ROBERTA LEIGH

I was quite sad to hear that author Roberta Leigh died this week. 

Roberta, whose real name was Janey Scott Lewin  is a well known name to Anderson fans as it was some of her children's stories that gave AP Films a chance to produce their early television series.

She'd approached Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis of A.P. Films after seeing a breakfast cereal  advertisement  for Ricicles, featuring a puppet of Enid Blyton's ,Noddy character that had been produced by the fledgling film company.

The first series was The Adventures of Twizzle which first aired in 1957.

This was followed  by Torchy the Battery Boy in 1960, although A.P. Films only produced the first series. The seccond series was produced by Associated British-Pathe.

During 1962 Roberta went on to create and produce another childrens puppet series, Sara and Hoppity  with Gerry's former partner from A.P. Films, Arthur Provis directing the episodes.

Roberta and Arthur then produced Space Patrol, more or less at the same time as A.P. Films were making Fireball XL5.

Athough both series featured adventures in space,it's interesting to note both series were very different. I loved Fireball XL5 , but as a child I found Space Patrol quite strange. However, both series were required viewing at the time.


Many years later when Network released the Space Patrol series on DVD, amongst the extras were two pilot episodes dealing with science fiction and building on what had been learnt from making Space Patrol.

The first pilot, which was produced in 1964, and again used puppets was called Paul Starr and featured a space hero, voiced by Ed Bishop.

Watching it now it's fairly obvious that it was heavily influenced by the popular children's TV of the time. The hero's space craft launched from an undersea base to a theme extremely reminiscent of A.P. Film's Stingray. The base is also full of robots not unlike Dr Who's arch enemy's !

The other pilot was an ambitious live action space story called The Solarnauts,  Both pilots were great fun to watch, but even as a kid I'd have judged them against Gerry Anderson's shows.

Roberta continued to write childrens books  and romance novels right up to 2007.

Janey Scott Lewin a.k.a Roberta Leigh 1927 -2014