The 25 Hour News and the Saturday Obituary
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Until I was ten, portrayals of school in fiction seemed stuck in the 1950s or even further back. ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ serialised on Sunday teatimes on BBC1 or ‘Just William’ on ITV in the same time slot; ‘Winker Watson’ in ‘The Dandy’ and Jimmy Edwards’ cane-happy headmaster in ‘Wacko!’ Caps and blazers, catapults and mortar-boards – all rooted in the Billy Bunter/public schoolboy tradition that hadn’t altered since the Edwardian era. And then came ‘Grange Hill’.
There had never been anything like ‘Grange Hill’ on children’s television before. There’d been many a TV series in which the leads had been children or juveniles, but none in which the school day formed the basis of every episode, and a school day set in an inner-city comprehensive of the kind most of us watching attended. When Phil Redmond’s brainchild was first broadcast in February 1978, we were introduced to a cast of characters who were all beginning their first day at ‘big school’, just five months after I’d been through an identical experience myself. It was the most relevant TV programme I’d ever seen to my own life at that time.
There was gobby Trisha Yates, mild-mannered Justin Bennett, vicious little creep Mickey Doyle, chubby smoker Alan Humphries, whiny posh-girl Judy Preston – but standing head and shoulders above them all were our instant heroes, Tucker Jenkins, played by Todd Carty, and his sidekick Benny Green, played by the unforgettably named Terry Sue-Patt.
Inexplicably, the football-mad black boy with the characteristic afro was found dead yesterday at the age of just fifty. Police are apparently not treating his death as suspicious. This is extremely sad news for those of us who belonged to the original ‘Grange Hill’ generation. The thought that little Benny was fifty is startling enough; the thought that he is no longer with us is a further sobering reflection on the passage of time.
Benny Green was one of the first children of West Indian-descent to be a regular character on a kid’s show, especially one made by the BBC. He suffered racist bullying on occasion, orchestrated by those hurling insults that would now either be edited out of repeat screenings or would be prefaced by a warning. But that was the reality of the time, and ‘Grange Hill’ mirrored that reality with a candour and honesty that was unprecedented; it upset parents and prompted many an outraged letter to ‘Points of View’ that cited its overnight success as a bad influence on children, yet children knew the playground and classroom were already like that.
Gradually, once the likes of later iconic characters such as Roland Browning and his sadistic tormentor Gripper Stebson grew up and graduated, the show descended into what was effectively a pubescent soap opera; but for the first five years or so, ‘Grange Hill’ was as groundbreaking a piece of TV drama as ‘Coronation Street’ had been in the early 1960s. And dear old Benny Green was pivotal to that.
Terry Sue-Patt, your fellow schoolboys from the class of ’78 salute you.
Petunia Winegum
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May 23, 2015 at 10:13 am -
The first I remember in this “ilk”;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v3NGSwaJJ0&list=PLF498FA5C71431554
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May 23, 2015 at 10:20 am -
Ah, yes. ‘Please, Sir’, where all the kids looked about 25! Wasn’t that Eddie Yeats as well?
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May 23, 2015 at 5:47 pm -
Yes, it was he.
“Please Sir” was my era rather than “Grange Hill” – though PS was a prime time sitcom, not made specially for kids like GH. The actors playing pupils Peter Craven, Maureen “thingy” and Dennis Dunstable all died quite a way short of old age. “Eddie Yeates” is gone too. My favourite on PS was always the ridiculous Frankie Abbott (David Barry).
The show is still funny – the school staff are particularly wonderful, including Basil Fawlty’s nemesis Joan Sanderson as the dragon of a deputy head (Miss Ewell) and the inimitable Deryck Guyler as the sneaky, blustering caretaker.-
May 23, 2015 at 5:55 pm -
Yes, I mainly remember Derek Guyler as ‘Korky’, the friendly neighbourhood copper on ‘Sykes’.
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May 23, 2015 at 9:16 pm -
Potter the caretaker was a comically self important creep who’d invented a bogus “heroic” past for himself as one of “Monty’s desert rats”.
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May 24, 2015 at 12:40 pm -
Was he not also the Inspector in “On the busses?”
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May 23, 2015 at 11:05 am -
Petunia’s comment reminded me of the odd occasion on which I was exposed to some Australian dross or another a few years ago – the soap which features a secondary school. I noticed then that most of the female “teenagers” looked about 30. It must be all that sunshine.
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May 23, 2015 at 12:13 pm -
Not unlike the stars of ‘Grease’, supposedly set in a US high-school but with ‘kids’ actually approaching 30 – but they were mostly American, so probably just very slow-learners (they did elect Dubya Bush twice).
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May 23, 2015 at 8:05 pm -
Followed by O’Barmy twice; to be sure, to be sure.
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May 23, 2015 at 9:19 pm -
In the 1970s I remember reading a book about the steep decline in the calibre of US presidents – it was called “A Ford….not a Lincoln.”
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May 23, 2015 at 11:26 am -
Terry Sue-Patt, your fellow schoolboys from the class of ’78 salute you.
Induction day ’79 at The Secondary Modern, a young dwarf put up his hand because the Headmaster had asked if we had any questions.
“Is there an SAG here, Sir?” *pin drop moment and deathly silence*
In retrospect probably not the best question I could have asked.
(for the Non Grange Hillers among us “Student Action Group” which was the fictional school ‘trade union’ or, as viewed from my headmaster’s perspective: ‘terrorists’.)
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May 23, 2015 at 11:49 am -
Ah, yes – I remember SAG! I seem to recall them staging a sit-in in the headmaster’s office or some such bastion of authority.
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May 23, 2015 at 6:54 pm -
SAG was led by Jessica Samuels played by future film director Sarah Sugarman former wife of David Thewlis.
American actor Al Matthews played the father of Benny Green. His best known role is that of Sergeant Apone the cigar smoking Space Marine in “Aliens”.
From Grange Hill to Outer Space
Michael Sheard went the other way. He went from playing the ill fated Admiral Ozzel in “The Empire Strikes Back” ( killed by Darth Vader) to play Mr Bronson!!!
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May 23, 2015 at 12:44 pm -
All long after my time, left school in ’59, but it prompts the thought of how on earth did all those improbable adventures involving ‘quite posh’ schools manage to engage us council estate listeners, more importantly readers? Because we were engaged. Not just the perennial William; there was more modern Jennings too, & the I’m sure there were more ‘old style’ school stories in the Wizard & Hotspur, but the brain cells aren’t firing up so well now.
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May 23, 2015 at 3:25 pm -
I can’t remember the first series of Grange Hill first time around – though I did clock it on the 1990’s BBC2 repeats… was an avid viewer from about the second series (though I will have only been about 5) and it was my favourite programme at the time (aside from TOTP & Kenny Everett). I remember my Grandad complaining “stuff like this shouldn’t be on childrens television” and that will have been the Gripper/Ro-Land era.
Can’t remember when I first went off it – that it wasn’t holding my concentration by the time I left school at the end of the 80s probably says a lot on how it lost the gritty realism it had in the early 80s. -
May 23, 2015 at 5:24 pm -
‘Grange Hill’ mirrored that reality with a candour and honesty
It would be interesting to see a remake of the episode where one of the 14(?) year old girls (‘Trisha? Penny?) falls in love with the woodwork teacher (I think) and her parents found her diary detailing their, totally fictional, liaisons. Pretty sure it was lyric for lyric “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” by The Police in VHS format. I seem to recall the teacher proved his innocent by simply pointing out that her diary stated he’d put the stereo on and HE DIDN’T OWN ONE!
That sort of weak excuse would, of course,get him no where these enlightened Child Protecting days.
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May 23, 2015 at 5:43 pm -
Ah, yes, I remember that one. I think it was a slightly later generation (early 80s), but the teacher in question was Mr Hopwood – who denied the claims in the girl’s diary. Too hot a potato to be tackled in any drama today, for sure.
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May 23, 2015 at 6:37 pm -
I had to google of course:
S05E14 “Diary” 19 February 1982
Claire seems to be hanging around Mr. Hopwood a lot. The student biology teacher has difficulty controlling the third formers, what with Duane’s laughter box and Pogo’s bleeping watch. Claire is writing a diary, in which she fantasizes situations with her heartthrob Mr. Hopwood. Her mother finds the hidden diary and reads the romantic entries, and becomes convinced something is going on. Claire’s father arrives at Grange Hill and makes a complaint to Mrs McClusky. Will a schoolgirl crush result in the end of a teacher’s career?These days it would be Claire’s Faceache page that her Mom read and the end of his career would be the very least of Hoppy’s worries….and Mrs McClusky would no doubt be on a charge as well for not passing it all onto the Police/NSPCC straightaway and for daring to interview Claire without first arranging Victim Trauma Counselling .
Thank God we now know that ‘crush’ was just another word for ‘groomed’ .
*update*
It’s on Youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9APHA41S6rE
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May 23, 2015 at 8:22 pm -
It’s a shame. He was just a year younger than myself. Our time is allotted to us and there’s nothing we can do about it.
One of Google’s drop-down menu suggestions is, “what is terry sue patt doing now.”
Resting with the angels or tormented in the fiery pit, one assumes; hopefully the former.
I agree that “Grange Hill” descended into a soap opera after a few years: less fun and more angst to increase dysfunction to satisfy the social engineers.
Another big time for the show was Zammo McGuire and “Just Say No”. That worked out well, didn’t it? :/
I have to say that my dad told me the same thing years before and I have never touched illicit drugs. I had to be detoxed off of alcohol, mind you.
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