National heartthrob David Tennant will front a BBC4 documentary on Doctor Who ahead of the popular, long-running family SF drama's sixtieth anniversary. Talking Doctor Who will see Tennant travel back in time through the BBC archives to tell the story of Doctor Who's early years. The documentary will also include archive interviews from past Doctors, from the late William Hartnell through to Sylvester McCoy. The hour-long programme is set for broadcast on Wednesday 1 November. It was recently revealed that most of Doctor Who's earlier series will be coming to BBC iPlayer. More than eight hundred episodes will be available on iPlayer, also from 1 November although, the BBC recently confirmed that the back catalogue will not include the first story, An Unearthly Child, due to a rights issue. Or, to put another way, because someone's being a knob.
Various online descriptions of the current, sad, situation regarding An Unearthly Child detailed in the last From The North bloggerisationism update as 'a Mexican stand-off' between the protagonists are, surely, inaccurate? Although, if The Aztecs had been the Doctor Who story in question, that would be an entirely different matter.
Meanwhile, both David and Big Rusty have been interviewed by Empire, parts of which are available online, here.
Loki director Kate Herron is to co-write an upcoming episode of Doctor Who featuring Ncuti Gatwa. Herron will script the episode with long-time collaborator Briony Redman, an actor and comedian whose work includes the Welsh crime-comedy Pont Brec with Damian Evans and the award-winning short film Forget-Me-Not. Herron is the latest name to join the upcoming series. She previously exec-produced and directed the entire Marvel Loki series and has also directed episodes of Sex Education, in which Gatwa stars. Herron and Redman have collaborated on a range of work together including the comic The Storkening as well as TV and film projects including Fan Girl and the short film Smear. 'This is when I absolutely love my job,' Russell said. 'Working with the stellar talents of Kate and Briony makes my whole world bigger and brighter, and a lot more fun.'
We are still some months away from his first series arriving early next year, but filming has already kicked off this week on the second series of Ncuti Gatwa's iteration of Doctor Who, according to Dark Horizons. The BBC announced the start of production on what will be the fifteenth series since the reboot in 2005. Alongside Gatwa as The Doctor, Millie Gibson is expected to return as his companion, Ruby Sunday. Further guest casting or story details are strictly under wraps at the moment. Ncuti is expected to make his official debut in the last of the trio of sixtieth anniversary specials in November before getting his own Christmas special before the end of the year. Gatwa and Gibson filmed the eight-episode fourteenth series from December last year through to July. After a three-month break, now they're back for the new run which will likely film through April or May next year. The BBC has also released a featurette showing how David Tennant filmed his most recent regeneration which was shot completely separately from Jodie Whittaker's shoot for the scene.
Speaking at a BFI screening of the latest Doctor Who animation, The Underwater Menace, executive producer Paul Hembury confirmed there are plans to animate more of the ninety odd missing Doctor Who episodes - indicating that the ambition is to complete the series. 'As long as there's an audience out there who want to see them, then we will endeavour to continue,' Hembury said. However, he cautioned: 'The DVD and Blu-ray market isn't getting any bigger and it was a significant contributor to the financing that we use to make these, so it's really incumbent upon us to say, "Okay, if we're going to be seeing less revenue from that source, we need to be able to replace it" - and more, because our budgets have gone up pretty significantly. So we just need to be able to make it balance out.' Despite confirming that at least one more animation is in the works, Hembury would not be drawn on which story was next on the slate, despite strong rumours that the missing 1966 serial The Smugglers could be in the offing. 'I would love to be able to say yes - I can't at this stage. We don't have a five, ten-year plan to work through. We do them one at a time. In all truth, I don't know whether we'll ever get to a situation where we've done every one. [But] there is something coming.' Hembury and The Underwater Menace animation director AnneMarie Walsh did, however, touch on how they decide which lost stories to animate, explaining that the selection process is 'quite complicated' with the length of the stories, the quality of the surviving audio and animated challenges posed by the story all being taken into account. Of the fourteen stories to be animated since 2006, eleven have been stories featuring Patrick Troughton's Doctor, though Hembury and Walsh hinted that fans can expect more animations featuring William Hartnell's Doctor in future. 'If we can keep going, then we will be a little more diverse in terms of the stories we select,' said Hembury. 'We weren't necessarily trying to complete the [Troughton] series, but it made sense to do that as long as the sound was good enough and the stories made sense within the budgets we had and everything else,' added Walsh.
The previously mentioned From The North bloggerisationism update promised, dear blog reader, to continue this blogger's merry search through the early British press coverage of Doctor Who in the autumn and winter of 1963. To uncover any further revelations about how the BBC sold the series. It's been quite a ride so far and it hasn't finished yet.
One fine example, Stephen James Walker mentioned to this blogger that a press conference for forthcoming Drama Department productions, including Doctor Who, was held at The Langham in London on Thursday 21 November 1963. And, that it was more than likely some of the unusual and/or unique one-off quotes and information which found their way into various press reports over the following days came from journalists notes at that particular event. Donald Wilson chaired the conference, but David Whitaker was present, whilst Stephen added that he was aware other members of the production and cast had been invited although he was unsure if any had actually been present. A report in The Stage the following week provides photographic evidence that Verity Lambert and Carole Ann Ford, at least, did make it to The Langham. At around ten-past-five if the clock in the background is anything to go by.
Someone else who was clearly in attendance at that event was the Daily Herald's TV reviewer Dennis Potter who, the following week, wrote an interesting and nuanced, broadly supportive, piece on the series (even if he was a bit dismissive of the content of episode one). Interestingly, Dennis provides another seemingly unique BBC quote about the programme being designed to 'bridge the family viewing gap between afternoon and evening telly' which, one imagines, came via either Wilson or Whitaker at the 21 November event.
Within a year, of course, Dennis would (infamously) be pitching a story idea to Verity about, 'a schizophrenic who only thinks he's a time traveller!' before going on to become, arguably, the greatest television screenwriter this country has ever produced. It was, tragically, uncommissioned.
The latter gem, incidentally, comes from an interview Dennis gave to Ginny Dougray of The Times Saturday Review in 1992, two years before his death.
This blogger's fiend Paul, who was so helpful in finding valuable published oddities for the last From The North update, also discovered something genuinely fascinating in the Staffordshire Sentinel on 4 December 1963. Alongside a preview for episode three of serial A was the first mention of the following serial B, which would debut a fortnight afterwards, using the title Dr Who & The Mutants. Which appears to be the sole occasion thus far discovered that any of the three 'production' titles for the first three serials as used by the BBC themselves (100,000 BC, The Mutants and Inside The Spaceship) appeared anywhere in print until David, Mark and Stephen revealed them in Doctor Who: The Sixties thirty years later.
And, lastly for the time being, here is what may be the world's very first ever bad Doctor Who review, beating Mary Crozier of the Gruniad Morning Star by two whole days. Someone of absolutely no importance at the Manchester Evening News on 30 November 1963 whinging about the pace of An Unearthly Child. But, of course, it's worth remembering that now he or she is almost certainly dead and Doctor Who is still going and about to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary. Where is your God, now?
Meanwhile, still on the subject of historical newspapers whinging about what The Youth Of Yesterday were getting up to, don't be squares, Shrewsbury dance hall managers. Get hip to that crazy rhythm, daddios and be rhombuses. Or parallelograms if you prefer. Groovy.
All of which malarkey being us skidding to Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Eighty Five: Eye of the Devil. Deborah Kerr: 'Oh, Philippe, you must do something about Odile and Christian de Caray, immediately! They are devils!' Sharon Tate: 'Must you always do as your mother says?'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Eighty Six: The Shuttered Room. Flora Robson: 'There's no hope for Susannah if she spends even one night in that house.' Gig Young: 'Do I detect a threat in there somewhere?'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Eighty Seven: Hysteria. Peter Woodthorpe: 'She used to model for me, up till six months ago, of course.' Robert Webber: 'Why of course?' Peter Woodthorpe: 'She died. She was murdered.'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Eighty Eight: The Nanny. Jill Bennett: 'Nanny, what are you doing?' Bette Davis: 'I'm taking Master Joey an extra pillow. What are you doing up so late?' Jill Bennett: 'I couldn't sleep, I'm going to make a cup of tea.' Bette Davis: 'It's bad for you this late at night!'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Eighty Nine: Curse Of The Fly. Michael Graham: 'You're not God, you're not even human! You murdered those men and you made me a murderer too.'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Ninety: The Night Caller. Robert Crewdson: 'In a few minutes, I shall be returning to my planet. Nothing you do can stop me. My task here on Earth is completed.' John Saxon: 'Tell us about your planet, Medra.' Robert Crewdson: 'A thousand years ago, we made our first stumbling steps into space. We visited the Earth only to find we could not survive its atmosphere. But we, from Ganymede, knew that we were superior beings and had nothing to learn from you!'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Ninety One: Rasputin, The Mad Monk. Derek Francis: 'There is sickness in the house.' Christopher Lee: 'I can see that. Nothing a few litres of wine won't put right.'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Ninety Two: Frankenstein Created Woman. Peter Madden: 'What, exactly, are you a Doctor of?' Peter Cushing: 'Medicine. Law. Physics. To the best of my knowledge, doctorates are not awarded for witchcraft. But, if they were, I'm certain that I'd qualify!'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Ninety Three: Repulsion. Patrick Wymark: 'There's no need to be alone, you know. Poor little girl. All by herself. All shaking like a little frightened animal.'
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Ninety Four: The Reptile. Michael Ripper: 'Who is it this time?' John Laurie: 'It's Mister Spauling. They found him this morning. Just like all the others!'
Doomed!
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror & SF Movies Of The 1950s and 1960s. Number Ninety Five: Night Of The Big Heat. Christopher Lee: 'If this heat goes on like this, it could very well drive us all insane. The human body simply isn't equipped to withstand such pressure and sooner or later the glands are going to fail, some more quickly than others. After that, it's only a matter of time before the brain's affected.' Peter Cushing: 'That's a logical conclusion, but I think it's one we should keep to ourselves!'
As mentioned in a previous bloggerisationism update, this blogger is still currently working during any downtime he gets, on the From The North 'best and worst TV of 2023' awards bloggerisation (which is still scheduled for publication around the start of December). Just over half of the fifty(ish) 'best of' entries have now been written up to at least first draft level and this blogger has also done the TV advert of the year, the Worst TV News moment of the year and the TV curiosity of the year categories which should only need a small amount of editing later. The thirty 'worst of's list is proving, as usual, to be the most fun but also, the most time-consuming to write. Over the weekend, for example, this blogger spent over two hours describing what a truly terrible year it's been for This Morning. Which was fun but there were a couple of occasions during it where Keith Telly Topping did think to himself, 'life's too short for this bollocks!'
Keith Telly Topping went to bed last Thursday, intending to watch the end of Richard III on BBC4 only to discover that the DVDr in the bedroom had (after, admittedly, over a decade of loyal service at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House) gone rather kaput, somewhat. Which wouldn't be too much of a problem expect that it was through this device that the bedroom's telly received its TV signal. Luckily, whilst searching around in various dusty cupboards for something else entirely, this blogger came across an old Goodmans GDR11 freeview reception box which he'd bought but then never used around the time that freeview first arrived circa 2002.
Blowing the accumulated dust off the box, this blogger managed to plug it in, get the auto-tuning sorted and, as if by magic, five minutes later he had bedroom telly pictures once again. Not quickly enough to catch the end of Richard III and Patrick Troughton murdering The Princes In The Tower, admittedly, but just in time to see Patrick Troughton arrive in The Omen, mutter a few cryptic portents to Gregory Peck and then get a lightning rod through his neck. So, you know, win some, lose some.
Of course, all of these shenanigans were occurring just as Hurricane Higgins (or, whatever the latest weather catastrophe to hit Britain was called) arrived big-style. Jeysus, but it was grim out there for several days, dear blog reader.
Here, for instance, is a visual representation of just how wet it was in the UK whilst we were being battered by Stormy Daniels.
This blogger wasn't planning on leaving the dryness of The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House at all during the weekend but, necessity forced a trip to the post office. This blogger has strange feet, dear blog reader - on several levels, but mainly in terms of size. Keith Telly Topping is somewhere between a size ten and a size eleven. Sometimes a ten will fit him, on other occasions they're just that bit too tight; so it was earlier that week when this blogger spotted a darza pair of winter ankle boots with fur lining for sale online. They looked great and were under twenty snots (including package and posting). Unfortunately, the largest size they did was ten. So this blogger took a gamble and it didn't work out. When they arrived he could just about squeeze into them but he wouldn't have been able to walk more than ten feet before crying in pain. So, he contacted the company's customer service department for advice on how to return them for a refund. 'Hello,' Keith Telly Topping said. 'I've bought a pair of boots from your good selves but they're the wrong size; they're too tight.' 'Have you tried it with the tongue out?' the customer service operative asked this blogger. 'Yeth,' Keith Telly Topping replied, 'ofth courthe Ith've thried ith with the tongueth outh. They're sthill too thmall for my feeth.'
Needless to say this blogger will continue to remember, fondly, the returned items and to pray for them each night. After all, dear blog reader, shoes have soles too.
Deserved, dear blog reader? Oh, yes ...
If you're wondering exactly why this blogger's beloved (and now, thankfully, sold) Magpies have been on such a good run of late (apart from the fact that they, you know, really good), evidence from the BBC suggests they're being helped by The Mysterons.
Sir Bobby Charlton, who has died aged eighty six, was one of the greatest footballers England has ever produced. He was certainly the most successful, the only English player to win all of football's major honours – the FA Cup, the Football League and European Cup with Manchester United and the World Cup with England, accumulating a then record number of international caps and goals. As captain of United in 1968, when they were the first English team to win the European Cup and a key player in the 1966 World Cup-winning team, he was the embodiment of a golden age of English football. But he was also involved in one of the game's darkest moments, the 1958 Munich air disaster, in which eight of his team-mates, three United staff and a further twelve passengers were killed. Charlton was renowned for his raking passes and explosive long-range shots, with either foot and was blessed with speed, athleticism and perfect balance. Some commentators say he was a scorer of great goals rather than a great goalscorer; the statistics undermine that claim although a show-reel of some of his greatest strikes supports it. For England, he scored forty nine in one hundred and six appearances (matched by Gary Lineker in 1992 and then recently passed by Harry Kane). And, he was United’s highest all-time scorer, with two hundred and forty nine in seven hundred and fifty eight games, until 2017, when that record was beaten by Wayne Rooney. But it was his modesty and gentlemanly demeanour, as much as his outstanding ability, that won him admiration far beyond Manchester and England. At the height of his fame in the mid to late 1960s, when London and the counterculture were in full swing, one of the world's most famous Englishmen was an old-fashioned sporting hero with a comb-over and a shy smile. Across the world, the first or sometimes only two words of English many people could speak were 'Bobby Charlton.'
He was born in the Northumberland mining village of Ashington, the second of four sons of Robert Charlton, a miner and his wife, Elizabeth, known as Cissie, who came from the famous Milburn football family. Four of her brothers - Jack Milburn (Leeds United and Bradford City), George Milburn (Leeds United and Chesterfield), Jim Milburn (Leeds United and Bradford Park Avenue) and Stan Milburn (Chesterfield, Leicester City and Rochdale) - were professional footballers and her cousin was the Newcastle United and England legend Jackie Milburn. Bobby's elder brother, Jack, also became a footballer and, although not as gifted as his younger brother, he enjoyed a distinguished career as a centre-half for Leeds United and later as a successful manager. Jack and Bobby were England team-mates between 1965 and 1970. Most Ashington boys went down the pit on leaving school (as Jack did, briefly, before joining Leeds), but from a young age it was apparent that Bobby would become a footballer and a good one at that. He passed the eleven-plus but attending the local grammar was unthinkable because it was a rugby-playing school. However, he was such a prodigy that his headteacher - with encouragement from Cissie - arranged a place at another nearby school, the football-playing Bedlington grammar. In his last year at school, he played four times for England schoolboys, scoring five goals and football scouts from across Britain were soon knocking at the family's door. Newcastle sent along Jackie Milburn to have a quiet word with Cissie and he received offers from eighteen clubs in all, but was charmed by Manchester United's chief scout, Joe Armstrong and signed for them in 1953. Apart from a brief swansong with Preston North End and then Waterford, in Ireland, Manchester was to be his only club and an inspired choice. Not only were United a club on the rise, but their inspirational manager, Matt Busby, was prepared to give youth its head, assembling a precociously talented young team that played with swagger and flair, capturing the nation's imagination and earning them the nickname The Busby Babes. They swept all before them to win the First Division in 1955-56, and retained the title the following season, in which Charlton scored twice on his debut, against Charlton Athletic, in October 1956. As champions, United were the first English side to enter the European Cup and reached the semi-finals in 1957 before losing to eventual winners Real Madrid. A year later they beat Red Star Belgrade in the Quarter-Finals, with Charlton, now an established first-teamer, scoring three goals over the two legs. On the flight back from Belgrade the following day, the team’s plane stopped to refuel in Munich. In freezing conditions, it crashed and burst into flames while attempting to take off from the snowy runway.
Charlton was catapulted forty yards from the plane, still strapped into his seat and clear of the burning wreck. His team-mate Harry Gregg who, heroically ran in and out of the burning plane, pulling passengers to safety reportedly saw Charlton and fellow survivor Dennis Viollet lying in the snow and assumed they were dead. Charlton woke minutes later, suffering only from shock and some minor cuts. He later described his escape as a miracle, but it would haunt him for the rest of his life. The grief of witnessing friends perish - most notably his close friend Duncan Edwards - left its mark, turning an already shy young man into an introspective one. Many close to him, including Busby and his brother, said that Bobby changed for ever after Munich. 'He never got over Munich,' said Busby. 'He felt responsible. Those were his kids that died that day.' Characteristically, Jack was more blunt. In his 1996 autobiography, he wrote: 'I saw a big change in our kid from that day on. He stopped smiling, a trait which continues to this day.' The book lifted the lid on the brothers' strained relationship - they barely spoke for many years, partly due to the cooling of relations between Norma, Bobby's wife, whom he married in 1961 and his wider family, in particular Cissie, to whom he chose not to visit in the final four years of her life. Fortunately Bobby and Jack were reconciled before Jack's death in 2020.
Despite all the success and veneration that would come Charlton's way, he always carried a slight air of melancholy. He was not withdrawn, however, on the football field, where he exuded the freedom, desire and commanding presence characteristic of great athletes. Just twenty three days after Munich, Charlton was out of hospital and back playing for United, and for the remainder of that traumatic season and indeed the next decade, he was the foundation stone on which Manchester United were rebuilt. Showing remarkable spirit, United reached the FA Cup final within three months of the disaster, with a patched-up team of youth players, stop-gap signings and four players who had survived the crash (Charlton, Viollet, Gregg and Bill Foulkes). There was a tide of public sympathy behind them, but they lost the game to Bolton Wanderers. In April, shortly before the Cup final, Charlton made his England debut, scoring in a four-nil win against Scotland at Hampden Park. He scored twice more in his second game, against Portugal at Wembley and this earned him a place in the squad for the World Cup in Sweden that summer. It was the first of his four World Cup squads (another record for an Englishman), though he did not get any pitch time in Sweden. By the 1962 World Cup in Chile, he was a first-choice player and scored against Argentina as England reached the quarter-finals before losing to the eventual champions, Brazil. As hosts of the 1966 World Cup, England made a disappointing start, with a goalless draw against Uruguay. It was in the second game, against Mexico, that Charlton lit up England's hopes with a magnificent goal, running from his own half with the ball before unleashing a trademark thunderbolt shot. '"We want goals." Against Mexico they got one, a beauty from Bobby Charlton,' according to Goal! the FIFA film of the tournament. In the Semi-Final against Portugal, Charlton had the international game of his life, scoring both goals in the two-one win that put England into the final. He had a relatively quiet game in the final victory against West Germany, given the task by Alf Ramsey of marking the brilliant young Franz Beckenbauer, who had, in turn, been told to mark Charlton, so that they largely cancelled each other out. But the battle between the two best players on the pitch was pivotal to the game's outcome, as Beckenbauer acknowledged years later: 'England beat us in 1966 because Bobby Charlton was just a bit better than me.' Ramsey declared that Charlton was 'very much the linchpin of the 1966 team' and he was voted player of the tournament. He ended the season not only as a world champion but as Footballer of the Year and European Footballer of the Year, too.
There was to be one last World Cup near-hurrah, in Mexico in 1970. He was thirty two by then and, although he was still perhaps England's best player, in the Quarter-Final, against West Germany, with England winning two-one, Ramsey controversially substituted Charlton to conserve his energy for what seemed like a certain Semi-Final. But the Germans came back to win in extra time. It was Charlton's record one hundred and sixth cap - the game in which he passed Billy Wright's tally and a record that stood until passed by Bobby Moore four years later - and his last, an unsatisfactory end to a glittering international career. His halcyon days with England coincided with Manchester United's post-Munich renaissance. By the mid-1960s Busby had built his second great team, Charlton now at the heart of it, playing as an attacking midfielder. The line-up included George Best and the Denis Law, who together with Charlton formed a dazzling forward line that reignited the legend of The Busby Babes. They were brilliant individuals (in the space of five years, all three were named European Player of the Year) and together helped United win the FA Cup in 1963 and the league title in 1964-65 and 1966-67. Ten years after the Munich disaster, United finally realised Busby's dream of playing in a European Cup final, against the Portuguese club Benfica. United won four-one at Wembley, with Charlton scoring twice and lifting the cup as captain. For him and Foulkes, the only two crash survivors in the team, and for Busby, it was an overwhelming evening. After the match, while the rest of the team celebrated, Charlton was so exhausted that he could not get off his hotel bed to go downstairs and join the party. Busby retired as manager a year later and United went into rapid decline, though Charlton played on until 1973. With his playing career over, he felt uncertain about what to do next and simply waited for the phone to ring. It was three weeks before it did and he accepted the first offer that came his way, to become player-manager of Second Division Preston North End. The club were relegated in his first season in charge and he resigned the next. It was a chastening experience after so many illustrious years as a player, and he never returned to full-time management.
He had more success in the media, working as a BBC football pundit and in 1978 he also set up the innovative Bobby Charlton Soccer Schools, which provided top-level coaching to young players. In 1984 he returned to Manchester United as a director. He developed a close bond with the then United manager Alex Ferguson and his diplomacy and peerless standing in the game made him the perfect ambassador for the club as it developed into a global sporting brand in the 1990s. Such qualities were not lost on other sporting bodies and Charlton, who was knighted in 1994, was an automatic choice for the teams bidding to win the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games for Manchester, the 2006 and 2018 World Cups for England and London's successful pitch for the 2012 Olympic Games. He is survived by Norma and their daughters, Suzanne, a former BBC weather presenter and Andrea.
This blogger is of an age where he saw Bobby play on a handful of occasions in the early 1970s (beginning with Manchester United's five-one defeat to this blogger's beloved Magpies at St James Park in 1970). This blogger was also one of twenty eight thousand people lucky enough to see a unique sight, Bobby Charlton playing in Newcastle United's famous number nine shirt, worn so proudly by his cousin Jackie Milburn. On Friday 10 May 1974, a testimonial match was held at St James' Park for United's Scottish international midfielder Tony Green whose career had been cut short by a knee injury. With Malcolm Macdonald away with the England squad, Bobby was ask to play up front for the club he had supported as a boy. The then Preston player-manager, at thirty six, still looked good enough to play at the highest level as he gave the Middlesbrough defence (including, in the first half, their manager, his brother Jack) the run-around, setting up all three of John Tudor's goals as United won five-three. It was, for one night only, a wonderful example of what might have been had Wor Jackie managed to persuade cousin Cissie to use her influence and get young Bobby to sign doon at th' Toon!
News of the death of Sir Bobby Charlton was, of course, phenomenally sad seeing the passing of, not only a twenty four carat sporting icon but, also, seemingly, a very nice, gentle and sincere man as well as great player (this blogger recalls at the 1996 Charity Shield Bobby being visibly moved as, before the game, he was walking around the Wembley pitch towards the Manchester United dressing room and he got a terrific reception from the Newcastle supporters as he passed). But to end on a - hopefully amusing - note, this blogger is reminded of a time some years ago on a football Interweb newsgroup when someone posed the question of the significant differences in temperaments between Bobby and Jackie. How, this person wondered, did Bob react when Big Jack had made one of his trademark controversial statements. 'He is not his brother's keeper,' someone replied, leading others to observe that no, indeed, Bobby was a centre-forward. And then, later in his career, a box-to-box goalscoring midfielder. This blogger's own contribution to the thread was to add what ultimately became the final word on the subject; that, in modern parlance, Bobby was 'not his brother's just-behind-the-front-two.'
Whilst the world was learning of the death of Manchester United icon Bobby Charlton, across Manchester, City fans were, at that very moment, holding a minute's applause for an icon of their own. Francis Lee, who died on 2 October aged seventy nine, was a prolific striker who won the First Division title with Manchester City in 1968 and then did the same with Derby County in 1975. Up front, in various positions for England, he was also a highly effective operator, including at the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, where he appeared - alongside Bobby Charlton - in celebrated matches against Brazil and West Germany. Short and stocky, golden-haired, self-confident and tenacious, Lee also won the FA Cup, the League Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup during a glorious period with City, for whom he was the leading goal scorer across five seasons, partly thanks to his great ability at both winning and taking penalties. For England he scored ten goals in twenty seven appearances between 1968 and 1972. Once he left football Lee became a successful businessman and, in 1994, used his money to take control of City as its chairman during a time when the team was foundering. Although his arrival was warmly welcomed by the fans, he failed to deliver any significant improvement and stepped down after four years, although he kept his substantial shareholding for more than a decade and continued to be well-loved at the club, where he is still regarded as one of its best ever players.
Born in Westhoughton, near Bolton, Lee went to Westhoughton secondary modern school and Horwich Technical College. With the encouragement of his father, a manager in a cotton mill, he left it to sign for the nearest First Division football club, Bolton Wanderers, where he played upfront with Nat Lofthouse and scored on his debut in 1960. He was Bolton's top scorer in 1962-63 and 1963-64, and then again, after the club were relegated to the Second Division, in 1965-66 and 1966-67, by which time he was agitating for a transfer. To do so quite openly was a controversial course of action in those more subservient days, but Lee's wish was granted in the summer of 1967, when he moved for a club record sixty grand to City, having scored one hundred and six goals in two hundred and ten appearances. At Maine Road the City manager, Joe Mercer, who had built a formidable team featuring Tony Book, Mike Summerbee and Colin Bell, described Lee as his 'final piece of the puzzle' - an assessment that could hardly be denied as his new signing went on to register sixteen league goals in thirty one appearances as City won the title in his first season there, sealing it with a thrilling four-three away win against Newcastle in which he scored. It was only City's second top-flight win, their first having come way back in 1937. The following year Lee figured prominently in City's run to the 1969 FA Cup final against Leicester City, which they won and in 1970 the Guardian described him as 'indefatigable and nigh irresistible' in the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup versus the Polish side Górnik Zabrze, which ended in a two-one victory thanks to a decisive Lee penalty. The same scoreline against West Bromwich Albion also delivered a League Cup winners' medal that year, before he moved on to Mexico in the summer for the World Cup finals.
England, the reigning world champions, were considered to be an even better team than the 1966 winners, thanks partly to the addition of Lee. He played up front with Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst in the opening win against Romania and again in the same combination against Brazil in a brilliant match that was narrowly lost. After being rested for the final group game against Czechoslovakia he returned for the dramatic Quarter-Final against West Germany, which England contrived to lose in extra time after having had the tie in the bag after fifty minutes. Usually phlegmatic in defeat, Lee took that result harder than any other in his career. 'Normally for me, after a game, by the time I got back in the dressing room it was all forgotten,' he said. 'There would be lads around me moping and I'd say to them: "shut up, you had your chance, it's gone, move on." Nothing hung around me long. But by Christ that has.' Having made his England debut under Alf Ramsey against Bulgaria in 1968, Lee had quickly become a mainstay of the team, but within two years of the 1970 finals he had fallen out of favour and in 1972 he played his last international at the age of twenty eight. By that time City, no longer with Mercer, were beginning a long slide into mediocrity and, in 1974, Lee was sold against his wishes for one hundred and ten thousand knicker to Derby County, having scored one hundred and forty eight goals in three hundred and thirty appearances. He was initially displeased with the move, but Derby had finished third in the First Division the previous year and under the manager Dave Mackay they won the title in 1974-75 as Lee, Kevin Hector and Roger Davies proved to be a formidable frontline combination. The following year, as Derby finished fourth, Lee's most talked-about contribution was a ferocious televised brawl with Norman Hunter in a match against Leeds, sparked by the not-uncommon contention that Lee had won a penalty with a dive. A subsequent off-the-ball confrontation ended with Hunter - Lee's room-mate when they were both in the England squad - punching him, hard, in the mush and the two players being sent off. After which Lee, presumably reasoning that he had nothing much to lose, re-engaged with his opponent and knocked him to the ground in retaliation. Condemned in official quarters, the fight nonetheless went down among us ordinary fans as one of the most exciting boxing bouts in English footballing history. You can keep yer Muhammad Ali walking onto Henry Cooper's 'ammer, men of 'a certain age' still get misty-eyed and wince as they recall Big Norman's right-hook which sent Franny sprawling to the Baseball Ground turf with a fat lip.
Lee ended his career at Derby in 1976, having made more than sixty league appearances for the club and went on almost immediately to success in business with a toilet roll manufacturing company that won major contracts supplying supermarkets around the country. He sold up for more than eight million notes in 1984, after which he became a racehorse trainer at Little Stanneylands stud farm in Cheshire, saddling one hundred and fifty winners on the flat and thirty two over the jumps over a thirteen-year period up to 1997. He then concentrated on making money through property deals. His chairmanship of City had begun with a flurry of optimism in 1994 when he bought three million smackers worth of shares from the previous owner, Peter Swales, pledging to restore the club to former glories. However, his appointment of his former England team-mate Alan Ball as manager in 1995 failed to work out and with the team teetering on the brink of the third tier in 1998 he stepped aside to be succeeded by David Bernstein, selling his shares nine years later to the controversial former prime minster of Thailand Thaksin Shinawatra. Despite his lack of success as an owner of the club, Lee's disarming honesty, self-deprecating sense of humour and patent love for Manchester City ensured that he remained a popular figure there and was able to share happily in its recent triumphs under a different regime. He is survived by his wife, Gill and their children, Charlotte, Jonny and Nik.
With his bright patkas and aesthetically pleasing bowling action, Bishan Bedi, who has died aged seventy seven, was one of the most recognisable and popular figures in international cricket during the 1960s and 1970s. His gentle, effortless run-in and stately, upright delivery created an exceptionally high, loopy flight to the ball that was often mesmerising in combination with the prodigious turn generated by his fingers. One of the finest ever spin bowlers, he gathered two hundred and sixty six wickets in his sixty seven test matches for India between 1966 and 1979 and on his retirement was the highest Indian Test wicket-taker. Even now he sits at number eight on the list, behind a set of modern-day bowlers who have mostly played far more games. Perhaps more importantly, he stands fifth among the leading left-arm test spinners of all time, below only Rangana Herath, Daniel Vettori, Derek Underwood and Ravindra Jadeja. During an era when slow bowling was the dominant force in India, Bedi operated in highly effective conjunction with three other top-quality spinners, Erapalli Prasanna, Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan and Bhagwath Chandrasekhar - a celebrated quartet that was collectively responsible for eight hundred and fifty wickets in its various formulations, although there was only one occasion when they all played in the same match (against England at Edgbaston in 1967). Aside from his duties with the ball, Bedi was also captain of India on twenty two occasions, winning six and drawing eleven of his matches in charge while earning himself a reputation as a man who was prepared to court controversy. In Indian domestic cricket he played for Northern Punjab (1961 to 1967) and then Delhi (1968 to 1981), with whom he won two Ranji Trophies, while in England he had five highly successful years with Northamptonshire (1972 to 1977), guiding them to their first major trophy - the one-day Gillette Cup against Lancashire in 1976 - by taking three crucial wickets before hitting the winning runs. He ended his career with fifteen hundred and sixty wickets in all first-class cricket - the highest tally by an Indian player. Born in the Sikh capital of Amritsar, Bedi first represented Northern Punjab at the age of fifteen, despite having taken up cricket only a couple of years previously. He made his international debut in Kolkata six years later, against the West Indies in the second test of their three-match tour in 1966, taking the prized scalps of Basil Butcher and Clive Lloyd before going on to bag four wickets in the second innings of the next test in Chennai. In his trademark pink or bright blue turban, Bedi was a spin bowling purist's dream. With a languid run-up and a fluid action, bowling came naturally to him. Cricket writer H Natarajan described the left arm spinner as 'stealthy, silent and deadly, a master of deception who conjured variations in flight, loop, spin and pace without any perceptible change in action.' His best test bowling performance came in 1969, when he picked up seven for ninety eight in Kolkata against Australia in a series in which he took twenty one wickets at an average of 20.57. Thereafter he was consistently excellent, twice taking twenty five wickets against England at home in 1972-73 and 1976-77 and securing thirty one wickets in Australia in 1977-78. Apart from his wicket-taking ability, Bedi's other great strength was his accuracy and control, which made it difficult for batsmen to score. Conceding an average of only 2.14 runs an over throughout his test career, his economy rate was lower than that of any other bowler who has taken two hundred or more test wickets and has been bettered only by Lance Gibbs, Richie Benaud and Underwood. 'Bedi flighted the ball higher than any bowler in international cricket; if he could challenge quick-footed batsmen thus, it was only because his command was so complete that he would make the ball descend far quicker than it went up,' wrote Ramachandra Guha, historian and author of A Corner Of A Foreign Field. West Indies legend Sir Garry Sobers said Bedi 'took the weight off the ball nicely.' Mike Brearley called his bowling 'beautiful' and Sir Donald Bradman felt that Bedi 'was a real study for the connoisseur and amongst the finest bowlers of his type.' Taking over the captaincy in 1975, Bedi showed the extent of his competitive nature the following year by presiding over a dramatic Indian run-chase against West Indies in the third test in Trinidad, where his team successfully hunted down a record target of four hundred and three, a total most sides would have considered unachievable. In the fourth and final test he also demonstrated a willingness to go out on a limb, effectively conceding the match by refusing to send out his last five batsmen (including himself) in the second innings as a protest at what he saw as intimidatory bowling by Clive Lloyd's battery of fast bowlers. The following year, he accused England left-arm fast bowler John Lever of using Vaseline to swing the ball during a tour of India. In 1978, he forfeited a one day international against Pakistan, alleging partisan umpiring. There were also frequent run-ins with administrators over pay and conditions for his players. Bedi played his last test against England at The Oval in 1979, but continued to appear for Delhi until 1981, after which he became a coach at the club and, for a time, with India. He also did some TV work, though he preferred to concentrate on mentoring young cricketers through his own coaching camps and cricketing school. Off the field he became even more outspoken, variously accusing Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan of having an illegal bowling action, criticising what he saw as the crass commercialism of the Indian Premier League, upbraiding the Indian cricketing authorities for being too close to the political elite and lambasting the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his record on Covid-19. He refused a lucrative contract from Kerry Packer to play World Series Cricket, later recounting that Packer's agent had approached him three times with substantial offers. Decades later, he upbraided player auctions in the IPL, saying that he 'just did not like players being treated like horses being sold to the highest bidder.' He asked for his name to be taken off from a stand at the main cricket stadium in Delhi in protest against the statue of a dead politician belonging to the ruling BJP being installed. 'If speaking one's mind is a crime, then I am guilty several times over,' he said. Although his sometimes choleric outbursts divided opinion, he nevertheless managed to retain the general goodwill of the Indian public, who at the very least admired him for his free-thinking and above all else loved him for his elegant cricketing achievements. Bedi was an intensely social person and a flamboyant personality. His daughter remembered a 'home full of free-flowing alcohol, food and an insurmountable amount of loud laughter.' He loved dogs and brought various breeds from kennel clubs home from his stints in the UK. The 'sardar of spin' - as he was popularly called in India - had an infectious sense of humour. In England, he once picked up two dogs, named them Charles and Diana and took them to India. At the London airport, an official asked him, 'Are you taking the mickey out of our royalty?' A deadpan Bedi replied: 'No! I am taking the royalty with me!' He is survived by his wife, Anju, their daughter Neha and son Angad, and his son Gavasinder and daughter Gillinder from a previous marriage to Glenith Miles, which ended in divorce.
Although her first renown on television was in tough-talking professional roles - the fierce and cynical news editor Alex Pates in the first two series of From The North favourite Drop The Dead Donkey (1990 to 1991), no-nonsense doctors in Peak Practice (1999) and Dalziel & Pascoe (2005) and as Superintendent Susan Blake in the first series of Merseybeat (2001) - there seemed to be no limit to the talent of Haydn Gwynne, who has died of cancer aged sixty six. The impression that she could be very funny, as she was in Drop The Dead Donkey, was consolidated by more recent royal family forays in Channel 4's The Windsors (2016) in which, not to be outdone by Harry Enfield's impersonation of Prince Charles, she played Camilla basically as Cruella de Vil - or 'as if she were Joan Collins in a soap called Balmoral', she said. More sedately, she applied a twinkling composure to Lady Susan Hussey, woman of the royal bedchamber, in the fifth series of The Crown on Netflix. Haydn had been a notable musical theatre presence on stage since 1988, when she played Billie Burke, the long-suffering second wife of the Broadway producer Flo Ziegfeld and lit up an otherwise execrable extravaganza, Ziegfeld, at The Palladium, with torch songs delivered with stylish flair. So it was no great surprise that she stormed the stage as the dancing teacher Mrs Wilkinson in Stephen Daldry's 2005 musical transformation of Billy Elliot, written by Lee Hall with a new score by Elton John. She layered her performance with a teacher's melancholy and a surrogate mother’s relief as Billy came truly alive on stage and she went with the show to Broadway where she won a couple of major awards and a Tony nomination.
Haydn was a late developer as an actor, although she had dabbled in amateur dramatics while at school in Sussex. The daughter of Rosamond and Guy Hayden-Gwynne, she was born in 1957 into a large family in Hurstpierpoint, where her father ran a printing business. She had been on the verge of a career as a tennis player, having represented Sussex at junior county level, but from Burgess Hill girls' school went instead to Nottingham University, then took off for five years on a university lectureship in Rome, teaching English as a foreign language. Realising at last that she was in denial of her germane acting bug, she returned to Britain. Her first job, in December 1984, was at Alan Ayckbourn's Scarborough theatre-in-the-round in an ensemble revival of Sandy Wilson's eccentric 1971 musical His Monkey Wife, based on a John Collier story of a man marrying a chimpanzee. This led to engagements around the reps, playing a season at The Royal Exchange, Manchester and two great leading roles: Millamant in William Congreve's The Way Of The World at The Theatre Royal, Northampton and Hedda Gabler, in the Christopher Hampton translation of the Henrik Ibsen play, at the Bolton Octagon in 1990. She was noted as a new stage star and the director Michael Blakemore cast her as a broken-hearted, wise-cracking secretary in his production of City Of Angels (1993) at The Prince Of Wales. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company for the 1994 season, inspirationally paired as Helena with Emma Fielding as Hermia in Adrian Noble's A Midsummer Night's Dream and as a winsome, graceful, shiningly intelligent Olivia to Fielding;s impetuous Viola in Ian Judge's Twelfth Night. In the same season, she made a beautiful, innovative double of Peer Gynt's mother and lover in John Barton's small-scale production led by Alex Jennings, but did not return to the RSC until a misguided Christmas musical version of The Merry Wives Of Windsor in 2006. All new playwrights must be buoyed by good actors and Shelagh Stephenson's debut play The Memory Of Water (1996) was a case in point at The Hampstead Theatre. Gwynne played one of three daughters - a doctor, in the throes of an adulterous affair - visited by the ghost of their recently deceased mother.
Her first starring role on TV was in 1989 as the feminist, lecherous lecturer Robyn Penrose in David Lodge's adaptation of Nice Work. She remained in demand over the subsequent thirty years, with telling cameos as, for instance, Caesar's wife Calpurnia Rome (2005-07). Back in the theatre, she was a formidable Southern wiseacre stricken with multiple sclerosis, in Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw at The Almeida in 2011; as Queen Elizabeth to Kevin Spacey's Richard III at The Old Vic in the same year, directed by Sam Mendes and catching perfectly, according to Michael Billington, 'the moral revulsion of being enlisted by Richard in seeking the hand of her daughter, even though he has murdered most of her relatives.' Her work remained varied and always surprising: a brilliant, oddly elasticated Margaret Thatcher in Peter Morgan's The Audience (2013) opposite Helen Mirren's monarch, incensed about an alleged 'political' leak from the palace; Lady Wishfort - silly, selfish and ageing 'like an old peel'd wall' - as she returned to The Way Of the World at The Donmar Warehouse in 2018 and as a fraudulent lady from Colchester in Lucy Kirkwood's The Welkin at The National in early 2020. She raised the roof at the Stephen Sondheim gala Old Friends at The Gielgud in May 2022 with her knockout version of the great Elaine Stritch number 'The Ladies Who Lunch', from Company, but was too ill to rejoin the cast for this year's September run at the same theatre. Her last West End appearance was in The Great British Bake Off Musical in March at The Noël Coward where, as Pam Lee, she approximated to an idea of Prue Leith – with cartwheels. As the critic Dominic Cavendish said: 'Sometimes [in the theatre] you need Eugene O'Neill. Sometimes you just need a cake trolley.' Her screen CV also included appearances in Lovejoy, A Very Peculiar Practice, Call Me Mister, Time Riders, Hospital!, The Secret, Absolute Power, These Foolish Things, Consenting Adults, Lewis (a grand villainous turn alongside her Drop The Dead Donkey co-star Neil Pearson), Poirot, Sherlock, New Tricks, Uncle, Death In Paradise, Hollow, Ripper Street, The C Word, Urban Myths and The Suspect. Hyden was separated from her partner, Jason Phipps, a Jungian psychoanalyst, though they remained friends and is survived by him, their two sons, Orlando and Harrison and her sister, Pippa and brother, Nick.
This blogger was really hoping this, which he purchased earlier this week, wasn't going to be embarrassing, dear blog reader. He had a vague, maybe eight per cent expectation, that it might be actually all right. What he wasn't ready for was it being the best thing The Rock and/or Rolling Stones have recorded since 1978. By a bloody big distance as well. That, he did not expect.
Once again, dear blog reader, the modern world continues to baffle and bewilder this blogger. What, for instance, fresh Hell is this?
The From The North Headline of The Week award goes to Metro (so, not a real newspaper) for Woman Slams Selfish Paragliders Who Made Her Think Hamas Were Invading Doncaster. This is what happens, dear blog reader, when rural bus services are cut. This blogger blames the government, personally.
Although, to be fair, the Daily Mirra's Nudist Slams Wetherspoons After Being Told To Leave For 'Bending Over' Without Underwear is a worthy runner-up. 'Slams' of course in both cases being tabloid-speak for 'criticises' only with less syllables.
Then, there's this.
And finally, dear blog reader, this blogger can confirm he knows nothing about this malarkey. Nothing. Straight up, guv. He wasn't there at the time. He was on one of the moons of Uranus.
