Bradford Hall of Fame: Rockers Smokie among latest inductees

This is the 17th part of a regular series with the latest five inductees into the Telegraph & Argus's Bradford Hall of Fame.

They can be people who were either born in the Bradford district, or made a huge name through an association to the city.

MELODY LUDI

Bradford-born table tennis star Melody Ludi won a total of nine national medals in her time playing the sport; eight golds and a silver, in the 1970s and 80s.

During her successful career, in which she represented England and Yorkshire, she won the Spanish and Irish Open Championships and hold other English titles among others.

Melody was probably one of the first English players to visit China for training and competition when in 1977 she was part of a small party of selected England players who were invited to train and compete in Canton and Shaoshan the birth place of the communist Chinese leader Maotse-Tung.

During her playing career she was known as Melody Ludi and now lives in Eldwick and has since remarried.

RODNEY BEWES

Bingley-born Bewes was best known as one half of The Likely Lads.

The actor starred as Bob Ferris in the BBC sitcom alongside James Bolam’s character, Terry Collier.

The pair were cast as childhood friends in the innovative programme – one of the first to be set in the north east of England – which at its peak was watched by 27 million people.

Born on November 27 1938 in Bingley, Yorkshire, he was confined to the house by asthma until the age of 12.

But two years later he secured his first professional role and eventually went to London to study drama at RADA.

Classic movies Heavens Above! and Billy Liar paved the way for his most famous role in The Likely Lads, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.

The show was a huge success and the pair went on to pen three series, with a total of 20 episodes being broadcast between 1964 and 1966.

The BBC revived the hit comedy in 1973 with Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?, which was soon named the Best Situation Comedy Programme of the Year.

He died, aged 79, in 2017.

HARVEY SMITH

Show jumping legend Harvey Smith, 82, who was born in Bingley, represented Great Britain in the Olympics, and after retiring from the sport in 1990, teamed up with his wife and trainer Sue Smith, to train race horses at their base in High Eldwick, Bingley. One of these horses, Auroras Encore, won the 2013 Grand National.

Harvey's best finish was fourth in the individual show jumping event at Munich in 1972. He later became a television commentator for the BBC, working at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

He won a bronze in the individual showjumping events at the 1970 World Championships and a selection of silver and bronze medals at European Championships held between 1963 and 1983.

Debbie Sharp at Julia Varley's grave

JULIA VARLEY

Born in Bradford in 1871, she was an English trade unionist and suffragette.

She worked in a mill from aged 12 and three years later she became the secretary of the Bradford Weavers' and Textile Workers' Union.

In 1909 Varley moved to Birmingham and established a branch of the National Federation of Women Workers at the Cadbury factory at Bournville.

She was awarded an OBE in 1931, and died in Yorkshire in 1952. She is buried in Undercliffe Cemetery.

Artist Debbie Sharp was pictured by Varley's grave for her 2018 Hidden Suffrage after researching at the cemetery.

SMOKIE

A chart-topping Bradford band with a string of hits in the 1970s to their name.

Smokie was formed in the late 1960s by St Bede’s classmates Terry Uttley, Alan Silson and Chris Norman.

In the 1970s they had top 10 singles including If You Think You Know How To Love Me and Oh Carol.

They split up in the early 1980s, but reunited at a 1986 fundraising concert for relatives of Bradford City Fire victims.

Chris Norman was later replaced by Black Lace singer Alan Barton, who was with Smokie until his death following a tour bus crash in Germany in 1995.

With Mike Craft as frontman, Smokie continued touring and were back in the charts in 1995 with comic Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown’s version of their 1976 hit Living Next Door To Alice.

Smokie are hugely popular across Europe and in the Far East.

They are particularly big in South Korea, Russia and Scandinavia, and are one of the few Western bands to tour Mongolia, Uruguay and China.

At the end of 2011 they played at a ball at the Kremlin, their second visit there at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Those already inducted are: Richard Dunn, Ian Beesley, Sir Edward Appleton, James Mason, Yvonne McGregor, Greg Abbott, Ian Ormondroyd, Paul Jewell, Terry Dolan, John Hendrie, Billy Pearce, Joe Johnson, Len Shackleton, Joolz Denby, Steve Abbott, Anita Rani, Dennis Mitchell, David Wilson, Mary Tamm, Bruce Bannister, Harry Gration, Richard Whiteley, Billie Whitelaw, Mollie Sugden, Kimberley Walsh, Bobby Campbell, Jimmy Speirs, Julian Rhodes and Family, Phil Parkinson, Stephen Darby, James Lowes, Robbie Hunter-Paul, Leon Pryce, Amy Hardcastle, Ellery Hanley, Harry Corbett, Professor Ajay Mahajan, Professor David Sharpe, Frederick Delius, Dave Whelan, Gareth Gates, Andrea Dunbar, Steve Abbott, Duncan Preston, Tim Booth, Ces Podd, Jim Laker, Gary Havelock, Dean Harrison, Bobby Vanzie, Dean Richards, Rudi Leavor, Kiki Dee, Professor Mahendra Patel, John Wood, Marsha Singh, Chris Kamara, Trevor Foster, Barbara Castle, Tino Valdi, Adrian Moorhouse, Tasmin Archer, Dynamo, Timothy West, Javed Bashir, Fattorini Family, Ade Edmondson, Sir Ken Morrison, Ruby Bhatti, Adil Rashid, JB Priestley, Zayn Malik, Sarah Khan Bashir, Captain Sir Tom Moore, Margaret McMillan, Stuart McCall, David Hockney, Brian Noble, Sharon Beshenivsky, Jack Tordoff.