“I Know How Much You Like It at Ross…”

Right, after my last piece about mocked-up newspapers in sitcoms, time to get on with some real work. Anyone got any suggestions? How about friend of the site Rob Keeley, have you got anything?

“If you’ve still got an appetite for mocked-up newspapers, John, I saw a subject for you the other day in the Terry and June episode ‘The Raft Race’. The end credits play over a local newspaper from Ross-on-Wye, telling about Terry’s river antics, and there’s a photo, headline and two quite convincing paragraphs, then the article suddenly turns into the original one, about drink-driving! They obviously thought no one would read any further. I did.”

Oh, alright then. Let’s do one more.

The Terry and June episode in question, indeed called “The Raft Race”¹, was first broadcast on the 14th November 1983. Location filming took place on the 13th and 15th of April, and it was recorded in studio on the 14th May, exactly six months before transmission.

The episode sees the pair take a trip away from Surrey, and into the dark, jungle-like depths of, erm, Herefordshire.

TERRY: Oh, by the way June, would you press the trousers of my brown suit for me?
JUNE: Well of course, but can they wait until Friday when I do the ironing?
TERRY: If you want me arrested for walking around Ross-on-Wye in me shirt tails, yes.
JUNE: You’re going to Ross-on-Wye?
TERRY: Yes, Sir Dennis has arranged an important business meeting for me on Friday, and I’m travelling down tomorrow afternoon.

I wonder if anybody has figured out exactly what percentage of Terry and June episodes involve Terry attempting to impress his boss.

Anyway, to cut a short story even shorter, Terry ends up embarrassing himself in the eponymous raft race, and gets in the local paper. We don’t have to squint at the screen in order to read it – the programme helpfully makes it full-frame over the end credits:

The title of the newspaper isn’t difficult to work out either. This is The Ross Gazette, the real local paper of Ross-on-Wye. And luckily, there is a digital archive of the paper available online. With the date of the paper clearly in view – it was the edition published on the 28th April 1983, a couple of weeks after the location filming – it doesn’t take too long to find the original edition of the paper which the prop was based on:

So, the story about the raft race was originally a piece about the mayor of Ross-on-Wye writing to Mrs. Thatcher, asking for the town to be considered for special development status. Part of this story is visible in the episode as broadcast; the line: “Mr Littlefield was prompted to write to Mrs. Thatcher…” can be seen at the bottom.

But hang on – there’s something odd here. The top of the prop in Terry and June is the made-up story about the raft race, and the bottom is about the mayor; but what about the middle section?

“The tightening up of the drink drive laws will be accompanied from Friday next week by a new, quicker and easier method of breath testing”

The answer can be found elsewhere on the front page, with a point towards a story on Page 5 about drink-driving. Sure enough, if we turn to Page 5 itself:

Clearly, they needed some extra text from somewhere, and so cut-and-pasted the second paragraph from this story onto the front page as well. Indeed, to make it fit, they rudely cut off the sentence halfway through.²

It seems to me that there was some obvious miscommunication within the production team about this prop. If the person who made it knew it was going to be full-frame for the whole length of the end credits, I would suggest they would have written a bit more of the fake story at the top. I’m not just saying this because of today’s large televisions and easy freeze-frames. Eagle-eyed viewers could have spotted this piece of nonsense right back in 1983.

*   *   *

As you might expect, there are a few more mentions of Terry and June around this period in The Ross Gazette.

Firstly, a mention of the upcoming filming, in the 21st April 1983 edition:

‘Terry and June’ show
Terry Scott and June Whitfield spent some days at Ross and Symonds Yat last week filming scenes for a new series of the “Terry and June” show.

One of the scenes involved a ramshackle collection of rafts.

We know from the paperwork that filming took place on the 13th and 15th of April, so this story is accurate. Hey, you’d be amazed at the things which don’t tie up nicely when writing these kind of pieces.

Next up, a celebratory piece published on the front page of the 17th November 1983 edition, just three days after the episode aired:

Terry and June Did Ross Proud
Publicity worth thousands and thousands to the tourist industry of Ross came from an unlikely source on television on Monday night. And, we were delighted to see, ‘The Ross Gazette’, also received a ‘plug’.

The top B.B.C. comedy programme, “Terry and June” starring June Whitfield and Terry Scott, was devoted to a business trip by Terry to Ross and his disastrous participation in a raft race on the Wye.

The opening sequences saw June persuading Terry to allow her to accompany him to the town. He of course, succumbed, remarking, “I know how much you love Ross”.

There were some exquisite shots of the town taken from the riverside and the scenes shown of the Wye and Symonds Yat did much to recommend the area to the programme’s millions of viewers.

A number of locals appeared as extras in the sequence showing crowds cheering Terry plus raft at Ross Rowing Club.

Terry actually says “I know how much you like it at Ross”, but near enough. And it’s fair to say that there certainly were some “exquisite shots” in the episode:

You might think that isn’t Terry Scott in the last picture. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Regardless, the above, combined with the end credits featuring a full-frame shot of The Ross Gazette, must surely have pleased everyone working on the paper. And that’s where you would really expect the story to end.

Not quite.

Three weeks later in the 8th December 1983 edition, the “Notes by the Way” column by “Wyecider” had this to say:

Publicity Blessed
A few weeks ago, Terry and June (bless their hearts) gave Ross in their popular television programme a wealth of publicity that would have cost the town tens of thousands to buy commercially.

A one-off benefit one might say, but typical of the publicity Ross gets gratuitously from the media from time to time.

Planned publicity is by no means lacking and the association commendably takes a full part in this. A friend who went last weekend to the World Travel Market at Olympia tells me that one of the first stands she came across was that of the Heart of England Tourist Board which included an attractive section by the Wyedean Tourist Board and Ross Hoteliers’ and Caterers’ Association.

In “Gardeners’ Question Time” in March, Ross was described as the “Garden of Eden” and as recently as the end of October another BBC team was about the town and district taking shots of the autumn tints for the programme “Day Out.”

Some of the results of all this could be seen in Ross last summer when for week after week the streets were crowded with holidaymakers.

In the light of all this and more it has been puzzling for someone on the sidelines to read the open letters directed by the local Hoteliers’ and Caterers’ Association to the Mayor about the town lacking the means to sell its wares in the market places both at home and abroad.

Of course one can never have too much of a good thing and there is no limit to the amount that could be spent on extolling the glories of Ross.

But money has to come from somewhere and increased local authority support for the tourist industry can only come from yet heavier rates – which are already a mighty imposition on hotels, as well as on the rest of us.

It is perhaps worth clarifying that the word “gratuitously” surely isn’t meant in terms of “without apparent reason”; in this context, it means “free of charge”.

Two weeks later, on the 22nd December 1983, the letters page had a response to the above column from G.C. Keay. Who? Vice Chairman of the Ross Hoteliers’ and Caterers’ Association, that’s who.

“Sir, In your article in ‘Notes by the Way’ on December 8th, you refer to the ‘gratuitous’ publicity that our area has been fortunate enough to receive over the past few years and go on to comment that you are “puzzled… to read the open letters… about the town lacking the means to sell its wares in the market places.”

Firstly may I correct your impression that the publicity to which you refer, on T.V., radio and in national publications, welcome as it is, is entirely gratuitous or accidental. Much of this excellent exposure is as a result of the efforts put in by the Ross and District Hoteliers and Caterers Association and the Wyedean Tourist Board over the past 10-15 years, in making contact with the media and encouraging them to visit our beautiful part of the country. To quote just two specific examples. The “Terry and June” programme was made in Ross because the producer chose to come here to make it as a result of earlier visits to the town, when he had been made to welcome and comfortable he had become a ‘fan’ of Ross and a personal friend of people in the hotel industry. Also BBC-TV paid their first visit to Ross in 1981 at the invitation of the hoteliers to film the Charity Pancake Race which the association had organised, and since that time have been back several times.”

ANOTHER BBC SCANDAL.

To be fair, I doubt there’s anything too awful here, and the aims of businessmen who want people to visit Ross-on-Wye, and programme-makers who want somewhere nice to film, just happen to align nicely. Certainly, nothing in Terry and June suggests the programme has been ludicrously bent out-of-shape in order to serve as a half-hour promo for the town. But it does seem to be a statement of fact that the choice of Ross-on-Wye for the series was nudged along at least a little by business interests in the area.³

Anyway, the important point is: how have I managed to write this entire article without a video of Terry Scott falling in the water?

There you go.

With thanks to Rob Keeley for the initial inspiration for this piece, and Tanya Jones for the usual editorial oversight and fixing my stupid errors.

1. Other places give the episode different names; Wikipedia, for instance, calls it “In the Navy”. However, the paperwork for the episode clearly states the episode title as “The Raft Race”, so this was its actual title during production. ↩

2. This cut part of the sentence includes a rouge apostrophe – it should be “drivers'”, not “driver’s”. Tsk. ↩

3. It is quite amusing that the plot of this particular Terry and June episodes is about Terry… erm, promoting a Ross-on-Wye business. But in this case, it’s “Bell’s Kitchens”, an entirely fictitious one. ↩

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newspaper props, terry and june