Roger Ordish RIP

Welcome back. Hope you had a good Christmas.

I'm late to this but I can't let the year end without mentioning former BBC producer Roger Ordish who died at the age of 83 in August.

Ordish worked on Top of the Pops in the early Seventies but will be remembered chiefly as the producer of Jim’ll Fix It which ran from 1975 to 1994.

Ordish and Jimmy Savile were members of Mensa when I edited the monthly Mensa Magazine from 1985 to 1999, so I met them both.

(I once interviewed Savile in his bedsit near Broadcasting House in London, sitting on a chair next to the bed while he talked, made tea, and wandered around in a pair of skimpy jogging shorts.)

Unlike Savile and Ordish I wasn’t a member of Mensa. I was a freelance journalist who got the job through Madsen Pirie, co-founder of the Adam Smith Institute, who was not only a member but was on the board that was chaired, in those days, by the inventor Sir Clive Sinclair.

In the Nineties (to the fury of some 'activist' members) I extended my brief and began organising a series of events featuring some of the more talented members.

I started with a variety show at the BBC Concert Hall, before organising concerts at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music.

I also produced a show at the Library Theatre, Manchester, and another event, with a live band featuring a former member of Dexy's Midnight Runners, on the old Coronation Street set at Granada Studios.

The variety show, which we reprised several times with an ever changing line-up, was predicted to be a disaster, but somehow it worked.

I have a cassette tape of the original show, recorded on BBC equipment by an in-house engineer, and the musical numbers still sound pretty good because we had some great singers and musicians.

I don't know where most of the cast are today, but the co-directors, who both performed in the show, are Facebook friends and they are among the hardest working people I know.

Mike Hatchard, our director and MC, is a brilliant pianist and jazz musician who appeared recently on a local edition of Children In Need playing the piano upside down. (He was upside down, not the piano.)

Co-director Guy Masterson became an award-winning actor/producer/director. He is currently in New York performing a one man show of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Another performer that day is a children's entertainer who appeared, a few years ago, on Britain's Got Talent.

Anyway, in 1996, as part of Mensa's 50th anniversary celebrations, I went for broke and booked Wyndham’s Theatre in London's Charing Cross Road for a show that quickly sold out (600 tickets).

The key, I found, to the success of these events was to surround myself with a team who knew what they were doing - from the director, to the stage manager, to the sound and lighting engineers, and so on – and let them get on with it.

For a West End theatre show I needed experience, so I asked Roger Ordish if he would direct and compere it, and he agreed.

As it turns out it was an inspired choice because he was very easy to work with. He was calm and unflappable, which was just what we needed because the show featured a dozen very disparate acts with a wide range of personalities, shall we say, and very little time to rehearse or sound check.

He was notably unruffled, I remember, when one act - a singer whose claim to fame was a number one hit in 1961 - threatened to be a bit of a diva.

Instead his quiet but authoritative manner commanded instant respect from both performers and crew, and the show was a huge success.

I enjoyed working with him and although we subsequently lost touch I remember that time with fondness.

Poignantly, his obituary in The Times made the point that:

Appalled as he was by Savile’s crimes, Ordish regretted that the programmes he had devoted so much of his working life to making had since been made unavailable.

“Jim’ll Fix It was my baby and its huge success thrilled me,” he said. “Now the programme has been airbrushed from history but I refuse to let that erase my memories.”

He noted sadly that in retirement he could no longer speak about his career at the BBC without a sense of shame. At one time when he told people he had produced Jim’ll Fix It “you used to get a wonderful reaction. Now it’s something I can’t mention”.

What should not be forgotten is that he also produced Dee Time with Simon Dee (1967) and A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1987-1990).

He also worked on Parkinson, Wogan, The Paul Daniels Magic Show, and Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game.

Roger died in August this year but I only found out last week, hence this belated post. Commiserations to his family.

PS. In April 2020 Roger published a memoir, ‘If I Remember Rightly’, that prompted a short but nice review by an old schoolfriend, Tim Waterstone, founder of Waterstone’s Bookshops. Click here.

Update: I knew Roger had moved to Lewes in Sussex following his retirement. What I didn’t know was what happened thereafter. According to The Times’ obituary:

In 2007 he moved to Foissac in France before returning to Britain in 2018 and settling in Richmond, North Yorkshire, where he volunteered in the village shop.

In fact, he did a bit more than volunteer in the village shop. He became a ‘beloved member of Richmond Operatic Society’ and was also a member of Richmond Amateur Dramatic Society, directing a one act play that won an award at a local drama festival shortly after his death.

Funnily enough, I once spent New Year in Richmond, arriving in a blizzard after driving over the snow-covered Pennines from Cumbria in my mother’s Triumph Vitesse.

It was one of the most hair-raising journeys of my life, but that’s another story …

Comments

[Robert Harland]

Living, as I do, some 6,000 miles from the UK, news can take a while to reach me. It is only this evening, March 28, 2024, that I learnt of Roger's death. In the late 60s and early 70s was a record plugger and then PR wallah in London. I have fond memories of working with Roger on Top of the Pops and on several items in the Jim'll Fix It series. I still have the medallion he gave me bearing the legend I Fixed it for Jim. Roger had the amazing ability of being able to sing backwards. When a recording of this was played back in reverse he was usually almost word perfect. RIP Roger.