Steve Hodson, who has died aged 77, made his name in one of the most cherished children’s television series of the 1970s, Follyfoot, which was inspired by the 1963 Monica Dickens novel Cobbler’s Dream, about three young people working at a horse rescue centre.
The teatime drama brought Hodson a legion of young admirers for his performance as Steve Ross, but also attracted many grown-up viewers over 39 episodes and three series from 1971 to 1973, with audiences of up to 14 million. It was sold on to 20 countries and won the 1972 Harlequin award for best children’s programme from the Society of Film and Television Arts (now Bafta).
Viewers were gripped by the trio’s adventures, the beautiful countryside where filming took place – around the Harewood estate between Harrogate and Leeds – and the memorable theme song, The Lightning Tree, about the oak standing in the Follyfoot farmyard. Performed by the Settlers, it became a Top 40 hit single in the UK.
Steve is sacked unfairly from the local squire’s nearby stables and finds a new job alongside Dora Maddocks (Gillian Blake) and the more rebellious Ron Stryker (Christian Rodska) at a retirement home for unwanted or badly treated horses, owned by Dora’s uncle (Desmond Llewellyn).
He bonds with the sad Dora – whose parents are abroad following her father’s appointment as a British ambassador in South America – over their shared sympathy for the horses. But he is more pragmatic than she is, which occasionally leads to tension. Many viewers regarded the programme as more realistic than the TV version of Black Beauty that was running around the same time.
Hodson’s sudden fame in Follyfoot led him to record a pop single, Crystal Bay (1973), written by Maurice Gibb and Billy Lawrie, although it never made the charts. After Follyfoot he continued acting on screen in character roles, but eventually decided to do no more television – partly as a result of being mobbed by fans of the series in Sweden and feeling that the limelight was not for him.
Instead he became a prolific member of BBC radio’s drama repertory company for almost 40 years (1975-2011) – “it was nice being away from the cameras,” he said – and much in demand as a reader of audiobooks.
Hodson was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, to Rene (nee Heffernan) and Tom Hodson, a factory supervisor, and attended Belle Vue grammar school.
While working in the civil service, he and his then fiancee, Anita Carey, took drama classes at Bradford Playhouse before both moving to London to train at Central School of Speech and Drama (1967-70), where their relationship ended. It was around this time that Hodson learned to ride horses in Wimbledon, south-west London, where he was lodging with a family who owned stables.
Shortly before being cast in Follyfoot, he made his television debut as a hotel worker in a 1971 episode of Hine, starring Barrie Ingham as an arms dealer. Other early TV appearances included parts in The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1971), a Willis Hall-written Play for Today, The Villa Maroc (1972), and Z Cars (1974).
Later came small roles in Hazell, Angels and A Horseman Riding By (all 1978), as well as Enemy at the Door (1980), All Creatures Great & Small (1980) and Juliet Bravo (two parts, 1980 and 1985).
He was also a regular in the BBC children’s series The Legend of King Arthur, as Mordred (1979), and Break in the Sun, as Pete (1981). So convincingly did he play – and resemble – a building society robber in a Crimewatch TV reconstruction in 1985 that some viewers phoned in to name him as the villain.
On BBC radio he was in scores of dramas, mostly as a supporting character, although he starred in some plays and as Chaucer in Canterbury Tales (1991), as well as taking the part of Marius in a 16-part adaptation of Les Misérables (1976). After voicing many one-off characters in Waggoners’ Walk, he took the part of Rupert Lovell in the radio serial in 1977-1978.
His stage roles included George in a 1998 tour of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and he directed fringe plays, as well as teaching acting at the Oxford School of Drama.
In 2011, after taking part in a nostalgic 40th-anniversary tour of Follyfoot’s Yorkshire locations with cast, crew and a couple of dozen avid followers of the series, Hodson told me: “I had no idea what it meant to the fans. They remembered so much more about it than we did. At the end my daughters said to me, ‘We knew you’d been famous in a children’s television series, but we never knew the extent. We’ve got a whole new respect for you, Pops!’ Suddenly they realised what it all had meant.”
Hodson’s 1979 marriage to Rosamund Rooth ended in divorce. He is survived by their daughters, Eleanor and Jessica, and his granddaughter, Cleo.
• Stephen Leslie Hodson, actor, born 5 November 1947; died 16 February 2025
