Murphy's Mob (Puffin Books)

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Holton was frontman with the Heavy Metal Kids for most of their five year career, prior to their official break-up last year. SInce then, he's been sorting out his future plans and attempting to get it together with various musicians while keeping the wolf from the door by taking several small film roles and TV ads. Most of the second rape sequence was cut, and it was only 31 years later that the film was given a certificate with the full scene reinstated (although, through a loophole, it had been available uncut on video for several years during the 1980s).

But Hutchison was on the other side of the law playing a police sergeant in the film epic Gandhi (1981), and a sinister superintendent on television in the second series (1990) of The Justice Game. Murphy's Mob is a British children's television series, created and written by Brian Finch which was produced and directed by David Foster for Central Television, and screened in the UK on ITV for four series between 1982 and 1985. The theme tune was sung by Gary Holton, of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet fame.

Cassidy was wonderfully played by the great character actor Milton Johns, who is probably best known to millions in his later role as Brendan Scott in Coronation Street. He was a pantomime style villain played to perfection. He didn’t like the kids. The kids didn’t like him. I can’t really remember what Mr Cassidy’s role was, but he certainly seemed to be Rasputin Jones’ right hand man and ran his arcade. Not someone to get on the wrong side of, but did he actually have a right one?!

Hutchison himself was football-mad, regularly playing in goal for Dennis Waterman’s charity celebrity team – and breaking a leg in a 1983 game. Such was his friendship with the Sweeney star that he lent him his Scottish home when Waterman left his wife for the actress Rula Lenska, to help them to escape from the media glare. It’s strange to think that the show has never been released on video or DVD as, at the time, it was immensely popular and is often cited as the definitive children’s TV drama series, above even the likes of Grange Hill. Cassidy provided a lot of the show’s most memorable comedic scenes and provided almost a comedy double act in his scenes with his foil, policeman’s son ‘Wurzel’ Glossop. The show is definitely long overdue a DVD release. In the years that have passed we could only live with our vague memories of Auf Wiedersehen Pet’s Gary Holton’s punky theme tune, the storylines and the childhood wonders of why we never had such a cool clubhouse for young fans at East Fife. The theme tune still really holds up as strong today.Then, during a season with Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre company at the Old Vic (1970), he had small roles in Oedipus Rex and The Taming of the Shrew. As a teenager growing up in Thatcher’s Scotland of the 1980’s, you needed as much joyous TV escapism as you could get and it didn’t come much better than rushing home from school twice a week to watch Murphy’s Mob, to see their latest scrapes and escapades, which of course were always more exciting than your own! Poseur's night at the Nashville" as the waggish Holton christened it. This evening saw the return of the one time Heavy Metal Kid supremo (that group now one year's rust encrusted) on a new year with a new band. AFTN: IT MUST BE A NICE FEELING TO KNOW THAT SOMETHING YOU DID SO MANY YEARS AGO IS HELD IN HIGH REGARD AND CULT STATUS TODAY. YOUR CHARACTER IN PARTICULAR IS VERY FONDLY REMEMBERED. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS? Ken Hutchinson, a Scot, who played Dunmore’s downtrodden manager Mac Murphy was tremendous. Snarly and an Alex Ferguson in the making – mannerisms wise at least, if not in terms of managerial success!

AFTN: WHY DO YOU THINK THERE’S NEVER BEEN A DVD RELEASE OF THE SERIES? DO YOU THINK THERE EVER WILL BE ONE? The ambiguity of the first rape is given context by the second rape,” declared the British Board of Film Classification in 2002, “which now makes it quite clear that sexual assault is not something that Amy [Susan George] ultimately welcomes.” Villain roles kept on coming, including a small-time crook on the run with his wife and daughter in Hideaway (1986), giving him, as The Stage remarked, “a fairly easy time … he is only mildly beaten up … he is run down by a car”. For those of you who remember Wurzel and the series as fondly as myself, we have a treat in store, as AFTN caught up with Lewis Stevens who played Wurzel and chatted to him about his time on the series and what he’s been doing since. You can read that HERE.

2022

LS: I’ve been really pleased with the reaction to the clips that are up on YouTube – it seems to have stirred a lot of memories. I think Wurzel was a likeable character with a good heart – he was always trying to persuade the adults to do things, but in a way that made them think it was their idea. He was often getting into scrapes and had some good comedy moments, so I guess he was good fun to watch. Gerry Marsden of Gerry & The Pacemakers had decided to make a charity record to aid the families of the victims of the disaster. The re-recording of the hit song "You'll Never Walk Alone", already a football anthem for Liverpool F.C. supporters, entered the UK charts at No. 4, and reached Number 1 on 1 June 1985.

If tonight's momentum can be maintained over the month's to come then Gary Holton should get a second shot at the kind of success that eluded his last, turbulent incarnation. The Crowd was a "supergroup" formed specifically to produce a charity record for the Valley Parade football disaster, in which 56 people died on 11 May 1985. The group consisted of singers, actors, television personalities and others. Wurzel’ Glossop was one of the main, and most memorable characters, from the ITV children’s TV show Murphy’s Mob. He auditioned by reading from William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost – the only play he knew – and became an assistant stage manager and actor, soon treading the boards. In particular the show focussed on a group of long suffering young fans as they overcame obstacles to set up their own Junior Supporters Club and clubhouse in the stadium, whilst also following their day to day lives and misadventures, in school, after school and of course, on a Saturday afternoon.

Ashes to be returned to Leslie

Described as a keen footballer, Ken also regularly appeared in goal for Waterman’s celebrity football team which played charity matches across the country. ‘Leslie’s most famous son’ I haven’t been acting much, but I did dabble with stand-up comedy again last year, which was fun. I do miss acting, so would love to do something else again at some point… AFTN: THAT WOULD BE CERTAINLY BE EXCELLENT AND ENJOYABLE. WHAT IMPACT DID BEING A NATIONAL TEENAGE TV STAR HAVE ON YOUR LIFE? Wurzel was a much downtrodden upon character, who at times never seemed able to do anything right. He wasn’t the brightest kid in school, but he was certainly one of the wittiest, played in fine comic style by Lewis Stevens.