Showing posts with label Elstree Studios. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elstree Studios. Show all posts

Monday, 25 September 2017

Elstree Studios 90th Birthday Celebrations

Last night, I was honoured to attend a very special occasion. Normally, we stick to Barnet events, but we made an exception last night for two very good reasons.The first is that it's on the doorstep and the second was that my good lady's band, The BBC Elstree Concert Band were performing!

The event was the final night of celebrations for the 90th Birthday of Elstree studios. The event consisted of two halves. The first half had screenings of classic footage of '60's and '70's TV series made at Elstree. including The Saint, The Avengers and Jason King. A whole slate of celebs turned out, most notably Guest of Honour Diana Rigg, and some great film memorabila including Simon Templar's car!. Here are a selection of tweets which give a good flavour of the night.






The Q&A sessions were great. A good selection of anecdotes, not all of which are suitable for a family blog such as this! Dame Diana Rigg looked great. I was fascinated to learn that the reason that Patrick McNee's female sidekicks were so "macho" was not due to a forward looking, feminist agenda, it was just because they originally had a bloke lined up and they couldn't be bothered to rewrite the scripts!

There was also a tribute to Roger Moore. He was always my favourite Bond and he used to live at the top of my road. He also has a very cool Christian name and us Roger's do stick together! The footage from the Saint was great, as was the short, previously unseen interview footage. There were some  very affectionate anecdotes. It was pretty clear just how well liked Roger was.

The second half of the show, had the BBC Elstree band playing a selection of well known TV and Film theme tunes, including The Avengers, The Third Man and Superman. Paul Walsh OBE, a local film historian and campaigner MC'd this section of the show. Paul had been enjoying the hospitality and gave a very down to earth intro of the various tunes, recalling various incidents such as Christopher Reeve, as Superman, dangling in clear view from Shenley Road from a crane. One suspects that Superman IV was not Paul's favourite film from the Period. He spoke rather more affectionately about "Murder on the Orient Express" which had a stellar cast. He also observed that the On The Buses films had made huge profits on tiny budgets.

Paul also observed that back in the 1960's and 1970's TV companies were prepared to take risks when commissioning productions and spend money on decent musical scores as so well demonstrated by the great tunes the band belted out!

Elstree studios are a gem. It was the first time I'd actually been back there since my acting career finished in 1970, apart from once when I accompanied my Dad to drop off a car he'd resprayed for a production. As it was being used in a film, he'd put his best sprayer on it and instructed him to give it a Rolls Royce finish. I can't remember what the film was but we got free tickets and he was horrified to see that all the hard work resulted in 15 seconds on screen and then the car crashing and blowing up. I look forward to the 100 years celebration in 2027.

Hopefully there will be some great output between now and then. Great Britain has amazing creative industries. We need to protect and preserve them. It was an honour to share in there celebrations!
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Sunday, 4 September 2011

Barnet Eye News Round up

Greetings, greetings to one and all. Great news, last night I took a phone call from Brian Coleman and he offered me a non job at Barnet Council paying £150,000 a year, if I agreed to only say nice things about him between now and the GLA election and then told me it would go up to £200,000 a year if I said Andrew Dismore smells of poo. Then I woke up and found it was all a horrible dream, caused by eating too much cheese and drinking too much red wine. So no £200,000 a year, no comfy non job, and no compromising of my principles. Ain't life a bitch, guess I'll just have to keep knocking out them blogs then.

So why you may wonder, was the issue of Brian Coleman & the GLA elections troubling me. I've been hacking through the backlog of emails from my holidays and I found this, which was revealed as part of an FOI response. It is an email sent by Brian Coleman, in response to a resident asking about the Obscene increases in CPZ charges (click on the images for a more readable version).
As you can see, Councillor Brian Coleman responds to a perfectly reasonable query about the Obscene raise in CPZ parking charges, by ridiculing his constituents use of the word Obscene, in relation to the price hike. Now if like me (yup, I live in a CPZ) you are subjected to this huge hike in prices and you are lumbered with it, you'd probably think it was "Obscene". However, if like Brian Coleman, you receive a free parking permit, because you are a Councillor, you probably wouldn't have a clue what the poor chap was on about. Or mayby, like Coleman, you wouldn't give a shit, because you are alright jack.

And why was I think of Andrew Dismore? Well yesterday the Labour Party were out in force in Mill Hill Broadway. A brief conversation with one of the campaigners in an Andrew Dismore T-shirt revealed that they were getting a rather good response. What were the topics people were interested in? Nationally, protecting the NHS. Locally - I was told that many local people have been impressed with Andrew Dismore's stance on the proposed Free School in Daws Lane. People have also woken up to the fact that Coleman is MR CPZ rise. They are also none too impressed with his sneaky attempt to abolish Pay and Display. At the last GLA elections, Nicky Gavron (the Labour candidate) was invisible in Barnet. Andrew Dismore is anything but invisible. I suspect that Brian Coleman may well be £53,439 out of pocket come May next year.

What else has been going on. Well there is yet another great new Barnet website, protesting at the stupidty of Barnet Council. As ever we are more than happy to give them a plug. Please check out the Daily Friern, the new site for the Friern Barnet Library campaign - http://paper.li/friernblibrary/1308604551 - at this blog we always give new bloggers in Barnet a plug. There are plenty of other great blogs in the sidebar. If you haven't checked them out, please have a nose around.

On the subject of Barnet Council & the industrial action, there is a great article by Kate Belgrave - http://www.katebelgrave.com/2011/09/barnet-strikes/ - Kate is a freelance investigative journalist who is a passionate supporter of the underrepresented in society. Well worth a read.

For all Barnet Eye readers who are Hogwarts and about to return for the new term, Network rail have moved the Hogwarts platform at Kings Cross - 9 3/4.

You can find details of it's new home at the Londonist - http://londonist.com/2011/09/hogwarts-pupils-confounded-by-moving-platform-at-kings-cross.php - I hope this helps the young wizards of Barnet to get  to school on time.

And on to this :-

I was shocked to see this picture on the First Capital Connect website. For a second, I thought it was the new uniforms for their revenue protection officers (Ticket inspectors in plain English). Happily for those of us partial to bunking the fair (an activity the Barnet Eye would never condone), it isn't . The chaps in the picture are part of the celebrations surrounding the naming of a First Capital Connect train as "Elstree Studios" - Full story here - http://www.firstcapitalconnect.co.uk/about-us/media-centre/news/2011/full-steam-ahead-elstree-film-studios-and-film-capital-connect/ - Maybe Councillor Brian Coleman would like to collaborate with the Barnet Eye and First Capital Connect and get a train named "Mill Hill Music Complex". This could celebrate some of the fine international artists such as Amy Winehouse and Kate Nash, who started their musical career rehearsing in Mill Hill. The offer is there.

Anyway, enjoy your Sunday. I'm off down to Iceland to get a pot noodle for lunch. Having spent all of my cash (and some) on our family holiday, that's all we can afford. That £200,000 a year would have come in mightily handy this month !!!!
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