Bob Wellings - Local hero to Nationwide star

Regional news presenters: you have to love ‘em. For many it’s the stepping stone to national stardom, be it still in the current affairs sphere or beyond. I also recall attending a Look North discussion group in Yorkshire soon after Sophie Raworth departed for network telly. Although young she was clearly missed, but participants were keen to realise that good presenters deserved the ‘promotion’ to London and they, too, considered it a feather in their region’s cap. This chimed with me as a fellow viewer. I still get a twinge of pride when I find myself watching, say, a Matt Barbet or Nina Hossain, remembering their early stints on the BBC London flagship 6.30 programme. 

Others choose - or perhaps have the decision made for them – to remain a big fish in a small pond. For example, Mike Neville became one of the biggest and most recognisable TV celebrities in the North-East, and there are many more of his ilk worth celebrating, such as Stewart White, Jamie Owen and Sue Beardsmore. They aren’t like film or reality TV stars who live on a claustrophobic planet orbiting our lives, shooting off sprays of tweets or instagram poses for the masses. Instead they are the familiar faces visible every evening you might also spot the next morning in your local branch of Tesco. Quite literally in the case of Wales Today’s Claire Summers who, before the Coronavirus pandemic, I sometimes bumped into in our neighbourhood Culverhouse Cross store. 

When I began my university stint at Exeter, I became rather addicted to the Beeb’s Spotlight South West. I know: not very rock’n’roll. However nothing lends a sense of place like the 25 minutes of news about tourism, fishing rights, Devonport dockyard or the demise of Cornwall’s tin mining, let alone Craig Rich’s weather forecasts complete with sea conditions and tide times. Back in 1979, Chris Denham and Gillian Miles were in the hot seat, the latter replaced by Fern Britton followed by Juliet Morris and Jill Dando, all three eventually becoming household names everywhere.

Growing up in Essex, I was deprived of my own local news presenters because we had the UK-wide Nationwide crew. I was never a fan of Michael Barratt or Sue Lawley, but Bob Wellings stood out for me. Many a TV journalist carries off the awkward skill of floundering yet covering it up with cool professionalism. Bob seemed to do the opposite, which was quite endearing! 

Most regional news presenters of that era would have started out in print journalism and Bob probably did the same. I can’t be certain. I do know his TV career began on About Anglia, before migrating down the A12 to the capital at the end of the Sixties.  He became part of the regular team on Nationwide in 1971, staying there pretty much throughout the decade. 

Wellings could be found in the great outdoors, in 1971 even participating in the then novelty craze of jogging. Occasionally he was allowed a crack at interviewing showbiz royalty and I think I recall his encounter two years later with the notoriously awkward Liza Minnelli. However, the lasting image I have of him is in the studio, somehow getting through a live segment involving fashion models. I don’t know when it was, or whether footage survives, but his old-school demeanour and less-than-forthcoming guests made for painful viewing – but this is what I remember.

For some reason he was considered to be the right fit as one of Esther Rantzen’s sidekicks on the first series of long-running Saturday night show That’s Life in ’73. I think I watched it because it replaced Match of the Day during the summer, and it was a genuine oddity. It was an uneasy marriage of consumer journalism, light entertainment and vox pop interviews with ‘real’ people out on the street, probably somewhere near the Shepherd’s Bush studios. 

I suppose Bob was there as a familiar current affairs face for the more serious stuff, while comedy actor George Layton (It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum, etc) provided the fun element along with the decidedly creepy Cyril Fletcher reading his Odd Odes. I really wanted Bob to do well but the heavily-scripted quickfire exchanges really didn’t suit his sober manner and well-modulated voice. Needless to say, he didn’t return for a second series, and it was ‘Esther’s Boys’ like Kieran Prendiville, Glyn Worsnip, Chris Serle and Doc Cox who became associated with the programme for many years. 

In the 1980s and ‘90s Bob Wellings would make the odd random appearance as ‘Newsreader’ or ‘Interviewer’ in drama series but the only programme I remember him actually presenting was the BBC’s Open Air.  This was part of the Beeb’s efforts to be more democratic and inclusive, offering an expanded forum in which to question programme-makers themselves instead of relying on the jokey Points of View format. Bob was one of the hosts and made a decent fist of it, deliberately avoiding any slippery slope towards Light Ent territory. I think he remained in situ from 1986 to its demise in 1989, Of course I worked at the Corporation and I quite liked the programme but it failed to survive the arrival of hated new Director-General John Birt. 

IMDB indicates no further TV or film credits since 1993 when he’d have been nudging 60, but I hope he has enjoyed a lengthy retirement.

Clare Balding - today's best sports all-rounder

TV sports presenters, like live news broadcasters and stand-up comedians, have to harness a range of qualities. It goes without saying that they need to know their audience and be authoritative on their subjects but it’s also vital to be an articulate storyteller, sufficiently quick-witted to adapt when that story takes numerous unexpected twists and turns and possessed of an entertaining personality. For many years it helped to be a woman but mercifully that has all changed. 

With precious few recognisable female sporting icons, apart from Sue Barker, to call upon, TV hosts have necessarily had to graduate via the journalism route, which is no bad thing. Local Radio and what is now Five Live have proved fertile breeding grounds, producing female presenters such as the late Helen Rollason – the first female presenter of Grandstand – Hazel Irvine and Gabby Logan. However it was when Clare Balding stepped away from her equestrian specialism and into other disciplines that I and the rest of the country came to appreciate what a brilliant broadcaster she is.

Horse racing is not a sport that appeals to me. Noble beasts at full gallop are an awesome sight but doing so purely to promote and support the gambling industry diminishes it. That’s why my TV experience of the races has traditionally focussed on the Grand National. I shall forever treasure Clare Balding as the Grandstand presenter who broke the tradition of donning tweed trilbies for the annual afternoon out at Aintree. I’m pretty sure I also once tuned in to coverage of the Derby, be it on the Beeb, ITV or Channel 4, just to witness her double-act with Willie Carson but it didn’t become a regular occurrence. Be it on the flat or over the fences, you always knew that her history with horses made her an informed reporter on the sport.

‘Jolly-hockey-sticks’ voices nurtured in private schools and Oxbridge usually set my teeth on edge but her readiness to be cheeky and irreverent, however famous the person she’s with, leads me to forgive her privileged upbringing.  Not even the legendary John McEnroe can escape her sugar-coated barbs on Today At Wimbledon. 

On that occasion Clare took him to task over a controversial comment he’d made about Serena Williams. She has always been quick to promote and, if needed defend women’s sport, just as she isn’t shy to speak out about LGBT issues and criticise President Putin’s anti-gay attitudes during coverage of the Sochi Winter Olympics. Maybe the misogynists and homophobes would be more effectively put in their place by heterosexual males like a Lineker, Stelling, Gower - or dare I suggest John Inverdale – but Balding does it so entertainingly. 

It’s not just about hosting an afternoon, or even a fortnight of live sport. Twenty years ago she appeared on the comedy game show They Think It’s All Over and held her own in the company of leading sports commentators and comedians of the day, including Rory McGrath who was never afraid to dive into the pool of political incorrectness. Clare’s popular touch made her a perfect foil for Philip Schofield and the ice queen Anne Robinson in an edition of Test The Nation, and she can switch to serious mode to present malaria reports for Sport Relief. 

However, it’s the live stuff for which Balding is best suited. It could be the Beeb’s annual Sports Personality of the Year (albeit scripted) or a jokey event at London’s Aquatic Centre for charity. Two years earlier she had been at the same venue for the 2012 Olympics striking the perfect tone for, amongst other things, her interview with the dad of South African swimming champ Chad le Clos. 

I’ll even forgive Balding’s occasional swerves into bizarre bonkers territory. Did she really write this intro for a broadcast on the 2014 Winter Olympics? I suppose she scored points for the common man/woman that summer when captured dancing to Kylie at the end – or was it the start? - of the Commonwealth Games. Well, we’ve all done that, haven’t we? It’s not the preserve of the LGBT community. 

Yet she is so much more than a human box-ticking exercise in on-screen minority representation. I no longer think of her as a woman or ‘The Lesbian’; she is simply Clare Balding, currently the best all-round sports broadcaster in the UK. End of.

Phil Davis: The Biggest Little Man

Phil Davis never quite became an A-lister but, for me, he remains more watchable than most who rake in the megabucks at the supposed top of the tree. Like me, he’s Essex-raised and only 5 ft 5 tall, but there the similarities end. These days, he’s more in demand than ever but back in the late Seventies and Eighties, his appearance in a TV trailer or Radio Times cast list pinpointed a drama well worth seeing. Despite his lack of inches, he could exude a sense of menace purely by opening his mouth; he has the scariest set of teeth in the history of acting! 

I’m certain Davis (then billed as a more formal Philip) first came to my attention in 1977 when he starred as a troubled teenager holding his teacher hostage on the last day of school in Barrie Keeffe’s Gotcha. I was hardly a delinquent 15 year-old myself but I was agog at the disturbing and thought-provoking drama, one of many powerful political Plays for Today broadcast in an era of high unemployment and low expectations. 

I don’t recall his roles in Target and The Professionals around the same time, but I’m willing to bet he wasn’t playing a respectable accountant, more likely fist-fodder for Patrick Mower and Lewis Collins! I’ve also somehow missed out on the movie Quadrophenia, in which he was also prominent as a ne’er-do-well scooter-riding Mod, not to mention the brutal borstal-set play Scum. This was too violent even for  1970s telly, but it later resurfaced as a movie, again featuring our Philip, alongside the even more intimidating Ray Winstone. 

Ten years later Davis had matured into fully-fledged gangster material, playing the head of an Eighties football hooligan mob in The Firm. His principal rival was played by the equally superb Gary Oldman, in the week a respectable married dad and estate agent, but come the weekend a sadistic thug. Oldman was at his most chilling but Phil’s bleach-blond hair came close. It was quite a shocking depiction of ‘firms’ which operated in parallel with the football clubs they purported to support but ended up showing them up not as respectable pillars of their working–class communities but as ultra-violent criminals. Hopefully this play helped dismantle the system but the launch in 1992 of the squeaky-clean Premier League era thankfully finished them off for good. 

Heading for his late twenties, Davis couldn’t play nasty teenagers forever, and in 1980 was a helpful London lad trying to direct lost alien Peter Firth in The Flip Side of Dominick Hide (he’s about four minutes into this clip). Seven years on and he was a Stetson-wearing driver in the Beeb’s amiable series Truckers but I missed his stint as King John in Robin of Sherwood, presumably back in nasty mode.

However, by this time, Philip (I don’t think he lost the ‘ip’ ‘til the Nineties) had become a fully-fledged member of Mike Leigh’s ensemble, alongside the likes of Alison Steadman, Janine Duvitski and Lesley Manville. Whether on the big or small screen, Davis is always a joy in the semi-improvised comedies, inhabiting the real characters so beloved of the playwright/director. I forget whether I watched the original broadcast (I was in a hall of residence so doubt whether a BBC2 play would have been on the communal TV set) or a subsequent repeat but I do recall seeing Grown Ups. I don’t think he played a particularly likeable character and his trademark sneer, backed by a jaw stacked with those gnashers, was used to full effect. 

Catching his performances in the twenty-first century has been a bit hit-and-miss. In 2002, Phil was a veteran hack in a so-so conspiracy thriller Fields of Gold and in the same year appeared in Channel 4’s adaptation of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I wonder if the director had an impudent sense of fun casting an actor whose facial features could by themselves have played the title role! For reasons I forget I don’t think I stuck with the series but Phil was excellent as ever. I also missed his leading part in ITV’s Rose and Maloney but never mind. 

Whereas once he was frequently found on the wrong side of the law, even suspected of attempted murder but defended by Leo McKern in Rumpole of the Bailey, the middle-aged Davis has mostly been found on TV amongst the forces of law and order. For several years he was the sceptic on Rupert Penry-Jones’ team investigating spooky murders in ITV’s Whitechapel then with the same co-star and the marvellous Maxine Peake in the more weighty legal drama Silk. He was in another set of chambers in 2016’s Undercover and only this year providing the narration for BBC2’s Murder 24/7 documentaries. 

However, only a few months ago it was wonderful to see Davis, his teeth concealed by a straggly beard, playing a paedophile. No offence, Phil, but he’s an actor born to play the scruffy bad guy. Nobody does it better.

Michael Palin - From Python to a Nation's Conscience

And now for someone completely different….  Not many entertainers achieve a six-decade career with barely a blemish but Sir Michael Palin has sailed serenely towards not only my personal but also ‘National Treasure’ status for being funny, interesting, self-effacing and just, well, extremely nice. Even within the Monty Python set-up, he always struck me as the more level-headed one. With his cheeky face and apparent permanent possibility of ‘corpsing’ mid-performance, Palin always seemed ‘one of us’. 

That could not be said of his early years. He may be a son of Sheffield but Michael was never heading for a job in a steelworks, and an education CV reading Shrewsbury School and Brasenose, Oxford hardly reads as that of an ordinary bloke.

And yet while his fellow Oxonian and future writing partner Terry Jones seemed born to don a woman’s hairnet, and Cambridge’s John Cleese to play civil servants, Palin’s roll-call of comedy sketch characters was remarkably wide-ranging. 

Like the vast majority of people, be they adults or eight year-old boys, I didn’t watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was first broadcast in 1969. It was only when repeated, and subsequent series shown on the Beeb, that I became a fan of the show. To a child, it was John Cleese who stood out, whether he was doing funny walks or sitting behind a TV newsreader’s desk on a freezing beach. However, with more viewings, it was the boyish Palin’s characters who so often seemed to be the most memorable. 

Whether dressed as a lumberjack (with self-confessed transvestite tendencies!), a strait-laced bloke paying to have an argument (it still seems very funny now) or a vendor of deceased Norwegian Blue parrots (“Beautiful plumage”) he proved to be one of the all-time greatest sketch actors. Years later, I was watching a re-run of the Spanish Inquisition episode on BBC2, and Mum was present. Now, Python could in no way have defined her comfort zone. However, when the programme ended with Palin’s scarlet inquisitor, having had to take the bus over the closing credits, storming into a courtroom, launching into his “Nobody expects the…” exclamation only for the screen go blank, Mum reacted to the character’s exasperated “Bugger!” with uncontrollable laughter. I’d never seen her roll around the settee in such mirth, a joy to behold. Thanks, Michael!

In ’76, it was me and, I think, Catherine, who were thoroughly entertained by the first in what became a new comedy strand by Palin and Jones called Ripping Yarns. It was launched by an extended tale called Tomkinson’s Schooldays, with Palin’s teenager enduring public school horrors such as the appointed school bully, maggot pit and school leopard, used to retrieve escapees. I’m not sure how well its humour stands up today but for years we adopted phrases from the script as enthusiastically as any Python fan. 

Subsequent Ripping Yarns introduced us to more delightful creations like the Yorkshire shovel nerd Eric Olthwaite, Roger of the Raj and serial PoW camp escape failure Major Phipps but it was Tomkinson who most successfully overshadowed Michael Palin’s Python past. It was unfortunate that John Cleese’s contemporary sitcom Fawlty Towers stole his thunder but in our household the Yarns weren’t forgotten.

There couldn’t have been too much rancour because the pair reunited for the triumphant cinema successes Life of Brian and A Fish Called Wanda, but I don’t recall any other TV comedy roles. The big screen beckoned in the Eighties and he wrote, but didn’t appear in, the engaging autobiographical East of Ipswich, which we all enjoyed.

Then in 1991 came his unexpected serious part in Alan Bleasdale’s drama serial GBH. I’ve already mentioned Robert Lindsay’s contribution as a left-wing local politician whose ambition leads him into all sorts of problems. Amongst these was crossing swords with a meek and mild schoolteacher played by Palin who surprises everyone by fighting his corner so brilliantly.

By this time Michael had begun to reinvent himself not as comedian, nor even serious actor and dramatist (although they were indeed strings to his bow), but as a travel documentary-maker and explorer for the late twentieth century. I’d had an early taste of this potential new career in 1980 when he’d presented one of BBC2’s Great Railway Journeys of the World films. Others travelled to far-off countries like Peru, India or Australia but our Michael’s exotic trips would have to wait. In fact he didn’t even require a passport because, in Confessions of a Trainspotter, his route led from London to the Kyle of Lochalsh. From the amusing intro to his departure from the Scottish ferry terminus, he made for a very agreeable companion. As an unrepentant number-collector and defender of this noble outdoor leisure pursuit, I felt we were kindred spirits although back then I had yet to set foot on the platforms of Sheffield Midland  Regretfully I’ve still never been to the Kyle. 

Nor have I crossed the Arabian Sea, the plains of Africa or the straits between China and Japan, and am extremely unlikely to do so, especially in the insular world post-Covid-19. However, maybe I no longer need to spend the requisite time and money because Michael Palin did it for me. 1989’s Around the World in 80 Days was a riveting travelogue, made in an era when world travel remained a thing of beauty and wonder for a modest twenty-something explorer like me. There was also the thriller element: would he and the crew complete the circumnavigation within the deadline?

There was more of the same in Pole to Pole three years later, with another delightful opening, this time in the Arctic, and 1997’s Full Circle which included a segment in China just as the economic boom was taking off. However, by the time Palin set off for the Himalaya in 2004, I was becoming rather jaded. His sojourn in Tibet was unforgettable but these series, like David Attenborough’s astonishing wildlife series, no longer held the same mystique. 

The seemingly endless cycle of TV-video-book-chat show money-spinners were no longer grabbing me and compelling me to watch, let alone buy the accompanying merchandise. Nothing against Mr Palin, who still did his thing with consummate ease and good humour. It’s just that international travel shows have become so commonplace. From Top Gear specials to celebrity environmentalists, dramas like Our Girl to the long-distance game show Race Across the World, foreign climes are constantly brought to our screens as entertainment. 

Perhaps the extended hiatus in foreign adventures for people like me caused by the Coronavirus will make me once again hanker for a Michael Palin travelogue but for now I’m happy to watch his back catalogue on YouTube or iPlayer. He is still relevant as an eloquent commentator and writer, and was always an engaging chat show guest whether reflecting on his journeys, childhood or comedy creations. 

His knighthood in 2019 was apparently awarded for services to travel, culture and geography. I can only presume that those hazy days of Python and Ripping Yarns are encompassed in the term ‘culture’, and so they should. Sir Michael has contributed so much to my entertainment over the years. In acknowledgement of the Black Lives Matter movement, he has courageously questioned the ‘racist’ design of the medal but a KBE is the bare minimum he deserves.

Martin Jarvis - Radio Icon, TV Treasure

BBC Radio 4 must have the most fiercely loyal listeners of any sizeable network in the world. Some may be rather too averse to even evolutionary change but they listen avidly for year and years, relish the sound of familiar voices. They may be newsreaders, comedy show panellists, correspondents, gardeners, historians or actors. Surely one of the most beloved of radio thesps must be Martin Jarvis. 

Towards the end of my enjoyable stint as Radio 4 research manager, I was invited to address a gathering of independent producers keen to win commissions for their various programme ideas. As I took my chair in the meeting room, I looked up and there, seated directly opposite me was the aforementioned Mr Jarvis. Many producers, when introduced to someone who analyses audience figures, roll their eyes and get twitchy but I was reassured by the kindly smile of Martin, who had pitched yet another adaptation of the Just William stories – read by himself, of course. 

His voice has graced hundreds of videos, cassettes, Audiobooks (his Wodehouse is legendary), as well as broadcasts but that smile was one I’d seen so many times on television, too. Sporting a fair, now silver, hairstyle that has barely changed in more than half a century, Martin Jarvis was, especially in the late Sixties and Seventies, a staple of TV drama. 

Nineteenth century costumes seemed to fit particularly well, although the likes of Galsworthy and Dickens were not a draw for this young boy who much preferred Doctor Who or Scooby Doo. And yet my first memory of him on screen came in the BBC serialisation of David Copperfield in 1974. Uniquely for Dickens I found myself immersed in the story. Arthur Lowe’s Micawber and Patience Collier’s Betsy Trotwood have stuck in the mind more than Anthony Andrews’ Steerforth or David Yelland’s eponymous hero, but it was Martin Jarvis’ snivelling, unctuous Uriah Heep which leapt out at this thirteen year-old. “Ever so ‘umble”, my arse! The blonde barnet had been replaced by spiky ginger wig but from that moment on I would come to recognise the actor’s name forever more. 

For someone with such a warm speaking voice, it’s perhaps surprising how often Martin Jarvis has played unsympathetic characters. That same year he played one of the baddies in Doctor Who’s ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ although it was in a role totally overshadowed by the state-of-the-art animated rubber monsters – Jurassic Park, it was not! 

Maybe it’s the narrow eyes and small mouth which so easily switches to sneer mode, but there have been several other instances of Jarvis as middle-class slimeballs. In 1991, he was a shifty-looking Ancient Greek scholar in Inspector Morse and, three years later, a criminal art dealer set up by the equally dodgy Lovejoy. Back in the ‘80s Jarvis played a suspicious monk in one of Anglia TV’s first-class PD James dramatisations, The Black Tower. Spoiler alert: on this occasion it wasn’t him whodunit, it was that evil long-haired Art Malik! 

As on radio, he has a lighter side to his TV CV, too, even his characters were perfectly-judged pantomime villains. In 1991, he was the slimy, sleazy politician who came up against Dawn French’s Brazilian maid in Murder Most Horrid. He got his just desserts, coming to a sticky end soon after we had a rare glimpse of his naked backside – assuming it didn’t belong to an anonymous stunt man, that is! Later that decade, he was one of a wonderful cast as another randy old goat in Guy Jenkin’s feature-length comedy Sex ’n’ Death. 

This millennium I watched the BBC’s re-telling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, in which he played the newsroom boss of main protagonists Damien Lewis (when he was in almost everything!) and Sarah Parish but the only time I can remember him actually in a lead role was in the sitcom Rings On Their Fingers back in 1978. Written by Richard Waring, who was also responsible for all the Wendy Craig And Mother Makes…. and My Wife Next Door series, it wasn’t the funniest but kept me reasonably amused for a few autumn half-hours before I hopped off to university. 

I am now very unlikely to hear his voice on a video game and my neglect of Radio 4 has become nothing short of shameful but it’s always a pleasure to see Martin Jarvis on the box, be it as mocking, middle-class crook or kindly old gentleman with the twinkle in his eye that once put this nervous presenter at ease.