Friends reunited! Grange Hill gang reminisce on their time on the show

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Todd Carty [who played Tucker Jenkins], Lee MacDonald [Zammo McGuire], Erkan Mustafa [Roland Browning], Susan Tully [Suzanne Ross] and Simone Nylander [Janet St Clair] were joined by writer and creator Phil Redmond to share stories. The team described how their life changed when the show came out in 1978.

Todd said: “The day before nobody knew who you were, come the [day] after it, bang, it went crazy for all of us, for every single member of the cast. From normal [life] playing football in the park, going to the cinema, it changed for every single one of us.”

Susan Tully added: “I’ve got a memory of walking down… one of the corridors in the production offices and seeing the big grey Royal Mail sacks, and somebody pointed out that one of those was just for Todd.”

Lee said: “Early on playing Zammo I remember getting chased out of the Imperial War Museum. I went with my school and the security guards said, ‘He’s got to go because there’s a girls’ school chasing him.’

“Getting this female attention when I was 13, 14, 15 was amazing, [it] was unbelievable.”

Susan, however, admitted she had planned on leaving the show due to the impact on her education.

She said: “In my family I had first-hand experience of unemployment, and I thsink I’d just got it into my head that the whole acting life might just be too precarious for me. I had up till that point always done well at school and I was slipping behind.

“I thought. ‘No, the plan’s going to be I’m going to knuckle down, I’m going to get my O-levels, go to sixth form centre, maybe go to uni.’

“I remember at the end of the third year, Anthony Minghella [Grange Hill’s script editor]… said, ‘You want to know what’s going to happen next year?’ And he went around the table and he got to me and I thought, ‘I’ll do him a favour’, and I said ‘Anthony don’t worry, don’t worry I’m not going to do next year’.

“There were going to be 18 episodes and I was going to be in 16 of them. I didn’t know any of this.

“They came back with a revised plan, instead of 16 I would be in eight. So I could spend more time in school.”

When she finished her O-levels, Anthony called her again and asked her to perform in a play over the summer before she started at sixth form.

And a week before that ended she was called for the role of Michelle Fowler on EastEnders, which she kept for 10 years.

One of the most controversial Grange Hill storylines was Zammo’s addiction to heroin, but it seems it did make a difference.

Lee said: “We went to a rehabilitation centre and we talked to ex-drug addicts. It would be daunting as an actor now, taking on something as big as that, but at the time you just take it in your stride.

“Absolutely [it made a difference], and if we had got one fan letter saying it had stopped people taking drugs that would have been enough. But we had loads. And I still get on social media now, regularly, people saying they didn’t take drugs because of that.”

Erkan also took this opportunity to set the record straight over the rumour that he was “stoned” when he attended a “Just Say No” anti-drugs event in their honour with Nancy Reagan at theWhite House.

He said: “Another cast member, who isn’t here today, said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if you said one of us was stoned?’ And I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ And like a mug I did it and the story just snowballed and snowballed and snowballed.”

Erkan recalled: “I was like ‘It’s done now, I can’t do nothing about it.”

The show finished in 2008 after 30 years on the air and 31 series, but it still sparks nostalgic memories in the hearts of many.

Phil Redmond, who went on to create soap opera Brookside, has confirmed he is now considering making a feature-length film about Grange Hill.

He said: “It’s no secret now, we are working slowly on the idea of a movie. And the movie is about what Grange Hill would be like now, and that would be a vehicle to bring everybody in.

“A lot of the same themes and stories would still carry but we would amplify it more with the impact of social media.

“If the BBC has got a future it’s got to be in making programmes like Grange Hill, that’s the role of a public service broadcaster.”

• The Reunion, today, 11.15am, BBC Radio 4

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