I shall always remember his unflinching cooperation when asked to speak at my father’s Memorial Service in 1995, together with the wonderful performance he gave when reading the passage from Vet in Harnessabout that great composite character, ‘Biggins’. Chris was pleased we had chosen that particular episode since he had become friends with the actor who played Biggins in the series, who had himself sadly died prior to the Memorial Service.
If Chris Timothy was a comparative unknown before assuming the mantle of James Herriot, the actor who played Siegfried – Robert Hardy – most certainly was not. He was already an established and much-respected performer and, as well as having experience as a Shakespearean actor to his credit, his versatility was such that he had stepped expertly into the roles of such diverse personalities as Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini.
I remember my first meeting with Robert Hardy. One afternoon in the surgery in 1977, I was surprised to see a figure in a white coat, counting tablets into a bottle beneath the disconcerting stare of Donald Sinclair. Seconds later, Donald seized the bottle.
‘No, no, Tim! I’ve already told you! These tablets are for dogs only! You nevergive these to cats!’ I wondered who this unknown, brow-beaten employee of the practice could be? I looked more closely at him. ‘Good heavens, it’s Robert Hardy!’ I said aloud.
His smiling face turned towards me and Donald introduced us. ‘I am very pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘Call me Tim. That is how I am known to my friends.’ I took an instant liking to him.
With filming having only recently begun, he was spending a few days at Southwoods Hall with Donald to give him the opportunity of studying his character. It proved, not surprisingly, to be a most illuminating experience and his time was obviously well spent because his portrayal of Siegfried, a character whom he came to love dearly, was brilliant. Although he bore no physical resemblance to the real man, he captured his impulsive character perfectly and his performance passed the severest possible test – the approval of the Yorkshire farmers who knew the real Siegfried so well. ‘By! That feller teks auld Sinclair off well!’ was a cry that I heard countless times.
Donald and Robert Hardy became the best of friends over the years but, true to form, Donald did not approve of his television portrayal. Almost twenty years later, in 1996, I had the pleasure of seeing Tim Hardy on the top of the White Horse Bank, near Thirsk. He had come to open officially the White Horse Preservation Society, an organisation dedicated to the upkeep of the famous White Horse that had been cut into the hillside above the village of Kilburn over a hundred years ago. He gave a short but revealing speech in which he reminisced about his role as Siegfried.
He had approached Donald one day and said, ‘You have never really approved of my portrayal of you, have you?’
Upon receiving the predictable response, he had countered, ‘Very well, who wouldyou have liked to have played the part?’
‘Oh, someone with manners. Someone like Rex Harrison!’ Donald had unhesitatingly replied.
‘From that moment on,’ said Tim, ‘I knew I was a dead duck!’
Robert Hardy’s feelings for his part in the series are revealed in a letter to Alf dated New Year 1978:
‘The first of our interpretations of your marvellous work goes out on Sunday 8th and I hope, and hope, you will like it … the joy that I’ve already had in being part of it all is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced.’
Carol Drinkwater, who played Helen, and Peter Davison as Tristan, were ideal in their parts. Carol brought a lively sexiness to her part and Peter stepped most convincingly into the role of the likeable but feckless Tristan.
Alf thoroughly enjoyed the series. The producer, Bill Sellers, ensured that the stunning scenery was displayed at its best throughout and, in choosing the village of Askrigg in Wensleydale, he brought the fictitious town of Darrowby to life. This village was certainly in Alf’s mind when he originally set his books in the Dales back in the late 1960s; the grey buildings surrounded by the fells, with the dry-stone walls snaking down from the high ground, are straight from the pages of James Herriot’s books. After the series began – the first episode was shown on 8 January 1978 – thousands of tourists invaded Askrigg and Wensleydale. They may have been a nuisance to some, but they certainly boosted the economy of the Dales for many years.
Another feature of the series was the excellent acting from the extras. Some of the farming characters were brilliantly represented and, as Alf said, ‘could have stepped straight out of the old farm buildings that I used to know’.
Johnny Byrne, the scriptwriter, did a most skilful job in transposing the writing of James Herriot to the spoken word, and many of the scenes rang with authenticity. One of Alf’s favourite episodes concerned the vets’ uphill struggle in extracting money from some of the old farmers. He said to me, the day following the screening of the episode, ‘Did you see that one, last night? It brought back a few memories, I can tell you!’
For many, the series became addictive viewing. An extract from the Western Daily Press, dated 30 January 1978, illustrates the high regard in which it was held:
Churchgoers in the village of Lowick, Cumbria, have been blessed with the chance to worship all things bright and beautiful – and then go home to ‘All Creatures Great and Small’. For the tiny Lakeland church has been given a special dispensation to hold its Sunday evening service earlier than usual so the congregation can get home in time to watch its favourite television programme.
Since the series started, there had been a decline in the numbers attending Evensong and those that turned up complained of missing the start of the programme. Such was their popularity, forty-one episodes were shown over the following five years, and they very quickly became compulsive viewing for a huge proportion of the population, with estimates running up to 14 million viewers.
Alf’s own opinion of the television series appeared in the Yorkshire Evening Postin 1981:
Not only did it capture the essence of what I had tried to say, but also the central characters were absolutely splendid … they were us come to life. I watched it faithfully.
Human nature being what it is, I probably watched Chris Timothy a little more closely than I did the others. I always saw myself as the rather diffident figure – not exactly a ‘grey’ figure but not a particularly colourful one – caught between two flamboyant, thoroughly zestful characters. Christopher Timothy perfectly captured that air of diffidence.
James Herriot had, by the early 1980s, become not just a famous international name, he had become an industry. He had sold millions of books in hardback and many millions more in paperback. The television series had made his name a household word and was transmitted to countries all over the world – right through the 1980s with repeats into the following decade. The area of North Yorkshire that he had made famous had assumed a new name; it had become known as ‘Herriot Country’, with tourists visiting Thirsk and the Yorkshire Dales in their thousands. With his books having been translated into so many languages, fans came from all corners of the world.
Alf, while having to admit that he greatly enjoyed meeting so many people from overseas, preferred to spend most of his time away from the spotlight. Not only had he bought, in 1977, his house in Thirlby where he and Joan were secreted away from the thousands of prying eyes but, in 1978, he acquired a cottage in the village of West Scrafton – a cluster of grey stone houses and farms, lying on the southern side of Coverdale and surrounded by wild fells and moorland. It was here, where he could merge into obscurity among his beloved Yorkshire Dales, that he found total peace – where, in the morning, he would awake to a silence broken only by ‘the sound of the bleating of sheep or the cry of the curlew’.