Hughie Green

Hughie Green
Green presenting the first episode of Double Your Money.
Born	(1920-02-02)February 2, 1920 London, England
Died	May 3, 1997(1997-05-03) (aged 77)
Occupation	British television show host
Known for	Double Your Money Opportunity Knocks

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

Biography

Born in London, his Scottish father was a former British Army Major who made his fortune supplying tinned fish to the Allied forces in World War One, 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.

Child career

After the family business went bankrupt, Green's father encouraged his stage-obsessed son into performance, and by age 14 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 Schooldays" 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 caught in North America on the declaration of war, during World War Two Green served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, ferrying aircraft across the Atlantic with RAF Ferry Command. 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 involved in business activities that included selling aircraft.

Main stream 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.

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 in the mid-1960's, it began the show business careers of Les Dawson, Lena Zavaroni, Pam Ayres and Mary Hopkin, among others. His 1971 short-lived game show The Sky's the Limit failed, and he returned to a revamped "Opportunity Knocks" produced by fellow performer Jess Yates, until Yates's dismissal in 1974 following newspaper allegations of a extra-marital affair with a young actress.

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. 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 later became a 1977 single. 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. It's an urban myth that he never actually used the catch phrase "I mean that most sincerely", which was part of an impersonation of him by Mike Yarwood.. He told Philip Schofield in a TV interview in 1996 that he came up with the catchphrase himself.

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."

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 obsessive, 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 expose 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; Green had four granddaughters that he never knew: Fifi, Peaches, and Pixie Geldof, and their younger half sister Tiger 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 confinement in his Baker Street flat, lacking many of the financial riches of his former fame. After a life time of smoking a pipe, heavy drinking and latterly taking recreational barbiturates, Green was diagnosed with and died from lung cancer in the Royal Marsden Hospital.

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

Buried in Golders Green Crematorium, his epitaph 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, Canadian resident son Christopher Green wrote the autobiographical perspective Hughie & Paula. The Tangled Lives Of Hughie Green and Paula Yates. (ISBN 1-86105-609-5)

On 2 April 2008 a TV film about Green's life was broadcast on BBC4. The film was entitled Hughie Green, Most Sincerely. Trevor Eve was cast in the lead role. In The Sunday Telegraph of 3 February 2008, Linda Plentl says 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.

References

• Hughie & Paula. The Tangled Lives Of Hughie Green and Paula Yates, by Christopher Green ISBN 1-86105-609-5