Arthur of the Britons

At the Compton Inn, we found cameraman Roger Pearce waiting for us. He and Oliver stood reminiscing for a while.



Jelly took some video. Roger mentioned that Jack Watson was the son of Vaudeville comedian, “Nosmo King”, and described how the comedian got his stage name.

Oliver remembered that Jack was in the army, and was a hard man.

Transcribed:

OT: I’ve just remembered that he [Jack Watson] didn’t get on very well with riding, so he had to put a cushion down the back of his trousers. He always said, ‘Go slow! Go slow!’ and we always shot him pulling up or riding off, and nothing in the middle – he preferred not to gallop off or canter off.

RP: I remember we had a director called Peter Sasdy, and the stuntman was Peter something.

OT: Brayham.

RP: With big pebble glass glasses [Peter Brayham], and we were doing a stunt where these guys were jumping out of a tree onto you guys … I think – and he kept building up and building up these boxes and boxes, and then he [Peter Sasdy] said, ‘Peter, can I have a word with you?’ He [Peter Brayham] said, ‘Yes, what?’ He said, ‘Are they jumping down, or stepping down?’ It made us laugh.”

Then we all found tables for lunch – mostly outside, as the weather was still fine.





Roger and Oliver sat together chatting, and Roger put Oliver back in touch with Maria Bisset (née Ford) who managed the horses and carriages back in the day, and who provided Oliver some accommodation following his injury and recovery.



I was told later, that some of the other customers who saw us wearing "Arthur of the Britons" 50th anniversary tee-shirts had thought we were commemorating a friend of ours who had died, named "Arthur"!

We checked maps, and then Tim took Mark on the back of his bike, to go to the village site. We followed on in cars. Oliver’s was in the lead this time, and I was a bit uncertain how far it was. We passed two houses, and I thought we’d gone too far, and had to stop to check with people in cars behind. Still, we got there in the end – it was further than I remembered – and parked on the side of the road.

When we got out, we found Mark there (Tim had left), and Oliver immediately recognised the area where his, Michael Gothard’s and Jack Watson’s caravans (actual caravans, not trailers!) had been, near the field entrance.



Looking out over the valley:
OT: All that background, and you don’t see any houses …



We walked down the hill to the field where the village had been situated, and I pointed out the ditch which had run through the village – which Oliver remembered.



Jelly took videos. Oliver spoke about the extras:

OT: … and they’d go berserk. One or two had to be - “Stop! Stop!” - but they’d carry on as if they’d lost their mind. It’s true. It’s pretty spectacular. One of them went completely berserk. Three people had to jump on him, hold him down. He lost it! He got, you know, the red mist yeah, one of the extras. With a spear. He wouldn’t stop! He wanted to murder it you know … ‘cause they were amateurs, they weren’t actors. But they all looked the part, they looked … and it’s good money, seven pounds fifty in those days, you know? That was good money. I think, when I was a drama student, I was given ten pounds a week to live on. And, er … people who were on grants were on … yeah, seven pounds fifty people … my drama school, yes, lived on seven pounds fifty a week, back in ’65 you could live on that. But then, you can get a beer and meat and two veg. in a pub for about half a crown. You’re all too young to remember that!

We had a look over the river, at the place where Oliver would have met with Cerdig.





Below: Oliver and Wendy. They had met once before, when she had visited her adopted brother, Michael Gothard, on location in 1972.



We walked further along the river bank, and through a private garden to reach the bridge.



Once on the other side, we went through a stable yard, and past a feisty-looking but very small pony, who stood watching us; Oliver observed that she was pregnant.



Then we got to the weir (for an old brass mill) which was known in the series as “The Giant’s Dam.” It featured in "In Common Cause."



Since our last visit, a platform had been erected in the middle of the dam, so we were able get different views of the area.



Roger Pearce remembered that to the left of the weir is a culvert, which features in the scene "The Pupil", in which Arthur kills Corin's father, Mordor, while Corin watches.





There was a big empty picture frame hanging in front of the platform, which had clearly been put there for wedding photos.



We spent quite a while sitting around here, and taking photos.



Below: Oliver and Jelly.



I commented that the weir looked quite small, compared to how it looked in the series. Oliver said that the dam would have been made to look much bigger by the use of low camera angles. He confirmed that it was a stuntman who jumped into the water during “In Common Cause”, because Michael didn’t like heights.

I told him about how Michael had been made to stand on the edge of a tall building with no safety equipment, by director Don Levy, when he starred in “Herostratus.” Oliver said “maybe they tricked it” (meaning, maybe he wasn’t really on the edge), but I said no, and that Don Levy was a bastard, but that it was due to this production that Michael had met Wendy’s dad.

We re-traced our steps, and as we went back past the pony, the owner of the farm, Melissa Warren, came to greet us. She reminded Oliver that in the episode of “Robin of Sherwood” in which he appeared, he leapt on the back of a horse ridden by a stunt double for Maid Marian – and she had been that stunt double!





Oliver’s character’s intent had been to make off with her. She said she was 18, and she had been terrified! She hadn’t been a proper stunt rider!



We took her photo, and thanked her for letting us see the weir. She said it had been used for her daughter’s wedding, and the photographer had suggested they might hire out the venue, but she’d decided it should just stay a private family place, where the kids and grand-kids could play.



Then we all returned to Wookey Hole Hotel, though a convoy was no longer needed.

In the car, Oliver said that the location scouts had done a really good job, finding this area, which had so much potential. I suggested that they found one – the area where “The Challenge” was filmed - and then discovered the others as a result.

Oliver mentioned that he’d met the actor Ken Hutchison who played Gawain later on in his career, and Ken had been depressed because he said “no one wants to hire me.” Oliver couldn’t understand it, as he considered Ken a fine actor.

He mentioned at some point, [1981/1982] that he’d been considered for/considering taking over the role of James Bond from Roger Moore. He said the Broccolis were really nice – he liked them – but he decided he didn’t want everything that went along with the role – the fact that he’d be associated with Bond forever, as happened to Connery and Moore, and has since happened to Daniel Craig – and with the whole circus that goes along with the franchise.

He has realised that acting can be soul-destroying, because you often spend days, weeks, months, living in hotels, and just waiting to deliver a few lines, while your life is passing you by. He has an agent who keeps trying to get him work, but he keeps rejecting it!



When we arrived back, we broke for a rest.

This photo is courtesy of camera operator, Roger Pearce, who says:

This shot is from our Woodchester Park location: me, operating the camera on the left, as one or two scallywags hurriedly exit the Long House, lake in background.



The "scallywags" are Morcant's men, who attack Arthur's village, only to find it deserted.

Cameraman Roger Pearce remembered filming "The Challenge" at a location near the Compton Inn, Compton Dando, on the River Chew, in Somerset. This is how the locations looked in May 2014. It's astonishing and heartening to see how little the landscape has changed since 1972.




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