Evening Press deputy news editor Andrew Hitchon recalls his fleeting days of fame as a child 'star' of Yorkshire's soap.

IT DIDN'T exactly seem like stardom at the time, but I suppose I could claim to have a place in soap history.

Back in 1972 we couldn't even get Yorkshire TV on our sets in Littondale, and we youngsters were quite bemused when the big lorries turned up and disgorged television equipment around the village green at Arncliffe.

There was even a helicopter, which landed in a nearby field.

We trooped out to see it from our one-room village school.

But as time went by we became used to Emmerdale Farm, as it was called then, being filmed on our doorsteps. We even learned that the historic name for Littondale was actually Amerdale.

More important from our point of view, the local primary schoolchildren found their own place in the show, at first providing background colour.

In what was undoubtedly a good local PR move, we were filmed not only in Littondale itself, but once went for filming at the Leeds studios, where we were given a VIP tour.

Our real hour of glory came when they filmed the school nativity play in the local church, which was decked out with studio lights for the occasion.

We had kids playing shepherds, a live sheep in tow, and there was yours truly, portraying Robert the Angel. I had lines too, and my very own script.

I don't remember much more, except I had to break my fake wings on a door, and forget my lines - deliberately.

After a while they stopped using the local kids and started bussing them in instead, and then the TV people took off to Esholt. Stardom is, as they say, a fickle thing.

Updated: 11:18 Wednesday, May 11, 2005