Follyfoot - Follyfoot fan tribute site

Steve Hodson

The main character of Steve Ross, a former stable boy employed by the local Squire but dismissed when implicated as a Nightrider. The Colonel employs him to help at Follyfoot despite rumours of a reform school upbringing and prison term for beating up a man who was whipping a horse. Steve was abandoned by his mother put into an orphanage after his father died when Steve was only four years old. He does find his mother again but she rejects him. He considers his life at Follyfoot the closest to having a home that he's ever had.

Steve Hodson was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire on November 5th, 1947. Since the Follyfoot TV series Steve has made a successful career as a voice actor for audio books and radio plays on BBC 4. He has also worked in collaboration with Christian Rodska on several audio books.

Steve Hodson Filmography IMDb website

Thanks to Pen for the following photocopies of Steve Hodson's Fan Club letters

Click images to enlarge

Bravo magazine articles

Thanks to JM for the following PDFs

Click on the links below to view articles and read translations

Steve the Sunny Boy from Follyfoot

Steve Hodson at Follyfoot

TV and Film

John Lubbuck - Lord Avebury, Founder of Modern Archaeology

Museum AV programme scripted and directed by Gordon McKerrow

Thanks to JM for finding it on You Tube

Steve appeared on Jim'll Fix It in 1985

Thanks to Sue for the screen caps

1985- Juliet Bravo - Girl Talk - Michael Blake

Thanks to Sue for the screen cap

1981 - Break in the Sun - Pete

Thanks to Sue for the screen cap

1980 - All Creatures Great and Small - Matters of Life and Death -Trooper Raven

Thanks to Garej for the screen caps

1978 - Hazell - The Walking Blur - Transvestite

Thanks to JM for the screen cap

1978 - Angels - Maternity

Thanks to Flynn for the screen cap

1978 - A Horseman Riding By - Dandy Timberlake

Thanks to Sue for the screen caps

1971 The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Episode 12 - The Ripening Rubies - Abel

Gillian Blake

Played the main character Dora Maddocks, niece to the Colonel. When Dora's father takes up a Diplomatic position in South America her parents decide to leave her with the Colonel. She comes from a privileged but dysfunctional upbringing, her parents being strangers to her and she is a product of an expensive education, private tutors and a finishing school.

Gillian studied acting at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and appeared in several TV series before starring in Follyfoot, including a BBC Comedy Playhouse- The Loves of Larch Hill written by Anne Burnaby, produced by Eric Fawcett, aired in 1969. Gillian played the character of Alison "smudge" Love.

Gillian has also played a part in the 1969 movie "Goodbye, Mr.Chips."

Gillian Blake Filmography IMBd website

Thanks to Sabrina for these two lovely big images of Gillian

"Halleluiah, Mary Plum" by Rose Tremain

Thanks to Tom who actually managed to salvage about ten minutes of this play. He says "to my knowledge this has never been repeated on air."

The 1980s play is about Gillian Blake's character going to stay with her sister after a nervous breakdown. Her sister is an artist in the story and Gillian does have a major role in it.

Transcript for short snippet from Halleluiah, Mary Plum

(Gillian Blake as Louise, and child stand in a forest glade beside a pond, both throwing in pebbles.)

Child: "It's rather serious - isn't it? Sort of tragic the pond. Can just imagine Margy's Oatmeal(?) drowning in this pond. Going down, down like a slide, wearing his top hat. You know - Miss Margy'd prop her hand on her tennis racket and cry and wail and say to herself - 'dear, oh dear, what an ending. Poor Lord Oatmeal(?) and poor me as his bride. What a terrible end to a life'."

(pans up to Gillian's face, eyes welling, while the child giggles to itself)

(camera cuts to shot of distant couple laying in a sunny clearing behind the trees)
Female: "Wonder there the others are?"
Male : "Shall we go and look for them?"
Female: "No. I expect they'll come to us."

(couple embrace. Camera cuts back to overhead shot of Gillian and Child still by the pond. Music starts.)

(female vocalist, uncredited.)

Well, when I'm a very lame woman(child laughs in distance)
And my steps are simple slow
When a forest floor is my own back door
Then perhaps I'll know

(camera pans back and upwards and credits roll)

Why a child has wings
Why the summertime sings
Why a tall house leans on my hilltop dreams
Why giants roar on the flannel shore
and why my colours fly.

Yes, when I'm a age old woman
And time lines up my brow
They'll tell me why my colour fly
I want to know it now

Yes, I want to know it now......

end transcript.

Click on the links below to read translations of Gillian Blake Bravo Magazine Articles

Thanks to Paul E for these two translations

Dora our Pride and Joy

Gillian Bravo 1974

Thanks to JM for the following translation

Gillian's Farm

Magazine/Newspaper Articles

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Christian Rodska

Christian Rodska played the supporting character of Ron Stryker, a rebellious biker sent to work at Follyfoot as a favour to his father to keep him out of trouble. Ron is good hearted but loves to make mischief and skive off work whenever possible. He's known to the local police and mixes with the local bad boys as well. Ron seems to know a lot of people, mostly from the more seedy side of society, but he has a strong streak of loyalty to Dora that sometimes conflicts with his actions. Ron appears to be roughly the same age as Steve, either 18 or 19, but that's unclear.

Christian was born on 5/9/1945 which made him 26 at the time of filming the Follyfoot series. Christian has had a 30 year career in British theatre, video plays, West end performances and TV series. He is also considered a premier voice actor for both radio plays and audio books, often working in partnership with Steve Hodson on several audio books narrations including:-

Death of the Tango (1990) by John Fletcher which received the Giles Cooper award in 1990
The Birdwheel (1993) by Geoffrey Parkinson - a BBC broadcast.
The Peer Gynt of Victoria Street (1994) by Geoffrey Parkinson

Christian Rodska Filmography IMDb website

Christian reading love poems in Royal Crescent Bath 2009

Thanks to Rena for the image

Magazine Articles

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TV and Film

2015 - Casualty - Heart Over Head - Morris Coyle

2015 - Churchill: When Britain Said No - Documentary - Churchill

2013 - Family Tree - Country Life - Graham Chadwick

2011 - Inside the Titanic - Captain Edward Smith

2011 - Doctors - Colin Thomas

2009 - Doc martin - Driving Mr McLynn - Stu Mackenzie

2005 - Doc Martin -In Loco - Stu Mackenzie

Thanks to Garej for the screen caps

1998 - The Round Tower - Dr Carr

1985 - Tenko Reunion - TV Movie - Duncan Fraser

Thanks Linda for the screen caps

1979 - In Loving Memory - Come Back Little Malcolm - Alec Crowther

1978 - The Tomorrow People - Achilles Heel Episode One - Cantor

1976 - The Likely Lads - Pump Attendant

Arthur English

Arthur English played the character nicknamed Slugger, a retired ex-circus boxer and worked with the Colonel for at least twenty years at Follyfoot Farm. Arthur was 61 when he filmed this TV series.

Born 9/5/1910 - Died 16/4/95 aged 85. Best known for his comedy role in TV series "Are You Being Served ?"

Arthur English Filmography IMDb website

He wrote an autobiography with Linton Mitchell titled "Through the Mill and Beyond" in 1989 with a foreword by Sir Harry Secombe.

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Arthur shows off his artistic talents

Desmond Llewelyn

A Brief Biography

Desmond Wilkinson Llewelyn was born in South Wales in 1914, the son of a coal mining engineer. In high school, he worked as a stagehand in the school's productions and then picked up sporadic small parts. His family would not give up their effort to prevent him from a life on stage, so an uncle who was a high ranking police officer arranged for Llewelyn to take the department's physical exam. "Thank God, I flunked the eye test, and they [the police] wouldn't take me. I suspect the inspector had a hangover because he also failed this other chap I knew, who went out the same day and passed the physical for the Royal Navy, which had a lot tougher test." After failing the police exam, Llewelyn thought about becoming a minister, realizing after a week-long retreat of quiet and meditation that the ministry "was definitely not for me." Llewelyn persevered in his acting quest, and was accepted to the Royal Academy for the Dramatic Arts in the mid 1930s. The outbreak of World War II in September 1939, halted his acting career, and Llewelyn was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the British army. He was assigned to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and was sent to France in early 1940. In a short time, his regiment was fighting the Germans, and Llewelyn's company was holding off a division of German tanks. Llewelyn explained that "eventually, the tanks broke through and many of us jumped into this canal and started swimming down it to the other side, figuring that our chaps were still over there. But the Germans were the only ones there and Llewelyn was captured, and held as a prisoner of war for five years. At one prison camp, the prisoners had dug a tunnel and were planning to escape the next morning. Llewelyn was down in the tunnel doing some maintenance work in preparation of the escape when the Germans found out about the tunnel and caught him down in it, a crime that earned Llewelyn 10 days in solitary, which Llewelyn called "a blessing of sorts. After spending every day of several years sleeping in a room with 50 other people, the quiet and privacy was rather nice." After the war, Llewelyn returned to London and revived his career, eventually being cast as his trademark Q in From Russia with Love (1963). Since 1963, Llewelyn has appeared as Q in every MGM/UA Bond film, except Live and Let Die (1973). Llewelyn was omitted from Live and Let Die *(1973) because producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli felt that too much was being made of the gadgets and they would play it down. Llewelyn said he "was quite disappointed" at being left out of Live and Let Die (1973). Fans, however, missed Q, and Llewelyn got a call shortly after the release of Live and Let Die (1973) telling him that he would be in the next Bond film, Man with the Golden Gun, The (1974).Llewelyn, who admits that his mechanical abilities in real life are virtually nil, is geared up for the next Bond movie. "I'd love to be in the next one," Llewelyn said. "Of course, if you consider my age, they should have put me out to grass a long time ago."

* Note: During the time Live and Let Die was being filmed, Desmond Llewelyn was absence from the filming of Follyfoot, whether or not the Live and let Die part of Q was actually filmed with him and later cut or not I have not been able to discover.

Other snippets:-

He appeared in the 'The Big Breakfast' in early December 1999.

He died after he was driving home from a booksigning to promote his autobiography in East Sussex and his car collided head-on with another.

Ironically, he admitted on Ireland's Gerry Ryan Radio Show in May 1999 that he, "Q" (aka Major Boothroyd), personally detested gadgets.

On why he disliked Americans: In World War II, Desmond was rescued from a German POW camp by an American GI. When he told the soldier he'd been there for five years, the American replied, "Aw, cut it out. War's only been on for three years", forgetting that it was only the United States that had been at war for three years. Upon telling his story to Ian Bulloch, an American stuntman on the set of Thunderball, Bulloch replied, "Maybe the Yank should've left you there!"

Attended almost every Bond premiere in Norway.

Died shortly after the release of 'The World is Not Enough'

Despite being the longest recurring actor in the 007 franchise, appearing in 17 films, his on screen time is only a little more than 30 minutes in total.

Llewelyn was not the first choice for the role of "Q." Actor Peter Burton played the role of Major Boothroyd (later known as "Q"), in Dr. No (1962), the first in the '007' series. Barton was unavailable when the second movie From Russia with Love (1963) was filmed. The part went instead to Llewelyn and remained his for 16 more productions until his death in 1999. The only other time Llewelyn did not play "Q" was in Live and Let Die (1973). Producers felt too much attention was being paid on the gadgetry so they downplayed it by cutting his role. However, audiences enjoyed the role of "Q" so much that Llewelyn was brought back indefinitely.

The DVD of "Doctor Who - Tomb Of The Cybermen" reveals that he was unsuccessfully sought for the role of Prof Parry (played by Aubrey Richards)

Personal Quotes:-

When asked by People Magazine, shortly before his death, how long he intended to continue with the Bond series: "As long as the producers want me and the Almighty doesn't."

"Yes, I know 'Q' is beloved. But, for God's sake, don't make him some kind of sentimental grandfather. That's what I am in real life."

Click on the link below to read Desmond's final interview

The Final Interview April 1999

Desmond Llewelyn Filmography IMBd website

Click images to enlarge