Murphy's Mob (Puffin Books)

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There's the lively "Aeroplane Food" "Soho So Good" and a song called "Problem" (which Holton candidly admitted, "sounded like one") as well as the slower and sincerely sung "I Need A Drink". Equally lovely is the mesmeric "Fade Away; Holton's haunting performance underscored with a muted paramilitary beat, followed by the debut album title-cut "Shooting The Singer Is No Way To Stop The Opera". It's another slow almost grandiose number and maybe the best medium for the vocalist's plaintive rasp.

Cassidy provided a lot of the show’s most memorable comedic scenes and provided almost a comedy double act in his scenes with his foil, policeman’s son ‘Wurzel’ Glossop. His last screen role, as a prison inmate making claims of brutality by wardens, was in The Bill in 1999. As a teenager growing up in Thatcher’s Scotland of the 1980’s, you needed as much joyous TV escapism as you could get and it didn’t come much better than rushing home from school twice a week to watch Murphy’s Mob, to see their latest scrapes and escapades, which of course were always more exciting than your own! Murphy's Mob is a British children's television series, created and written by Brian Finch which was produced and directed by David Foster for Central Television, and screened in the UK on ITV for four series between 1982 and 1985. The theme tune was sung by Gary Holton, of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet fame.

The Sweeney

If tonight's momentum can be maintained over the month's to come then Gary Holton should get a second shot at the kind of success that eluded his last, turbulent incarnation. Poseur's night at the Nashville" as the waggish Holton christened it. This evening saw the return of the one time Heavy Metal Kid supremo (that group now one year's rust encrusted) on a new year with a new band.

The series featured Ken Hutchison as Mac Murphy, who takes charge as manager of a struggling fictional Third Division football club, Dunmore United, and a group of young supporters of the club whose day-to-day troubles included attempts to set up a junior supporter's club and clubhouse within the stadium. [1] Cast [ edit ] Most of the second rape sequence was cut, and it was only 31 years later that the film was given a certificate with the full scene reinstated (although, through a loophole, it had been available uncut on video for several years during the 1980s). And so went the opening theme tune to one of my favourite childhood programmes and one of my favourite football related dramas ever – MURPHY’S MOB. Of the kid actors, Boxer was meant to be the main star. Played by Keith Jayne, who had been a star previously as the lead in ITV’s Stig of the Dump, Boxer was joined by characters such as Mugsy Moran, Pacman, The Hulk, Prof and girls Charlie and Hannah.For those of you who remember Wurzel and the series as fondly as myself, we have a treat in store, as AFTN caught up with Lewis Stevens who played Wurzel and chatted to him about his time on the series and what he’s been doing since. You can read that HERE.

Hutchison himself was football-mad, regularly playing in goal for Dennis Waterman’s charity celebrity team – and breaking a leg in a 1983 game. Such was his friendship with the Sweeney star that he lent him his Scottish home when Waterman left his wife for the actress Rula Lenska, to help them to escape from the media glare. Paying tribute, fellow Leslie resident, actor and playwright Micheal Kelly described Ken as “Leslie’s most famous son”. Ken Hutchison, who has died aged 72, was an actor best known for taking tough-guy roles on screen – and enjoying a hard-living, hard-drinking lifestyle off it.LS: I’ve been really pleased with the reaction to the clips that are up on YouTube – it seems to have stirred a lot of memories. I think Wurzel was a likeable character with a good heart – he was always trying to persuade the adults to do things, but in a way that made them think it was their idea. He was often getting into scrapes and had some good comedy moments, so I guess he was good fun to watch. The show is definitely long overdue a DVD release. In the years that have passed we could only live with our vague memories of Auf Wiedersehen Pet’s Gary Holton’s punky theme tune, the storylines and the childhood wonders of why we never had such a cool clubhouse for young fans at East Fife. The theme tune still really holds up as strong today.

The characters in the show were varied, as was their acting experiences prior to the show and since. Holton was frontman with the Heavy Metal Kids for most of their five year career, prior to their official break-up last year. SInce then, he's been sorting out his future plans and attempting to get it together with various musicians while keeping the wolf from the door by taking several small film roles and TV ads. Wurzel’ Glossop was one of the main, and most memorable characters, from the ITV children’s TV show Murphy’s Mob. Unusually, the combination of Hutchison’s hard-man reputation and a charm that often filtered through, led him to be cast as the brooding, tormented Heathcliff in the five-part 1978 BBC adaptation of Wuthering Heights. His move to appear in front of audiences, at the neighbouring Playhouse, came in 1967 when he met the actor John Neville, its artistic director. “We both got drunk in the bar late one night,” recalled Hutchison, “and he shouted, ‘You think acting’s easy. Well, try it!’ ”

A year later he appeared alongside Hollywood star Robert Mitchum in Wrath of God, striking up a friendship that lasted until Mitchum’s death in 1997.