Hughie Green, Gaiety Theatre, Douglas, Isle of Man.
The Rattlers meet Hughie Green.
The sixties were quite a pleasant time and people were reasonably pleasant to each other.
Or so we thought!
Then we came across Hughie Green and his motley crew!
 Hughie Green
Hughie Green was born on 2nd February 1920 in Kent.
His first show was the hugely popular Double Your Money, one of the first TV quiz shows. This, coupled with the later The Sky's The Limit proved he was an entertainer with an uncanny knack with ordinary people.
However, he will probably be most remembered for his role as the presenter of the TV version of Opportunity Knocks, and in the programme stars such as Bobby Crush, Bernie Flint and Mr. Muscles pay tribute to the man who launched their careers.
Eventually, Green's obsessiveness and reputation for being difficult made him too many enemies in TV management, and his show was canceled. Try as he might, he could not find a way back into television, and his career was effectively over.
It was not until his death on 3rd May 1997 that he really moved back into the public eye. The controversial revelations at his funeral were seized by the tabloids, and the ripples from that day are still being felt.
 Monica Rose
In 1963, a 15-year-old girl called Monica Rose
appeared on the show. At the time she was working as a junior accounts clerk, and she won £8 answering questions on "Famous Women". Hughie Green took to the girl so much she was invited back as a hostess on the show the following year and his sequel show The Sky's the Limit. This is one of the rare occasions when someone who has been a contestant later becomes part of the show. Some years later, Rose later tragically committed suicide.
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 Douglas
Isle of Man
Actually we didn't meet Hughie Green, he wasn't introduced to us and he never spoke a word to us!
I'd seen an advert outside the Gaiety Theatre asking for talent to audition for an Opportunity Knocks special that was being staged on a Sunday night at the theater. We didn't work Sunday nights so I thought it would be a good idea to try and get the Rattlers onto the show.
We carted our instruments and amps from the Villiers to the Gaiety Theatre on a trolley we borrowed from the Villiers, on one very pleasant summers afternoon in the summer of 1966. The pleasantness soon came to an abrupt end!
We decided to do the Cilla Black number Sing A Rainbow with Martyn playing the guitar and Jan Barrie singing. No sooner had we started the number when Hughie`s director came up to the front of the stage and asked us to turn it down, we were too loud. Martyn turned his guitar down and started again. The director came to me again and said Mr. Green still thinks it's too loud! This time I smiled at him and apologized, trying to placate him. He simply said to me, "Don't smile, this isn't funny son!".
We managed to get through the song with our instruments practically turned off and returned to the dressing room feeling a little peeved.
Shortly, Tony Holland, the man with dancing muscles, came into the dressing room and informed us that Mr. Green would like to hear us again, I must say Tony was a very nice chap, but Jan said to him, "If this is show biz, tell Mr. Green to stick it!" A slightly shocked Tony Holland left the dressing room and I thought, Jan's blown it for us, but she was perfectly right, I wish I had had the guts to say the same.
As we were getting our gear out of the theatre Mr. Green was rehearsing a dance routine with Monica Rose and neither of them gave us a second glance. I got the feeling Monica knew better!
My one regret is that when the director was stood in the orchestra pits talking to me, his teeth were perfectly aligned with my Beatle boot..............
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Tony Holland's views on Hughie Green
What did you think of Hughie Green. Did you get on with him?
Hughie Green was tremendous. When we did Opportunity Knocks he was very respectful to me and he said, the first week he said - I think you might win. He said - You've got a good chance. So that gave me some encouragement and then after the second week he said, I'd like you to come over to Scarborough where they were doing that summer season show of that year because it was like July, August. Erm anyway from there on, they used to book me for his summer seasons, his pantomimes, all his Sunday concerts and he would get would get me some openings into other areas of show business. For example, he got me Expo 67 in Canada. There was only four British acts took part in that. One being Freddy Star and myself. I don't know who the other two were. And he got me on Sunday night at the London Palladium which was the biggest television show of that time and big stars were willing to pay to go on there. He got me on that show and the interesting thing was that afterwards, at the party he challenged somebody who had power in that program and faced them with Monica and I and said - Did these two people that I brought along let you down? And this guy wouldn't say "no they didn't". He just put him on the spot so obviously he didn't want me, this guy didn't want us on the show. But Hughie got us on.
So as a presenter himself how did you rate Hughie?
Oh he was tremendous. A lot of people said he was corny. But he knew what the public liked and you've got to go by his track record haven't you, you know. He knew how to appeal to the masses. And that was the big difference I think than all the other talent shows. Because Hughie put little children on. He gave something for little children. He gave something for the youth. He gave something for the people in between and even the old people. You could be eighty two or eighty five and still get on the show and to me that's a master.