It's podcast time once again and this time something a bit different as this podcast explores a BBC Kids TV show from the 1980's.
The chat can also be found on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
In this edition I chat with actor Joe Grossi. Way back in 1987 Joe played Hopkins, the butler for Lady Fox Custard (played by Carry On star Joan Sims) in the Children's BBC series Simon and The Witch. It was based around a series of books written by Margaret Stuart Barry and featured Simon (played by Hugh Pollard) and his best friend The Witch (played by Elizabeth Spriggs). The Witch would often create havoc with her magic spells. To the delight of the children that went to visit her and annoying teachers and authority figures. |
| Hugh Pollard as Simon and Elizabeth Spriggs as The Witch. |
Out of the twenty five episodes made over the two series, Hopkins appeared in almost all of them and became a favourite character with fans of the show. Hopkins would always switch from speaking with received pronunciation around Lady Fox Custard to his original cockney accent when around the children. Often helping them out with their schemes and joining in with the mischief. Especially with Lady Fox Custard's nephew Cuthbert (Played by Ilan Ostrove) who Hopkins would always help sneak off to visit the Witch and distract her ladyship.
Now if you're a regular listener you will know I normally only focus on UK Kids TV shows from the 90's and 00's as that's when I grew up. I don't normally cover 80's TV shows, however Simon and the Witch did have a repeat run on the now defunct satellite channel BBC Choice. I seem to recall it was the summer of 2000 I saw it and I instantly loved it, so much so I even bought a few of the books which I read over and over.
VHS copies of the episodes made their way on to Youtube in the late 2000's which gave me the opportunity to watch them again and then fast forward to 2018 when I was originally started this project up and a new facebook group called Simon and the Witch Memory Board appeared, run by none other than Joe himself. So I dropped a message asking if Joe would be interested in answering a few questions about the show, this was back when this project was going to be more of a blog and the podcasts hadn't been thought of. Joe replied back and agreed to and... I forgot to reply back! Ooops!
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| Joe as Hopkins. This image was used in the end credits of the show. |
During the summer of 2020, due to lockdown I was a bit bored one day and one of the things I was doing was going through a bunch of VHS tapes that I'd been given to look for any interesting content to digitise before throwing them away. On one tape from 1993 in an advert break was an advert for Argos featuring Joe. Sporting a white suit with the Argos logo emblazoned all over it. I decided to recontact the group and asked Joe if he had a copy to which it turns out Joe had copies of all the adverts he'd been in... except that one! So I digitised it and forwarded him the clip and off the back of this we got talking again about doing an interview and I said would you be happy to do a podcast and well, here it is!
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| Joe in a 1993 advert for Argos |
It's a wonderful discussion, I love Joe's story telling of his career and some wonderful anecdotes are shared about Simon and the Witch especially about working with Joan Sims and also Ilan Ostrove who unfortunately passed away in 1997 at the age of just 22. Joe also talks about what life is like being an actor and the various other cool things he's been in such as The Da Vinci Code and even starring alongside David Jason in a cigar advert!
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| Joe with Joan Sims who played Lady Fox-Custard. |
Oh and you no longer have to make do with ropey VHS copies of the show, as it was all released on DVD in 2018.
Joe's website can be found here.
Sit back and enjoy the chat!
