Our Hilda Speaks Out - The Street has Lost Its Soul To Sex, Violence and Downright Nastiness!

This article was printed in the Daily Express on May 12th this year and sees former Street Legend Jean Alexander (Hilda Ogden) speaking out on the shite that is today's Coronation Street..

Hilda Ogden left Coronation Street 25 years ago singing “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye” in her trilling, trademark voice. It was Christmas Day, 1987, and it remains the most watched episode in the soap’s history. As Hilda left to start a new life in Derbyshire a record 27 million tuned in to wave her off.

Now, as a new musical about Britain’s longest-running TV soap opera hit the stage in Manchester Arena this week, veteran actress Jean Alexander, who played Hilda for 23 years, wishes the show well – but won’t be going to see it. Street Of Dreams, hosted by Paul O’Grady, brings together stars of the show, past and present, in an all- singing, all-dancing celebration of the soap’s history and unforgettable characters, with cast members such as Julie Goodyear (Bet Lynch), William Roache (Ken Barlow) and Kevin Kennedy (Curly Watts) recreating their iconic roles.

But not Jean Alexander. “I am afraid I shall miss the show,” she said from her home in Southport. “It would mean trains, taxis and a night in a hotel... Not much fun these days.” At 85, after 61 years as an actress, she says: “I’m tired. That’s why I am announcing I am officially retired. All my life I have rushed around to fit in with other people’s schedules. Now I can suit myself.” Suiting herself won’t mean watching nightly episodes of Coronation Street. She’s no longer a big fan because she says it has lost its way from the days when it represented a gritty northern back street.. CORONATION Street, she says, has sold its soul to sex: “Everyone in the Street seems to be having an affair. Some of them have been round the Street four times already. “I cannot comment on East- Enders because I never watch it but I am so disappointed in Coronation Street. In the relentless battle for ratings it has sold its soul to sex, scandal and downright nastiness. “Things have to move on, I know, but in the days of Hilda Ogden, Annie Walker and Co, the Street was gentle, funny and human. The humour has all but gone out of it these days.

“We had a lot of fun making Coronation Street and the fans let us know they had fun watching it. There were heartbreaking moments but we also tried to make people laugh. “Today it’s all sex, doom and gloom and it’s all taken far too seriously.

“The Street always tried to be relevant to the way people lived, especially in a northern working-class district.

Nowadays I suppose it still reflects what is going on because life seems to be all about titillation in a world where kids grow up at 10 or 11. Perhaps that is why they all have to behave like that in the soaps.” Jean cannot name many of the actors in the Street, nor does she know much about the plotlines because she tunes in only about once a month.

Of all the “newcomers”, Jean is most impressed with Jennie McAlpine, who has played Fiz Brown (now Fiz Stape) since 2001. Jean says Jennie, a Greater Manchester lass and one- time stand-up comedian, would have fitted nicely into the Street in the days of Hilda Ogden. “She has that northern grit and the original elbows out, hands-on-hip attitude. She’s a tough cookie. She is a real character and very noticeable. The characters are missing from Coronation Street these days,” she says.

Of all today’s TV soaps Jean reckons Emmerdale has remained most true to its roots. “It is far more gentle and set in lovely countryside. The characters are more lifelike and they are not always going over the top. I love Emmerdale.”


But her favourite programme is Midsomer Murders because, she says, there’s less violence than in Coronation Street or EastEnders!

Jean Alexander has not worked since Last Of The Summer Wine ended in 2010. For 20 years she played Auntie Wainwright, a role she loved and a character she far preferred to Hilda Ogden. “She was my favourite so I reckon I ended on a high,” says Jean.

The woman who won the heart of the nation as the curlers-and-head- scarf-wearing Hilda Ogden is still remarkably modest about her amazing success, even though she has sacrificed her personal life to her career. Jean Alexander has never married, still lives in the mod- est semi-detached home she bought with her late mum and only recently bought a DVD player. She has never driven or owned a car and one of her biggest indulgences is to take a taxi back from her local supermarket in Southport on her twice-weekly shopping expeditions. “I do get the bus there, though,” she says.

She has won five major awards – including a TV Times award for All Time Favourite Soap Star – and performed before the Queen during her Silver Jubilee in 1977. And though in her stage career she was sick with fright before every performance it was receiving awards that struck her with terror.

“That is because I was going out there as myself. I had no character to hide behind and I had to make up my own speech. I didn’t have someone else’s script to rely on,” she says.

But she is still recognised and stopped in the street by fans, though nowadays the reactions are less violent. “I have been battered black and blue by excited women who’ve pinned me against a supermarket market shelf shrieking, ‘It’s you, it’s you, isn’t it?’ These days people don’t ask for autographs, they ask if they can be photographed with me on their mobile phones.

“I don’t mind a bit as long as I am not eating a meal in a restaurant. It was the fans who made me what I am today and I owe them a great deal. So I have always tried to make time for them.”

She also receives regular fan mail from around the world, mainly because of re-runs of Last Of The Summer Wine in various countries.

One of her latest “fan” letters came from Ghana: “Dear Jean, I am a great fan of your music. I would love to attend the London Olympics. Please send me return airfare and provide food and accommodation as well as Olympic tickets... ” It’s one of the few letters she will not be replying to. So how will she spend her retirement? “Doing my own thing. No more traipsing down to a studio at 6am and spending hours being tarted up. I’ve enjoyed my career but it’s been long and hard. It’s left me tired so I think it’s time to take it easy.”

Steptoe and Son - Fifty Years of Magic

Forget the laughter. It was the tears, a trickle of real grief, that announced a new kind of comedy on television half a century ago. One Friday evening in January 1962, an episode of the BBC’s Comedy Playhouse series changed the face of sitcom for ever. Previous shows in the series, by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, had featured comedians such as Eric Sykes and Stanley Baxter. This episode was different: it starred two theatre actors, one a veteran of provincial rep, the other a devotee of the Method School of acting. Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett were cast as father and son, scraping a living from the rubbish people threw out, surviving on cold, tinned food and the dregs of bottles they collected from behind restaurants. They wore rags salvaged from the bags of clothes they picked up on their rounds, traipsing the streets of London with a horse and cart.

At the beginning of the Sixties, when Kennedy was U.S. President and the British had ‘never had it so good’, there was no future for the rag ’n’ bone man. And Corbett’s character knew it: he had to escape from the junkyard and his drunken, idle father. But he had nowhere to go. The final, achingly poignant scene has Corbett straining between the shafts of the cart, desperate to drag his possessions away from the ‘rathole’ where he was born. The cart is too heavy to move, and his father refuses to let him borrow the horse. Slowly, Corbett breaks down, screwing up his face and sobbing, then throwing himself face forward on the cart. ‘We couldn’t believe what we were seeing,’ Galton says, 50 years on. ‘I nudged Alan and told him: “Those are genuine tears. He’s really crying!” We were used to comics who would turn their backs and shake their shoulders, boo-hoo-hoo.’ The BBC commissioned a series, Steptoe And Son, based on this pilot. The first run, in the summer of 1962, was so popular the six episodes were immediately repeated. Galton and Simpson were in Spain working on a movie script, when Corbett flew out to see them. ‘It’s incredible,’ he told them. ‘We’ve started a national sensation!’

[Popular: Writers and Creators of the BBC series Ray Galton, left, and Alan Simpson, right.]

Steptoe And Son laid the rules for all the best sitcoms over the next decades. Its characters were trapped by their own flaws, convinced they were born for better things, but doomed to repeat their mistakes. Harold Steptoe could barely read, yet he longed to be an intellectual, a boulevardier. Instead, he had to look after the one person he despised most, his dad.

One early Steptoe episode shows Harold returning from the rounds to find his father soaking in a tin bath in front of the fire, his dinner balanced on his knees. ‘I got a bird coming round tonight,’ protests the younger man, and Albert smirks: he knows; that’s why he’s doing it.

‘You shouldn’t be eating your dinner in the bath,’ Harold scolds him. ‘Whichever way you look at it, to fish pickled onions out of your bath and put them back in the jar is an act of extreme dirtiness.’ Their antagonism reaches its highest pitch in perhaps the best-loved episode, Divided We Stand, where they build a plywood wall through their house and hurl insults over it. Even then, they can’t escape from each other — a kitchen fire starts, and they end up in hospital beds, side by side. Their fates and their flaws have twisted them together.

Count how many times, and in how many ways, that set-up has been mirrored in Britain’s favourite comedies. Dad’s Army’s Captain Mainwaring, desperate for respect but always feeling inferior to his deputy bank manager, the public school-educated Sgt Wilson; Basil Fawlty, loathing the wife who keeps him cringeing under her thumb. Del Boy, forever promising he’ll be a millionaire ‘this time next year’, though he knows he’ll never be anything but a small-time crook and David Brent, who tries to disguise his incompetence with jokes and jargon, and cannot quite grasp why his staff detest him. Sometimes the claustrophobia is real, like Fletch’s prison cell in Porridge or Father Ted’s island priest-hole. Sometimes it is self-imposed, like the Royle family’s living room. And sometimes it’s all in the mind, like Victor Meldrew’s persecution complex.

These situations are tragic, not funny. They are rooted in poverty, crime, age, class, greed and lack of education. So why do we laugh? When TV comedy started, it was modelled on the variety acts of the music halls. Galton and Simpson were 21-year-old novice gag-writers, friends who had spent their teens in a sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis, when they were hired by BBC radio to script comedy hours for the Light Programme.

They had a radical ambition, which they shared with comedian Tony Hancock — to create hilarious shows with no stand-up jokes, no punchlines, no silly voices, no guest stars and no sketches . . . just a single storyline with believable characters. All the comedy would be in the situation. They worked with Hancock for seven years — more than 100 radio episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour, 60 TV shows and a movie — before the comedian split from them, years later committing suicide. The BBC’s head of entertainment, Tom Sloan, was determined not to lose his star writers and made them an astonishing proposition. If they agreed to write a series of short comic plays, they could pick any subjects they wanted, hire any actors they liked, be the directors or even the stars if they felt like it.

‘That’s how Comedy Playhouse started,’ Simpson says today. ‘No other TV writers had ever been given such freedom, and I’m sure it could never happen now.’ W hen they han-ded the Playhouse concept over to other comedy writers, two years later, the series became a launchpad for great sitcoms, including Last Of The Summer Wine, The Liver Birds and Are You Being Served?

Its most controversial success was Till Death Us Do Part. The star was a bigoted, foul-mouthed, bullying racist called Alf Garnett, who became one of TV’s most perversely popular characters. Alan Simpson believes personalities such as Alf, or Albert Steptoe, spring from the same collective British consciousness that supplied the best-loved names in literature: ‘Dickens knew how to write characters with deep human failings who were unforgettably comic: Uriah Heep, Fagin, Mrs Gamp, Scrooge.’

Classical sources or not, the new wave of radical Sixties sitcom upset a lot of people. Mary Whitehouse, the self-appointed guardian of public morals, sued Till Death’s writer, Johnny Speight (he had called her a fascist). Steptoe went one better — questions were asked in the Commons after the B-word was broadcast in an episode about a piano. Harold and Albert are summoned to a penthouse to collect a baby grand. It’s too wide and heavy to remove. In the end, Harold declares: ‘What goes up can bleedin’ well stay up!’ Dr Donald Johnson, Tory MP for Carlisle, complained about this offensive ‘expletive’ and asked for the government to take action to ensure it was never broadcast again.

The Speaker, Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, ruled that no explanation could be forthcoming because it would involve ‘unparliamentary language’. Compare that to today, where the grossness of the language is the sum total of much that passes for comedy. Old Man Steptoe’s non-stop rants offended some because they highlighted how deeply injustice still ran in post-war Britain. Watch Inbetweeners or Benidorm and you’ll hunt in vain for a political point. The brand of intelligent comedy they pioneered is rare now, but Ray Galton, 81, and Alan Simpson, 82, are still around. They meet every Monday to drink coffee and swap stories. ‘We complement each other,’ Alan says. ‘He helps me up stairs, and I tell him what day it is.’ Ray grins, and puffs on his roll-up. ‘That’s fine, but he still thinks George V is on the throne.’ They both chuckle. Clearly, comedy writers might grow old but they never grow up.

Classic Brookside - Remembering Damon Grant (1982 - 1987)

Damon Grant was the first heart throb in the now defunct British soap opera Brookside and was played by Simon O'Brien. The character was part of the initial cast,appearing from episode one in 1982 until 1987. At the time of the soap'sinception, Damon was the youngest son of Bobby and SheilasGrant, with an older brother, Barry and older sister, Karen.

Damon was introduced after having broken into the Collins' house in the first episode on 2 November 1982, aged 14. When ques tioned about the theft of a lavatory and vandalism that occurs by Paul Collins, Bobby lashes out at Damon. Barry defends Damon after the occurrence, pointing out that he did not have the tools to remove the lavatory in the way it had been done and that the graffiti could not have been Damon either as "he only spells 'bollocks' with one 'l'".

The Brookside soap opera wasregarded as tackling social issues, andthis was no less true when dealing with the Grant family, and Damon. One of the first of the show's manyteenage characters to capture the viewing public's imagination, the role saw O'Brien catapulted tofame as a teen heart throb, andhis adoption of the "mullet" hairstyle proved to be in keeping withthe zeitgeist of the times,and saw the character further entrenched as a cultural reference point.

Storylines saw Grant presented initially as a cheeky, lovablecharacter, with a close group of friends. The manner of Grant'scharacterisation, both by the writers, directors and by O'Brien, led Jane Root, writing in Open the Box: About Television,to cite the character as evidence of "complex male characters andmasculine storylines". Root saw this focus as different from establishedsoap operas.

As the character grew olderand left school, the writers used storylines to comment on life in Thatcher's Britain. Unemployment was a serioussocial issue, especially in a dock citysuch as Liverpool, andGrant's character struggled to find work. Eventually he took a position as a painter & decorator throughthe recently introduced YTS scheme,the writers depicting the excitement and later despair when Grant'sparticipation failed to lead to a full-time job to great effect.

The character was then shown todevelop a relationship with DebbieMcGrath, played by GillianKearney. McGrath was an underage school girl, and the relationshipcaught the heart of viewers. WhenO'Brien decided to leave the show, the producers of Brookside decided to spinthis plotline into a separate show, Damon& Debbie, broadcast in a later timeslot than that in which Brooksidewas shown.

This three part series, credited as the first 'soap bubble'. moves the character out from Liverpoolin search of work. In the first episode the couple squat on a boat on theRiverOuse in York, in the second episode they moveto Morecambe and then Bradford, where Damon gets a job as agroundsman at Valley (thestadium of Bradford City footballclub) before they finally return to York in the third episode. Ultimately, thecharacter is stabbed by Crosby actor Jonathan Comer, and dies at the end of theseries at O'Brien's request, amove which sparked upset and outrage amongst fans of the show, and added toboth Brookside's fame and notoriety.

Within the Brookside show thecharacter's death was used as a catalyst for again exploring a number ofissues, including the grief of the character's mother, played by Sue Johnston, and that of the character's father, Bobby Grant, played by RickyTomlinson, who was shown as blaming the death upon his unemployment. Ultimately, Damon's death led to thesplintering of the Grant family within Brookside.

The character's funeral was watched by 7 million viewers,against Channel 4’s record ratingof 8.4 million set in 2005, andin The Daily Mirror,critic Clare Raymond claimed it to be one of the "most touching soapscenes". In 2001, JimShelley, writing for TheObserver, claimed the character's death to be one of two contenders for themoment where it all went wrong for Brookside, whilein 2002, with the announcement that Brookside was to end, the funeral scene waslisted as the fourth greatest episode in the soap's history by The Daily Mirror. In 2003, producer Phil Redmond discussed plans tocontinue the show through a series of DVD's,with one planned storyline involving '"Brookside's greatest untoldstory" -what would happen if Barry caught up with Damon's killers

Coronation Street - the 1970s

The 1970s saw Coronation Street's production team dealing with problems routinely besetting long-running soaps - how to write and structure the show when a favourite character leaves or dies, and how to manage audience reaction. When, in 1970, Arthur Leslie (who played the genial Rovers landlord, Jack Walker) died suddenly, his character was laid to rest too. Anne Reid determined to leave the show in 1971, and was written out, electrocuting herself with a faulty hairdryer. Granada's strategy to cope with these losses was to introduce new residents and allow established but smaller characters to step into the limelight. The characters of Bet Lynch, Deirdre Hunt and Mavis Riley were developed between 1972 and '73, while Gail Potter, Jack and Vera Duckworth and Rovers pot man Fred Gee all made their debuts during the decade.

In June 1970 the show celebrated its 1000th episode, and was being sold to ten countries including Sierra Leone, Hong Kong, Holland and Greece (with sometimes dubious subtitling). Colour came to the Street in mid-1972, and sets were expanded to allow viewers to see the houses' roofs and back gardens. In 1976 Bill Podmore, the Street's longest serving producer, joined the team, replacing Susi Hush. He immediately sought out the areas "crying out for a facelift or even a face change". Podmoreinherited such experienced writers as Adele Rose, Leslie Duxbury andHarry Kershaw, and his production background in television comedies ensured that humour became a stronger ingredient of the show.

Legendary couples Stan and Hilda Ogden and Jack and Vera Duckworth's marital spats frequently bordered on music hall turns, while other comic characters - including brassy and brittle Ivy Tilsley, with her background in cabaret, and Eddie Yeats, the ex-con turned bin man with a heart of gold - were brought to the fore.

The staple diet of births, ill-fated marriages and violent deaths continued. Storylines included the birth, in 1977, of Tracy Langton, the marriage of Brian Tilsley and Gail Potter in 1979, and the murder of Ernie Bishop during a robbery at the factory in 1978.

Despite the growing popularity of the daytime soap Crossroads (ITV, 1964-88; 2001-03), the Street had little competition, retaining its primetime slot and increasing its ratings. Novelist John Braine, writing inTV Times in 1970, accounted for the show's longevity: "the most important character in the Street is the Street itself. No matter who comes and goes, the Street remains".

Doing his Porridge - Remembering Lennie Godber

Leonard Arthur "Lennie" Godber was played by the late, great Richard Beckinsale in the classic BBC sit-com Porridge.

Godber is from Birmingham and supports Aston Villa F.C., has an O Level in Geography, and studies for a History O Level while in prison. Before he was arrested he shared a flat with his girlfriend Denise in nearby Cheswick in the West Midslands. In an effort to get her a gift, Godber broke into a neighbour's flat. He was caught, and it was for this that he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Denise later broke up with Godber through a Dear John Letter.

In the first episode, Lennie arrives at Slade Prison, along with Fletch. However, unlike Fletch, who has spent several five-year spells in prison, this is Godber's first stretch of 'porridge'. Fletcher felt strongly about someone of Godber's age being in prison. However, when Godber announces that upon his release he plans to 'go straight', Fletch is perplexed, announcing:

"Twenty-three and you want to go straight? What kind of talk is that? You've got your whole life before you!"

Fletch and Godber later become cell-mates, and Fletch is quick to take the naïve Godber under his wing, who learns much from him, and by the end of the series has inherited much of his cunning.

Godber also often came into conflict with the ever suspicious Mr Mackay, who appeared to find it very hard to believe that Lennie was not up to something. Even when he was, MacKay found it very hard to pin anything on him, thanks to Godber's penchant for dramatics, and occasionally to the cover-up efforts of Fletch and the sympathetic Mr Barrowclough.

Godber works in the prison kitchen where he has ample opportunities to steal valuable commodities such as butter and pineapple chunks for Fletcher. Godber also briefly took up a career as a Boxer in the prison, although this was short-lived when he got involved in match fixing.

Doe-eyed, optimistic Godber was the perfect sidekick for grouchy, world-weary Fletcher, and the banter between the two became one of the main attractions of the series. This was arguably best illustrated in the ambitious episode "A Night In", a bottle episode set entirely in relative darkness within the confines of their cell, with only the pair's conversation for entertainment.

This concept has been imitated by many other sitcoms, such as Friends ("The One Where No One's Ready") and Bottom ("Hole"). However, few, if any of these have managed to recreate the minimalistic feel of the original, falling back on other comedy devices (the former had several characters, each with their own storyline, and the latter was set atop a Ferris Wheel, and much of the comedy derived from this setting).

In the follow-up series Going Straight, Godber is a long-distance lorry driver, engaged to Fletch's daughter Ingrid (whom he began writing to shortly after Denise broke up with him). They were married in the final episode.

Due to Richard Beckinsale's premature death, Godber does not appear in the 2003 mocumentary Life Beyond the Box Norman Stanley Fletcher, although Ingrid receives a phone call from him, saying he's stuck on a motorway. They have one son, named Norman after his grandfather.

America's Finest - The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.

While the publication traces its historical roots to Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Gazette was first published in 1728 by Samuel Keimer. The following year (1729), Franklin acquired the Gazette from Keimer for a small sum and turned it into the largest circulation newspaper in all the colonies. It continued publication until 1815. The Saturday Evening Post was founded in 1821 and grew to become the most widely circulated weekly magazine in America. The magazine gained prominent status under the leadership of its longtime editor George Horace Lorimer (1899–1937)

The Saturday Evening Post published current event articles, editorials, human interest pieces, humor, illustrations, a letter column, poetry (with contributions submitted by readers), single-panel gag cartoons (including Hazel by Ted Key) and stories by the leading writers of the time. It was known for commissioning lavish illustrations and original works of fiction. Illustrations were featured on the cover and embedded in stories and advertising. Some Post illustrations became popular and continue to be reproduced as posters or prints, especially those by Norman Rockwell.

Curtis Publishing Co. stopped publishing the Post in 1969 after the company lostlandmark defamation suit and was ordered to pay over $3 million in damages. The Postwas revived in 1971 as a quarterly publication. As of the late 2000s, the Saturday Evening Post magazine is published six times a year by the "Saturday Evening Post Society", which purchased the magazine in 1982.

In 1916, Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer discovered Norman Rockwelll, then an unknown 22-year-old New York artist. Lorimer promptly purchased two illustrations from Rockwell, using them as covers, and commissioned three more drawings. Rockwell's illustrations of the American family and rural life of a bygone era became icons. During his 50-year career with the Post, Rockwell painted more than 300 covers.

The Post also employed Nebraska artist John Philip Falter, who became known "as a painter of Americana with an accent of the Middle West," who "brought out some of the homeliness and humor of Middle Western town life and home life." He produced 120 covers for the Postbetween 1943 and 1968, ceasing only when the magazine began displaying photographs on its covers. Other popular cover illustrators include the artists John Clymer, W.HD. Koerner, J.C Leyendecker, Charles Archibald Maclellan, John. E. Sheridan, and N.C Wyeth

The magazine's line-up of cartoonists included Bob Barnes, Irwin Caplan Tom Henderson, Al Johns, Clyde Lamb, Jerry Marcus, Frank O'Neal, B. Tobey, Pete Wyma and Bill Yates. The magazine ran Ted Key's cartoon panel series Hazell from 1943 to 1969.

Each issue featured several original short stories and often included an installment of a serial appearing in successive issues. Most of the fiction was written for mainstream tastes by popular writers, but some literary writers were featured. The opening pages of stories featured paintings by the leading magazine illustrators. The Post published stories and essays by H.E. Bates, Ray Bradbury, Kay Boyle, Agatha Christie, Brian Cleese, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C.O. Forester, Ernest Haycox & Robert. A Heinlein. ,

The Post readership began to decline in the late 1950s and 1960s. In general, the decline of general interest magazines was blamed on television, which competed for advertisers and readers' attention. The Post had problems retaining readers: The public's taste in fiction was changing, and the Post 's conservative politics and values remained controversial. Content by popular writers became harder to obtain. Prominent authors drifted away to newer magazines offering more money and status. As a result, the Post published more articles on current events and cut costs by replacing illustrations with photographs for covers and advertisements.

At a March 1969 postmortem on the magazine's closing, Emerson stated that The Post "was a damn good vehicle for advertising" with competitive renewal rates and readership reports and expressed what The New York Times called "understandable bitterness" in wishing "that all the one-eyed critics will lose their other eye". Otto Friedrich, the magazine's last managing editor, blamed the death of The Post on Curtis. In his Decline and Fall (Harper & Row, 1970), an account of the magazine's final years (1962–69), he argued that corporate management was unimaginative and incompetent. Friedrich acknowledges that The Post faced challenges as the tastes of American readers changed over the course of the 1960s, but he insisted that the magazine maintained a standard of good quality and was appreciated by readers.

That Was The News That Was: John Alford Guilty on Drugs Charges (1999)

Back in the 1990s I was a huge fan of London's Burning and was saddened and shocked when actor John Alford (Billy Ray) was arrested for offering to supply drugs to someone he believed was an Arab! A jury at London's Snaresbrook Crown Court found him guilty of one count of supplying 2.036 grammes of cocaine to an investigative reporter, as well as a similar charge involving 11.9 grammes of cannabis resin.

Judge Stephen Robbins remanded Alford in custody until May 26 and told him that a prison term was 'inevitable'. The verdict was greeted by gasps from the packed public gallery, and Alford's girlfriend, Tina Mahon, was seen to tremble and hold back tears. In August 1997, Alford had been lured to the Savoy Hotel in central London by a journalist posing as an Arabian prince and secretly filmed supplying cocaine and cannabis. The court heard Alford, 27, was so taken in by the "elaborate ... well-planned subterfuge" he even bowed to the bogus royal, who was in fact News of the World investigative editor Mazher Mahmood. The prosecution said Alford had acted out of "greed" after being offered the chance to join a celebrity line-up at the fake sheikh's nightspot opening in Dubai.

Alford, from Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire, represented himself during the 10-day trial.

He told the judge: "I respect the verdict of the jury and I thank your honour for your tolerance of my inexperience in these matters." Before they delivered their verdict, Judge Robbins warned the five women and seven men trying the case they should not make decisions based on "emotion".

After the story broke, Alford was sacked from his £50,000-a-year role in the ITV television drama, based on the lives of a team of firemen.

Robin Gibb (1949 - 2012)

Sad news reaches us today of the passing of former Bee Gee, Robin Gibb. Robin Hugh Gibb, CBE was born on 22nd December 1949 and is best known as a member of the Bee Gees, co-founded with his twin brother Maurice and older brother Barry. He had another younger brother, Andy Gibb, who was also a very popular solo singer.

Born in the Isle of Man to English parents, the family later moved to Manchester before settling in Brisbane, Australia. Gibb began his career as part of the family trio and when the group found their first success they returned to the United Kingdom where they achieved worldwide fame. In 2004, the Bee Gees received their CBEs from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace for their "contribution to music". With record sales estimated in excess of 200 million units, the Bee Gees became one of the most successful pop groups of all time. After a career spanning six decades, Gibb last performed on stage in February 2012 supporting injured British servicemen and women at a charity concert at the London Palladium. On 20 May 2012, Gibb died after a lengthy battle with colorectal cancer.

Born to Barbara and Hugh Gibb in the Isle of Man, Gibb was the fraternal twin brother of Maurice Gibb, and the elder of the two, born 35 minutes before Maurice. The third-born of five children, Gibb had one older sister, Lesley (born 1945), and three brothers: Barry (born 1946), twin Maurice (1949–2003), and Andy (1958–1988).

Gibb was the subject of an edition of the BBC Genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? first broadcast on 21 September 2011. The programme revealed that Gibb's paternal great-grandfather was born into poverty in Paisley and went on to become a decorated soldier and his paternal great-grandmother was a midwife.

Gibb's mother Barbara was born in Worsley, Salford and in the 1950s the family returned to Manchester, England. The family lived on Keppel Road, Chorlton-cum Hardy and it was here that the young Gibb brothers sang together and performed in local theatres. In late 1958, the family moved to Brisbane, Australia. The family travelled to Australia on the same ship as Australian musician Red Symons. The brothers' music careers began in Australia and flourished when they returned to England in 1967.

Traditionally, Gibb's role in the Bee Gees was lead singer, for which he vied with Barry during the group's first period of British success in the late 1960s. This rivalry eventually prompted Gibb to leave the group and begin a solo career. The final irritant was when Gibb’s song "Lamplight" was relegated to the B-Side of Barry's song "First of May". Meanwhile, there were rumours during this period that Gibb was dealing with drug abuse problems, leading Gibb's parents to allegedly threaten legal action to make him a ward of court (the UK age of majority at that time being 21, and he was only 19).

In his solo career, Gibb was initially successful with a Number 2 UK hit, "Saved by the Bell", which sold over one million copies and received a Gold disc. However, Gibb's first solo album, Robin's Reign, was less successful and he soon found that being a solo artist was unsatisfying. Maurice played bass guitar on the song "Mother and Jack", but was subsequently removed from the project by producer Robert Stigwood. Despite having almost completed a second solo album, Sing Slowly Sisters, Gibb reunited with his brothers, who then revived the Bee Gees. The group came back on a high note, reaching No. 3 on the US charts with the song "Lonely Days" in 1970. In 1971, the Bee Gees had their first US No.1 hit, "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart", but after that their popularity started to ebb.

In 1974, with new producer Arif Mardin, the Bee Gees reinvented themselves with the song "Blue-Eyed Soul,". The group now entered their second period of phenomenal success in the disco-era late 1970s.

In 1978, Gibb performed on the Sesame Street Fever album for the Sesame Street children's TV program. On the "Sesame Street Fever" title track, he sang a song called "Trash" for the character Oscar the Grouch, and spoke on at least one other song.

While continuing in the Bee Gees, Gibb also promoted his new solo career. During the 1980s, Gibb released three solo albums (How old are you?, Secxret Agent, and Walls Have Eyes). These three albums were more successful in Europe than in the UK or US, withHow Old Are You? spawning the hit single "Juliet". However, Gibb's 1984 single "Boys Do Fall in Love" did reach the Billboard Magazine top 40 list of hits. Gibb also recorded several extended versions of dance songs, including "Boys Do Fall in Love", "Secret Agent", "Like a Fool" and the rarest, "You Don't Say Us Anymore"; many of these extended versions were released to radio Disc Jockeys only.

On 27 January 2003, fifteen days after Maurice died, Gibb released a new solo album, Magnet in Germany on SPV GMBV, and worldwide shortly afterwards. Magnet featured the Bee Gees song "Wish You Were Here" (from the 1989 album One) in a new acoustic version. The lead single, "Please", had coincidental lyrics about "loss". After Maurice's death, Gibb and Barry again disbanded the Bee Gees; however, in late 2009, the two brothers announced that they would reform and perform again as the Bee Gees whenever they could. In recent years, Gibb sang the vocals to the opening titles to the British ITV show The Dame Edna Treatment.

On 18 May 2008, Gibb released the song "Alan Freeman Days" in tribute to the Australian DJ Alan Freeman. The song was issued as a download only track, although a promotional CD was issued by Academy Recordings. In December 2008, "Alan Freeman Days" was followed by another downloadable song entitled "Wing and a Prayer", which shared the same name as a song from the 1989 One album. However, the new song was actually a reworking of the song, "Sing Slowly Sisters", that had remained unreleased since 1970. Later in December, Gibb issued another song, "Ellan Vannin (Home Coming Mix)", featuring the King William's College Choir from the Isle of Man. ("Ellan Vannin" is the Manx name for the Isle of Man.)

In 2008, Gibb completed a new solo album entitled 50 St. Catherine's Drive, but it was never released. However, in August 2009, a 50-second video clip of "Instant Love" from 50 St. Catherine's Drive appeared as a preview. "Instant Love" was a collaboration with Gibb's son Robin-John. A second version of "Instant Love" featuring Robin-John on vocals appeared in a short film called Bloodtype: The Search in which Robin-John appeared.

Gibb and Robin-John also wrote the score for The Titanic Requiem, recorded by Royal Philarmonic Orchestra for the 2012 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic Gibb was due to attend the piece's premier on 10 April 2012, but his failing health kept him away.

In 2010, Gibb was also a guest mentor on the Australian version of The X Factor, alongside Australian TV host Kyle Sandilands, Australian actor/singer Natalie Imbruglia, Irish singer Ronan Keating, and Australian singer Guy Sebastian.

In August 2003, Gibb announced the release of a new single of "My Lover's Prayer", a song first recorded by the Bee Gees in 1997, with vocals by Gibb and singers Wanya Morris and Lance Bass. "My Lover's Prayer" was played on the radio, but was never actually released. In October 2003, Gibb recorded a second version of this song as a duet with singer Alistair Giffin, a runner-up in the UK television program Fame Academy on which Gibb had appeared as a judge. In January 2004, the new "My Lover's Prayer" was released in the UK as a double A side CD single. It eventually reached number 5 in the UK music charts.

In January 2005, Robin joined his brother Barry and several other artists under the name One World Project to record a charity single in aid of Asian tsunami relief, titled "Grief Never Grows Old". Other artists who performed on the single included Boy George, Steve Winwood, Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman, Sir Cliff Richard, Bill Wyman, America, Kenny Jones, Chicago, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Russell Watson and Davy Spillane.

In June 2005, Gibb joined X Factor runner up band G4 at a sell-out concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, singing the Bee Gees song "First of May". In December 2005, a recording of this performance was released as part of a double A side single, credited as "G4 feat Robin Gibb" together with G4's cover version of the Johnny Mathis song "When a Child is Born". "First of May" also appeared on the platinum selling album G4 & Friends, which reached number 6 in the UK album charts.

In November 2006, Gibb released an album of Christmas carols called Robin Gibb – My Favourite Carols, backed by the Serlo consort, a London choir. The Serlo Consort. The album also featured a new song by Gibb called "Mother of Love", which was released in Europe as a download single. The song was inspired by Maurice and was Robin's first new composition since Maurice died. Gibb donated all royalties from "Mother of Love" to the "Janki Foundation for Global Healthcare", and dedicated the song to Dad Janki, the organisation's spiritual leader. Gibb dedicated the album to his mother, Barbara Gibb. Robin Gibb – My Favourite Carols has a bonusDVD disc titled A Personal Christmas Moment with Robin Gibb.

Gibb went back to the top of the UK charts in 2009 when he collaborated with singers Ruth Jones, Rob Brydon, and Tom Jones on a new version of "Islands in the Stream", written by Robin, Barry, and Maurice. The new version, inspired by the BBC comedy TV show Gavin & Stacey, was created to benefit the charity Comic Relief.

In September 2011, Gibb recorded the Bee Gees classic "I've Gotta Get a Message To You" with British Army men The Soldiers for a charity single in the UK, the video for which was produced by Vintage TV.

In late 2004, Gibb embarked on a solo tour of Germany, Russia and Asia, with singer Alistair Griffin as the opening act. On his return to the UK, Gibb released a CD and DVD of live recordings from the German leg of the tour, backed by the Frankfurt Nueue Philarmonic, Germany. In 2005, Gibb made a solo tour of Latin America.

On 20 February 2006, Gibb and Barry performed at a concert for the Diabetes Research Institute of the University of Miami in Hollywood, Florida. This was their first joint performance since Maurice's death. In March 2006, Gibb announced plans for more solo concerts in Shanghai, China and Portgual. In May 2006, Gibb took part in the Princes' Trust 30th Birthday Concert at the Tower of London along with Barry. They sang three songs: "Jive Talkin'", "To Love Somebody" and "You Should Be Dancing". In September 2006, Gibb performed "Stayin' Alive" at the Miss World 2006 contest finals in Warsaw, Poland. In November 2006, Gibb performed a solo concert, entitled "Bee Gees – Greatest Hits", at the Araneta Coliseum in Manila, the Philippines.

Gibb marked his return to his birthplace by playing a concert at the Isle of Man TT festival in 2007. The Peel Bay TT Festival– 12 February 2007. Gibb donated all of his share of the money from this concert to the children's ward at Noble's Hospital, Isle of Man, and invited all emergency service staff and marshals for the TT to attend for free.

On 8 September 2007, Gibb performed a concert in Salt Lake City, Utah Energy Solutions Arena for the Nu Skin Enterprises Convention, singing a set of Bee Gees hits.

On 25 October 2007, Gibb performed a concert at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria and sang the Bee Gees' most famous songs.

On 25 October 2008, to mark the 30th anniversary of the song "Saturday Night Fever" topping the UK charts, Gibb performed with special guests including Ronan Keating, Stephen Gateley, Sam Sparro, Sharleen Spireti, Gabriella Climi and Bryn Christopher at the London music festival BBC Electric Proms.

On 30 January 2012, Gibb announced his intention to appear on stage at the Coming Home Concert at the London Palladium in February to benefit British soldiers returning home from Afghanistan; "I’m looking forward to appearing if possible and being able to continue my support for our servicemen and women. We owe a debt of gratitude to the dedication and professionalism of our armed forces.” It would be his last performance on stage.

On 14 August 2010, while performing in Belgium, Gibb began to feel abdominal pains. On 18 August, he was rushed to a hospital in Oxford, England and underwent emergency surgery for a blocked intestine, the same condition that killed Maurice. Gibb recovered and returned to perform concerts in New Zealand and Australia. During this time, Gibb was also involved in promoting fund-raising for the memorial dedicated to RAF Bomber Command in Green Park, London. Gibb also wrote The Titanic Requiem with his son Robin-John, which was recorded by the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic in 2012. Gibb continued to make television appearances and other events following his surgery, but in April 2011 he was forced by health problems to cancel his tour of Brazil. Another concert in Paris was cancelled in October 2011. On 14 October, Gibb was due to perform the charity single with The Soldiers, but was again rushed to hospital with severe abdominal pains. On 18 October, following his release from the hospital, Gibb appeared on ITV's The Alan Titchmarsh Show looking gaunt and frail.

On 27 October 2011, Gibb cancelled an appearance only minutes before he was due to perform at the Poppy Appeal Concert in London. Later the same week however, Gibb was seen in London and quoted as saying he felt "absolutely great".

On 20 November, it was revealed that Gibb had been battling liver cancer diagnosed several months earlier. A source close to the singer stated that his condition was "not good" and his wife, Dwina, had not left his bedside. His brother Barry and his wife Linda, as well as their mother Barbara and Robin's children, Melissa and Spencer, flew to the UK to be with him.

On 4 March it was announced that Gibb was in remission from cancer.^] On 28 March, Gibb's publicist announced that he had been hospitalised for intestinal surgery and was recovering and cancelled scheduled appearances.

On 14 April, it was reported that Gibb was "fighting for his life" after contracting pnuemonia and was in a coma in a Chelsea hospital. Gibb's two oldest children, his wife Dwina, his brother Barry and his mother were at his bedside.^] On 20 April, it was reported that Gibb was out of his coma and was making remarkable progress, according to his family. On 22 April, however, it was reported that he had advanced Colorectal Cancer.^] He died in London on 20 May 2012 at the age of 62.^]

Music historian Paul Gambacini described Gibb as "one of the major figures in the history of British music" and "one of the best white soul voices ever", while he noted that the Bee Gees were "second only to Lennon and McCartney as the most successful songwriting unit in British popular music". Gibb's death left his brother Barry as the only surviving original member of the Bee Gees.

Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye (November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1998), was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain. He and his wife Dale Evans, his golden Palomino, Trigger, and his German Shepherd Dog, Bullet, were featured in more than 100 movies and The Roy Rogers Show. The show ran on radio for nine years before moving to television from 1951 through 1957. His productions usually featured a sidekick, often either Pat Brady (who drove a Jeep called "Nellybelle"), Andy Devine, or the crotchety George "Gabby" Hayes. Rogers's nickname was "King of the Cowboys". Evans's nickname was "Queen of the West."

Leonard Franklin Slye was born to Andrew ("Andy") and Mattie (Womack) Slye in Cincinatti, Ohio, where his family lived in a tenement building on 2nd Street. (Riverfont Stadium was constructed at this location in 1970 and Leonard would later joke that he had been born at second base.) Dissatisfied with his job and city life, Andy Slye and his brother Will built a 12-by-50-foot houseboat from salvage lumber, and, in July 1912, the Slye family floated up the Ohio River towards Portsmouth, Ohio. Desiring a more stable existence in Portsmouth, the Slyes purchased land on which to build a home, but the flood of 1913 allowed them to move the houseboat to their property and continue living in it on dry land.

In 1919, the Slyes purchased a farm in Duck Run, located near Lucasville, Ohio about 12 miles north of Portsmouth. There they built a six-room home. Leonard's father soon realized that the farm alone would provide insufficient income for his family, so he took a job at a shoe factory in Portsmouth. He lived there during the week and returned home on the weekends, bearing gifts for the family following paydays. One notable gift was a horse on which Leonard learned the basics of horsemanship.

After completing the eighth grade, Leonard attended high school in McDermot, Ohio. When he was 17, his family returned to Cincinnati, where his father began work at another shoe factory. He soon decided on the necessity to help his family financially, so he quit high school, joined his father at the shoe factory, and began attending night school. After being ridiculed for falling asleep in class, however, he quit school and never returned.

Leonard and his father felt imprisoned by their factory jobs. In 1929, his older sister, Mary, moved to Lawndale, California with her husband. Father and son decided to quit their shoe factory jobs. The family packed their 1923 Dodge for a visit with Mary and stayed four months before returning to Ohio. Almost immediately afterward, Leonard had the opportunity to travel to California with Mary's father-in-law, and the rest of the family followed in the spring of 1930.

The Slyes rented a small house near Mary. Leonard and his father immediately found employment as truck drivers for a highway construction project. They reported to work one morning, however, to learn their employer had gone bankrupt. The economic hardship of the Great Depression had followed them west, and the Slyes soon found themselves among the economic refugees traveling from job to job picking fruit and living in worker campsites. (He would later read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and marvel at its accuracy.) One day, Andy Slye was told of a shoe factory hiring in Los Angeles and asked Leonard to join him in applying there for work. Leonard, having seen the joy that his guitar and singing had brought to the destitute around the campfires, hesitantly told his father that he was going to pursue a living in music. With his father's blessing, he and cousin Stanley Slye went to Los Angeles and sought musical engagements as The Slye Brothers.

In 1932, Leonard, now known as "Len," met Lucille Ascolese while on tour. That same year, a palomino colt was foaled in Santa Cietro, CA, named "Golden Cloud", and later renamed "Trigger" in 1938 after he was acquired by Roy. In May 1933, Len, 21, proposed to Lucille, 19, via a radio broadcast. Len then went on tour with the "O-Bar-O Cowboys" and in June 1933 met Grace Arline Wilkins at a Roswell, New Mexico radio station. She traded Len a lemon pie for his singing "Swiss Yodel" over the air. By August 1934, Len and Lucille had separated as she was reportedly jealous and tired of being a musician's wife. Len and Lucille's divorce was granted on May 28, 1935, and became final on June 8, 1936. Having corresponded since their first meeting, Len and Grace Arline Wilkins were married in Roswell, New Mexico, on June 11, 1936.

In 1941, the couple adopted a girl, Cheryl Darlene. Two years later, Arline bore a daughter, Linda Lou.

Rogers and Arline had a son, Roy Jr. ("Dusty") in 1946, but Arline died of complications from the birth a few days afterward on November 3. Rogers had met Dale Evans in 1944 when she was cast in a movie with Rogers. Following Arline's death, Rogers and Evans soon fell in love, and Rogers proposed to her during a rodeo at Chicago Stadium. They married on New Year's Eve in 1947 at the Flying L Ranch in Davis, Oklahoma, where a few months earlier they had filmed Home in Oklahoma. Rogers and Evans remained married until Rogers's death in 1998.

Leonard Slye moved to California to become a singer. After four years of little success, he formed The Sons of the Pioneers with Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer, a Western Cowboy Musical group, in 1934. The group hit it big with songs like "Cool Water" and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds". From his first film appearance in 1935, he worked steadily in Western films, including a large supporting role as a singing cowboy while still billed as "Leonard Slye" in a Gene Autry movie. In 1938, when Autry temporarily walked out on his movie contract, Slye was immediately rechristened "Roy Rogers." Slye's stage name was suggested by Republic Picture's staff after Will Rogers and the shortening of Leroy. and assigned the lead in Under Western Stars. Rogers became a matinee idol and American legend. A competitor for Gene Autry as the nation's favorite singing Cowboy was suddenly born. In addition to his own movies, Rogers played a supporting role in the John Wayne classic Dark Command (1940). Rogers became a major box office attraction.

In the Motion Picture Herald Top Ten Money-Making Western Stars poll, Rogers was listed for 15 consecutive years from 1939 to 1954, holding first place from 1943 to 1954. He appeared in the similar Box Office poll from 1938 to 1955, holding first place from 1943 to 1952. (In the final three years of that poll he was second only to Randolph Scott.) Although these two polls are really an indication only of the popularity of series stars, Rogers also appeared in the Top Ten Money Makers Poll of all films in 1945 and 1946.

Rogers was an idol for many children through his films and television shows. Most of his postwar films were in Trucolor during an era when almost all other B-Movies were black-and-white. Some of his movies would segue into animal adventures, in which Rogers's horse Trigger would go off on his own for a while, with the camera following him.

With money from not only Rogers' films but his own public appearances going to Republic Pictures, Rogers brought a clause into a 1940 contract with the studio where he would have the right to his likeness, voice and name for merchandising. There were Roy Rogers action figures, cowboy adventure novels, and playsets, as well as a comic strip, a long-lived Dell Comics comic book series (Roy Rogers Comics) written by Gaylord Du Bois, and a variety of marketing successes. Roy Rogers was second only to Walt Disney in the amount of items featuring his name. The Sons of the Pioneers continued their popularity, and they have never stopped performing from the time Rogers started the group, replacing members as they retired or passed away (all original members are deceased). Although Rogers was no longer an active member, they often appeared as Rogers' backup group in films, radio, and television, and Rogers would occasionally appear with them in performances up until his death. In August 1950, Evans and Rogers had a daughter, Robin Elizabeth, who had Down Syndrome and died of complications with mumps shortly before her second birthday. Evans wrote about losing their daughter in her book Angel Unaware.

Rogers and Evans were also well known as advocates for adoption and as founders and operators of children's charities. They adopted several children. Both were outspoken Christians. In Apple Valley, California, where they made their home, numerous streets and highways as well as civic buildings have been named after them in recognition of their efforts on behalf of homeless and handicapped children. Rogers was an active Freemason and a Shriner, and was noted for his support of their charities.

Rogers and Evans's famous theme song, "Happy Trails", was written by Evans; they sang it as a duet to sign off their television show. In the fall of 1962, the couple co-hosted a comedy-western-variety program, The Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Show, aired on ABC. It was cancelled after three months, losing in the ratings to The Jackie Gleason Show on CBS. He also made numerous cameo or guest appearances on other popular television shows, starring as himself or other cowboy-type characters, such as in an episode of Wonder Woman called "The Bushwackers" Rogers also owned a Hollywood production company which handled his own series. It also filmed other undertakings, including the 1955-1956 CBS western series Brave Eagle starring Keith Larsen as a young peaceful Cheyenne chief, Kim Winona as Morning Star, his romantic interest, and the Hopi Indian Anthony Numkena as Keena, Brave Eagle's foster son.

In 1968 Rogers licensed his name to the Marriot corporation, which converted its Hot Shoppes locations to Roy Rogers Restaurants, with which Rogers otherwise had no involvement. Rogers owned a Thoroughbread Racehorse named Triggairo, who won 13 career races including the 1975 El Encino Stakes at Santa Anita Park. When Rogers died of congestive heart failure on July 6, 1998, he was residing in Apple Valley, California. He was interred at Sunset Hills Cemetery in Apple Valley, as was his wife, Dale Evans, three years later.