From the collection of
Established in 1992, the South West Film & Television Archive collection spans from 1893 to the present day containing more than 250,000 items. Formed from a variety of depositors, including broadcast news and programmes material from the Westward and TSW archive. In 2018 the archive collection transferred to The Box in Plymouth.
Interview with International and Somerset cricketers Ian Botham and Viv Richards
Ian Botham and Viv Richards are interviewed together at County Ground Taunton at the end of the domestic season in September 1980. A flary, fiery, flamboyant player, on and off the field, Botham could turn a match. Viv Richard's unique batting style earned him a top five place in Wisden's Cricketers of the Century.
Botham began his first class career in 1974 with Somerset Cricket Club and went on to an England career but his captaincy of the side was short-lived. In the mid-1980s, new Somerset cricket captain Peter Roebuck sacked the overseas stars Viv Richards and Joel Garner and brought in the New Zealander Martin Crowe in an attempt to renew an ageing team. Ian Botham resigned in protest and moved to Worcestershire and Durham before retiring from the game in 1993. Botham was also a talented footballer and played for Scunthorpe United but turned down an offer to play with Crystal Palace FC. Viv Richards made his first class debut in 1972 for Leeward Islands and moved to Taunton in 1974. He went on to captain the West Indies.
Portraits of public and private lives against the shifting social climate of 20th century Britain.
Black communities, like many Global majority groups, have long been ill-served by a mainstream British media accustomed to reflecting predominantly white, middle-class lives - a problem entrenched in the second half of the 20th century with the rise of television. Yet a rich tapestry of work from across the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, film and TV, made for (though not always by) black people, does exist. This selection contains many surprises – some joyous, some sobering, some heartbreaking – and highlights the often painfully slow progress in addressing negative representations and stereotypes on screen. Impassioned and sometimes violent dispatches from the front line in the fight for racial equality can be found here, but so too can records of progress: in the pioneers breaking new ground in culture, politics and sport, and in the more mundane glimpses of everyday life. And this story is not just London’s story: the selection takes a journey around Britain, to a Nigerian wedding in 1960s Cornwall, an ‘African village’ in Essex and a Caribbean restaurant opening in West Bromwich; Newcastle
