Grange Hill

GRANGE HILL
Made by: BBC/Mersey TV
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1978 onwards

Liverpudlian writer Phil Redmond wanted to create a programme about real kids in real schools, having had enough of the Enid Blyton mentality of presenting middle-class kids having jolly japes and midnight feasts in the dorm. Grange Hill more than raised Mary Whitehouse’s temperature (and those of a lot of parents) when it hit the screens in the late seventies; here we had working class tykes with cockney accents, who came from broken homes, with dads in jail or mums on the dole, who lived in high-rise poverty and went to an inner-city comprehensive. Everyone loved the opening titles with the comic strip and the famous sausage being thrust into the picture in a food-fight; the music, called ‘Chicken Man’ is as classic as TV themes come (and was written by Alan Hawkshaw who, useless-fact fans, also wrote the Countdown theme, and played on Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’.)

Purists will tell you that Grange Hill’s vintage period was the early years, with Todd Carty raising hell as Peter ‘Tucker’ Jenkins, with his mates Alan (George Armstrong) and Benny (Terry Sue Patt), and causing grief for Trisha ‘Pongo’ Yates (Michelle Herbert) and dandy arch-enemy, Michael Doyle (Vincent Hall.) But in its 28 year history, Grange Hill has hit these highs many times over, and is not just one of the greatest children’s shows ever - it is one of the best television shows of all time.

The Heroes

There have been so many memorable characters carrying a wealth of amazing and controversial story-lines over the years, and they deserve a book of their own, really. No-one can forget Samuel ‘Zammo’ McGuire (Lee MacDonald), who started out as a fresh-faced cheeky chappy, and ended up as a 16 year old heroin addict. As a result, the cast recorded the anthemic ‘Just Say No’, which reached number 5 in 1986, but, ironically, MacDonald didn’t appear on the record because he was such a dreadful singer. Zammo was also engaged to Jackie Wright (Melissa Wilks), who became Grange Hill’s first - and so far, only - fifth form bride.

Around the same time we had Roland Browning (Erkan Mustafa), a bespectacled, whining fatso, who was bullied for all the aforementioned reasons. He received the unwanted attentions of Janet St Clair (Simone Nylander), with her cries of “Let me help you, Ro-land!”

Another primary scamp was Ziggy Greaves (George Christopher), a Scouser-out-of-water, who got up to all kinds of mischief with pal, Robbie (John Alford), Jackie Wright’s little brother. A more calculating deviant was ‘Gonch’ Gardner (John Holmes), a ginge who always had a new money-making scheme in the pipeline (he was the Bilko of the school), including washing PE kits for a fee, and selling sandwiches at lunchtime.

Every school has its rebels, and Grange Hill’s first James Dean wannabe was the cool, mulleted Ant Jones (Ricky Simmonds), whose attitude meant that he could never see eye-to-eye with the staff. He dated school pin-up Georgina Hayes (Samantha Lewis), but was forced to leave and go to rival school, St Josephs, so their love was across the barricades, so to speak. In the end, Georgina moved on to Mike Bentley (Rene Zagger), the school athlete, whose dad was pushing him into a running career and into a college in the USA.

But the über-rebel had to be Danny Kendall (Jonathan Lambeth), a diminutive figure with a monumental chip on his shoulder; he couldn’t see any point in going to school, so he just didn’t go. He was interested in art though, and designed the new school logo (the purple and yellow ‘GH’), as well as the mosaic on the wall of the school swimming pool. Danny was into his music too, and DJ-ed for shoddy playground rap outfit Fresh ‘n’ Fly, aka Ronnie Birtles (Tina Mahon) and Fiona Wilson (Michelle Gayle.) Fittingly for a kid with a fast life, Danny met his end in a dramatic way; having stolen the car of arch-nemesis Mr Bronson, he was found dead in the back of it (the sight of his empty eyes gave me nightmares for weeks.)

Grange Hill’s first teenage pregnancy happened to Chrissy Mainwaring (Sonya Kearns), who was going out with useless, inept sixth-former, Ted Fisk (Ian Congdon-Lee.) He cheated on her when he moved away to Southampton in search of work, and Chrissy was left alone, although she went on to single-handedly stop a rumble between Grange Hill and ‘St Joe’s’ on some wasteland near the school.

Chrissy’s ambitious mate was mouthy Justine Dean (Rachel Victoria Roberts), who befriended another school dissident, Terrence ‘Tegs’ Ratcliffe (Sean Maguire.) Tegs was a tiny one-boy crime-wave, who always wore trainers, and whose brother was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. I fancied Tegs when I was eight years old, and was bitterly disappointed that a) he didn’t get it on with Justine, and b) he moved to Germany. Justine later dated Liam (Danny Cunningham), a boy from St Joseph’s, who was senselessly killed in a gang-related incident, and later appeared to reassure her in a dream.

Where would we be without the class clown? They didn’t come any large-than-life than Ray Haynes (Kelly George, a ridiculous 22 when he finally graduated from the school, although he returned as the local caff owner in the late nineties) , who was always trying to escape the wrath of his psychotic biker brother, Kenny. Poor Ray fell in love with the American exchange teacher, Miss Patti Janowitz (Marita Black), and kissed her in the gym after school; typically for a Yank, Miss Janowitz threatened to sue for sexual harassment, and Ray became the school laughing- stock.

Also in Ray’s year were the good/evil twins, Natalie and Natasha Stevens (Julie and Clare Buckfield), plus friend Fran Williams (Rebekah Gilgan) and Maria Watts (Luisa Bradshaw-White), who fell out over their - frankly inexplicable - love for Richard (Desmond Askew.)There was also Julie Corrigan (Margo Selby), bullied for being fat, ginger and wearing glasses (see a recurring theme at all here?); memorably she was dared to jump into the swimming pool in her school uniform, but she grew up to be a confident eco-warrior who nearly died when she was chained to a house which was being demolished.

Moving well into the nineties, we meet Dennis ‘Techno’ Morris (Alan Cave), who was in love with the pretty Lucy Mitchell (Belinda Crane.) He lost her to his spaced-out mate Josh Davis (Jamie Groves), an army-memorabilia nut, won her back again, and then lost the use of his legs in a motorcycle accident. Also around this time was Jessica Arnold (Amy Simcock, who one of my friends claimed, rather cruelly, looked like a duck), a posh private school girl, who was the object of every boy’s affection, but chose charmer Joe Williams (Martino Lazzeri, also far too old to be at school.) This was controversial because she was only 15, and Joe was the sixth form hunk. But Jessica had trouble ahead; she was groped by the hapless Brian during a rehearsal for Romeo and Juliet, and then had to leave school with ME, eventually going to America to recuperate.

Love never runs smooth in the playground, and another contentious romance was between 15 year old devout Christian, Chris Longworth (Ben Freeman), and sixth-form temptress, Paula Webster (Abigail Hart) - she had her wicked way with him, and sent him crazy when she wouldn’t speak to him again. More tragic still was bad-boy Wayne Sutcliffe (Peter Morton), who was tamed by Judi Jeffries (Laura Sadler); she was the object of dopey Alec’s (Thomas Carey) affection too, and he was convinced by his evil mate, Sean Pearce (Iain Robertson), that they should slash her face. Judi then met a calamitous end when she fell from a fire-escape while trying to flee a fire which Sean had started; Wayne went well and truly off the rails, and Alec fled and lived rough, in hiding.

The Villains

‘Gripper’ Stebson (Mark Savage) was the first real bully, causing misery for Roland Browning and many others, with his money-or-menaces scheme. Gripper became a hard-core racist, insisting that kids swear allegiance to Britain, and there was a huge cheer when he was finally expelled. He existed alongside Michael Doyle, who, with his choirboy haircut, was more con-tricks than dead-arms.

A more lightweight version of Gripper appeared a few years later in the form of ‘Mauler’ McCall, with his pathetic American Football-themed Gridiron Gang. Girls weren’t all angelic either, and few could be as evil as the hateful Imelda Davis (Fleur Taylor), with her Terror Hawks gang and her spiky mullet; she and Ziggy had a mutual loathing for each other, and I remember her putting fibreglass from the boiler-room down his back and causing the tough Scouser to cry. In the mid-nineties there was Anna Wright (Jenny Long), a watered-down version, who lived in high-rise hell and took great pleasure from her cruelty, although she did run away and have a strange romantic tryst with Christian fundamentalist, and fellow runaway, Chris. Few have been able to emulate Gripper’s genuine corruptness, but a couple of pretenders to the crown were Mick Daniels and Sean Pearce. Mick (Joseph Kpobie) just personified nasty; with his gang of two, including the malleable Grimbo (Jamie Golding), he held a reign of terror in the playground, with his cigarette racket and bully-boy tactics. Sean slashed Judi Jeffries and left her scarred for life, and his escalating psychosis actually led to her death when she plunged from the fire-escape while trying to escape a blaze Pearce deliberately ignited. He tried to blackmail Mr Robson, but was eventually caught out by the school security cameras.

The Teachers

Grange Hill has had a vast staff body, some good, some bad, some downright gittish. The first headmistress was Mrs Bridget ‘The Midget’ McCluskey, who had a firm-but-fair approach when it came to dealing with hockey thugs, girls wanting to do woodwork, and Suzanne Ross (Susan Tully) dressing like Boy George. There was also Angela Keele (Jenny Howe), who took a tough ice-queen approach, but ended up ‘keeling over’ and having a nervous breakdown, found lying prostrate in her office. There was a brief ill-advised period when the head teacher was never seen, but always ‘at a meeting’; he was soon replaced by Peter Robson (Stuart Organ), a Grange Hill living legend, who had been a deputy for ages. Robson began in 1988 as a young and quite attractive Geography and PE teacher, and he even had a passionate affair with Martha Jordan (Dena Davis), another American exchange teacher; they had secret romps in the school swimming pool after dark, and he begged her to stay in England with him, while on a school trip to East Germany. It didn’t work.

Other staff members have also been as hormonally-charged as the kids, the first pair being mumsy Terri Mooney (Lucinda Gane), and smarm-ball Graham Sutcliffe (James Wynn.) She dumped him while on a school trip to the zoo, and she went on to attract the unwanted attentions of proto-Mr Bronson, Nick Smart (Simon Haywood.) Teachers really are a desperate lot. In more recent years, there was Jayne Carver (Sally Geoghegan), an enthusiastic and likeable English teacher, who was jumped by macho PE teacher, Dai Jones (played by Clive Hill, and hilariously nicknamed ‘Dai Hard’ by the kids) on their first date. Jones, the most accurate portrayal of a PE teacher ever, tried again a few years later, and this time Carver two-timed him with an Ofsted inspector, surely the greatest insult he could have been dealt. In the 2002 series, she hurriedly married Mr Robson, probably because she wasn’t likely to get a better offer and knew it. Bringing us more or less up to the present day we have smarm-ball Chris Malachay who - after falling flat on his face with Miss Dyson - somehow managed to get lucky with pretty Miss Adams, who snogged him behind the curtain in the school hall.

The staff have always had a toe in contentious matters; art teacher Tom Brisley (Adam Ray) was outed as gay (he went to a notoriously gay pub - ooh!), and then the parents went on a witch-hunt. Mr Hargreaves (Kevin O’Shea), known by the kids as Mad Max, was an ambitious deputy-head, who wanted to run the school as a business, but was a complete prat. But the biggest git of them all has to be Maurice Bronson, who resembled Adolf Hitler (and, in fact, Michael Sheard also played the Nazi leader in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), wore a toupee, and taught French when he wasn’t ruining the lives and self-esteems of his pupils. He had a good word to say to nobody, and was universally hated; but even he was lost for words when sickly Danny Kendall was found dead in the back of his car.

Grange Hill should be a springboard for many a talented young actor, but has a surprisingly low success rate - perhaps too many youngsters suffer from type-casting. So who might we have seen elsewhere? Todd Carty (Tucker Jenkins) played the show’s most memorable tyke, and got his own spin-off programme, Tucker’s Luck, a drama about life after school - mainly girls and youth clubs - which also featured George Armstrong (Alan Humphries); and pretty much since then, Carty has been best known as Mark Fowler on Eastenders before moving on to ITV perennial The Bill. Someone who followed him to Albert Square was Susan Tully (Suzanne Ross), who played Mark’s sister, Michelle, and she wasn’t the only one heading Walford way. Michelle Gayle (Fiona Wilson) played Hattie, before launching a moderately successful pop career in the mid-1990s; and Sean Maguire (‘Tegs’ Ratcliffe) put in an appearance as Aidan Brosnan, a troubled footballer for Walford FC. On leaving Grange Hill, Maguire starred in gritty children’s drama, Dodgem, and after Eastenders he appeared in TV series Dangerfield and Sunburn, before getting his big break in the USA, starring as sex-mad Brit, Euan in the sitcom Off Centre. He, of course, had the requisite attempt at a pop career as well, scoring eight top 30 hits between 1994 and 1997. Someone who really shouldn’t have tried to bother the charts was John Alford (Robbie Wright) who, on the back of his heart-throb status as Billy Ray in London’s Burning, took covers of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Blue Moon into the top 20 - before being sacked from the show because of a hard-core drugs habit. Drugs also featured in Desmond Askew’s (Richard) success, but thankfully not in his personal life: from nowhere, he suddenly turned up in Doug Liman’s hip drug-culture flick, Go (1999), as Brit abroad, Simon Baines.

Most actors stick to the safe arena of British soaps and dramas: 2.4 Children picked up both John Pickard (Neil Timpson) and Claire Buckfield (Natalie Stevens); Hollyoaks snagged Claire’s twin sister, Julie (Natasha Stevens), as well as Martino Lazzeri (Joe Williams); and, in recent years, both the late Laura Sadler (Judi Jeffreys) and Luisa Bradshaw-White (Maria Watts) have become cast regulars in Holby City, although Bradshaw-White has had consistent work from This Life and Bad Girls as well. George Christopher (Ziggy Greaves) popped up as drug-addicted Little Jimmy Corkhill in Brookside; Rene Zagger (Mike Bentley) embodied The Bill’s PC Nick Klein; Ben Freeman (Chris Longworth) played the second incarnation of Emmerdale’s Scott Windsor; Max Brown (Danny Hartson) has moonlighted as a young employee of the Crossroads Hollyoaks; and, finally, Danny Cunningham was spot-on in his portrayal of the Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryderin the 2002 film, 24 Hour Party People.
So there you go. There are probably many others, but I have already rambled on for too long.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 10/10

(Thanks to www.grangehillfans.co.uk for the borrowed pic)