Hold the front page..., Teesdale Mercury

Hold the front page...

Jan 9, 2008

KAYE JEMMESON looks back at a long-forgotten prime-time television drama series inspired by life at a small rural weekly newspaper that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Teesdale Mercury

If you were asked to name a television series about a journalist set in County Durham I'm taking an educated guess (scientifically based on several intense straw polls) that you would give the answer Harry aka "the one in Darlington with Michael Elphick".

However, from readers of the Teesdale Mercury, I would expect a different answer.

Cast your minds back to the early eighties - the autumn of 1983 to be exact. A new series had just been assigned as the flagship Friday night programme on ITV. It was called The Outsider and it was a drama based on the events of a local newspaper office called the Micklethorpe Messenger.

However, the Micklethorpe Messenger wasn't a real newspaper. It took its inspiration from a certain rural weekly newspaper set in the heart of a market town in the North East of England - oh, and the newspaper which came out on a Wednesday, had its own printworks too. Ring any bells..?

Although it's not a generally well-known fact, this prime-time programme was based on our very own Teesdale Mercury and not only that but all the main characters in it were based on real people inspired by the paper's then editor, Jim McTaggart.

The story goes that TV scriptwriter, Michael J Bird, (who had enjoyed ratings success with the popular BBC series, The Lotus Eaters) had seen the Teesdale Mercury featured on BBC One programme, Nationwide. The following day, Jim McTaggart received a phone call from Bird saying he was planning a series about a weekly newspaper and would like to meet up - Bird was so keen to meet Jim he travelled up to Barnard Castle the next day. 

It seems that Jim McTaggart and the Teesdale Mercury were the inspiration Bird was looking for to transform a vague idea into a television series. Jim provided Bird with everything he needed to make the series ‘real'. He gave him a genuine insight into how the newspaper ran including the fact that Jim had to deliver the papers himself in his own car (something we still do today by, the way!). He told him about the characteristics of significant people in the locality and true anecdotes that he had experienced at the paper.

"They were all based on people I had introduced him to or told him about," said Jim.

"For instance, we had a grumpy old printer who became Reuben Flaxman. I also had a mate who was a public relations man at Glaxo. When I was with Michael we met him in the street and I introduced him - he then became the inspiration for Donald Harper, a PR man for CorVol pharmaceutical. Lord Barnard, a director of the paper, became Lord Wrathdale and so on."

Even the man who started the Mercury off in 1854, Reg Atkinson, appeared in the series as John Wesley Banner - christened so by Jim McTaggart because of the connections between Barnard Castle and the Methodist church.

The Mercury became the Messenger and Barnard Castle became Micklethorpe - the name probably inspired by Mickleton, of course.

Of course, dramatic licence prevailed and there, among the every day comings and going of the real Teesdale Mercury, were intriguing plotlines, family mysteries, romance, and of the essential ingredient to any rural drama - the unearthing of murky and scandalous skeletons.

The stars of the show were big names in TV drama - John Duttine (Day of the Triffids, Who Dares Wins) played editor Frank Sculley, Norman Escher (Minder, George & Mildred) played Donald Harper and British treasure, Joan Hickson played Lady Wrathdale.

The first episode saw Frank Scully passing through Micklethorpe... or so he thought! But his arrival sparked off an explosion of jealousy and vengeance which as an outsider makes him vulnerable. What followed was a plotline that was a hybrid of Emmerdale and Dallas!

To get a feel for the show's inspiration, cast and crew visited the Mercury's offices but because the production costs would have been huge in Teesdale, the show ended up being shot in Knaresbrough, closer to the Leeds studios. But if, like me, you've been in the Mercury's offices, you will see that the programme got the style of our editorial office and printworks almost exactly right.

One of Teesdale Mercury's most distinctive characteristics is that it prints the newspaper in house and to stay true to the paper's feel the Micklethorpe Messenger was also printed on site. As the process is unique, actors, including Michael Sheard who was at the time also playing the inimitable Mr Bronson in Grange Hill (to the delight of Jim's daughters), visited the print works to understand how the place runs.

The Mercury even printed a few hundred extra copies each week for a while changing its masthead to Micklethorpe Messenger and adding in some new headlines to fit in with the series' scripts. The recreated issues were taken to Knaresbrough to appear in the show along with other items including two ridiculously heavy lead pages because the paper was printed by hot metal back then.

The Mercury even sneaked into a scene itself when Flaxman the printer was going through the archives. Jim said: "Even some of our advertisers were on the Micklethorpe Messenger's front page, companies like Addisons auction house."

One memorable incident that people in the area might remember is when a local garage owner had a large amount of illicit petrol and was tipped off that excise officials were coming to visit him. To escape any repercussions the man poured all the petrol down the drains and the whole town stunk of petrol for weeks. Jim had told Bird about this and it featured in an episode.

Unfortunately, the series was short lived - so it never really put Barnard Castle on the map.

Yorkshire TV were happy with the series, so much so that they altered the last episode so that it was open-ended and the storyline could continue through to a second series, but it seems that John Duttine's decision to leave put a stop to it coming back to TV screens.

The programme was not a massive success, although millions tuned in every week, but it remains a piece of little-known Teesdale history - even if it wasn't actually filmed in Teesdale. Let's face it - it's not everyday the town you live in becomes the main feature of a TV series. Who knows, it could have been the next Heartbeat!

And to all prospective scriptwriters out there, the workings of a newspaper office would make a fantastic television programme, but of course, there's no scandal to be found here these days... honest!

 
For more information about The Outsider and Michael J Bird, visit the website www.mjbird.org.uk run by Dave Rice whose assistance was invaluable when writing this feature.