Was watching Silent Witness the other night and witnessed the brutal murder of an actual broadcasting legend.
Even though it was obviously staged for dramatic purposes I found the sight of Derek Griffiths lying dead in the boot of a car with a gunshot wound to the head strangely upsetting.
My childhood has been violated.

Any other TV legends from your childhood who’ve been tarnished for you?

(except Jimmy Saville / Rolf Harris / various other 70’s tv sex offender types)

Note to SaxonRider – Derek Griffiths isn’t actually dead.

Ant & Dec.

Years ago there was a film called ‘Stella Does Tricks’ – I think it was the next film Kelly MacDonald did after trainspotting. A film about young women being coerced into prostitution by a guy who was a sort of pimp / sadistic abuser who took on the role of a creepy uncle to the girls.

James Bolam played the creepy uncle pimp and it was so disturbing because you got this sense of being betrayed by the harmless friendliness and trustworthiness of every other character he’d played before that.

Afterwards I was explaining to some friends that they should see if for that reason – the dissonance of having this violent manipulative psychopath played by a harmless, lightly comic character from your past and they were looking at me non plussed…. because every time I thought I was saying ‘James Bolam’ the words that came out of my mouth we ‘Jim Bowen’ 🙂

Peter Allen. Who was 70 yesterday I was amazed to learn, and he’s still going strong.

Note to SaxonRider – Derek Griffiths isn’t actually dead.

Thankfully, I read this just before I pressed ‘Send Post’ on my latest thread.