“I’d love to.” Noele said.

Less than an hour later, both were at the headquarters of the Warwickshire Aero Club at Birmingham Airport, Elmdon. Before the evening was over, Noele Gordon had enrolled as a pupil pilot.

But this was a flying course with a difference. It was to be televised for Midlands viewers under the title Noele Gordon Takes the Air.

Within a few weeks, the series was on the air. Since the middle of September, viewers have watched Noele’s steady progress. By the time the series ends in November, she hopes to have flown solo after only eight hours in the air.

I went to see Noele on one of her training flights on a dull day, with rain drizzling down at intervals — not the best of weather for a gruelling session which included spins, circuits and stalls.

Noele’s teachers — chief flying instructor Arthur Penzer and club secretary Neville Birch — are confident that she will emerge as a first-class pilot.

“She is adaptable and easy to teach,” said Penzer. “On her first flight, she taxied the aircraft on and off the runway.”

According to Neville Birch, an hour’s flying is the equivalent of four hours hard work. Pupils need so much concentration that after an hour they have little energy left.

“For this series, however, Noele virtually has to work twice as hard,” Birch admitted. “Her aircraft is being filmed throughout all her flights, and quite often manoeuvres have to be repeated for the camera—there is always another aircraft on her tail carrying the cameraman and producer. Those aren’t the easiest conditions for learning to fly.”

Reg Watson, who is producing the series, said: “Viewers at home, watching the finished product, probably don’t realise the amount of work involved in putting this series over. It isn’t just a case of filming the whole of Noele’s lesson. We have to re-film parts of it, and get special shots for the opening of the programme.”

Editing the film is a big job. Then there is the studio work, which calls for long rehearsals every Tuesday. “We manage to get our own back on Neville and Arthur every Tuesday night,” Watson said with a smile. “At the airport they teach us to fly, but in the studio we teach them about television.”

I talked to Noele as she stepped out of the pink-and-grey Auster which she had just taxied to the club headquarters. She looked confident.

“I’ve always nursed a secret ambition to fly,” she told me. “I think it’s good for all of us to learn something different occasionally, and flying is something that’s within reach of everybody.”

Penzer and Birch told me that it takes from eight to 10 hours to learn to fly solo, but getting a pilot’s licence means flying a total of 40 hours. Before she can fly solo, Noele will have become proficient in take-offs, climbing and descending turns, stalls and circuit procedure. All navigation has to be done in a pupil’s spare time.

Will Noele carry on flying to get her pilot’s licence?

“I’d love to,” she admitted. “But it’s all a question of finding the time.”

The post How Noele Gordon takes the air appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

I suppose we are cheating a bit, having our party early, but everyone is having such a rip-roaring time that I can certainly claim the means are justifying the end.

I can smell the cold roast turkey the chefs are carving, there is the friendly clink of wine glasses and the hubble-bubble of show business talk — all the ingredients that go to make a first-class party.

And who better to be our hostess than Noele Gordon, the popular Lunch Box star whose birthday falls on Christmas Day.

I say I hope too many people don’t give her a joint birthday-Christmas present. She grins and says she hopes so, too.

She tells me: “This will be a specially happy Christmas, because I shall have my family round me for the first time since before the war. My mother, my aunt, uncle and nephew will all be with me in Birmingham.”

I move to comedian Jimmy Wheeler, sporting a king-size cigar. He adjusts his paper hat and sips his wine, and says: “I’m having a rest this year.

“Instead of pantomime, I shall be appearing in a Christmas show at Southampton with Frankie Vaughan. We worked together in the summer.

“It’s the first Christmas in 35 years that I haven’t been in pantomime. In the New Year, I’m off to Australia. It’s my bank manager’s idea. He told me to go to a place where they don’t know my gags.”

I find David Whitfield talking to Noele Gordon about Robinson Crusoe. He plays Crusoe in a Birmingham pantomime. He tells me: “I’m trying to familiarise myself with the Birmingham dialect. Noele is helping me. She’s very good at it.”

David, following the latest trend in pantomime, plays Principal Boy. After the Christmas Eve opening night, he is driving to Hull to spend Christmas Day with his family. Then an early start back to be in time for the Boxing Day matinee.

David is proud of Hull. “Look at the stars it has produced,” he says, counting off on his fingers Ronnie Hilton, Ian Carmichael, Freddie Sales, Patricia Bredin and Brian Rix.

And there, standing right beside me, is lovely and attractive Shirley, one of the three Kaye Sisters, and every bit as proud of her home town Hull as singer David.

The three girls are not going to let their London West End cabaret engagement interfere with Christmas. They have planned a traditional Christmas dinner together.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, they gaze round the room.

“This is some reunion,” they chorus. “David, Lauri and George were with us in a Blackpool show last summer.”

Lauri is Lauri Lupino Lane, and George is George Truzzi.

Lauri and George, slapstick comedians of the old school, are surprisingly quiet off stage. But Noele soon talks them into doing a balancing act with a pile of plates.

“I think the way you smashed all those plates on the stage is adorable,” says Noele, with a laugh. “Why haven’t you brought some along for the party?”

Lauri grins. “We would have done — but there wasn’t room with Jimmy Wheeler in the car as well!”

I reckon I am now on my fourth mince-pie, and I am in a group with those Lunch Box stalwarts Jerry Allen and his TV Trio. Like David Whitfield, Jerry has a pretty tight-packed Christmas schedule, and is driving back and forwards to his home in St Albans, Herts, to see his family.

“There’s plenty of work to be done for the Christmas and Boxing Day editions,” says Jerry reflectively.

“Has anyone got a helicopter I can hire?”

I hear Jimmy Wheeler offer his, but I see Jerry does not believe him, though he hands him a sandwich to show no ill-feeling. Producer Reg Watson is enjoying himself, too. He tells me all about the bumper Christmas show : “We’ll be visiting Toyland,” he says.

“Cinderella, Prince Charming, the Fairy Queen and the Wicked Witch will be there, not forgetting Little Bo-peep, Jack and Jill and Humpty-Dumpty. Then there’s a ballet sequence with toy soldiers, and the Alpha Olde Tyme Music-Hall will put on its Christmas show.

“Apart from the usual gang, we’re adding the Concords vocal group, Jean Morton — who will play the Fairy Queen — and the MacTwecdles. Just try keeping these characters out of a special show! We’re very happy to have Eula Parker with us. She was in Australia this time last year.”

Dulcie Sawyer, one of the Christmas show dancers, will have one of the quickest changes in show business. She has just a few seconds to change from “Les Sylphides” to “Cinderella.”

Now the party is at its rip-roaring height. Jimmy Wheeler is giving the Kaye Sisters turkey and telling them: “That’s yer lot.”

David Whitfield is handing round wine. Noele is chatting to Lauri and George, while Lionel Rubin, of Jerry Allen’s Trio, is climbing into Father Christmas gear.

We have caught the Christmas spirit, and viewers will catch it, too, when they see the programme.

The post Christmas Box appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.