The Grove to stardom
QUESTION
Besides Ant and Dec, have any other cast members of Byker Grove had successful TV careers as adults? BYKER Grove was a BBC TV children’s programme following the fortunes of members of a youth club in Newcastleupon-Tyne. The show was created by writer Adele Rose and producer Andrea Wonfor and ran between 1989 and 2006.
It launched the careers of Ant and Dec, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, originally as the pop duo P. J. and Duncan, who had 14 Top 40 singles, including the Number One Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble and the ghastly Eternal Love.
Many other Byker Grove actors went on to have successful entertainment careers.
Ten-year-old Donna Air joined Byker Grove in 1992 as Charlie. She followed the P.J. and Duncan route, though without the success, by becoming part of the pop duo Crush. The band’s singles Jellyhead and Luv’d Up failed to make the Top 40.
Donna went on to become a presenter for MTV, The Big Breakfast and TFI Friday. As an actor, she has appeared in Hollyoaks, Hotel Babylon and The Mummy Returns. She was in the news for dating the Duchess of Cambridge’s brother, James Middleton.
Charlie Hunnam played Jason in Byker Grove in 1998. He made his name as an actor in Queer As Folk and has since starred alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest names in the films Nicholas Nickleby, Cold Mountain and Green Street. He also played the lead role of Jax in the U.S drama Sons Of Anarchy.
Jill Halfpenny played Nicola Dobson in Byker Grove in 1992. She has gone on to appear in a host of soaps, including EastEnders, Coronation Street and Waterloo Road, and has won awards for her performances on the West End stage in Chicago and Legally Blonde. She won Strictly Come Dancing in 2004.
Byker Grove became a production line for the TV soap Emmerdale, with Dale Meeks, Charlie Hardwick, Chelsea Halfpenny, Laura Norton and Victoria Hawkins moving from one show to the other.
Rebecca Davidson, York.
QUESTION
Several places in West Virginia, including a high school, are named after Robert C. Byrd. Wasn’t he a member of the Ku Klux Klan? ROBERT CARLYLE BYRD served as Democratic senator for West Virginia for 51 years, from 1959 until his death in 2010, making him the longest-serving senator in U.S. history.
He had previously served as a U.S. representative from 1953 until 1959.
My daughter lives in Virginia, and our son-in-law’s parents are from West Virginia, which was the only state in the Union to separate from a Confederate state, Virginia, during the American Civil War. The Confederate States in the South supported the right to uphold slavery. The war was a result of the long-standing tension about the enslavement of black people, a strong factor in supporting the Ku Klux Klan or KKK.
Robert C. Byrd’s father was an influential and wealthy person in West Virginia, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and the Democrat party.
The son was also an influential KKK member. In the early Forties, he recruited 150 friends and associates to form a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Sophia, West Virginia. His support of coal miners, unions and the KKK made him popular among West Virginia’s voters.
More than 50 buildings, including a school, erected from U.S. taxpayers’ money given to West Virginia, are named after Robert Byrd or his wife, Erma.
Alan Bowden, Bristol. LONG-SERVING senator Robert C. Byrd was a mentor to Hillary Clinton.
‘It is almost impossible to imagine the U.S. Senate without Robert Byrd,’ she said. ‘He was not just its longest-serving member, he was its heart and soul. From my first day in the Senate, I sought out his guidance, and he was always generous with his time and his wisdom.’
Yet in the Forties he was an active member of the KKK, reaching the high level of Exalted Cyclops.
In December 1944, Byrd wrote to segregationist Mississippi senator Theodore G. Bilbo: ‘I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side...Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.’
After becoming a representative, he disowned the Klan, later calling it ‘the greatest mistake I ever made’.
Conservative commentators such as Mark Steyn have wondered whether the same levels of forgiveness would have been afforded to a Republican.
Tom Yeats, Chichester, W. Sussex.