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WHEN Hugh David and Wendy Williams, the stars of Granada’s Knight Errant Limited, have any free time they climb into their car and point its nose towards Wales — towards the land of their fathers.

In private life they are Mr. and Mrs. David Hughes, but David altered his name to avoid confusion in the world of entertainment with singer David Hughes.

At the Manchester studios, where they were rehearsing for the Thursday adventure series, Hugh told me: “My mother came from North Wales and my father came from the south. I was born in Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire.”

Green-eyed Wendy was born in Surrey, of a Welsh father and an English mother.

“But,” she told me, with pride in her voice, “I went to school in Colwyn Bay in Denbighshire, and I adore Wales. When I hear the anthem The Land of My Fathers it always brings tears to my eyes. My father’s family live in Anglesey and I’ve got hosts of relatives there.

“Hugh’s parents are settled in Cardiff, so it’s natural for us never to think of going anywhere but into Wales when we have time off from the studios.”

“Not always to visit our families,” Hugh added quickly. “Sometimes we go just for the scenery, for the sheer pleasure of driving through the beautiful hills and valleys.”

What is it, I asked them, that makes the Welsh so patriotic?

“Well,” replied Wendy, “I think there is a sense of belonging in all of us.

“People with Celtic blood seem to me to have this feeling more strongly than others. Welsh people seem to be even more patriotic when they are away from home.”

This brought a smile to her husband’s face. “That’s very true,” he said. “I remember a friend telling me about a Welsh stationmaster who was in Manchester a long time ago.

“He wrote beautiful nostalgic poetry about Wales while he was in Manchester, but as soon as he left England and went home he gave up writing.”

Hugh and Wendy first met in Wales. They appeared together in a television play at Cardiff, in February, 1959. A mutual friend, the Welsh actor Clifford Evans, introduced them. They got engaged on St David’s Day last year.

Their marriage service at Surbiton, Surrey, took place only six days before the beginning of the present series of Knight Errant. It was conducted by Hugh’s father, the Rev. J. Williams Hughes, a Baptist minister who was formerly principal of the North Wales Baptist College at Bangor.

I asked Wendy if Welshmen are more romantic than Englishmen. With one of her infectious chuckles she said:

“In my limited experience they are not.

“At least, not in the sense that they shower a girl with flowers and whisper sweet Welsh words in her ear. I didn’t even get a bunch of leeks on St. David’s Day.”

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DIRECTOR Chris McMaster was placing chessmen in position on a plan of the set for “The Conspirators,” Thursday’s episode of Knight Errant Limited, when I called to see him at the Manchester Television centre.

“I’m not playing games,” he explained. “I’m just working out some camera moves. These chessmen represent people standing round the bar in a village pub in Ireland.

“And there,” he added, indicating some pencilled squares on the plan spread over his desk, “is the village street. We’re going to have somebody riding down there on a bicycle and a couple of women with shawls and baskets and a donkey to give the place atmosphere. It’s going to be great fun.”

Not so funny, however, for publisher Stephen Drummond (Hugh David) who, with secretary Frances Graham (Wendy Williams), finds himself in an Irish seaside village trying to sort out the ownership of a piece of land and gets involved in some of the local shenanigans.

Chris McMaster is Dublin-born and theatre bred. And this is the first time in the four-and-a-half years he has spent in television that he has worked on a show with an Irish setting.

“We’re going to have a real hooley (that’s Irish for party) with this one,” said 32-year-old Chris, who joined his father’s theatre company in Dublin when he left school at 16.

“To make this as authentic as possible we are using film shot in Ireland,” he added, “and half the cast are Irish, or have a strong Irish connection.”

One is 47-year-old, Omagh-born Patrick McAlinney, who plays barman Sian Kelly. Pat, an actor in Dublin, on Broadway and in London’s West End for the past 25 years, describes Kelly as “a cynical sort of chap, typical of Irish barmen, I suppose.”

Dublin born Harry Hutchinson, who will play publican Joe O’Kelly, has not been home since 1955 when he played in Sean O’Casey’s The Bishops Bonfire, in Dublin

Says Harry, who is 68 and has lived in England for 30 years: “Irish publicans tend to be very friendly, hospitable people. They are well-endowed with the gift of the gab, too, of course.”

The other Irish members of the cast are Michael Golden, Tony Quinn, Howard Lang and Alan Barry.

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BACK to the television screen next Thursday comes Granada’s Knight Errant Limited, the firm that specialises in solving other people’s problems — and rescuing damsels in distress.

The head of the old firm, Adam Knight, had to rush off to Canada to manage his uncle’s farm after the series ended last June. The new boss is publisher Stephen Drummond, a friend of Adam.

He took over because he thought the project too worthwhile to let die. Helping him are his secretary, Frances Graham, and a member of the “old firm”— “Daily Clarion” reporter Liz Parrish.

Drummond, who, according to the scriptwriters, is 32, intelligent, observant, a ski-ing and Judo enthusiast, is played by actor Hugh David, who is 35.

He matches up well, for, like Drummond, he went to university, took a degree in physics and mathematics and is keenly interested in modern history.

Hugh, his black hair flecked with grey, has the good looks and grooming demanded by the role. He points out that there are other facets of his character which agree with those of the TV hero he will be playing.

He told me: “Ski-ing for instance. Fve been ski-ing on holiday in Austria for about four years. I think I can say I’ve got past the stage where a broken leg is imminent — though I realise it could happen any time. But I don’t fall over so much now, so I suppose I’m progressing.”

Drummond, more interested in people than in books, is the sort of person who wants to help. It was this trait in his character that led him into Knight Errantry.

“That’s me,” said Hugh. “After qualifying as a physicist I worked in industry and did some research on jet engines. But I wanted to work with people rather than machines.

“In 1946 I became a teacher. I enjoyed that very much, but gave it up after two years. I felt there was too much restriction on the individual approach to the task.”

Three years at drama school in London resulted in Hugh winning a gold medal. That was in 1951 and, after a year in repertory at Whitby, he joined the Old Vic in London for three months, then went to Bristol.

Since 1952 he has made countless TV appearances — “playing parts ranging from a Borstal boy to Lord Nelson” — and has scripted schools programmes for television and radio.

His experience of helping people? It was his wife, actress Wendy Williams, who answered that question. Wendy plays the part of Frances Graham, Drummond’s secretary, She said: “He’s a smoother-out of trouble for everybody. People are always coming to him with problems.

“He has a sympathetic approach which makes them want to confide in him.”

But when Wendy and Hugh first met, nearly two years ago, it was Wendy who did the smoothing out! She explained: “We were working together in a TV play and Hugh was playing a love-sick 18-year-old boy. I played the part of his brother’s fiancee, who helps him to come to terms with his problem.”

What sort of girl is Frances Graham? The official description goes like this: Aged 26, gay, vital impulsive, very feminine, has violent enthusiasms which don’t last long.

She looked thoughtful, then said: “Well, I’m 25 and the rest of the description isn’t so far out, either!

“I’m impulsive — most women are, it’s a more feminine characteristic than masculine — and I can’t bear insincerity or incompetence. I’m the sort who must have things right. If they’re not, I want to know why.

“I like to have good things about me — clothes, furniture, food, everything. Enthusiasms? I don’t swing about. If I become enthusiastic about something I usually stay loyal to it.”

Blonde Canadian actress Kay Callard, back in the programme to give a helping hand to the new owner of Knight Errant Limited, married actor-director Jack McNaughton two months ago.

Her role, too, ties in with her own background. Before she became an actress, Kay worked on a small newspaper in Canada as a reporter.

While the show has been off the screen she has been able to spend more time on her hobbies … sculpture, gardening and collecting fine glassware.

Said Kay: “The garden is only the size of a pocket handkerchief, but it had become a little overgrown so we had to chop down the weeds and rescue a grapevine that was being choked.”

The post A new knight for the old firm appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

OF all the things I dabble in, drawing cartoons gives me aa much fun as any — probably because of a knack I have of isolating a person’s most telling characteristic.

Now, in trying to single out a clue to my own character, I cannot do better, I think, than borrow the immortal words “Sometimes I sits and thinks; sometimes I just sits.”

There it is in a nutshell. The fact is I have an inexhaustible capacity for doing nothing. I am lazy about anything that smacks of work. But acting, because it was something I once did for fun, is excluded.

I was a member of three amateur dramatic societies while still at school in Nottingham. Since then, I have never thought of acting as anything but fun.

My family having no theatrical connections, however, (my father was in the decorating business until he started teaching), it never occurred to me to take up acting professionally.

The idea of my doing so came from Leigh Crutchley, then Drama Adviser of Nottingham Council. He started me working for my Royal Academy of Dramatic Art scholarship, giving me unlimited coaching and encouragement.

Until then, my fondness for animals had made it seem more natural for me to try to become a veterinary surgeon. But as Latin did not come naturally to me, I gave that idea up. Figures baffled me, too. Science interested me at school (and astronomy still does) but the maths involved, the theories and principles, have always been a stumbling block.

I am also rather impractical, and the combination of all these drawbacks seemed to rule out all the usual jobs.

I suppose I could have become a photographer — I have always enjoyed getting an unusual picture. The snag was that I knew I should never have the application to master the technicalities, or cope with the routine work.

Once I decided to go on the stage, though, I knew for certain that it was the only job for me — the only one where I could be wholeheartedly happy.

I realise now that long before this I had been unconsciously conditioned to my present way of life. We lived in London until the outbreak of war when my father took up a teaching appointment at the Nottingham School of Arts.

My memories of those early days are a bit disjointed, but it was undoubtedly as a child that I assimilated from my father a great deal that was to give me tremendous satisfaction. For instance, I developed a feeling for texture, and an eye for line and colour.

I like to see good design in common household things like pots and pans, tables and chairs. And — right in character – the line of a motor car means much more to me than what is under the bonnet.

Recently, however, I did paint our old cottage near Stratford-on-Avon. Mind you, it was only my anxiety to see a job finished that kept me at it. Another time I would be only too glad to hand over the interminable business to an expert.

But we would still do the designing ourselves. Thisbe and I (my wife is a Stratford girl and named after Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) have a lot of fun with colour schemes.

The simple lines of the cottage called for white walls, dark floors and white rugs. Our soft furnishings are in plain, light colours and we like to vary contemporary furniture with what I believe to be the only antique that goes with it – Elizabethan.

For ornament I am fond of brass, particularly old telescopes. I have several 18th century ones and they make pleasant decoration. I also use them to look at the stars.

When I was working in London we used the cottage only for occasional weekends. It might happen again but Stratford will remain our permanent home.

We both know Stratford well. Thisbe was brought up here — her father was born in the adjoining cottage — and as a schoolboy I often visited the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Then after leaving the Academy I joined the company, and the three years I was there cemented my liking for Warwickshire — the heart of England. From Stratford I returned to Nottingham — this time as a professional actor in the repertory company. In 1955 I went to London, and later to Moscow, with Peter Brook’s production of Hamlet. I had already toured Australasia with the Stratford company.

After this came two plays in London — with our marriage sandwiched between them. One of these, No Time For Sergeants, ran for 18 months.

It was then that I did a lot of drawing. Flatteringly, people sometimes ask why I never try to sell my drawings. But, even if I thought there was a market for them, I should never have the necessary drive and ambition.

With music it is the same. I wish I played some instrument, but I know I would never practise. Oh, I tinkle away at the piano sometimes, but nothing much comes out. So I have to get my music — jazz preferably — from the gramophone.

But to make a professional job of anything one’s heart must be in it, and acting is the only thing that really counts with me — the one really constant and absorbing interest.

The post Self portrait appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

LEARNING to drive a motor car can be a nerve-shattering experience in itself but, when Richard Carpenter takes to the road with L plates, he finds he has an additional hazard to overcome.

Hazard? “Yes,” says 28-year-old Richard. “I keep hearing the Voice of Conscience. But it sounds so much like part I play of Peter Parker, Adam Knight’s assistant in Knight Errant ’60, that I could swear he’s sitting in the back seat, chunky grey sweater and all.”

Or perhaps it is just that Richard, who for six days a week is Peter Parker as he rehearses for the show at the Manchester studios, finds it difficult to forget him … Anyway I went along with Richard on one of his driving lessons to get the whole story.

As he drives away from the motoring school, he explains: “I start off brimful of confidence. But by the time I’ve turned a couple of corners and made three or four gear changes it happens.”

It? As he pulls up to allow a pretty redhead right of way on a pedestrian crossing, Richard gives a demonstration. He bawls: “Keep to the left, man! You’ll get us all killed!” And explains this is what nosey-Parker conscience says.

There is an immediate but unexpected reaction.

The redhead stops. Obviously she has heard. She stares. Obviously she is scared. She rushes on. Obviously thinking she is lucky to get away.

“See what I mean?” says Richard, looking unhappy and jerking his head in the direction of the fleeing female. “She thinks I’m a nut case. And when I’m out driving I almost convince myself.”

But there is nothing crazy about Richard when he is off duty at his flat in Hampstead, London where he lives with his actress wife Annabelle Lee.

He admits he is a handyman around the flat and enjoys painting, decorating and assembling electrical gadgets.

His collection of jazz records ranges from the early discs of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong to the latest issues of Duke Ellington. On the serious side, he likes Bach and Vaughan Williams.

There are some interesting sounds coming from the gear box as Richard juggles with the lever and returns to the subject of Peter Parker.

“It’s difficult coping with the gears when you’ve got a pest like Parker nagging at you. The trouble with him is that he knows all there is to know about the theory of driving a car, but put him behind the wheel and he would probably go speed mad or something.”

Richard glances out of the window. It is a sympathetic glance. An L driver has stalled his engine at the traffic lights and is being driven to distraction by the blast of hooters from other cars.

There is a thoughtful look in Richard’s eyes as he turns and says: “Hear that? Parker would be one of those people who are making all the noise. He regards car ownership purely and simply as a means of getting quickly from one place to another.

“My interest goes further. When I’ve passed my test — if I ever do with Parker breathing down my neck — I shall use every spare moment to drive out into the country to explore.”

Richard is particularly interested in architecture, and likes to visit churches and old buildings.

He was a painter in oils before he turned to acting, went into repertory at Chiswick, Dundee and Chesterfield, and toured the Middle East with the Old Vic. Now, he paints a word picture of the failings of Peter Parker…

“His head is like a junk shop of knowledge that needs sorting out. Each new thing he becomes interested in absorbs him completely for a time. For instance, he was writing a book on ‘What’s Wrong With Britain Today.’

“What happened? Why, it petered out, of course. Now he’s engaged on ‘An Analysis of Human Behaviour’.”

And Richard Carpenter, the motorist, gets tangled up in it?

“I don’t know about that,” says Richard as we pull up outside the driving school. “But I do know this: Parker gets tangled up in my motoring — and it’s driving me round the bend!”

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WHEN I met John Turner at the studios he had just finished an episode of Granada’s Knight Errant ’60, the series in which he plays Adam Knight, champion of the wronged.

“How does it feel to be a modern St George?” I asked.

I expected his eyes to shine with fervour. They did not.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “but I believe it’s not a bit of use dashing to the rescue of the modern maiden in distress. For instance, if you give up your seat in a bus to a woman, the odds are that she will refuse it. You insist. She still declines. And before you know what is happening, some unscrupulous male slips into the seat.”

A good talking point. Before I could reply, we were joined by Richard Carpenter, who plays John’s assistant, Peter Parker, and Kay Callard, Liz Parrish in the series.

Said Richard, taking up the theme: “Chivalry has been dead for years. Old women tend to expect it, probably a cause they were brought up during a period when life was more leisurely and there was more time for gallantry.”

Kay decided it was time to put a woman’s point of view.

She said: “Surely, the original meaning of chivalry, if you forget the romanticism of the writers, was the strong and idealistic individual fighting the battles of the weak and oppressed and rescuing the unfortunate and wrongly persecuted?”

“But the knights of old were men who went about the country simply looking for trouble,” said John. “They fought for milady’s honour just for the sake of fighting.”

Richard backed him up. “If you tried to do that now you would find yourself in jail. Really, the knights have been replaced by the police.”

Kay agreed that there were fewer damsels in distress. But she still thought there was a lot to be said for the old-fashioned male. “He treated women as the weaker sex and was much more thoughtful than the young man of today,” she said.

John wasn’t going to let her get away with that. “That’s just a lot of nonsense!” he said as he went into the attack.

“The modern young man is every bit as thoughtful as those in the days of old. Women are always the same. They expect chivalry and then demand equality.”

Kay countered with: “Why not? There are still parcels to carry, doors to open and chairs to set to the table. Aren’t men gallant enough for these courtesies?”

Said Richard: “These courtesies, as you put it, Kay, are just basic good manners not chivalry.”

But Kay was not going to be put off. “According to my dictionary the modern definition of chivalry is ‘Gallantry of spirit, bravery and courtesy.’ Men can be chivalrous by being courteous. Aren’t you courteous at home?”

Richard retorted; “If my wife is working, I do the housework. If I’m working she does it. But let’s get back to Knight Errant ’60. We’ve done a lot in the name of chivalry in this series, John. What would you say are the modern dragons?”

John thought hard, then said: “The physical dragons are people like the blackmailers, confidence tricksters and thieves from whom we’ve rescued Sally Smith, Shirley Laurence, Carol Wolveridge and Marianne Benet in the programme. But some of the dragons were in our own minds. Or they were disguised.”

The mention of disguise appealed to the Peter Parker in Richard. He suggested that Moira Redmond, who appeared in the Mediterranean cruise episode, was an example of the dragon in disguise.

“Do you mind,” said Kay, “if I come I back into this discussion? What it amounts to is that there are still just causes to be fought, if not by knights in armour then by scientists and politicians.”

John agreed, with the reservation that there were still many dragons at large in the community, perhaps not so important, but which ought nevertheless to be put to the sword. “For instance, overbearing matrons who charge to the front of the queue at the shops,” he said. “What is a mere man do?”

Kay sympathised. “Put it down to bad manner. I‘m ashamed of my own sex I when I see things like that.”

“Good for you, Kay,” said Richard.

John was more cautious. “Not so fast,” he said. “What Kay would like to see is every man falling over himself to dance attendance. Call it the Continental touch if you like, but really, it’s just a paradeof little tricks and flattering phrases.”

“Continental men tend to put women on a pedestal more than Englishmen do,” replied Kay. “And that makes a woman feel good. But I wouldn’t say women are fooled by it.”

It was time, thought Richard, to call a halt. “How about coming down off that pedestal you’ve just been talking about? Then we can all go for a drink.”

Said Kay: “Good idea. And if I may I say so, very chivalrous of you gentlemen.”

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BLONDE Kay Callard was quite emphatic. “Men,” she said, “are the limit. Why do they have to be so patronising when they meet a girl who has looks and intelligence?”

Canadian-born Kay, who plays Liz Parrish, John Knight’s “Girl Friday” in Granada’s Knight Errant ’59, pursued the point.

“It’s a tousand pities there aren’t more knights in shining armour around these days,” she said, referring to men who aren’t patronising to girls who have taken their education seriously. “Maybe it’s a thing with me but I hate patronising men. Why do they have to be so supercilious?”

Kay is in the mood for talking and she goes on speaking for a long time and says a whole lot of things that are most interesting.

Like how her boy friends react when they find out she goes in for sculpture.

“They pat me on the head,” said Kay, “as though they think there might be something mistaken in the works, or they look all sympathetic and say something like ‘Oh well, if it pleases you, my dear… It makes me so mad.”

There was an angry glint in the Callard eye, but she brightened as she added: “That’s why when I meet new boy friends I always talk to them about their business rather than mine. I find it saves a lot of eyebrow-raising.” She laughed.

Kay laughs, too, about the crazy situations in which she finds herself. “They seem to crop up frequently at my flat in Chelsea,” she said. “Mainly because I am probably the world’s most untidy person.

“When I am going out, I can never find anything I want. The dress I decided to wear is always at the cleaners.”

Kay claims she lives in “an almost perpetual state of panic stations.” Evenings that begin quietly at home are apt to have a different ending.

She explained: “My friends and I take it in turn to meet in our own homes. I remember not so long ago one of these so-called quiet evenings ended up with Scotch and strawberries in Covent Garden and a stroll through Hyde Park at the crack of dawn.”

Kay, who started her career as a writer on a Toronto newspaper and ran her own advertising agency when she was only 19, has made many television appearances and has been in a dozen films since she came to England six years ago. Six years of crazy situations. And improvisations. Like the evening she had been invited out to cocktails.

“I was at my wits’ end for a hat,” said Kay. “Then I came across an old black sweater and thought it might be a good idea to cut off the sleeve, wind it round my head and stick a pin in it ”

Was the hat a success?

“I suppose it was really,” replied Kay. “But I don’t think it wise to admit authorship of anything until you know how the land lies.

“I was asked where I got the hat so I said it was just a little something I had picked up on my travels. They seemed quite impressed, so I thought it best to leave well alone.”

Our conversation drifted back to men. Said Kay: “When it comes to picking my man I shall look for a sense of humour. That’s very important because he will have to put up with my peculiarities.

“He will have to be a good listener, too, because I talk a lot.”

She laughed and said she was firmly convinced men were here to stay and she believed the situation was not really so terrible after all.

Patronising on the part of Kay?

The post Oh, for the days of the knights! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THERE is a rumour going round that the wedding between Harry Hewitt and Concepta Riley isn’t coming off. All over the country people have been arguing about it and ringing Granada at all hours for the facts.

I have been down to Coronation Street to ask them. I made for “The Rover’s Return.”

Harry Hewitt (Ivan Beavis) was as usual propping up the bar. Concepta (Doreen Keogh) was polishing glasses I asked: “Ivan, is the wedding coming off?”

Concepta suddenly stopped polishing and Harry cocked an aggressive eyebrow.

“People never call us by our real names any more” said Ivan.

To save further confusion I decided to fall in with the majority — even though the career facts I gathered refer to their real-life careers.

“Did I ever tell you how I got started in this acting game?” he said. “I was convalescing at the time. I’d been ill for about 20 months.

“I wanted something to do. My brother and sister in Liverpool were winning prizes for elocution, but I didn’t fancy my chances at elocuting. so I decided to try acting …”

I interrupted. “About this wedding…” Harry grasped my shoulder. “Ask Concepta when she started acting.” he said.

“My mother told me I started the day I was born.” said Concepta.

“Yes. I was born in Dublin and studied at the Abbey Theatre school. Later I acted at The Gate Theatre.”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “we’ve had a lot of telephone calls about your wedding…

“Ask Harry how he turned professional,” said Concepta.

“I was an accountant,” said Harry. “Had been for years. But I didn’t like auditing. It always seemed like you were succeeding by finding other people’s mistakes.”

Harry got his break with Coronation Street after he played a northern part in Knight Errant Limited.

“Very interesting,” I said. “Now about this…”

“Ask Concepta how she got her break,” said Harry, serenely.

“I was playing the part of an Irish wife in The Citadel,” said Concepta. “It was a serial, you know. I started off with five children and ended up with about nine.”

“Never got over it,” said Harry. “There we both were at the first rehearsal we attended. I was supposed to be in love with her, and she with me, and we couldn’t even recognise each other.”

I cut in quickly. “I’m glad you mentioned that…” and prepared weakly for another attempt.

“Tell him about the wedding present,” said Harry.

“We’ve had our first wedding present, you know,” said Concepta. “A little girl gave us a tiny china figure. It was lovely.”

Harry cut in again. “There’s even a rumour that the wedding isn’t going to come off, ” he said. “Fancy spreading a rumour like that.”

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THE enthusiasm is there — it is just that there do not seem enough causes any more. That could well be a wail from the Modern Young Man, and one which may well have prompted Adam Knight, the hero of Granada’s new hour-long series Knight Errant ’59 to take up his job. The first episode will be screened on Tuesday.

Adam Knight, played by John Turner, is a young man who, having tried a variety of jobs, decides that he wants work that will combine interest and excitement. Calling himself Knight Errant, he sets himself up in business. His aim? To help anybody — in any situation. Scope? There is plenty, and Adam, as a 20th century Sir Lancelot, is kept hard at work.

Helping Adam is Liz Parish, a former newspaper columnist, who gave up her job to become his Right Hand Woman. Liz is described by producer Philip Mackie as “chic, charming, witty, wise, sophisticated, warm hearted and cool-tongued. As quick with a helping hand as she is with a well-turned wisecrack. She wears her clothes in the manner of 1959 — sometimes 1960. She is, of course, beautiful.” The part is filled by blonde actress Kay Callard. Her past career will help her with the part too, for, although Kay modestly says her career has been “ordinary,” she has led a more varied life most.

After studying at the Twickenham Arts College, she worked on a Toronto newspaper, so she is well acquainted women like Liz Parish. A year later she went into advertising, and by the time she was 19 had her own agency.

Then an old yearning came back. She remembered her days in pigtails when no one would let her act in the school plays. “Maybe it was because I was a tomboy,” she said. “They just couldn’t see me as Juliet or the Fairy Queen.”

So Kay decided to “take a whirl” of acting. She started as an announcer and writer on a Canadian radio station, then took the plunge and headed for Hollywood. Bit parts followed and “enough work to keep body and soul together” for three years.

Then she returned to England to see the Coronation. Within a week she a part opposite Douglas Fairbanks in a TV play. “So I stayed in Britain,” she explains simply.

“I’m delighted with the part of Liz Parish,” she said. “She is such an ‘alive’ character. In between trips to the Manchester studios, I busy myself in my Chelsea flat — sculpting.”

Twenty-seven-year-old John Turner a punter. River, not race track type, that is.

He lives with his young wife, a former repertory actress, in a charming old cottage in Stratord-on-Avon. Oak beams, Anne Hathaway’s cottage round the corner and, of course, the winding River Avon, where, on sunny mornings, the Turners take turns at the punt pole.

“Can’t imagine why anyone wants to live anywhere else,” says ex-city dweller “All the actors and people I knew in London or Nottingham, where I worked in repertory, eventually turn up here.”

Tall, dark and blue-eyed, John has the sort of good looks that one often sees in women’s magazine illustrations.

If Adam is the Angry Young Man type, John Turner is not. Slow speaking, he has an easy, relaxed manner. His hobbies — nothing too strenuous — include collecting telescopes and photography.

Of his telescope collection, his wife says “It was all right when the first two or three arrived. They were a manageable size, but now they seem to be getting larger. We’ll have to move to a bigger house soon.”

Not to let it appear that he is too lethargic, John told me he does weightlifting. “I used to practise a lot in the back garden, but now the weights are getting rusty behind the lawn mower.” John is delighted with the part of Adam. This will be his first TV appearance. He has so far acted mainly in Shakespearean roles, both at the Nottingham Playhouse and the Stratford Memorial Theatre. He played Marcellus in Peter Brook’s production of Hamlet and visited Moscow with the Brook company.

Third “regular” in the Knight Errant set-up is Peter Parker (played by Richard Carpenter), an earnest young author in the throes of writing a magnum opus entitled: “What is Wrong with Britain Today.” He is full of “angry young mannerisms,” but lacks that vital commodity: money.

Peter has had many jobs — Espresso bar attendant, office cleaner and the like. These keep body and soul together, and, as he explains, “leave the mind free for more important things.”

Richard Carpenter, tall, blond and looking younger than his 28 years, has this to say of his role: “I get to know Adam and like the work he does and the types he meets, so I work myself in as a sort of hanger-on cum leg-man. I’m also able to use the office typewriter for my book.”

In real life Richard Carpenter is himself a writer. He has sold short stories to magazines and radio scripts. But this is where type-casting ends.

“I don’t think I’m an Angry Young Man,” he said. “The only thing that angers me is to see or hear of people being pushed around.”

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A TELEVISION studio is the crossroads of the world — a meeting point of people from every nation. Here, for instance, Chinese, Indians and Africans meet to life and movement to the sets of Skyport and Knight Errant ’59.

They have no lines to speak, these silent part-time actors.

They earn the £3-a-day fee by merely hovering in the background or pacing unobtrusively across the set, giving the show the all-important stamp of a authenticity.

The task of finding them falls to Jose Scott, assistant to Margaret Morris, who is head of Granada’s casting department in Manchester.

Said Jose: “Some of the people I find are professionals, but many are part-timers specially engaged at short notice. I get them through an agent or our contacts in various schools and colleges.

“There are plenty of professionals available who have the facial characteristics of Europeans and most other whit-skinned foreigners.

“But when we need coloured people we run into difficulty in the North, because normally we can get hold of only a handful. Recently we needed 30 coloured men and women for a play. In desperation I rang Manchester University and asked them to put up a notice saying that any interested students should contact us.

“We didn’t have to wait long. Soon the phone was ringing — and it went on ringing and ringing and ringing. We had more than needed in the end.

“When we met them in the reception lounge, we found some of the men who had promised to come had brought their wives, too. And a woman who could not turn up at the last moment sent along her next-door neighbour.

“Although they speak English, many have a strong accent which we had difficulty in understanding and caused chaos when it came to getting their names correct.

“And when we asked them to write down their names, we couldn’t read their handwriting. But we got it sorted out eventually.”

Researchers for Granada’s People And Places magazine programme often provide leads to foreigners available for walk-on parts “And,” Jose told me, “once someone has made an appearance, he usually says ‘I have a friend who would be able to help…’ So the whole business works on a sort of snowball principle.

We have never been asked to find a Japanese, an Eskimo or a dwarf, but I’m sure we could. In the case of an Eskimo, we probably use a person with similar features, then dress them up. It’s amazing what a few clothes will do.”

Talking of clothes reminded Jose of an incident during rehearsals for a play. A group of Indians wearing saris were told the producer to turn up the next day in their “everyday” clothes.

So the next day they left their best saris at home and arrived on the set in their week-day saris! They didn’t that they were meant to wear Western dress.

At the studios, everybody speaks highly of the co-operation and friendliness of future doctors, lawyers, secretaries, teachers and engineers.

Said Jose: “The students are able to get a couple of days off without much difficulty, and they are always glad to do this sort of work. They have a reputation for being conscientious and hardworking.”

Akitoye Akiwumi, 24-year-old engineering student from Sierra Leone and Ali Mazrui, who has come from Kenya to study philosophy and politics, both appeared in a Granada play.

Said Akitoye: “We spent three days at the studio and found it very interesting to see things from the other side of the camera.” Ali told me: “I have done radio broadcasts in Mombasa, but this was he first time I had been inside a TV studio, a thrilling experience.”

Clarice Boyle, who is 25, and 22-year-old Marjorie During, both from Sierra Leone, got time off from their secretarial studies to become Skyport “travellers.”

When Jose was asked to find a Chinese family for Skyport, she called on a Chinese couple who run a Manchester restaurant, Maw Man and his wife Ah Sing. But their children, Ken, 13, and Linda, 12, were not able to appear because of restrictions concerning the employment of child actors. So Jose asked a London agency for two Chinese children.

When Ah Sing and her husband met the children from London in the studio, they discovered they were their niece and nephew — children of Maw’s elder brother.

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