Woolworths photo clippage special

It’s all over for the nation’s favourite bargain bin-cum-high street emporium. Well, unless the government decides to buy Woolworths on behalf of the nation. In the meantime…

1) 15th February 1971. Lord Fiske, chairman of the Decimal Board, drops into a branch in the Strand to check the price of soap and other what-nots:

2) May 1979: firemen clear out the debris from the “restaurant area” of a branch in Manchester:

3) Tessa Hewitt and Gillian Duxbury unveil the 1980 Woolworths Collection: a “Vino-one-Shoulder swimsuit in body hugging in shimmering nylon and lycra in vino, black or mid-blue” and “a black/strawberry halter-neck swimsuit in body hugging nylon and lycrs featuring two dainty heart pendants suspended from the halter neckline, also available in pink, brown, beige and rust.”

4) Hitler does his worst.  A German V2 rocket lands on a branch in New Cross in November 1944, killing 160.

5) Breaktime:

TV Cream Dr Who Consumer Unit

The air is thick with them, the internet perforated by them, the press carpeted in them.

But enough about rumours concerning the identity of that woman who sings Ride On Time. Let’s try and pin down exactly what is common knowledge about the identity of the next Dr Who.

1) In July, a man in Jedburgh told his local paper he thought he’d spotted someone who “looked like Tony Hawks” stepping in and out of a blue box.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: It was Tony Hawks, but on investigation it turns out he was merely “researching” his latest book about wryly carrying large goods (in this case a walk-in ice box) in a wry fashion around wryly inhospitable landscapes.

2) A fortnight ago an old lady in Hereford phoned her son to say that she’d overheard two people in Waitrose, “one of whom was Tom Baker”, discussing how much they were looking forward to “seeing more Billie Piper”. The son later posted this revelation on a fan forum.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: It was Tom Baker, but he was relating how much he was looking forward to “seeing more Marie Piper”, i.e. potatoes.

3) During the summer Russell T Davies reportedly told a fan convention he was very much hoping to give Danny Dyer a hand in getting an opening.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: Russell T Davies was not talking about Dr Who.

4) The next Dr Who will be someone who has already been in the show.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: He was asked, but Colin Baker declined, stating it would “be like being asked back for one night with your ex-girlfriend”.

5) The next Dr Who will be a black man/old man/American/child/cripple/gay/gay cripple.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: The next Dr Who will be Julia Sawalha.

Photo clippage #46

A pre pre-Christmas message from Rolf:

Callers as though it were Christmas Eve

Here’s a bit of textbook Poppery. Mr Duffy in a black poloneck mimes into a cigarillo-microphone in front of various easels boasting Reeves and Mortimer-esque line drawings of musical instruments while sporting an electric guitar which he strikes precisely twice (but at oh-so-important moments).

WARNING: contains insufferable voiceovers from S**** W***** 

“Avant-garde is French for bullshit”

…so said John Winston Ono O’Boogie Lennon, shortly before releasing an album entirely comprising the sound of himself and the missus shouting and shagging.

Famously, Macca beat him to it, as has suddenly somehow become news once again. But in what way was this ever “a myth”? Mark Lewisohn talked about Carnival Of Light 20 years ago in his ace book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. Then there was a load of fuss about its slated inclusion on, and ultimate omission from, the Anthology albums.

There’s never been any doubt about the track being real. Copies of it have turned up on bootlegs. So how come its existence is being made out to be some kind of revelation?

McCartney always did experimental stuff with a shedload more heart and humanity than his co-writer. Compare the last soaring 60 seconds of A Day In The Life with any or indeed all of the dreary, cynical Revolution 9. Silliness always undercut the pomposity; with Lennon it was forever the other way round.

There’s loads of stuff in the Abbey Road archives that merits release ahead of Carnival Of Light. Why, for instance, haven’t any of the Beatles albums ever been digitally remastered and reissued with the obligatory bonus tracks/alternate takes/accompanying DVDs? For that matter, where’s the DVD release of Let It Be? It used to get shown on the BBC every Christmas!

On first reflection the Carnival Of Light nonsense smacks of a bit of self-publicity for Macca’s pet project The Fireman. But look again at that news article: it all stems from an edition of, shudder, Front Row, to be broadcast on Radio 4 tomorrow (Thursday) evening.

Mark Lawson and co at their best, i.e., worst.

Starring Radiohead, John Simm, Robert Lindsay, Daniel Radcliffe, Little and Large and Lindsay Duncan

By way of a slight return to this, how might the feature film fantasies of today’s pop elite manifest themselves on screen? Three cinematic smashes suggest themselves:

Viva La Vida
Written by David Hare
Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring Coldplay, Gwyneth Paltrow, David Bowie, Eddie Izzard, Ricky Gervais and Maureen Lipman
A mysterious stranger known only as Yellow (Chris Martin) returns to Britain after 20 years travelling the world. He discovers an amoral, apathetic society, kept docile and dumb-struck by an evil dictator called The Scientist (Bowie). Teaming up with various revolutionaries and radicals, including the bilingual twins X and Y (Izzard and Gervais) and a beautiful female assassin named Trouble (Paltrow), Yellow attempts to free the minds of every British citizen by voyaging around the country smuggling lugubrious ballads and bombastic stadium rock into unlikely locations, including Battersea Power Station, Blackpool Tower, Edinburgh Castle and the Tivoli Ballroom, Buckley. But will he persuade the exiled Queen Of All Humans (Lipman) to join his quest?

Back For Good
Written by Russell T Davies
From an original idea by Russell T Davies
Directed by Bob Spiers
Starring Take That, Adrian Edmonson, Alan Carr, Justin Lee Collins, Phil Collins, Catherine Tate and Graham Norton
A madcap 24 hours in the life of the nation’s favourite pop group. Follow the highs and lows of the new Fab Four as they fall foul of their wily manager Sid Fiddler (Edmondson), get double-crossed by a pair of odious tabloid reporters (Carr and Collins), have to put up with band member Mark’s cantankerous granddad (Phil Collins) and struggle to avoid the clutches of an obsessive fan known only as Patience (Tate) before performing a triumphant concert in front of some gays in a discotheque run by the peculiarly-named Francis Francis (Norton). Features guest appearances by David Tennant, Penn and Teller, Louise Wener and Lily Savage.

In Rainbows
Written by Thom Yorke and Alan Bleasdale
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Starring Radiohead, John Simm, Robert Lindsay, Daniel Radcliffe, Little and Large and Lindsay Duncan
When a provincial town somewhere in the north of England decides to cede from the United Kingdom, a number of eccentrics, inventors and musicians led by Pablo Honey (Simm) use the opportunity to create a utopian society, only to see their efforts thwarted by the OK Computer, a fiendish masterbrain developed by a lunatic oligarch known as the Paranoid Android (Robert Lindsay) and his terrorist thugs, the Karma Police. Maybe the young firebrand Kid A (Radcliffe) can save the day and show that devolution and democratic socialism can co-exist with a globalised economy. Or will the populace be lulled into a stupor by the comic stylings of stand-up funnymen High and Dry (Little and Large)? And why does Mrs Amnesiac (Lindsay Duncan) keep taking her clothes off? Black comedy from the makers of The Bourne Ultimatum and Jake’s Progress.

Jack Scott RIP

Outlook: grim.

“Go back, go back, for my parts do freeze”

In the mid-80s any artistes worth their salt did a longform feature film that, ahem, ‘dramatised’ their latest hits, roped in a few guest stars, essayed some refreshingly amateurish acting, and got a limited cinematic release.

To which the nation invariably shrugged its shoulders and waited for Short Circuit 2 (“Some say he’s nuts. Some say he’s bolts!”)

The Pet Shop Boys did It Couldn’t Happen Here (“Tomato! Bacon! A fried slice!”), Macca did Give My Regards To Broad Street, Madness did one, The The had Neneh Cherry being threatened by a phallic train set…and so on. And so to Jerusalem, by The Style Council.

Here’s Paul Welly (sic) commanding the sea “thus I say go back” before joining Dee C Lee in the worst song he’s ever written. This has to be a genre that’s long overdue a revival. Surely it’s time for a Take That Hard Day’s Night-style romp? Or a Coldplay Joe Orton-esque satire on recession Britain?

Different every time

In Sunday’s Observer Miranda Sawyer insisted the absence from the Radio 2 schedules of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, and their replacement with Richard Allinson and Alex Lester, was proof that the station “has returned to the golf club.”

“All Lesley Douglas’s hard work,” she moaned, “her sharp decisions over presenters and shows, her success at attracting listeners in their thirties and forties, everything: just piddled away.”

Right, so the disappearance of TWO shows, five hours out of a total weekly output of 168, constitutes the immediate evaporation of everything that embodied present-day Radio 2 and represents a wholesale return to some version of the station that existed decades ago and was clearly only listened to by landed gentry in starched spats and cummerbunds.

What a ludicrous argument. For one thing, Ross and Brand didn’t embody the current Radio 2. What did they have in common with Sarah Kennedy, or The Organist Entertains, or The David Jacobs Collection, other than the same frequency? The only thing they embodied was an attitude towards diverse programming. That hasn’t gone away. It’s still there in Wogan’s playlist, in Ken Bruce’s choice of guests, in every minute of Radcliffe and Maconie’s nightly two-hour shows, in the way Evans is followed by Desmond Carrington…and so on.

Secondly, what is this version of Radio 2 that Used To Be? When, precisely, did Sawyer’s ‘golf club’ exist? Throughout its life Radio 2 has always broadcast popular music dating from a greater historical period than any other national network. For much of its existence it was even more diverse than it is now, boasting sport, sitcoms, soaps and magazine journalism.

What was pioneered by Jim Moir, and pragmatically continued by Douglas, was a broadening of the playlist to champion (and break) new artists. With that came, inevitably, new presenters who could talk with authority about those new artists.

Does Sawyer think the station is now going to stop playing all music from after 1990 (a mirror image of the policy purportedly adopted by her beloved Radio 1 under Matthew Bannister, and equally false)? Or sack everyone under 40? Or bring back Richard Stilgoe and Instant Sunshine?*

Her witterings are unhelpful and will do more damage to an already nervous, jittery BBC. It sounds like she wants Radio 2 to fail, so she can be the first to say: told you so.

*Which would, to be honest, be a good deal more enjoyable than Richard “Na Night” Allinson and Alex Lester. Instant Sunshine could replace Allinson, with a kind of leisurely, weekend supplement-style look back at the last seven days in song; Stilgoe would replace Lester, with a Stop The Week-esque revue featuring guests and laughter. Plus you could keep the programme titles that seem to have been adopted by Radio Times (‘Saturday Morning Music Show’). And it would be brilliant.

Photo clippage #45

Sir Jim’ll points at the credit roller for an edition of Top Of The Pops which boasts, among others, The Shadows, Beatles Band (single and album tracks), Sonny and Cher, and Horst Jankowski. Plus, down there at the bottom of the roller, Cecil Korer.

…and retire

It seems that giant effigies of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand are to be burned this Saturday.

Edenbridge Bonfire Society is the organisation responsible for this 1970s portmanteau horror film-esque carry on, and they have a long track record of publicity-seeking star-encrusted pyromania. Previous victims have included Love Rat James Hewitt, Enemy Of The West Saddam Hussein (no Smash Hits 2nd place ‘most evil’ ranking behind ’spiders’ this time) and Jacques Chirac.

Their website insists “we do not celebrate a spirit of intolerance” before relating with lip-smacking, grammar-defying relish how their effigy of Hewitt was “OVER 25FT TALL THE BOTTOM OF THE BAG HE IS HOLDING OPENS AND SIMULATED GOLD FALLS OUT THE BOOK CATCHES ON FIRE THEN HIS PRIVATE PARTS EXPLODE HE THEN BURNS IN AN ORGY OF FIRE AND FIREWORKS”.

Sadly the website’s quasi-Richelieu roll call of unbelievers and the unclean doesn’t stretch back beyond 1996, though presumably Edenbridge have been up to this kind of thing for decades. Even though it still hasn’t brought back their apples.

Who, however, might have made it onto the pyre in that fated, and feted, decade, the 1980s (that’s 1980-1989)? From the unambiguous attitudes suggested by their more recent choices, it’s a safe bet the Society went for…

1980: Darth Vader

1981: Ken Livingstone

1982: General Galtieri

1983: Michael Foot

1984: Arthur Scargill. Or Frankie Goes To Hollywood

1985: The Rainbow Warrior

1986: Diego Maradona. Or, if they were really fond of Maggie, Michael Heseltine

1987: Michael Fish

1988: Ayatollah Khomeini

1989: Jive Bunny

US election clippage: part three

It’s now 1992, and Dan Rather is wondering whether it’s “hasta la vista” for George Bush.

“This is the hour of prayer” he intones rakishly, after joshing with a reporter in the field who’s got news of Bill and Chelsea Clinton stopping off for “a glass of water” at a “McDonalds stand”.

It’s a more assured performance than before, though at times Dan looks like he’s trying to stop swallowing his own tongue. The theme tune is fantastic, and there’s also a bit where the camera cuts back to our man a bit too early to hear him complaining “No! No!”

Apparently Alaska may go for Ross Perot. Oh, and Texas is the equivalent of “a huge taco”. 

For pod’s sake

TV Cream’s first stab at a podcast is now available. You might have already seen the blurb on the site’s homepage; if not, you can download the MP3 here. It’s 75MB and, once saved to your own computer, will sit snugly in any media-playing device and run for about 54 minutes.

54 minutes of what, you may be wondering, before venturing to cock an ear, or even two.

Well, it’s a journey into stereophonic sound of all forms. Over 100 pieces of music turn up, some in unusual contexts, some in surprising hybrids, some written and performed by our own hand, some with annoying talking and shouting over the top.

But it’s not merely a glorified playlist of TV Cream favourites.

For starters, there’s a very special guest, who performs live in the studio. There are a few of what we’re calling theme sandwiches, delectable helpings of aural sustenance served in unlikely and, as it turns out, controversial taste sensations. There’s also a bit where two themes go head-to-head in what we’re not calling theme wars, the war of the themes.

The bulk of the podcast, however, is taken up with four exciting features. Here are some liner notes for anyone interested in lines:

Scene-setters

This is a complicated item that listeners may find hard to understand, so let’s see if it can be made simpler. There have been examples of music used on TV programmes that act not merely to compound title sequences with clusters of melodic and harmonic notation but contextualise and to an extent hypertextualise the subsequent transmission to a degree that prepares the viewer in both a moral and mental capacity for what they are about to ingest and thereby heightens those physiological sensations nurtured by latent synaptic pulses charged by the notion of cause and effect. These pieces of music are called scene-setters in that they cultivate and orientate our expectations around a particular manifestation of emotion thereby setting us up for an eventuality or scene that is shortly indeed almost immediately to unfold.

It’s also got loads of good TV themes in.

A Stack of Macca

The 10 best songs by Paul McCartney.

You’ve Made Your Musical Bed, Now You’ve Got To Lie In It

A guide to those ubiquitous tunes and samples that crop up as incidental music on innumerable documentaries and reality shows.

Riddle-me-Ron Grainer

Thrill to the sound of one man presenting another man with some Facts Amazing about the bloke who did the theme to Dr Who and challenging him to say whether they are true or false.

And that’s it. You can tell us what you think about the whole roustabout by emailing scene@tvcream.co.uk, or if you prefer to have your right to reply in public, bung your comments up here on this blog.

Lastly, by way of an unhidden extra, a couple of rejected attempts at podcast artwork. Can you see what we did here?