Gerry Anderson: A Life Uncharted

But perhaps we'd better begin at the best place for stories:

at the beginning.

'Five!'

He was responsible for aliens attacking the world.

'Four!'

He blew the moon out of the Earth's orbit.

'Three!'

And he turned a bunch of puppets into superstars.

'Two!'

He was a wonderful chap.

One of the most honest chaps I've ever met in my whole life.

'One!'

He's a very evil... a very evil man.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Gerry Anderson.

APPLAUSE

One has to bear in mind

that I was always intensely interested in space travel.

I mean, I've always...

..looked at the starry sky and just wondered,

what is out there?

I remember, in fact, my brother,

who was a Mosquito pilot during the war,

and I couldn't have been very old, but he came back on leave once,

and I remember very specifically that he said to me once,

"Assuming it were possible to fly in a straight line

"across the universe,

"you must eventually come to the end of the universe.

"Or the edge of the universe.

"And if so, what is beyond?"

Well, of course, that kind of mind-boggling question

really set me thinking,

and it's kept me going until today.

My father, Gerry Anderson,

produced 18 series and four feature films,

owned six Rolls-Royce motor cars,

had four children, across three marriages,

and made and lost his fortune twice over.

But beyond these headlines,

I actually know very little about the man that I call Dad.

What inspired him?

Why was he never satisfied with his work?

Why were his relationships so fractious?

I've been loaned my very own FAB 1 to make a journey of discovery,

visiting some of the key locations

and speaking to some of his closest family, friends, and colleagues,

with the hope that I will finally be able to understand what made the man

who, for many, made their childhoods.

OK, Venus? OK, Steve.

Right, let's go.

Very few people know anything about my background.

I don't once remember him telling me about a happy childhood experience.

I was in a house, an old house, living right at the top,

in one room, with my family.

He spent a lot of time drumming into me

how poor his family were when they grew up.

Down below, we had a woman, a very old lady,

who used to bang on the ceiling with her stick.

It was Neasden, it was bleak.

Opposite, we had a man - I can't remember his name now -

but he was just fresh out of jail.

And on the bottom floor, we had a mad artist

and a prostitute.

I think that Dad's climb from the poverty of childhood

was the most important endeavour in his life.

It's only right that a bloke should have ambition.

But that constant drive for success was probably quite damaging for him,

because in his mind, he never reached it.

I always feel that I have failed.

You know that failure cannot be tolerated.

I think Dad's drive to succeed

was probably due to the way he was brought up by his parents.

And, I suppose, the way that they were raised, too.

First of all, dealing with my grandparents on my father's side,

they were Jewish.

They came as immigrants to this country.

And when they arrived here,

the immigration people said to my grandfather, "Name?"

And he said, "Bieloglovski."

And the immigration officer said,

"I can't possibly spell that. Your name's Abrahams."

And so that was his name.

Now, on my mother's side,

my grandmother lived in Hackney,

and the family, that's on her side,

all grew up to be very, very Christian.

Now, when I say Christian, I don't mean they went to church,

but I mean very English.

It was...

a tough place to be, as a child,

between two parents locked in battle.

They had a lot of arguments, and it wasn't a happy marriage.

They should never have been married in the first place,

but there we are, they were.

I loved Grandpa Joe, he was a lovely man.

But he wasn't for Grandma Debbie. And she...

She was very unhappy her whole life.

My mother was kind of always saying how she hated him,

hated the marriage.

But the mixture was explosive.

Sometimes my father, there would be a row going on,

and she would say, "I'm going to bed",

and he would say, "No, you're not", and he would lock the door.

And I'd have to sit in a locked room for maybe three hours

while these two were going hammer and tongs at each other.

And consequently, I had just about

the most miserable childhood it's possible to imagine.

I think it's inevitable that Gerry's upbringing,

and the struggles he had, would feed into his work.

Because, you know, that's what all good creatives do.

They take what they know and put it into their work.

Do you remember how it all started?

I guess none of us will ever forget that day.

I was brought up, really,

by a mother who didn't want to be Jewish,

didn't want to have anything to do with the Jewish religion,

and by my father, who was Jewish,

and did want to have a lot to do with religion.

I think her...

..her non-Jewish beliefs actually extend far beyond that.

Gerry's mother was unbelievably anti-Semitic.

One day, this was just before the war,

a laundry boy came to collect the laundry,

which was in a sheet tied up with a list on it,

and he took the laundry, very cheerfully, "Thank you very much",

and she walked back,

perhaps to get the money for the last week's laundry, I don't know,

and he said, "Hold on a minute."

He had seen the name Abrahams.

And as she was returning, he shouted out,

"We don't take laundry from Jews."

And he threw the laundry, which hit her fair and square,

and slammed the door.

He was teased... for having a Jewish surname.

I also remember at Neasden, going to school,

and kids dancing in a circle around me, saying "Jew boy".

So I think he very quickly developed feelings, as a kid,

that religion was a thing that only brought negativity.

I don't really think you'll find much, if any religion

in any of the shows because of that.

So, with the aid of my mother, I totally rebelled.

So she, after a considerable argument,

forced my father to change the family name by deed poll.

I remember her saying, "I always liked the name Anderson."

I know that name.

From everything I can tell, from what he said,

as a child, he was very close to his mum,

and actually, with hindsight,

he can see that she was quite a manipulator.

And she never had a kind word to say for anybody.

I grew up, rightly or wrongly, very, very much on my mother's side.

So my father was the enemy, and I was an ally to my mother.

Therefore, I inherited all her ways, and I hated his ways.

He became a mummy's boy not because Debbie was a wonderful mother,

but because she set the stage

for Joe being a useless, ugly, lazy, slovenly man.

My mother used to humiliate him.

And, er...

When I was a kid, she used to say to me, jokingly,

"Come on, you ugly devil,

"you look more like your dad every day of the week."

It used to break my heart, you know.

Because I was brought up to think that my father was ugly.

So when she would say that to me, I used to get very upset about it.

Gerry's relationship with his father,

I think only began to heal

only a short time before Joe's death.

But it was almost too late, because he was taken ill,

he went into hospital,

and I believe up until the day he had his final heart attack,

he was still waiting on Debbie hand and foot.

When I arrived,

my mother was actually talking to a neighbour

about the pain she'd been having in her stomach,

and how she felt sick, and all the rest of it.

And my father came in with a tray of tea.

Tea, m'lady?

Tea on the lawn.

And he had just had a heart attack.

And an ambulance arrived, and he was taken to hospital.

And it was just about when Thunderbirds was due to premiere.

And he was in hospital, I think in Maidenhead,

and Gerry was so proud,

cos he managed to get a television set into the ward.

And he was semiconscious when they wheeled over a television set

for one of the first showings of Thunderbirds.

We're not really sure if he could hear it, or see it properly,

but we've got notes that suggest how proud Joe was

of what his son had achieved.

It was very important to Gerry

that Joe had seen him hit the heights, as it were.

Get some rest now, Dad. I'll see you tomorrow.

When he died, he said something to me which was incomprehensible,

and I said, "I can't understand."

And he said it again, and I said, "I can't understand."

And he said, "Can I have a pencil?"

And he...

He wrote...

"It all happened

"because..."

And he lapsed into unconsciousness.