Last week’s Creamguide concluded that, historically, and ignoring everything since c.1997, ITV’s regional efforts have outshone those of the BBC.
And one of the main reasons for that was surely The Six O’Clock Show, itself surely the best of its kind – an honour forever sealed by these 30 seconds of pre-weekend animated affability:
There’s Asp scurrying on at the end.
If only more of this show existed online…other than this tiny tiny bit of Mike a little out of breath and gallantly trying to rescue a feature that is plummeting rapidly downhill:
“I’ll get the team in – Cheryl Baker and Gary Wilmot!”
In 1985 That’s Life! was in its imperial phase. It had an immovable berth in Michael Grade’s aromatic Sunday night line-up of hit shows. It was trying to save children’s lives and start up phone lines and close down sweat shops across the planet. Audiences of 16 and 17 million tuned in to titter at misprints and miscarriages (of justice and babies).
Clearly it was a show at the peak of its powers. That’s what your memory tells you, and what popular culture readily seconds.
How come, then, that the truth is bone-chillingly removed from reality? Here is the first 10 minutes of a programme from June of that year. Maybe the show was near the end of its annual 40-week (or however many it was) run. Maybe Desmond had been giving Esther a hard time about ironing the Boy David’s smock. Maybe everyone just simply couldn’t be arsed.
Of particular note:
1) The first couple of seconds of the clip, which comprises, entirely uncoincidentally, the last few seconds of a plug for a programme by Esther’s other half.
2) The quality of the film stock used during the That’s Life! opening titles. It is appalling. It looks like it dates from the early 1970s. In fact it probably does. On another technical note, the sound balance is dreadful, with the microphones on the audience turned up way too high, meaning you hear endless shuffling, coughing and non-laughing in the studio.
3) The ginormous set. Wogan never got a wall that size.
4) The on-screen captions to introduce the nancies. They are horrible. Where are the Paintbox pyrotechnics?
5) John Gould and Maev Alexander! On an MFI sofa, him in a bow-tie, she in a suit! This was a dreadful decision (thankfully shortlived – Doc was back the following year), evident from the moment they walk on, awkwardly, and sit down, awkwardly, side by side, awkwardly. John seems to be wearing the kind of microphone Cliff Michelmore and David Butler wore on Election ’70.
6) The preamble, which is thin gruel indeed. There is a back-reference to last week’s guest Janet Brown in the shape of Esther trying to do a caricature of herself. There is also a non-amusing mug, a non-amusing cheque, and “two outstanding pictures” which aren’t.
7) Finally, the opening film package. This was clearly concocted off the back of someone who knows someone who knows someone in Esther’s husband’s drinking club. The ‘expert’ is rubbish, laughs at his own jokes and then blows the final punchline. Esther keeps trying to trump the expert with her own opinions, then runs around Covent Garden in a big mac like a flasher, failing to say hello to the people she collars and repeatedly trying to make a joke about ‘leg-overs’.
A quick look ahead through the rest of show reveals all the boxes are lazily ticked: animals running amok in the studio? Check – some ducks! Befuddled special guest? Check – Spike Milligan! Problems with the welfare state? Check – here are some people living rough! And so on. Maybe TV Cream was misguided in its unqualified veneration of Sunday night telly.
Meanwhile, prepare to guffaw raucously like you’ve never seen it before at the sight of an old man, possibly in 1973, using his eyebrows to move a cap backwards and forwards on top of his own head.
This being the week of the BPI Awards, here’s a helping from 1980 back when it was still the Radio 1 Daily Mirror Nationwide (precise order open to debate) Rock and Pop Awards.
Highlights include DLT’s many attempts at jocular adlibbery (“Oh Katy Katy, you look a bit shattered…No plugs for Walt Disney please”), Sue in a flattering outfit introducing Leo Sayer (“A gentleman for whom I personally have a very soft spot”), BA Robertson pissing about, the Numanoid looking comatose and the fact Cliff came third in the Best Male category. It’d be nice if the audience shut up now and then.
Forget your Specials, Police, Blur, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine and whoever is reforming (again) in the next 12 months. Now that The Beautiful South is no more, it must be only a Humber-spanning period of time before the second best band of the 80s, the third best ever songwriting partnership in Britain and the fourth best band from Hull get back together.
They’re all still on good terms. There wasn’t any bad blood at the time, even when they swapped drummers between albums. Indeed such was their nonimosity they used this changing of the skins (usually that most bitter of musical machinations) into a conceit for the following, irrefutably* one of the finest singles of the decade:
*The evidence being the fact the final score is, still, London 0, Hull 4.
It’s December 25th 1985, and, in one of the best bits of harmless nonsense ever undertaken in the name of festive telly, Terence jets off to Denver to interview all the cast of Dynasty in character. “What about the Irish one – did we tell him?”
Happy Christmas – from all of us, particularly the DG.
Half-way through this clip you’ll find Michael Grade doing a brilliant guest spot in an episode from the first series of French and Saunders. This was back when Mike was happy to do an on-screen turn almost anywhere, from sharing a sofa on Telly Addicts to “firing” Philip Schofield from the Broom Cupboard.
You don’t get this kind of thing anymore, sadly. Alan Yentob was probably the most recent Beeb executive happy to show up as “himself” on television. Nowadays it’s likely nobody would recognise Jay Hunt even if she introduced herself.
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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*****
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?
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”.
Back to 1984 this time, and Dan Rather’s waiting for us in an impressively-staffed, multi-screen CBS studio.
But first, the ubiquitous plugs. This time we’ve got to tip our electoral college-sized hats to “Manufacturers Hanover, the Financial Source Worldwide”, “the Sun Company – where there’s sun, there’s energy” and last but not least “Mastercard, Mastercard International: so worldly, so welcome”.
Surely this is maddening to anyone watching these kinds of programmes. You’re desperate for the latest news, you’ve been waiting up for the next set of declarations…and instead you get a load of smarmy sponsorship messages. It sounds very parochial, but does this sort of thing still go on? Even on crucial history-making election nights?
Anyway, once Dan can get a word in, he’s got some exciting news. It seems Ronnie might be back in, despite poor old Walter Mondale taking the District of Columbia and thereby garnering a thunderous three votes. It’s morning again in America!
To help hurry along the fortnight until polling day in the United States, here’s the first in a thankfully short series of clips from ancient American election programmes.
First up, an extract from CBS’s results night coverage of 1972. And what a ragged, amateurish affair it all is. The theme tune is frankly bizarre, resembling some atonal noodlings, possibly composed by Stockhausen or John Cage. Then, before we get to anything by way of news, comes the information that “this broadcast is sponsored by the Ford Motor company, and 6,283 Ford and Lincoln Mercury dealers – the goal, no unhappy owners.”
Cut to Walter Kronkite, who looks shifty and ill-informed. “Some or all of the polls have closed.” Make your mind up, Walt!
Then there’s an opt-out to a Virginia local network. The studio’s props and graphics are of an appalling low-fi quality. In the conversational area, two people sit on chairs underneath a giant eagle. “We’re going to have very mixed coat-tails tonight,” one mutters.
Compare this to the giant, multi-coloured, multi-gadgeted affair we had over here for the general election of 1970. Sure, Bob McKenzie had to get a workman to paint extra numbers on his swingometer, but at least he had a wall big enough to paint on in the first place.
It feels like there are a million things wrong with this clip, especially the opening 60 seconds or so. Ideally it ought to be prefaced with a short sequence involving somebody in suit and tie warning you about its content. And the fact it breaches almost every possible measure of taste, decency and factual accuracy the likes of which the Video Standards Council could only dream. “Have a listen to Jeff Wayne’s new single…”
There’s no way to embed this, unfortunately, but here’s a chance to enjoy the sight of Petula Clark singing across a faux-dinner table at Peter Ustinov, some Generation Game business involving orange peelers, and a BBC1 programme that “will also be shown on BBC2 and ITV”:
Do they mean a rather pompous opinionated rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-even-more-riches lollygagger who sued the BBC because he hasn’t got a sense of humour and now claims to be Touched By Angels?…
At long last, Reggie Bosanquet’s venture into the world of disco makes it onto the blog.
It’s an extraordinary aural creation, notable for many things, among them:
a) the fact it seems that no fewer than three people were involved in its composition; was the salient line of the first chorus, “Dance do-up, ooh-up, ooh-wee”, a group effort?
b) the charmingly off-hand sentiment of the second verse: “You’re in a pub, a cafe, a club/Then move on cos you’ve had enough” – arguably a damn sight more down-to-earth than “and you go home/and you cry/and you want to die”.
c) Reggie’s keen appreciation of sounds of the street: “Like reggae, soul, funk and punk/Bop around, lose all your junk”.
d) The will-this-do backing. It’s not even at proper speed, sounding instead like the sort of comedy approximation of late 70s dance music you’d get in an episode of George And Mildred where they mistakenly turned up at a discotheque instead of a whist drive.
e) Reg’s bucolic abandonment of all airs and graces during the fade-out: “I feel rather splendid at pleasant…I can move so many parts at one time”.
Altogether now: Dance ladies, that’s it, ooh, I like it, I like the movement, it’s nice…
Here’s a fine curtain-raiser to the weekend: the best piss-take of Right To Reply there’s surely ever been, right down to the inane bleating of the Kindly Producer Person to the skew-mouthed mithering of the Thunderously Normal Person Speaking In Front Of A Camera For The First Time.
It’s followed by an appallingly po-faced discussion about the future of Dr Who, wherein somebody called Michael Hanlon expresses his view that to ever bring the show back to television would be “an abomination” and that “it wouldn’t stand a chance”.
Posted by TV Cream 
