Reporter’s diary

Press, 17 November 1982, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Watch-radio A WATCH complete with a built-in radio has just■ arrived in Christchurch (Lois Fletcher, of Thompson’s Time Centre is shown wearing one above). Robert Thompson, the owner of the shop, says that the radio part of the watches is virtually a crystal set with the aerial in the wire from the watch to the earphones. He spotted them at a watch and clock trade fair in Hong Kong last month and brought" a dozen back with him. He has also ordered 200 more. They went on sale this week. So far two have been sold and many people have been in to try them out. Mr Thompson had hoped that they would be classed as watches for tax purposes but the Customs Department ruled that they were radios and charged the higher radio duty. The watch-radios cost $97.50. Mortimer revisited ■ WHEN "Mortimer’s Patch" became a critical and popular success a couple of years ago, Television New Zealand stopped making it. Now Tom Finlayson, who produced the programme ano left TVNZ when it was axed, has managed to raise $2 million to make a movie using the same principal - characters, actors, and: writers. It' is called “Finding Katy," and will begin shooting in Auckland on January 7.. Terence Cooper will play Mortimer again and his two police colleagues will be played by Don Selwyn and Sean Duffy as in the TV series. Patrick McGoohah the star of “Danger Man,” one of TV’s first spy series, will star and the female lead will be played by Emma Piper, a talentec} 25-year-old London stage actress who has just completed her first TV series for the BBC. And TVNZ is also involved. The production will use some TVNZ equipment and it will have TV rights here. There is no suggestion that the TV series will be revived. Shaky start

OVERSEAS interests are providing half the $2 million budget and New Zealand investors the rest, says Marcia Russell, the “Listener” journalist who is Tom Finlayson’s business and domestic partner. It has taken Mr. Finlayson more than a year, to get the project going and it almost did not get off the ground. “The Film Commission didn’t-want anything to do with the picture and refused even the small sum

Tom wanted to pay Maurice Gee to live on while he wrote the script,” says Ms Russell. “That just made him more determined than ever to get it made.” The year of. finagling, coaxing, haggling, has been a lesson in film finance for Mr ' Finlayson, whose first, though he hopes not last, film project this is. To direct the picture Mr Finlayson has hired Peter Sharp, who began directing in TV in Christchurch in the sixties and made the successful Ngaio Marsh series for the Broadcasting Corporation. He is now a top director in Australia. “Finding Katy” will be shot on sites round Auckland and at a large warehouse in Avondale which the production company has leased as a studio and offices. It is expected to take about seven weeks. Casting for roles other than

the five already filled will be conducted by Mr Finlayson next. week. Happy customer A GOOD word for the Post Office has come from a Linwood man who says that a letter he sent frbm Christchurch and postmarked 2 p.m. November 1, arrived at an address just outside London in the first post on November 3. “Is this a record?" he asks. The Deputy Chief Postmaster in Christchurch, Mr Alex McKenzie, says he doesn’t know if it is a record but it was very pleasing to hear .of a satisfied customer. “It appears to be just one of those things that has clicked. From the time he dropped it in it must have gone straight into dispatch and caught all the connections." ,

Jangled “CONFUSION and panic" reigned in many Auckland households after an Auckland newspaper reported yesterday morning that School Certificate examinations were to begin yesterday. But-the preexam nerves jangled needlessly a day early. The English paper - traditionally the one that signals the’ start of the examinations. - is not until today .’The Auckland regional superintendent of the Education - Department, Mr Pat Foley, said the. error had caused much confusion. He had been awake since 6 a.m. answering telephone calls from anxious parents and journalists. “It is not going to be a good morning,” he said. “This is going to upset a lot of people. We can do without that and the kids can do without it, too.”