love letters on scraps of wallpaper.

Archie was in love.

And her name was Cathy.

However, writing love letters didn't come easily to the slow-thinking lad.

But, with Mike's advice, surely he couldn't go wrong?

Mike: "Why don't you put: 'Dear Cathy, you're the best looking bird I've ever seen, how about a bit of the other? Your secret admirer, Archie.' "

Archie saw nothing wrong with the sentiments expressed, but spotted a basic flaw:

"Hang on. How can I be a secret admirer if I sign my name?"

As the 1980s continued, Archie would appear in the Emmerdale Farm series more and more, become a bit of a thinker, and develop strong political and ecological views.

But that was very hard to imagine in his early days!

Saturday 21 February 2009

Roxy Music - Some Things Last Forever - At Least In Soapland...

Archie gets funky to Roxy in 1984.

Picture the scene: it's the late 1970s and Suzie Birchall and Gail Potter of Coronation Street are working at Mike Baldwin's fashion shop, The Western Front. Mike wanted teenage girls to staff the shop as he thought they would, hopefully, know what the punters were "in to".

Oddly, Gail and Suzie often used to play severely out-of-date music, like Roxy Music's early '70s stuff, in the shop. Not something I ever heard when Sue, my older cousin, dragged me around real fashion shops in the late '70s...

Picture the scene: it's the mid-1980s, the setting is Tarrant, home of the boating saga Howards' Way, and local teens, wearing very "trendy" ripped clothes are having a boogie... to early '70s Roxy Music. That never happened at any disco I attended back then! (Incidentally, they followed it by hoofing it up to mid-'80s Robert Palmer - PURLEASE!!)

Picture the scene: it's Howards' Way, a fashion shoot, and the background music is a Bryan Ferry track from the mid-1980s...

Picture the scene: it's Beckindale, December 1984, and Archie and the local teens are listening to a Roxy Music compilation LP, including early '70s groover Love Is The Drug, and 1980 sensation Midnight Hour.

Picture the scene: it's the next day at Emmerdale Farm and Jack Sugden is doing the farm accounts and listening to the radio, which just happens to be belting out Roxy Music's 1980 hit, The Same Old Scene.

Picture the scene, it's Tarrant again...

I won't go on. But Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry tracks seemed to crop up an awful lot in our '70s and '80s serials. Much as I love the group and Mr F, and aware as I am that the group and Bryan Ferry as a solo artist had chart hits from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, they seemed to crop up more than was natural, particularly when it came to scenes involving teenagers - who might more realistically have been listening to The Fall or the latest synth epic.

I know there were copyright issues and Emmerdale Farm in the 1980s did make an effort to be modern, including snatches of Party Fears Two, Like To Get To Know You Well, various Sade hits, and Relax. I suppose Roxy/Bryan Ferry must have had an arrangement with UK telly producers which made their music an attractive proposition, but the band's back catalogue cropping up in two separate scenarios in one episode of Emmerdale Farm in 1984 did seem to be straining credibility more than a little!

"Ooh, Jack, not this bunch again - let's switch it off!"

Thursday 3 April 2008

Beckindale Youth - 1986

A schoolgirl in 1980, Sandie Merrick was apparently aged around thirty in 1986.

Was there ever a girl who was old before her time more than Sandie Merrick? The traumas she suffered - getting pregnant by Andy Longthorn at the age of eighteen, the loss of her mother when she was around twenty-one, and the beginnings of her affair with married builder Phil Pearce just afterwards prematurely turned her into a right old fogey. But not a very wise one as it turned out.

Even back in the caravan days of the early 1980s, Sandie seemed a stabilising influence on Pat and Jackie, almost a maternal influence herself. And, having become pregnant by Andy Longthorn in 1983, she was sensible about the baby after a brief period of going to pieces. She was a realistic character - Sandie had learned to be a coper because of her difficult childhood.

But her musical tastes were wildly inconsistent. Whilst Nick Bates taunted sister Kathy about having Bay City Rollers LPs when she was a little girl, Phil Pearce, chatting to Sandie on a cosy evening at Demdyke, harked back to some wonderful old R'n'B records a lad at the local Scout Hut had played him back in his own 1960s youth period - which had encouraged him and some of the other boys to form a short-lived band.

Sandie told Phil she went back as far as David Bowie and the late Bob Marley - which wasn't actually that far at the time as both had had major UK chart hits in the early 1980s. But these were both considered "serious" pop people and Sandie omitted to mention her "wild" times at the Vicarage (when the Rev Hinton was out) whooping it up to Shakin' Stevens with Jackie and Andy c. 1982.

Because of her attitude, her lack of teen/early twenty-something silliness, her world weariness, the fact that she preferred sitting in the Woolpack to night clubbing, I somehow got the feeling that Sandie was not referring to going back as far as Ashes To Ashes in 1980, but Bowie's debut with Space Oddity in 1969!

Sandie had no recollections to offer Phil of the 1970s 1950s-style pop idols in her not-so-dim and distant childhood either - no dewy-eyed recall of screeching at Alvin Stardust, Mud, the Rubettes, the Rollers or even Racey on Top Of The Pops. She wasn't even a Donny fan as a little 'un it seemed. She was terribly serious and out of her own age range.

I liked the character of Sandie, but there were times when I felt, as with many youthful characters in Emmerdale Farm and Coronation Street in the 1970s and 1980s, that the performer behind the character should have been a little more similar in age and/or the writers should have been a little more aware of current trends. Jane Hutcheson was somewhat older than the character she portrayed and often Sandie seemed of a similar age.

I was a contemporary of the Sandie Merrick character, as was my peer group at the time, and it was a lot more fun going out to "Nite Spots" and dancing to the likes of Noo Shooz and the Pet Shop Boys than sitting in Demdyke Row wittering on about David Bowie with somebody else's spouse who also happened to be at least ten years your senior.

Silly Sandie!

Mind you, the character Rosemary Kendall, who moped around the farm for a while in the '70s, seemed even more out of date.

In the 1980s, Archie Brooks - the lovely layabout with the off-beat '80s dress-sense, constantly proclaiming his strong (Old Labour) Socialist principles, was a Beckindale character I recognised from real-life people around me. Archie was very cutting edge for a soap.

So, as far as Emmerdale Farm's representation of youth was concerned, all in all, things were certainly looking up in the '80s.

It beat the teens-written-by-forty-somethings inhabiting Coronation Street during that era hollow.

But if only Sandie hadn't gone from eighteen to thirty in about a year.

When she became involved with Phil Pearce I felt that the character lost all credibility, any commonsense she had possessed had completely gone to the wall, and she was now just a vehicle for a cheap storyline. Onscreen, it seemed that Sandie was simply courting trouble for the sake of it, the storyline felt manufactured (rather like the relationship between Joe and Karen Moore earlier in the year) simply to plug gaps in the air time.

With Sandie we now had the worst of both worlds. Her character was flat and too mature for her age, yet she had a childish lack of sense when it came to romance.

It was a shame that Sandie was used in this way. If the production team had thought things through just a little more, I'm convinced that the character could have become one of the strongest in the show.

And I would have loved to have seen her bopping to Opportunities - Let's Make Lots Of Money in deelyboppers and shoulder pads at Blimps Nite Spot in Hotten.

Just once.

Down with Thatcher! Down with capitalism! No Nukes! Archie Brooks (Tony Pitts)- '80s activist and layabout, was an inspired creation. He's seen here with the enjoyably stroppy and clumsy Jackie Merrick and smoothy boy Terence Turner in 1985.

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Remember '88?

Archie Brooks has a surprise for some friends and it's Mrs Bates last day as Alan Turner's secretary - TV Times, 21 January, 1988.

Amos and Mr Wilks square up...

... for the battle of beers - 3 March, 1988. Does anybody have details of these episodes? I'd love to know more!


Friday 18 January 2008

Archie Brooks - '80s Man Activist

Archie's caravan was destroyed by Nick Bates in the Emmerdale Farm tractor. YIPIS stood for "Yorkshire Independence Party And International Socialists".

An e-mail from Carol...

The best Emmerdale Farm character in the 1980s was Archie Brooks, played by Tony Pitts. He was politically aware and a bit of an activist - highly involved in the anti-nuclear protests of 1987, and an "80s Man" or "New Man" too. He was determinedly non-sexist and in the early '90s helped Nick care for baby Alice.

He reflected the concerns of a lot of young people in the '80s and was a breed of youngster that was involved and politically active. It's absolute trash the way people try to dismiss the '80s as being simply greedy. They were a very polarised and turbulent era. These days, of course, apathy rules and youngsters would rather have an ipod than social/political justice, and insist they are far more caring than '80s youngsters whilst doing nothing to justify it.

Please can you do a write-up of one of Emmerdale's most original and true-to-life characters, who truly reflected the era he lived in?

It was fitting that the character was killed off when the show turned completely stupid and insensitive with the plane crash of December 1993.

I agree that Archie, who made his debut in November 1983, was a great character, Carol, he was a huge favourite of mine - and yes, there were a lot of Archies around in the 1980s. A very well-written and acted character. A quote from Emmerdale Farm - The Official Companion by James Ferguson, 1988:

The realistic behaviour and speech which Tony uses is based upon his own twenty-one-old brother, who is chairman of the Socialist Workers' Party in Sheffield.

The character is nowadays too often overlooked. Thanks for writing!

From the Sun, January 1983. Read more about the '80s/New Man here.

Monday 17 December 2007

1987 - A Vintage Year...

From the TV Times, 18-24 April 1987. A great year for Emmerdale Farm with the famous storyline about a proposed nuclear waste dump near the village. Excellent. Modern day soap opera doesn't go near issues like this, but in the 1980s the genre broke new ground and the nuclear storyline was a proud moment in the history of Emmerdale Farm.

Protester Jack Sugden (Clive Hornby) was arrested and the scene where the villagers gathered as the church bell tolled chilled my blood. First class drama.

Plans for the dump were abandoned.

And to add to the rich storyline brew, there was Eric Pollard, who had arrived on the scene in 1986 and was causing quite a lot of disruption in 1987...
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Actor Christopher Chittell knew he was doing a good job as hard, vengeful Eric Pollard in "Emmerdale Farm" when his mother-in-law started calling him less than complimentary names. Pollard has lost his job as auctioneer at Hotton Market for allegedly having his hand in the till. He blames Sandie Merrick (Jane Hutcheson) for telling Joe Sugden (Frazer Hines) that he was a crook.
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Says Chittell: "Pollard becomes very poisonous indeed. He's a Jekyll-and-Hyde character, and can become lunatic in his Hyde mood. I went home to Newark the other day and my mother-in-law called me a swine. My wife, Caroline, and two children, Benjamin and Rebecca, have just moved near her from Dartmouth. Now, because of Pollard, she's suggesting we move back again."