Adrian E C Petford (adrian@petford.demon.co.uk)
Thu, 18 Jun 1998 21:07:31 +0100
On Thu, 18 Jun 1998, Laura wrote:
> And I'm probably one of the only PG fans sad enough to travel from the
> Midlands to Uxbridge
Nope, been there, done that, got the T-Shirt as they say. The Midlands to
Uxbridge was quite a breeze in comparison to the marathon jaunt to
Eastbourne one Christmas to see Dexter in panto - I'll never forget his
face when we said we'd travelled for over 350 miles just to be there!
> to take a photo of the Hercies Road sign and the
> shopping precinct where Cindy sat. Sad sad sad.
Ooh, you're not even trying, are you? I can definitely out-sad you on that
one.... I bet I'm the only person to have a photo of the empty car park
where the Junior Gazette building *used* to be before it was demolished?
It's funny what you said above about location-scouting... it's been
something of a tradition among online PG fans for absolutely years now.
There's always been quite a fan following for PG on the net and the
whereabouts of the various locations often used to come up in discussion. I
did all my location hunting in 1992-93 and I certainly wasn't the first; in
fact, I used to correspond via email with a guy (Andrew Chin, are you out
there?) who'd been there many times in the previous couple of years and
knew others who'd preceded even his visits. Thanks to Andrew's tip-offs,
meticulous research and not giving in to my sore feet, I managed to find
virtually everything used in seasons one and two on my own visits.
On the first visit, I picked up a map in the town centre (where quite a few
of the obvious locations are) and started with the obvious things (i.e.
Czar's on Hercies Road, Steven Park hospital, Pizza Hut etc etc).
Interestingly, the road sign had been appropriated even in 1992, much to my
surprise and annoyance, because I had cherished a small ambition to have it
on my bedroom wall. Obviously someone had already beaten us to it :-(
The Pizza Hut provided the refreshments for the day, and it did look
exactly the same at that time as when it was used in the programme (I
gather it's been completely refurbished since) which was rather spooky to
say the least.
Most of that visit was spent tramping and driving around largely at random,
so not many locations were found. The second time I went I was armed with
the map in advance and had done a lot of the research beforehand as well.
Basically, to find the locations, you have to think in terms of how a TV
production unit would operate (i.e. everything featured regularly would be
within easy reach of a central base). Once you have that worked out, it's
fairly easy to find most of the places. I repeatedly watched all the
episodes, making notes on any landmarks that appeared in the background and
mapping out a rough geography of Norbridge as best I could which, it turned
out, fitted in pretty well with the Uxbridge/Hillingdon/Hayes of the real
world. Fortunately, once I had an actual map to refer to, it made what was
seen on the screen make much more sense and helped considerably in
pinpointing the locations exactly. The only major places I could never
locate were Norbridge High and the railway station (I think that was
Northolt though, just down the road from Czar's, but we never had time to
check it out).
We noticed Highpoint flats by accident on the way back (it's on the Ealing
to Uxbridge road) so a hasty pit stop was arranged to take some snaps! To
my knowledge, everything else used in seasons one and two is within the
Uxbridge area itself though. Seasons three and four were also filmed around
there, although I could never identify exactly where (it certainly wasn't
anywhere near the established locations) and at least some of the location
stuff seen in season five was shot near the studios in Twickenham.
I've still got my trusty map, now marked up with all the PG locations I
managed to find, so I'll have to get round to putting it, and my location
pictures, up on the Web to help others who want to tread the PG trail!
Watch this space...
> Right, back to the A-levels.....
Shudder. Good luck!
Incidentally, trivia buffs might be interested to know that it will be
exactly ten years (where have they gone?) since Press Gang entered
production as of the 11th July 1998. Given how much the locations had
changed even when I was last in Uxbridge, I imagine they must be pretty
unrecognizable by now.
Ade
_| Adrian E.C. Petford "Well,I could improve Teletubbies by taking |_
_| adrian@petford.demon.co.uk it off" - HARTLEY HARE live |_
_| http://www.petford.demon.co.uk/adrian.html at Kaleidoscope, 2/8/97 |_
_| Kaleidoscope UK TV: http://www.petford.demon.co.uk/kaleidoscope.html |_
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