Speedway is said to be at the crossroads right now, but Mark Sawbridge recals when Speedway was on Crossroads, the ITV soap opera we tuned into as we ate our evening meal

Crossroads.   

That word alone will evoke memories in those of us of a certain age.  A soap opera which contained wonky sets and wooden acting, the show was essential watching in millions of homes in the sixties and seventies. 

Despite the criticisms levelled at it, Crossroads was extraordinarily popular – indeed, more so that its Northern rival, Coronation Street.  At its zenith, no fewer than fifteen million viewers tuned in to watch the comings and goings of Meg Richardson, Miss Diane, Benny, David Hunter and the like. 

The show was based at a motel in the Midlands.  This gave it an advantage over its rivals in Soapland as there was no need to have a large number of permanent actors.  As guests at the motel came and went, they brought and took with them their own stories.  Speedway was one of them. 

In 1967, the show’s writers decided to incorporate the sport in one of their storylines.  The plot was that one of the guests at the motel was the team manager of a speedway club who’d invented a revolutionary new bike.  The machine was so powerful that the manager’s own son had been killed whilst riding it.   

But, despite the tragedy, the manager wanted Jerry Hawling - his star rider, played by the actor Scott Fredericks – to try the machine.   

To give the episode an authentic feel, production company ATV wanted to film some real speedway action.  As Wolverhampton’s Monmore Green was close to where the series was made, they put in a call to Wolves promoter Bill Bridgett.  He jumped at the chance to include speedway in one of the country’s most popular television programmes. 

‘Speedy’ Pete Jarman, at that time a heat leader at Wolverhampton, was asked to film some special material which would include him falling.  The bike Jarman used had a wooden object around the frame to make it look different to normal speedway machines, which made it harder to ride, which didn’t help matters. 

The crew asked Jarman to make a start, then fall off dramatically.  It didn’t quite go to plan, as he told the Poole speedway programme editor in 1980: 

“You know what film crews were like,” said Jarman.  “We were on the start line for about half an hour waiting for the light to be right and everything else.  Eventually, we got the green light.  My job was to lay the bike down coming out of the corner and roll over loads of times as if I was injured and the bike was unrideable.” 

You might be ahead of me here.  As we’ve seen on countless occasions at tracks up and down the country, the clutches of bikes which wait a long time at the start line over-heat.  And that’s what happened to Jarman’s machine.  “As soon as the tapes went up, the clutch was so hot that I did a wheelie!  I thought I was going to fall off the back, but I managed to sort it out and get into the bend.” 

If this sounds like a case of ‘all’s well that ends well’, then you’re sadly mistaken. 

“There were cameras at various parts of the track, filming from different angles,” Jarman continued.  “One of them was by the pit gate.  I reckon he must have got excited over my wheelie, because the next thing I saw was the pit gate open and the cameraman moving out onto the track.  I just managed to miss him, but piled into the gate and fence.” 

Jarman’s crash was extremely well received by the camera crew, who believed the footage to be much better than they’d expected to capture.  That, of course, was because the crash was real and not contrived, as had been anticipated.  Sadly, Jarman broke a bone in his foot in the incident and was missing from Wolves’ team for some time afterward.  Thanks, ATV! 

To add to the excitement, Jarman and his Wolves team-mates were invited onto the set to effectively play themselves – a speedway team who were checking into a motel.  John Hart and George Major of Sheffield were there too as part of this entourage.  Union rules meant that, as none of them were Equity members, they couldn’t say anything once the cameras were rolling. 

The programme went on air on 28 November 1967.  To augment the footage filmed at Monmore Green, the edition included some race action from a Wolverhampton v Cradley Heath meeting. 

My interest was piqued recently when Network Distribution released a DVD box set that contained every surviving episode of Crossroads.  Sadly, this particular show was wiped like so much classic television of its age (as any fan of Dr. Who or Dad’s Army will confirm).  The chances of a copy turning up somewhere must be in the million-to-one bracket. 

A look at the cast for that particular show flags up a couple of interesting names.  The Oscar-nominated Irish actor Stephen Rea was a regular in the motel at that point, playing Pepe Costa.  The listings have the track announcer as Arnold Peters.  This sounds suspiciously like Peter Arnold, who was meeting presenter at many tracks in the 1960s.  Sadly, Arnold died in a car crash a couple of years after the episode was filmed. 

Whilst I was writing this article, it triggered a memory.  By the late 1970s, Crossroads was regularly mocked in TV comedy programmes and had become something of a national joke.  The Wolverhampton track shop sold a badge, which I bought, that sums things up.  It read: 

“I’d rather watch CROSSROADS than Cradley Heathens.”   

I’m a little ashamed to admit that, more than forty years on, I still have it.