Day Telford taxi drivers rewrote a BBC drama
In 1988 the well-known actor Keith Barron, who died in November, was to learn a lesson - you don't mess with Telford taxi drivers.
Because when Barron and the rest of the cast of a BBC drama descended on the town to make a three-parter about the tangled love life of a Telford taxi driver, the local drivers cried that it wasn't "fare".
They said it would be bad nationwide publicity for them.
And remarkably, their protests caused the Beeb to back down and make changes.
Take Me Home, starring Barron, Maggie O'Neill, Annette Crosbie and Reece Dinsdale, was filmed in Telford, which for the purposes of the series was the fictional town of Woodleigh Abbots.
Barron was a taxi driver called Tom who picked up O'Neill, a young newly-wed, and became obsessed with her.
But it was not his extra-marital dalliances which upset the local drivers and led to them having a meeting with the BBC production manager, David Newcombe.
Instead, they accused the BBC of threatening their livelihoods by lining up a fleet of private hire cars on taxi ranks in Telford town centre.
They pointed out to the makers of the drama that private hire cars are not insured to operate from taxi ranks and must be pre-booked.
In other words, what was at issue was the difference between a taxi, or hackney cab, and a private hire car.
Private hire cars have to be pre-booked, so they cannot be flagged down, and cannot operate from taxi ranks. In contrast, taxis can pick people up off the street unbooked - they are permitted to "ply for hire."
At that meeting, the Telford taxi drivers came up with a suggested solution.
"We proposed that when the leading lady is heading towards the private hire cars someone intercepts her to point out that private hire cars should not be lined up along the rank," said Allan Phillips, a spokesman for the hackney cab drivers.
Objectively, it would not have made for the most riveting scene in the drama.
In any event, Mr Newcombe stood firm and said that there would be no changes to the script.
However, there seems to have been something of a change of heart because not long afterwards there was a happy ending to the row.
The BBC solved the issue by fitting make-believe hackney carriage licence plates to the back of the vehicles - in other words, making it clear visually that they were taxis, and not private hire cars.
