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NAS President is seen in an old film as a child actress
Above: Jane Asher, fifty or so years on.
Friday 8 March 2002
Jane Asher is a very busy lady. She is a well-known actress, novelist, and cake maker to name just a few of her famous talents, not to mention the McCartney affair to boot as well. She even has time to be president of the National Autistic Society, where she supports thousands of British people with autism – and she even had time to pay a visit to this website in November 2001 and made correspondence with yours truly – and if some archive footage can prove, her acting career could have began when she was only six. Why hasn’t she been given the OBE or MBE yet, I wonder? I suppose with all the coincidences that I have had to put up with over the past couple of years, I wouldn’t be surprised if that really did happen.
It ain’t half old, Mum
Remember those old 1970’s Children’s Film Foundation movies that were seen parallel to those Green Cross Code public information films on 1970’s children’s television? Well, go back twenty years from that. A village hall in Kent has shown a long lost children’s film, featuring a six-year-old Ms Asher in a film called Adventure in the Hopfields, except that this one dates from the 1950’s instead. She also appears alongside a child version of comedy actor Melvyn Hayes of the sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. The film was found in an American skip where no one realised how it got there in the first place. Could it be just a coincidence that the future stars appeared in the film?
A film enthusiast paid the British equivalent of £25 for the film at the time, unknown that the child actors would be famous in the future. But those lucky people of Goudhurst will get to see the film first in their village hall. Could a Channel Four or BBC 2 weekday matinee be the next stop for this film? No doubt that Angus Deayton will probably want a clip of the film to show on this Before They Were Famous programme at Christmas Time. If you ever become famous, make sure that anything of yourself as a child is hidden so that no human apart from yourself can ever reach them!
The strongest link
When Jane Asher went to talk about the film on Channel 5’s Open House with Gloria Hunniford, as well as talking about the film, she did talk about 2002 being the year of autism. Yes, the National Autistic Society’s presidency was mentioned on the show. You could say that this find was a link between the year of autism and the film itself. The MMR vaccine was briefly mentioned in the interview as well. It has to be said that this old children’s film was not responsible for Jane Asher being famous; fame and fortune came much later. If she had not become famous, would the National Autistic Society have a different president by now? Let’s just hope that this film will have a small screen outing soon.
OK, this article has nothing to do with autism, but you can see the link, can’t you? Jane Asher may make lovely cakes, but what she does for autistic people is even lovelier.
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