Life's a Cavalcade

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I: As far as Programme Controllers go, you seem to have had a wonderful passage with each one of them, quietly but firmly approving of what you're doing and let you get on with it. Paladin talked to him a bit, also saying, ‘Come on now wake up’, and then Cavalcade’s theme tune played. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to be told he’d responded and was doing just fine. In our latest edition of Advantage Magazine, former STV children’s star Glen Michael (95), is encouraging people to call Age Scotland’s friendship line if they are feeling lonely and shares how thoughtful neighbours helped brighten up his day. I: I was really, probably, very, very slightly less sorry than you are, you know, about it coming to an end! It was one of those things called progress.

Michael eventually turned his attention to television, starring in many Scottish Television productions and dramas including: From Tuesday 1 May 1962 he was given his own nine-week record programme on the Scottish Home Service, That Reminds Me, in which, according to his producer Ben Lyons, he would "look at some of the more recent news, dip into vintage newspaper reports, add his own lighthearted comments, and illustrate the combined result with some records". [1] He scripted the programme himself. [2]

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Thinking about STV in general, did you feel happy and at ease in everything you were doing within STV in terms of you didn't have to run up hill pushing spaghetti to get things done? You managed to get things done alright in the programme? I: If I can be personal for a second, my motto as a Director is [Latin phrase] - 'True Art is to Consume Art'.

Cavalcade has been broadcast on at least three other ITV stations, Southern Television: 1966–1967, Westward: 1967–69 and Grampian TV also broadcast the series in the early 1970s and again the early 1980s. But one ray of hope in a difficult year has been the way that communities have come together to help those who were more vulnerable or on their own. R: I've got a big photograph on the wall in my room at home - a huge one like that - on which you're sitting at a table with about twenty others when we won in 1975 and we won the best ITV programme for that year and they're all sitting there and it's great to see you sitting there now!And I couldn’t put my finger on why it was and of course over the time I began to realise it’s because you’re lonely, you haven’t go that person beside you that you’ve always been used to.” I: Oh yeah! Shall we get some more pictures maybe? Right, you've got those. These are all the same, are they?

I: And, there's a nice title on that one. And I think in terms of your various dogs, I think they were in just enough, if you know what I mean. I: I think, remember STV when they did the shift to the new building and so on, when all that was going on. It didn't actually affect your show, did it? I: I think the important thing is, I agree, I've done lots and lots of things, but that was the one thing that I always found was not a trial, was not work! I was guilty about taking the money for doing something that was really enjoyable and, I think, without exception all of the crew say the same thing. How do you feel about it? Was it work? But the survey, undertaken with ScotInform, also shed light on soaring levels of loneliness across Scotland, with an estimated 218,000 older people feeling lonely most or all of the time. More than 3000 older people, from every council area in Scotland, took part earlier this year.

I: As television, STV was growing, did you find that your programme was growing in terms of size of what you could do, what you couldn't do? I mean, it didn't end up being studio-based only, did it? I: Oh yeah, it certainly did! (How are we doing for time? Have we still got plenty of this? Right, OK) On Monday Glen entrusted not only Paladin, but a birthday card, photo of himself, a WOOF (World Organisation of Fidos!) Club badge and membership of the WOOF Club into the safekeeping of Daily Record columnist and TV pundit Tam Cowan to take to BBC Scotland on the big night. R: Yeah, character! But he thought it was wonderful! He must have spent a fortune on it. It looked lovely but it was too new, you know!

R: I think it wasn't parochial. It wasn't, originally we, people laughed at me because I wanted to introduce this lamp. Paladin the Lamp. People said, "Well, what are you going to do with a lamp?!" And I thought, 'Well, why not have an old oil lamp?' And I'd thought about actually Aladdin's Lamp, that was the idea and it feels, and still do today, they meet me and they say, "The talking lamp!" But it wasn't the talking lamp, it was the genie inside it that I wanted to get, and I never got round to saying that that's what it was! And I let people think that it was a talking lamp but my idea was that inside that lamp was a person and he started off as a Highlander and I used to talk like that into the thing and you know what I mean?! I thought, 'This is not right!' So, I gradually worked it out that no, it shouldn't be that, it should be a Glasgow, somebody identifiable so it became a wee fellow who talked like [unintelligible Glaswegian!] and so I had visions of this wee fellow inside the lamp doing all the talking and being cheeky to me and that seemed to catch on! R: No. I forget. Anyway, he suddenly appeared with him and he had it all re-done and it was all tolled up and at one end it looked tatty and miserable. He gave up his caravan home around this time and bought a flat in the Hyndland district of Glasgow. I: In these days there's more audio compression and stuff that kind of gets away from that. [24:26] Talking about Harry, the boom, and him following you around, you do radio work as well, don't you?

Losing the show still rankles. When I ask if he's enjoying retirement he answers: "Well, not really. Because I was forced to stop." Paladin was always being rude to me and I was always the fall guy at his expense. That was the whole idea of the character. Missed opportunities - if you want to call them that - there may have been, but Michael is a Scottish showbusiness legend. He remembers BBC DJ Ken Bruce telling him so, too. "Scotland's been very good to me. The people of Scotland have been very good to me," he says, recalling how the plan to support Milroy in Paisley was only meant to last five weeks.