On this Day 1973: Olive Haines is addicted to weddings

On this Day: November 8th, 1973

Chris Tarrant meets up with Olive Haines, who is addicted to attending weddings, whether she knows the lucky couple or not.

Haines, from Buckinghamshire, calls her love of seeing ‘I do’s’ a hobby Chris Tarrant joins her for ATV Today on a visit to Birmingham Register Office. Olive and her husband George are seen riding in a taxi through Birmingham.

She usually attends weddings in Banbury but was today in Birmingham to indulge her hobby of watching other people’s weddings. Chris Tarrant interviews Olive and George about the reasons why they go to so many weddings.

Chris is then seen with the Haines outside Birmingham Register Office watching the newly married couples with Olive passing comments. The feature concludes with Olive and George driving away in their taxi covering Tarrant with confetti.

The ‘New Birmingham Registry Office‘ opened in September 1962, and over the years was seen regularly in ATV soap Crossroads, notably, when Meg and Hugh married in 1975, it closed in 2006 and had a spell as the home of the council’s sports department. The building started life as the College of Commerce before its £53,000 conversion into the Registry Office which provided six marriage rooms via the Hall of Marriage and also united the departments for the first time under one roof for births, marriages and deaths. The previous wedding register offices were spread across the city with main locations on Edmund Street and Easy Row.

The site was demolished in 2015 as part of the new Arena Central development which also included the demolition of the ATV Centre studios.