The Griper's Times

The very first entry was 1970's The Stalls of Barchester NOTHING says Merry Christmas like spiders the size of kittens - plump and mewling - scuttling up the boughs of an ageing ash and in through a bedroom window.  The nightmarish experience of a country squire is one of the stand-out moments of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas strand. Elsewhere in its annals, a terrible vengeance is visited on a treasure-hunter whose night-time dig disturbs more than just the earth, and an orphan boy wakes in darkness to hear the horrid sound of music and laughter. It was 2004 when I came across the long-running series via a set of late-night repeats on BBC4. In fact I was steered that way by my Dad, who had watched the episodes on transmission 30 years earlier. Somewhat scarily several decades now stand between me and my sixth form self tuning in to watch The Ash Tree for the first time. Interest in the episodes from the 1970s was enough to persuade the BBC to commission a brand new in...

PETER Kennedy - or simply PK to many in the newsroom - was the very definition of an old-school journo. He'd cut his teeth as a cub reporter on the Solihull News in the early 1960s and by the time I started my own traineeship almost 50 years later he was back on his old patch having seemingly seen almost everything during a career in newspapers and BBC Radio. Having someone of this experience sat opposite you was a rare thing in this era of the local press, most others from my particular cohort of trainees usually shared a desk with a senior who'd started a year to 18 months before them.  Peter was in many ways the sort of reporter who if I'd really stopped and thought about it would have persuaded me that there was no way I was cut out for the profession; he was fearless in his questions, shameless in his anecdotes and would wash down his lunch with a mini bottle of wine. Frankly I should have been terrified but strangely having this imposing industry veteran sat opposite ...