"The James Whale Radio Show", a mixture of the occasionally sublime and the more often seedy
There was a kind of inevitability, however, that once late night TV (usually under the umbrella title of 'Night Time') was fully established, there would be the temptation for more explicit, dubious material to be broadcast that both the programme makers and TV bosses hoped would be barely noticed by the regulators and moral arbiters, as such would not be watching at such an ungodly hour, except for semi or fully drunken youths who would revel in such sleaze. Maybe the most prominent, but not certainly the most distinguished example of such was the ironically titled "The James Whale Radio Show", broadcast live from the early days of 'Night Time' in 1988 until the mid 90's, starring DJ James Whale at Yorkshire TV Studios in Leeds. (Whale had been working for some years at the city's main independent station, Radio Aire).
Whale's radio persona was that of a confrontational, voluble, rude and belligerent ringmaster, not afraid to berate callers to his show if they displeased him, or cut them off instantly by a quick flick of a control or volume button. The TV version of his radio talk show followed a similar pattern, looking as though it was actually being filmed in a radio rather than TV studio (it wasn't made clear whether this was used as mere effect), with frequent forays into what appeared to be be the main reception lobby at the Yorkshire TV studios. The show itself comprised a mixture of contemporary pop videos and serious debates with various politicians, public figures and celebrities of the day, and to be fair, some of these debates worked quite well, with Whale showing himself a decent interviewer and linkman at his best, with subjects such as the monarchy and disabled rights alternating rather uncertainly with showbiz style interjections featuring the increasingly unfashionable Bernard Manning as one example; Manning actually appeared on the programme more than once, in a period when the alternative comedy brigade, who by this time had taken over the mantle from more traditionalist, mainstream comics on TV, and had all but killed the racist and sexist humour that was Manning's trademark.
The best interview and maybe the best ever moment from the series' history was an interview with Spike Milligan who spoke about his mental health struggles, a remarkably frank and compassionate piece of television with Whale showing immense empathy and understanding over Milligan's manic depression and getting the deeply troubled comic genius to open up seriously (albeit injected with some typically well-timed comic one-liners) in a way he had never really expressed before in public. Even as recently as the 90's, this was still a period where depression and other forms of mental illness were rarely discussed in public or the media, or indeed taken seriously by the NHS, treating it as a taboo subject and an embarrassment to be swept under the carpet, with stigma, ignorance and prejudice still all too frequent before more enlightened attitudes and lobbying from mental health campaigners and charities broke down such barriers. So Whale deserves much credit for such an interview in an era when such a subject was still treated as an excuse to make cheap jokes, or to just dismiss as a made up lifestyle choice; Whale's line of questioning is perfectly judged and never inappropriate or offensive, and Milligan appears to appreciate his interviewer's sympathetic, sensitive attitudes and responds fluently, honestly and movingly. A piece of television that is totally compelling from beginning to end, obscenely underrated and may in fact have started the process of looking at mental illness from a new, less ignorant perspective in the years ahead.
Spike Milligan speaks movingly about his manic depression in a memorable interview with James Whale
Yet a sublime peak such as this was a rarity, and Whale more often than not teetered his show into the kind of boorish confrontation that confirmed his not always spotless reputation, walking out in the middle of one show in a rage, and letting the singer Sinitta rather haplessly take over in his absence, although he admitted in his autobiography years later that this was a deliberately pre-arranged stunt to bolster up some media hype (which got some attention from the tabloids). There were appearances from very risque female dancers in scanty, fetishistic costumes in several shows, and an infamous appearance from Wayne Hussey of the rock group The Mission, heavily drunk or worse, swearing profusely, with Whale having to forcefully remove Hussey from the set when the attempted interview collapsed into chaos. On a few occasions, Whale phoned up some well-known celebrities (having obtained their numbers by dubious means) on the mere pretence of irritating them, and let us not forget his pretty young female assistant Donna, a mute and rather stereotypical portrayal of a subversive, blonde bimbo. Various hoax callers turned serious debates into farce by shouting obscenities when put through live, which perhaps led the the series' end as Whale became a victim of his own penchant for conflict for the sake of it by the mid 90's; a further similar series followed in 1996 but this was pre-recorded with no live calls taken anymore after the embarrassing potty-mouthed interjections that had led to the previous series' demise, with Whale now coming across as more subdued and restricted, and he soon returned to his more natural home of the radio talk show, where he stills causes controversy in the present, after making inappropriate remarks and responses to a woman who claimed she had been "orally raped" in a phone call.He was suspended but later reinstated as host of his show.
Whale's show was certainly not 100% trash or sensationalism across the board, and indeed was very capable of intelligent, informative debate at its best, with the host a fine interviewer when the situation demanded, but there were lapses of taste and control rather too often for comfort, which were about to get worse and more excessive in other late night programming as the 90's turned into a new century, and would begin to seep even into programmes in peak time viewing.
Death On The Rock (1988): Did this hard-hitting investigative documentary inadvertently start the process of 'Trash TV'?
Perversely, it could be argued that the main catalyst for the culture of 'Trash TV' in Britain was not a programme that featured any kind of gross sensationalism or distasteful exaggeration at all. Quite the contrary in fact; a very serious, persuasive but highly controversial investigative documentary ('Death On The Rock') from Thames Television's respected 'This Week' series (the Southern equivalent to the somewhat more revered 'World In Action' series from Granada TV) about the shootings of three IRA operatives in Gibraltar in March 1988, who were thought to be planning a bomb attack.
I won't go too much into the details involved, but the main argument was were any warnings given by SAS soldiers before they opened fire, if the IRA members were armed themselves and exchanged fire with the SAS, and if they were about to detonate a bomb. The official line from Margaret Thatcher's government was the IRA did open fire and were ready to detonate a bomb; 'Death On The Rock', broadcast just a few weeks after the incident, claimed the IRA were unarmed, that no bomb was present and the SAS shot them dead without warning, with witness statements supporting such evidence, contradictory to the official government line.
It had not been the first occasion that British TV had incurred the wrath of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980's. The BBC had been her main bone of contention beforehand, particularly in a General Election debate with members of the public on the 'Nationwide' programme in 1983, where a schoolteacher, Diana Gould, took issue with Thatcher on the sinking of the Argentine warship 'General Belgrano' during the Falklands conflict the previous year. Thatcher was the supremely dominant political figure during the 80's, with huge parliamentary majorities at her disposal, and an allegedly dictatorial manner in her overwhelmingly male cabinet. So to see a relatively unheralded schoolteacher of around the same age disagreeing and berating her live on National TV and unable to take appropriate action (such as ignoring or sacking such a miscreant) was an unexpected humiliation. The Nationwide editor, Roger Bolton, later recalled an ill-tempered contretemps between him, Thatcher, and her husband Denis, whose views were even more right-wing than his wife, apparently supporting the Apartheid regime in South Africa (as he had business interests in the country) and accusing the BBC of being 'pinkos', 'poofs' and 'trots' amongst other insults. It may or may not have been a coincidence that Nationwide was cancelled from BBC 1's evening schedules just a few months later.
Curiously enough, Bolton was the editor on 'Death On The Rock' five years later, proving to be Thatcher's nemesis again, although this time the repercussions were to be far more serious, and arguably irreparable, for British broadcasting. The government lobbied both Thames and the powerful regulatory broadcasting body at the time, the IBA, for the programme not to be shown, but both organisations refused to yield, and the battle lines were drawn; the staunchly Thatcherite press predictably launched propagandist counterattacks on the programme, notably via character assassinations against the most prominent eye witness featured on the documentary, Carmen Proetta (who was later paid damages for such stories), and including Roger Bolton himself, who also won damages and an apology after untruthful allegations were published in the Daily Mail.
The IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority) was an early casualty of the 'Death On The Rock' controversy
Although Death On The Rock won the BAFTA award for Best Documentary, Thatcher and her allies in the cabinet saw the programme as an act of treason, and hardened their attitudes towards a proposed new Broadcasting Bill, loosening regulatory controls over quality and content, opening up competition, expanding choice (i.e. more channels) and bringing in market forces, all quintessential aspects of Thatcherism. This and other similar proposals were put forward in the 1990 Broadcasting Act, which was duly passed, one of the last statute bills passed in the Thatcher government before she was brusquely removed by her own MP's near the end of that year.An independent inquiry viewed the programme had been fair in its conclusions, but as the late Ray Fitzwalter (the Editor-in-Chief of Granada's 'World In Action' for many years) stated in his book "The Dream That Died: The Rise and Fall of ITV", the writing was now on the wall for quality television as the spectre of deregulation, sensationalism and profit was about to replace intelligence, integrity and independent thought:
"Death On The Rock proved to be a high point for the IBA.They had stood up to a government that sought to censor, even publicly defending the programme before Thames, the company that had made it...[but] this was regarded as the death knell for the IBA...the government would replace it with a 'lighter touch' body...The loss of the Authority's powers over the quality of the ITV schedule would prove one of the most damaging aspects of the law eventually passed in 1990. Deregulation would promote a collapse in standards."
That process began in earnest with the abolition of the IBA at the beginning of 1991, replaced by the much less powerful ITC (Independent Television Commission), and Thames lost their franchise to broadcast the following year, the price that was paid for Death On The Rock and its challenge to the establishment. Around the same time, David Plowright was ousted as the chairman of Granada, replaced as he was by Gerry Robinson and Charles Allen as the main men in charge, who after gaining power clearly were more interested in making a profit above all else, that actual quality programming. The integral standards of Plowright, Denis Forman, and the company's founder Sidney Bernstein, were now a thing of the past as Fitzwalter stated:
"[Plowright's] dismissal was a symptom of a crisis that had been developing in Brirish broadcasting and from which it never recovered as regulation was weakened and raw commercial forces were let loose."
Allen himself had a specific request by John Cleese at the time of his Granada takeover to "F*** Off out of it, you upstart caterer..." (a reference to previous business interests). With the benefit of hindsight, Cleese's advice should have been heeded, but Allen, Robinson, and others throughout the ITV regions remained long enough to change the basic thesis of British TV, that of profit over quality. Never mind if such broadcasting is sleazy, exploitative, unintelligent, tabloidal or sensationalist, as long as it brings the money in and incredulous viewers, it has done as what is said on the tin.
The Word, the notorious 'yoof' magazine programme from Channel 4 that perhaps really began the descent into 'Trash TV'
The process of 'trashification' really started with the notorious Youth-orientated magazine show 'The Word' on Channel 4, around the same time that the 1990 Broadcasting Act was being passed in Westminster. Inept interviews by Manc-in-residence Terry Christian were the least of its problems; "Wannabes" who would do absolutely anything to get on TV, such as licking sweaty armpits and french kissing elderly women, made the previous excesses of OTT eight years earlier seem like a children's birthday party that had lemonade as its strongest drink, but the process was somewhat gradual, as Madchester in the early 90's and Britpop in the mid-late part of the decade were at least cultural fightbacks, albeit musical and very little to do with television itself, though at least the main players were prominently featured on the box when both movements took off. But such excesses were now beginning to make their presence felt as the 90's progressed, not especially at peak-time viewing, but late-night as 24 hours a day programming had begun on ITV early in 1988. It initially consisted of repeats of American TV shows from the 60's such as 'Route 66', 'The Fugitive', 'I Spy', 'Time Tunnel' and others, innocuous quiz shows, job adverts, Classical Hollywood films and obscure low-budget British 'B' movies usually from the 50's and 60's, some of which were rather interesting in a cultish sort of way, particularly the slightly nasty if suspenseful 'Cover Girl Killer' (1959), featuring Harry H Corbett in his pre-Steptoe days, as a serial killer of young fashion models, with one of them, played by Christina Gregg (a model in real life), having a heartbreaking impact in the film's most effective scene; this lower-rent hybrid of Michael Powell's controversial 'Peeping Tom', which was released at around the same time, became a familiar staple of these early days of late night TV, and in truth was showing some promise with its quirky variety and diversity, sometimes actually more interesting than peak time TV in this period, with perhaps the most diverting show on offer being the often very funny American sitcom 'Sledge Hammer', made in 1987-88, a clever parody that mostly utilised Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry series of movies, but also other subjects such as Peter Weir's 'Witness' (1985) and Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' (1958). The blond and handsome comic actor David Rasche gave a wickedly accurate impersonation of Eastwood's Harry persona, with the beautiful Canadian actress Anne Marie Martin a worthy foil (although for some years before she was billed under her real name of Edmonda 'Eddie' Benton), with Harrison Page as the irascible Captain Trunk, hating Hammer's methods and barely able to cope with them, in a slightly over-the-top portrayal which became more restrained and more enjoyable as the series went on. ITV appeared to have successfully conflated a mixture of the retro and the present in the late 80's and early 90's with this late night/very early morning broadcasting, and all seemed to be boding well. Or at least that's what we thought at this stage, not forgetting 'The Hit Man and Her' of course, an excuse to mainly promote music from host Pete Waterman's stable in various tacky nightclubs around the country with the help of a young Michaela Strachan.
'Sledge Hammer' (1987-88), perhaps the best show to emerge from the early days of ITV's 24 hour programming
"Tomorrow I'll be berating multi-billionaires over their tax affairs (and personal affairs if our legal advisers allow us)"
The demise of "The Jeremy Kyle Show" last month probably justified my long break from writing about all things TV. It is now well documented that one of the participants committed suicide after failing the show's infamous lie detector test, which was too much for TV bosses after nearly one and a half decades' worth of mocking, sneering, provocation, aggression and occasional violence involving the incredulous underclasses, all MC'eed by its well-educated, middle class host, displaying his special brand of moral superiority.
In truth, the programme should never have been considered for broadcast in the first place. We all thought the excesses of American talk/debate shows like that of Jerry Springer would never adorn our small screens, didn't we? But the London-born Springer is actually a first-class presenter/writer/journalist and his show often came across as a self-conscious parody despite the chaos that often took place, with his inevitable 'final thought' in the end.
The concept of the parallel talk/debate show was extant well before Kyle, Springer, Phil Donahue or Kilroy. David Frost brought this kind of thinking onto television as early as the 60's, and considerable controversy sometimes followed even then. Publisher Felix Dennis was thought to have been the first person to say the C word on British TV during a live broadcast in 1970, much to Frost's chagrin, and three years earlier, he was accused of encouraging 'Trial by Television' when confronting the insurance fraudster Emil Savundra, with a number of his clients in the audience that had been defrauded. Savundra contemptuously described such as "peasants", but it was obvious Frost had won this particular battle with the cries of "Well done Frostie!" ringing in his ears at the programmes' end.
An increasingly fractious Emil Savundra on "The Frost Programme" (1967)
It's interesting that such a programme brought an individual who had accumulated wealth via criminal behaviour to be shouted at and berated by its host and the audience (Savundra was tried, convicted and jailed shortly afterwards for his crimes), but this was 1967 when such depictions had never really been screened before, with the vain, egotistical Savundra presumably thinking he could sail through such a facade flawlessly, but the clever and well-informed Frost had other ideas . The millionaires and billionaires of the present day are now too worldly wise to even remotely consider such an enterprise, crooked or otherwise. Any media appearances are rare or carefully stage-managed, if they bother to say anything in public at all, so having a host ask them about their financial or tax affairs along with a hostile audience is simply a pipe dream, and if they did, legal action would certainly follow suit. So the easiest solution is to search for uneducated lower class oiks with no money and exploit their incredulity by sneering at their immoral personal lives and reinforce stereotypes of lazy, promiscuous, aggressive and violent scroungers and skivers who deserve our scorn and don't deserve money off the welfare state. Kyle and his producers knew exactly what they were doing, and were given carte blanche by ITV bosses regarding such freak shows. I myself had brief contact with the programme when a mature student at university, not to watch but to help other fellow students who expressed an interest in attending recordings. Several problems ensued, and the show rather brusquely told me they didn't want any more contact. It was rather typical of the contemptuous attitudes the programme encouraged in its lengthy 3,000 shows plus existence, so seeing it taken off the air for tragic reasons described means that it got its well overdue comeuppance in the end after years of complacency and arrogance. If we were to look a generation or so back at how it used to be on morning/daytime TV, the contrasts are like being from another universe. The schedule for Yorkshire TV from May 23 1975 is sedate, mild, uncontroversial, perhaps dull, but thankfully inoffensive; no Breakfast TV, just Schools programmes from 9.30 am until 12 noon, followed by a few innocuous children's shows from Granada TV, a light entertainment show, then two short international and local news broadcasts, followed by another Granada programme, the much-missed and near legendary "Crown Court". This was an era when the unions were all powerful with stagflation and industrial unrest signalling the last stages of the Keynesian post-war consensus, so any remote possibility of a Kyle-like dressing down of the working classes at this time was a way-out fantasy, though it eventually came into fruition three decades later when trade union influence was all but dead, corporatism had replaced industrialism, and deregulated TV was now a sponsored, money-making commodity of hundreds of channels rather than a carefully regulated collection of just three channels (ITV, BBC 1 and 2), a communal not fragmented viewing experience.
After the Kyle controversy, one may have thought ITV would have looked twice or more at last year's ratings champion "Love Island". There have been two suicides that could be directly associated to the programme by former contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis, or perhaps even a third, if the suicide of Ms Gradon's grief-stricken partner may also be taken into account shortly after her passing. This programme and Kyle claim to have after care and psychological support mechanisms for those more vulnerable participants, but in these days of Social Media that can easily have hundreds if not thousands of media trolls berating such with vicious personal abuse, and the return to ordinary life after being under a national microscope, it appears such support has failed. The programme makers desire for increased hype and viewing figures is deemed more of importance than the well-being of discarded participants. What is the criteria of psychological profiling in the application process? Are vulnerable individuals told it would be in their own interests to be rejected? There have been obvious failures in such a process, and even the technicians union, BECTU, are now expressing their concerns behind the scenes, implying they could ask members not to operate cameras and walk away if other similar tragic incidents happen again.
Both programmes and others have been accused of encouraging the penchant of 'Trash TV' on our screens, particularly since the dawn of the 21st Century. The origins of so-called Trash TV are not entirely clear. In TV's apparent golden age of the 60's and 70's, there was certainly classic and seminal TV, but it was mostly dull if not disposable television that was broadcast. Trash and sensationalism were virtually non-existent, aside from the odd lapse into nudity and bad language being broadcast live (the most notorious example being the interview between Bill Grundy and The Sex Pistols in 1976). Perhaps the first genuine stirrings were in 1982 with the 'adult' version of the childrens' show 'TISWAS, namely the controversial 'OTT', both made in Birmingham, with much of the same cast (Chris Tarrant, Lenny Henry, John Gorman). The crude slapstick of the former, mainly comprising buckets of water thrown over anybody or anyone in sight, came across as anarchic and actually well-timed punctuation; in the latter more explicit counterpart that followed, it appeared like the stupid, drink-fuelled antics of youths on an Ibiza bender, with the added distraction of custard powder being mixed in with water and scantily-clad young women mostly on the receiving end. Yet in the midst of predictable outrage, Clive James, perhaps the most respected TV critic of the time, praised it in his Observer column as "..a real television breakthrough...the...performance from the OTT dance group Greatest Show on Legs was one of the funniest routines I have ever seen on television" (i.e. when the naked men involved covered up their intimate regions with rapidly deflating balloons). James perhaps envisaged the future of TV as his opinion on the show was very much against the grain of general thought; OTT was soon cancelled after further disgust was expressed, but the show was clearly ahead of its time.
Growing up as a child in the 70's, the Christmas holidays meant just two things; spending most of Christmas Day with my parents and grandparents, then waiting with breathless anticipation for the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in the evening when Gran and Grandad departed. I could never understand why they never bothered to stay and watch Eric and Ernie with me and my Mum and Dad, but they always insisted on being taken home around 6pm for some reason, maybe to watch the show on their own monochrome telly, more baffling as we were technologically advanced now in renting a colour TV from the mid-70's onwards.
Eric and Ernie never failed to disappoint, as this was undoubtedly the most prestigious and lavish BBC production of its given year, with big star names, glossy musical numbers, elaborate production values, and guaranteed fun and entertainment. This was a programme that could turn TV viewing into a genuinely national and communal experience, alongside the other Xmas versions of top BBC light entertainment shows like The Generation Game, The Mike Yarwood Show, amd Top Of The Pops. This would be the proverbial icing on the cake after millions of families celebrated Christmas, giving their presents and enjoying their Christmas meal, where 20 million viewers or more would sit down with virtual tunnel-like vision for just over an hour from around 8 in the evening, expecting if not insisting to be amused and entertained by the nation's favourite funnymen. And we were.
Their final show for the BBC, in 1977, was poignant personally for several reasons. It of course marked the end of a classic era as the final M&W show for the corporation, the final truly happy Xmas I spent with close family as the sands of time began to catch up with my grandfather the following year (he would die in 1980; my grandmother two years later), and perhaps the last great hurrah for mainstream British TV humour, allegedly watched by over 28 million viewers, but the actual number has been disputed in recent years, reducing to as low as 21 million by other sources.The fast talking, saucy, variety-style humour did of course continue throughout the 80's and beyond, but alternative comedy was just round the corner, based more on mordant, anti-establishment, political and satirical elements, mainly performed by public school and university graduates who eschewed racist and sexist attitudes, but employed blatant vulgarity and profanity as a counterpoint. As it turned out, when Eric and Ernie moved to Thames TV, their shows lacked the production and writing quality than that of the BBC, and so began a steady decline, which was not painful to watch as they were still funny, but not as before as Eric's health was deteriorating after a second heart attack, and his timing was clearly less sharp, more blunted than their 70's peak. Other contemporaries such as Dick Emery and Tommy Cooper were also affected by declining health, as both died around the same period as Eric did in the early-mid 80's. Others such as Benny Hill were now looking outdated and anachronistic, and were even being publicly criticised by premier figures in the alternative scene like Ben Elton for deliberately bawdy badinage and stereotyped views of young women.
In the coming year, it will be 35 years since Eric's death, and 20 years since his partner Ernie's; their comic style rooted in the latter 20th Century. Having read various opinions and blogs in recent years, it is now obvious that Morecambe and Wise are still loved and appreciated, but not universally as they were four decades ago. It should be stated that many of their TV shows will appear very dated to Millennial audiences who will be a trifle baffled at the lack of deliberately crude and vulgar material and foul language, as they were never interested in making political or satirical statements, just simply wanting to make people laugh, with a dash of cheeky innuendo but no more allusions to edgier or explicit material, which made them ideal for mainstream, family humour, which has all but vanished from British TV screens in the 21st Century.
The first series they made for the BBC, in 1968, was written by their writers for their ITV series, Hills and Green, and most of the shows were lost until two full episodes were recently found in the African nation of Sierra Leone, of all places. Restored and colourised, they were shown on Boxing Day on BBC2 for the first time in 50 years, and reading the various comments made by reviewers and bloggers, not to universal acclaim, as the shows are more interesting historically than comedically.
Having now watched both, it is obvious that Hills and Green fell below the standards of the writer that would begin working for them the following year, Eddie Braben. Their comic characterisations are rather two dimensional and conventional; Eric is gauche and gormless and Ernie as the disapproving straight man. Another negative is the presence of Hills and Green themselves, who are dull, ineffectual foils and appear in several sketches, such as one set in a flat, where they would have been better being totally absent. The opening crosstalk two-handers aren't too bad, and Eric predictably handles some one liners with his usual aplomb, but this is definitely a case of the comedians in transitional mode as the material is often forced and drawn out (a fault of previous sketches in their ITV days), their characters still not properly developed, with some aimless, slapdash handling and for them, some rather atypical and dubious material, including a joke about a Jewish wedding and a full sketch about the IRA which would appear horribly misguided and outdated barely months later when the troubles began to really take a tragic hold in Northern Ireland. The production values also look very shoddy, as this was a period still before they truly became national superstars, as little money seems to have been spent with some very obvious gaps, and cracks, in the scenery.
One plus point is Michael Aspel, who gives an assured and confident performance in the kind of musical sketch which would be expanded and improved in the 70's; it is affected by the cheesy art direction that afflicts both shows. It is obvious Morecambe and Wise were just finding their feet at this time, as they were plenty of funny moments, but the best was yet to come, although not in a way that they would have liked, as Eric, who is seen to smoke cigarettes on a few occasions, had a major heart attack shortly after the first series finished, and Hills and Green, thinking that Eric would not be able to commit fully to another series, promptly resigned as their writers. Eddie Braben stepped into the fray and deepened their characterisations; Eric became less naive and a bit tougher; Ernie turned into a pompous, affected, egotistical playwright with delusions of grandeur. This led to sharper, more focused scripts, with more emphasis on character rather than jokes (although the latter was still heavily employed). The flat sketches now just had them instead of pointless interjections from Hills and Green, which strengthened the comedy considerably, even sharing a double bed as their inspirational heroes Laurel and Hardy did. Braben was the writer who found them their comic niche, and after a few stumbles along the way, the 1971 series with Glenda Jackson as Cleopatra, plus the same year's Xmas show with Andre Previn (or Preview) and Shirley Bassey had them really hitting their comic stride, and they kept this consistency going to high levels until they departed from the BBC, after the 1977 Xmas Show.
So these two shows from 1968 are an interesting historical document, though not consistently funny as they were still a few years from their artistic and comedic peak, but they are still worth a look with some fine moments, just brought down by the aforementioned disadvantages that would soon be ironed out and discarded by circumstances, some of them lucky but others not so, as Eric's heart trouble would continue to plague him and led to his untimely death in 1984, aged 58.
I have a confession to make; I am utterly out of place as a decided non-millennial as the quintessential grumpy old man, not necessarily baffled by technology or decrying laptops or mobile phones, using them like the next man yet dispirited by their essential dehumanising soullessness. I concede I quite like Facebook, but Twitter and Instagram are out of bounds, the former a mere excuse for banal, pointless banter or (more disturbingly) vicious abuse, where many public figures, celebs, politicians et al who pre-internet were mostly insulted behind their backs or out of range, now have to put up with the most appalling, vituperative, ugly comments that now veer into genuine threats of harm to the individual, as sinister or threatening phone calls for example (of which I suffered periodically) appear an anachronism, as greater cans of worms are now open and available to people who think as such. My late father was a photography enthusiast for decades in a period when it was quite rare for someone like himself to have sophisticated camera equipment, as innumerable friends and acquaintances often harangued him to take portraits of their family or cover special events. He was unable towards the end of his life to keep up with digital technology, although the sands of time were sadly catching up with him by this stage. He did not live long enough to witness Instagram, which is no bad thing as it overwhelmingly proves several stark issues, one of them being it is an excuse for vacuous young wannabees to show of their shapely bodies, but not their intellectual prowess, as proved by the monotonous drivel accompanying such portraits and selfies in the comments section ("GR8" "LUV U BABES!") by various panting admirers, and the plain fact that, as I and my Dad always knew, 99.9% of the world's population are absolutely awful photographers and should not be let anywhere near any kind of camera, still or video.
And here's a more startling confession: I handed in my TV licence to the operating centre in Bristol five years ago, and have never been remotely tempted in the period since to have it back, despite some mildly threatening correspondence that keeps on implying wrongly that I avidly watch a choice of several hundred channels a day, vainly trying to trace through the morass of technology just one solitary programme that may be the diamond in the rough, all for the sake of £150 per year, or if I was really a miserly skinflint, £50.50 for a black and white set, eschewing ultra-widescreen telly in full HD, which embarrassingly shows up the wrinkled, pock-marked, crater-filled visages of various male/female presenters.actors and celebs whom we once thought of possessing flawless, baby-like skins and complexions. They would still appear glamorous on good old monochrome presumably, of which there are 7,000 households that steadfastly refuse to move with the times.
So I am bitter and twisted regarding social media, laptops and the unending distraction of i-phones, where it seems every other person walking down the street or on public transport is more concerned in texting or sending a message to some loved one in Mongolia or Manchester than interacting with specimens of humanity alongside them who are probably doing the same thing, turning us all into cold, dead-eyed automatons.
Yet what really enrages me now is the state of TV, more accurately British TV. Why should I be since my licence to watch has long since departed? Hypocrite, you ask? Well yes, to a certain point, but I still am forced to stare reluctantly at the box when I visit friends or go into pubs or various other public places, or watch programmes on video sharing websites such as YouTube. Though again I should be described as a dyed-in-the-wool hypocrite as I mainly watch small extracts if I can be bothered of contemporary TV, and wallow in indulgent nostalgia when watching the shows of my childhood throughout the 1970's, or on DVD.
Were the Seventies the Golden Age of Television?, as asked by the journalist, author and sometime TV and film critic Brian Viner about the time his book "Nice To See It, To See It Nice" was published a decade ago, an amusingly self-deprecating, anecdotal, but mostly detailed and informative essay in watching television during his formative years in the seaside resort of Southport in the 70's, a place familiar to me in that period as I often went for day trips there with my family, being of the same generation as Viner himself (born in the 60's), so can perhaps agree that the much maligned decade of oil shocks, inflation, and industrial unrest represented the medium at its artistic peak.
I seem to recall a survey that may have been organised by the BBC that had its participants indeed vote the 70's as their favourite era of British TV, with the 2000's apparently as their least favourite. Yet the description "Best" could be easily interpreted as a contradiction of terms, and should be interpreted with caution. Being lucky enough to watch TV in my formative years during the decade, I would agree television was perhaps at its cultural and artistic apex, though I was a young child at the time and too tender in years to see more adult-orientated dramas, documentaries and comedies, having to catch up on them from the late teens onward to fully appreciate their quality. There were of course just three mainstream channels at the time, with an average day on BBC 1 and ITV (The Granada region in my case) broadcasting around 12 hours a day, with BBC 2 starting their main schedules from 7pm in the evening for five hours if the viewer was lucky, with colour TV licences only starting to outnumber black and white equivalents from 1976, with then major technological advances such as home video recorders only starting to become available to the public towards the end of the decade and the early 80's.
And this was the "Golden Age of Television" you ask again? Viner himself explained "less meant more [quality]", and he was possibly right. Another description which is more accurate, perhaps, is that less television meant less bad television. The classic shows from the period indeed do represent British TV at its very best, but don't get the idea that every single programme was a well-crafted masterpiece as there still was an awful lot of disposable junk, dull wallpaper-type TV presented by stolid and uncharismatic presenters, and sitcoms and sketch shows that were enjoyed by millions that that have dated badly and are virtually unwatchable nearly five decades on, examples of which I hope to touch on in the next part of this personal essay.
I also will refer to some of the most erudite, pithy, witty, but respected and revered TV critics and writers of their respective eras whenever possible: Clive James (70's-early 80's), Victor Lewis-Smith (90's-2000's), Charlie Brooker (2000's), and other relevant writers such as Joe Moran, Ray Fitzwalter, and the aforementioned Brian Viner, adding embellishments to their informed and intelligent observations on the medium as to support the conclusion that yes, modern TV is generally "awful" and has long seen its best days, though with constructive suggestions that may bring a revival of higher standards again.
It is not just the mainstream channels, but the interminable number of freeview and prescribed TV stations that have a grim and relentless obsession with the medium's most prominent contribution to 21st Century culture, namely Reality TV. I will discuss this so-called phenomenon of the digital age in another post in due course, but in brief detail, this has arguably if not conclusively brought down standards of quality and taste since the dawn of the millennium, though the first stirrings of such a decline made their presence felt in the 1990's as the new Broadcasting Act, brought in at the decade's beginning and one of then PM Margaret Thatcher's last pieces of legislation, gradually started to make its impact, and what is generally agreed, a very negative impact at that, which again will be a subject of more detailed discussion later.
To conclude the preliminaries, let us discuss a TV play written by Nigel Kneale and first broadcast in July 1968, The Year of the Sex Olympics, and the reality TV dating show, "Love Island", which was a considerable ratings hit for ITV 2 this summer. So what does a 50 year-old play by a highly respected sci-fi writer have to do with a quintessentially modern reality TV show? More than you would think actually, as Kneale's dystopian satire predicted with uncanny accuracy the future craze for reality TV, as the play opens with a hyperactive female host Misch (Vickery Turner) presenting various photogenic young couples in "Sportsex" ("Tonight, and every night...", as the continuity announcer explains), an interactive show where the viewers vote in and nominate their favourite couples in the act of love, as the TV executives (Brian Cox, Leonard Rossiter), known as the "High Drives" observe the apathetic reactions via CCTV of the viewers (The Low Drives), which seems to be achieving the desired affect of putting them off sex and therefore controlling over population, with other shows dissolving into crude slapstick involving the waste of food and pie throwing, After a technician falls off some scaffolding to his death while trying to show more artistic culture (via his paintings), the Low Drives react with hysterical laughter. The High Drives then propose a separated couple, along with their young daughter, go to live on an isolated island in primitive conditions, while being filmed 24 hours a day, while planting without their knowledge a violent criminal on the island that will create much needed "tension", with no one sure what may happen as a result...
All kinds of reality shows can be recalled from Kneale's predictions for the medium: Big Brother, Survivor, Love Island itself and many others.
Kneale lived long enough for his gloomy forebodings of the medium to become reality, if you can excuse such a term, but there was the most extraordinary but eerie coincidence towards the end of July as virtually to the same day and time (with barely 5 minutes difference), the so-called final of Love Island began when The Year of the Sex Olympics did 50 years earlier on BBC 2.
So what can I say about Love Island? Not much actually, as it appears very similar to the "Sportsex" hybrid of 5 decades before. I did actually watch occasional scenes from the virtual remake, not set in a drab TV studio but sunny climes in Spain, with photogenic himbos and bimbos, the former examples inevitably enhanced by pumping iron in some nondescript corporate gym (or maybe not), and the latter displaying the effects of pumping botox, with the question who will pair up with who and sleep with who and maybe go all the way (as one contestant apparently did two years ago and was promptly thrown off the programme).
I watched some of the show at a friend's house this summer, and it was far better to watch it with the sound muted as the Spanish locations were pleasant to look at, as indeed the contestants were in a kind of mutton-headed, spoon-out-your-eyeballs kind of way, not wanting to look as it was the ultimate insult to one's dignity yet you were drawn to games and tasks that were too sophisticated even for the standard degradations you would find on a Club 18-30 holiday, itself now a thing of the past as it made its farewell this October.
Once the sound was turned up, any merit the programme had immediately vanished. Some young model from Liverpool made less than an intellectual interjection about the Brexit crisis, in essence no worse or better than Boris Johnson, David Davis or Theresa May, a kind of touchstone to how modern culture has dumbed down alarmingly in the last decade or so. The philosophy of the programme makers was that as long as the contestants were replete in (very) skimpy swimwear, it didn't matter what they said but how they looked, a shallow thesis where how you appear on the outside is more than what qualities are on the inside, and to be honest, they wasn't any evidence to suggest there was anything whatsoever on the inside, particularly brain cells, of which I expected a major fight to break out as the contestants to fight over the sparse few that may have been available.
Programmes such as this have perhaps turned out far worse than Nigel Kneale could have ever envisaged, yet thanks to saturation coverage and even discussion hybrids (After Sun) that go on around an hour, such Prole Feed for the masses was even mulled over by The Guardian in vast detail during its run, as it does with other reality fodder (Bake-Off, Strictly Come Dancing, The Apprentice, I'm a Celebrity,etc.), no doubt hyped further by coverage in the tabloids and celeb mags. But if it comes to a great piece of television written by a distinguished writer such as Kneale, increasingly rare these days of course, the tabloids and even broadsheets such as The Graun hardly want to know.
There were so many scenes and incidents that could be termed a point blank imitation by Love Island over its immeasurably superior dramatic original of five decades earlier, one of them being a pathetic sequence where the himbos and the bimbos hurl custard pies at each other, hilarious to the contestants but wretchedly unfunny to the viewers involved. It was also crude and unfunny in Kneale's original, but it had a dramatic and satirical point to make and was therefore intentionally serious. The modern version was merely pointless, ham fisted and stupid, in line with the cynicism of the programme makers intended in the original.
Such an opus like this would have been unthinkable in the 70's to virtually all viewers of the time including myself, but Kneale had a sixth sense what was going to happen, "Sooner Than You Think", as the opening subtitle forewarned. Reality TV, Bread and Circuses for the modern generation.
The last word should be left to Victor Lewis-Smith, quoted from his book "TV Reviews" that compiled many opinions on 21st Century TV from his columns in the London Evening Standard as he became as disillusioned as myself with the stark fall and decline in quality:
"...over the past couple of decades, television has undoubtedly fragmented and degenerated, from a medium where a mighty handful of well-resourced channels offered us a communal viewing experience, into a world of a thousand satellite channels (many of which are barely watched or funded at all)...I witnessed the decline of television in sorrow and anger, and can fairly claim to have seen it coming...In every branch of entertainment...there is an immutable law of inverse proportions between quality and quantity.If you open thirty theatres on a single street in a small town that can barely sustain one local rep company, then expect execrable productions from all of them. Why does anyone expect multi-channel television to fare any better?"
I hope I can explain in the near future why VLS was so accurate in his opinions, as he sadly appears to have given up TV criticism for good (as presumably he cannot take any more programmes that are so bad).
There will be very few people, except the very most dedicated, who will recall the name of the late organist Charles Smitton. One of those accomplished and skilled musicians who seemingly preferred to let their their talent speak for themselves behind the scenes, content to pick up their pay cheques at the end of a given week quietly and anonymously, not seeking the limelight but merely getting on with their job as any unskilled manual worker toiling in a local factory.
Yet such a conclusion is rather too neat regarding Smitton. Highly respected and sought after as one of the UK's top organists, he worked with some of the biggest names in British show business on stage and TV for several decades at the country's most prestigious venues, and also as resident organist at celebrated cinemas for chains such as Gaumont and Odeon in his native Liverpool, London and Manchester. But at the peak of his career in the early 1970's, he was curtailed by a severe stroke which had a grossly negative effect on his career, along with some personal setbacks that saw his later years decline into a tragic twilight for a musician who had been recognised as one of the best of his chosen profession with the highest standards of professionalism. I first got to know Charles in the mid-80's as an aimless, frustrated working class youth affected as I was by mass deindustrialisation as many of the same generation around Manchester, more accurately Tameside where I and he were now living. There are very few biographical details of Smitton on the internet; this is the sum total of what I have come across to date:
Started playing the organ at about 10 years of age.
His first appointment was when he was 15½ at the Curzon, Liverpool, where he succeeded his teacher Henry Croudson.
He joined Gaumont British at Manchester, this was followed by the Gaumont, Worcester and the Gaumont, Wood Green.
Possibly the youngest organist to Broadcast, he was on air regularly from the early 40s up to and including 1950.
We first met in a cafe where my late mother was working at the time and who introduced us. Despite the large age gap (he was approaching 60, I was in my late teens), it was clear we showed similar interests and hit it off very quickly, him showing an endearing childlike appreciation for music as a whole (more especially the Black Dyke Mills Brass Band), innumerable anecdotes of the big names he had worked with, such as George Formby's apparent foul-mouthed retort when he asked what key he would like to be accompanied with his song, and Matt Monro forgetting the words to "You'll Never Walk Alone" on the Yorkshire TV show "Stars on Sunday" where he was chief musical arranger. I enrolled for organ lessons on the course he ran at the local college, disillusioned at the acting/performing arts course that I eventually left.
But it was sadly obvious that the severe effects of his stroke were now taking their toll mentally and physically, and on his mobility and communication. His struggles with walking, often appearing to be stumbling and shuffling to the point where he may fall over at any time were very sad to observe (why he never used a walking stick as support was baffling), as was his stutter which restricted his communication and obviously he found both difficult and embarrassing, a neurological effect of the stroke he had about a decade earlier, caused by a weight problem and an addiction to salty food (Chinese cuisine was a particular favourite of his).
As the years went on, Charles' movement became more restricted, and his speech got more slurred as his health further declined. He acknowledged a personal tragedy as his first wife had committed suicide, with his second marriage now badly failing, his new wife refusing to look after her very frail husband. If truth be told, I didn't enjoy music lessons with Smitton as he appeared unduly harsh and critical, and barely giving faint praise when I knew myself I had played the allotted practise tune quite well, even though I had absolutely no natural talent as a musician. His Achilles heels were an occasional habit of lapsing into pomposity, arrogance and a quick temper, although he was mostly a congenial, affable and intelligent individual who was very talented in his field.
But he was becoming plainly a rapidly fading force, still not at retirement age but looking at least two decades older than he actually was. Towards the end of the 80's, there were two distressing incidents that were proving his career was reaching its coda; in one of the last lessons I attended, he tried to say the word "analogy" to one of the other students, but stuttered very badly on the word's first syllable for nearly a minute which was showing he was now finding even basic communication a considerable task; me, my mother (who also attended such classes) and others attending were at a total loss what to say or think. The second was most tragic; he applied for a part-time organist job at a local social club, a far cry from his halcyon days, where me and other members of the family used to attend. My own parents refused to go on the evening he was given an initial trial as my mother had fallen out with him by now for various reasons. My late uncle was on the committee, and he later phoned his sister, namely my Mum, to tell her how it went. The story was heartbreaking. He struggled to walk up the flight of stairs to the performance area, played a few tunes, apparently poorly, and stared into space afterwards, obviously now reluctant to communicate with the small gathering of people due to the problems with his speech. The cycle continued for the rest of the night, until he had to be helped downstairs by my uncle, appearing both scruffy and dishevelled as the neglect by his wife was also taking its toll. A friend of the family at the time who was also involved with the club later explained why Charles simply couldn't be asked back again: "It would have been bad for him and bad for us". When I asked Charles later how the night went (knowing the truth), he sheepishly answered "Yes and No", when it was very clear it was a disaster. He didn't seem to accept that the game was virtually up; one could not laugh, but feel considerable pity. Not long afterwards, he suffered from the effects of a fall and collapse at home, and his career was now over. It was nothing short of tragic that having worked with such prestigious names in show business and top venues that his career was cut short by such circumstances. He ended up in a care home where I visited him every other week, but perhaps as a result of his frustration with his condition, he was becoming increasingly cantankerous and aggressive in his manner which was very untypical and out of character. Our friendship inevitably declined, and in the late summer of 1990, I turned up to be told by care workers that he had packed up and left a few nights before with no goodbyes to anyone or anybody, including myself. I never saw or spoke with him again, but he presumably spent his last years in care homes as before, passing away in January 1997, just before the New Labour era of government.
It is good to observe that some of Charles' recordings have turned up on You Tube when he was around his artistic peak, including a radio programme and a TV newsreel at the The Manchester Odeon, both from the mid-60's. The latter shows him being interviewed by the now notorious and disgraced presenter Stuart Hall, the former showcasing his excellence as a musician and indeed confident and charming presenter, with his speech and diction both absolutely immaculate.
I wish I had known Charles at the peak of powers, both personally and professionally, instead of when he was clearly in a sad and steady decline, but let us remember him for what he was; a brilliant organist, one of the very best of his kind, and all round decent man.
