One more star in the sky

It was very sad to hear of the death of Adam Faith recently.

Adam was one of our Elstree Film Evening guests of honour in 1999, along with the late Sir Nigel Hawthorne, at the BBC Elstree Centre.

I remember when I greeted him on arrival Adam commented: "It is very strange for me to come back to this studio. I first came here, when it was the old National Studios, as a teenager over 40 years ago to work in the cutting rooms.

"When I had my first number one hit I still kept my union ticket for a couple of years in case the bubble burst and I returned here!"

Adam, in fact, became a major pop artist in the late 1950s and enjoyed 24 appearances in the UK charts over the next seven years. This included two chart-toppers at the beginning of his career with What Do You Want and Poor Me.

Adam also recalled: "I did, in fact, work at Elstree Studios as an actor in a television series called Love Hurts in the early 1990s, but the studio was then under threat of closure with Brent Walker and was a bit run down."

He was a really nice chap and his sudden death from a heart attack is a sad loss.

When Venue duty manager Dan Purdy suggested we go up to the big smoke for a few drinks and take in a show it sounded a good idea. When he suggested a show which involved a half-naked ex-Boyzone star Stephen Gately, French ladies of the night, bondage and inflatable sheep, it gave me cause to hesitate!

However, it turned out to be family entertainment in the form of a new version of the Lloyd Webber perennial hit Joseph And His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and the packed audience contained quite a few young mums.

Whether they were there to introduce their kids to their forthcoming school musicals or ogle young Gately was difficult to determine.

It is hard to believe that it is now 40 years since Cliff Richard was on the sound stages at Elstree churning out those popular film musicals Summer Holiday, Wonderful Life and The Young Ones.

Nobody would have guessed then that one day he would be knighted and still be a major record seller six decades later. I did have the pleasure of watching him rehearse his millennium concert on one of the new stages at the studio back in the winter of 1999, with guest star Hank Marvin.

Musicals were a staple genre of the movies from the coming of sound until the 1960s. Who can forget film icons such as Fred Astaire, those Busby Berkely spectaculars of the 1930s, the moving West Side Story or the huge blockbuster The Sound Of Music.

Elstree got into the market early with what they described as the first British film musical, called Raise The Roof, in 1930. Later in the 1930s came Richard Tauber's Blossom Time and Anna Neagle's Goodnight Vienna, which were both hits in their day. Richard, in fact, was a local resident living in what is a now demolished house in Allum Lane, although his name is remembered in a street name located near to his old residence.

One of the first films shot at Elstree after the war was The Dancing Years by Ivor Novello, and even Errol Flynn turned up doing a song and dance routine in Lilacs In The Spring in 1954.

Two of the last musicals to go before the cameras at the studio were The Boyfriend, starring Twiggy, and the not so successful return of Cliff in Take Me High in 1973. In Hollywood the 1970s saw a revival of film musicals with the big box office hits such as Saturday Night Fever and Grease.

I am tempted to suggest to Andrew Lloyd Webber that he comes to Elstree and makes a film version of Joseph. Is it too late for me to follow in the footsteps of Stephen, Jason Donovan, Philip Scofield, Donny Osmond and Dan and take on the title role denied me at school by being born too early.

Okay, I may be a touch old for the role now, but perhaps Max Factor can produce something to cover up a few 'laughter lines'!