talking stock

Dear reader, I fear that with my last article, I may have pushed your goodwill too far. Moreover, I may yet do so again before the end of this article. So before you click away and resolve to never to read another word of this dumb website, let’s quickly dive into some of the good stuff I’ve been promising.

So, where exactly does the stock footage used in the end credits of Hi-de-Hi! come from? Well, let’s throw ourselves straight into some Pathé archive, shall we? And immediately, something rather exciting makes itself obvious…

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hi-de-hi!, talking stock

Last time, I talked at length about the stock footage used in the opening titles of Hi-de-Hi! They took us on a whirlwind tour of important news stories from the late 50s/early 60s, and do a beautiful job of setting up the mood of the show before Ted even mentions his latest scheme.

The closing credits take a different tack. We’re still in newsreel land, but they’re not of important news stories of the day. Instead, it’s a trip through actual footage of holiday camps from the period. It’s the perfect goodbye to each episode, and again adds a real sense of verisimilitude to the show. It also seems to look like a gift to any researcher tracing down the origin of the clips used; surely, if anything, clips of people having fun would be even more delightful to wallow in?

Sort of. In fact, I’ve had a few problems researching this footage, which makes it rather more irritating than I’d hoped. You may eventually get a dopamine hit with this one, but it’ll take a while to get there. Before all that, we have to deal with some exciting sitcom admin. And the major reason for this admin is that unlike the opening titles, which stay the same for every single episode, the footage used in the end credits keeps changing.

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hi-de-hi!, talking stock

Out of all the many great things about Hi-de-Hi!, one of my very favourites is how the show achieves such an achingly specific sense of period.

Part of that is the beautiful location filming, at Warner’s Holiday Camp in Dovercourt. Part of that is because Jimmy Perry lived and breathed this world, rather than spending his whole life indoors attempting to become a writer. And part of that is the brilliant theme music, which – much like the Dad’s Army theme – sounds like something which was sung at the time.

But alongside the strains of “Holiday Rock” is another, less-talked about means of establishing exactly when we are. Look past the close-up of Paul Shane’s face in the opening titles, and stock footage – mostly from the late 50s – plays in the background. A quadrant of key historical events of the time. And that same footage was used from Hi-de-Hi!‘s pilot in 1980, right through to its last episode in 1988.¹

So, where is this footage from? The answer is contemporary newsreels, mostly from the late 1950s, from outfits like Pathé and Visnews. And helpfully, the paperwork for the Hi-de-Hi! pilot lists every single one of the newsreels used, along with their catalogue number. So I thought it would be fun to try and trace every newsreel clip used in the opening titles, and find the full versions of each online. That, to me, seems like a worthwhile way of spending my life. I presume, if you’re still reading this article, that reading such a thing seems a worthwhile way of spending your life too.

First, the good news. I’ve managed to identify every single historical event depicted in the opening titles, and trace a good number of the original newsreels, especially when it comes to the Pathé material. On the other hand, even with the original paperwork, some of this material has been impossible to find. Exactly why is a bit of a story in itself, and I’ll explain along the way.

So take a trip with me now to 1959…

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1. The opening was amended in 1984 to accommodate Simon Cadell leaving the show, but the background footage remained the same. ↩

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hi-de-hi!, talking stock