WHEN LOUIS MET JIMMY. (2000) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

WHEN LOUIS MET JIMMY. (2000) A TV SPECIAL DIRECTED BY WILL YAPP. WRITTEN BY LOUIS THEROUX. FEATURING LOUIS THEROUX AND JIMMY SAVILE.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Louis Theroux spends a week with the eccentric broadcaster and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile and attempts to get behind the public persona.’

I recently watched and reviewed LOUIS THEROUX: SAVILE. As it referenced WHEN LOUIS MET JIMMY several times, and as the later film was a kind of reaction by the documentary-maker Theroux to the flood of accusations of sexual abuse that emerged after Savile’s death in 2011, I decided that I needed to watch the 2000 film also. Now, they seem to fit together perfectly as a sort of Louis Theroux’s before-and-after take on the Jimmy Savile story, so watch them together if you can.

As the blurb says, the talented young film-maker Louis Theroux spends a week in Savile’s company as the now-disgraced TV star Jimmy Savile supposedly goes about his everyday business.

This includes going to the launch of a charity cruise aboard the ship CARONIA, going to a restaurant where everybody knows Savile and visiting Savile’s holiday home in the Scottish Highlands, where the former DJ accidentally breaks an ankle during a spot of mountaineering.

More interesting than the changing locations- though the Scottish Highlands are gorgeous- is the dynamic between the young film-maker and the crabbed old TV star who was well on his way to being all washed-up in the year 2000. I wonder if he was aware of this, or if he actually still thought he was da bomb.

We were right on the cusp of the reality TV/Big Brother/Pop Idols and X Factor/social media era back then, and the kids only wanted to see young, attractive-looking people on their screens, people like Cheryl Cole, Davina McCall, Rihanna, Beyonce, Shayne Ward and Nicole Sherzinger, not a withered old has-been with an abrasive manner and a mother fixation to rival Norman Bates’s.

(Did Louis look remotely comfortable about sleeping alone in ‘the Duchess’s’ neatly preserved bed? Did ‘e ‘eck as like, as Vera Duckworth might have said. (The actress Liz Dawn is seen briefly attending the launch of the charity cruise.) I wouldn’t sleep in it myself, that’s for sure. Not that I’m ever likely to be invited.)

What’s extraordinary about this film is the horrible manner Savile displays towards Louis and his questions. Jimmy was using his patter to deflect my questions, the broadcaster says at one point, and he’s right.

Savile is always ‘on,’ always talking shite at top speed, always bullshitting, always cracking bad jokes, showing off or dispensing useless pieces of ‘homespun wisdom’ on how Louis might ‘improve’ his interview technique.

There’s nothing wrong with Louis Theroux’s interview technique. It’s Savile’s inherent inability to answer a straight question with a straight answer that’s the problem here. He’s impossible to pin down.

He bites Louis’ head off for questioning a cache of booze he finds in the supposed teetotaller’s flat. He constantly evades the question of romance by saying that women give him ‘brain damage,’ and that’s why he never married or had a steady girlfriend, allegedly.

When he hurts his foot in the Scottish Highlands, he phones the local papers to film him having his plaster put on in the local hospital. What a narcissist. Louis points out that, when a normal person has an accident, they phone for friends or family to come. Jimmy Savile phones the media.

Obviously, he was desperate to keep his face and name in the papers. Maybe he was aware after all that his star, luminescent for so many years in the world of TV and radio, not to mention his charity fundraising, was finally beginning to lose its glow.

I can get anything, me, Savile tells Louis mysteriously at one point, when Louis wonders aloud how his ex-directory address and phone number have ended up in Savile’s address book. It’s because I didn’t know who you were, so it’s just in case I had to send any Sicilian gentlemen around to have a little chat with you, Savile adds, or words to that general effect.

Savile is caught unawares at one point, telling the cameraman after Louis has gone to bed all about how he used to treat messers at his clubs, back when he used to run nightclubs in Leeds in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

There’s talk of tying guys up in the club basements till the club was shut, and, even though Savile doesn’t mention giving them a few digs before sending them on their way, I personally feel like it might be implied.

When Louis later quizzes him about this, Savile backtracks and says it was all ‘only a figure of speech,’ like when you say to someone, I’ll kill you for doing that! Figure of speech my ass.

I invented zero tolerance, me, boasts the white-haired former celebrity at one point. Sadly, his victims were usually too young and vulnerable to implement the ‘zero tolerance’ policy against Savile himself, who would have needed it applied against him more than most.

Theroux manages to squeeze in a couple of questions about the all-important paedophilia issue. Is he or is he not a paedophile? He might be or he might not be, how would anyone ever know, Savile says in reply. He knows he’s not, and that’s all that counts.

But he tells the press that he ‘hates children,’ he confides next, and that’s how you put the more ‘salacious’ members of the press ‘off the scent,’ you see. Well, that doesn’t sound dodgy at all, does it, folks? Then Savile yawns a huge fake yawn as if to say, subject closed…

Here are some words I’d use to describe Savile’s personality after watching this film. Prickly. Hostile. Aggressive. Passive-aggressive. Arrogant. Secretive. Evasive. Entitled. Privileged. An abuser of his power. A nasty piece of work. Defensive. Obnoxious. Volatile. Odious. Creepy. Someone who could turn nasty in a flash. Show-off. Show-boater. Grand-stander. Menacing. Threatening. A boaster. A bully. Always ‘on.’ Over-confident. Considers himself ‘untouchable.’ They’re not nice words, are they?

If even a grown man like Louis Theroux could feel a bit on edge around this man, and sense the aura of power and privilege that still emanates from him, and Louis is a big powerful-looking bloke, then how rail-roaded into having sexual relations with Savile must those innocent youngsters he abused have felt? It hardly bears thinking about.

I have only one further observation. Watching this documentary made me feel uncomfortable, not only because of what we now know about Savile, but also because the two men don’t really seem to be the friends they claim they were after this film was made.

Louis himself admits he found Savile ‘irritating,’ which I can fully understand, and Savile seems to completely resent the intrusion into his private life, even though he gave his consent for the film to be made. Try to watch this fascinating documentary if you can. If you’re a psychologist, even just an armchair one, or an interpreter of body language, you’ll have a bloody field day.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

LOST HEARTS (1973), THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS (1974) and THE ASH TREE (1975): MORE GHOSTLY ADAPTATIONS FROM THE BBC REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

CLASSIC GHOST STORY ADAPTATIONS FROM THE BBC: LOST HEARTS (1973), THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS (1974) AND THE ASH TREE (1975). BASED ON THE STORIES OF MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES.

STARRING SIMON GIPPS-KENT, JOSEPH O’CONOR, MICHAEL BRYANT, PAUL LAVERS, EDWARD PETHERBRIDGE AND BARBARA EWING.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

These three ghost stories in the BBC’s A Ghost Story For Christmas series are just gorgeous. They’re beautifully photographed and the stories are good and creepy too. As the little booklet accompanying the DVD box-set tells us so descriptively, they would have appeared on television late at night, probably the last programme before the station shut down for the night.

This was back in the days when television wasn’t a twenty-four-hour thing, remember, and you had a choice sometimes of only two, three or four channels. The viewer would have watched the programme in front of the dying embers of that day’s fire, and gone straight up to bed afterwards with the disturbing imagery from the ghost story weighing heavily upon his mind. By Jove, if that isn’t the way to do it…!

Lost Hearts tells the story of a recently orphaned boy called Stephen coming to live with his ancient aristocrat uncle/first cousin twice removed Abney, in said uncle’s fabulous stately home set in acres of rolling parkland.

Uncle Abney is, quite simply, too good to be true. He’s chuckle-y and funny and so kindly disposed towards the soon-to-be-twelve-years-old lad that we wonder in earnest what his deal is. Things –– and people –– that seem to be too good to be true often are, after all . . .

If I were Stephen, I’d be extremely worried about the well-meaning but thoroughly unnerving tales told by the housekeeper about children who were invited to stay at the house by the kindly old Mr. Abney in the past, but who then disappeared into thin air shortly afterwards. Still, the boy is powerless to act, isn’t he? What can he do in a situation like that? He’s orphaned, after all, and the older gentleman in whose home he currently resides is now his legal guardian.

The fog-wreathed landscape looks wonderful in this film. The supernatural beings are present in the narrative almost from the beginning, but they’re no less creepy for all that, the Italian hurdy-gurdy gypsy boy in particular. The music is marvellous and the graveyard scene at the end is just beautiful to look at. Apologies for the fulsome nature of my adjectives, but really, this short film is just too visually delicious to resist.

In The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, an intellectually arrogant cleric by the name of the Reverend Justin Somerton is engaged on what amounts to a secret treasure hunt, for the gold said to have been secreted away by the titular Abbot Thomas in the ancient church-slash-seat of learning where Somerton is now doing some research. It has to be kept secret because it would fatally damage Somerton’s academic reputation to be seen to be grubbing around after a handful of gold coins.

Somerton is assisted in his treasure-hunting by the aristocratic young Lord Peter Dattering, whose father is recently deceased. I love the bit where Peter invites his mentor Somerton to a séance in his home. Peter’s mother is convinced that her medium and the medium’s husband are able to contact her dear dead spouse for her, but the snobby show-off Reverend Somerton soon puts paid to the medium couple’s little scam . . .

Somerton and Peter have great fun flexing their intellectual muscles in trying to solve the puzzle left by long-deceased alchemist and suspected sorcerer, the Abbot Thomas. Imagine Somerton’s fright, though, when he realises that the mischievous, malevolent Abbot Thomas has not been trying to keep him away from his precious treasure, but has in fact been trying to lure him into a horrible, deathly trap, using the treasure as bait. The scene in the catacombs is delightfully gruesome, and I love the end bit, of which we get a satisfying bird’s-eye view. He looks down on what is hidden . . .

The Ash Tree is arguable my favourite story of the three short films. The handsome, aristocratic young Sir Richard Fell is the newest incumbent of Castringham hall, his predecessor Sir Matthew having died a strange and mysterious death.

Sir Richard straightaway begins to experience moments of possession, when he finds himself occupying the body and mind of the late Sir Matthew. But Sir Matthew lived in witch-finder times, when innocent women were hanged and drowned and burned to death after being found ‘guilty’ of so-called witchcraft.

Sir Matthew’s mind, once he has reluctantly accused a beautiful local woman, Anne Mothersole (played by Hammer actress Barbara Ewing), of witchcraft and condemned her to a horrible death by hanging, is not a comfortable place to be. Sir Richard becomes more and more discombobulated by the periods of possession. Is it only a matter of time before he suffers the same grisly fate as his unfortunate ancestor . . . ?

Sir Richard has a saucy little sexpot of a girlfriend called the Lady Augusta, by the way, who seems to be permitted an extraordinary amount of freedom for a woman of the time. Gadding about on her horse, swanning over to Paris for her wedding trousseau and daring to chide her husband-to-be over his inclusion of Henry Fielding’s The Adventures of Tom Jones in his library. A woman who reads? Heaven forfend . . . 

It is sincerely to be hoped that Sir Richard beats this distinct tendency towards independence out of her once they are lawfully wed, which was the style of the time, and fills her belly with enough regularity to take her mind off gadding about and keep it where it belongs, in the nursery. Humph.

There’s an hilarious passage in the booklet which accompanies this DVD box-set, in which director Lawrence Gordon Clark tells us about how it was the ash tree in his very own garden that served as the downfall of poor Sir Richard.

Months later, the following summer, in fact, Clark was entertaining friends in his garden when a hideous spider baby, that seemingly hadn’t been boxed away with the other hairy monstrosities after filming ended, fell suddenly out of the tree into the lap of a terrified female guest. If that had been me, the speed of my departure would have put the Road-Runner to shame. Sweet suffering Jesus.

‘Mine shall inherit . . .’

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (1971) and A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS (1972): TWO GHOSTLY TV ADAPTATIONS REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.©

GHOST STORIES: CLASSIC ADAPTATIONS FROM THE BBC: THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (1971) AND A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS (1972). BASED ON STORIES BY MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES. PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY LAWRENCE GORDON CLARK.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘No diggin’ ‘ere…!’

British film and television in the late ’60s and early ’70s is the best in the world. You can’t beat it. These two offerings are so exquisitely atmospheric and of their time that I literally feel like I’m walking through a door to the past when I watch them. I’m not always happy about stepping back into the present either, when the credits start rolling…!

A mere review couldn’t hope to capture or encapsulate their ghostly essence in a thousand words, but I can certainly try to transit some of my enthusiasm for these two immaculate adaptations of some of the spookiest stories in literature.

In THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER, the marvellous Clive Swift (the long-suffering Richard Bucket from sitcom KEEPING UP APPEARANCES, about a snobbish, upwardly mobile social climbing housewife) plays a tweed-suited academic called Dr. Black. He has come to Barchester Cathedral in the 1930s to catalogue the library there. He finds it a dreadfully dreary task on the whole, until fate puts in his way a locked box of papers…

The box contains the private papers and diary of the now-deceased Archdeacon Haynes, who was the head cleric at the cathedral in the 1870s. This fellow Haynes, brilliantly played by an almost unrecognisably young Robert Hardy (Siegfried Farnon from ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL), has waited an aggravatingly long time to attain his cherished position of Archdeacon.

The previous incumbent, a Dr. Pulteney, insisted on living pretty much as long as Methuselah, and doubtless would be living still had not a sudden shocking accident catapulted the good doctor into heaven and this chap Haynes into his place.

Haynes, a joyless, austere and rather pompous fellow not untypical of his Victorian contemporaries, takes up residence in the house where his ancient predecessor recently died a violent death.

When his sister Letitia, played by Thelma Barlow (Mavis Wilton from Rita’s newsagents in CORONATION STREET), joins him in the Archdeacon’s residence in the summer months, his stay in the creepy old house that comes with the job is bearable enough. But when Letitia decamps to warmer climes in the winter and Haynes is left alone with the shadows and strange sounds that surround him nightly in the old house, he becomes slowly unhinged…

He hears people around him constantly, voices and comings and goings, especially on the stairs or in the hall outside his study, but when he steels himself to look, there is nothing to be either seen or heard in the darkness without.

He also senses the presence of a large cat, but his manservant assures him that no such animal resides in the house. Who or what is trying to drive the sombre Archdeacon Haynes out of his mind, and, perhaps more interesting a thought, why…? What has he done to deserve it?

The strangely obscene carvings in the magnificent old cathedral have their part to play in this very gothic mystery, as does their creator, John Austin, dubbed ‘The Twice-Born’ by the superstitious natives, and also a stretch of visually beautiful woodland containing the stump of what was once known locally as ‘the hanging tree.’

There’s some rather gorgeous choir-singing in the cathedral, and a few genuinely scary moments in the house that relies on candles for its light, as electricity hasn’t yet been invented. Can Dr. Black get to the bottom of the mystery of Archdeacon Haynes, and will it be fit for publication in the cathedral library’s catalogue, even if he does…?

A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS is, if possible, even more beautiful to look at and atmospheric than THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER. Peter Vaughan (VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, STRAW DOGS, PORRIDGE, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY) plays a disillusioned, middle-aged amateur archaeologist called Paxton, who has recently been made redundant from his job as a clerk. With nothing to lose, he travels in the winter-time to the fictional seaside town of Seaburgh on the coast of Suffolk, to do a little independent sleuthing into a matter that interests him greatly.

Local legend in the place where he has come to has it that, long ago, three Anglo-Saxon crowns were buried in different locations along the East Anglian coast to keep foreign marauders from invading Britain. Only one crown remains unfound, and the natives believe that it is still guarded by the last member of the family that has always guarded the buried treasure, one William Ager.

The fact that William Ager, a ‘solitary’ who died years ago of the consumption appears to be no impediment to his carrying out of his sworn duty … guarding the crown and, thereby, defending the realm, England’s green and pleasant land.

When Paxton finds the third crown after a telling conversation with a beautiful woman in a wild and ramshackle country garden, he feels from the moment he uncovers it that he is ‘never alone, not for a minute.’

Who stalks the unfortunate amateur archaeologist with evil intent, and who accompanies him wherever he goes, though no companion is ever visible to his own eyes or those of others? The feeling of dread is palpable all the way through this marvellously atmospheric piece of television.

Haunting flute solos throughout and the discordant scraping of violins towards the end of the piece contribute greatly to the atmospherics. Ditto the fabulous sweeping shots of a bleak coastline in winter, deserted beaches and silent woods. Clive Swift plays another Dr. Black here, this time a knickerbockered academic who comes to the desolate windswept seaside town to paint and escape his wife.

There’s a stunning scene in the village cemetery in which the local vicar points out to Paxton the resting place of the consumptive William Ager. Steam train aficionados will delight in the sight of the valiant machines used by kind permission of the North Norfolk Railway Company, and the twist in the tale will leave you reeling.

This and THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER both became highly popular Christmas viewing in the early ‘Seventies, sparking off a series of similar ghostly festive pieces. A ghost story for Christmas, what could be more perfect? Take a trip back in time and enjoy these two gems. And thank your spooky stars for the spectral imagination of M.R. James…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

OPEN ALL HOURS. (1976-1985) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

OPEN ALL HOURS: THE COMPLETE SERIES 1-4. (1976-1985) CREATED AND WRITTEN BY ROY CLARKE. STARRING RONNIE BARKER, DAVID JASON AND LYNDA BARON.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘G-G-G-Granville, f-fetch your cloth…!’

‘You can’t move around here for grocers in your bosom.’

This is the warmest, nicest and funniest television I’ve watched all year. It’s really and truly the best of British in the sitcom line. My only regret is that I didn’t discover it sooner. It’s the story of Arkwright’s Corner Shop and all who sail in her, namely Albert E. Arkwright the grocer, his n-n-n-nephew Granville and Arkwright’s state-registered lady love, one Nurse Gladys Emanuel, who lives over ‘t’ road.

Arkwright has three aims in life. One, fleecing his customers of every possible half-penny and sending them home with much more than they came in for. A slice or two of bacon? Well, why not buy a nice hand-mirror, antique clothes horse or out-of-date packet of Jamaica ginger cake to go with that, my love? The customers leave, bemused, time after time, gobsmacked at the way that the sneaky, unscrupulous Arkwright has managed to part ’em from their hard-earned cash.

Two, preventing his curly-headed, constantly daydreaming nephew, Granville, from discovering a life outside their cosy little Yorkshire shop. Granville yearns for a woman, for the bright lights and clamour of the local disco, for foreign travel and Chinese architecture and a yacht on the Riviera and the finer things in life, but how the heck is he supposed to achieve any of these exotic delights when the shop opens in ‘t’ middle of ‘t’ night, namely, at sun-up, and doesn’t shut till nine o’clock at night…?

Three, breaking through the fortress of ample bosom that is Nurse Gladys Emanuel to her softer inner core without getting one of her nifty left hooks, although getting stuck in the outer bosom would suit Arkwright (and Granville!) just fine, come to think of it. They could set up shop in her splendiferous frontage without any hesitation whatsoever, it’s so nice and warm and comforting there.

Nurse Gladys Emanuel, Arkwright’s betrothed, with her fabulous head of burnished red-brown hair, is one of those old-fashioned visiting nurses who’d drive round her little parish seeing to different patients. Changing a bandage on an old lady’s wound, checking on a newborn baby and its poorly mum, seeing that a bedridden old gent has managed to eat something after his operation, stuff like that. The travelling nurse is very much part of Britain’s distant past. I enjoyed hugely having that lovely nostalgic element included in the show.

Gladys Emanuel, played by the magnificent Lynda Baron, is a fine figure of a woman. No skinny little young one she. On the contrary, she’s broad in the beam with more front than Blackpool, and it’s no wonder the lovestruck Arkwright risks climbing a ladder at his age to catch a glimpse of her famous frontage leaning out of a window in her negligée. She won’t marry Arkwright until her never-seen mum no longer needs looking after, and Arkwright’s just going to have to knuckle down and wait.

Nurse Gladys is worth waiting for, though, as Arkwright well knows. She’s a woman any man would be proud to call his own, warm and good-humoured with a ready laugh. It’s brilliant, though, the way she slaps away his groping hands time after time and always has a cutting quip lined up that’s guaranteed to put him back in his box.

She’s determined to get him to spend a few quid as well, which for a man as stingy and parsimonious as old Arkwright is like pulling teeth without anaesthetic. Good luck getting Arkwright to prise open the old Oxo tin that holds his precious takings, Nurse Gladys Emanuel. If anyone can do it, you can!

There’s a running joke in the show about Granville, who’s of uncertain parentage, being part-Hungarian. Arkwright’s quite cheeky about his own sister, Granville’s long-deceased mum, having been of loose morals, flinging her knickers to the four winds whenever anyone asked her to.

Granville isn’t altogether averse to being part-Hungarian. It appeals to the part of him that yearns for excitement, glamour, mystery, bright lights; anything, in fact, that takes him away from the mundanity of pricing tins of carrots and pushing the old shop-bike loaded down with deliveries up yet another poxy hill in the rain…!

Arkwright’s Super-Stores is the housewives’ choice for sure. Kathy Staff (LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE) was bloody hilarious as the plain speaking Mrs. Blewitt in the earlier episodes. Stephanie Cole as the Black Widow, aka Mrs. Fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-Featherstone, did duty as the Resident Cranky Auld One in the later episodes.

Liz Dawn, Vera Duckworth in CORONATION STREET, had one line in a very early episode. Him off THE BILL (Eric Richard) played a cameo role once as a man trying to flog a washing machine to Arkright. Good luck with that one, mate. He’ll want cheaper than what you’re offering, you mark my words. Teddy Turner (CORRIE, EMMERDALE) also had a small role. Barbara Keogh (Lilly Mattock from EastEnders) was Mrs. Ellis.

Maggie Ollerenshaw played the ditzy, terminally indecisive Mavis, or did she? I can’t quite make up me mind! Paula Tilbrook (Betty Eagleton from Emmerdale) was Mrs. Tattersall. Barbara Flynn played the Milk-woman who every morning delivered two pints and a pot of unrequited love to the head-over-heels Granville. I personally thought she was a bit of a tease. I don’t believe she had the slightest intention of ever letting Granville have the top off ‘t’ milk, the snooty little hussy. She were only leading ‘im on, she were.

Poor Granville, desperate to be part of Britain’s new generation of swinging young people, but he never has time to get his pinny off. Doomed to be an errand boy for life, the poor lad. Come and nestle for a bit in Nurse Gladys Emanuel’s bosom. That’ll make you feel better, lad. Just make sure Arkwright’s not watching…!

Arkwright the grocer is rude to everyone, racist, sexist, disrespectful to women, verging on dishonest the way he flogs his old out-of-date white elephant stock to his customers (remember when he tried to sell some kind of lead blacking to male customers as a kind of marital aid?), and yet he’s the cuddliest, most loveable rogue you could ever hope to meet.

I also love the delightfully mournful theme tune, and the fact that the show didn’t modernise as the years went on, but rather kept the olde-worlde charm that makes it so magical. The time of the corner shop that sold everything from turnips to braces for your trousers to the kind of lead blacking people used to put on old stoves (marital aids, my foot!) has passed, sadly, to be replaced by the age of the supermarket and online shopping. Still, if we ever have a burning need for a small brown loaf and two teacakes, we’ll know where to go, won’t we? G-G-G-Granville, fetch your cloth…!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor