From Glasgow To Northwick Park Via The Ghost Train

15 years before appearing in Green Wing, Mark Heap appeared as part of alleged comedy double act "The Two Marks" on ITV's Ghost Train in the early 90s. This clip from Youtube features the duo performing a "Boo" on a football fan from Glasgow, although I don't understand why it's the person who's sent the letter that gets splatted! One of the many eccentricities of the erstwhile Saturday morning show.

I seem to remember the Two Marks coming to Canterbury to perform a Boo on an unsuspecting victim just after we'd moved to the city. This was done in a car park near the Castle Ruins and seeing the familiar locations on television was quite something at the time. Interesting considering that part of Green Wing was shot around the Harrow Campus near Northwick Park Hospital.

The concept of the show was that the presenters were travelling around the country with the Ghost Train to escape from Barry Mafia. If you think that's twisted then the storyline has to be the most pretentious within a children's programme judging by the comments I've found on Youtube:

(Quote from Pippo)
"Right the premise was thus:
Frances actually dated Barry for a while, Barry duped Frances grandmother to giving him the Ghost Train. She found out dumped Barry and along with Sabra and Paul stole the Ghost Train (Very first episode)"

Part 2:

They meet up with Nobby in a field (from where the first ep. was broadcast IIRC) and find Gerrard lurking in the shower on the Ghost Train (he was actually an unwilling slave of Barry Mafia)

Barry then spent every ep. trying to steal the Ghost Train back. Barry succeeds (with the help of a rather treacherous Nobby) in series 2 and keeps possesion for about half of series 3 before Nobby betrays him.

Part 3...

On the very last episode Barry Mafia dupes the gang once more (he offers a truce) and steals the Ghost Train and banishes Frances forever on the plabet Zajax (which they had previously visited). End of story, no coming back."

This was a Saturday morning kids show for fuck's sake! I could barely understand the plot-line back then and still can't now. Maybe this was a desperate attempt to make the show different from predecessor "Get Fresh" which featured snot ridden alien Gilbert travelling with a mulleted Gareth "Gaz Top" Jones around the UK in "The Millennium Dustbin".

However the wittiness of Nobby the Sheep and the attractiveness of presenter Frances Dodge made the show memorable for me. Probably just as well they kept Nobby on when the show evolved into the studio based "Gimme 5" with the even more charming Jenny Powell!
That's kind of coincidental considering the clip above steals the jumping video effect from "No Limits" when the girl gets splatted!