People on the pier
People and Places goes out on the road


WATCH out … People and Places is coming your way. From next week, thousands of Northerners on holiday at seaside towns in the region will be able to see how this Granada show goes on the air.
Twelve on-the-spot editions, under the title “Pier to Pier,” are planned for a four-week tour of the resorts.
The tour begins on Tuesday at Skegness. There, the 50 strong production and technical staff will work at top pressure to set up their mobile studio and put over the show before moving on to Mablethorpe and Cleethorpes on Wednesday and Thursday.
Then on to Bridlington, Filey, Scarborough, Morecambe, Blackpool, St. Annes, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and Llandudno.
This meet-the-people series of outside broadcasts aims to provide something for everyone.

Holidaymakers will see and hear the programme personalities — interviewers Bill Grundy and Gay Byrne, singer Marion Keene and the Derek Hilton Trio — as the show goes on the air.
Viewers will also see show-business stars appearing in the seaside summer shows, a film of the town from which the programme is transmitted and they will meet some of the interesting people who live and work in the towns.
Cameras will be perched on piers and promenades, in pleasure grounds, on harbour walls and beside boating pools.
Interviews by Bill Grundy and Gay Byrne will present current news stories against a background of yachts, sand, sea and fairground bustle.
Marion Keene gets a num her of unusual settings for her songs. At Mablethorpe they pop her on top of a helter-skelter and at Morecambe on board the schooner Moby Dick, the one that was used in the film.
Producer David Plowright told me: “The content of the show will be the same as it is in the studios. The difference is that all the items in ‘Pier to Pier’ will have a holiday flavour.
“We shall be doing all the shows out in the open — whatever the weather!
“We intend looking at the main sport in each resort — water ski-ing, sand yachting, and so on — and see some kart racing.”
The double decker, open-topped People and Places bus, which will be heading Granada’s Travelling Eye fleet, will become a familiar sight to holidaymakers.

Last year the People and Places team faced a number of hazards — including the bad weather — that they hope they will not have to cope with this year.
One was the gremlin that turned up at Bridlington in the shape of a gust of wind. It blew the programme caption cards into the sea minutes before the programme was due to go on.
They were retrieved, dripping wet, with only seconds to spare, by three men in a small boat.
When the show visited the Quarry Hill Flats, at Leeds, some of the intended camera shots were obscured by an army of children.
Closer and closer came the children until the camera crews and artists — among them singer Marion Ryan — were surrounded.
And at Carr Mill, near St. Helens, the Derek Hilton Trio went adrift. The anchorage of the raft on which they were playing broke and they began to float out into the lake as hydroplanes whizzed past them at speed.