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We had the pleasure of having Anita Harris coming down to the start of the bed push - and giving us literally a helping hand to start.
She is a lovely girl, full of fun and was great to have around.
She didn't even charge a fee.
Please see her info below :-
At the end of the Bed Push we had the pleasure of Russell Hunter (Lonely) and Helen McArthur who were both performing at the Kings Theatre at the time.
They spent time signing autographs - and helped us drink the champagne.
They also didn't charge a fee.
Please see there profiles below -


ANITA HARRIS
Anita Harris was born 3 June 1942 and her musical career began as a child, although her expectations were to become a dancer. Soon after leaving school she left the UK to train as a choreographed skater in Las Vegas. Even today this would be unusual, but in the 1950s it was an exceptional experience. However, her first significant professional engagement in the UK was as a singer - briefly as one of the few ladies to sing with the Cliff Adams Singers. These were choralists who were to enjoy a long run with BBC Radio's Sing Something Simple.[2] Harris was still in her teens when she cut her first recording - with the John Barry Seven - a band who, at that time, were at the most active part of their own pop chart career. This early single, a double A-side of "I Haven't Got You" and "Mr One And Only", did not succeed.
Anita recorded for the Parlophone, Vocalion and Pye record labels and, in 1966, made her first important appearance at the London Palladium.
The late 1960s saw her career at its peak. Her hit, "Just Loving You", was acquired through her friend Dusty Springfield, from her songwriting brother, Tom Springfield. It was released in June 1967 on the CBS label, and was her biggest selling single. It peaked at #6 in the UK Singles Chart, and was a consistent seller for over six months with 625,000 copies in the UK, and 200,000 in South Africa (where it reached #1). In the United States, where it was released on Columbia Records, the record "bubbled under" the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at #120. Sales from other European countries and Australia took the total over one million copies. Two further singles were released, both cover versions of the songs "Anniversary Waltz" and "Dream a Little Dream of Me". Her one and only visit to the UK Albums Chart was with the album also called Just Loving You, which hit number 29 early in 1968.
She also made appearances in several British movies, posed for a nude set in Mayfair magazine, and had a popular presence on UK television. She made an appearance at the San Remo Song Festival in Italy - something that perhaps one associates with more established stars like Petula Clark. In fact she had the same musical arranger as Clark - Kenny Clayton.
Harris also co-hosted The David Nixon Magic Show in the 1970s, and appeared on the Morecambe and Wise Show in 1971 and 1973. In 1981 Harris was in the line-up for the Royal Variety Performance, singing "Burlington Bertie". She was still appearing as herself on programmes up to 2001, notably Boom Boom: The Best of the Original Basil Brush Show, French & Saunders, and Bob Monkhouse: A BAFTA Tribute. She also appeared in the cast of the touring play Seven Deadly Sins Four Deadly Sinners. In 2006 Harris appeared in Strangers on a Train at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley, co-starring Alex Ferns, Will Thorp, Colin Baker and Leah Bracknell for a one week run. In April 2009, Harris started at the New End Theatre playing Gertrude Lawrence in G and I.
On Sunday 5 July 2009, The Mail On Sunday newspaper published a lengthy interview with Harris, in which she claims to be penniless and homeless. She estimates that she and her husband, the sometime TV director and artist Mike Margolis, are £15,000 in debt, although sources close to the couple say this may be a considerable under-estimation. The Daily Telegraph reports that the couple first suffered a financial setback in 1985 when they lost all their savings in the collapse of a Swiss-based bank.


RUSSELL HUNTER
Actor Russell Hunter (1945-2004), began his career with Glasgow Unity Theatre in the mid 1940s appearing in plays such as 'The Gorbals Story'. During the mid 50s he joined the Glasgow Citizens' and in '59 he appeared with the Edinburgh Gateway Company. Hunter was an extremely versatile actor, exemplified in his one man show 'Jock' by W.Gordon Smith. Although a major name in television, Hunter continued to appear regularly on stage, in plays such as Bill Bryden's 'Willie Rough'.
Perhaps he is best known for his portrayal as 'Lonely' in the popular television series 'Callan' in the early 1970s, in which he starred alongside Edward Woodward.
His most memorable role was the timid, smelly petty criminal, "Lonely", unlikely accomplice to a clinical spy-cum-assassin, in the downbeat 1967 television spy series Callan. Reportedly, he said of his identification with Lonely that "I take more baths than I might have playing other parts. When Lonely was in the public eye I used only the very best toilet water and a hell of a lot of aftershave."
After playing Costard in a BBC television production of Love's Labour's Lost (1965), Hunter was cast as Lonely in ITV's "Armchair Theatre" production A Magnum for Schneider in 1967, which introduced the secret agent Callan to the screen. Four series followed (1967, 1969-72). Hunter and Edward Woodward reprised their roles in both a 1974 feature film of the same name and, seven years later, in the television film Wet Job, by which time Lonely had gone straight, got married and was running a plumbing company called Fresh and Fragrant. The title plays on "wet job" the euphemism for murder or assassination.
During his years with Callan, Hunter acted in the Hammer horror film Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) and took the roles of Crumbles, Dr Fogg and Dr Makepeace in an ITV production of Sweeney Todd (1970).
Hunter's other TV credits include The Sweeney, Doctor Who, Farrington of the F.O., The Bill, A Touch of Frost, sitcoms Rule Brittania (1975) as the Scotsman Jock McGregor and shop steward in The Gaffer (1981-83), and his last ever TV appearance, in the BBC drama Born and Bred. In his last years he reprised his Doctor Who role for a series of audio plays released on CD, Kaldor City.
He also appeared as different characters in the pilot and series of the BBC sitcom Rab C. Nesbitt.
Russell Hunter died aged 79 at Edinburgh's Western General Hospital of lung cancer


HELEN MCARTHUR
Helen McArthur who was one Scotland’s most popular singers died in November at the age of 60.
Helen was born in Glasgow in 1943 and intended to become a history teacher and was in fact a graduate of Glasgow University. Interested in music and singing from an early age, she entered and won the top awards in the Caird Travelling Scholarship Competition, and being twice a finalist in the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Competition, she decided to make singing her career, studying in Switzerland, London and Paris, as well as at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music.
Alongside her serious music commitments, which had taken her all over Britain in concerts, recitals and oratorio, Helen became a household name in her native Scotland on the lighter side of the entertainment world playing in cabaret and appearing in radio, TV and theatre. She appeared in all the major theatres alongside such artistes as Andy Stewart, Denny Willis, Jimmy Logan and also opposite Kenneth McKellar in one of the famous ‘Jamie’ panto’s at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow.
Helens first radio break was in 1968 when the BBC gave her her own series "With a Smile and a Song", she was also a regular on ‘Friday Night is Music Night’. In 1971 she was voted ‘Top Female Radio Personality of the Year’. Following this came guest appearances on several radio and TV shows, culminating in her own television series, ‘She Shall Have Music‘. She starred in cabaret in the Savoy Hotel, London and also performed before the Queen at the Palace of Holyrood, Edinburgh.
Helen moved to London around 1989 to sing and teach. She had fought illness for the past few years and died in the Thames Valley Hospice.

 
James Erskine Church Hill Place Edinburgh Scotland EH10 4BD
Tel:044 01314473135 Fax:044 01314470408 Email:norman.laidlaw@james-erskine.co.uk
Copyright © James Erskine 2012
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