Murphy's Mob (Puffin Books)

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AFTN: WHY DO YOU THINK THERE’S NEVER BEEN A DVD RELEASE OF THE SERIES? DO YOU THINK THERE EVER WILL BE ONE? Ken Hutchinson, a Scot, who played Dunmore’s downtrodden manager Mac Murphy was tremendous. Snarly and an Alex Ferguson in the making – mannerisms wise at least, if not in terms of managerial success! The ambiguity of the first rape is given context by the second rape,” declared the British Board of Film Classification in 2002, “which now makes it quite clear that sexual assault is not something that Amy [Susan George] ultimately welcomes.” Cassidy was wonderfully played by the great character actor Milton Johns, who is probably best known to millions in his later role as Brendan Scott in Coronation Street. He was a pantomime style villain played to perfection. He didn’t like the kids. The kids didn’t like him. I can’t really remember what Mr Cassidy’s role was, but he certainly seemed to be Rasputin Jones’ right hand man and ran his arcade. Not someone to get on the wrong side of, but did he actually have a right one?! Unusually, the combination of Hutchison’s hard-man reputation and a charm that often filtered through, led him to be cast as the brooding, tormented Heathcliff in the five-part 1978 BBC adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

Broadcast on ITV from 1982-1985, running to four seasons and over 50 episodes, Murphy’s Mob was set around a struggling, fictional English Third Division Football Club called Dunmore United. Of the kid actors, Boxer was meant to be the main star. Played by Keith Jayne, who had been a star previously as the lead in ITV’s Stig of the Dump, Boxer was joined by characters such as Mugsy Moran, Pacman, The Hulk, Prof and girls Charlie and Hannah. His last screen role, as a prison inmate making claims of brutality by wardens, was in The Bill in 1999. In particular the show focussed on a group of long suffering young fans as they overcame obstacles to set up their own Junior Supporters Club and clubhouse in the stadium, whilst also following their day to day lives and misadventures, in school, after school and of course, on a Saturday afternoon.Poseur's night at the Nashville" as the waggish Holton christened it. This evening saw the return of the one time Heavy Metal Kid supremo (that group now one year's rust encrusted) on a new year with a new band. As a teenager growing up in Thatcher’s Scotland of the 1980’s, you needed as much joyous TV escapism as you could get and it didn’t come much better than rushing home from school twice a week to watch Murphy’s Mob, to see their latest scrapes and escapades, which of course were always more exciting than your own!

LS: Not much really. I did get noticed quite a bit when it was on (and got asked to sign a few autographs) – and very occasionally still do – but that was about it really. It gave me tremendous experience at an early age, so I guess I grew up a lot doing it. And so went the opening theme tune to one of my favourite childhood programmes and one of my favourite football related dramas ever – MURPHY’S MOB. For those of you who remember Wurzel and the series as fondly as myself, we have a treat in store, as AFTN caught up with Lewis Stevens who played Wurzel and chatted to him about his time on the series and what he’s been doing since. You can read that HERE. AFTN: IT MUST BE A NICE FEELING TO KNOW THAT SOMETHING YOU DID SO MANY YEARS AGO IS HELD IN HIGH REGARD AND CULT STATUS TODAY. YOUR CHARACTER IN PARTICULAR IS VERY FONDLY REMEMBERED. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?No matter what else I do, people always associate me with Dancer,” he told The Herald in 1989. “It’s frightening.” The series featured Ken Hutchison as Mac Murphy, who takes charge as manager of a struggling fictional Third Division football club, Dunmore United, and a group of young supporters of the club whose day-to-day troubles included attempts to set up a junior supporter's club and clubhouse within the stadium. [1] Cast [ edit ] The show is definitely long overdue a DVD release. In the years that have passed we could only live with our vague memories of Auf Wiedersehen Pet’s Gary Holton’s punky theme tune, the storylines and the childhood wonders of why we never had such a cool clubhouse for young fans at East Fife. The theme tune still really holds up as strong today. Curiously, he also starred in the children’s series Murphy’s Mob (1982-85) as Mac Murphy, manager of a struggling football club setting up a supporters’ club for juvenile fans.

The series featured Ken Hutchison as Mac Murphy, who takes charge as manager of a struggling fictional Third Division football club, Dunmore United, and a group of young supporters of the club whose day-to-day troubles included attempts to set up a junior supporter's club and clubhouse within the stadium. Cassidy provided a lot of the show’s most memorable comedic scenes and provided almost a comedy double act in his scenes with his foil, policeman’s son ‘Wurzel’ Glossop.But Hutchison was on the other side of the law playing a police sergeant in the film epic Gandhi (1981), and a sinister superintendent on television in the second series (1990) of The Justice Game. AFTN: THAT WOULD BE CERTAINLY BE EXCELLENT AND ENJOYABLE. WHAT IMPACT DID BEING A NATIONAL TEENAGE TV STAR HAVE ON YOUR LIFE?