A new Tyne Tees Television series starts tonight week chronicling the lives of ordinary people from the north of England. Jo Haywood spoke to one of the programme's York-born stars.

Sue Houlden's childhood was picture perfick. "It was just like The Darling Buds of May," she said. "Dad ran the farm, mum looked after the food, we ate our tea out in the open air and family was everything to us."

The farm, Wigman Hall at Crockey Hill, near York, had been the Hight family home since 1934 and was run by Sue's father until it was sold on his death six years ago.

It was then that she discovered a cache of long-forgotten cinefilms her father had taken during her childhood, films she had not thought about in 30 years.

"They were labelled things like A Year in Farming and Our Summer Holiday, but I had no way of looking at them because I didn't have a projector," Sue, 47, explained. "Then earlier this year I saw an advert on the TV programme North East Tonight asking for old photographs and films, so I sent dad's films off."

The footage was picked up by Honky Tonk Productions, which was compiling material for a Tyne Tees nostalgia series entitled When We Were Kids, which starts tonight - and it wasn't long before presenter Andy Kluz was on the phone asking Sue to take part by discussing her early life and revisiting her childhood home.

She wasn't keen on the idea at first, but was soon convinced when they presented her with a video of her father's films, transferred from his old cine reels.

"It was a very strange and emotional experience when I first watched the video," she said. "Mum died 30 years ago and it was incredibly moving to see her again.

"It's not that I had forgotten what she looked like or anything, but to see her again as large as life was surprising and wonderful."

When the production team took Sue back to her family home - her first visit in six years - the surprise was not quite so wonderful.

"It had completely changed. It was like a mini housing estate," she said. "My mum and dad and brother are all dead, I am the only one left, and to see our family home like that was very upsetting.

"The farmhouse was still there but all the outbuildings had been converted into houses. I was very shocked, but all the team, even the sound man and cameraman, were sympathetic and understanding."

She now lives in Hawes, a place she says she loves because it reminds her of her childhood. It's quiet and secluded, and the whole village rallies when a crisis occurs - as it did a couple of days after filming when Sue underwent a triple heart bypass.

"I probably wouldn't even know my neighbours if I lived in a city," she said. "Here, everyone knows everyone."

This was certainly the case in her childhood when the neighbours weren't just like family, they were family.

Aunties and uncles, grandmas and grandads all lived within walking distance and it was true to say that friends and family were one and the same.

"My earliest memory involves my Auntie Mavis who lived next door," said Sue.

"She used to come in every morning for a cuppa - always a cup and saucer, never a mug - and I remember her and mum sitting cross-legged by the Aga sipping their tea while I tugged at mum's skirt for a drink. I must have only been two or three, but it's an image that has stuck with me all these years."

Discussing her early life with Andy Kluz as part of the six-part TV series has brought a lot of other happy memories flooding back.

FAMILY Christmases lasted for three days instead of the customary one, says Sue. She recalls eating mountains of sandwiches and tea from a tall metal urn out in the fields at harvest time. And she remembers weekly trips to York Coffee House for frothy coffees that were always brought to an abrupt halt as the family dashed home to watch the wrestling at 4pm.

But perhaps her most treasured memories are of her "wild times" in the Swinging Sixties.

"Me and my pal would always pool our money so we would have ten bob to spend on a Saturday night," she said. "That was enough to get us into the pictures, pay for our bus fares, get us two bags of chips and ten No.6 cigarettes. There was never any money left for matches though, so we had to wander round the picture house cadging a light.

"We felt so rebellious, but when you look back it seems so innocent and nave.

"Having said that, I would have still been in big trouble if my mum and dad had ever found out what I was up to."

Sue and her brother Allan used to hate it when their dad picked up his ever-present camera, but now she is glad that he was such a film fan.

"We would moan and groan and tell him to put his camera away, but now I can see he was doing a brilliant thing for us," she said.

"His films have kept the family alive."

- When We Were Kids begins at 7.30pm tonight on Tyne Tees. Sue is one of eight people from North Yorkshire and the North East whose lives are chronicled throughout the six- part series. A book to accompany the series is available for £9.95, plus £2 for post and packing, by writing to: When We Were Kids Book, PO Box 1AL, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE99 1AL.

Updated: 10:41 Tuesday, September 18, 2001