Our Crossroads Favourites: Amy Turtle

Hippies on the telly? Mr Booth's fancy cooking? Amy wasn't impressed. It was juicy gossip she craved.

Ah, Amy Turtle! Some people will snigger, but it's worth remembering that Amy was a hugely popular Crossroads character - in my family she was more popular than Meg Richardson - and from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, many working class folk would have frowned at criticism of the character or of the actress's performance.

And, as Ann George, who played Amy, pointed out, she did become a bit of a scapegoat when other cast members fumbled their lines.

Diminutive Amy was immensely popular not just with the tongue-in-cheek detractors of the show, but with its loyal and loving audience - who took the character seriously and cared for her.

So, Amy lived in the village of King's Oak and was first seen as a Brummie customer at Kitty Jarvis's shop, where she soon went to work. Amy then transferred to the motel as a kitchen hand and char. Gossip was Amy's great love and she wasn't very clever. The character's biography at ATV described her as an 'English peasant' - as were many of us viewers, of course. She dabbled in spiritualism and maintained contact with her deceased husband Fred that way. She was suspicious of big city living and hippies.

Amy Turtle was happy in her own little pond.

Much was made by mockers of the show in later years of an old story-line in which Amy had apparently been accused of being a Russian spy - Amelia Turtlovski. The episode/s no longer exist, and I don't recall the plot from my viewing years, but it has since been suggested that the whole thing was just a jokey comment made by another character, and not a story-line at all. Amy, of course, would have made an excellent spy. If anybody has any further information on this, I'd be fascinated to hear.

After the death of her son in 1975, Amy was caught shoplifting and we were all horrified when she was put in a police cell. She shamefacedly slipped into Meg and Hugh's wedding, and sat at the back. Things didn't improve when a wage packet went missing, and some uncharitable souls suspected Amy was the thief. She fled from the motel, briefly taking a job elsewhere under an assumed name to cover her shame, but was finally found by Jane Smith and brought safely back into the motel fold.

In early 1976, Amy went away to visit a relative abroad, and wasn't seen again until early 1987. Apparently, she'd been quietly living in the village and had come to visit the motel as a friend of its new owner, down-to-earth Brummie cove Tommy 'Bomber' Lancaster.

And she'd hardly aged a day.

Her presence seemed to rather freak out poor Jill Chance, and Amy made a few dark comments about Meg - who apparently would 'bawl like a fish wife' if the chalets weren't spotless, but 'had a heart of gold'. 

Ann George made a few appearances as Amy at this point, and I loved them.

Her disappearance in the mid-1970s had left a huge hole in the show. Apparently there had been problems behind the scenes, and so the viewers lost a cherished character.

Oh well. 

Still, it was great to see Amy again in 1987, brief though her appearances were.

Another Crossroads legend, never to be forgotten. 

Our Crossroads Favourites: Tommy "Bomber" Lancaster

Ah, what might have been if Crossroads King's Oak had become King's Oak and Tommy "Bomber" Lancaster's reign as hotel owner had continued!

But it was not to be.

I thoroughly enjoyed Terence Rigby's portrayal of Mr Lancaster.

Bomber was the owner of the Red Ox chain of eateries, a rich, self-made Brummie, living at posh Lady Byron Lodge.

And he was a pal of former motel char Amy Turtle.

Seeing her again rather freaked poor old Jill Chance out.

Bomber bought Crossroads in early 1987, and set about stamping his mark on the place. Of course, this was the late 1980s, so it had to have a theme - Bomber tied it into the history of King's Oak and its connections to the English Civil War, naming the bar "The Merry Monarch" (complete with flame stitched seating), and wondering if he could get away with telling guests that the big oak tree out the back by the bins was the one King Charles had (reputedly) hidden in.

Bomber had a wife - Mary - and two daughters, Debbie (called by some at Crossroads "Debbie Dreadful") and  Lisa. Debbie was down-to-earth, like her father; Lisa, the complete opposite - a globe trotting good time girl, mixing happily with the yuppie set.

Bomber was a great student of human nature. He was aware that Adam Chance was sneering at him and that Jill was looking down her nose at him, but he sorted them both out. When Adam ended up drinking the naff plonk he had bought for Bomber's dinner party, it was no more than he deserved. 

Bomber also spotted that Barry the barman was fiddling the till.

Mary Lancaster died in 1987, leaving Bomber devastated.

But he persevered.

He decided to change the name of the dear old motel. Crossroads Motel? That was so old hat, so down market - so 1960s. King's Oak Country Hotel was surely more like it...

Jill Chance was initially against it, but she was jollied along by John Maddingham, Bomber's "ideas man". 

Bomber also decided that Charlie Mycroft added a touch of class to the place, and took him on to the permanent staff. 

Christmas 1987 found Bomber coping with his grief as he faced his first festive season without his beloved wife, and then the bombshell news that his steady, down-to-earth daughter Debbie was pregnant, with no father on the scene.

At first, he was furious - and thought that he had failed as a father. But after Lisa intervened, Bomber held his hands up and told Debbie that he wanted her to stay at Lady Byron Lodge, and that he would welcome and love his grandchild.

In 1988, Bomber sold the newly-renamed King's Oak Country Hotel.

"And that's an end to it," he said.

I thought it was a great shame because I liked the Lancasters and I thought there were endless possibilities with Tommy at the helm at the hotel. There were even rumours that Nicola Freeman was to have returned permanently if the show had continued, as a possible chalk and cheese romantic interest.

The Lancasters had great potential - gruff old Tommy, with his head for business and knowledge of what made people tick, and his beautifully contrasting daughters - shaggy permed yuppie puppy Lisa and Brummie sounding Debbie, who shared her dad's "from-the-ground-up" approach to business, if not his knowledge of human nature. "Deadly Dave", father of Debbie's sprog, safely back in Spalding with his wife and kiddies, would vouch for that. Debbie had been sure he was a good bloke.

Tragically lost potential, but still very worthy of a place in our favourites listing...

Our Crossroads Favourites: Darby

Darby:  "Please extinguish that cigarette, Mrs  Tardebigge!"
Mrs Tardebigge: "It's me bit of pleasure, lover."

Mr Thomas Darby, played by Patrick Jordan, was the hall porter at the Crossroads Motel in the mid-to-late 1980s. Thomas was just about always called and referred to as "Darby" or "Mr Darby". Use of his first name no doubt seemed a little too informal to him.

Fiercely devoted to Nicola Freeman, Darby always made sure she received her newspaper and cuppa each morning. As soon she was settled in her office for the day, he was in with a tray - and woe betide anybody who smoked in her office, for Darby would be in with the air freshener (it was called "Whispering Glen" or something).

Darby had quite a rigid mindset and clashed with the likes of cleaner Mrs Tardebigge and new motel owner Tommy "Bomber" Lancaster. He hated Mrs Tardebigge smoking in the staff room. 

Like all the best "pain-in-the-neck" soap characters, he always believed he was acting for the best. 

Sometimes his was the voice of doom and gloom. When Tommy took over the motel in 1987, Darby droned on endlessly - saying that it was just like the old Station Hotel at Buxton years before, and that the staff would soon be out on their ears. 

Perhaps if he wasn't so apt to get worked up about things, Darby could have avoided the heart attack he survived. But he was soon back to his old self.

He developed a friendship with Margaret Grice's mother, Mrs Babbitt, herself a gloomy old fusspot. 

At the end of the series in 1988, as the Three Crowns took over the newly-renamed King's Oak Country Hotel, Darby was heard saying that it was just like the old Station Hotel, Buxton, all over again...