Life's a Cavalcade

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Cavalcade has been broadcast on at least three other ITV stations, Southern Television: 1966–1967, Westward: 1967–69 and Grampian TV also broadcast the series in the early 1970s and again the early 1980s. Back in the living room, when I suggest - judging from the photos on the wall - that his family is also one of his greatest achievements, Michael says I'm right. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by interview participants are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the History Project or any of its volunteers, employees or representatives. From Tuesday 1 May 1962 he was given his own nine-week record programme on the Scottish Home Service, That Reminds Me, in which, according to his producer Ben Lyons, he would "look at some of the more recent news, dip into vintage newspaper reports, add his own lighthearted comments, and illustrate the combined result with some records".

The couple married in 1946, when Michael was 19, and have been together since, through thick and thin. But a bit naive, I suppose, in those days, you know but ratings wise, I was always quite keen to look at ratings and I was always quite pleased to see that we held our own in most because we were put opposite things like the main picture on BBC on a Sunday afternoon or something like that, which took a lot of viewers away but it did very well to hold on to it. Michael leads the way to his spare room, a homage to his career, full of memorabilia and photographs. And I let people think that it was a talking lamp but my idea was that inside that lamp was a person and he started off as a Highlander and I used to talk like that into the thing and you know what I mean? For some unknown reason the boom seemed to have a feeling that I can move anywhere, do anything, this thing round my neck curtailed me and, funny, I wouldn't go forward!The trouble with it is including things like the phone service and so on, I want to talk to somebody and eventually I get somebody who's, perhaps English isn't their first language. Everybody didn't like him personally but that was one of those things that people didn't, but as a performer in front of the camera, beautiful! I sent them a bill which I didn't need to send and they sent me a letter back saying, "Oh, we're going to refund this because you shouldn't have paid this tax and phone this number". Anyhow, he came out and David Johnson was the Head of News at that particular time and he also was Deputy Controller and he said to David, "I've got Glen here, he's going to do the programme so we'll put him on a long-term contract. And I started to do commercials and I did a commercial for carpets, for refrigerators and Jack Radcliffe was actually doing them at the same time and one or two other people but it was a kind of one-off thing and from that I got in to STV.

But it wasn't the talking lamp, it was the genie inside it that I wanted to get, and I never got round to saying that that's what it was! Michael began his career as an entertainer on stage for the army and worked his way up with his many shows that encompassed his talent for comedy, in particular, impersonations.Later, when Michael went on to have a part in the 1950 classic Ealing film, The Blue Lamp, starring Jack Warner and Dirk Bogarde (Michael still has a copy of the original script), the director, Basil Dearden, would say to him, "Don't go anywhere, stay in London.

He became one of the regular cast of STV's first situation comedy, The Adventures of Francie and Josie, which ran over four series from 26 October 1962 to 8 August 1965. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.Glen, who now lives in Ayr with his wife Beryl, started his career in entertainment at the age of 17. Michael also made an uncredited appearance as "Larry" in the police drama The Blue Lamp in 1950; [1] he and his date witnessed the shooting of Jack Warner ( Dixon of Dock Green) as they entered a cinema. Older people often need a hand with some household chores like changing a lightbulb or cooking for themselves, so a nice gesture might be to take round an extra plate of hot home-cooked food. I was either an Arab or an old man or a drunkard or somebody with beards on and you never recognised me at all. And the taxi driver got out and he said, "I've taken some fares in my life but I've never taken a robot!