Hughie Green

Hughie Green
Green presenting the first episode of Double Your Money.
Born	Hugh H. Green 2 February 1920(1920-02-02) London, England
Died	3 May 1997(1997-05-03) (aged 77) London, England
Cause of death	Lung cancer
Resting place	Golders Green Crematorium
Nationality	British
Occupation	Game show host
Known for	Double Your Money Opportunity Knocks

Hughie Green (2 February 1920 – 3 May 1997) was the host of numerous British television shows.

Early life

Hugh H. Green was born in London; his Scottish father (Glasgow) was a former British Army Major who made his fortune supplying tinned fish to the Allied forces in World War I, while his mother Violet was the Surrey-born daughter of an Irish gardener. The family had a home in Meopham, Kent where the children lived with their mother, who took regular lovers, while his father did business from and often stayed in the Savoy Hotel.

Career

Child performer

After the family business went bankrupt, Green's father encouraged his stage-obsessed son into performance and by the age of 14 he had his own BBC radio show and created and toured with his own all-children cast concert party called "Hughie Green and his Gang". After an extensive tour of Canada, Green appeared in his first film Midshipman Easy in 1935 then went to Hollywood where he appeared in the film Tom Brown's School Days and at the Cocoanut Grove with his cabaret act.

World War Two

Having already fathered his first illegitimate child with a Canadian usherette at the age of 17 and been caught in North America on the declaration of war, during World War II Green served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, ferrying aircraft across the Atlantic with RAF Ferry Command. Green was actually on a stop-over at the US Airforce Base at Roswell, New Mexico at the time of the alleged "flying saucer" incident in 1947^{[citation needed]}. After being declared bankrupt following a failed legal action against the BBC, he married Montreal society beauty Claire Wilson and took Canadian citizenship, working in the aircraft industry as a ferry transport pilot, a stunt pilot, and from 1947 on his return to London he was involved in business activities that included selling aircraft.

Mainstream popularity

Green became a household name in 1955, with the ITV quiz show Double Your Money (which had actually originated some years earlier on Radio Luxembourg). Green brought his future co-host Monica Rose to the screen. The chirpy 15-year-old Cockney junior accounts clerk won £8 answering questions on famous women and was later invited back by Green to be a hostess.

In 1966 (aired 8 November 1966 at 7pm), Hughie Green presented the show from The House of Friendship in Moscow, Russia. Along with Monica Rose, he also had Natasha Vasylyeva as assistants. Because the Communist Party would not allow money as a prize, the top prize was a television set (source Television's Greatest Hits, 1993 book).

His most successful show format was his self-developed long-running talent show, Opportunity Knocks. Started as a UK-wide touring show produced for the radio, one of his early finds was singer Frankie Vaughan, who came second as part of a duet. When it transferred to television on the ITV network, first in 1956 and then again from 1964, it began the show business careers of Les Dawson, Lena Zavaroni, Pam Ayres and Mary Hopkin, among others. Green, who possessed a pilot's licence, would fly the panel of judges between audition venues all over Britain, in his small Cessna aircraft.

His 1970 game show Sky's the Limit was generally considered a failure and was dropped by most ITV regional companies after the first run, though it lasted until 1974 in the Yorkshire and Granada regions, eventually ending due to low ratings, combined with a falling-out between Green and producer Jess Yates.

Right up until its final shows, Opportunity Knocks was a ratings hit that attracted 18 million viewers weekly. But Green, known for his right-wing politics, had decided he was bigger than the show format he devised and began politicising an apolitical family-friendly format. It has been suggested that Green believed that Harold Wilson and his Labour government were Communists and that Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh should replace Wilson as leader of the country. In December 1976 Green sang a rant about the state of the United Kingdom called "Stand Up and Be Counted" with the words coming up in subtitles: "Stand up and be counted, where the managers manage and the workers don't go on strike". It was released as a single in 1977. Partly seen as an open support of Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher, he was disciplined by Thames Television, but kept on making political comments. After numerous viewer complaints, Thames axed the show in March 1978, despite attracting high ratings, something Green mentioned in a bitter rant against Thames in his last show. Family-friendly Opportunity Knocks was replaced by youth-orientated comedy The Kenny Everett Video Show which attracted 10 million viewers.

After his rather slow-paced and "end of the pier" entertainment-style shows were replaced with more active audience participation formats, Green tried presenting variants on the Opportunity Knocks theme in Ireland, Australia and one show in the USSR, where a TV set was the top prize (no cash prizes were allowed).

Style

Green was often mocked for his permanent door-to-door salesman's smile and faux-American accent. His catchphrase "I mean that most sincerely" was also mocked, to such an extent that it is sometimes mistakenly believed to have been invented by the impressionist Mike Yarwood, whose impersonation of Green was celebrated. Green told Phillip Schofield in a TV interview in 1992 that he came up with the catchphrase himself. During Double Your Money Green kept up an occasional but good-natured feud with "rival" quiz show host Michael Miles, who compered Take Your Pick, Miles even appearing on one occasion with a huge bouquet of flowers for a guest, to Green's (mock) indignation.

Personal life

Green met Montreal society beauty Claire Wilson on a cruise liner in the mid-1930s when both were still teenagers. They married in 1942 and settled in Montreal, before moving to London in 1947. The couple had two children, son Christopher and daughter Linda (married name: Linda Plentl). The family lived in a fifth floor flat in Baker Street, London; although with Green's numerous affairs and self-obsession, including taking luxury holidays and spending Christmas often on his own, his children defined it as "highly-dysfunctional."

In 1955 the entertainer Green sued the BBC, Carroll Levis and his wife, and others, alleging a conspiracy to keep his own discoveries show Opportunity Knocks off the air. Green lost, yet it was Levis's career that went into decline. To his great credit, Green paid off all his debts arising from the failed lawsuit. Claire and Green separated in 1961 and filed for divorce in March 1975 after Green started an affair with Gwen Claremont, the sister of an earlier lover, Pat. Later that year, Claire married Upstairs, Downstairs actor David Langton. After separation from Claire, Green's drinking became more compulsive, while his affairs continued even during the height of his fame presenting Opportunity Knocks. Journalist Noel Botham approached Green to expose him, but Green countered with a lawsuit threat. Eventually the two became good friends.

Botham then became key in two stories within Green's life. The replacement producer for Opportunity Knocks after the failure of The Sky's the Limit was Jess Yates. Green grew frustrated by the lack of ITV's action to remove Yates when he requested and (ironically) leaked to Botham the stories of Yates's affair with the young actress Anita Kay, whose story, published in News of the World, destroyed Yates's career. After Green's death from lung cancer, Botham wrote the exposé story, also in the News of the World, of Green being the father of TV presenter Paula Yates, a fact Yates had first learned after the tabloids printed the story (although Green being her father had been an "urban legend" for many years). Green had four granddaughters that he never knew: Fifi, Peaches, and Pixie Geldof, and their younger half sister Tiger Lily Hutchence.

Death

After a failed court case against the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation over a copyright case which cost him £250,000 in 1989, Green lived out his life away from the media in solitary, confined to his Baker Street flat and lacking many of the financial riches of his former fame. After a lifetime of smoking a pipe, heavy drinking and latterly taking recreational barbiturates,^{[citation needed]} Green was diagnosed with and died from lung cancer in the Royal Marsden Hospital.

Green's son Christopher postponed his wedding and flew from Canada to be at his dying father's bedside.

The bulk of Hughie Green's estate was bequeathed to his lover at the time of his death, Christina Sharples, widow of Green's friend and Opportunity Knocks musical director Bob Sharples.

His epitaph at Golders Green Crematorium, reads: "You were the star that made opportunity knock. You will never be forgotten. Christina".

Retrospective media coverage

In light of the death in 2000 of his daughter Paula Yates, his son Christopher Green, now a Canadian resident, wrote the autobiographical perspective Hughie and Paula: The Tangled Lives of Hughie Green and Paula Yates.

On 2 April 2008 a TV film about Green's life was broadcast on BBC Four. In the film, entitled Hughie Green, Most Sincerely, Trevor Eve was cast in the lead role. In The Sunday Telegraph of 3 February 2008, his daughter Linda Plentl said the new BBC drama about her father would reopen intolerable wounds. She told of her struggle with his legacy and her three meetings with half-sister Paula Yates.

Selected filmography

• Midshipman Easy (1935)
• Paper Orchid (1949)

References

• Hughie and Paula: The Tangled Lives of Hughie Green and Paula Yates, by Christopher Green ISBN 1-86105-609-5

External links

• Hughie Green at the Internet Movie Database