A rueful reunion

FIFTY years to the night since the launch which helped define a region, the folk of Tyne Tees Television – some still household names, some barely names in their own household – gathered last Thursday for a glorious, nostalgic, rather rueful reunion.

Back in 1959 it was ITV’s eighth regional station, seat-of-the-pants television housed in myriad studios in a huge old warehouse in City Road, Newcastle, down by the waterfront.

Stars came and stars were made; agog on the Tyne.

Even John Aird, the head chef – the HEAD chef, there were others – was back for the bash. His passion fruit cheesecake, they reckon, would have been top table at the Ritz.

Now Tyne Tees, like much of the media, has drastically downsized, based on an industrial estate somewhere Gateshead way. Some call it a call centre, others worse than that.

Scenes, screens, are much changed.

They recalled the opening night when the Bishop of Durham (“drunk as a lord”) blessed everyone including the studio cat and when even the blessed epilogue overran. They talked of Wanda Lyon-Shaw, who strolled the corridors with George Romaine’s toupee on a dog lead and of the first person to be bonked on the Beckstein, manifestly a high note.

David Dawson, the station’s public relations officer in the 1960s, urged the assembly to forget the Golden Globes and the Oscars. “There’s more original talent here tonight than there is in Hollywood.

“These wonderful, innovative people produced thousands of hours of original entertainment. The region should be very proud of them.”

PIONEERING programme controller Bill Lyon-Shaw is now 96, insisted that the only one of the 290 present who’d even remember him was Fred Johnson, the former chief accountant. Fred’s 99.

Bill, wonderful character – “I’m really only 90, Tyne Tees put years on me” – had held senior positions with the BBC and ATV before being persuaded by impresario brothers George and Alfred Black to front the North-East television revolution.

These days he’s writing a scholarly book called Who the Hell Is Shakespeare?

– “I’ve done three years research, hope to have it published by Christmas, don’t believe in doing nothing” – watches little television and is unimpressed by what he sees.

“When I produced Sunday Night at the London Palladium we had 18 million viewers. Now there are hundreds of channels, not 18 million between the lot of them and most of the programmes just rubbish and repeats.

“The audience has gone. Commercial television has no longer the money to make good shows. We were professionals, not the bloody amateurs they have in place today.

“When I started at the BBC, and when Tyne Tees began, we were emptying theatres and cinemas. Tyne Tees had the biggest audience share of any ITV region. We trained people and they got jobs all over the world, it was like a university of television.

Now it’s ceased to be an entertainment industry and become a business.

“Twenty years ago you could walk into a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Now you have to wait two years for a ticket. They’re driving people back from where they came.”

Bill also gave a little speech, maybe 15 seconds, to the gathering. “Tyne Tees Television,” he said, “had a touch of magic.”

THEY’D gone on air at precisely 5pm, January 15, 1959, the opening ceremony performed by the Duke of Northumberland. He was followed by continuity announcer Sally Morton, just 21 years old and still reckoned mainstream television’s youngest presenter.

Everything was live, most rehearsed and researched. An autocue might have been something invented by Fred Davis, an ad lib a free puff.

There’d be technical hitches, too, like the time that a film machine broke down and they switched to the continuity studio, only to find Miss Morton with her feet on the desk, polishing her fingernails.

“I got a bit of a roasting for that,”

she recalled.

She was born in Newcastle, followed the Magpies, studied drama, history and philosophy at Bristol University, wanted to be a television producer – “everyone did” – and wrote to the brothers Black.

When nothing was forthcoming, Sally – now Sally Terry – went on teaching practice to Blyth, 52 of the little monsters (as no doubt affectionately she recalls them) in one class.

“Out of the blue I got this letter asking me to go for an audition at Tyne Tees and that was it. The kids who’d been sending me up were queuing down City Road to see me. I was a bit of a god to them after that.”

On opening night, she recalls, she was shaking like a leaf. “You could be on air for two, three or four minutes at a time and you had to know everything about your programmes. It was an amazing time to be in television; I don’t suppose I’d have been much of a teacher, anyway.”

THE reunion was at St James’ Park, home of Newcastle United, probably the most diverting thing to happen there all season. “I weep for Newcastle,” said Sally.

Mike Neville was there, said (for the benefit of football fans) to be the Kaka of Look North “and worth every penny of the transfer fee”.

George Taylor, the first head of sport, remained very much alive and kicking.

Marianne Forster was there, still remembered as the weather girl whose magnetic symbols fell to earth. Rod Griffith was there, Stuart McNeil, Peter Moth, Bob Langley, Jim Lloyd – Sally’s fellow presenter – flown in from Australia.

George Romaine, nicknamed Shildon’s Singing Son, was a wagon works electrician who became a star of the One O’Clock Show, a variety package which broadcast, live, five lunchtimes a week.

“They were a fabulous gang,” recalled Malcolm Morris, the producer.

“George sang beautifully, but sometimes he’d be given a song just ten minutes before we went on air and had to busk it. That’s the way it was, but it worked incredibly.”

George shared number two dressing room with “Wacky Jackie” Haig, a natural comedian. “We did more than 1,000 live shows and there wasn’t a day we didn’t laugh like hell,” he said. “That’s what’s missing from television today, fun.”

Inevitably they spoke also of absent friends, those now in some great celestial studio – which must not, of course, be confused with Sky Television – and those still rehearsing the role. They toasted, too, those obliged to leave as the small screen diminished yet further.

“Like Newcastle United,” said former head of sport Roger Tames, “Tyne Tees still haven’t learned that you don’t sell off your best players.”

It lasted until midnight, a great occasion.

For one night only, Tyne Tees Television was just as entertaining as ever.

The Bishop Seamus Special

THE Right Rev Kevin Dunn, much loved Roman Catholic bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, died last March – on the day that Northern Cross, the Tweed to Tees diocesan newspaper, appeared. Cross purposes, they produced a special edition within five days.

Since not even Catholic editors get tips off from the Vatican, the announcement of the new bishop, Canon Seamus Cunningham, came on the day that this month’s issue was printed and despatched.

“We turned round another special edition within 34 hours,” reports retired editor John Bailey, who wrote most of it.

The special – eight pages, 20p – carries a leader acknowledging that there might have been “more favourable divine intervention” in the matter of timing.

“However,” it adds, “we shouldn’t expect the Holy Father to take into consideration the fairly trivial matter of newspaper deadlines when deciding when to announce who will be the next diocesan descendant of the apostles.”

The media, including Northern Cross, had been informed at 8am on Friday, January 9, that there’d be a press conference, subject unspecified, three hours later. An announcement appeared on the Vatican website – no Sistine smoke for diocesan bishops – at exactly the same time.

Canon Cunningham, presently diocesan administrator and priest of Tynemouth and Cullercoats, had at 9am rung his sister in Mayo to ask if she could keep a secret. “I told her that the new bishop was an Irishman, from Mayo, from the village of Carrajames and that it was her brother.”

LAST week’s note on Darlington lass Ann French, glamour model and aspirant journalist, not only interested her old school but, more surprisingly, a football website called nonleaguezone. Within hours, a yet more revealing photograph of the young lady had appeared, alongside a message that Mr Amos got paid for writing such stuff. An hour later, it had been pulled again. The original had been posted by someone using the pseudonym The Laughing Policeman. Whoever he is, he clearly isn’t PC at all.

ALATE evening telephone call from George Reynolds, 74- year-old former chairman of Darlington FC, reveals that once again he has his finger on the button.

He’s now in the vending machine business, perfume and other heady stuff, has a factory at Langley Moor, near Durham, and plans another.

The best bit, however, is that Boris – the hunting pink pig who permanently occupied the top table place in the Direct Worktops board room in Shildon – has returned to his former pre-eminence.

“We’ve brushed his teeth, cleaned his paws and he’s lording it in the chairman’s seat once again,” says George. “Boris is our mascot; the only way is up.”

A MAIDEN voyage, we travelled on Sunday on Grand Central Railways, for some reason identified as Route 26. It was only from Sunderland to Eaglescliffe, but it seemed pleasant, friendly and almost empty. The coaches are the ancient stock where Monopoly, Cluedo and chess boards were inlaid into the tables. In the absence of other playing equipment they seem pretty superfluous – or, game afoot, did the railways once provide the other pieces, too?

HARRY Herring, one of those familiar faces to which few might put a name, died this week. Though few are quite sure, and he gave little away, he was probably 87.

He’d several times been mentioned hereabouts, not least – though there could hardly be said to be shoals of Herring – to differentiate him from Harry Herring who played twice for Hartlepool United in 1957-58 and who still kicks about Hart Village.

The other Harry was an actor, born in North Shields, still popping up everywhere from the Gala Theatre in Durham – the irreverent Maggie’s End, just three months ago – to the diamond jubilee commercials for Barker and Stonehouse.

A wartime member of the RAF Gang Show, alongside Peter Sellars, he’d also recently appeared in a memory jerker at Darlington library and, playing George Stephenson, at Stockton.

His most recent role, little to the imagination, has him unclothed in a comedy pilot called The Site, to be shown on BBC3 next month. “Harry Herring starkers for the world to see,” he wrote in the theatrical magazine Cloud Nine. “If Helen Mirren and Bob Hoskins can do it, so can I.”

He’d also frequently played Old Father Time, and it is that ineluctable gentleman who finally has hauled down the curtain.

…and finally, last week’s note on Freddie Frinton and his sketch Dinner For One – particularly remembered in Germany each New Year’s Eve – prompted a note from Roger Cliff in Low Coniscliffe, Darlington. “Have you seen the Lego version? It’s brilliant,” he said. It’s easily watched by putting “Dinner For One” and “Lego” into Google – and Roger’s right, it’s highly amusing. More on Dinner For One, and further memories of Tyne Tees Television, in next week’s column.