The 25th Anniversary Celebrations –
The theatre, which at the time was rented by former Crossroads actor Stan Stennett, was handed over at no cost for a Crossroads celebration featuring a number of former motel faces and behind-the-scenes crew as well as 200 fan club members. The event raised money for the Crossroads Care charity.
The event saw several different segments, including selected speeches by the former cast including Stan Stennett and soap expert Dorothy Hobson who wrote the book ‘Crossroads The Drama of a Soap Opera’.
There was also a chance to watch Format V: Nolly from 1978 in which Noele Gordon discussed the series as well as a selection of episodes from the 1970s and 80s.
The highlight was the stage show, hot on the heels of the Prisoner: Cell Block H theatrical 80s tour came Crossroads Motel. The comedy sketch-
Stars who attended the event included Peggy Aitchison –
There was also a chance to buy series merchandise and reminisce between the nibbles and drinks. The event was recorded by Central Television for a feature on Central News and also the BBC who transmitted a national feature on the gathering as part of Daytime Live which Angus Lennie also appeared as a guest.
The 45th Anniversary Celebrations –
On March 28th 2010 some of the biggest stars of Crossroads reunited to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the soap. Booked former cast for the event at Birmingham’s NEC included Angus Lennie who played chef Shughie McFee, Jane Rossington the motel’s owners daughter Jill Richardson, Tony Adams, motel manager Adam Chance, Edward Clayton, village electrician Stan Harvey, Janet Hargreaves wife of motel manager David Hunter (the late Ronald Allen) and series writer David Garfield.
On the day itself, Angus Lennie was too ill to make the event, but it didn’t stop the 100s of Crossroads fans in attendance from enjoying the day out which formed part of the bigger memorabilia event.
Produced by Fantom Films, in association with CAS, the day included a question and answer session, a chance to pose with the cast for photos and autograph signings as well as ‘one to one’ conversations.
Below are photos of the event courtesy of Valerie who also provides a short report on what the gathered cast said at the event.
“When Tony Adams first appeared as an estate agent who sold a property to Kitty, Nolly decreed that he looked much too young to be an estate agent and it was suggested he grew a moustache. He then quipped that he’d been wearing Nolly’s moustache ever since.
Janet Hargreaves complained about the £4 a week clothing allowances when she started which simply wasn’t enough to cover Rosemary’s wardrobe. She talked about going out shopping for second-hand clothes with Kathy Staff with whom she was good friends.
David Garfield originally joined Crossroads in an acting capacity, playing Joe Shaw who was a paraplegic. He had previously turned down the chance to work in Crossroads because he hadn’t been particularly keen to do it, but when he took the part of Joe Shaw he had been offered a six-week run which fitted perfectly with a six-week gap he had between other jobs and, as he had a family to feed, he took the role.
However, there was a bit of a problem one day with the scripts and the producer knew he was an experienced writer and asked him if we could write some extra material as the programme was running short by 1 minute 40 seconds. He said that the character of Joe Shaw was a bit of a fantasist and so he wrote the character a story to recount to Sandy which filled the gap. Afterwards, he was asked if he’d like to come back for another stint but this time with the chance to write the scripts for his storyline himself. And that was how he ended up becoming Crossroads’ chief scriptwriter.
Jane Rossington talked about how she was late for her initial audition because she was doing a play and they wouldn’t let her leave before the end even though her character didn’t actually appear in the latter part of the play. She also talked about the fact she was told there was no such programme as ‘Crossroads’ when she turned up for her first day in the role. But eventually, Reg Watson appeared saying that everyone had been wondering where she had got to. It turned out he had been so paranoid about the press finding out about the programme he had told the reception staff to deny it existed if anyone had asked about it.
She also said thought the Mark II series was ‘chaotic’. She said when they first asked her down they asked her to see the set which they were very proud of because it had cost £1 million. She added that she thought they should have spent less on the set and more on other things. She went on to compare the Mark II set with the original sets which she said were much flimsier and explained they used to move them out of their way to get past them at times. She went on to talk about the set of the Harveys’ house. It was so cramped the sofa was in front of the bottom of the stairs and therefore in your way if you had to come down the stairs. Returning to talk about Mark II, she said that the thing they spent most on was the taxi bill.
Can’t recall much that Edward Clayton said on the panel other than the fact he had eventually walked out. I asked him about it afterwards and he said the main reason he walked out was down to a lack of caring attitude when Jo Richardson (Mrs Whitton) went missing believed dead. They found her husband’s body but not hers. He asked if he could fly out to bring their children back but they wouldn’t let him and that led to him walking out. He said he was also unhappy about the way they had been treating Jane over her pregnancy.
I also had a bit of a chat afterwards with David Garfield about the unique way the programme was written with different writers penning different parts of each episode and sticking with one storyline each through from start to finish. He agreed with me the system had worked well and explained that it had been Peter Ling who had made it work and that it wouldn’t have worked had it not been for Peter Ling. He explained how he would discuss with Peter Ling how much the storyline he would be working on would progress each week and then they would work out together how to break that down into individual scenes. He said that sometimes Peter Ling wanted to stretch storylines out a bit too far and he didn’t always agree. He also explained that he had been the main writer who was there all the time whilst other writers had come and gone.
I also asked him how he had found it when Philip Bowman took over as producer from Jack Barton. He said he hadn’t got on well with Philip Bowman who he felt had just wanted to change things for the sake of it and questioned why you would want to change a winning formula. He felt that the management at Central had wanted rid of the programme and wanted to use the studio space for other things.
I didn’t get so much time to chat to all the others as by then each of them had quite a long queue of people wanting autographs. The only other thing worth adding is that Tony Adams told me he had very much enjoyed playing Adam in Mark II as the character had become more and more deranged.”
The 45th reunion was part of a bigger ‘television cult’ event at the NEC. We are pleased to report Crossroads‘ fan attendance was exceptionally good, and the show gained more interest than other programmes featured.
Other Events of Note:
2005 – ‘ATV Centre farewell Tour’ CAS are the last official organisation allowed to tour the former ITV Midlands TV Centre.
2006 – ‘Nolly Day’ CAS celebrated the life of Noele Gordon at ATV Centre in Birmingham.
2006 – ‘Celebrating Crossroads II’ / ‘An evening with Cindy Marshall-Day’ celebrates the short-lived return of Crossroads in 2001-03.
2014 – ‘Crossroads 50th anniversary’ Central News and fans gather at Penns Hall in Sutton Coldfield to mark fifty years since the launch of Crossroads. Tony Adams and Jane Rossington also feature.
Events raise funds for the Crossroads Care charity. To find out more, or support the Crossroads Fan Club’s current associated branch, please pop over to Crossroads Caring for Carers Worcestershire website or Facebook page.