elspeth ballantyne tells all

It was 31 years ago today or thereabouts that Elspeth Ballantyne had the pleasure of talking to me about her role on Neighbours and of course a little bit about her time on Prisoner. What shocks me the most about this fax to the UK magazine Inside Soap is that I was invoicing, and presumably got, £100 for this sack of shit (and a tiny little sack of not much shit, either). Talk about the glory days of print publishing. 

Blah to that! 

if you read only one interview with tom oliver today...

...you will no doubt want to make it this one, by the iridescent 'Jean MacElroy' who was one of my many noms-de-plume while I was hackily hacking out el cheapo pieces on Australian soap stars etc for the British colour press. This story must have been from 1992, as (a) that's when TO returned to Neighbours after a shorter stint in the late 1980s; and also, in 1992 yeah, he was 54. The rest of the story shows, if nothing else I suppose, my sinister fascination with old television. I hadn't realised until I started busting into my manila folder of old soap star interview transcripts/beat ups that I had such an abiding interest over such a long time, there you go. 

Unfortunately I was the vessel of a vicious lie from TO to the readers of whatever this appeared in (assuming it did) over thirty years ago: we said that The Shifting Heart was 1969. So wrong! It was 1968:

Melbourne Age 21 August 1968 p. 6

And here's a feature on TO from the following year. 

Melbourne Age 29 January 1969 p. 2

Enjoyed all that? Good. Because this is a new feature of this blog, always full of surprises, going forward for some time to come! Thrilled? You are!!!