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If I Remember Rightly
Roger Ordish

Roger Ordish was a producer in what was then called ‘Light Entertainment’ firstly with B.B.C. Radio and then for thirty years with B.B.C. Television.
For twenty years he was the only producer of the hugely successful ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ programmes. Then in 2012 the shock revelations of Savile’s misdeeds changed everything.
The Dame Janet Smith inquiry on Savile cleared Roger of having ‘turned a blind eye’ to Savile’s paedophilia but in his own words “Despite having frequently topped the combined B.B.C/I.T.V. audience charts, the very existence of the programme has been airbrushed from the B.B.C.s Kremlin balcony”.
From memories of wartime in Kent, Roger goes on to describe working with such names as Bruce Forsyth, Kenneth Williams, Michael Parkinson, Paul Daniels, Helen Fielding, Terry Wogan, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, with delightful anecdotes about Edith Evans, Sammy Davis Junior, Gina Lollobrigida, John McEnroe and Princess Margaret and others. In 1968 he was one of a trio of B.B.C. producers, who posed as the Albanian entrants for the Eurovision Song Contest in a hoax that dumbfounded their boss.
Published: April 2020
Paperback: 190 pages
Price: £9.99
ISBN: 978-1-913425-11-1

£9.99 (+ £3 postage)
Number of copies:


Available from Amazon

Roger Ordish was a television producer for thirty years, producing ‘Parkinson’, ‘Wogan’, ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ ‘Paul Daniels Magic Show’ and many other successful shows.
Reviews...

 Tim Waterstone, founder of Waterstone's Bookshops.
If I Remember Rightly arrived yesterday, and I started reading it this morning, at 6.30 am, over my first-of-the-day mug of tea. Thereafter I couldn't put it down, effectively reading it all through at one sitting.Roger - I really loved it. And, perhaps more importantly, really admired it, and indeed, from it, you. We were such close friends as teenagers, and it is a real pleasure for me to now realise, more fully perhaps than I had before, what a wonderfully rich and rewarding career, and life, that you have led. Your description of it absolutely holds the reader. And you write so well - the 'voice' is delightful - sometimes very funny indeed - (my absolute favourite of all your wonderful anecdotes being the little Ken Dodd piece) - sometimes unexpectedly vulnerable and exposed. Ace stuff, all of it.So well done, my friend.
livesinprint

Blackbird Flying
Cate Collinson

On being a stroke survivor
Shortly before the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, Emma goes to work as normal. Walking to the toilet, she closes the door. After a moment, she realizes that her right side is numb.
She wakes three days later to find herself in a bed at University College Hospital.
After two months at U.C.H., Emma is moved to Charing Cross Hospital. She has been told by the Almoner that there is a good chance she will get herself well again but that’s not how she feels about it. ‘I’m twiddling my thumbs in here,’ she says. She wants to go home. Meanwhile, Mark is fearful of his feelings. He knows things will never be the same but he agrees to take her home. When they get there, he tells her what he’s been doing to the house and shows her the shower down on the ground floor and the steps with a banister to the garden. Then he says suddenly, ‘I’m off.’
He doesn’t arrive home until midnight and the following morning he is gone.
Published: Oct 2019
Paperback: 146 pages
Price: £7.50
ISBN: 9-781912-419920
Available on Amazon

This is the story of Emma’s fight for recovery. She visits another hospital, King’s, where she has physiotherapy twice a week and speech classes for half-an-hour each week. Then she finds speech classes in Farringdon, twice a week. She goes to pottery and to singing at Southwark College. Later, she rides in the Stroke Association Bike Ride 1996 to mark almost ten years since she had her stroke. It’s a story of courage and hard work told with verve and feeling by new author Cate Collinson.
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