On the way up to the Lake
District I called at the pretty Giggleswick village.
I had a vegetarian burger and coffee before going to visit the grave and former
home of television presenter and chat show host Russell Harty.
He’s buried here as he once lived here having become an English and drama
teacher at Giggleswick boarding school, now home to
over 400 pupils.
He started his broadcasting career aged 31 when
he became a radio producer for the BBC Third Programme, reviewing arts and
literature. Aged 36 he got his first break presenting the arts programme Aquarius.
A documentary about painter Salvador Dalí
("Hello Dali” - worth watching on Youtube).
Aged 38 he bagged an interview with Marc Bolan who at the top of glam rock pile
at the time. It’s well known that he asked Marc what he’d be doing when he reached
forty and Marc said he wouldn’t live that long. He died shortly after the
interview in a car crash.
Russell got his own show conducting lengthy
celebrity interviews and he was so likeable and cheeky that he got some of the
big names of the day - Tony Curtis, Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake, David Carradine, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. His
interviews with Dirk Bogarde and Salvador Dali were
my personal favourites. Being curious he asked questions other interviewers
didn’t dare ask, had the common touch, didn’t adopt a
London accent. He was brought up on a Blackburn market stall where folk chattered
and wanted to know all the detail. Once he got Princess Diana to visit Giggleswick. She asked if he wanted a lift back to London
in the helicopter. He said yes even though he had no reason to and immediately
got the train back up to Giggleswick.
Aged 54 he became ill with hepatitis B, went to
St James's University Hospital in Leeds for treatment but didn’t come out alive.
Red top newspapers attacked him with unforgiveable cruel, claiming his illness was
AIDS related and that he used young rent boys (everyone knew he was gay but he’d
never wanted him mum to find out) Hospital porters were offered money for
photos showing him ebbing away in Intensive Care. They even put photographers
in a flat across the hospital so their lenses could reach into his hospital
room. After he died in June 1988 writer Alan Bennett said the gutter press had
“finished off” his friend. He’d come a long way from a fruit & veg stall on
Blackburn market.
Anyway, here I am in Giggleswick.
I went for a quick look at the grave behind the beautiful St Alkelda church and then to Rose Cottage where Russell had
lived. This was his retreat away from London where he lived another life. I had
a wander around Giggleswick school
and took a few photos. A man with the authoritative bearing of a head teacher strode
across the road to ask why I was taking photographs of the school. I gave him
my card and which seemed to pacify him. “Are you parked up in the motorhome?”
he asked going off at a tangent but only followed this up with an odd
expression when I confirmed this. I’m used to people enquiring why I taking
photos and his interruption would have been justified had I been down by the
playing field taking shots of the girls in tight micro-skirts playing hockey
(use my stealth-mega-zoom-lense camera for that.)
Lots of children were wandering around the
village and they all seemed to be so wholesome looking. I didn’t see one that
seemed ugly or rough as sandpaper. On the school website I saw parents were
forking out £7,000 - £10,000 a term to send their spawn here. Blimey you could
get a second hand Rolls Royce for that.
He was the
English and Drama teacher here at Giggleswick School…
At the front of
the beautiful church (camera on a wheelie bin)…
Russell’s last
days were poor as the gutter Press was after him. Alan Bennett said they
“finished him off”…
For me the biest interview he did was with Dirk Bogarde
at his place in France…
Rose Cottage
where Russell lived…
If you come out
of the front door and turn left the church is just round the corner…
At
the rear of Rose Cottage…