JUST what is ITC and what does it do? One of the vagaries of ATV House is that there is no ground floor through-way between the eastern and western halves of the building. Maybe this is one of the reasons so many members of ATV themselves have little idea of what is happening in the western sector, occupied by ITC.

The initials stand for Incorporated Television Company.

It is a wholly owned subsidiary of ATV , and it has a dual function.

ITC is responsible for all the film series — such as “William Tell”, “The Invisible Man”, “Danger Man”, “Supercar” and “Sir Francis Drake” — for ATV. It is also responsible for the sales of all ATV-produced programmes throughout the world.

The ATV organisation leads the way in the international sales of television product, through ITC, London and ITC (Independent Television Corporation) New York, the latter with a team of salesmen selling to stations throughout America and covering the Western hemisphere. The company has agents in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Thailand, Japan, Manilla, Canada and Australia, as well as many others. It is the largest integrated organisation in the world for the distribution of TV programmes.

All over the world people are watching ATV. Overseas sales of the Company’s products, through its subsidiary ITC, now exceed 3,750 different programmes.

We are therefore playing an important part in Britain’s export trade, bringing into the country much needed foreign currency — a fact which is all too frequently forgotten by our critics.

PIONEERING

ATV decided six years ago to make a long-term investment by planning to break into world markets almost before they existed. Even today, the full potential has by no means been reached. Almost every week, new television stations are being opened in various parts of the globe.

It was obvious that television film series could not be made as economic propositions for showing only in our country. To get their money back, they would have to penetrate markets which would come into existence in the years to follow. The production of these series therefore represented a heavy ATV investment in the future.

This pioneering has resulted in an organisation which is now taking ATV programmes to almost every country.

The “Adventures of Robin Hood” series first broke the ice in smashing into the American market. More recently, our “Danger Man” series has won a new regard for British-made product in the United States and elsewhere, and “Sir Francis Drake” has just been bought for peak-hour network showing by N.B.C.

“Supercar” is also enjoying phenomenal and rapidly increasing success in America, with the result that ITC has just embarked on a new puppet series. “Fireball XL-5”, which is being produced by the “Supercar” team.

Mike Nidorf, president of ITC in America, is now visiting London, and is more enthusiastic than ever about the future of our product in the States. “It’s a hard battle”, he points out, “The American attitude is, ‘We’ve got enough of our own mediocre material without having to take any from other countries. But give us something that’s really good, and we’ll be glad to take it’. They are so pleased with ‘Supercar’ and ‘Danger Man’ that we now have greater opportunities than ever. From what I can judge of ‘Man of the World’, ‘The Saint’ and ‘Fireball’, we’ll really be going into orbit this year!”

“Man of the World” is now in production at Shepperton Studios with Craig Stevens starring, and “The Saint”, with Roger Moore in the title role, is being made at the ABPC Studios, Elstree. Both are one-hour shows of twenty-six episodes.

DUBBED

Many of our programmes are “dubbed” into French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Italian.

Our shows can be seen on TV screens in such areas as Arabia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Holland, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Rhodesia, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Yugoslavia, Monaco and Czechoslovakia.

The adventures of John Drake in “Danger Man” are being followed just as avidly in such countries as Sweden, Poland, Germany and Portugal as they are in Britain. In Thailand the children are enjoying “Noddy in Toyland”. In Egypt and Japan they thrill to the adventures of William Tell.

DOCUMENTARIES

Sales abroad are not restricted to fictional TV programmes. Several of the documentaries we have made are being shown on overseas screens. Australia, Finland, Germany, Hong-Kong, Hungary, Malta, Norway and Sweden have all bought the brilliant documentary ATV producer James Bredin made in South America earlier this year.

ITC is right on the spot wherever new stations are opened, as with the new one at Lagos, Nigeria; another in Northern Rhodesia; one in Malta, and another in Gibraltar; and the soon-to-be-opened stations in Sierra Leone, Trinidad, and Nairobi. Australia has plans for several new stations as well.

If you’re working on programmes for ATV, don’t imagine that only home audiences are going to see them. You’re making them for viewers right the way round the world!

Our other interests

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THE work of ITC is only one of the ways in which the Company has been able to diversify its interests beyond that of being television contractor for London at the weekends and the Midlands, Monday to Friday.

Other companies in which ATV is concerned include:

ATV (Australia) Pty. Ltd.: This is a wholly owned subsidiary which has been operating for nearly four years in Sydney. It has holdings in seven radio stations and participates in the Australia-wide Macquarie Radio Network. Through a subsidiary called Artransa radio programmes are produced and sold in many countries outside Australia. ATV (Australia) also has interests in eight television stations in places such as Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.

Planned Musk Ltd.: All over Britain people in offices, factories, shops and restaurants are listening every day to Muzak — a selected programme of music piped to them direct from several centres which have been set up. This company was started as an ATV subsidiary over three years ago.

Pye Records Ltd.: The Company owns 50 per cent of this, the third largest record company in the country.

British Relay Wireless & Television: ATV has more than two million shares in this company which serves 17 metropolitan boroughs in London with wired TV and radio and has networks covering extensive areas of the West Midlands, Yorkshire and Scotland. Big plans for participation in coin-in-the-slot TV, when permitted by law, have recently been announced by BRW.

Canastel Broadcasting Co. Ltd.: A wholly owned company in Halifax, Nova Scotia which has investments in radio and television stations at Halifax and in a Vancouver TV station, and also the company which supervises the networking of programmes in Canada.

Ambassador Bowling Ltd.: This company has been formed to cater for the ten-pin bowling enthusiasts. A centre has been opened at Ipswich and another will shortly come into operation at Stevenage, Herts. Other centres are also planned.

The post World Sales for our Shows appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

THE big news this month is the tremendous success which we are having with our Supercar series in overseas sales.

The programme started on Station WPIX in New York in January and achieved a rating of 15.6 — much higher than any other show on the air at the same time. The C.B.S. show in opposition had a rating of 9.6; N.B.C was 3.7.

So far, our U.S. sales have grossed 600,000 dollars [about $6.3m in today’s money, allowing for inflation – Ed] and we have just completed another regional sale which will soon bring Supercar’s earnings into the 1,000,000 dollar [$10.5m] bracket.

The series is also being shown in such countries as Canada, Australia, Italy, Portugal and Japan.

This is the first British-made puppet series to crash the world market in this way. The original idea was put to us by a team of four film technicians — Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, Reg Hill and John Read.

They showed us — in book form — a lay-out for the show with artists’ drawings of Mike Mercury, Supercar and the rest of the characters. Lew Grade was enthusiastic from the start — and we agreed to put up the money.

The series is produced by Gerry Anderson, 32 — his wife Sylvia is script editor and provides the voice of Jimmy and all the female parts. Actors and actresses speak for the rest of the puppets.

Art director Reg Hill, who designed Supercar itself, is in charge of all the sets and John Read is the chief cameraman.

A WEEK TO FILM

Each Supercar episode takes a week to film, followed by three months editing. A crew of 60 film technicians work on the programme and nine puppeteers under the direction of Christine Glanville and Mary Turner.

Making these half-hour Supercar films is a most involved and complex business — much more elaborate than any previous puppet series.

The Slough studios, where they are filmed, uses overhead gantries; three dimensional sets; revolving stages; back projection and special electronic equipment to enable the puppets to talk.

Two models of Supercar are used — one is seven feet long and the other, for trick flying shots, is 18 inches. Mike Mercury himself is 22 inches high.

Thirty-nine episodes have been filmed so far and we will soon be starting on a new series.

The success of Supercar as a TV series has, in fact, been as swift as one of Supercar’s flights on the screen. Fast going indeed.

The post Supercar’s big success – the inside story… appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

Since he came over from Hollywood to star in the Company’s series of 26 hour-long TV films based on the Leslie Charteris fictional hero, Roger Moore has been featured in hundreds of magazines and newspapers ranging from “Roxy” to the half-crown glossies. Yvonne has been the link between Roger and the journalists.

In this article, Yvonne (pictured below with Roger) tells you what it has been like…

FOR the past 12 months my work-a-day activities have been mainly centred around “The Saint” series and consequently ROGER MOORE. In fact by now I think I must know more about this handsome British actor than his own family do.

Constant studio visits, press interviews, lunches, cocktails and photographic sessions have given me the opportunity to form a very clear picture of this television idol—a picture that is not visible to the average “Saint” viewer.

In my opinion the suave, sophisticated figure of Simon Templar is in fact Roger Moore with a new career.

In Leslie Charteris’ own words “The Saint” a roaring adventurer who loves a fight … a dashing dare-devil, imperturbable, debonair, preposterously handsome”.

FAST CARS

He loves fast cars, abhors badly cooked food and inefficiency. At times I wonder whether he was speaking of the fictional Simon Templar or the actor Roger Moore — as these words befit Roger as if they were written for him.

FIRST MEETING

My first meeting with Roger was in a taxi on the way to a lunch interview with a member of the press. As my latest memories of him were as Beau Maverick in the western series I suppose sub-consciously I was expecting a good-looking American-speaking cowboy, toting gun and stetson.

ASTOUNDED

Instead I was astounded to discover an impeccably dressed, cigarette-smoking Englishman, not toting a gun but a cellophane box containing an orchid which was gallantly handed to me in the most gentlemanly fashion.

Over my initial surprise, we all settled down to a hilarious lunch. Hilarious from the point of view that Roger has a very infectious sense of humour and not only were we entertained but it was noticeable that nearby tables were also affected.

The reporter almost forgot he was there for a story until I reminded him about the time. Well, he went back to the office with his story, rescued between quips, and I returned with a large box of chocolates, the orchid and a souvenir guardsman which Roger insisted on buying me from the confectioners next door. This now stands in a place of honour on my desk.

WON OVER

So much for our first meeting. From that moment I was won over. Of course it might have been the gifts that helped — being the early days of our relationship — but as the months passed I found the first impressions of Roger were proving to be correct.

Although they will never admit it, I believe that women both young and old enjoy feeling important in the presence of the opposite sex.

With Roger Moore around you are made to feel like a queen with every rule in the book of etiquette being put to use, from walking on the right side of the pavement, opening the door for you, your arm crossing the road, to the flick of his lighter for your cigarette.

Perhaps all this is just to create a first impression? Women journalists have said to me “Is he always like this or is it just because I’m a stranger?” All I can answer is “I’ve never known him to act differently during the time I’ve known him”.

EXCHANGING JOKES

To walk on the set during break in filming a visitor would have difficulty singling him out from the ordinary workers. He can generally be found clutching a huge mug of tea among a group of jolly cockney scene-shifters and prop men, exchanging jokes.

So the easiest thing to do is wait for peels of laughter then head in their direction.

Nine out of ten times you will find Roger amidst it all. I have been associated with many film productions in the past but can genuinely say I have never known a happier crew/actor relationship as that which exists on “The Saint” production stages.

RENOWNED

The film world is renowned for its stories of artists temperaments and tantrums on the set. This I have never witnessed from Roger Moore, in fact I have never even known him to be in a bad mood.

Obviously we all have our ‘down’ days as must he. Generally we find ourselves taking it out on other people, but not in his case unless it is something directly associated with production.

His outlook on life is ‘live and let live’. He’s always ready to give a helping hand or a word of praise to those around him. But he is equally ready to speak his mind on things which don’t please him.

In conclusion I feel all I can say is that “it’s hectic but a pleasure working in the shadow of such a perfect saint”.

The post In the shadow of The Saint appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

The most severe of A.T.V.’s critics have found it difficult to say hard words about the plays. Whether ‘live’ or filmed they have maintained a very high standard throughout. The parade of stars has been most impressive and varied. Actors and actresses of the calibre of Eric Portman, Flora Robson, Dame Edith Evans, Roger Livesey, Barbara Kelly, Bernard Braden, Helen Haye [sic – Hayes], James Donald, Nora Swinburne, Dorothy Tutin, and Elisabeth Welch, have appeared in the A.T.V. drama series.

The plays have included many which have run successfully in London and, in some instances on Broadway too.

The best plays, the best actors, the best producers — that is the aim of A.T.V. when presenting drama, with the intention that a high level will always be achieved and maintained.

The post Drama for everyone! appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

IT’S SATURDAY MORNING MADHOUSE time, and the terrible Tiswas team — led by Chris Tarrant and Sally James — is back with plenty of disorganised mayhem and general chaos. First shown in Birmingham in 1974, the programme has become a cult watched by five million adults and children. Fan mail reveals that students lay down their books, housewives stop vacuuming and husbands watch it in bed.

Anything can happen and it usually does. The most unusual aspect of Tiswas is that the actors and studio audience all attack each other. Adults beg to be locked in The Cage and have buckets of water, custard pies, egg and ketchup flung at them. In between competitions, film clips, cartoons and quizzes pop stars are doused in mid-interview and return for more.

Tiswas has been translated as “This Is What They Want”, “This Is Saturday Watch And Smile” or “This Is Saturday Watch And Suffer”. What is certain is that Saturday mornings are not the same any more.

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CHRIS TARRANT

Maestro of Tiswas. Producer and presenter. Not averse to getting soaked

The Cage

“Twelve thousand people have written to ask if they can go in The Cage. We’ve had two vicars, a chief of police who couldn’t say where he was from, and half a dozen Inland Revenue men inside. We’ve not had any politicians yet. I intend to work on that one.

The Dying Fly

“The Dying Fly was introduced to us by Jasper Carrott. Once, during his act, a drunk came on stage and said: ‘You’ve got to do the Dying Fly.’ Suddenly the whole audience were lying on their backs and waving their arms and legs in the air. We introduced it to Tiswas. We hold the world record. We got 1,700 people to do it in Leicester. I read a list of dangerous sports compiled by R.o.S.P.A. (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents). They banned the Dying Fly as dangerous unless supervised, along with hang-gliding,” jokes Tarrant.

The Phantom Flanflinger

“I pay his wages but I’ve never seen him.”

Most Requested Film Clip

Says Tarrant: “Kids keep asking for the most gruesome scenes. Especially Monty Python. The Black Knight losing arms and legs is requested most often. So are scenes from Life of Brian.”

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Q: What eats hay and sees equally well from either end?

A: A horse with its eyes shut.

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HOW TO DO THE DYING FLY

Lie on your back on the floor. Lift your legs up, bending them at the knee. Bend your arms at the elbows and raise them upwards. Bend hands at wrists but keep your hands straight.

When the music of the song The Dying Fly starts, kick your legs around and wave your arms in time with the music.

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SALLY JAMES

Pretty witty presenter. Famous for brilliant interviews. Looks better than ever when thoroughly damp.

“It’s firn being the only girl but a bit messy. It’s different for boys. The custard pies are made of shaving foam and stick to my mascara. One Saturday I worked out that I’d washed my hair four times during the day after being soaked in the Bucket of Water song. I get through hair conditioner by the litre.”

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LENNY HENRY

Resident comedian

“I love Tiswas. I think Chris really understands the rebellious feelings in children.”

Says Bob Carolgees: “Lenny Henry used to do a very funny newscast as Trevor McDoughnut. One day Chris secretly smuggled Trevor McDonald into the studio and produced him as Lenny finished his act. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Lenny go white.”

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BOB CAROLGEES

Owner of Spit the dog and Charlie the monkey

Says Bob Carolgees: “My dog was originally called Spot. The reason I gave him that name was because he didn’t have any. But when I first started using him in my act I accidentally called him Spit. Everybody thought it was funny so I added the spitting gesture and now Spit has really taken off.

“Spit gets a personal fan mail of 50 to 100 letters a week. Many people call their dogs after him, especially if they are Cairns or Scotties which Spit thinks he is. He gets sent scarves and hats and bones. Charlie is a really friendly puppet and is very popular. He receives quite a lot of nuts and bananas now.”

Spit is in for a big surprise in the new series. He is going to have a rival. “His name is Cough the cat and I think he will give Spit a run for his money.”

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Q: What do you get if you cross a porcupine and a skunk?

A: A smelly pincushion.

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HOPPING

“This autumn hopping will be the craze,” says John Gorman. “Everyone will be hopping mad and I predict we shall all have a very Hoppy Christmas.

“Hopping has reached a state of great popularity. It has spread with astonishing rapidity to nearly every country in the known world (and a couple in the unknown too).”

Famous Hoppers include:
Hoppalong Cassidy
Bugs Bunny
Long John Silver
Kermit the Frog

✹

JOHN GORMAN

Ex-Scaffold singer and chief loon. Manly responsible for the extraordinary popularity of the Bucket of Water song.

“I was chosen as the resident loon because of my devastating good looks. I am especially responsible for instructive work. I am the expert in the art of hitting your head with a tray. I have crowned heads from Europe and Tower Hamlets. It is not a piece of cake. That’s made with flour.”

The post Chris, Sally and Spit – organising meyhem every Saturday appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

Emergency – Ward 10, seen twice weekly, is one of ITV’s longest-running and most popular programmes. It is a favourite with millions. But what does a doctor think of the series? TV TIMES has invited Harvey Flack, MD, Editor of Family Doctor, published by the British Medical Association, to give a medical man’s view

WHY are people – millions of people – eager to view regularly a programme that revolves round doctors and nurses and hospitals?

This is not a new taste. What Emergency – Ward 10 does is to meet in a new medium exactly the same wish to know about doctors and hospitals that has been in the public mind for a long time.

Think back and you can get the evidence for this in your own experience. You must have read one of Richard Gordon’s immensely funny Doctor books. You probably saw the Betty Box film versions.

How many films do you remember with the Men-in-White theme? How many serials have you read in the women’s magazines with a doctor hero and nurse heroine? You have probably read at least one of Frank Slaughter’s books, all loaded with doctors, operations, deaths, epidemics and medical disasters of every known type and shape.

Do you recall A. J. Cronin’s best-seller, The Citadel, and the film that was made before the war?

The formula that has proved so successful for Emergency – Ward 10 is one that you can see at work in all these magazines, books and films.

There are three main ingredients- entertainment, information and warm human interest. Which is rather like saying that for a perfect meal you start with vegetables, meat and heat.
The recipe gets clearer and more detailed when you watch, for example, Nurses Pat Roberts and Carole Young with the doctors Alan Dawson and Simon Forrester. They get involved in human and dramatic situations that would be full of interest in any setting.

But the setting is a hospital, and in any casualty ward the basic dramas of life are played out every day. There is always the car crash, the near-fatal accident, the attempted suicide. Always there are people in urgent need of operations, blood transfusions, skilled medical treatment.

There is a great wealth of information that interests people on all these things. There is always the feeling that it might happen to you or your family. And here the Emergency – Ward 10 team do go to enormous trouble to get it right in every detail. I don’t say they score 100 out of 100 marks every time, but they do so surprisingly often with medical and surgical details which are not easy to get across to viewers.

So they get the background information and all the details as right as can be. And it is information that people want to know.

They make their doctors and nurses be- have like ordinary doctors and nurses. Then, a minute later, they come out of the professional problem and they fall in and out of love and in and out of ordinary human situations that we all know and they behave like ordinary people.

Take all these ingredients, mix well, light with care, rehearse just enough and serve at 7.30 on Tuesdays and Fridays. You then have some of the secrets of the great appeal of Emergency – Ward 10 as an entertainment that will interest and hold the attention of millions. And they get a lot of information and instruction without pain or effort.

This interest in doctors and hospitals and what they do and what makes them tick is very old. It goes right back to the first doctors and the first hospitals-when medicine was not a science but an art compounded of mystery and magic.

Today, there’s much more science in medicine, but the art is still there, too; a human and compassionate art. And there’s still a trace of magic, and of mystery, and of a secret power.

There are many doctors of whom it is said “He makes you feel better the minute he comes into the room.” There’s a magic there that is based on knowledge, experience, skill and all the elements of a clear and confident personality.

In this workaday world we have an overplus of science. All the old myths and mysteries are being explained away. When I was at school, the atom was a mysterious ultimate. Now, there’s nothing those chaps at Harwell can’t do to it.

When I was a young man, there was still an Aristocracy. Stories of the Beggar-maid and the Prince were read avidly. Or else it was the Poor Boy and the Princess.

Most of that has had the glow taken right off it. And the rags-to-riches story has gone the same way. There’s nobody left in rags and nobody is allowed to keep much of their riches. The Welfare State has seen to one and the taxation needed for it has diminished the other.

So there’s just one department of human activity that still has elements of magic and mystery and secret power. And that’s in doctors and doctoring, and especially in hospitals.

I think that’s what accounts, in the long run, for the continuing success of Emergency – Ward 10. I think it helps to make people more aware of hospitals, more confident in them if ever the need should arise for hospital care.

So, while saluting the 100th anniversary performance of this series, I feel we can be reasonably confident that in about a year from now we’ll all be enjoying the 200th – and probably just as much.

The post This hospital serial really does help appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

EVERY Sunday morning, soon after dawn, a blue van draws up outside the London Palladium and parks among the debris left over from Saturday night’s fruit-barrows.
The van is the mobile television control room which brings viewers Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

“It is all done in the van,” the show’s producer Brian Tesler, told me. “Viewers probably imagine that this great variety show is directed from some mighty control desk. People just would not believe that it is in fact controlled from this van parked in the street!

“Inside the van are my production assistant, the vision engineers, sound engineers, wardrobe and make-up experts, the driver… oh, yes, and I manage to squeeze in somehow.”

This may sound a make-shift arrangement, but it isn’t. This ATV control van, in its smart blue livery, is one of the most up-to-date headquarters of television
equipment. It contains TV and sound equipment valued at about £30,000 [about £565,500 now, allowing for inflation – Ed].

“During the earlier part of the week,” said Brian Tesler, “we get the show into shape in the empty theatre, using every precious hour until they have to set the stage for first house of the Palladium’s normal show.

“On Saturday our night crew go in immediately the curtain is rung down for the end of the second house and work all night rigging the extra lighting, the cameras and cables.

“By the time the van draws up early on Sunday morning, we are ready to link up to the theatre.”

Tesler, who has an Oxford first class honours degree, has a tidy mind, and great organising ability. At his elbow all the time is his production assistant – blonde, quick-witted Audrey Maclean.

“Here’s how the time-table goes for the rest of the day, in and out of the van,” said Tesler:

10.0: Try to commandeer one of the Palladium dressing-rooms for our personal gear. There are about 150 people back-stage today.
10.10: Go around chatting to all the artists in the show, listening to their numbers and discussing any special effects.
11.0: Band-call. Cyril Ornadel and the 25 members of the London Palladium Orchestra. Audrey is busy with her battery of stop-watches while we listen to the music, time it, and run through some of the numbers several times to make cuts.
1.0: Val Parnell entertains us to lunch. Around the table usually are Charles Henry (Production Chief of Moss Empires), dance director George Carden, Cyril Ornadel, Audrey and myself.
2.15: Rehearsal with cameras. Now we are out in the van, watching on the TV screens for the first time. I have a mike in front linked through loud-speakers and head-phones to all key people inside the Palladium.

We use Outside Broadcast equipment in the van, and on this the cameramen themselves also have microphones and can speak back to the producer. I sit in the centre of the control desk at the rear of the van. On one side is the vision mixer, on the other the sound mixer.

We watch the monitor screens up front, with a radio engineer in charge of each. Behind us are other technicians at their switches. I relay comments to the people inside the Palladium, and Audrey gives instructions about running order and timing.

The van is a maze of wiring, for in addition to the monitor TV screens that link with each camera in the building, there are two separate screens, known as radio-check monitors, enabling us to see how the show is coming over the air.

4.30: Back from the van to the Palladium, break for tea.
4.35: Talk during tea-break with the dance director and others who have been too busy for conference. Then back to the van.
5.0: Complete run-through with band.
6.0: Now is the time to make any last-minute changes. During the run-through, I may spend part of the time in the van, or part at the production desk in the Palladium. This is a position next to the two cameras mounted in the stalls.
6.30: A round of the dressing-rooms to wish the artists good luck.
7.15: The audience, which has been queueing in the street, begins filing in.
7.30: The house-lights are on, and I go on stage and begin the “warm-up warm-up” with whoever happens to be compering the show. The clock ticks on towards 8pm. I dash back to the van, take my seat at the controls, and there is a momentary hush in the babble as Audrey begins counting the seconds… “Ten… nine… eight – three… two… one…” SOUND ON. VISION ON. We’re on the air!
9.0: Moment of elation. But no time for celebration. I go back-stage again to the dressing-rooms and thank all the artists. The engineers and stage-hands attack the Palladium, knocking down the scenery, wheeling out the cameras.

And then, around midnight, the blue van drives away… until early next Sunday morning.

The post The Palladium Show is ‘in the van’ appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

One of the most outstanding recent successes in television programme-making is ATV’s The Muppet Show which delighted viewers for the first time in the autumn of 1976. Kermit and company took over the television screens at about 5p.m. on Sunday afternoon and the team of puppet characters succeeded in waking up dad from his afternoon nap and keeping mum from making the tea in order to join the children for 30 minutes of the zaniest, wittiest, most endearing comedy show in years.

Within two-and-a-half months the time slot which had been attracting six million viewers had an audience of over twelve million. Now into its second series The Muppet Show has become a cult and looks like remaining an integral part of our viewing habits for some time to come.

But how did it all begin? The Muppets – their name derived from the combination of marionette and puppet – were created by Jim Henson, who featured Kermit and some other Muppet characters in the children’s educational programme Sesame Street. Lord Grade of ATV, who showed a great interest in the series, invited some of the Muppets to appear in two or three major television specials being made at ATV’s Borehamwood studios. These programmes, which included Julie on Sesame Street (Julie Andrews), Herb Alpert and the T J B and Julie – My Favourite Things, were so effective that Lord Grade invited Jim Henson to make a series of shows designed for family viewing.

Jim Henson was delighted; for several years he had been trying to get the American television networks to back him for a similar idea but nobody in the USA was willing to make the show. Lord Grade then did the inevitable. He sold the show back to America where it has become as big a hit as in Britain.

But without the creative genius of Jim Henson and his team nothing would have been possible. Jim Henson, aged 41, was born in Mississippi and made his first Muppet (Kermit) 22 years ago. Needless to say there have been several Kermits rebuilt since, plus over 300 other characters created over the years. Jim has an extremely talented team around him which consists of puppet builders and designers, writers, and of course the puppeteers. Where Jim goes, they go! Therefore the entire unit moved to Britain and set up its work shop off the main studio at ATV’s Borehamwood studios, and that became ‘home’.

The production team is, of course, British, headed by two directors – Peter Harris, who did the entire first series, and Philip Casson who is an additional director for this second series. Jack Parnell and his Band provides the marvellous Muppet music, and David Chandler, Paul Dean and Bryan Holgate are the designers.

The British crew and Jim Henson’s team in no time developed a very warm working relationship and admiration for each other and rarely has there been such a compatible or happier unit on any production.

The technique of making the show and operating the puppets has created as much interest for viewers and the industry as the show itself. Every set is built at least four feet above floor level and the cameras work at an average height of seven feet. The sets are built to a two-thirds scale suitable to accommodate the human guests as well as the puppet characters which vary in size from eighteen inches [45cm] to two feet [61cm] (giant Muppets can tower fourteen feet [4.25m]).

The puppeteers are all at least six feet tall [1.8m] and very slim. They wear head bands with microphones attached and have a small monitor TV set in front of them. This enables them to synchronise the dialogue with the mouth, eyes and arms, and gauge the puppets’ expressions and movements. The puppeteers operate the puppets by hand, above their heads – an extremely strenuous and shoulder-aching pastime!

The puppeteers are performers. They have to be actors, comedians, singers, voice impersonators and even have a good sense of rhythm or know a little about music. For instance the ‘At the Dance’ sequence and the synchronisation of Animal on the drums and Rowlf at the piano must be perfectly timed. No wonder Jim Henson looks on auditions for new puppeteers as a formidable task. Fortunately, however, his current team of performers: Frank Oz (Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, Animal), Jerry Nelson (Floyd, Crazy Harry, Uncle Deadly, Robin), Richard Hunt (Scooter, Mr Statler, Sweetums, Thog), and Dave Goelz (The Great Gonzo, Zoot and various guest characters) have been with him for a few years. Incidentally, Jim’s own main characters are Kermit, Mr Waldorf, Rowlf, Dr Teeth and Mahnamahna.

Part of the attraction of the Muppets is that they all have very individual characters and often display recognisable human frailties and emotions. It is quite common in rehearsal or during a break between camera ‘takes’ for the Muppets to talk and joke with each other, and if the floor manager gives a direction to a puppeteer he is not surprised when it is the Muppet on the end of the puppeteer’s arm that comes back with the response.

The strength of The Muppet Show’s success can be further assessed by awards the show has received during 1977. In January the American Guild of Variety Artistes presented the special Georgie award for the ‘Best Special Attraction – 1976′. In March the British Academy of Film and Television Arts cited the show ‘Best Light Entertainment Programme – 1976’. In April The Broadcasting Press Guild voted the show ‘Best Comedy or Light Entertainment Programme’ for 1976 and in May the show won the most prestigious of all international awards for Light Entertainment, the Golden Rose of Montreux in Switzerland. Also in May, the Pye Colour Television Awards voted Kermit the Frog ‘Most Promising Male Newcomer’.

The series has now been sold to over 100 markets throughout the world and has an audience of hundreds of millions. It is dubbed into five languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

This is the story behind The Muppet Show to date, but doubtless more awards, more record successes (the first Muppet LP reached No. 1) will be forthcoming to reflect the quality and popularity of this truly original show.

The post The making of the Muppets appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

Your television subsidiary, ATV Network Ltd, commenced its new contract with the Independent Television Authority on the 30th July 1968. The results for this past year have therefore included approximately four months of the old licence period when the company operated partly in the Midlands and partly in the London area, and eight months of the new licence period when our operation was for all seven days of the week in the Midlands.

The Board of this subsidiary company was reconstituted during the year and two very distinguished figures with widespread involvement in the life of the Midlands accepted our invitation to become directors. Dame Isabel Graham Bryce had retired some two years previously as a Member of the ITA. She has, thus, a detailed knowledge of the working of IndependentTelevision and clear views about its future development and its responsibility in each region of the country. In addition, her work as Chairman of the East Midlands Hospital Board and in many other fields of social work in the Midlands, gives ATV Network a new strength.

Sir George Farmer is Chairman of the Rover Car Company and brings to your Board a lifetime of experience from the exceptionally competitive British engineering industry. He is also a Director of the great British Leyland Motor Corporation, and his knowledge of modern industrial practices, of labour relations work and marketing, including the vital export field, will be an immense benefit to the Company. Sir George’s interests also include his Chairmanship of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and Pro-Chancellorship of Birmingham University.

In addition, Mr Leonard Mathews, the General Manager in the Midlands, was elected a Director during the year. We welcome all three.

The repercussions of the Independent Television Authority’s decision to change the structure of the industry have been both profound and disturbing.

A very great deal of time has been involved, both in internal reorganisation of ATV Network, and also in arriving at new networking and other arrangements for the exchange of programmes between the various companies for the new licence period.

A new contractor was brought into the group of companies which supply the network with most of its programmes. Thus five companies were called upon to make the same number of programmes as four did previously-with a commensurate rise in everyone’s costs. In the initial months of the new licence period ATV Network, therefore, found itself with a reduction in total output.

Subsequent network re-scheduling resulted in a sudden considerable increase in the total output required from ATV’s studios. This produced a most difficult and continuing problem for our staff at Elstree and Birmingham.

Television Levy

The increase in the Levy announced in the Chancellor’s Budget speech came like a bombshell. It is quite clear that a major miscalculation has been made. The financial viability of ITV had been drastically altered as a result of the redistribution of licences and the past decisions of the Government to change the line standard from 405 to 625, and to introduce colour. These decisions, together with the requirement for new Midland studios, created an additional capital requirement, which will amount to about £7 millions in ATV Network alone. Your Board had come to the conclusion before the Budget that every effort should be made to impress upon the Chancellor that the Levy should be reduced.

We have made representations and will continue to press the Government with the utmost vigour to make a very substantial reduction in the Levy.

Staff relations

Almost immediately following the change of licence last summer, the industry was subjected to a major and quite unnecessary national strike by its ACTT members. This strike was created partly by the lack of confidence within the industry as a result of the licence change. Only after the industry had suffered considerable losses was it possible to return to the ordinary negotiating machinery and ultimately find a solution.

Concurrently with the negotiations with ACTT, the industry reached new agreements with its other major Unions – NATKE, ETU, NUJ and Equity. It is well worth mentioning that the new agreement reached with Equity was extremely complex but was negotiated with great goodwill, with each side adjusting its position so that benefits could flow to both.

It is the earnest hope of your Board and the Board of ATV Network, that a new basis of sound relations has been created within the company for the future. Short term productivity agreements were reached both at our Elstree studios and at Birmingham to cover our present production activities. We have now asked each of the main Unions to negotiate with us long term productivity deals protecting both their individual interests and your company’s throughout the remaining five years of the present television licence. We have been pleased with the initial response from the Unions to these proposals. They are now under detailed negotiation but we will need the full understanding of our Union employees that the only way the company can afford to pay additional wages beyond the exceptionally high levels which already apply in this industry is in return for further direct calculable improvements in individual productivity.

New Midland Studios

We are well pleased with the progress in completing our new television studios at Paradise Centre in Birmingham. Both our architects and the equipment manufacturers have worked well with us to ensure that the new studios will be available for transmissions from the target date next month.

By the early part of 1970 all parts of the Paradise Centre Television Studios will be fully operational.

Programmes

The centre of ATV Network’s activities is in its programmes. In spite of the many difficulties of the past year, ATV has once again produced a wide range of programmes of all types. Some of the highlights of the past year are shown on page 13.

There have been indications of a reduction in the total amount of viewing for television programmes. The largest proportion of the decline has fallen to BBC programming in spite of its control of two channels and monopoly of free advertising for its television programmes on BBC radio – a very great advantage which BBC Television enjoys. In the last six months, ATV Network’s proportion of the total television audience has risen substantially, and now stands at approximately 56%, with BBC1 and BBC2 combined having 44%.

ATV Network’s Educational Advisory Committee has been reconstituted under the Chairmanship of Professor Ronald Maudsley.

ITN

Like the rest of the industry ITN must operate on the 625 line system and in colour later this year. ITN’s Board therefore had no alternative but to agree plans for the building of a new ITN Studio Centre in London. These studios when equipped will cost about £1.5 million and represent a further large but unavoidable capital outlay for the industry. There will also be higher running costs when programming is in colour.

We were delighted to hear that Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, have agreed to honour the industry by making the official opening of these studios in November.

UN’s major news programme, ‘News at Ten’, continues to appear regularly in the Top 20 charts and draws widespread international acclaim.

Your Managing Director, Mr Robin Gill, became the Chairman of ITN during the year.

Viewing Hours

Last Autumn the Government allowed a tiny extension in the hours of broadcasting available to the BBC and ITV. We were grateful for this first indication that our long-standing request for the complete removal of all restrictions on the hours of broadcasting might yet be brought about.

We do most earnestly recommend that this restriction should be removed. It is wholly out of date and against the interests of the viewer. There are significant minority and other groups in the population who cannot be reached so long as such restrictions continue to apply.

TV Times

The year saw the unhappy closing of our very successful Midland magazine TV World. This came about as a result of the ITA’s new policy, which required all companies to use one programme magazine for the whole country.

The new national magazine was a re-creation of the TV Times. This new project involved heavy pre-operational charges, and it has taken a very considerable time to produce a continuing trading profit from the venture.

EVR (Electronic Video Recording)

ATV Network continues to keep a careful watch on the many technological developments within the television and electronic industries.

One of the most promising of these developments is a process for playing cassetted programmes through your home television set. This system is called EVR and we are pleased that the first full programme produced for this new system will be one of ATV’s.

Some of ATV Network’s programmes in the past year

Plays
‘Macneil, Cornelius and Emlyn’ a trilogy by Alun Owen shown in world markets as ‘Male of The Species’*, ‘A Heritage and its History’ adapted from novel by Ivy Compton Burnett, ‘A Matter of Diamonds’ by Paul Lee, ‘Retreat’ by John Hale, ‘The Marrying Kind’ by David Reid, ‘Colombe’ adapted from Jean Anouilh, ‘The Square on the Hypotenuse’ by Anthony Skene, ‘Uncle Jonathan’ by Linette Purbi Perry, ‘Stealers of Darkness’ by Jacques Gilles, ‘A Most Unfortunate Accident’ by John Bowen.

Drama Series
‘The Power Game’, ‘Fraud Squad’, ‘Love Story’, ‘Crimebuster’, ‘Crossroads’, ‘Honey Lane’, ‘Virgin of the Secret Service’, ‘Driveway’.

Light Entertainment and Comedy
‘This is Tom Jones’, ‘The Liberace Show’, ‘The Des O’Connor Show’, ‘George & The Dragon’ starring Peggy Mount and Sid James, ‘It’s The Bachelors’, ‘The Golden Shot’, ‘Goodbye Again’ starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke, ‘The Big Show’, ‘The Jimmy Tarbuck Show’, ‘The Real Mike Yarwood’, ‘Stars’ with Maurice Woodruff, ‘With Bird Will Travel’, starring John Bird, ‘John Brown’s Body’, starring Peggy Mount & Naunton Wayne, ‘It Must Be Dusty’, with Dusty Springfield.

Late Night Shows
‘Tonight with Dave Allen’, ‘Tonight with David Nixon’.

Current Affairs
‘Man of The Month’ including Governor Wallace, Dr Borlaugh, Deputy Prime Minister Allon of Israel, General Lemnitzer, Dr Lindt of the Red Cross. ‘Midland News’, ‘ATV Today’, ‘Police Five’, ‘Meet The Mayor’, ‘The Power from Beyond’.

Documentaries
‘Big Fish, Little Fish’ by Anthony Firth*. ‘The Lion & The Dragon’ by Robin Brown, ‘Welcome to Britain’ by Ross Devenish, ‘The Three Happiest Years’ by Norman Swallow, ‘Anything Can Happen’ by Hugh Raggett, ‘The Old Boys’ by Ken Ashton, ‘Hospital’ by David Rea.

Sports & O.B.’s included:
‘Wimbledon 1968’, ‘Cup Final 1968’, ‘Royal Show 1968/69’, ‘British Grand Prix’*, ‘Sportsweek’, ‘Sports from the Midlands’, ‘Major Football Matches’.

Religion
‘All Creatures Great & Small’ by Jean Morton, ‘Once More with Feeling’ Music, ‘The Church and I’ Discussion Panel.

Children’s Programmes
‘The Tingha and Tucker Club’.

Education
‘Towards Mathematics’, ‘Primary French’, ‘Ici La France’, ‘The Universe’ with Sir Bernard Lovell.

* Programmes which have won International Awards

Amongst those appearing in our programmes have been the following: Anne Bancroft, Shelly Berman, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Harry Corbett, Jim Dale, Phylis Diller, Sacha Distel, The Fifth Dimension, George Gobel, Engelbert Humperdinck, Sid James, Michael Jayson, Tom Jones, Nemone Lethbridge, Liberace, Anna Calder-Marshall, George Maharis, Mireille Mathieu, Barbara Murray, Peggy Mount, Des O’Connor, Sir Laurence Olivier, Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter, Marjorie Proops, Juliet Prowse, Lynn Redgrave, Cliff Richard, Peter Sellers, Paul Scofield, Sheila Scott, Lord Soper, Ann Todd, Terry-Thomas, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Kenneth Williams, Patrick Wymark.

The post Annual Report 1969 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

TONIGHT is the biggest night in commercial television in Britain since its inception 12 years ago. For tonight the new contract period comes into operation —bringing the new companies of Yorkshire and Thames to the screen for the first time, putting Harlech officially on the ITV map and redefining the pattern of Granada in the north and ATV in the Midlands.

And at the end of this momentous week the new London Weekend Company — with David Frost as one of the principal figures both behind and in front of the cameras —takes the air.

But, unless you happen to watch the ITV channel tonight for half an hour before the 10 p.m. ITN news, you might be forgiven for not realising that a new era has dawned with ATV.

ONE OF 17

For though there are 17 new programmes advertised to start this week, only one — a twice-weekly serial called Driveway — carries the ATV label (notwithstanding tonight’s half hour introduction and the Royal Gala show on Thursday which are, after all, only one-off programmes).

Of the others, one is from Anglia, two from Granada, four from Yorkshire, two from London Weekend and seven from the new London weekday company, Thames TV. It is hardly an impressive start.

For example. ATV’s Midland contributions to tonight’s 7¼ hours’ viewing amounts to 15 minutes of Tingha and Tucker, ten minutes of regional news, 25 minutes of ATV Today and the 30-minute “hullo-to-the-new-contract” programme.

REPEATS

It even manages on this first night of the brave new world of independent television to devote 80 minutes to repeats of American film series.

Given the regional news and ATV Today each night, the rest of the week’s Midland contribution to our viewing is:

• Tuesday: Crossroads (25 minutes); Driveway (new series — 30 minutes).
• Wednesday and Friday: Tingha and Tucker (15 minutes); Crossroads (25 minutes); Pulse (new religious series — ten minutes).
• Thursday: Tingha and Tucker (15 minutes); Crossroads (25 minutes); Driveway (30 minutes); Pulse (ten minutes).

And of the other 27 hours of evening television this week ATV productions account for only three hours and ATV presentations, usually film series purchased from overseas (mainly America), amount to five hours — 25 minutes of which is a repeated programme: in total, less than a third of the week’s evening programme time.

Nor is the picture to be much better between now and the beginning of the autumn schedules at the end of September. For while the other programme companies pour out thousands of pounds worth of new programmes, and experiment with new ideas, ATV’s “new” offerings for the period are:

‘X’ SERIES

A late night “X” film series starting on Saturday; another new twice-weekly series Crimebuster (about a disgraced sportsman who turns exposé journalist for a Sunday newspaper); a documentary on Warwick University; another documentary about the racehorse Arkle; Sunday afternoon recordings of Midland soccer matches when the season starts; a series called Stars, with Maurice Woodruff and Marjorie Proops; and three programmes featuring Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore.

Again, not a line-up which really merits a heralding fanfare.

On ATV’s side, of course, it could be argued that it is bringing Midland viewers a choice of the best of the new programmes being produced by the other companies. This is true — and so it should.

TOO FACILE

But it is also a far too facile answer, and no excuse for a company which was one of the “big four” and is now one of the “big five,” being responsible for only one seventeenth of the week’s new programmes.

It would also be an all-too-easy reply that ATV is already known in the Midlands and, therefore, does not have to make such a big splash just because it enters a new contract period which now includes the weekends as well as the weekdays.

Neither does Granada, now seven-day contractors in the north-west area based on Manchester, have any need to re-establish its identity in that region. But, true to its tradition of liveliness and willingness to have a go, it is managing to introduce two new series this week, one of them an hour-long drama series in the mould of City ’68.

The sad fact is that this week, ATV had a once-for-all opportunity to make a real impact in the Midlands, to give us some foretaste of all that is promised for the future – but it chose not to take it.

Even if such a splash by ATV had only been a gesture — it is one that ought to have been made nevertheless.

NO SNAGS

What makes the picture even more damning from ATV’s point of view is the fact that it has not been beset with the chaos of moving or the uncertainties of starting from scratch that some of the other companies have experienced in recent months.

A few months ago Yorkshire TV had only a few odd rooms in Leeds to work in. Yet today, it has four new programmes ready for the network. Thames has had severe internal problems, mainly staff ones, as a result of its formation out of Rediffusion and ABC, yet has come up with no less than seven new programmes.

ATV has had no such problems. True, its faculties in Birmingham will remain limited until the new centre is ready.

FACILITIES

But it has had available all the marvellous facilities of its vast Elstree production centre and it would have mattered not one jot that the programmes were actually produced there provided that they had either a real Midland content or were worthy of networking under the ATV Midlands banner.

Having said all that, however, I am still prepared to take at face value the promises made by ATV that the autumn schedules will reveal all; that the new programmes being planned (some of them announced a few months ago) will be really new and extremely viewable; and that ATV will prove its allegiance to the Midlands as a region within the ITV pattern.

And if I have expressed doubts about independent television in the Midlands, nothing would please me more than that ATV should, with its new programmes and new interest in the Midlands, confound those fears and doubts and make me eat my words

Commentary

The post Watch carefully – it’s TV’s big night appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

CLOSE YOUR EYES and you could be anywhere. Open them and you are in Dreamland. Margate, that is.

And lurking somewhere in this town on this cold autumn evening, is The Hulk.

Scraps of paper blow through the Dreamland fairground and come to rest by a kiosk advertising a “Cavalcade of Carnage”. Now that’s a likely Hulk hideaway. But there’s no Hulk. Incredible. Is there anything more empty than an out-of-season fairground? Is that the wind, or just the echoes of summer screams and laughter?

When I asked Jackie Pallo Snr. —  “Mr. TV” Pallo with the wrestling son Jackie Pallo Jnr. — who now promotes wrestling fixtures, to introduce me to a wrestler who would talk about the sporting, showbiz life, he suggested The Hulk. “Been around a long time. Seen it all and done it all.” I could have talked to The Wild Man of Borneo, but Pallo said The Hulk would prove the best bet as he had a couple of dates coming up. Hence Margate.

The confrontation came in The Summerland Room. There was smoke coming from The Hulk. He was puffing a pipe and looked friendly. “I’ve just been having a meal,” said The Hulk. “Beefburger.” The amiable Billy Stock, from Crystal Palace, South London, is The Hulk. At 16 stone and 5ft. 5in. Billy is a young-looking 45. “Yeah, I’m lucky. No grey hairs. Maybe that’s wrestling. I haven’t been The Hulk long. It was Jackie’s idea and if it really catches on I’ll get some green gear, all torn. That’s what Hulks wear, isn’t it?

“I’ve had lots of different names. Basically I’m very round. I’ve been The Angry Bubble Car, The Little Boy With the Big Heart, and even Billy Two Dinners…

“All I ask,” says Billy, “is that you don’t knock this business. We’re here to entertain. We work hard at it. You get a lot of knockers and it doesn’t help anyone. There’s a lot of nice people in this game.”

By day Billy Stock is a mini-cab driver. “Drive anywhere. You want to go to Scotland, we’ll go to Scotland. Nights in the ring are when I become a villain. I often think if more people could get in a ring and be a villain for half an hour or so there’d be a lot less trouble in the world. It’s very nice to get in the ring and have the punters hating you… those same punters who are hating you and who five minutes earlier were buying you a drink.”

Tonight in Margate he is totally on the side of law and order; he’s the referee.

It was once Billy Stock’s dream to be Middleweight Champion. “It never happened. It’s very hard to get in the running. I dream of having a house in the middle of a field. I like the quiet life. Wrestling’s been good to me, though. When you phoned I thought it was one of the boys having a go. Well, you don’t think someone from the TVTimes would be interested.

“I was an amateur wrestler for a long time, but my Mum got fed up with me bringing home knives and forks. They were always the prizes.

“Tomorrow in Ipswich I’ll really be a villain and I promise you’ll see some real action.”

Twenty-four hours later in the Ipswich Corn Exchange and Billy Stock/The Hulk has a new title. He is billed on the poster outside for a tag match with his partner Lee Sharon as one of The Aggrovators. “Half the time you don’t know what you’re called till you look at the billing,” he says.

We are in the bar and he is drinking halves of shandy. Mickie “Super Star” Sullivan joins the table. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” says Billy. Sullivan is going to fight him in the tag match. They smile. “Super Star” Sullivan says he once wrestled a bear in Germany. Both of them agree that some of the hardest opposition is the audience. Sullivan says sometimes the women can be very amorous in a physical sort of way. Grunt and groan boys sometimes get attacked by grope and groan women.

“You get an audience shouting abuse,” says Stock, “and it can get very nasty. You get cigarettes stubbed on you. Annoys me. I wear tights and it can ruin the gear. I remember down in Brighton there was a gent we called The Colonel and he hit me across the back of the legs with his stick. And I grabbed it from him and went to break it. For some reason I couldn’t snap it. I looked pathetic.

“My wife Di is a great wrestling fan. She’s a good one to have in the audience. She shuts up the troublemakers. Met her when I was doing gas conversions. Her mother’s potty about wrestling, too.”

At 9.35 on goes Billy Stock/The Hulk/The Referee and now The Aggrovator. He comes out of the blue corner looking mean. “You silly old fool,” shouts a tremulous, but brave voice.

There’s a lot of rough stuff on both sides. The audience love it, but hate him. Lee Sharon tries to drill Sullivan’s back into the top of a corner post. And then Sullivan makes a comeback and gets the first fall. Everyone but The Aggrovators is delighted. “The ropes, ref,” says Billy Stock.

More rough stuff, only rougher. Billy would never win any knives and forks for some of the illegal moves he’s using now. Is this the man who wants a quiet life? He’s wild and so is the audience.

Suddenly, he gets a submission from Sullivan. The hall erupts. The audience are off their chairs in protest. The bell is ringing but no one’s heeding it. A private fight has broken out between the two teams.

The ref goes to break it up, gets in the way of a forearm smash and sinks to the canvas. A second topples over and joins him. “Ladies and gentlemen, Ladies and Gentlemen! The Aggrovators have been disqualified. Disqualified!”

Beer cans sail through the air; Billy Stock is out of the ring and walking villainously through the threatening audience. As he reaches me, a chair is hurled towards us. “You see that,” he says. “That’s really disgusting.”

Another day, another night. A bit of sport, a lot of entertainment. Jackie Pallo Jnr. says that so often there’s a knocking remark in an article like this. Usually at the end of the piece.

Not me. Never, ref. Never. It’s a knockout!

The post How wrestling can get a hold on you appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

WHATEVER ELSE life at the Crossroads Motel might have been, it has never been dull. And looking back over the 14 years since we opened our doors, I am amazed at how much has happened.

We’ve had our bad times and we’ve had our good, and although this is an occasion for celebrating, it’s as well to remember both.

Will I ever forget, for example, that night in 1968 when my car collided with motor-cyclist Vince Parker? The worry about Vince was terrible, and then came the shock of being sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for dangerous driving. I only spent a week in prison because I was released pending an appeal. Thankfully, that went in my favour, and I can’t tell you my relief at getting back to the Motel.

There was more than a little relief the following year when my nephew Brian and his wife Janice found their baby, which had mysteriously vanished. You can imagine the thoughts that go through your head at a time like that. It seems that some children had been playing with the baby and had locked the poor little thing in a shed. I thought the joy at finding the child unharmed would help bring Brian and Janice closer together and avoid them splitting up, but it was not to be.

Do you remember that silly argument between the Motel and the Manor House? Looking back, I can smile now, but at the time it all seemed very important. Miss Penn, the woman from the Manor House, and Mr. Sinclair, the man I thought to be their gardener, objected to us putting a caravan at the bottom of our garden. So I conducted all my business from the caravan. But it all ended happily. Miss Penn married the gardener — who turned out to be the owner of the Manor… Then there was Jill’s wedding. I must admit that at first I wasn’t too keen on my daughter marrying Stan Harvey. They met, if you remember, when he did some electrical repairs at her boutique. But their marriage was happy enough, although I’m not too sure what’s happening at present.

Sandy’s accident was one of those stupid things that never should have happened. He had insisted on driving some people home from a wedding reception because they were drunk. They stopped for petrol and a woman passenger demanded to take over the driver’s seat. Sandy tried in vain to stop her and the result was the inevitable crash. The woman was killed outright and Sandy was badly injured and paralysed. Condemned to a wheelchair, he went through terrible depression. Then he began to realise how many people had helped him through that awful period and he became a Samaritan. I think he feels he’s repaid some of his obligations by being able, in turn, to help others.

Hugh Mortimer and I were reunited in 1974. I hadn’t known beforehand that Hugh had married his partner’s daughter out of compassion. He knew — although I didn’t — that she was dying.

Hugh and I finally married in 1975, but I wasn’t to know how short our life together would be. He was kidnapped in Australia and they asked a fortune in ransom. I thought I’d never be able to raise the money. But I did. The tragedy, of course, was that he died of a heart attack while the money was on its way to the kidnappers.

Memories, memories, how many there have been over the years. We’ve had our share of heartache but, on the other hand, there’s been a lot of fun in running the Motel and I’ve met some marvellous people and made many good friends.

Now there’s just time for a little celebration, then it’s back to the Motel — and the next instalment of our story.

1 Nick Van Doren; 2 Kevin McArthur; 3 Jimmy Gudgeon; 4 Ken Church 5 Marylin Hope; 6 Peter Hope; 7 Sandy Richardson; 8 Mr. Lovejoy; 9 Shirley Perkins; 10 Meg Richardson; 11 Hilda Duvene; 12 Mrs. Hope; 13 Jill Richardson; 14 Dick Jarvis; 15 Kitty Jarvis; 16 Amy Turtle; 17 Bruce Sorbell; 18 Josefina Rafael; 19 Brian Jarvis; 20 Vince Parker; 21 Graham Parrish; 22 Edith Tatum; 23 Emily Vinson; 24 Janice Jarvis; 25 Nora Gillingham; 26 Ruth Fraser; 27 Diane Lawton; 28 Marcus Allison; 29 Johnny Patrick

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1 Mr. Lovejoy; 2 Mr. Booth; 3 Mrs. Hope; 4 Andy Fraser; 5 Charlie Forward; 6 Linda Ash; 7 Don Rogers 8 Miss Tatum; 9 Alan Johnson; 10 Mrs. Blundell; 11 Amy Turtle; 12 Meg Richardson; 13 Jill Harvey; 14 Stan Harvey; 15 Sheila Harvey; 16 Wilf Harvey; 17 Vince Parker; 18 Sandy Richardson; 19 Sandra Gould; 20 Diane Lawton

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1 Meg Mortimer; 2 Hugh Mortimer; 3 Sandy Richardson; 4 Vince Parker; 5 Jill Harvey; 6 Jane Smith; 7 Wilf Harvey; 8 Ruth Fraser; 9 Diane Parker; 10 Mrs. Hope; 11 Stan Harvey; 12 Mrs. Witton; 13 Brian Jarvis; 14 Shelia Mollison; 15 Mr. Booth; 16 Florrie Harvey; 17 Vera Downend; 18 “Carney”; 19 Andy Fraser

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Those lucky Lookalikes face their famous doubles

“It’s all a diabolical plot by the producer to replace the entire cast!” That’s how Roger Tonge reacted when he saw double — the winning Lookalike in our competition that most resembles him as Sandy Richardson, the Crossroads character he plays. His “double”, and the other winning Lookalikes have already come face to face with their other selves and, with their guests, will be V.I.P.s at the special Crossroads 3,000th. Birthday Party on September 19 at the same hotel where Meg’s wedding reception was held — the Chateau Impney, Droitwich, Hereford and Worcester. Now meet the stars — and their other selves

The post It’s Crossroads’ 3,000th Birthday appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

LENNY HENRY is black, 16 years old, 6ft. plus and is the comedy impressionist who stood the New Faces panel on its ear with his sunburned Michael Crawford routine. Lines such as “Betty got me this job as an Ambre Solaire salesman and it won’t come off”, helped to cam him top marks for “star quality”.

And since those early accolades Lenny, the boy from Douglas Road, Dudley, in Worcestershire, a few miles outside Wolverhampton in the industrial Midlands, is working the top clubs in the North, making TV shows such as Saturday’s The Summer Show and hoping, as a result, for the chance of a cabaret engagement in Las Vegas.

Lenny the fifth (“Henry the Fifth”) of seven children, started his comic career in the classroom. “I used to do impressions of teachers; that always went down well. I would always get a laff from me mates. And I did other things, like a Groucho Marx routine.”

School for Lenny was a great time for getting comedy routines from his classmates. “But it didn’t do much for me when it came to learning anything. It was a terribly big school with huge classes. Then they raised the school leaving age; this created one hell of a confusion.

“But it was fun a lot of the time. Science classes were the best, because the teacher used to help us to do a radio show. We would do all those comic routines, impressions of the teachers and stuff like that, and then play them back over loudspeakers in the science laboratory.”

Lenny lives with his parents, younger brother and two sisters in a large, crumbling Victorian house: “Six rooms, all with very high ceilings. It’s a great place, but it needs thousands to put it right. Our house is right in the middle of Douglas Road. There’s big houses on one side and little council houses on the other. A lot of me mates come from that road.” His parents came to Britain from Jamaica in 1958. “Mum came over first. She and Dad used to live in the country part of Jamaica, where Dad had a store. He used to do all sorts of jobs — stonemason, store owner — and they lived in a big house with green crops of all kinds. But they wanted a change. Me Mum had read that English streets were paved with gold, so they decided to leave for Britain.

“So she came to Dudley, got a job and a flat. Dad came over a while after her and I was born here.

“Dad works in a big engineering factory. I don’t know what he thinks of his job, he just does it, day in and day out.”

Lenny made light of the monotony of his own factory job, as an engineering apprentice. “1 was always playing it for laffs in the factory. Me mates used to like me to do routines at the bench. One day I was working with a screwdriver and it slipped and cut my hand. They all laffed but I couldn’t see anything funny in it. So I went into ray Max Bygraves routine — ‘You need hands…’, that used to go down really well.”

Lenny’s break from his engineering career came after he entered a talent competition run by a local disc jockey and record shop owner, Mike Hollis. “I did it as a dare. Me mates sort of pushed me into entering the contest so I did Presley’s Jailhouse Rock.

“I won that week, and the next week I did an impression of Tommy Cooper and won again.”

Hollis recognised his show-stopping abilities and took him under his wing. “Lenny has a natural instinct for humour and an incredible gift for mimicry,” says Hollis, who has become Lenny’s mentor and friend since they first met just over a year ago. And Lenny has a great regard for “me mate Mike”, who is “very honest and reads me like a book.” The repertoire of impressions includes James Mason — “I was chuffed when I got him right” — Michael Crawford, James Stewart…

He also has a good line in Kojak jokes, the voice honed to perfection.

At the moment, Lenny is able to satisfy only his liking for clothes and food.

“But when I start to get into the money, there’s loads I want to do. It’s my birthday on August 29. I’ll be 17, so I want to buy a car. I’d also like to take the family off for a holiday in Jamaica. Mum and Dad would love to go back there. Mum’s a bit fed up with Dudley now. She’s seen it all. They’ll never get a chance to go back though, except for a holiday.”

Since some bad experiences as a child, Lenny says that the colour question hasn’t bothered him. “I got known as the Sun-Tanned Kid and I thought, looking at my skin, this is my gimmick, this is my ticket.” That ticket, and his natural talent for mimicry and humour, is likely to take Lenny Henry, first-class, to the top of the entertainment tree.

The post You have to laff at Lenny’s new faces appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

From the ATV Television Show Book for 1963

The man who sets out to prove that they would work, despite all the obstructions of officialdom and the scoffers – is Sergeant Cork, detective.

The stories of Sergeant Cork have as their aim the accurate capturing of the flavour and atmosphere of the time. This was a period of tremendous change in British history. There were great extremes of wealth and poverty. London was a home for political exiles from all over the world, a hotbed of argument and debate.

Much of the action of the cases which Cork investigates show him in his office, set high in the attic of a Whitehall building; in his lodgings; in the public bar of a pub.

What of Cork himself? He is a man of about 42, a sergeant in the newly formed CID. He is unmarried, and lives in comfortable lodgings in the Bayswater Road district of London. He comes from lower middle-class parents, so that he is familiar with both sides of Victorian society. He started as a probationer P.C. on the beat, and joined the original Detective Department. His sympathy is with the underdog, but he does not tolerate fools gladly whether they are above or below him in rank, and his outspokenness has probably cost him promotion.

He is a well-known figure in London — and even elsewhere — mainly because the Press of the period gave considerable publicity to detectives. But beyond this he has a host of friends and acquaintances, as well as contacts in the meanest pub in Limehouse and in the houses of the great.

He is a passionate believer in scientific aids and wages a one-man war with H.Q. to achieve proper status and facilities for the CID. He is neat and clean, but often careless of his appearance as he gets worked up over a case. He is not worried about personal comfort or food and will spend the night on a chair in his office if pressed by work, and he will be as happy with an apple, bread and cheese, and pickles as with an elaborate meal. He doesn’t like violence or cruelty, but is able to defend himself and restrain a violent customer if necessary.

He has no close girl-friend, but there is a rumour that the girl he was engaged to, years before, died of injuries received when she was knocked down by a coach belonging to a merchant. The merchant was absolved, and the story goes that it was his wealth that enabled him to get off.

Who works with Cork? Well, there is Bob Marriott. He is about 25, a public school and university product who got into the CID through “back-stairs” influence. Bob went to these lengths because, as a young man, he developed a great interest in detection, much to the despair of his family, who regarded the police with complete disgust. He is tough and mentally alert. Inexperience and over-enthusiasm lead him into mistakes, and Cork often has to take him to task. But he is a pleasant chap and his enthusiasm and willingness to work encourages Cork to be patient with him.

To Bob, Cork is someone from a different world. His knowledge and experience of all sides of life fascinate him. He has no regular girl-friend — but a whole assortment of girls. He likes a pretty face and won’t miss an opportunity to improve an acquaintance if it occurs. Women find him attractive.

Like his chief, he is interested in scientific aids to detection.

Detective Joseph Bird is a different kettle of fish. A man of about 50, he is mainly interested in administration. He represents every thing that Cork dislikes: he is servile to superiors, bureaucratic and narrow in outlook. He is a family man, strongly religious, and a strict disciplinarian.

Cork and Bird are constantly at loggerheads, mostly over Cork’s attitude and activities. The sergeant is polite and respectful on the surface, but his manner conceals his contempt of Bird — and Bird knows this.

To his friends, Superintendent Billy Nelson is known as a handsome man, who is always stylishly dressed. A former Army officer, now in his 50’s, he retains something of the military bearing. Though there is a certain impish humour in his eyes, he is a man who can be tough, although he is fair.

Nelson admires and respects Cork, even though he doesn’t always understand what he is up to; but even then he is prepared to back him to the hilt, and he is the one who defends and protects him from outside attacks — and from Inspector Bird — though Cork does not always make it easy for him to do so.

Outside his work, who has an influence on Cork? Mrs. Fielding, his landlady, might be said to exert some influence — but not much. She is a neat, attractive, well-shaped woman in her 30’s, with a husband who is a clerk. Cork’s rent is valuable in supplementing the family income. He has the first-floor front room, which is cosy but not sumptuous. The house — in a terrace of lower-middle-class houses — is not as distinguished as, say, Sherlock Holmes’ rooms in Baker Street. This is a more humble background for Cork, whose salary is around the not princely figure of £200 a year.

Mrs. Fielding’s two children are constantly being hushed to silence when Cork is in the house, but without any great need, really, for they hold the famous detective in something like awe.

To play the role of Sergeant Cork, actor John Barrie was wooed from the grocery business which he runs in his native Yorkshire. With his curly bowler set jauntily, though not foppishly, his stout cane at the ready and his sidewhiskers bristling, he looks and plays the part to perfection. For when he strides the streets of old London, artificial though the cobblestones may be beneath his feet, he has transported himself back seventy-odd years… to the days when at least one policeman with ideas which many said were before their time proved that with determination and imagination the side of the law’ on which it was best to be was undoubtedly the right side.

Such a man is Sergeant Cork — detective.

The post Sergeant Cork appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

From the ATV Television Show Book for 1963

As this small band became integrated with all branches of crime in the capital city, and as its members rubbed shoulders with the criminals of all types who frequented their new “beat”, so valuable information was picked up and passed on to Scotland Yard. Such information often meant that a planned crime could be nipped in the bud. On other occasions it meant that the movements of a wanted man were known to the authorities and the means of capturing him could then be executed with the minimum of risk to success.

Jack Capstick and John Gosling, now retired senior police officers, were both members of the first exclusive band who were prepared to remove themselves from all the protection that the law could give so that they could help their colleagues on the outside perform more easily their job of keeping the law.

It was to Gosling’s book on “The Ghost Squad” that ATV turned when a series of programmes depicting the work of such men was first considered.

But where Capstick, Gosling and the rest of the early “Squad” operators lived and worked, in an area which seldom stretched beyond fifty square miles of London — and there were even weeks on end, in fact, when their activities confined them to the square mile of Soho itself — the brief given to the authors of ATV’s “Ghost Squad” stories enabled them to range the world, for their settings, to tell their stories through the fortunes and misfortunes, hopes and shattered dreams of people from almost any corner of the globe.

If the television “Ghost Squad” was to be international, then its operators were not to be confined merely to London policemen who were prepared to change their uniform — official or otherwise — for any disguise befitting the case on which they were working.

So the idea of “Ghost Squad” operator Nick Craig was created. The character called for an American actor, tall and rangey, distinctive in voice, with the ability to melt into the background, yet with a personality and presence which allowed him to leave his imprint on any assignment undertaken.

Such an actor was found in the person of 6ft.-4in. Michael Quinn, who came to Britain almost unknown to play the role of Craig. But he was to do such a good job that more than one major film organisation was to make very serious attempts to woo him back to Hollywood during the eighteen months he spent working at ATV’s Elstree Studio Centre.

Quinn is a good example of the new-type American actor who is now looking beyond his own shores for work, as well as looking for an opportunity to find out what is new and challenging in other film and TV capitals throughout the world. Producer Antony Kearey cast Neil Hallett in the part of Tony Miller, the other main “Ghost Squad” operator, seizing an opportunity to bring a new face to a regular TV role.

Where Quinn, at a glance, can be said to be undeniably American, Hallett has all the attributes which are characteristic and distinctive in an accomplished English actor with the sound experience and training of an apprenticeship served in English repertory theatres.

He has a good speaking voice, is agile in movement, dresses well, and he can throw off a humorous line of dialogue in comedy banter as easily as one-word questions.

Behind the activities of both men lies the guiding hand of Geoffrey Stock, the Chief of the “Ghost Squad”. An irascible character, Stock sweats it out in lonely silence when one of his operators is on a dangerous mission. The tensions he suffers are not helped by the “pressures” to which he is exposed from the “faceless” ministers to whom he must report, or by a constant nagging stomach complaint for which no amount of powders and glasses of water, kept readily at hand by his harassed secretary, Jean Carter, can bring relief.

At times his operators think of him as being unreasonable, bad-tempered, inconsiderate — occasionally all three at once—but they would not deny that he possesses the ability for his taxing job.

There are occasions when Geoffrey Stock puts his big desk in his secret headquarters, his multitude of phones and the large-scale map hidden in a panel of the wall of his office behind him. When he thinks he must handle a case personally his mastery of disguise, his ability to assess people and his eye for fine detail come into their own — and his missions successfully accomplished leave his younger associates very much in awe.

Genial Anthony Marlowe gives the appearance of being ready made for the tweed suits, bow ties and countryman’s soft hat with its raffish swept-up side which would seem to be Stock’s favourite choice in dress. If such clothes are characteristic of the man, so also is his pair of horn-rimmed spectacles — especially when they slip to the end of his nose, for this is invariably a sign of trouble for someone. And if Craig or Miller are not on the receiving end of it, then woe betide the one “the Chief” has it in for.

Cases which the “Ghost Squad” are asked to handle have sent Craig and Miller — and occasionally Geoffrey Stock himself (as well as “Porridge”, the Chief’s Scots-born secretary) — travelling to most of the capital cities of Europe. It has also meant their operating in torrid Middle East oil centres, getting caught up with white-slave traffickers, drug-pedlars, counter-agents who cunningly used Army paratroop manoeuvres as their means of passing information, and criminals of all races and descriptions who are prepared to play for the smallest as well as the highest possible stakes.

Danger is the “Ghost Squad” man’s constant companion whenever he is on the job. He has no recourse to the recognised means of help if he finds himself in difficulties, for he must play a lone hand.

The real-life “Ghost Squad” called for men of initiative and imagination and “guts”. The television series requires artistes who can bring to each new story in which they appear acting technique of a high order, understanding and a sense of adventure.

Messrs Quinn, Hallett and Marlowe — not forgetting Claire Nielson, who played Stock’s secretary — have proved that they are well able to measure up to all these requirements.

The post Ghost Squad appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

from the ATV Television Show Book 1963

If the critics didn’t welcome the change with unreserved rapture and if some faithful fans grumbled unnecessarily at the passing of a hero, there is no denying that it took courage and a sense of adventure for Tony Hancock to try something new, to experiment, in the series which he made for ATV this spring.

Tony went back to his early, radio days for the all-important material on which he was to build the new, highly civilised, middle-class Hancock — with its capital “H”. Godfrey Harrison had written the scripts on which the Hancock reputation was firmly founded. So, as Tony looked around for a new image, what better than to go right back to the source of his first inspiration and once again team up with the man who had committed the right words and lines to paper, knowing that the Hancock talent for putting them across would ensure the true marriage of thought and presentation.

No more the faded city gent’s outfit. Put away were the rollneck sweater, tight-fitting trousers and the medal on a thin artificial-gold chain. Bring out, instead, the badges of respectability: the sheepskin jacket, the Robin Hood style hat. Thus attired, Tony Hancock ventured into his new series. And with a new series came a new setting for the inquisitive, audacious Hancock.

Focal point of all his adventures was the doorway of the local bank, a humdrum, unexciting place in itself; but with Hancock around anything could happen — and it usually did.

It was from here, for instance, that “The Lad” became ensnared in a drama which had him rubbing shoulders with the anonymous Big Brass of M.I.5, who, glad of any excuse to see this inveterate nosey-parker out of their way, invented codes, passwords, identification signs and secret messages which had Tony completely confused as he found himself caught up with a Government department kitchen staff, a queue waiting for a bus and the inevitable “overseas agent”.

No amount of red herrings or contrived clues could put Hancock off once the smell of middle-class responsibility was wafting around his nostrils. He just had to succeed; see through to the bitter end the task which he felt he must carry out — invariably ending in disaster and humiliation. For such is the character of Hancock on the screen, and no matter the elevation in his social standing he is still doomed to failure and ridicule — and to our sympathy in the process.

Who, for instance, can forget his attempts to bring to a “This is Your Life”-style story his own individualistic contribution? Hancock had to make his entry to the programme in the grand style — and even if he had nothing really worthwhile to say he was not to be denied the opportunity to make an impression. This he did — to the embarrassment of the subject of the programme and to ATV question-master Shaw Taylor, who played the compere in the programme.

Hancock, the civic-minded citizen, bungled the job of helping the police when the local bank — yes, that very same one where he seemed to spend so much time annoying and lording it over the bearded newspaper vendor who had made his pitch the entrance to the bank — was robbed. Ever hogging the limelight, ever bigger than life, once again Hancock was in trouble, this time with the police, as well as the robber who had done the job.

Big-headed, pompous, naive… Hancock has been called them all. And he earned such descriptions when he got himself involved in helping a casual friend impress his wife with his ability as a “do-it-vourself” exponent; when he took on the job of a professional “escort” to visiting women who wanted a night on the town; when he fell for the smooth talk of an experimental film producer who saw in our Tony the answer to his dreams of a new face for his new-wave movie — with Tony definitely on the receiving end of anything but bouquets from the film critics. His reward was face-slapping, insults from a conscientious house-owner and torment at the hands of a young starlet and a very experienced film actress.

Hancock aping his betters is always an intriguing sight. With the inevitable props of dressing-gown, cigarette-holder and silk kerchief, here was vintage Hancock as he assumed the role of author and comedy script writer. But always the results were the same: disaster, disappointment and a sense of disenchantment.

But only for the moment. For such is the stuff of which Hancock is made that in his mirroring of life he is like a rubber ball: down one moment, up the next, always ready for the next adventure, ever prepared to stick his nose in business which is not his own — invariably with disastrous results. And for those very same reasons he has become a character, a special friend and accomplice — even a national institution.

But behind the facade of buffoon and busybody lies the professional approach of the perfectionist. Too much rehearsal, too much interpretation of the slightest act or situation, is no problem to Tony Hancock. Alan Tarrant, who produced Tony in his programmes for ATV, tells of many hours spent after the official time for rehearsal had ended while Hancock dissected some minute aspect of the plot or action. Time, which saw the night before pass into the early hours of the next morning, went by unnoticed — and rehearsal hour was drawing nearer and nearer. Overflowing ashtrays told of hours of concentration spent in deciding how a particular scene should be played, how a look or word should be used to provide the best effect… and when rehearsal was called, seemingly only minutes later in a rehearsal room at ATV’s Elstree Studio Centre, who was the freshest, most enthusiastic member of the cast on call? Why, Hancock, of course.

“The man thrives on hard work”, says Tarrant. He also confirms the belief held widely in show-business circles that Tony Hancock insists on having “professionals” around him — to work with him and with whom he can work. Hancock saw such an assembly of “pro’s”, for in the programmes which came to ITV screens regularly at 8.30 each Thursday evening for three months such established artistes as Dennis Price, John le Mesurier, Maggie Fitzgibbon, Harry Towb, Edwin Richfield, Diane Clair, Hazel Hughes, Brian Wilde, Thomas Heathcote, Edward
Chapman, Wilfrid Lawson, Judith Stott, Denholm Elliott, Peter Vaughan, Kenneth Griffith, Mario Fabrizi, were on hand to lend their professionalism and know-how to the situations and predicaments in which Tony found himself.

But always the impact was that left by Hancock himself—and who would have it otherwise? For his is an impact of individuality, which reflects the “little man” in all the millions who watched his on-screen activities — unsuccessful and slapped-down though they may have been — and which attracted our affection and recognition: for here, surely, is a kindred spirit.

Hancock is unique.

The post Hancock appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

• Apart from the ITN news bulletins, everything today is an ATV production or an ATV presentation of something they have bought for themselves. No other company gets a look in. Low summer viewing figures and the upheavals in ITV itself make it that, not counting religious material, there’s only 2 hours and 45 minutes of non-repeated programming today.
• Sunday was the most regulated day of the week on British television. The daily service was mandated; there was a ‘closed period’ with no advertising and restricted to religious and morally improving programmes in the early evening; and no programmes that might distract children from going to Sunday school before 3pm.
• 2.10pm sees part ten of a documentary series about religion; whilst programmes at this point in the day didn’t need to be about religion itself, it was always good for brownie points with the great and the good to try to get some in anyway.
• At 2.45pm we’ve got one of the very few programmes to make the jump from ATV London to the new London Weekend Television: Shaw Taylor’s Police Five. A version also ran on ATV in the Midlands, whilst the format was so popular that other companies ripped it off – Granada’s offering was called Police File.
• General entertainment programmes being banned until after 3pm, Among My Souvenirs is classed as adult education. It’s certainly not something children would choose to watch, but it was popular enough to appear on most ITV stations, albeit at varying times.
• The entertainment starts at 3.25pm with the 1955 film Where There’s a Will, starring ATV’s Mrs Thursday, Kathleen Harrison, and George Cole. Very much a B-picture, it’s typical undemanding Sunday afternoon fare, notable only for being the first film to feature Edward Woodward in the cast.
• The huge print run and the myriad of different editions of the TVTimes (Southern, London, North (Granada and Yorkshire from this week), Border, Anglia, Scottish and Grampian) mean that it has very tight deadlines and goes to press much earlier than you may expect. So they admit that The Golden Shot‘s jackpot is not known, the issue having been put to bed before the previous week’s programme went out.
• The final religious ‘closed period’ of ITV 1.0 is kicked off at 6.15pm with the Tree House Family. This is the same programme as the Tinga and Tucker Club but with Christianity hammered into it. For viewers in the Midlands, Tinga and Tucker was a six-days-a-week programme for kids with Jean Morton. For viewers everywhere else, including London, the Tree House Family was a once-a-week religious programme for kids with Jean Morton. The result is confusion whenever Midlanders and outsiders talk about the programme.
• A scoop for ATV at 6.35pm as Brian Connell gets to interview Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in amongst the 500 bishops, archbishops and metropolitans at the Lambeth Conference.
• 8.25pm has us visit the summertime replacement for the Palladium Show. A classic ATV London variety bill here: a presenter who is big in the States but almost unknown in the UK introduces a cast of second-string and past-prime European stars singing and dancing on stage for an hour.

• Braden… on the Box at 11.10pm functions as ATV London’s last programme, a goodbye to weekends in the region that ATV have provided since 24 September 1955 and thus an analysis of the disappearance of ITV 1.0 and the beginning of ITV 2.0. Interestingly, in the northern editions of the TVTimes it’s billed merely as a return to TV for Braden that happens to be discussing television, with the only clue that it’s focussed on the changeover being the last sentence, left over in the editing from the London description.
• We come to the end of the day at about 12.10pm, with David Frost popping up to do a promo for London Weekend (mentioning TVTimes ‘astrologer to the stars’ Maurice Woodruff) before Trevor Lucas makes the station’s final farewells. For viewers in London, ATV wasn’t quite disappearing, of course, as its programmes would continue coming from the midlands. Only the presentation was changing. Still, this did end the situation that had made ATV the biggest ITV company – and the only major of company of the original ITV set-up to be a 7-day operation.
• For TWW, ABC and Rediffusion is was a solid goodbye. They were gone. For Granada, it was a half goodbye, with them remaining in one half of their region. And for ATV… well, it wasn’t really goodbye at all.

The post Tonight’s ATV London… in 1968 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

Think of that tweed-suited, flat-capped individual who is forever getting his own way — deflating the pompous in the process — and the crafty “tramp”, full of wiles, who have become almost a fixture of Saturday evening viewing.

Many people ask: “How does Arthur manage to maintain such a consistent standard of comedy?” For this, Haynes thanks his brilliant scriptwriter, Johnny Speight. But much was to happen before Arthur struck up a friendship with Johnny.

There was a time when Arthur regarded television as a menace to show business. “All the theatres were closing”, he says, “and it was difficult to get work. In fact, for a while I even considered getting out of the business”.

Naturally, he thinks differently today. “I have every reason to be grateful to television”, he says. “Believe me, it is much more of a challenge than any other branch of show business.”

This change of heart has been brought about mainly by his own tremendous success in this medium. Yet, strangely enough, when his show started it was scheduled for only six weeks. It is now in its seventh year!

Today, many young entertainers think they have struggled if they remain unrecognised for two or three years; but artistes of around Arthur’s age-group know the real meaning of the struggle to success.

Arthur’s first experience of getting a laugh from an audience was when he fooled around in class while studying at the Chiswick Polytechnic Art School. He wanted to be an architect, but when he discovered that it costs more than £2,000 to train he dropped the idea. He decided he would like to go on the stage, but how could he achieve his ambition? He had no contacts inside show business.

For a while he took a number of jobs. He was everybody’s mate — plumber’s, carpenter’s and painter’s. Then he joined London Transport and became a bus conductor. It must have been quite an experience to travel on a bus with a wise-cracking conductor like Arthur. The story goes that passengers used to wait for Arthur’s bus simply because they wanted to enjoy his repartee on the journey.

In 1940 he was called up for the Army. Knowing his “cheeky” television characters as we do, one can imagine the exasperation the Army suffered at his hands. He was first put on a charge during a route-march. At the rear of the line, he found that marching with full-pack and fixed bayonet for mile after mile was too much for him. He slipped away unnoticed and thumbed a lift from a passing motorist. The first thing that happened — and this could quite easily have been a sketch from one of his television shows — was that his bayonet went through the roof of the car. This, naturally, did not endear him to the friendly motorist. But, being wartime, the patriotic driver did not order his clumsy passenger out of the car, but drove ahead of the marching troops and dropped Arthur at his camp. Unfortunately, Arthur’s commanding officer was standing at the main gate. He was not at all impressed by Pte. Haynes’ contribution to Britain’s motorised infantry, and immediately put him on a charge.

After further experiences of this kind, the Army tired of Arthur — or could it be the other way round? — and he was regraded, medically, for having flat feet. He auditioned for the famous “Stars in Battledress”, but was turned down. Later, a chance funny remark to the young son of Captain George Black, the famous impresario who was in charge of the “Stars in Battledress” unit, won him a reprieve.

It was the Army, with whom Arthur had so many tussles, which finally helped him to achieve his long awaited ambition — to go on the stage. For the remainder of the war he toured the war fronts, entertaining the troops.

After his demobilisation in 1946 he was with Charlie Chester in the long-running radio series “Stand Easy”. Then he went solo. He went into pantomime, then toured the country on one-night stands. “I went everywhere from Aberdeen to Plymouth”, he recalls. “All this was wonderful experience and I gradually began to build up a solo act.”

Then, in February, 1956, he was offered his first television spot — in a show called “Strike a New Note”. This was his first meeting with Johnny Speight. “As soon as I saw that first script I knew that it was ME. From the first, Johnny’s scripts suited me perfectly”, he says.

Within twelve weeks the show had been retitled “The Arthur Haynes Show” — and it has been running ever since. Those early shows not only introduced Arthur to Johnny Speight, but also to Nicholas Parsons. Arthur and Nick have now built up the perfect partnership, with Nick the ideal foil for Arthur’s humour.

“Arthur and I did not set out to become a team”, explains Nick. “It simply developed. And I think it’s because it grew that way that it has become such a success.” One thing Nick can be sure of — when working with Arthur Haynes there is never a dull moment. “I’ve been hung from a scaffolding, had my clothes ripped, been covered in mud, made to dive through a window, knocked out, tripped, covered in shaving soap and pushed”, Nick recalls. “You just name it and it’s happened to me: like the sketch in which my flat was supposed to have caught fire and Arthur dashed in dressed as a fireman. I was almost knocked off my feet by the force of the water from Arthur’s hose and soaked to the skin, into the bargain. The trouble was I wasn’t really expecting it. You see, at rehearsal we could not use real water, because this would have ruined the set, so we did not switch on the water until the actual show. So when we did the show everything was spontaneous — and how!”

Many top recording artistes have been guests in “The Arthur Haynes Show” in recent months.

They include: Kenny Ball’s Jazzmen, Patsy Ann Noble, Susan Maughan, Janie Marden, Dickie Valentine, the Springfields, the King Brothers and Alma Cogan. These are the artistes who provide the musical interludes between Arthur’s sketches.

One man who has become a regular member of the “team” in recent months is Joe “Mr. Piano” Henderson. The quiet manner and shy smile of Joe Henderson has become a popular feature of the show. Joe has had his share of hit-parade successes in the past, but he is not at all worried if one of his discs fails to enter the charts.

“It would worry me to be thought of as a hit parade artiste”, he says. “The moment you fail to click people think you are finished. I’m interested in a lasting career. I like to play tunes that people like, aiming somewhere between what the mums and dads go for and what the kids want.”

With the aid of Nicholas Parsons, Joe Henderson, his guest vocalists and the guest actors he frequently uses, Arthur Haynes has built his show into one of the most consistently successful series on television. And, of course, Johnny Speight must share the credit here.

Without a doubt, it is Arthur’s down-to-earth brand of humour and his ability to find the common link in all of us that has made “The Arthur Haynes Show” one of the highlights of Saturday evening viewing.

The post Arthur Haynes appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

For the amorous Muppet Miss Piggy, with whom Elton was to perform a duet, it was back not to the dressing room but the store cupboard.

For Elton, who takes his chairmanship of Watford Football Club seriously, it was an opportunity to race off to see his team in action. He hired a helicopter for £200, then had to prevail on the police to escort him from Birmingham Airport to West Bromwich Albion football ground. He arrived minutes before the 7.30p.m. kick-off only to see Watford lose 3-2 — the first time he’d seen his team defeated.

The following day Elton was prickly, but politely so. During a brief break in recording, his newly-transplanted pate was bent over a pile of autograph books. Later, once the show was in the can and the studio empty of fans, he was all smiles.

After a phenomenal six years with earnings estimated at £7 million a year — roughly half that figure from royalties alone — he came off the road at the end of 1976. He still insists it’s for good — an insistence reinforced by the announcement that his charity appearance at Wembley last November was his last live show, marking his retirement from the stage altogether.

“It was just a matter of finding the right time,” he said, looking down at what were for him conservatively styled boots. “I don’t regret those years but now I’m rid of them I’m relieved to be starting my life all over. I don’t think anything I’ve written so far is really of much consequence. And I know I can write something of great consequence.”

Until he decided to take a breather he’d enjoyed playing big stadiums surrounded by a seemingly limidess sea of faces. “But quite suddenly I got fed up with seeing people’s faces squashed against fences. I thought, ‘Well, this might be great for me but is it so great for them?’ It wasn’t normal. I had to stop. Re-think.

“When I’ve been on tour I’ve always had bodyguards with me because there was always some crank who wanted to beat me up or shoot me. I went from plane to hotel. From hotel to plane. I tried keeping in touch with everything going on in the world but whatever I did I felt more and more remote.

“I lost my sense of values. I didn’t appreciate what people did for me, nor did I have any idea of how much pleasure just a small thought gives to people. I even resented people wanting my autograph because I’d forgotten what it was like to be on the other side of the fence. The more the wheel turned the more dangerous it felt. So to give up wasn’t a hard decision. It was a gut feeling and I’ve always relied on my instincts.”

His self-assessment docs him no favours. He is after all the man who in 1975 chartered a jet because he thought it would be a nice idea to fly all his office staff, their relatives and friends out to Los Angeles for a corporate jaunt. The gesture is typical of him. As was his refusal to sign up with Rocket, his own record company, until 1976 — four years after it was formed — when he felt it had proved itself.

Elton John hasn’t, and won’t join the ranks of tax exiles, although he is indebted to America for his overnight success story which began in 1970. He does, however, have a home in Beverley Hills.

In all he didn’t spend more than eight weeks in the States last year. There was a six-week holiday, his appearances in Madison Square Garden, another to launch his album The Greatest Hits Vol II and a book called It’s A Little Bit Funny — a photographic collection by David Nutter of Elton’s unguarded moments, with text written by lyricist Bernie Taupin. There were also four days spent recording in Seattle with pianist and ex-Stylistics producer Thom Bell. This session produced six “blatantly pop, blatantly black” tracks for his spring album and a single due for release this month which will be his first new one since Blue Moves on the Rocket label 14 months ago.

Once he was out of the goldfish bowl Elton’s great “down-to-earther” was Watford Football Club. “I was dealing on a normal basis with normal people again. There are still things that I miss, like going for walks or getting on buses. I’d get paranoid thinking everyone was looking and pointing at me. I love the smell of buses. Watford’s been my equivalent of getting on a bus — and sitting in the front seat.”

As a boy they’d been his local team. When he heard they were falling on hard times in 1974 he went along, thinking they’d be put off by his pink hair and eight-inch platform shoes, and offered to do a benefit concert for the club at their ground. About 26,000 people came and they raised £20,000. He became a director, never thinking he’d become chairman, and now football — or rather Watford — is his passion. “Either it’s that,” he laughed, “or it’s being able to tell all my friends that I’m chairman of a football club.”

Another of Elton’s preoccupations this year has been getting Goaldiggers, this country’s only football charity, off the ground. So far he, Jimmy Hill, Brian Moore, Brian Mears and Eric Morecambe under the patronage of the Duke of Edinburgh, have raised enough money to build 20 or so floodlit all-purpose-surface pitches for youngsters in under-privileged areas. The proceeds of his Wembley concert last November went to the Goaldiggers.

Underneath the glossy veneer of the superstar lifestyle and his personal joky image, Elton John has always seemed pretty ordinary, shy and surprisingly insecure. Somewhere there’s a component, a facility for success, everyone’s missed. When he came off the road the Elton ego and image collapsed temporarily. He lost interest in the way he looked, ate too much, drank too much. When he appointed Graham Taylor manager of Watford all that changed, he said, because he recognised something of his old self in Taylor’s dynamic determination, and he wanted to keep pace with him.

“There are two things I could have done,” he said. “I could either have shut myself away, become thoroughly miserable and ruined myself in the process but I realised how ridiculous it was to become a recluse.

“The only other thing I could do was to cope and come to terms with my success. After all I created it.”

The post Where were Elton and Miss Piggy when the lights went out? appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

So when Morecambe and Wise breezed into ATV’s headquarters to talk about themselves we wondered what was coming next. We soon found out.

The tall, bespectacled Eric Morecambe set things going when he suddenly stopped, clapped an outstretched hand under his partner’s chin and said: ‘get out of that,’ the phrase that has become so popular through their ATV programmes.

After that it was laughter all the way. The wisecracks flowed thick and fast. Finally, with patience, the comics were persuaded to be serious, at least long enough to tell their story—how they met, parted, met up again and finally achieved success.

‘We were travelling from Birmingham to Coventry during the blitz,’ said Ernie Wise, ‘when Eric’s mother, Mrs. Bartholomew, who was accompanying us to a show, suggested that we should try to become a double act. Eric and I had known each other for a few months, as we were both appearing in Bryan Michie’s show Youth Takes a Bow. The idea appealed to us and we decided to give it a try.’

The youngsters did team up and this was the beginning of an act which has now established itself with a string of successful television shows, summer revues, pantomimes and a weekly series for ATV.

‘We had not had time to establish ourselves as a double act before Ernie joined the Merchant Navy, cut in Eric Morecambe. ‘When he went away I teamed up with the brother of the late Dave Morris as a ‘feed’ and this is when I dropped my real name — Bartholomew — and took the name of my home town. We became Morris and Morecambe. This partnership did not last long, however. I was conscripted — into the coal mines — and disappeared from view for a while.’

Their reunion was a chance meeting. They were both booked as single acts in a Sanger’s Circus show in 1947. This led to Morecambe and Wise re-forming their double act.

‘I bumped into Eric,’ recalls Wise, ‘and we decided to try our luck again. Before the road show ended we had re-established our act. It was at this time that I met my wife, Doreen, who was a dancer in the show.’

‘We were only just making a living in those days,’ confided Morecambe. ‘If I remember rightly we earned £12 a week and had to divide that in half. After the tour we went into pantomime with Lupino Lane and from there to variety and revues.’

In 1952 Eric Morecambe met Joan, an ex-beauty queen, who was a dancer in a show which featured Morecambe and Wise in Edinburgh. In December of that year Eric and Joan, a London-born girl, were married.

‘It was in 1952 that we decided we ought to broadcast,’ said Wise. ‘We cornered a radio producer at the Tivoli Theatre, Hull, one evening and before we were through with him we had earned ourselves a spot in Workers’ Playtime. This led to many other broadcasts. After that things really began to move for us. Our money must have gone up a little by that time because in 1953 I could afford to marry Doreen’.

Before long Morecambe and Wise had their own radio series in the North of England called You’re Only Young Once, and this met with such success that they were asked to do three more series. Then came television. The comics did their first television show in 1953 and were then offered a series of their own. The series was called Running Wild and was seen in 1954.

‘It ran wild all right,’ said Morecambe ruefully. ‘Mind you, although we blushed every time we read the critics’ columns, many viewers wrote to say they liked the shows.’

‘But we took the whole thing far too seriously,’ confessed Wise. ‘After all, those were early days in television. But we are not making excuses. We did not like the shows ourselves. In fact, we completely restyled our approach after this series and when we finally decided it was safe to go out of doors again, we were pleasantly surprised at public reaction.’

‘No lynch mobs,’ cut in Morecambe.

Successful summer shows in Blackpool in 1955, ’56 and ’57 followed while in 1956 they returned to television in an ITV series of Winifred Atwell shows. They were much more successful this time and the following year did another series called Double Six.

‘In September, 1958, we decided to go to Australia,’ Wise continued. ‘We were there for six months and all the shows went well. When we returned to Britain in March 1959, we were determined to make an impact. After a summer season at Blackpool and pantomime in Liverpool, we began what we call our television campaign.’

In March 1960 the comics had only one television date in their diary, but they came over so well that, before the end of the year, they had made over a dozen appearances in major television shows including Sunday Night at the London Palladium, to which they returned several times.

‘Before the end of 1960 we were being asked to do a series,’ said Morecambe. ‘We did not want to rush things this time, remembering what happened in 1954, so we waited until we felt fairly sure of the scripts.’ Autumn 1961 saw them topping popularity polls with their own series of programmes for ATV — The Morecambe and Wise Show — which went out over the entire Independent Television network. Their second series for ATV earlier this summer was equally well received.

‘Together with script writers Syd Green and Dick Hills, we worked on the comedy ideas for this series,’ said Morecambe. ‘This seemed to be quite a successful formula and we found that the ad libs and asides we used were as well received by the audience as any straight from the shoulder jokes.’

With their appearance last year in the Royal Variety Performance, a year of triumph came to an end for Morecambe and Wise.

Despite many hard years of struggling to reach the top, Morecambe and Wise have retained that relaxed, easy-going cheerfulness that seems to be lacking in some comedians.

And when one is being entertained by the informal back-chat of Messrs. M. & W. you just don’t want to, ‘get out of that’.

The post Morecambe and Wise appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

IT IS unashamedly escapist and, at a cost of £3 million, the new Saint series has never had it so good compared to the 1962 version which starred Roger “James Bond” Moore. That was done on a shoestring and borrowed bits of film for the outdoor shots. The Return of The Saint, starring Ian Ogilvy, is sumptuously presented in luxury locations entirely suitable to the character and preposterous charm of the hero created by Leslie Charteris way back in 1928.

Nine episodes have been shot in Italy and on Monte Argentario, a mountain island resort favoured by the wealthy, the crew and cast booked comfortably into 75 rooms, spread over three hotels.

After breakfast, they took to the hills in a convoy of mini-buses, complete with a set of props which included a bazooka, dynamite and Russian-made machine-guns.

In a country where every other person seems to be under police protection for fear of being kidnapped or assassinated, the props were no mean achievement.

It is a nervous country where private gun licences have been revoked and all use of real weapons by the film industry prohibited. But it is also a country where pulling strings has become a national pastime. The unit intervened with the Ministry of the Interior, who intervened with the police, who… anyway, they got the weapons.

I lay on dusty mountain grass, alongside various prone carabinieri, who may have been real policemen or extras hired for the episode, and observed for the first time the man on whom ATV’s £3 million investment rests.

Much has been written of Ian Ogilvy’s striking resemblance to Roger Moore. Both director and producer sometimes forgetfully call him Roger.

My first impressions were basically of marvel. How, for instance, did Ogilvy keep his white pants looking impeccably pressed, and his hair so shiny and groomed?

On the set he was always dazzlingly immaculate. Handsome to the point of being pretty. Between takes, a small battalion of make-up girls dashed forward with assorted powder puffs and brushes to dust him down and spruce him up. But there were signs that after five solid months of location filming he was near exhaustion.

It may explain why Ogilvy was not enthusiastic for press interviews or keen to pose for pictures.

At Monte Argentario, a separate villa was provided for him and his wife Diane, a former model, who has been with him throughout the months of filming.

People have tended to assume, he says, that they have a claim on his time, but when work is over for the day, he gives his attention to his wife and two children, Emma, 15, and Titus, 9.

A year ago, Ogilvy declared blithely that he had sold his soul to TV for 12 months, and they could do with it what they liked. Now, as the hour-glass runs out, he has taken a long, cool look at his commitments, and his situation as a professional actor.

We talked during a sudden downpour, sitting in the Saint’s Jaguar. It is a beautiful car which has been his virtually a year. He must often have to remind himself of his own second-hand Austin 1100, costing under £200, parked outside his four-bedroomed semi in South London.

After 14 years as an actor, the closest he has come to fame, he says, is when his local wine merchant said to him: “Your face bothers me.” Now, with the Return of The Saint the days are ticking by for anonymity. “I don’t very much look forward to that. It is terribly nice to be anonymous,” he says.

Unlike Simon Templar, Ian Ogilvy smokes. Lighting one after another with the rain pouring on the roof of the Jaguar he tried to put the Saint experience into perspective.

He says: “I suppose, of the people I know who could have played this part, and there are quite a few, I would say 50 per cent of them wouldn’t have done it. I am one of the 50 per cent who would.

“I have been in this business 14 years. I have spent most of my time at the BBC doing highbrow shows, not through any choice of my own. But I have got a period face, and I can wear the clothes. Because of that, I am not terribly well known in England. Or indeed anywhere.

“A lot of people say that if you are going to do anything big, it’s best to do it in your 30s rather than when you are younger. Well, I’m 35. If this could be considered as something big, and I think it probably could be, then I think I have done it at the right time.

“Oh yes. You weigh up the pros and cons like mad. It is not necessarily a heaven sent gift. But I came to the conclusion that there were more pros than cons. The way I was didn’t pay too much.”

Ogilvy is an Old Etonian who had ambitions to go on the stage when it was much more fashionable to be working class from almost anywhere “Up North”. His father was a brilliant Cambridge scholar and a leading light in the advertising industry.

When anyone asked Ogilvy where he went to school, he replied: “Slough Tech.” His first job was as assistant manager and sweeper-upper at the Royal Court Theatre, London.

He met his wife on a flight to Italy when both went to audition — unsuccessfully — for a part in a Zeffirelli film, The Taming of the Shrew. His major television roles so far have been in Moll Flanders and I Claudius. He also played Elizabeth Bellamy’s impotent husband in Upstairs, Downstairs.

He was spotted for the Saint by producer Robert Baker in a small second-feature film six years ago. “I had lunch with Bob at Pinewood Studios,” says Ogilvy. “He said he wanted to do the Saint again, would I play the part? It is nice that nobody else was ever considered so far as Bob was concerned. And I had a very long time to make up my mind.

“Obviously Roger Moore is the Saint everybody remembers, though quite a few actors played the part. I’m about the 12th. It’s like Tarzan.

“The character of the Saint has never been a problem. The Saint has no character. Nor does James Bond. This is what makes them successful heroes. Heroes are what you make them. A hero with a character has to have a special word invented for him — anti-hero.

“I just try and be myself. The reason you get a part like this is, presumably, because people think you look like a hero. Therefore I see no point in trying to be anything but myself in a very glamorised and romantic situation.

“My main difficulty has been with the scripts. They say things like ‘The Saint brings the speedboat neatly into port and jumps out.’ Well, anybody who thinks about it knows that it takes quite a long time to manoeuvre a speedboat and jump out. And who ties it up?

“‘The Saint fires a bazooka from a cab window.’ You think of a cab window, and a bazooka, which is like a five-foot long drainpipe. You have to get it into the cab, then stick it out of the window while moving. It’s not easy.

“The funniest instance was when I had to walk out of the water in a wet-suit with scuba gear. Anybody who knows about scuba gear realises that you can walk out of the water in it only if you walk backwards.

“‘Right,’ said the director, ‘take the flippers off in the water and put them in a waterproof bag’ — which turned out not to be waterproof. The moment I stood up it had about 50 pounds of water in it. The air tanks weighed about 75 pounds. With all this gear, I literally staggered from the water.

“Then we go into this whole process where the script says ‘the Saint slips out of the scuba gear.’ You don’t slip out of scuba gear. You need help.

“So the way we finally did the scene was with a man kneeling down, trying not to get into camera shot, taking the weight of the tanks, while I tried to look beautiful and act.

“For a ski episode, the plot called for an avalanche, which had to be created with dynamite. And with his brushed-up ski-ing ability dating from the age of 14, Ogilvy struggled gamely, heroically on.

“The director said: ‘Ski up to the body and stand before it.’ I said: ‘The skis will be sticking straight through him.’ ‘Well, turn this way,’ he replied. That way, I slid down the mountain at 50 miles an hour. Nobody thinks it out. There turned out to be only two ways I could stand next to the body.

“It is very hard work convincing people that just the ordinary business of filming is exhausting. It’s not just remembering the words. It is looking pristine all day.

“The crew can come in with jeans and feel terrible if they have had a hard night. But they can still operate, and walk around with their eyes half-closed. I have to come in looking lovely, and remain looking lovely, and that is hard work, believe me.

“After working all day I am tired. But nothing like as tired as I am on my day off. On my day off I am shattered. I keep going to sleep. I keep thinking — why am I so tired, it’s my day off?

“I usually get up at the crack of dawn, say 6.30. I don’t eat breakfast, just have a cup of coffee. I am taken to wherever the wardrobe and the hair people are. Usually a hotel. I spend half an hour fiddling around. Then I go to the location and stay till the light fades. I get home about eight, have a quick dinner, and go to bed. That has been my day for five months as the Saint.

“Having my wife here is vital. Quite apart from the companionship, which is the important part, there is the purely practical side. Most people here, sooner or later, have to think about laundry. Everything like that, she takes off my hands.

“Now, I suppose the publicity machine will swing into gear. The grown-ups — that’s what I call the people in charge — say I will have to go to America and do chat-shows. Nobody is going to pay me for this. I am a working actor, I need to earn my living. They believe it still carries on, you see. But quite honestly, I would like another job after this is finished.

“Obviously it would be nice to know what happens next. Three things could happen, I suppose.

“I could carry on as I have done, and go back to the BBC. I could go into total obscurity because nobody wants to use the Saint. Or I could actually be quite a big… la de dah.”

Ogilvy hesitates almost superstitiously to use the word “star”, and says: “It is all up to the public now.”

The post It’s a tough life being a Saint appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

From the ATV Television Show Book 1963

This, then, was the setting, in March, for the rehearsals of ATV’s second “A Golden Hour” programme. The greatest names from the worlds of ballet and opera were preparing to bring their arts to millions of people who ordinarily would never have the opportunity of seeing and hearing such international artistes.

The huge velvet stage curtains bearing the insignia EiiR were down. One could almost feel the years rolling away. Almost instinctively thoughts turned to the great names of the past — artistes whose names will live forever, and who had brought their genius to this, tradition-soaked theatre…. Enrico Caruso, the Neapolitan, first came to sing to a bejewelled audience from this very stage exactly 61 years ago. Nijinsky danced his way to immortality here. Scotti, Melba, Destin, Chaliapine and Pertile have all become part of the history of the Royal Opera House.

The silence was broken by the crash of percussion and it was a return to the present. The Royal Opera House Orchestra had plunged into the vibrant music to be used later by the Hungarian State Dance Ensemble. “Fortissimo”, cried the stocky Hungarian conductor as, with flailing arms, he brought the orchestra to the climax of the composition.

From a seat in the stalls, Sir Malcolm Sargent, who was to conduct the orchestra for the remainder of the programme, watched with interest. An opera house official brought a burly, smiling gentleman to Sir Malcolm. “Sir Malcolm, this is Mr. Boris Christoff,” said the official.

“I am delighted to meet you,” beamed Sargent.

“It is my pleasure, maestro,” replied Christoff, the great Bulgarian bass.

Soon, Sargent was standing before the orchestra. Beside him Christoff rehearsed the two pieces he was to sing in the programme, his rich, deep voice resounding around the opera house.

Regine Crespin, the French lyric-dramatic soprano, was next to rehearse with the orchestra. The echoes were set ringing as Madame Crespin’s magnificent voice sang the opening bars of the well-known “Vissi d’Arte” from “Tosca”.

Then the slim, elegant figure of Rudolf Nurevev stepped from the shadows at the side of the auditorium. He leaned nonchalantly over the orchestra-pit barrier beside Sir Malcolm Sargent as the beautiful music of “Les Sylphides” filled the theatre. Later, Nurevev partnered Dame Margot Fonteyn in the Pas de Deux from “Les Sylphides” and the famous “Le Corsaire”.

The two “Golden Hour” programmes so far produced by ATV — the first in November of last year — brought a wealth of artistic talent into the homes of millions throughout the country. Under one roof, the cream of the world’s singers, dancers and musicians gave live performances and reached a vast television audience.

The almost legendary Maria Callas sang “Carmen” in the first “A Golden Hour” programme. Guiseppe di Stefano, the great Italian tenor, was in the same programme. He sang magnificently, despite the handicap of influenza. Pallet stars Svetlana Beriosova and Donald MacLeary, violinist Mischa Elman and Jose Greco’s Spanish Dance Company added their individual magic to the programme. Everyone agreed it was a wonderful night.

The second programme was equally successful. Many young people with aspirations for the ballet were particularly interested. Short of going to a major city, where else could they be treated to a performance by artistes of the calibre of Fonteyn and Nurevev? The grace and beauty of every movement was captured close-up by ATV’s cameras.

Sir David Webster, the General Administrator of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the man who introduced both programmes, has this to say of the programmes: “I am a great believer in quality entertainment. I believe that the mass of television viewers at this time are hungry for the finest dancers, singers and musicians on their screens. The reaction to the two “A Golden Hour” programmes confirmed this view. I also believe that programmes of this type must come from Covent Garden itself, and not from a studio. It certainly makes all the difference to the artistes’ feelings, and consequently their performances, and I also believe that some of the extraordinary beauty and atmosphere of the most wonderful of all opera houses actually comes across to the viewer.”

ATV plan to produce two or three “A Golden Hour” programmes each year. Judging from the response to the first two, it is a decision that will be welcomed by viewers all over Britain.

The post A Golden Hour appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

This first birthday is in itself some measure of the appeal of the programme.

For confirmation, just take the letters which flow into the Seeing Sport office… anything between 300 and 400 letters fan mail, queries and answers to competitions — are brought into Television House every week for the Monday sports-spot team.

Within two days of a telecast on judo, there were 1,500 letters in the office from viewers asking for addresses of clubs, and when next the programme was going to feature judo. That record mail surprised even commentator Peter Lloyd, who used to direct and produce the show until Tony Flanagan took over from him.

Peter Lloyd said: “When Tony Flanagan and I took over we decided to focus on seven sports.

“We started with soccer, swimming, table tennis, riding, athletics, cricket and ice skating. Taking each sport in turn, we got experts to talk about equipment, training, coaching, and the right and wrong ways of doing things.

“We always go for the top people in every sport.” That’s where Associated TeleVision sports chief, John Graydon, comes in. Graydon, a leading sports journalist before he went into television, arranges the guest star personalities… and, as Lloyd says, “the best.”

Walter Winterbottom, manager of the England football team; Alf Price, swimming’s Olympic team boss; Alf Gover, once an England fast bowler; A.A.A. coach Geoff Dyson, and ex-world table tennis champion, Johnny Leach; all have given the benefit of their experience and skill to Seeing Sport’s young audience.

Once the sport is decided and the guest star arranged. Lloyd and Flanagan begin the outline of the programme. Interviews, demonstrations and close-ups of the important points are slotted together, and one rehearsal follows another.

The effort is worthwhile. Television is quick to make – and equally quick to break. Certainly, too, this ATV trio know the dangers which go with catering for a knowledgeable and critical audience. I know the bulk of Seeing Sport’s viewers are children — but who are quicker to spot errors?

Lloyd and Flanagan trade on those sharp eyes and ears. Each week a deliberate mistake is eased into the show. It does not creep by unnoticed. That’s where the letters come in — in heaps. In return, the sender of the first right answer opened gets a prize suitable for that particular sport.

Flanagan was operating a BBC camera in 1947 when Lloyd was one of six would-be commentators being tested.

Lloyd told me: “We were numbered from one to six, and viewers were asked to say who they thought was the best. By some miracle, they chose me.”

Since then he’s tackled almost every kind of sports commentary. Yet his most harassing job was not connected with sport.

Lloyd was one of the team waiting to meet Liberace on his arrival in England.

Well, that’s the team and they’re doing fine for my money. Happy birthday!

The post Happy birthday! to ‘Seeing Sport’ appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

“It was called Why?” says Monkhouse, “a question on the lips of every viewer after watching it. It was so complicated that when they scrapped it people still didn’t know what the rules were.”

Then came What’s My Line?, the panel game which created the biggest impact in the Fifties. Monkhouse was a resident panellist for two years.

“It was such a cult that, if you did anything remotely unusual, it was bound to get into the newspapers,” he says. “The supposedly cantankerous Gilbert Harding once gesticulated angrily and accidentally poked me in the eye. The producer decided it would be an amusing gimmick to wear an eye patch on the next show. I did so — and we made headlines in four national papers the next day.” By this time, Monkhouse was building a reputation as a quick-fire ad-libber, one of the few comic entertainers happy to face the cameras — then mostly live — without a script. On one occasion, he inadvertently demonstrated the lack of polish of some of his contemporaries when he appeared in I’ve Got A Secret.

“My ‘secret’ was that I would walk out every time someone said ‘um’ or ‘er’. I was suffering from chronic exhaustion by the time they guessed. Such verbal hesitation wouldn’t be tolerated these days. Still, we shouldn’t be hard on those panel pioneers. After all, to ’er is human.”

He next became chairman of Do You Trust Your Wife?, in which the husband received £10 for replying correctly to a question or, if he couldn’t and passed it to his wife, she earned £20 for a correct answer. No one knows how many marriages broke up under the strain, but for Monkhouse it led naturally to the next game series, Bury Your Hatchet.

“I co-invented it,” he explains, “and it was dreadful. It should have been buried with the hatchet. It was replete with every possible yawnmaking gimmick, from a sin-bin — a forfeit-type feature — to toy hatchet prizes. Fortunately, we filmed it in advance, so we could edit out the worst excesses. But I’ve seen better film on dirty teeth.

“The idea was to invite people who had fallen out to win money for one another by answering questions. It sounds like a satire on a game show now. Understandably, the collected wrath of the viewers had us taken off the air ahead of schedule.”

But not before Monkhouse had tried to breathe life into it with yet another version of the old eye patch gag.

“A lady wrestler came on claiming to have a grudge against her husband who was a boxer,” says Monkhouse. “So we invited the late Freddie Mills, the boxing champion, to act as ‘referee’ and try to talk them into a reconciliation. Freddie only succeeded in making things worse and it began to look a bit ugly. The lady took a swipe at him and in defending himself Freddie hit me in the eye with his elbow — the same eye that Gilbert Harding had poked. I thought that was marvellous and wore a patch on the next show. But such was our status that we didn’t even get a mention in the Press.”

Monkhouse redeemed his reputation with For Love Or Money, which had the same format as Sale of the Century, except contestants were not aware of how much money they were winning until the end.

“It was during that show’s two-year run that I developed my technique,” says Monkhouse. “I started sprinkling jokes throughout the series, creating a frivolous atmosphere which didn’t stretch or disturb the viewers. It simply allowed them to relax, sit back and let their brains hang out — as undemanding an amusement as a fairground side show.”

In the mid-Sixties, Monkhouse compered Sunday Night at the London Palladium, steering it back to the top of the ratings. So great was his success, particularly with the Beat the Clock audience participation feature, that he was almost sure they would select him for a new game called The Golden Shot.

“I was cracked up when they gave it to Jackie Rae — until I saw it,” he says. “In spite of Jackie’s considerable skill and charm, the format was so rigid and mechanical that he was stifled. They offered it to me when Jackie left and I agreed, on condition they changed the format. But little did I know the other perils which faced me.”

At that time, the show was transmitted live from an old, almost obsolete studio.

“Cameras broke down, targets disintegrated and bolts wouldn’t bolt,” he recalls. “In one show, two contestants were locked in the soundproof box and still stuck there after the commercial break, so we had to commandeer two new volunteers from the audience. Then there was the case of Mrs. Moss and Mr. Plugget, who failed to turn up after winning their way on to the next week’s show. They’ve been lost ever since. Are you there, Mrs. Moss and Mr. Plugget?”

Monkhouse confesses that those terrifying days were of great and lasting benefit to him.

“Until then, I had been the glib, polished performer with the metallic finish, never stuck for an answer. But for the first time in my life, as the studio fell apart around my ears, I was lost for words and my smart-alec image began to disappear, thank God.

“It was The Golden Shot series that provided me with the security and stability I needed through a bad time of my life, the period when my divorce was going through,” he says. “But professionally I needed to stretch myself in other directions.”

The acting talent he had displayed in straight television plays during the Sixties had been neglected during his panel game period. But drama producers insisted his image would interfere with the realism of their plays and there was little demand for Monkhouse the actor.

Then came the challenge of Sunday’s Celebrity Squares, the spectacular noughts-and-crosses game imported from America, where it has been phenomenally successful for nine years.

“It’s a juggling act of most of the things I can do,” says Bob Monkhouse. “I have to make the contestants comfortable and relaxed, keep the nine panellists happy and mentally stimulated, explain the rules without boring anyone or losing pace; I have to watch for the panellists’ flashing lights, select the appropriate questions for each of them, keep everyone up to date as we progress, do my ad-lib solo spot, keep the score… and try to entertain.

“That’s the name of the game — whatever it’s called…”

The post Games people play with Monkhouse appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

“I’d love to.” Noele said.

Less than an hour later, both were at the headquarters of the Warwickshire Aero Club at Birmingham Airport, Elmdon. Before the evening was over, Noele Gordon had enrolled as a pupil pilot.

But this was a flying course with a difference. It was to be televised for Midlands viewers under the title Noele Gordon Takes the Air.

Within a few weeks, the series was on the air. Since the middle of September, viewers have watched Noele’s steady progress. By the time the series ends in November, she hopes to have flown solo after only eight hours in the air.

I went to see Noele on one of her training flights on a dull day, with rain drizzling down at intervals — not the best of weather for a gruelling session which included spins, circuits and stalls.

Noele’s teachers — chief flying instructor Arthur Penzer and club secretary Neville Birch — are confident that she will emerge as a first-class pilot.

“She is adaptable and easy to teach,” said Penzer. “On her first flight, she taxied the aircraft on and off the runway.”

According to Neville Birch, an hour’s flying is the equivalent of four hours hard work. Pupils need so much concentration that after an hour they have little energy left.

“For this series, however, Noele virtually has to work twice as hard,” Birch admitted. “Her aircraft is being filmed throughout all her flights, and quite often manoeuvres have to be repeated for the camera—there is always another aircraft on her tail carrying the cameraman and producer. Those aren’t the easiest conditions for learning to fly.”

Reg Watson, who is producing the series, said: “Viewers at home, watching the finished product, probably don’t realise the amount of work involved in putting this series over. It isn’t just a case of filming the whole of Noele’s lesson. We have to re-film parts of it, and get special shots for the opening of the programme.”

Editing the film is a big job. Then there is the studio work, which calls for long rehearsals every Tuesday. “We manage to get our own back on Neville and Arthur every Tuesday night,” Watson said with a smile. “At the airport they teach us to fly, but in the studio we teach them about television.”

I talked to Noele as she stepped out of the pink-and-grey Auster which she had just taxied to the club headquarters. She looked confident.

“I’ve always nursed a secret ambition to fly,” she told me. “I think it’s good for all of us to learn something different occasionally, and flying is something that’s within reach of everybody.”

Penzer and Birch told me that it takes from eight to 10 hours to learn to fly solo, but getting a pilot’s licence means flying a total of 40 hours. Before she can fly solo, Noele will have become proficient in take-offs, climbing and descending turns, stalls and circuit procedure. All navigation has to be done in a pupil’s spare time.

Will Noele carry on flying to get her pilot’s licence?

“I’d love to,” she admitted. “But it’s all a question of finding the time.”

The post How Noele Gordon takes the air appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

The Muppet Show — on screen this Sunday — is a today spectacular. A slick musical where cows, dogs, bears, hens and all kinds of likely and unlikely characters sing, dance, make music and tell jokes. And they allow a real live human being in the form of a big-name star to join their ranks each week. For Muppets are puppets, and without a shadow of doubt they’re the greatest, most animated, most believable puppets you’ve ever seen.

After many years of the educational programme Sesame Street, and after guesting on major TV spectaculars with stars like Julie Andrews, Tom Jones, Perry Como and Herb Alpert, the Muppets move into a family appeal slot of their own, described by their creator, Jim Henson, as a music-hall variety entertainment with on-stage and back-stage action. Kermit — his oldest and best-loved character — has the support of a whole Muppet orchestra, a Muppet chorus-line, and Muppet acts. There are Muppet scene-shifters, and even a Muppet wardrobe mistress, named Hilda.

If it’s corny comedy you’re after, listen to Fozzie Bear. His jokes are so bad they match his own description of them. ‘Unbearable’.

Singing? Listen to Miss Piggy – She’s so far out, she’s coming back!

You want a piano-playing dog? Rowlf’s the name.

Operating these puppets is an incredibly involved job. Some of them are worked by hand. Others by strings. Yet more by rods. And there are even times when life-size puppets get on stage, worked by animators dressed in black, against a black velvet backdrop, so’s you can’t see them. In fact, part of the fun for the viewer is to try and guess just how the many and varied visual tricks are worked.

When you join resident theatre-goers Waldorf and Statler, two very human Muppets who spend their time commenting on acts from their permanent box at the stage-side, you’ll see Guru, a mystical Indian. You’ll see the incredible Doctor Teeth, leader of a way-out band that includes Zoot, a remarkable sax-man, Floyd, a bass-player, and a wild-man drummer named Animal. And when you see the Snoths — cow-like females who sing — you’ll flip! Their appearance in the opening show in company with a zany beatnik Muppet has to be seen to be believed!

But here — why should you take our word for it? Tune in yourself and see why the Muppets are going to be the television talking point this autumn.

The post It’s the Muppet Show… appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

I suppose we are cheating a bit, having our party early, but everyone is having such a rip-roaring time that I can certainly claim the means are justifying the end.

I can smell the cold roast turkey the chefs are carving, there is the friendly clink of wine glasses and the hubble-bubble of show business talk — all the ingredients that go to make a first-class party.

And who better to be our hostess than Noele Gordon, the popular Lunch Box star whose birthday falls on Christmas Day.

I say I hope too many people don’t give her a joint birthday-Christmas present. She grins and says she hopes so, too.

She tells me: “This will be a specially happy Christmas, because I shall have my family round me for the first time since before the war. My mother, my aunt, uncle and nephew will all be with me in Birmingham.”

I move to comedian Jimmy Wheeler, sporting a king-size cigar. He adjusts his paper hat and sips his wine, and says: “I’m having a rest this year.

“Instead of pantomime, I shall be appearing in a Christmas show at Southampton with Frankie Vaughan. We worked together in the summer.

“It’s the first Christmas in 35 years that I haven’t been in pantomime. In the New Year, I’m off to Australia. It’s my bank manager’s idea. He told me to go to a place where they don’t know my gags.”

I find David Whitfield talking to Noele Gordon about Robinson Crusoe. He plays Crusoe in a Birmingham pantomime. He tells me: “I’m trying to familiarise myself with the Birmingham dialect. Noele is helping me. She’s very good at it.”

David, following the latest trend in pantomime, plays Principal Boy. After the Christmas Eve opening night, he is driving to Hull to spend Christmas Day with his family. Then an early start back to be in time for the Boxing Day matinee.

David is proud of Hull. “Look at the stars it has produced,” he says, counting off on his fingers Ronnie Hilton, Ian Carmichael, Freddie Sales, Patricia Bredin and Brian Rix.

And there, standing right beside me, is lovely and attractive Shirley, one of the three Kaye Sisters, and every bit as proud of her home town Hull as singer David.

The three girls are not going to let their London West End cabaret engagement interfere with Christmas. They have planned a traditional Christmas dinner together.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, they gaze round the room.

“This is some reunion,” they chorus. “David, Lauri and George were with us in a Blackpool show last summer.”

Lauri is Lauri Lupino Lane, and George is George Truzzi.

Lauri and George, slapstick comedians of the old school, are surprisingly quiet off stage. But Noele soon talks them into doing a balancing act with a pile of plates.

“I think the way you smashed all those plates on the stage is adorable,” says Noele, with a laugh. “Why haven’t you brought some along for the party?”

Lauri grins. “We would have done — but there wasn’t room with Jimmy Wheeler in the car as well!”

I reckon I am now on my fourth mince-pie, and I am in a group with those Lunch Box stalwarts Jerry Allen and his TV Trio. Like David Whitfield, Jerry has a pretty tight-packed Christmas schedule, and is driving back and forwards to his home in St Albans, Herts, to see his family.

“There’s plenty of work to be done for the Christmas and Boxing Day editions,” says Jerry reflectively.

“Has anyone got a helicopter I can hire?”

I hear Jimmy Wheeler offer his, but I see Jerry does not believe him, though he hands him a sandwich to show no ill-feeling. Producer Reg Watson is enjoying himself, too. He tells me all about the bumper Christmas show : “We’ll be visiting Toyland,” he says.

“Cinderella, Prince Charming, the Fairy Queen and the Wicked Witch will be there, not forgetting Little Bo-peep, Jack and Jill and Humpty-Dumpty. Then there’s a ballet sequence with toy soldiers, and the Alpha Olde Tyme Music-Hall will put on its Christmas show.

“Apart from the usual gang, we’re adding the Concords vocal group, Jean Morton — who will play the Fairy Queen — and the MacTwecdles. Just try keeping these characters out of a special show! We’re very happy to have Eula Parker with us. She was in Australia this time last year.”

Dulcie Sawyer, one of the Christmas show dancers, will have one of the quickest changes in show business. She has just a few seconds to change from “Les Sylphides” to “Cinderella.”

Now the party is at its rip-roaring height. Jimmy Wheeler is giving the Kaye Sisters turkey and telling them: “That’s yer lot.”

David Whitfield is handing round wine. Noele is chatting to Lauri and George, while Lionel Rubin, of Jerry Allen’s Trio, is climbing into Father Christmas gear.

We have caught the Christmas spirit, and viewers will catch it, too, when they see the programme.

The post Christmas Box appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

So began Emergency — Ward 10 — and the series has been running continuously (except for a break brought about by the Equity dispute) ever since. Last May it reached its 500th performance.

No one in those early days could have foreseen the tremendous popularity that this series would achieve.

Tessa Diamond has written many of the scripts for the series, and today a team of writers work on the programmes. During the six years that have elapsed since the first Ward 10 story went on the air, writers, producers and artistes have changed. But the series retains its high viewing figures. The first programme, in February 1957, was watched by a million viewers. Today, the figure is 16½ million.

Two of the longest serving members of the cast are Australian actor Charles (known to his friends as Bud) Tingwell — who plays Consultant Alan Dawson — and attractive Jill Browne, Nurse Carole Young. Today the close-knit team of artistes includes Desmond Carrington (Dr. Chris Anderson), Anne Brooks (Nurse Jill Craig), Paula Byrne (Dr. Frances Whitney), David Butler (Dr. Nick Williams), John Line (R.S.O. Shaw) and William Dysart (Dr. Maclean).

Emergency — Ward 10 has always paid close attention to detail, and although its primary aim is to entertain, it can—indeed has—helped to bring to the public’s attention the importance of certain real-life medical services, such as immunisation against polio, the importance of blood donors, cancer research, and preventative measures against road accidents and accidents in the home. These are services for which the programmes have received praise from the medical profession and from religious bodies.

John Cooper, the present producer, is the series’ fourth since 1957. Cooper is particularly anxious that details of the programme’s story-lines should not become known in advance of each episode’s transmission. Cooper believes that advance knowledge of the plot kills the true-to-life illusion. ‘We like to believe,’ he says, ‘that what you watch is actually happening in Ward 10 at the time you see it.’

Despite this authentic air of spontaneity, tremendous preparation goes into each episode of Emergency — Ward 10. An episode is born at a script conference attended by all the writers. Today the writing team includes Diana Morgan, Robert Holmes and Rachel Grieve. Also at the conference is Cooper, his production assistant, Carol Williams, and the series’ medical advisers. Within a few days the first draft scripts are in the producer’s hands and the medical advisers check them for authenticity. Then the artistes are brought in for rehearsals.

The first rehearsal takes place in one of the spacious rehearsal rooms at ATV’s Studio Centre at Boreham Wood, Hertfordshire. All the artistes connected with the episode are called and they ‘walk-through’ with the producer using only the barest of props—perhaps a table, chair, a telephone, sometimes a bed. After perhaps two days of this kind of rehearsal the whole company move into the studio.

By now, scripts will have been distributed to all the other studio departments. The sets will be well under construction, the props section will be providing the necessary dressing for the sets, wardrobe will be arranging costumes and make-up will be standing by. The technical departments, such as lighting, sound and cameras, will be lining up their equipment.

The producer now takes his artistes through the scenes in the exact settings of the actual transmission. On the day of the performance the artistes are made-up and appear in full costume for the final dress rehearsal. Cameras and sound have been rehearsing steadily, co-ordinating their movements under the producer’s instruction. Now all is ready for the programme itself.

For the artistes the pace is hot. Learning two scripts a week, rehearsals and more rehearsals take up most of every day of the week, leaving few opportunities for spare time activities.

But to say that they enjoy their work would be an under-statement. A visitor to a Ward 10 rehearsal is certain to find high spirits. Not that the cast do not take their work seriously—they certainly do. But there is the ever present good humour that is reflected on the screen in the happy atmosphere of Oxbridge Hospital.

It is not only the artistes who are serious in their approach to the programme. The public, too, are sometimes carried away by the authenticity of the series. Frequently telephone calls are received from members of the public who wish to discuss their ailments with Mr. Dawson or Dr. Anderson.

How do the artistes feel about their respective roles?

Charles Tingwell says: ‘I have always admired people who are deeply engrossed in their jobs, particularly men with a sense of vocation — as in medicine or the church. So I enjoy playing Alan Dawson and trying to get inside the character to act and think as I believe he would.’

‘Playing Nurse Carole Young has affected me in several ways,’ says Jill Browne. ‘Sometimes I wonder who I really am. Whenever I hear anybody say “Carole,” I respond automatically — even when they are not talking to me.’

This is the measure of how her two personalities have become entwined. In fact, she would seem to have three personalities — her own, the trained actress and the character of Nurse Young!

Desmond Carrington, too, has found his private life becoming involved with his role of Dr. Chris Anderson. ‘When Barbara Clegg had to leave the series,’ he says, ‘the scriptwriters decided that Barbara — who played my wife in Ward 10 — would be drowned in a flood. I received so many letters of consolation from viewers after this episode had taken place, that I really began to think that I had had a bereavement.’

Such examples show how ‘real’ to viewers Emergency — Ward 10 has become. The series has successfully combined first-class entertainment with helpful and informative information about everyday hospital life. It has also helped to eliminate the dread many people have of entering hospital. Could this, in fact, be the secret of its staggering success?

The post Emergency – Ward 10 appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

When they built Hollywood, they built it for Miss Piggy. The star on her dressing room door is the biggest I’ve ever seen. And the tantrum coming from inside is certainly the loudest I’ve ever heard.

A familiar high-pitched voice is screaming: “This is my best angle, my best, my best!” There’s a hubbub of soothing voices and then: “I’m right, I’m right!”

Not the best time to interview the daunting doyenne of stage and TV screen about her Hollywood debut.

But, as I’ve already waited at the studio for two hours, I take a deep breath and knock.

Immediately the shouting stops. A harassed maid opens the door. Behind her, Miss Piggy is lying on a velvet chaise longue, her retinue of make-up girls, hairdressers, wardrobe ladies, chauffeur, secretary and valet around as her delicate little pink trotters are being manicured.

“Who the hell . . .?” she starts crossly, then her secretary whispers my name. “Oh, a cover article,” she simpers. Her eyelashes flutter. She waves limply towards me, but barely glances up. “Lesleee, dear, how lovely to see you. What a divine outfit. I’ll be with you in a teensey minute.

“I’ve been filming with dear Roberto Hope and the sweet man was so overcome he wouldn’t let me leave. My time is so short. It’s one of the penalties of being a superstar — I’m sure you’ll understand, dear.”

Two hours later I’m not so understanding. Miss Piggy is still in her gold-plated bathroom — the bath is shaped like an oyster, the shell opens up at the touch of a button — with her hairdressers and make-up girls.

Suddenly the door opens with a flourish and there she is, a picture of porcine beauty in a cloud of mauve sequins, feathers and tulle, jewelled turban and white fur stole. She looks every inch the star she says she is.

“Oh, Miss Piggy, how beautiful you look,” I gush.

“Yes, I know,” says Miss Piggy airily, tossing back her blonde curls. “I am the epitome of glamour and I always like to look my best. I am a star and I must live like a star. If only my fans around the world could see me in person… my inner beauty, my true self… ”

Then she tears herself away from her mirror and says to me, “O.K., cut the cackle. Waddyer want to know? You’ve got 20 minutes.” What I really want to know is about her rumoured face lift, about the “rest cure” that added inches to her voluptuous figure, the truth about her romance with Kermit the Frog, the rumours about her torrid relationship with The Incredible Hulk.

But she fixes me with those steely baby-blue eyes and instead I end up lamely asking: “Well, how are you enjoying your stay in Hollywood?”

Miss Piggy, wrapping her stole around her, sets the tone for the whole interview. “I think the question is, Lesleee, how is Hollywood enjoying moi? They’re so lucky I could fit them in my schedule.

“Of course, the film certainly hasn’t tested my true talents. It’s a cute, sweet little movie, but it’s not the Miss Piggy story that I’m certain everyone would like to see. That’s probably going to be my next movie.

“Oh, I’ve had tons of offers since I’ve been here, but I just haven’t had time to read those silly little scripts. I’m just a little woman… sometimes it’s all too much for me.”

She sighs and flutters her eyelashes. We’re interrupted by servants bringing in lunch. Miss Piggy lifts a dish and screams at the unit publicist.

“Regina! How many times do I have to tell you ham salad is definitely out, out, out!”

All sweetness and light again, she confides to me. “Lesleee, dear, Burt and Cary are desperate to co-star with me. But all I think about is my frog. He’s here with me in Hollywood. We go out jaunting quite a bit — parties, premieres, things like that. And quiet evenings alone when I dismiss the servants. You dig what I mean?” She laughs coarsely.

“Could I ask you a personal question?” I wonder.

“Lay it on me,” says Miss Piggy, elegantly crossing her legs.

“Are you going to marry Kermit?” I ask.

“Oh, Lesleee, Lesleee, yes, marriage is something I certainly want, but I have my wonderful career. Kermit is always begging me to marry him. This little green thing crawling towards me saying ‘Please marry me’! It’s a sad sight. I find there’s a larger world out there wanting my talents. So I think I’ll just string the frog along for a while.”

The photographer arrives to take pictures of the two of us. Miss Piggy decides she would photograph better from my seat, so we swap places. “Jack, I want to see every single negative,” she orders the photographer. “Remember, Jack, I have picture approval.”

“Miss Piggy, have you achieved your ambition now that you’re a world-famous star in Hollywood?” I ask her.

“No, dear. I always knew I would be both successful and beautiful. I must forge on. It’s a large responsibility to be the glamour image of the decade.”

What about the competition from all the other glamorous superstars in Hollywood?

“Dear Raquel, dear Farrah,” coos Miss Piggy. “Sweet little girls, but no competition. They’re always asking me what I do for beauty, what I eat, if I exercise.”

“Could I ask you that?”

“Of course you can.”

“What do you do?”

“Get chased around by a frog,” she said. “What else?”

I take a deep breath and plunge in with my next question. “Everyone in Hollywood has a little cosmetic help — eyes lifted here, chin there. I wonder if you, er…”

Miss Piggy stops me with an icy stare. “Do you think I have?” she demands.

“Well, I can’t see any sign,” I stammer, looking at her hairline.

“I very strongly suggest that you don’t,” she thunders. “Next question.”

“How do you keep your marvellous figure?” I ask timidly.

“Some pigs have it, some pigs don’t. I’ve got it, kid,” she says, smoothing her hips. “I need hardly work at all to keep beautiful and trim. Maybe four or five hours a day at most.”

What about jogging, I ask. “Why, Lesleee?” she demands coldly. “Why would little moi need to jog? Think carefully before you answer.” Simply for enjoyment, I stutter. “No, I don’t do that for enjoyment, I do other things,” Miss Piggy says, leering vampishly. “You know what I mean, kid.”

I decide to risk another question. “In these modem times, I wonder if you and Kermit are co-habiting?” I ask innocently.

Miss Piggy flutters her lashes. “Co-whatting?” she simpers. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’m just a little woman. All I know is that nothing is more important than love, and that means my frog. Men come running after me. Running. Look at me… irresistible. I’ve had to get four new telephone numbers since I’ve been in this town. Men keep calling, tanned good-looking beach boys, but I’m just too busy.”

We’ve all heard stories about the Hollywood casting couch, I venture. “Oh, I’ve heard stories,” Miss Piggy says contemptuously. “But I feel a woman in today’s society does not have to be involved in that sort of thing. I am a star-studded talent. No one would dare try that with me. I do it if I feel like it. No, that’s a joke. Don’t print that, I’ll sue.”

She preens the feather in her turban, looks at her watch and smiles sweetly. “Time’s up, sweetie. Close the door on your way out.”

There’s one last question, I add hastily. “Everyone wants to know your age, your secret of looking like a teenager at your time of life.”

Her eyes freeze. “Lesleee, dear, it’s not that I’m shy about telling my age, I just feel that when one is a superstar, age doesn’t enter into it. Age is but an infinitesimal part of one’s make-up. The irridescence of being what I am is all that’s really important.”

That’s a lovely reply, I tell her, gritting my teeth. “Yes, wasn’t it? Thank you, dear, goodbyeee.”

As I close the door I hear her shriek at her publicity man: “What sort of question was that? Why didn’t you tell her I never discuss my age? Never, never! Why didn’t you stop her asking about face-lifts? If that happens again, you’re fired!”

The mumbled, soothing, sounds start up again …

The post The men in my life and the life in my men – by Miss Piggy appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

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Fred Robinson. Does the name ring a bell? It ought to with any ITV viewer. Fred has never appeared on TV, never received a screen credit. But he was frequently mentioned in such shows as Alfred Marks Time and Saturday Spectacular.

Scriptwriter Brad Ashton told me why. “My partner, Dick Vosburgh and I met Fred Robinson, and found he was a very funny writer. We mentioned him to several comics, but they weren’t interested. So we started a little campaign on his behalf by naming various characters in our comedy sketches Fred Robinson. It kept his name alive.”

Now Fred comes up with The Larkins, starring Peggy Mount and David Kossoff. After 10 years of spare-time scriptwriting, Fred recently gave up his job as a builders’ clerk to devote himself to full-time writing. So far he has written a few gags for radio and has had his comedy thriller, You Too Can Have a Body, successfully presented in the West End of London.

But the history of his Larkins’ characters goes back many years. “I used to write plays for an amateur group in Harringay, North London, and several plays were written around the Larkins family,” he said. “I haven’t changed the characters much, but I’ve written half-a-dozen new stories for TV.”

Cockney Fred, who lives at Hackney Downs (a London area that has provided show business with Alfred Marks and John Slater, not to mention Brad Ashton) has based his comedy ideas on a Cockney Mum and Dad.

“Ada is a dominant character, but her old man is by no means henpecked,” said Fred. “Alf fights back, but, of course, he can never win.”

Peggy Mount is the ideal choice for Ada. “When I read the scripts I thought they were just too good to miss,” she said, offering me home-made cakes in her Kensington flat. “Most Cockney stories aren’t much good. They are inclined to overwrite the Cockney with lots of ‘aints.’ These stories are real — all the things could happen in anybody’s home.”

Peggy, who sprang to fame as Cockney Emma Homett in the long-run stage success Sailor Beware, was born 42 years ago in Southend. Her mother used to take her to London to see shows about twice a year. “She wanted to go to musicals, but I always wanted to see straight plays,” said Peggy. A passionate interest in the theatre developed, and, while working as a shorthand typist, she took an interest in amateur dramatics. When she broke into the theatre — as an assistant stage manager — her secretarial training stood her in good stead: “They wanted some scripts typed, and they paid me about £10 for the main copy and £5 each for parts. I had never had so much money in my life. I made about £35 while working for about £4 a week.”

Once started as an actress, Peggy was never out of work. “I’ve always been plump, never very good looking — which was lucky or unlucky, whichever way you look at it. I’ve always been able to play characters. I was playing parts of 80 when I was 20. My face has always looked much the same, and I can easily play someone 15 or 20 years older. I can also look huge and fat because I have big shoulders to hang dresses from.

“I was working in repertory at Wolverhampton when the then manager and owner, Basil Thomas, asked me if I’d like to audition for a witch in Humpty-Dumpty at the London Palladium. Basil, I found out afterwards, had written the script.

“I was terrified of the idea of an audition at the Palladium in front of Charles Henry, who devises the shows, and Val Parnell. When I got there I was fascinated to watch the rehearsals, and a man put his arm round me and said he was glad to see me. Another man said: ‘Would you like to come to us, my dear?’ He told me to go up on the stage and say anything like a witch. I was petrified; didn’t know what to do. Then I remembered the first four lines of The Tinder Box, which I had played at Liverpool repertory two years before. I made a lot of witch-like noises, and the second man came up to me again and said ‘That was very nice, my dear.’

“By this time, I was so nervous I had to be carried off the stage. I found that the first man was Charles Henry and the second, Val Parnell.”

In the past few months Peggy made her debut in a television play, The Visit to Paradise Buildings, and followed it with Arsenic And Old Lace. At the first Arsenic rehearsal she met David Kossoff, who complimented her and told her: “I took this part only because I wanted to appear with you.”

This set Peggy thinking about The Larkins. She had accepted the Ada Larkins’ part and was at a loss to know who to suggest for the part of Alf. “I looked at Kossoff, and thought, well, why not? So I asked him if he was interested.”

Sitting among many carvings and ceramics — from Africa, Israel and Austria — in his Golders Green, London home, David Kossoff told me: “Like Peggy, I was beguiled by the scripts. All the writing has heart, a warm feeling.”

Both stars are insistent that this show’s comedy will be based on theatrical acting as opposed to music-hall gagging. The other principals in the regular cast are also experienced actors: Shaun O’Riordan (from Emergency — Ward 10) as son Eddie Larkins; Ronan O’Casey as son-in-law Jeff Rogers; Ruth Trouncer as daughter Joyce Rogers, and Hilary Bamberger as girl-next-door Myrtle Prout.

But to get back to Kossoff. “These days I’m principally known for foreign parts,” he told me, “though for six years on the radio I almost had a corner in Cockney characterisations.

“On television and films, I played plenty of foreigners but not one honest-to-good-ness Cockney — which is what I am. I, too, come from Hackney!”

The post Cor luv a duck! It’s The Larkins appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

1956

1957

1958

1959

The post 1950s appeared first on THIS IS ATV NETWORK from Transdiffusion.

Although the series was intended to cater for the younger viewer, the age groups of those who follow the adventures of Steve Zodiac, Venus and company range from 5 to 50 — and many more beyond.

Fireball XL 5 is a spaceship, the biggest of its type and over 300 feet in length. It is rocket-propelled. It can be away from its base for months at a time. Completely self-contained, it has living quarters for all its crew, with an ultra-modernistic lounge, observation window, a laboratory for research and an “astrascope”, which enables its crew to see in any conditions. It has a nose cone (“Fireball Junior”) which detaches itself from the main part of the spaceship and can make a landing while the spaceship continues in orbit.

Part of the equipment is a set of “jetmobiles”, the motor-cycles of the future, which can travel across any type of terrain, either on land or air-cushioned a few feet higher. They enable their riders to explore any of the planets being visited.

Fireball XL 5 is part of the World Space Patrol fleet. Each spaceship in the patrol controls a different area in outer space. The patrol’s base is Space City, on an island in the Pacific, a purely scientific establishment with a revolving skyscraper, enormous control-tower, laboratories and equipment for propelling the ships into space. Communication can be maintained between base and the spaceships patrolling outer space.

The new puppet characters which come to the TV screen in “Fireball XL 5″ are, like their popular predecessors in “Supercar”, electronically operated. Their heads are made of fibre glass and contain solenoid cells which automatically control their lip movements as they react to the vocal pitches of the human voices speaking the words. The voices are pre-recorded and played back from the control-room as the action is filmed, each wired to the respective puppet players.

The star of the stories is Steve Zodiac, blond, handsome, and in charge of Fireball XL 5. As he patrols a sector of the universe beyond the solar system, he has with him Professor Matthew Matic, a navigation mathematics genius, who has his own navigation bay in the spaceship. Also on board the spaceship is an attractive blonde, Venus, a doctor of space medicine, with her own laboratory in the craft. She possesses a fascinating Continental accent, and accompanies Steve Zodiac on his explorations and adventures.

Another of the regular characters is Robert the Robot, a transparent mechanical man and automatic pilot in the spaceship. He can walk — controlled by sound-waves. He has one particular eccentricity. If his orders are changed or anything goes wrong, he literally gets steamed up. The steam is set off electronically from his head!

Among the many other characters who come into the stories from episode to episode is a lovable animal called a “lazoon”, which comes from another planet.

Because of the out-of-this-world techniques needed for the series, the Andersons and their talented crew created a Special Effects studio, which was added to the existing studio and manned by a skilled team of experts in this aspect of film-making. This studio-within-a-studio is complete in every detail and proved capable of providing all the unique scenes required for the first-ever puppet series dealing with life in outer space in a hundred years’ time.

Space City was built in this studio, enabling close-ups to be shot of the spaceships being fired from their rocket bases and returning safely to land. The model-makers also created numerous planets, with their unusual surfaces shown in minutest detail.

Every type of special-effects procedure is carried out, and the “backroom” boys do a truly wonderful job of creating realistic explosions and planet atmospheres.

The stories in “Fireball XL 5” are thrill-packed. There have never been such unusual adventures on the TV screen. And each one is different. As the spaceship speeds through outer space on its normal patrol, anything may happen. It may run into unexpected trouble, or an urgent message may be flashed to it from base. Steve Zodiac never knows what may be in store for him. He has to intercept a missile which has been fired from an enemy planet and is powerful enough to blow up the whole earth. He explores mysterious underground caverns on a planet and meets weird Green Men who take him prisoner and also capture Venus. There is excitement when a space fuel tanker is being taken to other planets and space pirates come into action. Steve also has adventure in roughing up spies in space, and there was even an episode in which he met a space circus, complete with gipsies and caravans.

There is nothing horrific in the series. The thrills and adventures are achieved without resorting to bloodshed. When it is necessary, for instance, to overcome the occupiers of a planet, a ray gun is fired at them, but instead of this being a lethal weapon it fires coma rays which reduce the enemy to temporary unconsciousness. It has been the thinking of the planners of the programmes not to present Fireball XL 5 as a war machine, but rather as a vehicle used to patrol outer space and keep the peace.

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The essence of our civilised way of life in Britain is that, in theory at least, everyone is given the right to reply. That is what Parliament, with its elaborate system of debates, is all about.

That is the root of our judicial system — that no one is sentenced unheard. And that is what we mean in everyday conversation by the phrase, “Well, let him have his say.”

I have been struck recently by the number of personalities who seem suddenly to become the subject of attack because of some big issue in which they have become involved. The issue may concern politics, social affairs, the arts, or sport.

But the attack is so much louder and better publicised than the original statement that I often have felt I have come in half-way through the argument, and have never heard the beginning. What was it, I wonder, that stirred up all this fuss?

What I hope to do in this new programme, Right to Reply, is to get back to the real beginnings of an argument by giving those who have stimulated controversy the chance to re-state their case and meet their critics. I do not intend to make this a platform for scapegoats, or people with persecution mania. I want to make it a forum where men and women who are the standard-bearers of significant issues of our day may boldly and clearly reply to criticism, misunderstanding and opposition. Their Right to Reply will involve the freedom to state their own case without being badgered.

I believe that television offers an ideal medium for this sort of exercise. The British Press has an honourable record for allowing anyone they attack directly to reply, but equally there is a tradition that the reply is only a correction of facts. It is not easy to argue back with a newspaper. On TV, the reply can be direct; the two sides can meet and argue together.

It often happens that someone who is attacked by three or four newspapers is praised by two or three others. If he is a hardened public figure, or if he is a rather timid person unused to public controversy, he will shrug his shoulders and say, “That is as fair as I will get.”

But how many people read ALL the newspapers? Very few, and so they may get only one side of the argument. Right to Reply will give a better chance to know both sides, because I shall always make sure viewers are told the case to which a reply is demanded.

What sort of people will take part? I hope there will be two or three currently controversial personalities in each programme. Most of us are interested not only in political argument but in the way people live and the sort of entertainment they enjoy.

I would like to sec a film producer replying to the critics of his film, telling us what he really was trying to do; or a striker replying to public criticism; or a football player explaining just what did go wrong. A reply by someone who has been sharply criticised often tells more than all the critics have done.

I believe we should be brave, too, and let people from outside Britain, who are criticised as unfriendly to this country, have their say. Seeing ourselves as others see us is good, healthy exercise and I feel sure the people of Britain will never resent hearing the case of their own critics, or even their enemies.

Democracy thrives on the Right to Reply.

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“On the Braden Beat”, as far as television viewers are concerned, is a one-man show. That man is the Canadian-born actor Bernard Braden.

Braden describes his 20-minute programme as “a type of journalistic column of the little screen”. As such the main aim of the show is topicality. An item of news which has caught Braden’s eye can be commented on in a way which is essentially Bradenesque: searching, biting, sympathetic, as the occasion demands—and if it deserves the full impact of the Braden-type humour, then it gets it!

An experienced man of the stage, radio and TV, Bernard Braden can be, in turn, author, poet, composer — as well as displaying his natural talents as a mimic and entertainer.

In his attitude to life Braden has two definite and constantly underlined dislikes: discrimination (whether on grounds of race, religion or politics) and the exploitation of the little man. Much of the material he has featured in his programmes has its origin in these deep-founded beliefs. And he likes nothing better than to learn of examples of these from the very people to whom he speaks through his show.

Braden does not set himself up as a preacher, nor as a corrector of wrongs, but he honestly believes that, by bringing what he considers to be malpractices—whether of landlords, big business, politicians, civil servants or merely smart-Alec door-to-door salesmen—to the attention of the general public he will have done something to rectify a wrong.

Braden likes people. His programmes prove this, for it is essentially about people and what he thinks will interest them that is his governing approach to the planning of each programme.

From his relaxed position behind the big desk into which he slumps in a cloud of cigarette smoke at the beginning of each show he waxes, seemingly at random, about topics of the day which are currently occupying the attention of most of his viewers. He gives his opinion on new books, films, gramophone records, new styles of fashion, personalities in the news, incidents which have caught the public imagination.

But there is no random approach to the content of a programme. For the five days preceding each show Braden and his team of four writers will have been out and about — in pubs, clubs, offices, shops, meeting the people whose interests are mirrored in the programme, finding out what they are talking about and what is currently interesting them most.

With humbug and officiousness Braden is particularly scathing. Using a special talent for mickey-taking, where music and words can be married to tear away the last vestige of false respectability, ht has perfected a means of writing lyrics to popular songs which he sings while “doctored” photographs of some special subject whom he wishes to expose or hold up to ribaldry appear on the screen. It is often an embarrassing experience for the person under fire, but it is never undertaken purely with malicious intent. The presentation is always amusing, reflecting technique in its concept and presentation, and if behind the humour and impact the Braden message comes through, then this more than satisfies the author.

When Bernard Braden is “On the Braden Beat” anything is fair game for comment. This is how Braden likes it, and judging by the popularity of his , programme it is also to the liking of the millions who make a point of staying up late to be with him on one night of every week as he looks at life and all that goes to make it up.

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