Coronation Street - Feb 17, 2014

Dennis is moping in a bar with Gloria serving drinks. Richie comes in, having been texted by Gloria (ah…is it as easy as that? Just text Robin and he’ll come to you? ;) ) to drop by because Dennis needs some cheering up. He tells them he was going to stop by and see them anyway because he was on his way to the airport and had a car waiting outside. (Cute vintage Robin bit here – Dennis asks if he smells a groupie in a singsong voice and Richie responds in a Timmy Lea fashion that no, it’s just his aftershave, ha ha) Anyway, he says, a promoter of his from the old days wants him to go touring in Eastern Europe and he’s leaving. Gloria gets huffy about him ditching them, but Dennis seems relieved that it’s all over. At the end Dennis and Rita make up and celebrate with champagne.

And I suppose that’s the final exit of our hero from “Coronation Street”.

Coronation Street - Feb 10-14, 2014

Part 1: Back in the restaurant, Richie is talking with the grandma Gloria (mom of the restaurant owner) character. He tells her of the first time he heard Sgt. Pepper on the radio. Richie is asked if he ever had any kids, and he replies, yes, two that he knows of who are now grown and an accountant and a solicitor. A girl comments that that sounds a bit boring, after what he does…and he replies well, they’ve seen what the music business does to you.Dennis comes in to talk about his ideas about the setlist, he wants Richie to open with a medley of all his best songs. The grandma character is more interested in looking at Richie’s rings on his fingers. She tells him a man with rings is “Very rock and roll!” Later in the episode, Dennis stuns the crowd at the restaurant when he walks in with “rocker” clothes: a leather jacket and rings on his fingers.

Part 2: A birthday is being celebrated at the restaurant and a woman is opening gifts. She opens a fancy scarf and Dennis’ wife Rita tells him that he should borrow that scarf, it would go well with his jacket. Richie laughs. Dennis pulls Richie away from talking to a girl about traveling through Belgium so they can talk about the current band they’re working on. Richie insists he wants to play covers, but Dennis tries to talk him into playing his own works. Richie breaks into song with “Suspicious Minds”. Dennis’ wife is getting more and more annoyed with Dennis wanting to be in the whole rocker scene.

Feb 12, 2014

No Robin in this episode. The plot of his storyline just involves Dennis’ wife getting mad at him for spending too much time around Richie and Gloria, and she kicks him out of the house. Gloria invites him to spend the night on her sofa. I have to wonder, where is Richie staying all this time, couldn’t Dennis stay with him?

Feb 14, 2014 part 1

No Robin. Dennis begs Rita to take him back and she does, admonishing him first for “hurting her so much”. I’m confused as to what he did that was so bad, he didn’t cheat on her. Just because he hung out with Richie, wanted to be a rocker, and flirted a bit with Gloria? Really? Come on. A guy’s got to have a little excitement in his life at that age!

Part 2:

Still no Robin. Rita and Dennis are happily back together and having a Valentine’s day dinner date when Gloria walks in and comments that oh, he’ll probably not need to sleep at her place again tonight. To which Rita gets huffy again and storms out, Dennis pleading that he only slept on the sofa. Drama, drama.

Coronation Street - Feb 7, 2014

Part 1: Richie is in the restaurant working out the setlist of songs. He wants to open with Waterloo Sunset, but Dennis thinks it too melancholy and would rather he play original material. Richie says they’ll figure it out later, and he has to use the bathroom, Dennis rolls his eyes, but follows him. When the men have left, the restaurant owner warns Gloria that both of the guys are besotted with her and she can do what she likes with Richie, but leave Dennis alone, his wife Rita is getting suspicious.

Part 2: Richie unloads the van with his band at a club, the Hyde Working Men’s club. They complain how cramped is was back there. Richie tells Gloria she could have ridden up front with him. Robin's really cute in this episode with him and the other characters joking back and forth!

Coronation Street - Feb 5, 2014

Just when I'd gotten lazy about checking to see if Robin's made a re-appearance as "Richie" on this show, I find out a week too late that his role started up again on Feb 5! Frantically I search YouTube for it, hoping whoever's been uploading recent episodes haven't already taken it down, but am out of luck. I get an inspiration and type the episode into a Google search and voilà! I find it on a video site called Daily Motion. This includes text at the bottom of the screen, but oh well, all the better for understanding some of the accents!

Not too much goes on in this episode, Richie just comes into the restaurant and meets with Dennis’ wife Rita and Gloria (the mom of the restaurant owner) and makes some small talk. He has bigger parts in the next few episodes, so stay tuned!

Coronation Street - Dec 20, 2013

Right before Robin's scene in this episode there was a story featuring one of the other characters learning to drive in a car with a driving instructor...wonder if that was put in as an inside joke? :)

Anyway, in this episode we see Richie starting to bring the music equipment into the restaurant. The young woman owner complains about the size of the speakers and her mom says condescendingly that she was always that way, even back in the days when she, the mom, was younger and dancing around the kitchen to Marc Bolan.

Getting ready to start, the people are commmenting that a lot of tickets were sold, how Facebook helped publicize, and that it isn't just for young people. Richie comments that "You're only as young as the person you feel!" ha ha

Now...that was the end of Robin that I could see. This is a godawful boring show so I kind of skipped through episodes from Dec 23, Dec 25, and Dec 27 super fast, but seeing no Robin, I deleted them. I hope I didn't miss him. After that I just kind of gave up and forgot about looking for new episodes. Just my luck, I probably missed what I was waiting for: the actual performance scene! Did they have one, did anyone see? And if not, why wouldn't they? Why would they just fizzle out on this very important story that seemed like it could have gone on awhile longer?

Coronation Street - Dec 11-13, 2013

Happily watching Robin's latest appearances in the soap "Coronation Street"! So far I've watched Dec 11-16, but Robin wasn't in the episodes from the 16th. I had great luck in finding them on YouTube! There are these mysterious people - it's either a bunch of different people or just one using different accounts - who upload the latest episodes right after they are shown and then take them down within a day, so if I act fast I can grab them. I guess the network that broadcasts this show doesn't allow it to stay up indefinitely.

First episode: Dec 11:

Robin is introduced to the show as aging rock star Rodney Purvis using the stage name of Richie Duvries. A regular character in the show, Dennis Tanner is an old friend of his and excited about seeing him again. They meet in a restaurant ("Nick's Bistro", I think?) in which (I think) the daughter of his wife(?) owns. I think. Ha ha. They sit around a table and talk of old days. Richie used to be in a band called "The Power", which had a hit in 1965 with a song called "Sweets of the Night". They used to tour with famous bands like Manfred Mann and the Yardbirds. He tells them that there's only two original members left, as one had died and one has emphysema. They ask him if he'd like to play a gig at the restaurant, and he is interested.

Dec 13 (part 1)

There are two parts to the show on some of the days. In part one there's not much of Richie. He walks into the pub and everyone says hi to him.



Dec 13 (part 2) They talk at the restaurant about the gig. Richie laughs about the place, but the woman with Dennis (wife?) says that the occasional celebrity does pop in. Two more women come in and the overweight one is introduced to Richie and sits down at their table. Richie talks about touring with the Yardbirds in their early days when Eric Clapton was with them. The overweight girl becomes interested and says how she writes to Eric and occasionally gets a photo back from him. She starts getting interested in Richie and tells him how she's looking forward to seeing his band play. He looks nervous and hurriedly leaves. They talk afterward of dressing '60s for the show and how she could dress up like Mary Quant!

Dec 16 (parts 1+2)

No Robin. But, there is some talk amongst the characters about the gig. The woman who owns the restaurant is hesitant about the gig being held there. Later, Dennis talks to a young woman who works in the restaurant. They have a typical "Older person - young person" music exchange with her never having heard of any of Richie's hits from the '60s, and how 1965 might as well have been the dinosaur age.

Robin's character is definitely the most energetic character on this show! Everyone else is so dour and wallowing in misery and drama. I just fast-forwarded through most of the other stories going on. One other story kind of captured my interest, though. Cute little blond boy in a red pullover sweater, can't resist listening to little British kids talk with their adorable accent! hee hee. That story is something about his dad having done something really wrong, possibly illegal? And his brother not wanting him to see the boy, and the mom not being a very involved mom, and a grandma trying to hold them all together? Something convoluted like that, but I'd be interested in finding out what the dad did that was supposed to be so bad his own brother and ex-wife don't want him around the kid!

Anyway, great seeing Robin again, as peppy and happy as ever. Best actor on the show, really!

Happy 63rd birthday, Robin!

Birthday time again for our fave actor!

Wishing him all the best. There hasn't been much news to post lately, so that's why this blog has been quiet. I did see where he made an appearance at the London Film Memorabilia Convention on Sept 21, but I've not read any reports of how it went. But the best upcoming news I've heard is that he'll soon be appearing again on some episodes of "Coronation Street"! Details and a nice recent photo of him can be seen here:

'Coronation Street' casts Robin Askwith as rocker Ritchie

Don't know when that will start, but am looking forward to finally having something to review here again! :)

ReelStreets.com - Horror Hospital

Hi again - yes, it's been forever since I've had anything of interest to write about, Robin news has been nonexistent (that I know about) and I've not been able to get ahold of any more of his appearances (although I'll occasionally give a half-hearted google search on him when I think about it) Anyway, here's something which is pretty neat, although they really should add more to it. They've taken a few scenes from Horror Hospital and tried to take photos of how those places look now. www.realstreets.com

Anyone who might live in the area and can easily photograph some of the Horror Hospital locations, I'm sure this site would be happy to hear from you!

It's a Celebrity Knockout! 1978

Good news! The 2nd "It's a Celebrity Knockout" game show Robin played on has surfaced recently on YouTube!







As you might remember, I talked about the 1977 one in this post. This is more of the same. You don't see Robin too much, he mainly runs around with buckets of water, and you can also (not) see him hidden inside a big monkey suit at the beginning. He doesn't get to say anything, unfortunately, like some of the other players do. He's on the "Lord's Taverners" team and they win! Yay! You can watch the whole show here: And read all the details about it here ! Now we have to hope the 1979 one will become available soon! And...happy HALF birthday to Robin! I always remember this, because his HALF birthday is on my son's birthday! So happy birthday to my new little TEN year old as well! :)

Vote for your fave Robin movie!

Hasn't been any Robin news lately that I'm aware of, but that's why this blog has been a bit quiet as of late. I did just find this movie voting thing someone had on "Ranker" for Robin, thought it would be fun to link to. Vote and let's see which one stays at the top!

2024 UPDATE - I noticed this poll was no longer working, so I just erased it.