Out of Town - Jack Hargreaves. Good News

Neil Maidment · May 20, 2017

Excellent news from Simon Baddeley.

"Well! It's done, or should I say, we're at the start line for producing and re-producing more 'Out of Town' material.

Yesterday, the Managing Director of Network Distributing Ltd and I, put our signatures to a seven year Acquisition Agreement which guarantees the re-publication of all existing 'Out of Town' DVDs. (Unavailable since late 2015 except second hand, when I terminated the licence of the last publisher on grounds of insolvency).

Plus new material of my stepfather's along with work by his friend Oliver Kite that was made before and after 'Out of Town'.

Plus, and this is even more significant for me and others interested in Jack's work, the recovery of the 16mm films and 1/4" sound tapes of 'Out of Town' episodes that Jack stored in his shed at Raven Cottage, Dorset."

tigger · May 20, 2017

I have a box set of JH's out of town series and loved to watch his programs as a kid. I will be very interested in these vid's you mention incase they're different from the ones I already have.

Philip · May 20, 2017

Good stuff.

If they re-made out of town today I wondered who would be a good presenter for it.

...Ray Mears ?

tikka · May 20, 2017

tigger said:
I have a box set of JH's out of town series and loved to watch his programs as a kid. I will be very interested in these vid's you mention incase they're different from the ones I already have.

Same here, I also remember as a boy watching another series of Jacks' called " Country Boy ", is there any chance of this series being available.

103841 · May 20, 2017

Loved it as a kid and was disappointed if there wasn't any fishing in the episode.

Had a song at school about school dinners sung to the them tune.

Say what you will, school dinners make you ill..................

David Rogers 3 · May 20, 2017

tikka said:
Same here, I also remember as a boy watching another series of Jacks' called " Country Boy ", is there any chance of this series being available.

I used to love that series - A favourite recollection is from an episode where they were luring badgers out of their setts with the offer of "round, chocolate-covered sweets" - obviously Maltesers, but they weren't allowed to name any product on camera back in the mid-1960s!

barbelboi · May 20, 2017

That's good news Neil, I remember when they found the 'lost tapes' some years ago - hope it all goes well...........

David Rogers 3 · May 20, 2017

s63 said:
Say what you will, school dinners make you ill..................

We sang that too! I remember wondering why it was Davy Crockett who "died of shepherd's pie" and always insisted on being the only one singing "The last Headmaster" instead.

I suppose I was an awkward so-and-so even back then... ;-)

Peter Jacobs · May 20, 2017

Really good news to many of us of "a certain age" who remember Jack's laid back style of presentation.

lambert1 · May 20, 2017

I picked up one of the DVDs in a charity shop the other day. It has one of my favourite epsidodes with the orphaned kingfishers being hand reared. Wonderful stuff. Will watch for developments with interest.

robtherake · May 20, 2017

Philip said:
Good stuff.

If they re-made out of town today I wondered who would be a good presenter for it.

...Ray Mears ?

Perhaps not? Not from a river angler's viewpoint, at least, if this AT interview excerpt is anything to go by. I'm pretty sure he also denigrated anglers and angling on at least one UK-screened wildlife programme.

"I get really irritated because they’re constantly having a pop at canoeists and that really irritates me because I’m a keen canoeist. I can’t understand it because everywhere else you go in the world canoeists are fishermen and fishermen are canoeists. What is the problem here? A canoe is a great way for a fisherman to access the waterways. For some reason anglers are up in arms. Canoes are very quiet, they’re silent *the people who paddle them are incredibly sensitive to the environment and I would have thought that there was more in common between us, but for some reason we’ve got this silly situation which is largely due to financing access but I think we have to learn to be more tolerant of each other. I hope fishermen will come to have a better understanding of canoeists because it’s so suited to what we do it would be nice to think that these two different activities could learn to learn from each other."

* but the ones who aren't have badly tarnished the image of the rest.

lambert1 · May 20, 2017

Bernard Cribbins for me.

Neil Maidment · May 20, 2017

tikka said:
Same here, I also remember as a boy watching another series of Jacks' called " Country Boy ", is there any chance of this series being available.

If you do Facebook here's the page with all the information:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/JackHargreaves/

And this is the precis of what Simon is aiming to do:

"It has been tricky to recover original recordings of 'OOT'.

In 2012, after much research by Jack’s stepson Simon Baddeley, Simon Winters, the classic television organisation Kaleidoscope, and the archive expert David King, 34 episodes of Out Of Town – not seen since broadcast in 1980/81 – came to light and became available on DVD. 28+ hours of Out Of Town are presented for the first time since broadcast 35 years ago.

But then in September 2015 Delta Leisure, retailer of these DVDs went into liquidation. I terminated my retailing licence on grounds of insolvency, and am retrieving the company's remaining OOT assets. But for pre-bought DVDs my family are the sole retailers of OOT DVDs.

Jack always intended these for VHS and DVD. They include earlier film by Stan Bréhaut, but a new commentary was added by Jack sitting in his real shed and front room at Raven Cottage in Dorset, 5 years after the end of Southern TV. For 26 years these were the only versions of OOT available; put together by my stepfather and a team led by Steve Wade in 1986, using archived silent location film by Jack's cameraman Stan Bréhaut, to which the team added sound effects.

Until the 2012 unearthing of 34 original recordings, the only authentic material from C4'S 'Old Country' or STV's original 'Out of Town' that I could stream were ones sent by viewers who made home recordings as the programmes went out.

We also now know that the the British Film Institute hold copies of the successor to 'OOT', 'Old Country", handed to them by Channel 4. The BFI also have episodes of 'OOT'. 'Old Country' has been retrieved by David Knowles, colleague of Jack's, and are being sold by him http://jackscountry.co.uk/tag/dave-knowles/"

xenon · May 20, 2017

Peter Jacobs said:
Really good news to many of us of "a certain age" who remember Jack's laid back style of presentation.

"Laid back"? positively horizontal! Loved Jack-dont think they make presenters like that anymore.

binka · May 20, 2017

robtherake said:
Perhaps not? Not from a river angler's viewpoint, at least, if this AT interview excerpt is anything to go by. I'm pretty sure he also denigrated anglers and angling on at least one UK-screened wildlife programme.

"I get really irritated because they’re constantly having a pop at canoeists and that really irritates me because I’m a keen canoeist. I can’t understand it because everywhere else you go in the world canoeists are fishermen and fishermen are canoeists. What is the problem here? A canoe is a great way for a fisherman to access the waterways. For some reason anglers are up in arms. Canoes are very quiet, they’re silent *the people who paddle them are incredibly sensitive to the environment and I would have thought that there was more in common between us, but for some reason we’ve got this silly situation which is largely due to financing access but I think we have to learn to be more tolerant of each other. I hope fishermen will come to have a better understanding of canoeists because it’s so suited to what we do it would be nice to think that these two different activities could learn to learn from each other."

* but the ones who aren't have badly tarnished the image of the rest.

Well said, that man.

fishing4luckies · May 21, 2017

robtherake said:
Canoes are very quiet, they’re silent *the people who paddle them are incredibly sensitive to the environment

Not on the River Medway they aren't. You can normally hear them coming a mile away and they NEVER worry about anglers lines in the water.

Towards the end of last season I had one get his paddle wrapped around my line and rather than help me free it he got extremely angry and tried to pull the rod in. He was eventually dissuaded (19 stone of angry fat tattoed fisherman leaping into the shallows convinced him to change his mind).

Out of Town - Jack Hargreaves. Good News

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