Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School (TV series)

Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School
Starring	Gerald Campion Anthony Valentine Michael Crawford John Woodnutt Jeremy Bulloch Melvyn Hayes Kenneth Cope Roger Delgado
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	7
No. of episodes	52
Production
Producer(s)	Joy Harrington Shaun Sutton Pharic Maclaren David Goddard Clive Parkhurst
Location(s)	Esher Station, Esher, Surrey, United Kingdom
Running time	30 minutes
Release
Original network	BBC
Original release	19 February 1952 – 22 July 1961

Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School was a BBC Television show broadcast from 1952 to 1961. It was based on the Greyfriars School stories, written by author Charles Hamilton under the pen name Frank Richards. Hamilton also wrote all of the scripts for the television show.

Bunter was portrayed by actor Gerald Campion, who was aged 29 when he was cast in the role in 1952, hence was playing a schoolboy only half his age. A number of genuine child actors were featured in the other schoolboy roles in the show, some of whom would go on to achieve fame in their subsequent adult careers, including Anthony Valentine, Michael Crawford, Jeremy Bulloch, Melvyn Hayes and Kenneth Cope.

The character Billy Bunter featured in stories about the fictional Greyfriars School which appeared for over 30 years (in fact, continuously from 1908 to 1940) in the boys' comic The Magnet, written mainly by author Charles Hamilton (although, as Hamilton was not always the author, the stories were published under the collective pen-name Frank Richards). Plans to bring the stories to the cinema screen, featuring the comedian Will Hay, had been discussed in the 1930s, but were unrealised. In January 1947 the Daily Mail newspaper reported that the film companies Rank Organisation and Rock Productions were interested in resurrecting the project, with the latter paying a £150 fee to Charles Hamilton, but again the project was dropped.

In May 1951, the BBC Children's Department made public its plans to screen a series of half hour television shows featuring Billy Bunter as the principal character. These would be broadcast during Children's Hour. Later that year, in December 1951, the BBC announced that it was looking for an actor to portray the character of Billy Bunter, prompting seventy-five hopefuls to apply for the part. The search for a suitable Bunter received wide newspaper coverage, with the Daily Mirror covering the auditions both on its front page and in columnist Ian Mackey's 'diary'. The Daily Telegraph and Reynolds News were among other newspapers that also provided prominent coverage. When a 29-year-old actor, Gerald Campion, who was married with two children, was cast in the role of Bunter, a 15-year-old schoolboy, the choice was greeted with mixed reactions. Apart from the matter of his age, Campion, although fairly short and somewhat rotund, was a relative lightweight at 11 stone 2 pounds, compared with Bunter's weight of 14 stone 12 1/2 lb (as described in The Magnet in 1939), and this added to the controversy (for the BBC series, Campion wore padding to make him appear much fatter than he actually was). In fact Campion had already been considered for the role of Bunter, twelve years earlier, when the intention was to make a cinema film based on the character.

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