R THE STARS OF A TV CLASSIC
About Herriot’s old surgery today
at’s res .” e to ery her g in ere the enly they yelled ‘ cut’. A local woman had walked across the shot, going to the store.
“She just turned round and said, ‘I’ve got my bloody life to lead, you know’.”
But it was Alf who was uppermost in the stars’ minds for yesterday’s do at The Gala Rooms in Leyburn, North Yorks.
Robert said: “It’s great to be back with everyone after so long, just amazing to see them after all these years. I loved working on when he retired. was Alf’s pen name. When we started The we never dreamt want to watch us but I reat honesty that mals. They don’t on the show. When it was going well it was great and when it was bad it was tough but that’s what working with animals is like.”
Alf was 78 when he died in 1995. His son Jim, 73, kept working at his father’s practice and opened the World of James Herriot visitor attraction in Thirsk.
After retiring, Jim handed the reins to his former trainee Peter Wright and vet Julian Norton. Channel 5 documentary follow a script, they may wee all over the floor or escape. Their behaviour is unpredictable.”
Like All Creatures Great And Small, Julian, who wrote Horses, Heifers and Hairy Pigs – The Life of a Yorkshire Vet, has had his fair share The Yorkshire Vet follows Julian as he goes about daily life in the practice which inspired Alf’s books.
Jim said Yorkshire folk had a down-toearth reaction to his late father’s fame.
He said: “He liked that the local people didn’t make a fuss.
“He wasn’t James Herriot to us, he was always Alf Wight.”
Alf was not closely involved in the TV of funny moments. He recalled a worried woman bringing in her dog with a suspected tummy tumour.
He said: “We cut away the hair around the lump and it turned out to be a Fox’s glacier mint.” show but became good friends with Christopher, particularly after the actor was knocked down by a car while making the first series, breaking a leg.
The star had to use a wheelchair between scenes for two months but Alf admired the way he dealt with it.
Thrones
Peter is sure that Alf’s stories and the show inspired many vets to take up the vocation. He said: “I got fan mail from a lot of young women who were planning to become vets. I think we were responsible for an enormous uptake around Britain, probably all over the world.”
HBO, makers of Game of Thrones, may film a big-budget version of the books with Hugh Laurie and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Jim said: “It would be filmed in Yorkshire.” Christopher and Peter are unlikely to mind having other actors taking fans’ medical queries for a change.