Turned Out Nice Again
Page 41
38 This was the first of two trial shows, before the series proper began on Saturday 13 September. The show later moved to the Hackney Empire, ABC borrowing ATV’s facilities because it did not yet have a London base of its own.
39 ‘Oh Boy! – It’s A Musical Powerhouse . . . With The Accent On Vitality’, TV Times, 13 June 1958, pp. 8–9.
40 Author’s interview with Brian Tesler, 23 February 2005.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 An unsubstantiated story runs that Trinder made some ill-advised anti-Semitic remarks.
44 Author’s interview with Brian Tesler, 23 February 2005.
45 Ibid.
46 Author’s interview with Yvonne Littlewood, 24 February 2005.
47 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
48 Author’s interview with Yvonne Littlewood, 24 February 2005.
49 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
50 Ibid.
51 The Jack Benny shows were an even harder editing job, being sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes, which were mentioned in links and sketches.
52 Author’s interview with Yvonne Littlewood, 24 February 2005.
53 Ibid.
54 Author’s interview with William G. Stewart, 23 March 2006.
55 Author’s interview with Stewart Morris, 1 April 2005.
56 Ibid.
57 Author’s interview with Yvonne Littlewood, 24 February 2005.
58 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
59 Ibid.
60 Hancock’s Forty-Three Minutes (BBC TV, tx: 23 December 1957). Available now on DVD after nearly fifty years of sitting on a shelf in the BBC archives.
61 Ibid.
62 The Times, 19 May 1967, p. 3.
63 Author’s interview with Rosalyn Wilder, 21 January 2005.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
CHAPTER FOUR
1 Neither Took nor Feldman were gay themselves. Polari was also adopted by theatricals and market traders.
2 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004.
3 Ibid.
4 ‘BBC Networks by Numbers’, The Times, 28 July 1967, p. 3.
5 Frank Muir, A Kentish Lad (Bantam Press, London, 1997), p. 227.
6 Ibid., p. 228.
7 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
8 Author’s interview with William G. Stewart, 22 March 2006.
9 Author’s interview with Richard Greenough, 2 April 2006.
10 Two of the best trumpeters Britain ever produced.
11 Author’s interview with Jack Parnell, 22 January 2004.
12 From a tribute to Roger Moffat, compiled by Keith Skues and broadcast on Radio Hallam in Sheffield on 9 August 1987.
13 Make Way for Music (BBC TV, tx: 9 August 1960).
14 Author’s interview with John Ammonds 14 April 2005.
15 The Times, 17 May 1960, p. 16.
16 Rather cheekily, the bass drum has the legend ‘Hot Pyes’ daubed on it, a reference not to fast food, but to Donegan’s ATV-controlled record label.
17 The Times, 17 May 1960, p. 16.
18 Howard Thomas, With an Independent Air (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1977), p. 176.
19 Author’s interview with Brian Tesler, 24 February 2005.
20 Ibid.
21 The Pigalle was in the building now occupied by BAFTA.
22 Author’s interview with Brian Tesler, 24 February 2005.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Thomas, With an Independent Air (1977), p. 163.
27 Ibid., p. 165.
28 Mike and Bernie Winters, Shake a Pagoda Tree: Mike and Bernie’s Autobiography (W.H. Allen, London, 1976), pp. 44–5.
29 Despite the long-standing rivalry between Lancashire and Yorkshire, Morecambe was for many years the holiday destination of choice for the vast majority of Leeds families, thanks to railway links.
30 Author’s interview with John Ammonds, 14 April 2005.
31 People, 25 April 1954, p. 8, quoted in Graham McCann, Morecambe and Wise
(Fourth Estate, London, 1998), p. 109.
32 Bob Monkhouse, Crying with Laughter (Arrow, London, 1994), p. 117.
33 Bruce Forsyth, Bruce: The Autobiography (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 2001), p. 195.
34 Author’s interview with Jan Kennedy, 20 April 2005.
35 The Morecambe and Wise Show (ATV, tx: 26 February 1966).
36 On the recording, he fluffs the line, and it comes out as ‘If you don’t want the show to close . . . finish early, yes.’
37 Ibid.
38 The Morecambe and Wise Show (ATV, tx: 18 April 1964).
39 Ibid.
40 Author’s interview with Eric Geen, 10 March 2006.
41 The BBC had begun test transmissions from Alexandra Palace, using the American NTSC system, in October 1955.
42 Author’s interview with Richard Greenough, 8 April 2006.
43 Thomas, With an Independent Air (1977), p. 195.
44 Quoted in Forsyth, Bruce: the Autobiography (2001), p. 129.
45 There were only five studios open at the Centre in 1963. The gigantic TC1 had yet to be equipped. That evening’s other big live production, That Was The Week That Was, came from TC2.
46 Author’s interview with Yvonne Littlewood, 24 February 2005.
47 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004.
48 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004.
49 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004.
50 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004.
51 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004.
52 Author’s interview with Marcus Plantin, 4 March 2005.
53 Quoted in Harry Thompson, Peter Cook: A Biography (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1997), p. 114.
54 The prime example is the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, passed to ensure munitions workers’ attendance at work, by limiting pub opening hours. DORA affected the licensing of alcohol sales for a further ninety years.
55 Author’s interview with Elkan Allan, 25 October 2005.
56 ‘Notes On Broadcasting: Satire In The Age Of Television’, The Times, 15 December 1962.
57 Author’s interview with Elkan Allan, 25 October 2005.
58 Although, in his autobiography, he claims that he did. Presumably, he was unaware of the machinations required to secure his position.
59 Author’s interview with Elkan Allan, 25 October 2005.
60 Ibid.
61 Quoted in David Frost, David Frost: An Autobiography – Part One: from Congregations to Audiences (HarperCollins, London, 1993), p. 46.
62 Frost and Birdsall were both Cambridge graduates, Levin went to the London School of Economics.
63 Interview with Jack Duncan, 4 November 2004.
64 Quoted in Frost, An Autobiography – Part One (1993), p. 54.
65 If anyone wants further proof of their non-racist intent, the singers also once accompanied blues singer Josh White on a Light Programme broadcast.
66 Author’s interview with Jack Duncan, 4 November 2004.
67 ‘I got a lot of mates – Johnny Speight, Galton and Simpson, Frank Muir and Denis Norden, Barry Took and Marty Feldman – to give me bits and pieces which I worked up into an act’: Frankie Howerd, The Times, 6 August 1977, p. 6. Galton, Simpson, Took and Feldman are absent from the show’s credits.
68 Quoted in Roger Wilmut, From Fringe to Flying Circus (Methuen, London, 1980), p. 61.
69 Quoted in Frost, An Autobiography: Part One (1993), p. 61.
CHAPTER FIVE
1 Author’s interview with Elkan Allan, 25 October 2005.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid. A nice easy job for reporters at ITN, which shared the building with Rediffusion.
5 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton,
29 September 2004.
6 Author’s interview with Elkan Allan, 25 October 2005.
7 Ibid.
8 ‘Ginger Judas’, Private Eye, issue 103, 26 November 1965, p. 5. A former Rediffusion cameraman has suggested to me that in the original version of the joke, Allan was advised to go to the party not as an armpit, but as ‘a fox’s arse’.
9 Author’s interview with Elkan Allan, 25 October 2005.
10 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004.
11 Ibid.
12 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
13 Committee members included Joyce Grenfell and Peter Hall, then the director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.
14 BBC1 and ITV remained exclusively on 405-line VHF until 15 November 1969, when their colour services launched. The 405-line transmitter network was finally closed in January 1985.
15 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004.
16 Author’s interview with John Ammonds, 14 April 2005.
17 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004.
18 Ibid.
19 A surprising and gratifying amount of Jazz 625 survives, simply because videotape machines were at a premium, resulting in many editions of the show being ‘telerecorded’ on film for transmission. For many years the film recording systems available had not been regarded as of sufficient quality for transmission, but by the mid-sixties, the new fast pull-down system was capable of very high-quality pictures indeed. In general, the editions made on VT were wiped subsequently, tape being regarded as a reusable medium, while the films were kept.
20 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004. This edition was long thought lost until a copy with Spanish subtitles turned up.
21 Ibid.
22 Not Only . . . But Also . . . (BBC2, tx: 9 January 1965).
23 Excerpt from the London Television Consortium’s application to the ITA, quoted in David Docherty, Running the Show (Boxtree, London, 1990), p. 20.
24 Although the company was called London Weekend Television, its on-air identity was simply London Weekend for the first decade of its life. The station identification was initially plain white text on a black background, but in 1969, a more ornate logo came into use, with the station name inside a graphic device resembling a TV screen. It wasn’t until 1970 that the long-serving and famous ‘River’ ident came into service.
25 Quoted in Docherty, Running the Show (1990), p. 23.
26 Author’s interview with William G. Stewart, 23 March 2006.
27 Ibid.
28 ‘Television’s New Look’, The Times, 20 July 1968, p. 17.
29 An ABC-branded clock was exhumed for time checks, the ABC triangle only partially obscured by masking tape.
30 ‘The New Television Programme Companies After A Year In Business’, The Times, 6 August 1969, p. 8.
31 Barry Took, A Point of View (Duckworth, London, 1990), p. 142.
32 Ibid.
33 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004.
34 Ibid.
35 Author’s interview with Paul Smith, 20 May 2005.
36 ‘The Man Who Has Kept Britain Laughing For Half A Century’, The Independent, 8 January 2007, p. 10.
37 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
38 Author’s interview with Jim Moir, 19 July 2006.
39 Ibid.
40 Author’s interview with Stewart Morris, 1 April 2005.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
CHAPTER SIX
1 Author’s interview with Brian Tesler, 23 February 2005.
2 The Eamonn Andrews Show (ABC, tx: 1 May 1966).
3 Bill Cotton, Double Bill (Fourth Estate, London, 2000), p. 126.
4 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004.
5 Ibid.
6 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004.
7 Author’s interview with Jim Moir, 19 July 2006.
8 Author’s interview with Terry Henebery, 6 November 2004.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. The much-missed Ray Moore had been the show’s announcer in Manchester.
11 Henebery was lucky to survive: three other motorists died in the accident.
12 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Dee Time, 21 September 1968. The bass player in question is likely to have been Joe Mudele.
16 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004. The full performance was finally transmitted in a compilation of highlights from the show.
17 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
18 Ibid.
19 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004.
20 The Times, 20 February 1971, p. 17.
21 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Easy enough now, but in the pre-Sunday trading and cashpoints world of 1973, it was a considerable achievement.
25 Author’s interview with John Fisher, 11 May 2006.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Parkinson (BBC1, tx: 6 March 1982).
29 Author’s interview with John Fisher, 11 May 2006.
30 Alan Bennett, Writing Home (Faber & Faber, London, 1997), p. 63.
31 Author’s interview with Marcus Plantin, 4 March 2005.
32 Bob Monkhouse, Crying with Laughter (Arrow, London, 1994), p. 263.
33 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
34 Author’s interview with Jim Moir, 19 July 2006.
35 Author’s interview with Roger Ordish, 22 October 2004.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1 Author’s interview with John Ammonds, 14 April 2005.
2 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
3 Author’s interview with John Ammonds, 14 April 2005.
4 Author’s interview with Sir Bill Cotton, 29 September 2004.
5 Author’s interview with John Ammonds, 14 April 2005.
6 It also cropped up on the 1964 HMV LP Mr Morecambe Meets Mr Wise. Their last Christmas special, made in 1983 for Thames, is in places a shot-for-shot remake of their 1976 BBC Christmas show, with different guest stars, such as Peter Skellern standing in for Elton John. Now, I love Peter Skellern, but I can’t help but think that even he’d admit that he’s a bit of a comedown.
7 Author’s interview with John Ammonds, 14 April 2005.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Author’s interview with Ernest Maxin, 9 November 2005.
11 Ibid.
12 Author’s interview with John Ammonds, 14 April 2005.
13 ‘Christmas Specials’, Televisual, December 1985, p. 20.
14 Author’s interview with Bernie Clifton, 12 August 2005.
15 Author’s interview with Johnnie Hamp, 4 July 2007.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, series 1, show 3 (Granada, tx: 27 April 1974).
21 Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, series 1, show 2 (Granada, tx: 20 April 1974).
22 Author’s interview with Johnnie Hamp, 4 July 2007.
23 Author’s interview with David Liddiment, 3 March 2005.
24 ‘Great Service, Great Sets, That’s Granada’ to the tune of the thirties song ‘Granada’ being their advertising slogan.
25 Author’s interview with Jan Kennedy, 20 April 2005.
26 Ibid.
27 Author’s interview with Stewart Morris, 1 April 2005.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Author’s interview with Jack Parnell, 22 January 2004.
31 Lew Grade, Still Dancing: My Story (Collins, London, 1987), p. 233.
32 David Nobbs, I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today
(Arrow, London, 2004), p. 245.
33 Les Dawson, A Clown Too Many (Elm Tree Books, London, 1985), p. 111.
34 Author’s interview with Jack Duncan, 4 November 2004.
35 Dawson, A Clown Too Many (1985), p. 127.
36 Nobbs, I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today (2004), p. 259.
37 Author’s interview with Ernest Maxin, 9 November 2005.
38 Author’s interview with Stewart Morris, 1 April 2005.
39 Ibid.
40 Author’s interview with John Fisher, 11 May 2006.
41 ‘No Rationing for Mr Dodd’, The Times, 21 April 1965, p. 13.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1 David Docherty, Running the Show (Boxtree, London, 1990), p. 74.
2 Author’s interview with John Kaye Cooper, 2 March 2006.
3 Ibid.
4 Author’s interview with Stanley Baxter, 31 May 2006.
5 Author’s interview with John Kaye Cooper, 2 March 2006.
6 Ibid.
7 Author’s interview with Stanley Baxter, 31 May 2006.
8 Author’s interview with Alan Boyd, 8 June 2005.
9 Author’s interview with Stanley Baxter, 31 May 2006.
10 Ibid.
11 Stanley Baxter’s Christmas Box (LWT, tx: 26 December 1976).
12 Stanley Baxter on Television (LWT, tx: 1 April 1979).
13 Author’s interview with John Kaye Cooper, 2 March 2006.
14 Author’s interview with Marcus Plantin, 4 March 2005.
15 Author’s interview with Stanley Baxter, 31 May 2006.
16 Author’s interview with Brian Tesler, 24 February 2005.
17 Ibid.
18 Some weeks, this would be followed by a mass chorus of ‘Never heard of him/her’ – usually when it was a war hero’s turn – and an immediate switch-over to another channel, the wireless or various other nourishing pursuits.
19 Archive interview with T. Leslie Jackson, excerpted in Archive Hour: This Is Your Life at 50 (BBC Radio 4, tx: 28 September 2002).
20 The Times of 7 February 1961 reports that the replacement was ‘a programme which told the story of Dr Robert Fawcus, of Chard, Somerset’. It is unclear whether this was an edition of This Is Your Life or not.
21 Denis Norden, Sybil Harper and Norma Gilbert (eds.), Coming To You Live! (Methuen, London, 1985), pp. 206–7.
22 Ibid.
23 Author’s interview with Brian Tesler, 23 February 2005.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.