There's a novelty -

I met Rod Burton on a tube train the late 70s once. Actually, that’s not strictly accurate. I was on a tube train once and Rod Burton came into the same carriage and got off a couple of stops later. We didn’t exchange any words so I didn’t exactly meet him. Well, be fair, it was a tube train and you didn’t.

Rod, if you’re not sure, was one third of Rod, Jane and Freddy. If you’re still not sure they had a pretty long running kid’s TV series running through the 80s into the early 90s. I watched it a few times with my kids. I think the best way to describe the shows is that each was a 15 minute mini musical, concerning different issues like moving house. It was rather good for what it was, unless memory deceives me.

Of course, the trio are probably far better known for providing the music component of ITV’s iconic and long running younger children’s show, “Rainbow”. Why I mention “Rainbow” is this. I am currently moonlighting in the office today, responding to the live CDS phone line rather than the messages on the DAP phone line. Don’t worry about it. But it does mean that I’ve been surreptitiously looking at Facebook on my phone in the interludes between calls. There’s been quite a bit of clickbait about the show there because puppeteer, Ronnie Le Drew, who operated Zippy, passed away this week.

Now, if you click on clickbait then you probably deserve what you get. But one thing I learned was really rather interesting. I knew in the 70s that Rod and Jane were married. Not for all that long, it appears, though. They divorced in 1979, I think. What I didn’t know though was that in the mid 80s Jane began a relationship Freddy Marks, the Freddy of Rod, Jane and Freddy, culminating in marriage quite a few years later. So, at different times, Jane was married to both Rod and Freddy. Well, good luck to all three of them. Freddy sadly passed away a couple of years ago. Rod made it quite clear in an interview that his split with Jane had nothing to do with Freddy and that their relationship didn’t start until several years later.

I just found it interesting – there’s lots of examples of TV performers marrying their co-stars, but marrying both of your co stars at different times, now that’s a bit special.