BARRY Island played host to some star-studded holiday memories when two TV personalities Jasper Carrott and Len Goodman recalled the fun of the fair.

Brummie comedian and quiz show host Jasper Carrot recalled Barry Island Pleasure Park memories as part of Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing With The Stars head judge Len’s Holiday of My Lifetime series.

The pair filmed scenes this week for the show, scheduled to be broadcast in October this year.

Jasper said: “I came here in 1958.

“There were a few stalls and I remember there was a big shop and in those days it cost me a around three shillings and I won a toothbrush.

“I do remember coming here. That’s the weird thing. I don’t remember a lot. I came two years running in ‘58 and ‘59. I was 13 and then 14.

“When they asked me to do this, because I know Len very well, this was one of the very few holidays I ever had as a kid. We went to Dawlish once and those were the only three holidays I ever had.

“I came here about 10 years ago doing some filming with Meera Syal and we never really had time to look at anything.

“This is the first time I’ve been back in several years.”

Eighty-nine-year-old former ice-cream parlour and Barry Island cafe owner Andrew Forte, who was interviewed for the programme, said: “I first came to Barry in 1937 as a kid.

“It was an exotic place, lots of noise and happiness. There were no pubs, no bad behaviour and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“I was born in Scotland. After I got demobbed, because I was in during the war, I was a Bevan boy. We had a business down here. The first ice-cream parlour in Wales was in Barry Island and I came to work for my uncle and I’ve stayed here ever since apart from one year when I got married. I’ve been in Barry all that time.

“We had a lot of boxers - Jack Peterson. A lot of sportsman used to come to Barry Island for some reason or other. Tommy Trinder came in. Shirley Bassey used to come in. Bob Monkhouse, he used to come into the cafe when he was playing in Cardiff - every day he came in for lunch, hell of a nice guy.

“If somebody came to Barry they came into the cafe – it was the only place you could get a coffee. It was called Cafe Dash in those days because a cappuccino was a foreign word. We called the coffee Coffee Dash. People still stop me now and say my mother brought me in because I passed my A-levels. To me it was a happy place, people were always laughing. We used to have these kiss-me-quick hats, there was a lot of banter with the teenagers. We had the donkeys on the beach mostly for the kids, but very often they would persuade the mother. You could hear the squeals. The whole beach seemed to be noisy, the whole Island.

"At the height of the season there used to be 100 extra trains. They used to come from Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, even London. We used to see the trains come in and they’d be packed. All nice memories.”