This film is part of Free

Yorkshire Tour No. 2

Having given up the ghost as Martin Hopkirk, Kenneth Cope provides the banter as we tour Yorkshire, while maverick show jumper Harvey Smith helps decipher the Yorkshire ethos.

Documentary 1972 25 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for Yorkshire Film Archive

Overview

A quirky Tyne Tees television production from 1972, starring the versatile actor Kenneth Cope, fresh from his success in the popular TV series Randall and Hopkirk (deceased). Kenneth and his sidekick Charlotte Allen visit a sheep auction at the windswept Pennine Tan Hill Inn, take water at Harrogate, do a spoof ‘Moonwalk’ at Brimham Rocks, visit a taxidermist in Knaresborough and chat with Harvey Smith before running out of steam on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.

Tyne Tees was one of the earlier independent television broadcasters, starting out in January 1959. At the time of this film it was allied with Yorkshire Television as part of Trident Television. Harvey Smith is probably the best known British show jumping champion there has been. The previous year he achieved notoriety when he made a two fingered ‘V’ sign to the judges after winning the British Show Jumping Derby. As a result he was disqualified, only to have this overturned two days later, having fibbed that it was a Churchillian “victory” sign and not an obscene gesture. All of the places visited in the programme are pretty much as they were, over forty years on – even the Tan Hill Sheep Show is still going.