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In April 2007 we received a phone call from a gentleman who said he was from a film company, the name of which sounded like Hammer Horror! He said that they were making a series about places which had previously been used as locations for TV programmes. The series would be called "Stuart Maconies TV Towns" and would be filmed in several locations around the country.
For the Birmingham sequence they were using programmes such as "Crossroads", "Boone", and "Gangsters" and they had realised that the "Gangters" programmes featured canals quite frequently and were now looking for someone who could talk to them about Birmingham Canals and they had seen my name on the Society website and thought I might be able to help them. After chatting to them for a while about the BCN, a few days later the producer, Colin Campbell and his colleague Lucy, drove up from London to meet us. They arrived at our home in Alvechurch just after 9.00am stayed for quite a while talking about the possibilities of filming for the programme. They wanted to do the canal part from a boat and asked where they could hire one from. I mentioned that we owned a narrowboat and Sheila and I would be happy to be involved which solved a number of problems for them. After a number of delays due to co-ordinating filming schedules and people it was agreed that our bit of filming would take place on Friday 11th May. This was the last possible date that we could be involved because we had arranged to go down to Limehouse for the Tidal Thames Cruise and needed to get down there by a certain date. We took the boat into Birmingham the day before and then moved it round to the agreed location by the Mailbox the next morning. The film crew arrived about lunchtime and unloaded quite a lot of cameras etc onto the boat and arranged from where they could film. Colin introduced us to Stuart Maconie who was very professional and easy to talk to. It was arranged that Stuart and I would sit on the front of the boat while the camera was located inside the front door. Sheila was elected to steer the boat. We set off in a gentle drizzle towards Gas St Basin and Old Turn Junction where we winded to go back through Gas Street Basin to Salvage Turn and were then asked if we could do more filming. During all this Sheila was stuck on the back trying to steer the boat quietly because the engine noise intruded on the film. Just as we were approaching Worcester Bar on our way back to Salvage Turn a full length working boat towing a butty came towards us and we had to stop. The people on the boat recognized me and various ribald remarks were made. Stuart said, "You seem to be quite well known round here!", which I had to admit was very true. At one time a camera crew were running along filming from the towpath covered with cameras etc. They looked a bit like the Keystone Cops! They finally decided that they had enough film and I talked enough so we returned to our mooring and tied up. Anyone who sees the DVD and knows the area will see that we passed under Broad Street Bridge at least twice during the filming, but no mention was made of it, that's artistic license! It was agreed that the film company - Hamma & Glamma - would donate £150 to the BCN Society and would let us know when the series was going to be shown. It was shown on ITV3 and a surprising number of people mentioned to me that they had seen it. They also sent us a DVD of the programme we did for the series as a memento of our moment of fame on TV!