Norman Florence's Acting Career

I was watching another episode of The Saint, The Set Up - it's 1965 and involves an unusually brutal mail van robbery. There are fist fights in The Saint every week, and Simon does get knocked out rather a lot, but one of the bad guys in this episode was shooting people all over the place.
And another member of the gang of robbers was a certain Norman Florence.
In Hay, Norman Florence (or Flo, as he was usually known), was best known for having the original idea that became Hay Festival, now an international concern run by his son Peter. I knew he had been an actor, but I hadn't noticed him appearing in anything until last night.
When I looked up his acting career, I saw that he had also appeared (well down the cast list) in one of my favourite episodes of The Champions, The Iron Man, in which Craig, Richard and Sharon are sent to protect a South American dictator in exile from being murdered.
He did quite a lot of TV work in the 1960s, including two other episodes of The Saint and one other episode of The Champions. Several of his characters seem to have been called Carlo, or some other vaguely Mediterranean name - he also seemed to play quite a few policemen, and he was Tony Marchesi in the series Compact, which was a soap opera set in the offices of a glossy women's magazine. He was also in Redcap, with a young John Thaw. The last acting credit in his IMDb entry is for Doomwatch in 1971.
In the 1970s he went into theatre management, working with Sam Wanamaker on the Globe project, and coming to Wales with Theatr Ym Ymylon, a bilingual theatre group - and he happened to settle just outside Hay....

The Saint in Puerto Rico - with Parker!

The latest episode of the Saint that I've seen takes him to Puerto Rico, where he finds a poor peasant farmer about to lose his farm because he borrowed money to grow tomatoes in a hydroponic system which failed.
And I remembered reading the original story, many years ago, in which it was made clear (which it was not in the episode) that the poor peasant farmer had been set up to fail because the hydroponic system didn't work, and the man who lent the money knew this.
I also noted that the actor playing the poor peasant farmer had the very un-Puerto Rican name of David Graham.... and that name seemed strangely familiar.

David Graham was quite busy in the 1960s. He's best known for his performance as Parker, Lady Penelope's chauffeur in Thunderbirds - though I wasn't aware until I read his Wikipedia entry that he had also provided the voices for Gordon Tracy, Brains and Kyrano! When Thunderbirds was remade in the last few years, he was the only original cast member to return. He also provided Dalek voices for some of the early Doctor Who episodes.

Merlin's Isle of Gramarye

There was a record and CD sale in the Buttermarket during Hay Festival, and I always go along to see if there's anything interesting and folky - so this title leapt out at me.

Merlin's Isle of Gramarye is a collection of Kipling's poems from Puck of Pook's Hill, put to traditional music. It's by Peter Bellamy, and apparently it's a second collection (so now I'll be looking out for the first one).
Peter Bellamy is joined on the CD by Dik Cadbury, Nic Jones, Dolly Collins, Peter Hall, Chris Birch and Anthea Bellamy, and the songs include Puck's Song, Eddi's Service (the one where the priest says the service to the animals who are the only congregation in his remote little church), St. Helena, The Song of the Red War Boat, and the Smugglers Song.
I think Kipling would probably have been pleased to hear his words set to English folk music, but I did wonder about some of the choices. For instance, shouldn't the Harp Song of the Dane Women be sung by, well, women?

Many years ago, I became aware of the filk songs of Leslie Fish, and others who then put out cassette tapes through Off Centaur. Leslie Fish also adapted the poems of Kipling, and they're now available on CD - as soon as I re-discovered them, I sent off for them, having lent my precious cassette to a folk singing friend who never returned it.
She does Harp Song of the Dane Women too, and the Song of the Red War Boat which, in her hands, has a more emphatic beat as if the singers really are rowing through a storm to rescue their master. She also does the Roman Centurion's Song (which always brings me to the point of tears), and the Female of the Species, and many more.
I have Our Fathers of Old, where she performs with Joe Bethancourt and Kristoph Klover, and Cold Iron, where she performs with Catherine Cook.

I've known the Leslie Fish tunes for a very long time, so I tend to like them better because of the long familiarity, but the Peter Bellamy songs are an interesting different take on the poems, and I'll be listening to them again.

Farewell Avon

I noticed that Paul Darrow was trending on Twitter this evening, and sadly, it is because he has died. He was 78.
Paul Darrow was most famous for his role as Avon in Blake's Seven - he had all the best snarky lines.
He was also an excellent villain in the audio drama Minister of Chance, in a cast that also included Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy.
On stage, he played Commander Vimes in the adaptation of the Discworld book Guards! Guards!
He was also part of UNIT in Doctor Who, in Doctor Who and the Silurians (as Captain Hawkins), and in the 80s he returned to the series in the story Timelash.
He was the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1975 BBC version of Robin Hood (and was one of the best things about the series!).
He was also in the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery Murder Must Advertise.
[Edited to add: I completely forgot he also played Cromwell in The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, the graphic novel by Bryan Talbot which was adapted into an audio drama with David Tennant in the title role, by Big Finish]
He played many other parts as well - but this is the moment I'm thinking of right now....