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.
