Since I was lucky enough to interview Century 21 Production Manager Ken Holt (pictured at left with Derek Meddings) recently, Ken has very kindly shared numerous anecdotes and memories of his varied career in film and tv and his fond memories of working with the late Gerry Anderson.
In pursuing background material for the Blog Legend special, I mentioned to Ken that a new, rare toy had been found, based on the investigator. Ken, as usual had an amusing series of events to relate about production of the ill-fated series..
Ken takes up the story:
"Hi Bill, The Investigator show was a sad scene really, after Gerry got it finally approved by Universal he contacted me to do a recce in Malta for a puppet come live action kids show.We decided to go ahead with it, Gerry said jokingly that it could be a puppet Hawaii Five O .
We went out to Malta in January with rough weather and did some location scouting for the live action sections, but had to finish in their FortRocco studio with a view to completing post production at Elstree Studios.
The location scout was going to be Harry Oakes a good mate of mine he was a VFX director of photography at Slough, Gerry and myself. We were met in Malta by a well known 'Fixer' with VIP contacts who's name was Paul.
Paul had arranged my first meeting was for a very private location whose permission was through a Goverment Minister, which was no problem for Paul except the only time for me to see the Minister was first thing in morning on the beach during his morning swim. It all went according to plan and the first location was fixed. We had no difficulty selecting others, including a monastery; but our next one was difficult as we needed a cave by the sea.
You would think that would be easy, but no,so it meant going over to Gozo which is an island close to Malta. Paul arranged a friend who would fly us over in his own plane, a Cessna. We had all flown in Cessna's before, but not with this pilot...
We met up with him and got on well, explaining what we were looking for and arranged to meet at Hal Fa airport which is actually a military base. We arrived on time and joined pilot Hank Alfonso on board the light plane.
Settled in, we taxied onto the runway and took position for takeoff, gathering speed as we went. All of a sudden, Hank had to brake sharply, sending everyone, including Gerry into a heap on the floor! Overhead a huge Vulcan bomber soared past, almost directly in our path. Hank said quiet calmly that it was the problem with not having a radio on the plane!
Shortly after, we took off in great weather, Hank said he knew the perfect beach with a cave which is just what we want. When he drew close he started to fly along low over the sea looking across at the shoreline. Suddenly, Hank curved in and flew low just above the beach, close to the cliffs shouting at us but instead of looking ahead he was too busy looking for the cave!
Gerry shouted "Thanks Hank, but we will look now!!" We scouted the cave, which was ideal for our location and made our way safely back to the studio.
Some while later, Gerry got a call from U A. To say that there had been a change in management and the guy who set the programme up was finished and his desk cleared including the Investigators, tough eh ! Thats Show Business !"
best regards, Ken Holt
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