Number 73

Heeere's Ethel! Yes, I know she's Sandi Toksvig really!

Children's TV show Number 73, which had debuted in the TVS area in January 1982, was networked in 1983. I wasn't a child at the time, but what the heck. I loved it. When I visited the set for a Friday dress rehearsal in 1983, I was well chuffed!

The show mixed comic fiction - the ups and downs of Miss Ethel Davis, her lodgers, friends and neighbours - with the usual Saturday morning children's magazine fare - interesting features, pop guests, etc.

Ethel's lodgers included dim-but-nice Harry Stern (Nick Staverson) and the up front, good hearted Dawn Lodge (Andrea Arnold), who always seemed to be wearing roller skates!

My favourite No. 73 feature was the quiz.

All together now:

"It's the daring, dazzling, death defyingly dull, devastatingly dangerous, delectable, delicatestable, divinely decadent Sandwich Quiz!"

The Sandwich Quiz patter as recorded in a mid-1980s No. 73 book differed from mine - "delicatessenable" replaced "delicatestable" but I certainly always heard it as the latter, so if I'm wrong, please forgive me!

As with all live shows, there could be problems - and cast and production team had, on occasion, to think on their feet.

In one episode, the screen suddenly went black whilst Sade was performing one of her hits. The song continued to the end, black screen and all, then there was a commercial break. After the break, Ethel was seen sitting on the stairs, apologising because the electric had "gone out" and explaining she'd had to nip out for change for the meter!

Number 73 - 1985. Hey you get ready get on your feet, get into gear and hit the street...

In June 1985, wedding bells were all set to ring out for No. 73 landlady Ethel Davis. She was to marry her bank manager, Frederick Crossfield (Michael Maynard). On the morning of the wedding, No. 73 regular Neil (Neil Buchanan) was surprised to find that Ethel was playing tennis with Junior (Mama Used To Say) Giscombe, and not making any effort to prepare for the ceremony. In fact, she seemed eager to avoid the subject altogether...

Kim (Kim Goody) was another No 73 regular. On the morning of Ethel's Big Day, she came scurrying back from "The Blooming Bride" with the wedding and bridesmaids' dresses.

Something old (the groom), something new (the bride's shoes), something borrowed (the mortgage)... something blue?

Of course, the bathmat was absolutely ideal but, as the morning progressed, Ethel developed a nagging doubt that it was too big. So Kim came up with some blue cheese for her to wear instead. Ethel was quick to reject it - that would have been absurd.

The wedding guests were arriving - including Five Star (Bucks Fizz had brought their latest video to show Harry and, "interestingly", the Red Skins were providing the cellar sounds with some highly "interesting" lyrics about Margaret Thatcher thrown in).

Jimmy Nail - fresh from Auf Wiedersehen Pet added to Ethel's growing ranks of wedding presents...

Well, you can't have too many of these...

... and, adding to the thrill of it all, Paul (Love and Pride) King turned up with his band. Sadly, it was all for nothing. Neither Ethel nor Mr Crossfield could go through with the wedding.

One of at least two "No 73" books which appeared during the run of the series.

"No 73" was regularly featured in the pages of "Look-In", the "junior TV Times".

Kim Goody and Neil Buchanan, who both joined the series after the start, were always referred to by their real names, but Sandi Toksvig, Nick Staverson and Andrea Arnold, who had been with the show from the beginning, played characters with different names to their own. Early on, efforts were made to conceal the fact that Ethel, Harry and Dawn were actually actors but, by the time the Look-In feature above appeared in 1986, the true facts were well known.

Actor/presenter Patrick Doyle, an original member of the cast, played Percy Simmonds in 1982 but became Alec Simmonds in 1983. Viewers were informed that Alec was Percy's "identical cousin" from Scotland. The part of Alec allowed Patrick to drop Percy's English accent and use his own Scottish one! Patrick made his final No. 73 appearance in 1983.

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"No. 73" became a popular "Look-In" comic strip.

Hazel (Jeannie Crowther) and Martin (Richard Addison) Edwards from No. 75. Hazel was a popular visitor to No. 73 - warm hearted, practical and a good friend to the gang. Martin had delusions of grandeur and was an interfering, Crossroads-loving, know-it-all - very much the man we loved to hate. Occasionally, just occasionally, we would feel quite sorry for him. I mean, would you fancy living next door to No. 73?!

Hazel and Martin shared very differing views of Sunny Toes Holiday Camp. To Martin, it was heaven on earth; to Hazel, it was sheer hell.

Characters who passed through during the show's run included Fred the postman (Tony Aitken), the conman Tony Deal (Nick Wilton) and the bizarre Frank Sidebottom.

A "No. 73" badge.

Locked out... "TV Times", January 1987...

1986 and 1987 saw the series undergoing several changes, most important of which was the departure of Ethel in 1986. The kindly-but-not-terribly-bright landlady, with the bizarre tendency to occasionally slide into clever Sandi Toksvig style wit, had been, in my humble opinion, the show's pivotal character, and the gap left by her departure was never successfully filled.
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Kate Copstick arrived as comic cleaner Maisie McConochie, and the cast altered further with the departure of Jeannie Crowther and Richard Addison as Hazel and Martin Edwards, and the arrival of Julian Callaghan (Jules) and Nadia de Lemeny (Nadia), new lodgers at No. 73. Richard Waites took on the role of Hamilton Dent, tenant of No. 75.

In Look-In, 3 October 1987, Harry described Nadia as being "beautiful and sophisticated". She hailed from Colorado, USA. Harry described the character of Jules as being a slob: "He's disgusting and smelly! The smell from his bedroom is something else! I thought it was the drains to begin with."

And as for Hamilton Dent...

"Hamilton Dent is our next door neighbour. He's very twitchy and nervous: not the sort of person you'd expect to be a driving instructor..."

The show gained a Sunday morning edition.
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In January 1988 the writing was on the wall for No. 73 - Ethel's successor, greedy new landlord JC Birch, had his way and the house was demolished to make way for redevelopment.

So, Harry, Dawn, Neil, Kim and co. went to live on a Wild West theme park (like you do), taking the old front door with them, and applying its distinctive yellow numbers to the saloon-style doors at the park - hence 7T3...

A very rare "7T3" badge. The show did not last long!

Soon, 7T3 was no more, and some of the presenters popped up on a new Saturday morning programme called Motormouth.

What fashions were Motormouth presenters Neil Buchanan, Julian Ballantyne, Andrea Arnold and Tony Gregory into in 1988? A photograph and article from a November TV Times provides a useful insight into some of the fashion trends of that time...

When the four presenters from the weekend children's show "Motormouth" arrive at our studios to model their version of street cred fashions, it's almost as if they're still performing for the television cameras. Such is their dedication to their work that the fast- talking foursome never stop competing to see who can dig out the best one-liners. All, that is, except Tony Gregory who today is doing a passable imitation of the walking dead.

"It was my 21st birthday yesterday and I've got quite a hangover," says the oh-so cool presenter. Even his hair quiff looks a little limp and he spends some anxious moments scowling in front of the mirror with blow-dry lotion and hairspray, coaxing it back into shape. Like all the presenters, he is very image-conscious, and trying to part him from his favourite jeans and leather jacket turns out to be no mean feat. He favours casual clothes and buys from specialist shops in London and home town, Brighton.

Neil Buchanan, in contrast, is a sharp dresser and is in his element trying on countless suits and over-sized jackets. Surprisingly, for an ex-heavy metal guitarist, his taste in clothes is quite conservative, and unlike the other two chaps, he's no label snob. "So long as it looks good together, labels don't matter," he says, rescuing a discarded chain-store sweater from a pile of Julian's rejects. "I reckon that in a year's time, it'll be trendy to buy from somewhere like Marks and Spencer. Kids are fed up with being ripped off by sky-high designer prices."

Julian Ballantyne may not agree with him, but then Julian enjoys minor tiffs. His cheeky Scouse accent and talent for organisation once earned him the title of Entertainments Director for a French ski resort. Now, much chat later, "Motormouth" is the perfect outlet for his personality.

And what about Andrea Arnold, formerly No 73's Dawn Lodge?

"I love to play around with clothes," she says. "Give me some scissors to hack off hems, some fabric to wrap and drape, and I'll be happy for hours."

Motormouth has long departed and I don't even remember it. But, forever fondly recalled, are those Saturday mornings I spent relaxing in bed, often feeling slightly "jaded" (courtesy of the night before), watching Ethel and the gang, and nipping down to the kitchen during the commercial breaks for tea, toast, and bacon sarnies.

Happy days...

Barbara Woodhouse

The inimitable Mrs Woodhouse with a canine pal in the early 1980s.

Barbara Woodhouse was born in 1910 and always loved animals. She was known for her way with horses and cows as well as for being a dog trainer.

Having trained dogs to appear in films, Barbara became a celebrity herself in 1980 with her BBC series Training Dogs The Woodhouse Way.

Her commands to the dogs in her charge quickly became catchphrases, parroted across the land. "Walkies!" we shrilled and "Sit!" Do you remember the strange arm movement which went with the latter command?

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The first page of my copy of Barbara's autobiography is signed by the great lady herself. My wife found the book in a second hand bookshop when I was in bed with flu, c. 1996.

I remembered Barbara as a somewhat starchy English "school marm" type character, standing around trilling orders in her sensible tweed skirts, and didn't expect to enjoy the book. But I was pleasantly surprised. Barbara's insights into training animals were fascinating, and she had a great sense of adventure, having travelled to South America to live as a young woman in the 1930s.

Some of Barbara's dog training methods aroused controversy - I remember much animated chatter about the use of choke chains, but nobody could doubt her genuine love for her canine students. And she was a great character. It came as no great surprise when she was voted TV Personality of the Year 1980.

The Daily Mirror reported on 2/1/1981:

The lady who orders dogs about, Barbara Woodhouse, spent Christmas in Switzerland and was in bed by 11pm on New Year’s Eve.

Switzerland was a real thrill for this lady who became a TV star in 1980: “Even there people were coming up to me and shouting ‘Walkies!’ "

From the Sunday People, November 1981:

TV’s doggie queen Barbara Woodhouse has been calling some of Hollywood’s superstars to heel. She’s been in California to train the canine delinquents of Beverly Hills and to teach their famous owners to “walk the Woodhouse way”.

Barbara’s TV series has made her an instant celebrity in America and she has had the top dog treatment from the start.

“I was treated like royalty, it was amazing,” said Barbara.

“Everywhere I went people greeted me with the word ‘walkies’.”

The results of Barbara’s American teach-in are to be shown in a Yorkshire TV special over Christmas.

Among the problem pooches she helped were those belonging to Zsa Zsa Gabor, David Soul, Dorothy Lamour, Wilfred Hyde-White, Britt Ekland and Bill Shatner.

Problem number one was Zsa Zsa’s nervous Alsatian.

“I trained it to sit and walk to heel,” said Barbara. “It only took me about five minutes.
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“Zsa Zsa was delighted.”

Next stop was David Soul and some advanced training for his Labrador.

“The trouble was that the dog kept jumping into the swimming pool after rubber balls,” she said.

David Soul said he thought Barbara was terrific. “But my dog hasn’t changed much,” he said.

Then it was on to the home of William Shatner, Captain Kirk in the TV serial “Star Trek”.

“He had two Dobermans and seemed a little ill at ease at first,” said Barbara.
Another of Barbara’s calls was to Britt Ekland’s home where she trained two Elk hounds and a cat.

Barbara with Stefanie Powers and pooch.

Barbara wrote:

If any fortune teller five years ago had told me I should travel the world, with my husband, demonstrating my method of training dogs, to people whose welcome is “walkies” and “sit” when I arrive in their countries, I’d never have believed it. Yet it has happened.

I’ve trained dogs for the Singapore enthusiasts, and celebrated our meeting wading through a wonderful dinner of ten courses of rice, fish, chicken or other ingredients, and was assured that if it spilt on the tablecloth, due to my lack of experience with chop sticks, it was a compliment to the chef to have a dirty tablecloth.

I’ve seen a police dog crossing a wire tight rope in Pretoria wearing leather booties to save its paws.

I’ve not seen a flag raised on a flag pole, but a banner which read: “Welcome Barbara Woodhouse”. A Doberman Pinscher pulled the rope that raised the banner onto the flag pole.

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I’ve trained the stars and their dogs in Hollywood including David Soul, Stefanie Powers, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Wilfred Hyde White, William Shatner etc; I found them quick and easy to train.

I’ve met Ray Berwick and his Cockatoo, Fred. I’ve met Ron Randall and his lovely horse, star of the film “Black Stallion”.

I’ve met Tippi Hendren and her husband Noel Marshall who made that fantastic film with the lions, “ROAR”. The lions roam uncaged around her estate and home. There, also, I got acquainted with a leopard who wandered up to me, lay on my chest and licked my hand before resuming his morning stroll.

I took a baby Cougar back to its mother without her attacking me. It is said that female Cougars are fierce and will attack anyone going near their babies.

I found all the dogs I met easy to train, or rather re-train if they had faults. The people I met in Australia, Canada, South Africa and the USA are full of love for their animals. The welcome for my husband and I was unbelievable.

Unless you’d known you’d flown thousands of miles, as we had flown, you could almost imagine you’d never left England.

Dog Training and the love of horses and ponies, I’ve found, will take me around the world to get to know the animal lovers who share my interest, knowledge and affection for their pets.

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Barbara cautiously befriends a cheetah.

In 1983, Barbara appeared in a couple of amusing advertisements on the opening morning of TV-am, ITV's breakfast television service. The product? Eggs!

"Tell an eggshell who is boss. Let it know that you are...

CROSS!"

Barbara died in 1988. Her fame had been brief, but her impact great. Even today, the doggy commands "Walkies!" and "Sit!" are still widely associated with her.

Two of the 1983 egg ads featured in commercial breaks on the first day of TV-am.

This Andrex Appeal advertisement dates from September, 1981.

1989: The Twin Peaks Pilot

24 February, 1989: the body of local Home Coming Queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), wrapped in plastic, is found by Pete Martell (Jack Nance) washed up on the shore of the lake outside his home in the idyllic Pacific North West town of Twin Peaks...

Twin Peaks, of course, took the world briefly by storm in 1990 and 1991.

One of the most original and multi-faceted TV shows ever, Twin Peaks got no further than series two and ended amidst accusations from some that it had "out-weirded itself".

So, what was it all about and where does 1989 come into the picture?

I will tell all...

In 1989, David Lynch (Blue Velvet) and Mark Frost (a writer of that wonderful 1980s police drama series Hill Street Blues) produced the pilot episode of Twin Peaks - and production was well advanced on the first seven episodes before the year ended - in fact episode five was being produced in November!

Everything was in place - right from the start. The music, the atmosphere, the characterisations - the show was spot on.

An historic video cassette - the Warner Home Video European release of the 1989 "Twin Peaks" feature, running time approximately 113 minutes, copyright MCMLXXXIX [1989], Lynch/Frost Productions Inc. The material contained on the video was used as the Twin Peaks pilot episode, but contained an alternative ending. This video is sometimes referred to as "Twin Peaks - The Movie".

David Lynch looked back to the late 1980s origins of Twin Peaks in an interview in the early 1990s:

"We were at Du Par's, the coffee shop at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura and all of a sudden, Mark Frost and I had this image of a body wrapped in plastic washing up on the shore of a lake."

A map of the fictional town was soon drawn up…

"We knew where everything was, and it helped us decide what mood each place had, and what could happen there. Then the characters just introduced themselves to us and walked into the story.

“The pilot was written in only nine days and shot in 23.

"I didn't feel we compromised, and I felt good.

"These shows should cast a spell. It's sort of a nutty thing, but I feel a lot of enjoyment watching the show. It pulls me into this other world that I don't know about."

As well as 1989 being the year of the Twin Peaks pilot, it is also the year that most fans agree all the plot action was set in. Amazingly, it seems that all the bizarre and tangled events of the series occurred in just a few weeks of 1989! Although continuity faltered once or twice and Jennifer Lynch's 1990 novel, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, pointed towards 1990 as the year of Laura's murder, apparently if you study days and dates in the series and film "prequel" Fire Walk With Me, 1989 emerges as the one and only.

Not that Twin Peaks seemed to have caught up to 1989. The town seemed, in many ways, still stuck in the 1950s - which gave the series a real "back woods" feel. Good old cherry pie, and home comin' queen values jostled with modern day evils.

FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) meets the Little Man from Another Place (Michael J Anderson) and Laura Palmer in the Red Room. But just remember: "When you see me again, it won't be me!"

Life wasn't always so heavy and downright weird in the "Twin Peaks" universe - and at the Sheriff's Station, receptionist Lucy Moran (Kimmy Robertson) was one of several characters that added a comedy thread to the show's rich brew.

In 1993, Pat Cokewell, owner of the Mar-T Cafe, the RR Diner in Twin Peaks, told about her establishment’s first transition from reality to Peaks legend. This is an extract from the 1990s Twin Peaks magazine Wrapped In Plastic:

“One of the first questions people ask is, how did they find you? How did they find the Mar-T? Well, with all movies they send out a location scout. So that was my first contact in February of 1989. I said, 'Oh yeah.' (We weren’t very busy.) ‘You can use it, but we’re fixing to do some remodelling.’ But they said, ‘Oh, no, no, no, don’t do anything like that. We want it just as it is.’

“About two weeks later, they said that David Lynch will be up on the weekend and he’ll decide. (They’d looked at another cafe, too.) So they came up, and they told us they wanted to use it."

Pat Cokewell recalled the arrival of the film crew and cast around the end of February 1989: "I’d never seen so much equipment. There were about seventy-five people that were working and another hundred that were watching from the outside. So when they said, “Rolling,’ you better keep quiet.

“For those of us that met David Lynch, he’s a wonderful director. You hear stories about directors yelling and screaming on the set, and that did not happen for the four days that we had the privilege of having him around the Mar-T. When he was not working, he was talking to you.”

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Sheriff Harry S Truman (Michael Ontkean) shakes hands with FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) whilst a parade of doughnuts awaited their fate. With some "damn fine coffee" nearby, all seemed well. But not for long.

The Log Lady (Catherine Coulson). Did the log have information about Laura's murder?

Josie Packard (Joan Chen), the beautiful young widow of local mill owner Andrew Packard, held many secrets - not least her love affair with Sheriff Truman.

Andrew Packard's sister, Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie), held some devastating secrets herself and plotted to ruin Josie. She and her lover, local hotel owner Benjamin Horne (Richard Beymour), added a strand of 1980s era power soap to the "Twin Peaks" brew, as they plotted together - but could they trust each other?

Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) has a mystical vision, and screams in terror. But who's that in the mirror?!

A supernatural horror strand was ably provided by Bob. Was he a demon? Or simply the show's representation of the evil that men do?

Bob, the terrifying being that appeared to certain people and possessed Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), was not part of the original plan for Twin Peaks.

I’m indebted again to my Wrapped In Plastic collection which contains this insight from Frank Silva, the man behind Bob:

“First thing I have to say is that Bob was an accident. He was never, ever there from day one. It was a whole, unbelievable accident. It basically happened during the original pilot. I was a crew member, the on-set dresser in the art department. We were doing the shot in Laura Palmer’s bedroom. I was tweaking the bedroom, and the camera was in the doorway. David was out in the hall and he jokingly said, ‘Frank, you’d better get out of there. You’re going to get caught in the camera..’ And I looked at David and went, ‘Okay.’ And then a blood vessel kind of like burst in his head, and he said, ‘Frank! Get down at the end of the bed, just crouch down there, and act scared!’ And I went, ‘What?!?’ ‘Just act scared!’ And that was how Bob began.

“At the end of the day, in order to make sense of me being shot at the end of the bed, he added the scene at the end of the pilot - this was never scripted - where Grace Zabriskie, Laura’s mom, is lying on the sofa, and she’s chain smoking, and she suddenly jets up and says, ‘Leland, I saw him.’ There are three mirrors on the back wall where the sofa is. I’m clear across the room, being a crew member, holding cigarettes in my hand for her to do each take. So I’m standing there, she jets up, and she says, ‘Leland, I saw him.’ David goes, ‘Great! How was that for the camera?’ So the camera guy says, ‘Well, it was really great, but Frank was in one of the mirrors.’ And David went ‘WOW!!’ We couldn’t have planned it better! This is where it all started with the Bob character.”

Twin Peaks blasted on to our screens in 1990 and we were asked “Who killed Laura Palmer?”

“Not another soap!” I moaned. “It sounds just like ‘Who Shot JR’!”

But of course it wasn’t.

It was like nothing else ever seen on TV.

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I was initially curious, and soon enthralled. Then baffled. Disturbed. Disorientated. Obsessed. Chilled. Amused. Terrified.

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This show played games with my mind like no other - before or since.

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And I loved it.

LOADSAMONEY!

Here's rising young alternative comedian Harry Enfield in 1988. In the picture above he's in character live on stage as one of his most popular creations - Loadsamoney!

Loadsa, waving his wonga: "What's that?"

Audience: "Loadsamoney!"

Loadsa: "What?"

Audience: "Loadsamoney!"

Loadsa: "No, it's loadsa FU**ING money - I ain't on telly now! Loadsa fu**ing money! Loadsa fu**ing money!

"Shut your mouths and look at my wad and worship it up! This is the wickedest wad in the world, it is the wad of wads and it is all fresh MONEY, 'cos one thing I cannot bear is a stale wad. My money's gotta be brand new or it can FU**K off !

"How come I've got so much money again? 'Cos I'm a plasterer, 'en I? And plasterers are great. Roofers? Scum! Scaffolders? Coarse and ignorant peasants..."
Etc, etc, etc.

The Sun, 16 September, 1988. Cor! Harry lands a sponsorship deal with Holstein Pils for his stage show, worth £50,000. DOSH! DOSH! DOSH!

What was it with socially aware lefty comedians? We saw 'em all in the 1980s, these startling new alternative comedians, slagging off the Thatcher creature, railing against capitalism, and stuffing the wads of cash they earned from it in their high interest accounts quicker than you could blink. Here, Sun columnist Fiona Macdonald Hull sticks the boot into Harry Enfield: "How I loathe Yuppies!" But don't be too harsh. It was the same with the Peace and Love hippie trippie crowd on the pop scene in the 1960s. Do as we say - not as we do! And it's the same with the ultra priggish celebs of today. Shame! Whatever happened to the days of true idealism? Of people backing their words with their actions? And when exactly WERE those days?!

The Sun, October 21, 1988: £500,000 on the way!

Another of Enfield's popular creations:

Note: very broken English - no typing errors here - written as spoken:

"Hallo everybody peeps! Good evening and welc! My name is Stavros in case you don't know all red 'cos you blinkin' thick, and I'm got a little kebab house in Greece. Bethnal Greece, East Londos..."