MAN ALIVE on BBC-2 insists that it is “a programme which focuses on people and the situations that shape their lives.”

As a catch-phrase blurb in the Radio Times it is snappy, and generalised enough to be practically meaningless. Among other current programmes that could also claim “to focus on people, etc., etc…..” are Panorama, This Week, 24-Hours, World In Action, Late Night Line-Up, Whicker’s World, Meeting Point and Blue Peter.

Where Man Alive, however, was different from these other programmes was in its pre-occupation with the intimate situations that shaped people’s lives.

Not for it such life-shapers as the Labour Government, Vietnam, the Common Market, the Vatican, television, comprehensive schools, trade unions, the hydrogen bomb, the impact of culture.

Hurt

Its editors, Desmond Wilcox and Bill Morton, burrowed into the more personal layers of human motivation. With camera and microphone, they tramped through the wreckage of hurt, broken and anxious lives.

Unmarried mothers, the homeless, priests who sinned, divorced wives, mistresses, children of broken homes, homosexuals, people with phobias, teenagers who left home — these were some of the unhappy fauna that Man Alive trapped on the small screen.

Watching it was at times like eavesdropping on a confessional or hiding under a psychiatrist’s couch. The techniques used to encourage such intimate revelations were those one might associate with the family doctor or a newspaper sob sister.

The interviewer’s voice always throbbed with sympathy and understanding. After each unhurried question, there would be a long pause before the next, which had the effect of encouraging the subject to say a little more — afraid perhaps that he had let the interviewer down by saying too little — and often thereby bringing out the statement he probably would have preferred to have kept hidden.

Usually the interviewer was unseen — his words echoing eerily on the sound track — and the subject was scrutinised by the camera as vividly as a stethoscopic searching for some hidden disease.

To be fair, not all Man Alive programmes indulged in this metaphorical wringing of hands over man’s plight. There were editions on grouse shooting, market research and the Mafia, but there were enough of these TV confessionals to associate the programme in many minds with a keyhole vision of the human condition.

No doubt these revelations often made absorbing television. But there was always a suspicion, too, that on some programmes there was a preoccupation with sensation for sensation’s sake and that sentimentality was being used as a substitute for concern.

But there is a bottom even to the well of human misery and Man Alive, in its new series, has turned away from agonising over individual private sorrows and is now concentrating on a broader spectrum of social problems.

This takes the form of setting up an issue like hanging, the exploitation of the welfare state, or the excesses of satire, filming some background material and interviews, and then throwing it open for discussion to a studio assembly of involved guests.

Again the programme seems to be more concerned with so-called “good” TV than with any sincere desire to inform viewers rationally or effectively about the subject being aired.

“Good” TV in this context means TV that excites, irritates and embarrasses rather than TV that informs or stimulates any logical thought.

It manages to include in one format almost every device guaranteed to kill reasonable talk, serious communication and constructive reflection.

There are usually 15 to 20 speakers spaced through a large studio as if they were all afraid of catching something from each other.

The speakers are of unequal intellectual weight: some are experts on the subject, while others have little but an isolated experience to justify their inclusion in the debate.

The sheer distance that separates the protagonists guarantees a shouting match in which the loudest and most persistent larynxes will eventually prevail. The large number of debaters means a few scrappy minutes for most speakers, no chance of rebuttal and a discussion dominated by the most unabashed extroverts.

In the programme on capital punishment Duncan Sandys and Edgar Lustgarten, arguing for the restoration of capital punishment never remotely got round to the many reasonable arguments that should have been put on their side.

In much the same way, the question of whether satire had gone too far descended to an exchange of irrelevant insults between the editors of Private Eye and Mr. Robert Maxwell, MP, and one switched off feeling only acute embarrassment for all concerned.

Because it sensationalises serious subjects, reduces discussions to brawls, humiliates important people, there are some, no doubt, who will claim that it is good TV.

Socially, however. its most dubious effect is that it not only brings no enlightenment to the urgent problems it raises, but it polarises opinion, confirms prejudices and leaves viewers even more convinced about the wisdom of their own views and the stupidity of their opponents’ than they were before seeing the programme. As such, it is positively harmful.

The post There are times when it embarrasses viewers to look appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Syndicated to newspapers on 24 February 1968

THE fascination at Alf Garnett, the monstrous hero of the BBC’s Till Death Us Do Part, lay in his ability to act as a distorting mirror in which we could watch our meanest attributes reflected large and ugly.

Like some boil on the back at the neck that one cannot resist stroking or touching, this social aberration demanded the nation’s attention.

Some 18 million viewers — half of Britain’s adult population — watched him weekly wallowing in the hates and fears and prejudices most of us have tucked away in some genteel niche of our psyche.

Alf’s views on coons, kikes and wags; his reflections on Labour Party politicians; his suspicion of anything new like transplant operations, his ignorant superstitions, his insensitivity to beauty, his blatant hypocrisy can be seen and heard most days in most pubs, factories and boardrooms in the land.

Aggressive

Even his conventional virtue — his faith, his patriotism, his loyalties — have all been acquired tor the wrong reasons. His religion is motivated by fear at a vengeful God; his admiration of the Queen, by snobbery; his passion for West Ham, by a need for aggressive self-fulfilment.

Fortunately, there are few of us who possess all of Alf’s bulging portmanteau of hates and prejudices. But it is only the saint among us who does not share at least one.

The difference between Alf and most of us is that he brandishes his decadent and violent ideas in the fout-mouthed linguistic setting that suited them best. He was too uncultivated and ignorant to realise that if he disguised them under a veneer of propriety, they would have been acceptable in some of our best drawing-rooms.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of Alf’s existence is that he should be a member of the working-classes. Ever since Rousseau’s “noble savage,” liberal humanitarians have believed that given the right social conditions, the best in humanity would emerge from the lowest orders.

They had long ago given up the middle-classes and the aristocracy as too corrupted by self-interest to ever strive unduly for a broadening of the human spirit.

It would be expected that a Prussian Junker like Ludendorff could be described as “a man blind in spirit. He had never seen a flower bloom, never heard a bird sing, never watched the sun set.”

And it was natural that the epitome of a nation’s xenophobia, narrow-mindedness, obtuse attitudes should have been that red-fared, bloated representative of the upper middle-class, Colonel Blimp.

But the proletariat was better than that. So the Russian Revolution and the Welfare State set out to prove. Well, we know what happened in Russia.

Could it be possible that decades of literacy, universal suffrage, full employment, trade union protection and governmental paternalism could spawn a monster like Alf Garnett?

Sadly, it is only too true. The millions who laughed at Alf Garnett weekly knew only too well that it was true. And it is in reminding us how far we still have to go before any Utopian ideals about ourselves and our society can be remotely realised that Johnny Speight’s creation has succeeded in providing on TV both a chastening and enlightening experience.

No one can deny that some of the recent episodes of Till Death Us Do Part showed signs of tired flair and exhausted imagination. But even the worst ones were funnier, more stimulating and more nerve-provoking than 95 per cent. of so-called TV comedy.

The nation owes it, creator Johnny Speight, and its cast, Warren Mitchell, Dandy Nichols, Anthony Booth and Una Stubbs, a debt of gratitude.

But when a series as significant as Till Death Us Do Part leaves the air, it is important that a critic investigates the nature of its going.

Smothered

Was Alf Garnett pushed off the BBC or did he die a creative natural death? If Johnny Speight is to be believed, Alf was smothered by an artistic climate in which he could not survive.

“We have been irritated by a number of idiotic and unreasonable cuts,” he said. “The trouble has been since Lord Hill’s arrival at the BBC and I could be the victim of new policies. I would write another series for the BBC but only it this censorship was stopped.”

What evidence, then, is there that Till Death Us Do Part has gone too far in its use of unseemly language, its derision of politicians, the monarchy, foreigners, its shocking of sensibilities over such topics as religion sex and the family?

Judged by viewing figures, only a tiny fraction of the nation has been shocked enough by the Garnett family to stop looking at them.

This has by no means deterred pressure groups, like the one of which Mrs. Mary Whitehouse is secretary, from blazing away at the programme as a disgrace to the nation and a potential source of corruption.

Because in a comic discussion about the beginnings of man, the words “your bloody God” and “that rubbish, the Bible” were used, Mrs. Whitehouse’s association has demanded that the BBC be prosecuted for blasphemy.

In the event of a prosecution, would Mrs. Mary Whitehouse or the BBC be right as to what shocks and disturbs the nation?

The BBC in its Talkback programme, has provided some evidence of where viewers stand on programmes that its critics claim go too far in the way of permissiveness about language and taboo subjects.

An audience of 100, scientifically selected from the London Area by an independent firm, represents a statistical sample of the population by age, class, sex and earning power.

On the right of TV to upset and occasionally offend the nation, 80 per cent. agreed that it had that right. Did Alf Garnett stimulate racial prejudice? Ninety-five per cent said No. Were references to the Queen by Alf Garnett offensive? Ninety-seven per cent, said No. Was there a need for an independent viewers’ council? Ninety-two per cent said No.

These statistics, then, would seem to put paid to Mrs. Whitehouse’s constant claim that her body represents a majority, or even a substantial, number of viewers.

An incidental aspect of this affair is the fact that so many commentators have assumed that Lord Hill’s presence at the BBC has been responsible for this new censorious atmosphere. It may not be true — Lord Hill should let us know — but when Prime Ministers appoint politicians to be overseers of our beliefs and morals, suspicions will always be there.

The post Viewers, the fact is you were looking at yourselves appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

UNDOUBTEDLY the folk hero of our time is the detective. Whether it is the rumpled Maigret or the suave Bond, there is an inexhaustible audience fascinated by the conflict of a lone figure against the combined forces of crime and evil.

We no longer demand of our private eye or special agent or police inspector that he be a paragon himself. Indeed, corruptibility must now be part of his equipment.

He can be a rake, bribe-able, cowardly, effete, seedy, snobbish, vicious, devious, boastful, dull and ugly, and still retain our sympathy in his struggle against amoral opponents who are sometimes not as amoral as he is.

I suspect it is basically his aloneness that makes him so appealing a figure for contemporary audiences. No matter what help he gets from assistants or scientific paraphernalia, he is always a man pitted physically or mentally against the unknown.

Mass identification with his problems and dilemmas comes naturally to societies like our own where loneliness has become a mass disease.

It follows, then, that in any TV series based upon the activities of a single detective, its success will depend more on the development of the central character rather than on the strength of the plot or the ingenuity of the detection processes.

Wasted

Judging from the work of three detectives seen on TV – Sherlock Holmes, Amos Burke, of Burke’s Law, and Frank Marker, of Public Eye – the Americans are beginning to learn this lesson while out producers are still light years away from it.

Sherlock Holmes on the BBC seems to me to be the saddest example of a wasted opportunity. On a completely undemanding level, the aura of sinister Victoriana is acceptable enough.

Douglas Wilmer has the authentic jaw, the hawk-like nose, the cold, detached stare, the clipped decisiveness that one envisages for Holmes. Nigel Stock, as Watson, is a bumbling appendage that rarely adds much to the action.

But a recent episode “The Beryl Coronet” adapted by Nicholas Palmer, summed up what I feel are all the faults of this series to date.

A valuable piece of a coronet had been stolen from the home of a leading London banker. The banker suspects his son but Holmes, after measuring the imprints of a wooden leg and finding some significant boots, proves that the boy was “inn-oh-cent,” as everybody seemed to pronounce it.

Now trying to stretch this story to an hour has obviously been too much for the imagination of either the writer or the director, Max Varnel.

Lingering on long pans up and down staircases, each clue was stretched out to fill Gargantua and flashbacks were used to repeat events we already knew.

An even worse mistake was not introducing either Holmes or Watson into the story until almost 20 minutes had passed.

With all that padding needed, couldn’t we be told more about Holmes? His cocaine addiction, his Stradivarius, his chemical experiments, his skill at fencing, his university, his brother, Mycroft.

Conan Doyle’s creation, brought up to date with some imaginative scripting and some modern pace to the editing, could still be exciting stuff. But this reverential, orthodox approach merely reduces to the routine a unique treasure of detective fiction material.

Now in Burke’s Law, shown on the Commercial Channel, gimmickery is all. The improbably stories rarely interfere with Burke’s conquest of the sexiest suspects in America. The only clues that really interest him are those found in mattresses.

Who Killed Rosie Sunset? enabled Burke, played with dead-pan aplomb by Gene Barry, to investigate a flamenco dancer, a concertina player, a counterfeiter, and an abstract Russian sculptor. He was mauled by a luscious brunette tax expert, he was cornered by a Slavic beauty whose English vocabulary consisted only of the words “hello” and “yes” and he was stroked by a rich blonde wearing tights that were little more than an epidermal disguise.

Racy

In his Rolls, equipped with telephones and cocktails and driven by an Oriental chauffeur, he raced from bedroom to nightclub to artist’s studio. I cannot tell you who did it or why, but while it lasted it was racy, pacy and alive. With a much better story the Holmes episode was slow, bumbling and dead.

But, by comparison with ABC’s new series, Public Eye, both Holmes and Burke are masterpieces of TV technique. Its private eye, Frank Marker, is supposed to typify the new anti-hero figure.

He has sleazy offices, shady clients, an old sports jacket, stains on his tie, is plagued by income tax demands and when he gets into a fight, he loses.

All of this information came out of the TV Times. None of it was visible in Saturday’s first episode, “The Morning Wasn’t So Hot.”

In technique and subject matter, it brought back memories of “No orchids for Miss Blandish,” which I have always considered on the most tasteless British films ever made.

It concerned the activities of a pimp who picks up unsuspecting girls newly arrived in London and turns them into call-girls and prostitutes.

A little brunette, Jenny, is desired for their brothels by a crime syndicate and the pimp is forced to sell Jenny to them.

When Marker, who through no detection device that was visible to the naked eye, finally finds Jenny – her mother has been worried about her – Jenny decides she wants to stay a prostitute.

“Mr. Marker, last week I earned £300 [£6,500 today, allowing for inflation – Ed]. Did you?” is her decisive answer to his revelation that she has been sold to other brothel keepers. There’s a moral to keep our girls pure and unsullied.

Roger Marshall’s dialogue would best appeal to the paperback literati of Shaftesbury Avenue with sentences like “The nearest he gets to power is in your bed” and “He’s in town getting the lay of the land.”

Alfred Burke, as Marker, had little to do except look hang-dog and disgruntled while this flow of “ugh” poured over the screen.

During the advertisements I switched over to BBC and listened to Quintin Hogg and Malcolm Muggeridge in Not So Much engaging in a fascinating and adult discussion about sexual morality.

It is perhaps typical of our sense of values that Not So Much should be condemned as offensive while puerility like Public Eye will probably survive.

Which, in the end, is more corrupting?

The post Some of the things Burke (of Burke’s Law) can teach Sherlock Holmes appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

POP records are not only big business but a social phenomenon. There is little doubt that they are making a discernible impact in the shaping of the new Britain.

From being the squarest nation in Europe we are fast becoming the coolest. Foreigners familiar with the Britain of Victor Silvester and hunt balls are staggered by the transformation they find in the dancing seen in jazz clubs and discotheques.

The grace, the rhythm, the abandon – not to mention the improvement in the looks of the girls – have that sophisticated natural quality that one used to associate only with the more exclusive haunts in Paris, Manhattan and St. Tropez.

Barriers

More important, that ease and lack of restraint has begun to manifest itself in certain social side-effects among the young.

Class and racial barriers erode much more quicker when peers’ daughters swing unselfconsciously with lorry drivers and Negro musicians.

The innate rivalry of the dance floor has created a heightened awareness of such status ornaments as hair styles, smart clothes and make-up.

The time-consuming demands of the pop craze has so canalised their energies that relatively few of them display much interest in politics, social problems or even hobbies.

The intimacy of their surroundings and the encouragement of physical abandon has also inevitably resulted in a freeing and liberalising of sexual inhibitions.

But is all this any different from the twenties, when teenagers were swaying to the Charleston and the Black Bottom? It is all a question of degree and I think that at the moment we are going through a particular virulent phase of the rhythm epidemic.

And chief among the influences to be credited or blamed for this phenomenon is undoubtedly television.

There are at present no fewer than five weekly peak hour shows devoted exclusively to the playing and plugging of pop music. This compares with two programmes about politics, three about current affairs and two off-peak shows fortnightly devoted to all the arts.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of these pop programmes – presumably devoted to the ever-changing tastes and fads of their fans – is how quickly they congeal into frozen formulas and into mindless repetitiveness of the same technical gimmicks.

Oldest

The three oldest in the business – Ready, Steady, Go!, Thank Your Lucky Stars, and Juke Box Jury – have remained practically unchanged, down to the compere’s cement smiles, for almost three years.

Now with stentorian fanfares two of them ushered in what they shouted was to be a fresh era in pop presentation.

“We’re all terribly excited,” said Cathy McGowan, introducing Ready, Steady Goes Live. “It’s the very first show of its kind where everybody sings live.” If memory serves me right I thought that was what TV used to do before most of Miss McGowan’s audience were actually born.

There was no doubt that something fresh had to be done to Ready, Steady, Go! which had deteriorated disastrously from its early days, when its free-and-easy mingling of artists and audiences had given the show a spontaneity and bounce that appealed triumphantly to the very young.

But of late is anarchic shooting had become an excuse for sloppy directing, its natural studio environment had become a refuge for lazy set designers and cheap budgets, and its gay, lively enthusiasts had diminished into a jumble of spotty faced, frozen gawkers.

Harried into going live by a growing suspicion among audiences that mime merely disguised the incompetence of its performers, Ready, Steady, Go! moved into a larger studio and recruited some prettier girls into the audience.

But apart from discovering two girls who could sing remarkably like Dionne Warwick, it cannot be said that a new millennium in pop programmes was opened up by the renovation.

The problem of singing live proved that only Tom Jones and Miss Warwick could perform as effectively without the help of recording engineers. The actual sound balance of the programme was atrocious, with rhythm beats blotting out melodies and the background noises blurring the singing.

There was chaos in the cueing, with performers caught with their instruments down and egg all over their guitars. “You’ve done it again,” cried Manfred Mann at a bad cue. “Ready, Steady Goes Live. Aspirin sales have doubled!”

A.B.C.’s Thank Your Lucky Stars did much better with its revised show. Getting rid of all the nonsense stunts – audience markings “O’ll give it foive,” extraneous disc jockeys – the acts took place in a well-marked off arena, divorced form the audiences, allowing the lighting effects to play their full part.

Screams

By cutting to the fist-chewing, hysterical screamers in the audience only when it was needed to match the effect of the performers, the viewers at home could get an uncluttered, clean-cut picture of groups like the Beatles, the Animals and the Drifters without interruptions from the stamping fett and waggling behinds of the studio fodder.

I am at a loss, however, to explain the continued tolerance of the B.B.C. for Juke Box Jury. The juxtaposition of close-ups of astigmatic children and square-faced Moms with the sound of the latest records has long since ceased to be of any conceivable visual interest.

The sight of middle-aged people like David Tomlinson, Joan Turner and Catherine Boyle trying to communicate their with-it-ness to a glum-faced, mummified audience is one of the continuing embarrassments on TV.

What conceivable use their judgments are escapes me when last week no fewer than seven out of nine records were solemnly nominated as hits. David Tomlinson, indeed, voted for nine out of nine as hits which, as a standard, would make the turnover in the Top Ten as active as an explosion of jumping beans.

Smashing

This programme, like Ready Steady Go! also tends to correlate pop music with inarticulateness. The vocabulary of Sue Lloyd on Juke Box Jury seemed to be confined chiefly to the words “I love it, I think it’s great.” Cathy McGowan, doing most of the talking in Ready, Steady, Go! announced a “smashing” competition, thanked Manfred Mann for a “smashing” arrangement, said a harmonica player was “smashing” and told us that the four dancing couples we were going to see were – guess what? “smashing.”

And, in addition to doing something about this potential deleterious effect on teenager speech, could the producers of these programmes not be so shamelessly ready to plug any new American star that happens to float into town?

Dionne Warwick, in spite of her undoubted talent, does not deserve a spot on the Eamonn Andrews Show, Ready, Steady, Go!, Thank Your Lucky Stars and Juke Box Judy [sic] in just under ten days.

It would, indeed, be healthier all round if the entire pop world were farm more independent of the public relations men in the record business.

The post Five pop shows on television to every two where they talk about politics appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

INERTIA is television’s most prevalent disease. Nothing is more likely to bring on a fit of the vapours amongst TV planners than the suggestion that a popular programme has outlived its effectiveness.

Programme paralysis is particularly virulent in commercial TV circles where it would probably need a couple of deaths or retirements in the board rooms before Coronation, Emergency Ward 10, Sunday Night at the Palladium, Double Your Money or No Hiding Place were finally tossed into their well-deserved limbos.

But the BBC, to, suffers from this reluctance to change or abandon a once-successful formula. In their case they tend to cling less to the popular shows than the programmes that give give the Corporation its image of solid, responsible, semi-intellectual respectability.

Speculation

There is much speculation these days about who will fill Stuart Hood’s vacant post as BBC’s Controller of TV Programmes. Proof of the need for some fresh mind in this job is the manner in which To-night [sic], the five-day topical magazine, has been allowed to deteriorate into a middle-class Tit-bits stuffed with incestuous techniques and in-jokes.

Although To-night has been on the air almost eight years, it reach the peak of its creative dynamism about four or five years ago. It then evolved its wry, oblique, irreverent approach to life.

It sought out with a purpose and some effectiveness some of the immoral and ludicrous aspects of British society. And in its imaginative use of film and the ranging quest of its cameras, it recognised the fact that TV is essentially a visual medium.

The quirky

But my recent viewing of To-night shows that irrelevance has been replaced by a falsetto indignation about insignificant and manufactured issues, that its spotlighting of British life is largely concentrated on the quirky and the silly and that its aim to stimulate and titillate the eye has been all but abandoned.

The unexpected was once To-night’s most endearing feature. Predictability is now its most irritating fault.

There seem to be at least three Alan Whickers on the programme and if you exchanged the beard and the Scot’s [sic] burr, who could tell whether it was Fyfe Philpot or Trevor Robertson speaking?

Metaphors

The hallmark of a To-night item is a man in a mackintosh, carrying a hand-mike, walking menacingly down an empty rural lane or across a row of suburban houses towards a camera close-up and in an apocalyptic voice saying something like (my words) “This ground on which I’m standing hides a dream… for some a dream of hope and riches… but for others it has already proved a will-of-the-wisp, a Freudian aberration, a frustrating nightmare.”

In one week such unrestrained, highly coloured metaphors have rolled over a disused lead mine, and abandoned town in Australia, a toy factory, a church in Spitalfield.

Only the picture of an Australian town vacated after the collapse of the uranium boom was worth showing. Fyfe Robertson’s attempt to find a serious social issue in an ecclesiastical decision to spend £70,000 [£1.5m today, allowing for inflation -Ed] on a beetle-infested architecturally-exciting church was contentiously forced. But perhaps it was peripherally acceptable.

There was no excuse at all for including Christopher Brasher’s two contributions from Wales. His playing about with drums was embarrassing and his enthusiasm about some disused lead and zinc mines was inexplicable and even misleading. “A few tax concessions,” he said in conclusion, “and we could be digging our own minerals and cutting our import bill.” And perhaps going bankrupt in the process?

Eccentrics

The programme, too, is plagued with eccentrics and odd inventions. Any foreigner watching it might well conclude that any attempt to drag such an odd-ball nation into the second half of the 20th century is doomed from the start.

There was the working-class home of a printer converted into a baroque, plaster-imitation of a miniature Victorian palace. There was Fyfe Robertson offering to sell us re-painted quarry locomotives for £100 [£2,500] each. There was the man who collected vintage Rolls-Royces, another chimney pots, and the fellow who was using chicken manure as a substitute for petrol.

There is, too, a ponderousness about the so-called funny items that is almost distressing. Magnus Magnusson trying to ridicule Italian politics, pretending to be lulled to sleep by an Oriental device or making up a new calendar were Teutonic and collegiate enough to have been the products of some “vitty shport” at Heidelburg University.

Dullness

It is not only prestige that the BBC is losing with this near-parody of a once-exciting programme. Its dullness and specialist appeal gives the commercial channel and opportunity to pick up its mass audiences for the night.

Double Your Money and Take Your Pick have for years made the Top Ten largely because they were pitted against To-night. Even such relatively serious programmes as All Our Yesterdays and Cinema can reach Top Ten status with To-night as its opposition.

With the BBC trying to justify a higher licence fee, this almost wilful chucking away of audiences seems either short-sighted or stupid.

What To-night desperately needs is a change of time-slot, approach and editor. Moved to 10-30 p.m., it would be more likely to pick up the kind of audiences to which it is appealing and a fresh zest and look would obviously come with its late-night atmosphere.

Obsession

It must stop living on its former glories and get rid of its obsession with the past and the eccentric. It should concentrate on the urgent, the vital and the genuine absurd. If it campaigns, it must make sure that the issue is really worth campaigning about and it must stop its present breathless, contentious, holier-than-thou approach to all God’s works and all God’s peoples.

It is obvious, on this record, that 29-year-old Derrick Amoore is hardly the Editor to take on such a renovation. Judged by To-night, he seems to be the oldest young man in the business.

The BBC might also stop to consider whether or not their current passion for youthful executives has not already gone too far.

The post Is this the root of the trouble with Tonight? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Her own series on BBC TV proves her versatility. The series has a vast following.

From Television Stars 1966, published by Purnell

Even though she has carved her niche in popular music, Kathy is still a devout opera fan and enjoys hearing her two favourite operas, “Carmen” and “La Boheme”, whenever she has the opportunity.

Getting to the top of any profession is no easy task. There was no exception in Kathy’s case. Before her first big disc hits, “Dance On” and “Secret Love,” she can remember the tough, sometimes heartbreaking days, when success seemed a million years away — endless one-night stands and club engagements. For all her charm, however, Kathy is made of stern stuff. “I always wanted to be a star,” she declared, “and I was willing to make the kind of sacrifices one has to make in order to attain stardom.”

She was sweet sixteen when she started on her road to fame. It was then that she was signed by Bert Ambrose to sing with his band. Bert had tremendous faith and confidence in her. He groomed her, taught her, guided her into becoming the name she is today. Never for one minute did Bert or Kathy think in terms of failure.

When she finally hit the jackpot there were other problems to cope with. Success can be worrying, even sometimes upsetting. She found herself working harder than ever. She once confessed, “Success is terribly, terribly strange. At first I didn’t feel anything. People would say, ‘You’ve sold so many thousand records this week and earned such and such’ — but it wasn’t until I walked along the street and people recognised me that I realised what fame meant. It’s amazing. I came from oblivion all of a sudden.”

Some artistes on finally getting to the top forget their early struggles and hardships. Not so, Kathy. “In this business you’ve got to keep your sense of values. I find that looking back acts as a tremendous stabiliser. It makes you realise how much you owe to other people who’ve helped you. All the time you’re thinking of them and not wanting to let them down.”

The glamorous image Kathy has projected on our screens is all part of the magic this dynamic girl possesses. “I would love to be in films,” she says, “but not as a sex symbol. You know, I’ve never tried to be a sex symbol. Early on in my career many people compared me with Marilyn Monroe. I admit the comparison was extremely flattering. I loved seeing her films. She was a fantastic woman. I was a great fan of hers.”

No star likes to be compared with another, and Kathy has proved to her public that she has a style and personality of her own — a warm, friendly one to match her talent.

She admits that the late Mario Lanza had more influence on her career than anyone else. “When I was taking opera lessons I used to love seeing all his films. I thought he was the greatest thing that ever lived. In fact, he used to make me cry. That’s the effect his voice had on me.”

Kathy is also a great Doris Day fan.

Now that she has the world at her feet what does Kathy strive for?

“Oh, to be better than I was before. I’m a perfectionist. I like to improve all the time. Who doesn’t? What do I strive for? Well, contentment as a human being — personal happiness. Not that I’m unhappy,” she laughed, “but everybody thinks they could be happier.”

The post Kathy Kirby: Champagne Star appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Though not planned, I found myself watching a number of 1960s’ shows and there are some I have come to really love. Inspired by the now-defunct TV Minus 50 blog, I spent a month in 1968 and, having thoroughly enjoyed it, decided to spend a lot more time in the decade.

I’m spending a week with each year’s telly – this week, that year. As I don’t possess an actual time machine, there are a few limits on what is available for me to watch – I may not always get to see the exact episode from that day – but, hopefully, there should be something watchable every day.

1960

A lot of the programmes I’m familiar with are from the latter half of the decade. After putting a schedule together from this week’s listings, I realise just how much of a step into the dark this is as I have never seen any of the shows before. How exciting!

This week all of my ITV programmes are coming from Granada and ABC.

18th February
Ivanhoe
Granada

Roger Moore plays a medieval knight doing all the good things knights do. For instance, in this episode, he is escorting a stroppy Irish princess. Having seen a few episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood, it felt like similar territory watching Sir Ivanhoe gallivanting on horseback in between sword showmanship with bad guys. There seems to be a bit more location work seen in Ivanhoe, whilst the episodes of Robin Hood I have seen are very studio-bound. This occupies a similar teatime slot and I can see the appeal because I find them both great fun. The villains are wonderfully pantomime-style and you are guaranteed action every episode.

19th February
The Four Just Men ‘The Battle of the Bridge’
Granada

It works out nicely that Granada has given me the very first episode this week. Four men who first met during World War Two are brought back together when their former commanding officer dies and leaves them some money, which is to be used to fight injustice. This episode is a flashback to their wartime mission together. Nazis, resistance, fire fights and a bridge being blown up – this was quite something and it is an awful lot to put into the first episode of a series. This is filmic yet they pull it off in a half hour television programme.

The Lone Ranger ‘Bad Medicine’
BBC Television

There are loads of Westerns on this week – at least one most days. The Lone Ranger was action-packed from the start as it opens with two brothers robbing a bank. Our eponymous hero soon sets out after them. Shoot-outs, horse pursuits and a bit of climatic tension all helped to make this gripping. 1960 must have been fantastic if you loved Westerns and clearly quite tiresome if not. I haven’t seen many Westerns and though I enjoyed this, I have the feeling it could all get a bit samey by the end of the week.

20th February
77 Sunset Strip ‘Vicious Circle’
ABC

I would class this as a detective drama, I suppose. A young man is kidnapped and, after the ransom is paid, his father isn’t interested in going to the police, believing it will cause more trouble for him. The son ends up engaging our leads, two private detectives. They are partly assisted by a young lad, who at one point begins combing his hair in the middle of a gun fight. He is clearly meant to be a cool, modern guy but considering a wounded man lay bleeding nearby, I thought this one action made him look a prick. The show is certainly slightly more glamorous than everything else I am watching this week.

21st February
Maverick ‘The Cats of Paradise’
ABC

It’s another Western, although this one was not what I expected. This episode involved a cat lady, theft, murders, and several people who all wanted the Sheriff dead. I quickly warmed to our lead, Brett Maverick (James Garner), who after being fleeced by the cat lady, finds the Sheriff gunning for him. There was not a great deal of fighting and the episode had a fairly light-hearted tone, with Brett providing most of the quips. Maybe I can get on with these Westerns after all.

Face to Face
BBC Television

This week, John Freeman interviews Henry Moore. The name seemed familiar and the description told me Moore was a sculptor but otherwise I knew nothing about him. I have little interest in art yet decided to give this show a go, in part because I’m watching a fair bit of ITV this week. This was actually an interesting look at an interview from that time. After some establishing shots of the room, the camera never left Moore. It was odd to never cut away to the interviewer. I was left wondering if production teams assumed the audience had no interest in the journalist so it would be best to keep the focus on the interviewee. Modern interview programmes tend to be ‘chat shows’ and it is much more of a two-way conversation. The interviewer can make a lot of difference to what we get out of someone. I think I would like to see something in between the two. This was intense, detailed and definitely highbrow.

22nd February
Wagon Train ‘The Tracey Sadler Story’
Granada

It’s a day ending in Y so there is another Western on. After enjoying Maverick so much I had high hopes but Wagon Train left me a little flat. A woman is seeking to get her son back, who was taken from her when she was wrongfully sent to prison for 12 years. It was heavy and emotional and soppy. The one thing I can say is that these Westerns do all seem to vary more than I expected.

23rd February
William Tell
Granada

I knew little about William Tell before watching this. Basically just that he was Swiss and I thought he was sort of like Robin Hood. In the titles, he shoots an apple off a lad’s head with a bow and arrow. He’s in some sort of resistance and sends his mate to get a letter containing a list of names that must not get into the wrong hands. This does not prove easy. It gets hidden in a shoe that turns out to belong to the Lamberger, the big baddie – literally, the fellow is huge. One of the soldiers was played by Derren Nesbitt, whose voice I recognised under his mountains of armour.

24th February
Highway Patrol ‘Detour to Death’
Granada

I felt the title adequately described this programme as in it contains police officers patrolling the highways. The ‘highway’ bit tells us we are in the US so I expected high-speed pursuits with the baddies shooting back at the cops. No such luck. This episode saw the bad guys setting up road blocks with detour signs, then robbing the drivers at knife point. Yet it has to be one of the dullest cop shows I have ever watched. The action just seemed to be so slow, which is never ideal but especially not when it’s only a half hour show. Aside from one fight – and I use the word loosely because it was more of a struggle – there was very little action. The cops must clearly be the regular characters in this but any distinctive character was lacking. I just couldn’t find anything decent to cling to and the programme dragged.

What you could have won – missing and unavailable

Here are some of the listings that intrigued me but I was unable to watch this week.

UNAVAILABLE Spy-Catcher – ‘A series of true stories of the search for spies in wartime based on the experiences of Lt.-Col. Oreste Pinto.’ There were four series of this and, oddly, a couple of radio series were also made and its broadcast overlapped with that of the third series.

UNAVAILABLE Glencannon – I’ve been able to find out little about this sitcom following merchant sailors, which makes me ponder whether it has ever had a repeat. Every episode exists but has never had a release.

MISSING Studio Two – ‘An ABC Advertising Magazine’ this programme invites you to join them for ‘lively shopping information’. I have heard about these advertising shows and would be keen to see one as they were banned within a few years.

UNKNOWN No Passport – ‘Richard Dimbleby suggests a holiday that needs No Passport. A journey to The English Lakes with David Dimbleby and Jonathan Dimbleby. The second of four films to help you choose your holiday.’ Who would pass up the opportunity to see the Dimbleby clan on holiday?

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