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It's hard to believe that I
set up RAHDAS as long ago as 1989. I had no idea how
it was going to work or what I was actually going to
do - all I knew was that I was completely obsessed
with Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and I
suppose it was a way of reaching out to any other
fans who may have been out there. These days you
simply set up a Facebook group but Facebook didn't
exist back then and even home computers were a
fairly new concept which I hadn't embraced at that
time.
I remember hand producing some
A5 leaflets advertising my brand new Randall and
Hopkirk (Deceased) Appreciation Society, which I
rather naughtily photocopied at work. I think I left
some copies in my local library and remember going
to the BFI for some reason and strategically leaving
a few leaflets here and there. I also have a vague
memory of having some leaflets to hand out when I
attended my very first Avengers Dead Man’s
Treasure Hunt weekend that year. This was the 1980s
and I honestly can't remember exactly where my
leaflets went. I also placed adverts in Starburst
and TV Zone and several other Cult TV
magazines I came across. I was completely new to the
world of Cult TV, so was unaware of fanzines, fan
clubs and appreciation societies, and therefore
unfamiliar with Fanderson, Six of One, The Saint
Club or any other TV related clubs and societies.
Wherever those leaflets ended
up and whichever magazines I placed adverts in, it
wasn't long before people responded and it was both
heartening and exciting to know that there were
indeed Randall and Hopkirk fans around that
were only too pleased that there was now a club they
could join which catered for their passion.
Image ©
Vanessa Bergman, 1992
In a way, it was good that I
was green to the world of fandom and fan clubs as I
wasn't copying anyone else's club but just went
ahead and did what I thought Randall and Hopkirk
fans would want to see and do. So I produced and
edited club newsletters which were supposed to be
quarterly but in reality appeared at irregular
intervals. They were very cheaply produced, not the
glossy colour magazines that other clubs had, but
very basic photocopies. The first two or three
editions were free of charge as I used the same
printers as the organisation I worked for and as we
gave them a lot of business they were quite happy to
do a small print run for me without charge. Even
when they did eventually charge me it was at a very
reasonable cost.
After some months the printing
company closed down, so I had to find someone else
who could photocopy my newsletters at a minimal
cost. I can't remember how much I charged for club
membership, but I do remember it was only a nominal
fee, so I didn't have the resources for any costly,
glossy, colour fan club magazines. I remember
apologising for the poor quality newsletters but the
majority of club members told me they liked the
format and that it was in keeping with the series
itself which didn't have a big budget and with the
show's main characters of a down-at-heel private
investigator and his dead partner. So the cheaply
produced newsletters stayed - although they weren't
as cheap to produce as they had been at the
beginning. This was due to my needing larger print
runs as membership numbers grew and the fact that
the new printers were charging more than the
original ones had.
Members at Elstree Studios as
part of the first RAHDAS meeting on 26th
November 1989
Image ©
Vince Cox, 1989
RAHDAS membership reached
around 300 at its peak. This was not a lot compared
with the circa 2,000 members that the
long-established Six of One and Fanderson boasted,
but Randall and Hopkirk was still fairly
obscure and couldn't compete with the more popular
and widely known series such as The Prisoner
and the Gerry Anderson productions, especially
Thunderbirds. As RAHDAS was a much smaller club,
it gave me the opportunity to make the members’
experience a more personal one by replying to every
letter I received (no email back then) and I also
listed my phone number in the newsletters so that
members could call me if they wished. RAHDAS became
renowned as the friendliest TV related society, a
title I was very proud of.
Something I did for RAHDAS members which other
clubs didn't tend to do for their members was to
arrange visits to filming locations. Granted,
Six of One arranged annual visits to Portmeirion
and there are Unmutual Elstree walkabouts that
are still well attended, but I arranged visits
to specific areas, sometimes having to write for
special permission to visit private or exclusive
places such as Dyrham Park Country Club, seen in
The Smile Behind the Veil, or Stanmore
Hall, which features in
The Trouble With Women as the Spiritual
Society of Great Britain. Even Tyke’s Water
Bridge on the Aldenham Estate, which turns up in
countless TV shows and films, as well as in
The Smile Behind the Veil. I spent many
hours writing letters explaining who we were and
why a visit was so special to us. We were only
ever refused a visit by one place: Hilfield
Castle, which was seen in
For the Girl Who Has Everything. The
owners obviously valued their privacy very
highly, as although I wrote on more than one
occasion asking for permission to visit, the
reply was always a very emphatic “No”. The treks
to locations were something several members
greatly enjoyed and we even made a special trip
to Knebworth House near Stevenage, which of
course featured heavily in
Somebody Just Walked Over My Grave.
RAHDAS members work out the
right angle of Knebworth House from the
churchyard
Image ©
Alan Hayes, 1992
In
the early days of RAHDAS, I even arranged whole
weekend location tours by minibus, touring
London locations on one day and Elstree
locations the next. These were always great fun,
but eventually it became too expensive to
continue with, so we began visiting London
locations by Tube and driving around to visit
the locations in and around Elstree and
Borehamwood. The group would always come back to
the house nearby that I shared with my Mum, when
she was still alive, for tea and we'd all sit
around the TV to watch episodes of R&H that
featured the locations we'd visited earlier that
day. I sometimes used to look around at everyone
there, just to see the look of sheer delight on
their faces. This made me feel so happy that I'd
set up RAHDAS in the first place! The sad thing
is that with the passing of time and Randall
and Hopkirk being a series that was based
largely in urban locales, many of the locations
we visited back in the day now no longer exist.
These location visits continued for many years,
even after RAHDAS was disbanded – and even
spawned a location-centric spin-off newsletter,
the Randall and Hopkirk Fun Fact File (or
FFF for short), produced by Anita Green.
We've had many members in the
past who were real characters. One had an obsession
with EastEnders and the actor Michael Melia
(who of course did not feature in Randall and
Hopkirk (Deceased)!), while another talked so
quickly and excitedly that we had to constantly ask
her to slow down so that we could have a chance of
understanding her. Another member seemed to suffer
constantly with nerves, no matter how welcome we
made her feel, but eventually she decided she wanted
nothing more to do with us, which was sad.
RAHDAS member Colin Lench
meets Annette André
Image © Vanessa Bergman, 1993
One early member who became a
very close friend of mine was Colin Lench. Colin was
an amazing artist and cartoonist and his artistic
talents were often seen in the RAHDAS newsletters.
He had a wonderful sense of humour and his talent
for drawing caricatures of our little group of
RAHDAS members was hilarious. Colin sadly passed
away in 2007.
Kenneth Cope and BAP 245B
reunited at Action 93, with RAHDAS member Vince
Cox
Image © John Holburn, 1993
Another renowned RAHDAS member
was John Kelly from Tyne & Wear, who at the time was
the owner of Marty and Jean's Mini, BAP 245B. John's
trade was restoring old Minis and when he acquired
BAP 245B he had no idea of the car's history - all
he saw was an old Mini in urgent need of repair and
a lot of TLC. By the time I heard about him, the
Mini had been completely restored to its former
glory and John not only became a RAHDAS member, but
on several occasions he would drive the Mini down
from the North East on our location days so that
some scenes could be re-enacted with the Mini in
actual filming venues. John also brought the car
along to the Action 93 convention held in March 1993
at the Shepperton Moat House Hotel, where Kenneth
Cope was delighted to be reunited with it. As part
of these events, members had the opportunity to sit
inside the very same car that Kenneth Cope, Mike
Pratt and Annette André had all driven at some time
in the series. Sadly, John passed away in December
2010 and the Mini was sold on as part of his estate,
though pleasingly it appears still to be on the road
according to the DVLA.
Surprisingly, RAHDAS gained quite a bit of media
interest during its years of operation,
including a couple of radio interviews and a
chapter in a book about quirky leisure pursuits.
But its biggest claim to fame was in 1990 when
RAHDAS was invited to appear on The Mike
Smith Show on The Now Channel, one of five
channels run by British Satellite Broadcasting
(BSB), the first franchised UK satellite
service. Mike was hosting a series of discussion
shows based on people's obsessions, subtitled
A Particular Passion and his topic for this
edition was to be “fans and fan clubs”. I
managed to round up five members eager for
stardom and, on Wednesday 18th April 1990, we
made our way to BSB’s Marcopolo House on Chelsea
Bridge Road, London, where we were escorted to
our specially reserved seats. We discovered we
were surrounded by Kylie Minogue and Cilla Black
fans as well as Crossroads and Royal
Family supporters, but the six of us looked
quite resplendent in our white on black RAHDAS
sweatshirts.
Six of One? No, six of RAHDAS!
Image ©
Noel Gay Television, 1990
The recording session was
nearing completion when Mike Smith finally
introduced the Society and, before I could say
“Marty Hopkirk”, he began to quiz me about RAHDAS. I
found the experience rather daunting as I struggled
to come up with a reasonable reply in the short time
I had to answer the question: “What do you actually
do in your society?” I had been practising replies
to the questions I assumed would be inevitable, but
I had assumed wrong! Anyway, Mike seemed satisfied
with the reply I gave. He nodded his thanks and went
on to question the Kylie fans. In seemingly no time,
the whole thing was over and, as we sipped what
passed for tea and coffee from the vending machine,
Mike Smith came over to us. Not only did he oblige
us by having his photo taken with the RAHDAS team,
but he also seemed genuinely interested in the
series and the Society. He did decline the offer of
enrolment though! An interesting day had been had by
all and at last RAHDAS had a claim to fame - even if
it was only a very small audience who would
ultimately glimpse us on the elusive BSB!
So why was RAHDAS called
RAHDAS? Well, it was an acronym of the Society’s
full title of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
Appreciation Society, which was quite a mouthful.
Other clubs had short, snappy titles, such as Six of
One for The Prisoner Appreciation Society or
Fanderson for the Gerry Anderson fan club. Some time
after setting up RAHDAS, I discovered to my dismay
that there was another Randall and Hopkirk
fan club known as Faithful Unto Death, which I
thought was a great title. However, this club didn't
appear to be advertised that much and therefore
wasn't so well known. Both groups started up in
Spring 1989 - initially oblivious to the existence
of the other - but FUD had faded away by the end of
the next year. Regardless, I really wanted a wittier
title than RAHDAS, but couldn't think of anything.
It actually reminded me of RADA (Royal Academy of
Dramatic Arts) and I quite liked the idea of it
sounding similar, so it remained as RAHDAS. And it
remains as RAHDAS to this day, even though the
Society only endured for five years. It broke my
heart to have to disband it, but it became difficult
to run due to increased work and personal
commitments.
A 2014 RAHDAS get-together in
Shenley, 20 years after the Society folded
Image © Alys Hayes,
2014
I thought that after the
disbandment of RAHDAS I would lose the friendships I
had made with several of my members and that really
upset me. However, little did I know that they had
other ideas and organised a surprise farewell party
on Saturday 5th March 1994, even arranging for
Annette André - yes, Jean Hopkirk herself - to join
us. It was a wonderful but emotional day as it
marked the end of our little fan-focused club.
However, it soon became evident that although it was
the end of the appreciation society, it was far from
the end of our friendship and although the
newsletters ceased being produced, there seemed
little reason for stopping the location visits. It
meant that we could remain friends and spend days in
each other's company, meeting up from time to time.
I am delighted that, more than thirty years later,
those same RAHDAS members still meet and remain
friends, not just with me but as a group. These days
we rarely visit locations other than our spiritual
home of Merston Manor (The Manor Elstree), as we've
now exhausted pretty much all of them, but we catch
up for the occasional Sunday lunch and have even
welcomed the likes of actress Grazina Frame (That's
How Murder Snowballs) and Mike Pratt's
daughter Karin to our get-togethers. Over the years,
we have lost touch with some former RAHDAS members
as they have moved on to other things. We have also
gained friends who were not originally members of
RAHDAS, but, sadly, we have lost several of our
friends along the way - people like Colin Lench,
John Kelly, Steve Watts and Martin Holder. However,
those we have lost will never be forgotten and I
feel privileged that they had either become members
of RAHDAS or became friends with ‘the gang’
afterwards. Something I never envisaged when setting
up a little appreciation society for fans of
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in 1989 was that
deep into the 2020s those of us who remain still
meet up at least once a year to enjoy spending a day
together. I can't help feeling rather proud of this
achievement!
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