by Louis Barfe
I’ll never forget being in reception with Richard when this Old Testament prophet ballooned in, with the cape of a million sherry adverts. He didn’t have a cane, he had a staff. He was walking with great difficulty. We’d already been told he wouldn’t be able to go up to hospitality on the first floor. If we wanted to give him hospitality, it had to be in his dressing room. It was a typical BBC dressing room, very long and narrow. So we set up a small drinks table in there, for after the show. He literally filled half that room. I’ve never been in the presence of anybody whose personality drained you so physically. He was charming and voluble but you came away thinking ‘Jesus’. He had more charisma than anybody I’ve ever met.25
Considering some of the legends who parked themselves in front of Parky and his team during the show’s eleven-year run, Fisher’s description of Welles carries real weight, but the sherry-advertising film genius had competition. Welles had staked out his territory by arranging for the hospitality to be in his dressing room, but, according to Fisher, there were two guests who almost matched him for charisma. ‘One was Richard Burton, the other was Tommy Cooper. I remember doing a show with Eric and Ernie. Everybody was gathered around Eric Morecambe, listening, and he said “You’re listening to me now, but if Tommy came in, everybody would go.” He had this magnetism.’26
During the run-up to the show, it was usual for the researchers or producer to have meetings and lunches with the guests, to discuss their appearance on the show. For Fisher, though, the veteran wisecracker George Burns stood out as ‘the only celebrity who asked me to have lunch with him after the show’. On his second appearance on the show, the first having been with Walter Matthau at the time of the release of The Sunshine Boys, Burns had picked up on Fisher’s deep interest in the history of entertainment, particularly in magic:
He’d toured with a great American vaudeville magician called Nate Leipzig, and there was a card trick he used to do, which Nate Leipzig had taught him. It was a comedy thing. I said ‘Will you please do that on the show?’ Halfway through the interview, talking to Parky, he said ‘There’s a trick I’d like to do for that boy, what’s his name? John Fisher.’ Afterwards, just as he was about to go, he said ‘What are you doing tomorrow? Come and have some lunch at the Dorchester.’
I turned up and it was just George and his manager, a wonderful man called Irving Fine, who had also been the manager for Jack Benny. He asked ‘What do you want to know, kid?’ So there I am, asking ‘What was Jolson really like? What was the strangest act you ever worked with?’ He was paying – there was no way he was going to let me pay, which I could easily have done on a BBC expenses account. He said ‘If you’re not doing anything, come up to the suite. We can carry on talking.’ I’m not going to say I’ve got another appointment, I’m in the presence of this legend. We got to the suite and he said ‘I’ve just got to apologize about one thing. I’m expecting somebody to come up from the foyer. I’ve just got to do a couple of minutes’ business with them. They could come any time. You just stay here. Irving will get you a drink. I want to talk with you.’ We carry on, he’s regaling me with anecdotes. He says ‘Ah, there’s the knock at the door.’ He goes to answer it, but there’s nobody there. I’m not surprised by that, because I didn’t hear a knock. He came back, another five minutes and ‘There it is . . . must be my hearing.’ We carry on, and then there is a knock, and Irving says ‘I’ll get it.’ Irving opens the door and it’s George Burns. He stands there and he says ‘I just thought you’d like a little magic.’ He’d conditioned me to expect the knocks. I hadn’t paid any notice to the fact that he’d just gone into the next room to grab a cigar or whatever it was, but no sooner had he gone, he’d skedaddled through the far door, and along the corridor, in split seconds.27
Not all of the guests will be remembered for their charm. Most notorious was the night in November 1976 when Rod Hull and Emu began wrestling with Parkinson, prompting fellow guest Billy Connolly to comment that if he were attacked he’d break the bird’s neck and Hull’s arm. The surprises were usually more pleasant, though, particularly those of a musical nature. Just as the show promoted unlikely combinations in discussion, Parkinson was also responsible for some inspired musical groupings, often aided by organist Harry Stoneham’s endlessly versatile house band. Fisher remembers that ‘on one show, we had Placido Domingo, Cliff Richard and Sammy Cahn. The last fifteen minutes – we only had half an hour to rehearse this – was just Cliff Richard and Placido Domingo at Sammy Cahn’s piano, singing his songs.’ An earlier piece of alchemy had fused the classical world with jazz at a time when the term ‘crossover’ had yet to be invented:
It came to our very first Christmas [Fisher explains] and we’d been trying throughout the year, 1971, to get Yehudi Menuhin on the show, but he’d always refused. Stephane Grappelli had a bit of a resurgence in Paris. I said, flippantly, because I was still relatively junior in this business, wouldn’t it be funny if we could get Stephane Grappelli and Yehudi Menuhin on the same show? To Richard [Drewett]’s credit, he picked up on it and said ‘That’s not such a bad idea. I wonder whether Menuhin admires Grappelli?’ Of course, he did. And it was because of Grappelli that Menuhin came on. We did that show on a Sunday morning, probably because we were pre-recording for Christmas, and I remember going out to the airport at some unearthly hour, seven o’clock or something, to meet Grappelli – a sweet man with a twinkly sense of humour – for the first time and take the car journey with him across to Highgate, to Menuhin’s pad, where they rehearsed. To be able to introduce those two people. They’d never met. They came on the show as a double, two, maybe three more times after that, and did many albums together.28
There was a similarly memorable, if not as long-lasting, pairing in a 1980 show that brought harmonica-playing anecdote factory Larry Adler and violin soloist Yithzak Perlman together for a sublime and all but impromptu version of ‘Summertime’. On a show near the end of the run in 1982, however, a truly off-the-cuff moment occurred, and it involved a man who seemed to be making a habit of wandering into BBC studios while chat shows were in progress. The booked guests were all-round entertainer Roy Castle, mischievous DJ Kenny Everett and the irascible bandleader and drummer Buddy Rich. Whereas many shows despatched each guest at the end of their allotted time, on Parkinson, the guests stayed around and joined in the discussions. On this occasion, Parkinson’s law of guest interaction was in full force. Rich was obviously delighted by Castle’s story of an inept pit band drummer who didn’t know the difference between his bass drum pedal and his hi-hat. Then, after asserting that he can beat a rhythm out of anything, Rich was challenged by Castle to play a handful of change and a pair of £5 notes. When Castle responded with a spot of tap dancing, the show was already firing on all cylinders.
However, with Rich’s face in close-up, some off-camera action causes the entire audience to gasp, and it becomes clear that something great is about to get even better. Just what becomes clear in the next shot, a cutaway to Sammy Davis Junior, wandering nonchalantly onto the set. Rich walks past him playfully before grabbing the singer from behind in a bear hug. Davis, who claims he is in town ‘to find out what’s going on with Richard [Burton] and Elizabeth [Taylor]’,29 had rung the Parkinson production team on the morning of the show, and asked if he could come and say hello to Rich, his friend since their days in vaudeville as child performers. Davis announces that he knows Castle well, and that he admires Everett, but doesn’t yet know him properly. Everett repays the compliment by attempting to tap dance in his plimsolls – causing Davis and Rich to collapse in delighted convulsions behind him. The old-timers reminisce about their first encounter, before Parkinson persuades Davis to busk a number with the rhythm section of Rich’s big band (‘Almost Like Being in Love’, in B flat, it transpires). The warmth of the occasion is almost palpable, one of those moments when television can truly be described as magical.
Unfortunately, there were occasions when the musical guests exuded a distinct chill.
In particular, the camp pianist Liberace refused to play along, until the host suggested that a good old-fashioned stitch-up would achieve the required result, as Fisher, still at this point the junior of the team, recalls:
I go along to the hotel and sit with Lee [as Liberace liked to be known] and his manager Seymour Heller, who was known in Hollywood circles as the ‘Silver Fox’. If we had a performer on the show, we’d always request that they’d do their party piece. With Jack Benny, he played a number on the fiddle. Even if it was something they weren’t known for. Jimmy Stewart played accordion on one show. So, I ask: ‘Now, Mr Liberace . . .’ ‘Call me Lee.’ ‘. . . you will play something for us?’ At which point Seymour Heller came in and said ‘In no way is Mr Liberace playing anything. He is here in this country on your show in his capacity as an author.’ Lee was simpering on the sofa, but there was no arguing. You didn’t argue with Heller.
I came back dejected, because I had failed. It was my job to persuade people to do these things. Parky said ‘Well, if we confront him with that on air, he can’t refuse, can he?’ We all said ‘Yes, but it’s easier said than done. It’s not like pulling out a pack of cards for a magician.’ We realized we were in the big studio – TC1 – that day, so we had a lot of wasted space. You had our set, Parky’s chair area, Harry Stoneham and the boys [in the house band], then the audience. But then you had this corridor area, a black hole. We found out what piano he played, so he couldn’t refuse because it wasn’t what he was contracted to play, and got a full-size concert grand in. We put it in this area, and we covered it all over with black cloth on flies. We come to the show, Parky was doing the interview, and at the end he says ‘Thank you Lee, but we can’t possibly let you go without playing for us.’ Liberace replies ‘I’d love to, but we haven’t got the piano.’ At which point, the black cyc[lorama – as the backcloth covering the studio wall was known] went back, the black cloth went up, and there, in the spotlight, was this piano. At which point, Seymour Heller, who was on the floor, came over and got me by the lapels, saying ‘You are going to pay for this. You are going to pay for this.’ Meanwhile his only client has been ambushed and is having to fake sincerity like he never had before – ‘Is there any tune I can remember?’ But he did it, he played, and he got a resounding ovation from the audience.30
In America, chat shows were nightly, whereas Parkinson was weekly. By 1978, Bill Cotton – by now BBC1 controller – thought it was worth trying five shows a week. The only obstacle was the seemingly immovable feast that was the nightly current affairs show 24 Hours, but when BBC2 controller Brian Wenham agreed to take that over, the scene was set for Parkinson five nights a week. Cotton had, however, reckoned without the snobbery of the BBC governors, who tended not to rate what they saw as vulgar entertainment programmes too highly. They vetoed the plan, leaving Cotton with five slots to fill. He was allowed one midweek Parkinson, which he placed on Wednesday nights.
Just over a year after Parkinson’s chat show had taken to the nation’s screens, London Weekend Television presented ITV’s rival offering. If Michael Parkinson was yin, Russell Harty was yang. Parky was a Yorkshireman, Harty a proud Lancastrian, the son of a Blackburn greengrocer. Parkinson went straight from school to journalism with two O levels to his name, while Harty went to Oxford, before becoming a schoolteacher at Giggleswick, where one of his pupils was future Countdown host Richard Whiteley. Parky was and is gruffly masculine, Harty was gossipy and camp. Nonetheless, the rivalry between Parkinson and Harty was a warm, friendly one. They guested on each other’s shows and when Harty died prematurely in 1988, Parkinson spoke at his funeral. Perhaps the main difference between the pair was that Parkinson, while he could be tough when required, was fundamentally reverent, especially when faced with the heroes he’d seen as a boy at the Barnsley Gaumont, while Harty was anything but. Alan Bennett, whom he met at Oxford, summed up his friend’s chutzpah at his memorial service: ‘He had learned then, by the age of twenty . . . that there was nothing that could not be said and no one to whom one could not say it.’31
Harty had begun his media career relatively late, joining BBC Radio as a producer in 1967, at the age of 33, moving to London Weekend Television in 1970 to work on Humphrey Burton’s arts magazine programme Aquarius, where his talent was noticed. On 21 October 1972, Russell Harty Plus, his first chat show, went out, with a guest list including actor Michael York and actresses Phyllida Law and Hylda Baker. His first ‘Emu’ moment came in the eleventh show of the first run, in January 1973, when interviewing the Who. Pete Townshend got the encounter off to a flying start by knocking over his amplifier stack, leading Harty to ask whether the item belonged to him or LWT. Harty then had a nightmare of a time trying to get a word in edgeways, as all four members of the band talked across each other, while Keith Moon played claves, staged a mock walkout and bit Townshend’s knee. However, even this was eclipsed in November 1980, during Harty’s first series for BBC2 after moving from LWT, when singer Grace Jones began slapping Harty around the head because he turned fractionally away from her to speak to another guest. In later BBC shows, Harty appeared unannounced on viewers’ doorsteps and invited himself in for a cup of tea and a natter. When they worked, these encounters were as illuminating as any celebrity interview, Harty being warm and natural. Unfortunately, one punter wounded Harty as much as Grace Jones did by admitting she had no idea who he was.
Harty’s last work at London Weekend had been Saturday Night People, co-hosted with Observer TV critic Clive James and Janet Street-Porter. The experiment was interesting, but flawed in that each of the triumvirate was bound to regard themselves as the star of the show, and would invariably attempt to pull it in their own direction. James’s wit and his grasp of both high and low culture would, in time, make him a perfect chat show host at both LWT and the BBC. Harty remained a favourite with both BBC2 viewers and impressionists up to his death.
With Harty covering the BBC2 end of chat, Terry Wogan was preparing to take over the BBC1 baton from Michael Parkinson. Parky had become one of the founding directors of TV-am, the successful applicant for the new breakfast television franchise awarded by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, as the ITA had become in 1972. The whimsical Irish disc jockey began with a trial run on Tuesday nights in May 1982, before moving to the hallowed Saturday night slot in January 1983. ‘The try-out happened while the Falklands War was on,’ says producer Marcus Plantin. ‘It worked very well on a Tuesday. The Tuesday show was a lot more dangerous than the Saturday show.’ Plantin notes one crucial difference between Wogan and his predecessor. ‘The difference, and Terry’s quite honest about it, is that he’s not a journalist. He’ll listen, but he won’t probably absorb and ask questions spontaneously. So, it has to be constructed and it was an edit job. Nothing wrong with that. We used to run everything long and pick the best bits. Put them together, hopefully seamlessly.’32
When Michael Grade came in as controller of BBC1 in 1984, he decided to build a weekday schedule to run from February 1985, underpinned by Wogan live from the Television Theatre on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with the new soap opera EastEnders on Tuesday and Thursday. Plantin was in the frame for the job of producing the thrice-weekly show, but was saved by overtures from his old mentor Alan Boyd at London Weekend. ‘The money was a lot better, and I didn’t really want to do three days a week of Wogan as a live show, because I didn’t believe in it,’ Plantin says. ‘As much as I love Terry, and I’ve got a lot of time for him, he’s best when he’s recut.’ For all its faults, Wogan lasted for seven years before giving way to the Spanish-set soap opera Eldorado.
As chat shows became a more important element of the television variety schedules, the game show was also coming of age, with the BBC accepting that it would have to tackle ITV head on. For years, ITV alone had doled out cash and prizes, while the BBC had clung to the relative gentility of panel games. These were the televisual equivalent of the Victorian parlour game, in which the only reward was the approval of the host a
nd audience, not to mention the sense of a job well and wittily done. With shows like The Generation Game, the BBC entered the game show arena fully.
The reason for the shift was that ratings, which had always been important, had become crucial, as the BBC came under increasing pressure to justify its right to the licence fee. Politically, the Corporation did itself no favours in 1971 with the transmission of Yesterday’s Men, an unflattering documentary about the Labour Party in sudden and reluctant opposition. The relationship between the BBC and politicians would become increasingly adversarial over the next twenty years.
The development of the game show also reflected social changes. Just as BBC2 was a response to post-war improvements in education, game shows reflected a new, acquisitive, consumerist outlook, possibly a delayed reaction to the years of austerity and rationing. After so much make do and mend, the nation was asserting its right to amass as many candelabras and cuddly toys as it could get hold of. When Rediffusion lost its franchise in 1968, two of the game show stalwarts of the commercial television schedules went with it, namely Double Your Money and Take Your Pick. In their stead came other shows, not least of which was ATV’s The Golden Shot.
The format came from Germany, where it was known as Der goldene Schuss. The McGuffin was a crossbow attached to the front of a television camera, operated by a blindfolded cameraman, who was receiving instructions on his aim at a novelty target from a viewer at home over the telephone. As such it had to be a live show, and it should have been a thrilling proposition, but The Golden Shot was not an immediate success. When it began in a prime Saturday night slot in July 1967, it was a ratings disaster. Although strong competition from BBC1, in the form of the Black and White Minstrel Show and Billy Cotton’s Music Hall, was the main cause of the early disappointment, it had too many rounds and the choice of host did not help matters. Bob Monkhouse was the front-runner for the job, and wildly enthusiastic about the idea, but Lew Grade decided to offer it instead to Canadian singer Jackie Rae, former host of Granada’s musical quiz Spot the Tune, who failed to stamp his personality on the show. Rae had impressed Grade when he played a game show host in a Charlie Drake Show, but although Rae could play a game show host perfectly well when scripted, he had none of the necessary ability to think on his feet and steer an unpredictable show to a satisfactory conclusion. And with live weapons in the studio, The Golden Shot was certainly unpredictable.