NOLLY.

Russell T Davies’ drama based around Noele Gordon, who starred in the ATV soap Crossroads (from 1964-1981, returning for two episodes in 1983) was about two things: how a woman with no partner or children was judged by the male-dominated entertainment industry, and how something considered trivial – or worse – can still be valuable, powerful and life enhancing.

The (male) TV critic Hilary Kingsley has stated that Crossroads never failed “to provide its critics with ammunition. Some of the acting would have disgraced the humblest of village halls; many of the plots were so farcical they could have been written in a bad dream, and much of the dialogue was pathetic.”

While those harsh criticisms may be true – and were the symptoms of a punishing year-round production schedule rather than deliberate incompetence – Crossroads was a cultural phenomenon. Noele won the TV Times award for most popular actress eight times during her time in the show, while Crossroads itself attracted an audience as high as 15 million viewers. One of those was my nan, who devoured the show on a daily basis and avidly read the spin-off novels.

Now there was a thing – the books were written by one Malcolm Hulke, who wrote thirteen episodes of Crossroads between 1968 and 1975. In 1945, he’d joined the British Communist party and went on to write a succession left wing, anti-authoritarian screenplays in the action-adventure genre. Because of his politics, Hulke was kept under surveillance by MI5, and at the time he was writing the Crossroads novels, was critiquing racism, economic imperialism and the arms race in his Doctor Who scripts. A notable anti-establishment pedigree for a freelance writer also working on a modest soap about a Midlands motel.

But then, Crossroads itself could be surprisingly controversial and cutting edge. In 1970, Meg was given an adopted black daughter, Melanie Harper (Cleo Sylvestre), in a response to racial tensions in Birmingham, partly provoked by Conservative MP Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech in April 1968. Cleo’s role was ground-breaking – she was the first Black actor to play one of the regulars in a British television soap opera. It was another casting first for Crossroads, which in Sandy Richardson (Roger Tonge), had presented the first regular role played by a paraplegic actor in a TV soap in the UK.

With the benefit of hindsight, Crossroads was a unique, rather odd mixture of cheap production values and ahead-of-its-time social awareness. Even if it hadn’t been, it wouldn’t have devalued the importance that people like my nan attached to it. In Nolly, there’s a scene on a bus in Birmingham in which a man denigrates the female passengers’ interest in Crossroads. Noele (Helena Bonham-Carter, astonishing), rips into his masculine preferences of cultural import – principally football – and rams home the message that being enamoured of a fictional motel is no less valid. You can extrapolate from there that Davies is also talking about his love of Doctor Who, or indeed anything that’s considered marginal but, for its dedicated enthusiasts, is equally life affirming.

I have to say – how many soap operas have had an electric guitar at the forefront of their theme tune? None, and it’s a brilliant piece of music by Tony Hatch, instantly recognisable and running across the musical spectrum from melodrama to genuinely moving.

Perhaps Crossroads’ quiet subversiveness is why one of its most popular characters was name-checked by punk legends The Damned on their single ‘The History of the World Part 1’ (1980):

Adam Chance and Zorro
Take them with a pinch of salt.
Sad about tomorrow.
Sorry, but it’s not my fault

That’s only matched by Albert Tatlock and Annie Walker, from Crossroads’ great rival Coronation Street, featuring in the lyrics of Scottish punks The Skids’ TV Stars (1979). Long after those characters have been forgotten, they’re still being sung about, largely because The Damned and The Skids are both still touring. There’s no greater honour, and it illustrates what a massive impact soaps have not just on popular culture, but on the national psyche.

Pride of place on my bookshelf is a second hand copy of The Crossroads Cookbook, by the series' creators Hazel Adair and Peter Ling. It features an 'in universe' afterword by Meg and a hand-written dedication that concludes, "Do try David Hunter's scrambled eggs." 

I think Nolly would have been delighted.