Russell Harty (5th September 1934 to 8th June 1988.)

 

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…