Michael Elwyn, Corin Redgrave and The Newcomers

Talking about Joe Orton last Saturday, Michael Elwyn recounted how he had appeared in the 1960s BBC soap opera The Newcomers.

When he threw it up to join a touring theatre company, Auntie was horrified. Two dozen scripts with his character in them had been written. The solution turned out to be to cast Corin Redgrave as his twin brother and carry on as if nothing had happened.

When I spoke to Elwyn afterwards, he told me he had given Judy Geeson her first screen kiss in the programme.

He also kindly suggested that I was too young to remember The Newcomers. But I do remember it, if only from its last days. It ran from 1965 to 1969.

Only a very few episodes survive, but you can read some memories of the show on Britmovie.

If you look at Wikipedia or the IMDB, you will find no mention of Elwyn or Redgrave. But the BBC Genome site allows me to be exact.

Michael Elwyn appeared in seven episodes of The Newcomers at the end of 1965. Corin Redgrave then appeared in a further nineteen.

There is something wonderful about the idea of a Redgrave appearing in a soap.

You can hear John Barry's theme to The Newcomers above, but I cannot claim it gives me any tingles of memory,but it does sound splendidly Sixties,