Andy Potter of BBC Radio Derby

speaks to

STEVE HODSON

Aired on Tuesday 26 April 2011

A ‘The Lightning Tree’ by the Settlers set us off on this journey a few weeks ago but one of the people who starred in that series is a bit of an enigma; he calls himself an enigma because he hasn’t spoken about it for over 20 years! His name is Steve Hodson. He played Steve Ross in the programme. If you remember it, he was almost the romantic interest for Dora wasn’t he? With the black hair - the shoulder length hair. Well Steve Hodson is now 63 and when I tracked him down and we said “Will you do this interview, will you talk about Follyfoot?” he relented for the first time, as I say, in decades and this is what you’re gonna hear now and I asked him...

What was it like to be in FF and did he look back on it with glee and with joy?

S It has... I think what was really amazing was that after FF ended I tried to stay up in Yorkshire for a while but you couldn’t really in the 70s and finally I had to return to London and I did loads of other stuff. I must have done about six or seven, uhh, serials and television plays and things but the only thing anybody ever talked about was FF and of course, it did take time to get back into telly because they repeated it and repeated it and so people thought I was still working, still up in Yorkshire riding horses (laughter). Umm, but yes, it’s followed me everywhere and, in fact, I’ve just heard that there’s gonna be some sort of reunion later this year and Jane Royston, who’s the girl who looked after all the horses, has written a book from their point of view so there is still that, that interest in it which is absolutely... who’d have thought it?

A When you were filming it, I mean it’s Sunday night, teatime , everybody’s sat down, you’re getting big audiences because there’s only three chan... three/four channels to watch at that time.

S Sure.

A Did it feel like you were a bit of a superstar?

S Not, (laughter) not stuck out in the middle of Yorkshire (laughter) riding and we did work very long hours. Quite often we’d uhh, I mean I used to be out of my bed at about 4am to be on set and then we’d break for lunch of course, but then we’d break about 5/6 or whenever we finished filming. I think quite often we’d gone to a night shoot to do all the night stuff so we were working very long days. I wasn’t aware that any... they could have dropped a bomb (laughter) and I wouldn’t have known. But it was an amazing time and I think we were all shocked because it was aimed, I was told, at sort of 8 to 15 year olds. What became... what everybody was amazed at was that their parents started watching with them and got as hooked as the kids did.

A But it was adult storylines as well. I mean we’d had Black Beauty hadn’t we?

S Yeh, yeh. Follyfoot started first and it was the first time that any television company had gone out for something like that, especially a kids’ series, when it was all done on film because VTR was the big thing then, uhh, but we did nothing on VTR, it was all on film and Yorkshire Television made a success of it. They managed to sell Follyfoot round the world.

A Cause these days when you talk about film you’re talking about expense. We’ve sort of gone full circle haven’t we now in the fact that we can do it digitally and it doesn’t matter how many times you go to it. Was there much time when you were making it, to rehearse or were you basically, there’s the script, stand there and let’s get on with it?

S They’d get the scripts to us as soon as possible, maybe four or five days in advance and then we’d try and rehearse but then you’d do a couple for lighting and for sound and then you went into it.

A Were you a horseman?

S I had ridden before, yes, yeh. Umm, I, umm, just after drama school, umm, I lived with a family in Wimbledon in London. A sort of family, coming from Bradford, I didn’t know people like this existed cause they actually had stables in their back garden in Wimbledon (laughter) but they taught me to ride. I used to go out onto Wimbledon Common so I’d, every day for quite some time, so it was quick, so I wasn’t new to horses when I got up there.

But I didn’t get the part originally. I think Yorkshire Television must have auditioned hundreds of young actors. We were all filmed doing dialogue and how we reacted with each other and riding of course but I didn’t get the part - it was given to another actor. Then about four weeks later I got this phone call saying “Yorkshire Television believe they’ve made a mistake... could you be up there on Wednesday?” I, uhhh, uhh, yes! (laughter)

A But I suppose the rest of the cast have bonded at that time have they?

S Yes, I think they had to a certain extent. I was definitely the new lad, the new lad on the block and I was very nervous and let’s face it, because I knew the young man who’d been given the job, we’d... I’d met him in London and we’d had drinks together as young blokes, and when I arrived on set the Executive Producer of Follyfoot hadn’t actually arrived to tell him that I was taking over and he saw me across that famous farmyard. “Hello Hodders. I haven’t read the next script. What are you coming up to do?” He had no idea that he was... it wasn’t a pleasant moment.

A But that’s the nature of the industry though isn’t it?

S Well, yes, sure, yeh.

A And the people that you’re working with. I mean, I said after we’d played ‘Lightning Tree’ the other week, look at that cast. Look at Desmond Llewellyn there and Arthur English, you know. All the connections are there and were they there to help you as well? Did you all eventually sort of get together and help each other out or were there definite distinctions between the cast?

S Ummm, Desmond would go home as often as possible. We all had very different sort of lives. Gillian, although it was not known at the time, was married. Christian, Christian Rodska, was married with a lovely young wife, Jacqui, and had a baby on the way and so people were, at the end of the day, people were sort of going off to do their own things, umm, I was the only one who dashed out to the nearest bar.

Song break

A A third of the way through interview with Steve Hodson, Steve Ross from Follyfoot. It’s its 40^th birthday. Steve hasn’t given an interview in over 20 years and we were very lucky to convince him to sit down and just chat about the years of Follyfoot, although halfway through my interview, halfway through my chat, I thought I’d lost it because I brought up the fact that, OK, he became a star........ and then he cut a record.

S I suddenly think you’re a cruel man. (Laughter)

A (Laughter) Why?

S Oh, but it wasn’t great. Yes, Maurice Gibb wrote it, umm, Sandiago Day I think it was called. Umm, I didn’t really like it but there was a promise that if I did this pop song there’d be an album and I could do my beloved blues and jazz but, of course, they wouldn’t let me do that (Laughter) so I refused to go on Top of the Pops and things so it wasn’t the greatest moment . It sold quite well on the continent (lots of laughter). Isn’t that what they all say?

A Oh, well, I was big in... and then ‘insert name here’ isn’t it. (Laughter)

S Absolutely. It was big in Bulgaria. (Laughter)

A So, what did you do at that point. You’re still a young man. You’ve had a hit TV series.

S Yeh, well, as I say, it was difficult because Yorkshire Television repeated it and it kept going out and going out and so umm people thought I was still working and then, of course, my face by that time was too well known just to go straight into something else. Things were very different back in the 70s. Now you’d be picked up because you’d done that series.

I started doing more theatre and I’d always loved fringe theatre so I did a lot of that.

A Was it almost like going back to square one again?

S No, I got to choose; out of the things I did, I got to choose what I did and there were some offers that came in for a lot of theatre. I mean, the theatre thrives on somebody who’s been on television for a long time and it was the start of all that sort of getting a star in to head a play, which I don’t particularly like, and didn’t then. So I did a bit more theatre and then I was asked to do a radio play by the BBC and I just went “oh yeh”. Then I was asked to do another one and then about four weeks after that somebody phoned and said, this is what’s bizarre about it, somebody was leaving the rep. There was a BBC radio rep company and somebody was leaving that to go and do a television series... would I like to join the rep, and they kept saying “You know, you won’t earn anything like the money you’ve been earning in television but would you be interested?” and I leapt at it because I’d just fallen in love with radio drama.

It meant that on radio I didn’t, I no longer had to be just 5’ 6” with dark hair - I could be 6’ 3” and blonde, you know, on the radio.

A You’ve fallen in love with it obviously...

S Yeh, oh yes.

A ... and your voice... the richness of your voice belies your Bradford root so did you do... when you went to drama school was it elocution and those sort of things?

S Well, yes, you do a lot of accent training but there is one thing called RP, received pronunciation, and in those days it was assumed that you couldn’t do Shakespeare if you didn’t have RP, and I think for those of us from the midlands and the north it’s harder because the sounds are so very different, so I think it tends to stick with us a bit but my daughters always say the minute I’m angry ‘I go back to Bradford as quick as a bat owt of ell.’ (In a Yorkshire accent) (Laughter)

A I don’t want to bring up the number of years cause it is a considerable number of years, but do you look back affectionately at Follyfoot or...?

S Most of it, yes, yes. I mean there were times that it was difficult with... working out on location, not knowing quite what was happening all the time and a bit of politicking goes on as always and I was too young to understand all that but for the most... oh, come on... I’d been asked to go back to Yorkshire to ride horses around the countryside for something that had started to sell round the world. I don’t think I understood the enormity till, till much later.

A Do you think if you met yourself now, knowing what you know, you would give yourself some advice? Is there anything you would tell yourself?

S Yes, stay out of the Yorkshire Television club. (Laughter)

A Would you like to go into TV drama now, go into a longstanding programme, you know...?

S Not a longstanding one, no, I have problems with that. I suppose I’d like to do some sort of guest or pop in and do the odd one or two. I’d love to do something like Emmerdale or... but only maybe just a few episodes. I don’t have the, and haven’t had for some years, the driving force that umm... to get back into telly but if the right thing came along I’d do it. It’s all a matter of being able to choose now I suppose.

A But audio books and those sort of things, I mean, you’ve managed to sort of infiltrate into a lot of different areas so I’d have thought that every day is completely different for you, is it?.

S Oh, it is indeed and I also teach at The Oxford School of Drama, uhh, which is a thing I love doing and I manage to get young students work as well, both recording books and bits of theatre and I mean all sorts of things like that. That’s a joy to do. But the books came about because I’d done a few radio plays and somebody asked me if I’d do a book here where I’m speaking from, an RNIB, Royal National Institute for the Blind, studio in Camden and I was asked to do some books for the RNIB and I fell in love with that as well. It’s just you and a microphone and these wonderful words, and you get to play everybody; the men, the women, the children, the dogs, the horses. It’s wonderful.

A Does it feed the ego?

S No, because I think you’ve got... as the reader you’ve got to feed the ego, or at least the authorial voice, of the writer so it’s slightly different. It’s quite nice. A couple of years ago I won the New York Audi Award for a book I’d done and that was quite nice cause I don’t think I’ve ever won a prize before. (Laughter)

Song break

A Speaking to Steve Hodson – Steve Ross in Follyfoot which is celebrating 40 years since it first started on the TV. 1971 it started; ITV Sunday nights, somewhere around 5 o’clock I think it was, if my memory serves me correctly, as I sat down to watch it all of those years ago. So we got onto what Steve is doing now which is, of course, lots of talking books. He’s won awards for them and we carried on in that frame towards the end of the interview.

S I’ve just been up to Leicester to do one at Whitehouse Sound and that was a book ‘Stage Struck’ by a guy called Peter Lovesey who I’ve known, umm, we don’t see each other every day by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve known Peter since I did some of his stuff on the radio 40 years ago, so I mean things like that happen but more or less you just get a phone call ‘would you be interested in doing...’ and if you like the book then you say yes.

A I was gonna say, you get to do books that probably you might not have picked up in a shop...

S Oh sure.

A ... when you do it yourself.

S Yes.

A You’re sort of expanding your knowledge, aren’t you, all the time?

S Oh, constantly, constantly and that’s what I’m always saying to the students at Oxford, read a lot, and to read it from cover to cover, don’t just Google it.

A That is the bane of the 21^st century isn’t it, the internet, in some respects, if you’re teaching somebody because they won’t go off to a bookshop to research it, they’ll spend two seconds on their phone, won’t they?

S Absolutely, yeh. As a kid I read a lot. My family used to look at me and go “Oh God, he wants another bloody book,” (In character) (Laughter) at birthdays and Christmas and they treated me as an eccentric from the age of about 5 I think. (Laughter) “Would you like a football? I want a book.” (In character)

A Do you see yourself in some of the students that you’re teaching?

S I see some of the mistakes they make and wonder why you can’t quite put it right and then you think, oh my God I’m now 64 and I’m still doing this same thing. So you do pick up more on the mistakes that people make and the difficulties in getting that right.

A All of this, Follyfoot, and then it looks like you’re going to be getting back together and doing a bit of TV or DVD or something like that. It wasn’t for the money in the end was it.

S No, no not in those days, no, no. I mean, it was made viable because it sold around the world.

A Viable to Yorkshire not viable to you, I would have thought.

S No, but it meant a bit of difference to us because, I mean, everybody’s got to pay for it so, I mean, we do get our residuals.

A What’s the smallest cheque you’ve had ever?

S Oh, gosh. Umm, God I do remember. Umm, it was somewhere mid-Europe and umm I think it was just that the currency had changed not long ago... and I think it was 54p for the whole series. I said to my chum, I said ‘That means that only one person ‘s got television in this country.’ (Laughter)

A Did you cash it or frame it?

S I framed it (Laughter) but I think one of my daughters still has it. It hung in the lavatory at home for quite some time.

A All of that work for just over ten shillings.

S Yeh, absolutely. (Laughter)

A Anything that you would like to do though now Steve. What would you... if I said whatever you wanna do...

S Yeh.

A ...what is it?

S Umm, I’d like to direct a bit more and only, as I say, in the fringe. I love doing that and I did direct several plays and some of them were quite successful and we sort of came away from the fringe and we taught with them and did all sorts; and perhaps go to America to do one episode of NCIS. Wouldn’t mind doing that. So that’s a dream I’ve still got.

A Well, you never know who’s travelling down the M1 when this is going out do you? (Laughter)

S It won’t be anybody from NCIS I promise you. (Laughter)

A Stranger things have happened, I’ll tell you. (Laughter)

Steve, umm, thank you so much for being on the programme.

S It’s been my pleasure Andy.

A And also for making my producer’s life. She will be humbly in our favour and it’s gonna cost me every single day I come into work.

Play out with ‘The Lightning Tree’ song