Wonder if Jack ever met up?

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Mark
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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Mark »

Olly wrote:Just been looking at a site by Simon Baddeley - Jack Hargreaves step-son.
Simon is a member of this forum.
Mark (Administrator)

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where you find only elder trees, nettles and dreams. (BB - Denys Watkins-Pitchford).

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Gurn
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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Gurn »

Shaun Harrison wrote:
Stathamender wrote: The venue was the 'Sand Spit' pitch at 'a private lake in Bedfordshire' - anyone have any idea where that might have been?
Rackley Hill, better known later for its catfish. http://www.lbac.co.uk/


copied from their site...

Open May 1st - March 15th

Rackley Hills lake is situated on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard, close to the by pass. Entry is via the access road to Grundfos Pumps. The lake is an old sand quarry, disused for many years it has matured into an attractive lake. Despite the surrounding factory units anglers can feel as if they are in a countryside setting.
The lake varies in depth from two feet to twelve feet. There is a small amount of weed growth in the margins and little elsewhere. The lake is well known for its catfish stocks which currently reach 56lb. There are numerous fish in the 30 and 40lb range. The lake also contains a good head of carp, some of which have been caught to 33lb. Recently the lake was stocked with fast growing Simmonds mirror carp at 4lb-5lb. Last year some of these fish were caught at 15lb-17lb which indicates an impressive growth rate.
There are large stocks of roach and bream in the lake. Pike are present but do not grow to any great size. Anglers may park along one side of the lake and walk a short distance to their swim. Do not park close to the Grundfos Pumps gates and block them!! Anglers wishing to night fish must apply for a place on a night syndicate. Members must leave the water in the evening at the time stated in the club membership booklet. Three rods may be used on this water. There are no bait bans or tackle limits. We do suggest that anglers fishing for catfish use at least 15lb line and appropriate rods. Rackley Hills lake is owned by Leighton Buzzard Angling Club. The lake is open from May 1st to March 15th.
This is a lovely lake now Shaun. As I write from my office, it is just a couple of hundred yards away. I was the bailiff for a few years and the lake has matured into a little slice of paradise.
Some nice carp in there now, and the 'nuisance' Woburn bred catfish, approaching 70lb now.
I did hear a tale that the Taylor brothers witnessed a UFO on their way back from fishing Rackley Hills..Would love to know the details. Someone suggested the full story was in a copy of Waterlog
but I've never been able to track it down.

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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Nobby »

Mark wrote:
Olly wrote:Just been looking at a site by Simon Baddeley - Jack Hargreaves step-son.
Simon is a member of this forum.


Is he by jingo!


Well please pass along to him how much I have enjoyed the 'Lost' DVDs and all his uploads for some years now and also how grateful I am that he persevered, as I can't find his usual username sibad in out members list.

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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Stathamender »

Just been looking at a site by Simon Baddeley - Jack Hargreaves step-son.
Was this his blog, Democracy Street, at http://democracystreet.blogspot.fr/? Or was it this page http://www.outoftown-dvd.co.uk/jack-hargreaves/ on the site which sells the Out of Town DVDs and belongs to something called the Delta Leisure Group which acquired the rights to them a few years back?

The later has an interesting note by Simon, part of which runs:
He’d focused ..... on what was happening in and to the countryside and, to his surprise he would say later, made it into a best-selling TV series – Out of Town. I was bemused that this savagely witty sometimes scathing cosmopolitan parent, manager and organisational politician had, on the box, become a gentle voiced avuncular bloke in a shed, his beard and hair whitening over the years. He made it look easy.

It took me a few decades to grasp how far it wasn’t; how meticulously crafted was his writing, and why the person who spoke on the tele’ about the changing countryside on Friday evenings remarked to an interviewer in the 1980s “I didn’t sleep on Thursday night for twenty years”.
This seems to me to go to the heart of one of the themes we've been discussing here and explains the contradiction between an accomplished public relations man and presenter with over 30 years experience, described by a colleague as 'the best spieler I ever knew' and someone who could strike the young Nobby as having failings as a professional presenter that were obvious even to a child.

It's the difference between Jack Hargreaves and 'Jack Hargreaves'. What we see on Out of Town is essentially a performance by Jack Hargreaves in the role of 'Jack Hargreaves' that he has created for himself. There's an influential school of sociology members of which argue that significant parts of human social life should be viewed as performance (their founding document is discussed here: http://sociology.about.com/od/Works/a/P ... y-Life.htm) or, at the least, better understood through theatrical metaphors, and that such situations are inevitable and unavoidable. And, as Dave Burr observed early on here: it's not reality we're discussing here it's TV. TV programmes are essentially conscious artefacts deliberately designed, made and edited to convey specific intended impressions, meanings and messages. The shed is, after all, a studio set.

The norm of presentation is slick and everything to plan but 'Hargreaves', with his fluffs and stumbles, runs counter to that. I can't help but feel that to do it this way was a conscious choice to go against the grain (and indeed all the principles of his work up to then), he'd already seen it could be successful on How (I also sometimes wonder if he was at all influenced by Tommy Cooper). Seen that way it raises the paradoxical possibility that it's actually the bits that go wrong that are 'faked', that is deliberately staged that way. Certainly we can't conclude simply from the fact that mistakes and mishaps are included that everything we might need to know is also there, that there has been no economy with the actualite. This may well be what some (other) sociologists call: Fabricating Authenticity.

In fact there almost certainly wasn't, that there's nothing there comparable to the sweary Scottish sleb-chef sea fishing expedition, only in reverse, not least because there wasn't any need to. And, in the end, that doesn't matter anyway, what matters is whether or not the programmes and performance entertain, even move, you. And for many people they obviously did and continue to do so. That's all one needs to know.
Iain

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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Hamburger »

Well put, Stathamender. Nothing to be added exept congratulations for a very interesting post.
I said goodbye to what I knew and embraced the ways of old, with it taking on the attitude that big isn't best.

Stuart Harris, 'From Carbon to Cane'

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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Hamburger »

Jack's stepson, Simon Badderly forgot his username to this forum himself. He asked me to point you people towards the public OOT with JH pages, where there's a vivd exchange about Jack and his TV programmes. https://www.facebook.com/groups/JackHar ... ts&fref=ts
His biographer Paul Peacock is also a member there. If you have questions about Jack, this would be the place to visit.
If you're interested in Jack Hargreaves Out Of Town, Old Country, etc. Simon has inherited a truckload of celluloid and 1/4" reel to reel tape, which is currently being digitized and put together again. Hopefully someday, there will be more "Lost Episodes".
I said goodbye to what I knew and embraced the ways of old, with it taking on the attitude that big isn't best.

Stuart Harris, 'From Carbon to Cane'

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Michael
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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Michael »

The Facebook site very good, been a member for yonks, I cannot recommend it enough
I had the pleasure of meeting Jack Hargreaves at Horticultural college & markets a few times in the early 70`s. I always thought there were two sides, one the producer, editor, business man and the other the country presenter, trying to educate the public, both adult and child. A truly interesting chap..

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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Nobby »

Thanks for passing these details on for those of us who don't do Facebook gentlemen.

More 'lost' episodes in the future eh? Marvellous!

I think it's true that Jack might not be the old 'country codger' some thought him to be from his television programmes. He was a senior member of Southern Television's board of directors, not a cattleman or a market trader. He sat on the Nugent Commission deciding on the post-War future on no longer required military installations. As a country boy he'd have had little to give to such organisations. As an intelligent and educated man interested and experienced in country matters he did.

I also think, on further consideration, that what I and others might have taken for losing the thread of his 'conversations' with us might have more to do with sheer nerves on a live TV programme than with a bad memory.........


Whatever the truth of the man his work is as mesmerising today as it was 40 years ago and I am so glad to hear there might be more on the digital way.


I'm still searching all the DVDs for this supposed 'smaller' landing net to make his catches look bigger.....so far it is decidedly absent :Thumb:

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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Stathamender »

The biography of JH by Paul Peacock is currently out of print, although second hand copies are readily available. It is, however, available for Kindle at what looks like a bargain price: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jack-Hargreaves ... hargreaves
Iain

What is your favourite word?
I suspect it could be “love”, despite its drawbacks in the rhyming department.
Björn Ulvaeus

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Re: wonder if Jack ever met up?

Post by Kingfisher »

Nobby wrote:Thanks for passing these details on for those of us who don't do Facebook gentlemen.

More 'lost' episodes in the future eh? Marvellous!

I think it's true that Jack might not be the old 'country codger' some thought him to be from his television programmes. He was a senior member of Southern Television's board of directors, not a cattleman or a market trader. He sat on the Nugent Commission deciding on the post-War future on no longer required military installations. As a country boy he'd have had little to give to such organisations. As an intelligent and educated man interested and experienced in country matters he did.

I also think, on further consideration, that what I and others might have taken for losing the thread of his 'conversations' with us might have more to do with sheer nerves on a live TV programme than with a bad memory.........


Whatever the truth of the man his work is as mesmerising today as it was 40 years ago and I am so glad to hear there might be more on the digital way.


I'm still searching all the DVDs for this supposed 'smaller' landing net to make his catches look bigger.....so far it is decidedly absent :Thumb:

You've got me into watching them now Nobby. I just watched the Ratting stick episode, where he also follows the woodsman making Ash bar hurdles. Very interesting and surprisingly something that I've never watched. Thankyou very much for bringing it to my attention. :Hat:

Edit, I also meant to add, I have my own copse and may attempt making some of my own Hurdles when I landscape my back garden later in the year.

God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.

Izaak Walton

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