Summer time has again been a washout from a weather point of view, however the team have been beavering away with various aspects of the production, which continues to gain contributions from people who were involved with the ATV Centre throughout its life.
As the leaves on the trees change colour, we have been crossing the country again in search of more stories. Last month Jim Bowen, fresh from a gig on a cruise ship, spoke to the team at his home in north Lancashire. As you may expect some hillarious anecdotes came about, including the fascinating history of Bullseye, from it's inception at ATV to it's demise at Central in Nottingham 15 years later. We learned of how the Bendy Bully came about as well as the contribution to the show of the programmes first director Peter Harris. Jim was incredibly generous (as all the interviewees have been) and he contacted Peter Harris for us and passed over the phone! As a result our next interview was arranged.
Peter Harris was a big player in the history of ATV and Central working on some iconic shows from the start of his career as a floor manager and then later as a programme director including, Tingha & Tucker, Tiswas, Bullseye, The Muppet Show... It was a pleasure to meet him last week along with his former P.A. Barbara Bradbury, in the Midlands. They both recalled many great aspects of working at the ATV Centre over the years on the afore mentioned programmes and others, it was clear that they (along with all our other interviewees so far) enjoyed their time there.
Following on from those contributions we have arranged an interview with Spitting Image stalwart Steve Nallon former ATV / Central news and current affairs presenter Reg Harcourt, to be completed in the coming weeks. So as things move on, this programme is going to be bulging with stories from the people who worked at the ATV Centre for the viewers enjoyment.....
As always the team are overwhelmed by the generosity of the people we have met, and are very grateful to them for their contributions to this labour of love.
Further work has been going on in the editing department with substantial sections being put together in anticipation of interviews being completed. Where there are gaps we are working to fill them. What has become fairly obvious to us, is that we have amassed so much material for certain areas that we could do some special separate programmes offering fuller length clips of the interviews we have done, so look out for that......
