Worzel Gummidge was a fictional scarecrow who came to life in Ten Acre Field in the village of Scatterbrook, and he would get up to all sorts of mischief when befriended by the children, brother and sister John and Sue Peters. Originally created as a series of books by author Barbara Euphan Todd from 1936 onwards, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall then wrote scripts for a television series for the character, televised between 1979 and 1981. Filmed, mainly in Romsey, Hampshire by Southern Television for the ITV Network, it starred ex-‘Dr. Who’ actor, Jon Pertwee in the lead role of Worzel Gummidge.
August 17th, 1982 was quite a day for the children of the Poole locality when Jon Pertwee, dressed exactly as his TV alter-ego, Worzel, made a personal appearance at the Poole Market.
Poole Market was held where Sainsbury’s now stands just off the main High Street, and the whole area, including the car park and shops to the rear of the piece of land, had for decades, been the site of Poole Gas Works. But the advent of North Sea Gas being piped into homes rather than the fuel being manufactured from coal, the ‘ozone-hostile’ gas works was demolished, and during the interim period of it being flattened and Sainsbury’s being built; the ground was used for a Saturday Poole Market.
Of course, it was packed out with parents and children whom had become fans of Worzel and his friends in the weekly TV series, and Worzel himself arrived in a beautifully restored Model T Ford car, in which he was slowly driven around the ‘arena-like’ area, with hundreds of children, including our daughter, Natalie, who were standing shoulder-to-shoulder around the perimeter. Twenty minutes or so later, a live elephant entered into the event, with Worzel feeding the animal some hay, and even climbing up astride the creature’s huge neck and riding it around the small arena, much to everyone’s delight.
A little later, when Worzel had once again got to his feet to walk around doing a ‘meet-and-greet’ by shaking his scarecrow-gloved hand with as many of the thronging masses of kids as he could, the 5 year-old Natalie was thrilled at being one of them.
It was an amazing hour or so, indeed, and one which many children from that generation might
remember? It is not often these days that we get ‘Stars’ at any events in Poole. In my youth, ‘Poole Hospital Fete’ would be held annually in Poole Park, and I remember one year Jack Warner, the Star from the ‘Dixon Of Dock Green’ TV series opened it, and another year Bruce Forsyth, then the Star of ‘Sunday Night At The London Palladium’ did likewise; yet now, either I am out-of-touch, or is it that events like this just don’t happen any more?
*Readers may also like Alan’s book ‘When Upton Had Trains’ available
at WH Smith in the High Street or www.natula.co.uk
