This Isn’t What I’d Usually Post On Here

Occasionally, I feel like the last person left on the planet. Like a dinosaur. Do you remember how, when you were young, you couldn’t understand that your parents didn’t laugh at the same things as you, or like the same sort of music as you, or eat the same food as you? As the years pass, you come to realise that you have more in common with them than you might have thought, and this is a good thing. However, it doesn’t always feel quite as good.

I am a smoker. There. I said it. It’s not like it’s a difficult thing to say (as anyone that has spent more than half an hour with me will be able to attest to readily), but somehow it is now. I am now the last of the people that I see regularly (I wouldn’t say “of my friends”, because that wouldn’t be true) that smokes. And it’s lonely. It feels it already, and I haven’t even seen any of them yet. And it’s going to get much more difficult before it gets better.  The social side of it vanished during the summer, when the smoking ban was introduced. With an addiction, though, it’s not as easy as, “oh, I’ll just sit in the pub and not smoke”, though. You have to go outside and stand on the street to smoke. But I was never the only one. And now I feel like I am.

Just needed to get that off my chest.

So, “Dave”, Then.

I think we can be fairly certain that naming their new digital TV station “Dave” has earned UKTV some valuable publicity, but… “Dave”? I’m not sold that this is a wise decision. Once you get over the novelty factor, it just feels a little irritating to have the name staring out at you from the top left-hand corner of the screen. Creepy, even. So, what’s going on here, then? The UKTV stable has been one of the mainstays of the Freeview era since the government decided to do away with the analogue signal. UKTV History, on Channel 12, was one of its longest-serving residents.

Initially, it did very much as it said on the tin – all day historical documentaries. It wasn’t afraid to be highbrow – Jeremy Isaacs’ seminal “The World At War” and his criminally overlooked follow-up, “Cold War” were both shown in their entirety – but, as time wore on, it’s scheduling became more and more fractured. Dramas such as “Sharpe” started appearing in the evening schedules, along with the likes of Tony Robinson’s twee archaeological series “Time Team”. The documentaries that they were showing seemed to be limited to one subject: “World War II”. When a friend of mine was forced out of work for a year by a spinal injury, his first comment to me upon finally coming back to work was that he was now one of the world’s leading authorities on “Nazis and dolphins” – a comment on the output of daytime television.

So, UKTV History bit the dust, and Dave has come along to take its place. It describes itself as “the home of witty banter” and, whilst “banter” is one of those words that I really, really dislike,  the roster of programmes that they have managed to get the rights to isn’t that bad, featuring old episodes of “Top Gear” (a programme which is, let’s face it, Britain’s secret guilty pleasure), very old episodes of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”, and other BBC panel shows of yesteryear, such as “Have I Got News For You?”, “Never Mind The Buzzcocks”, “QI” and “A Question Of Sport”, as well as mainstream comedies such as “Little Britain” and “The Catherine Tate Show”. I was a little irked by their announcer recently confirming that they will be holding a “Catherine Tate Weekend” this weekend – I’m not a fan of Tate and the idea of entire weekends of themed programmes seems to me to be one that will only drive audiences down, as all but the most hardcore of fans (who, one would assume, already own all of Ms Tate’s work on DVD and therefore have the option to watch it at their leisure without commercial breaks) – but the early signs are encouraging. A television station for people that don’t want to watch trash is a novel concept in the modern televisual environment.

Having said that, though, the jury is still out on Dave. Firstly, that name has to go. Secondly, only time will tell whether their budget will support a decent breadth of programming. It’s all very well throwing these treats at us for the first few weeks on air, but will they have the courage of their convictions if the audience figures are sluggish, or will the definition of “witty banter” be stretched to breaking point in the same way as the definition of “historical programming” was on UKTV History when ratings started to fall there. I shall watch with considerable interest.

The Ten Greatest Motown Songs Of All Time

It’s not really the greatest ten Motown songs of all time. Sorry if I tricked you with the thread title. As is traditional with this sort of list, I’ve gone for ten songs by ten different artists. If I was going for the ten greatest songs of all time, it would probably be narrowed down to about four acts, which, in my opinion, tower head and shoulders above more or less every other musical act in the entire history of music. So, I’ve made it trickier for myself and, by extension, you lot. Ten different acts. Well, nine, actually. I couldn’t resist putting in two tracks by The Temptations.

10. The Commodores – “Machine Gun”: It is something of a tragedy that The Commodores are remembered as balladeering crooners, and that their legacy is often mistaken for the largely atrocious solo career of Lionel Ritchie. In the beginning, they were a hard-funkin’ band, and “Machine Gun”, the title track of their debut album, was much more typical of their sound at the time. It’s as tight as anything that more critically lauded bands of the time managed, and it broke them as a band on both sides of the Atlantic. Brilliant stuff.

9. Rare Earth – “Every Now And Then We Get To Go On Down To Miami”: A guilty pleasure, for sure. Firstly, Rare Earth were not the first white act to sign for Motown. That honour went to Nick & The Jaguars. They did, however, inspire the bile of Gil Scott-Heron in “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, which is a large (and somewhat unfair) chunk of their legacy. The thing about Rare Earth (Scott-Heron added a British Invasion-esque “The” to their name) was that they were, depending on your outlook, a rock band with soul or a soul band that rocked out. This brilliant song, from their 1972 album “Willie Remembers”, isn’t necessarily their most famous, but I’ll happily bet a pound to a penny that you’re tapping your toes to it by the time it gets to the first chorus.

8.  The Supremes – “You Keep Me Hanging On”: Now, I happen to know that this placing will upset at least one person, but I’m not certain that this is a brilliant performance by The Supremes themselves, and for that it drops about five places in the list. As a song, however, it is the stand-out song written for them, and shows the first signs that Motown was prepared to break away from the “Hitsville USA” mould and experiment, musically. I don’t know whether the jangling guitar is supposed to sound like Sputnik orbiting the earth, but it does. It also has an endearing, relentless quality – when all the other instruments cut out, the guitar starts up again and the song bursts back into life. It’s still the high-water mark of Diana Ross’s career, which says a lot about the rubbish that she’s being putting out since she left the rest of them behind.

7.  Martha Reeves & The Vandellas – “Heatwave”: This song is probably the closest to what I would describe as the traditional “Hitsville” sound of Motown that ruled the roost on the label until about 1965, and it was a close call between it and “Dancin’ In The Street” to make the cut. It’s also the oldest song in this top ten, released in 1962. Even so, it shows the first flowering of the lyrical subtlety that was a signature of the best Motown music – “Has high blood pressure got a hold on me, or is this the way life’s supposed to be?” is one of the greatest lyrics in the entire history of pop music.

6. The Temptations – “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg”: To be honest, I cringe at gangsta rap. There are plenty of people who are happy to stereotype black American men as being violent, ignorant thugs, without black Americans playing up to it for the amusement of white kids from the suburbs. So, here’s something from the opposite end of the spectrum – a man who is prepared to do anything, including humiliating himself, in order to keep the love of his life. This is the “Classic Five” version of The Temptations, featuring David Ruffin, and just before he went a bit mad and started insisting on being driven around in a private fur-lined limousine. Also, that instrumental break: two notes on the saxophone and two notes on the piano. Less is more.

5.  Marvin Gaye – “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”: This is the sound of America on fire. 1969. Teddy Kennedy may or may not have killed his secretary at Chappaquidick. Charles Manson and The Family have killed Sharon Tate and her friends. Altamont is a full stop to the hippie ideal. “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” is the comedown song. It’s smoky and dark, full of paranoia and bitterness and, just as we are always told that The Specials’ “Ghost Town” is the perfect musical accompaniment to urban Britain burning during the late summer of 1981, this song does the same for America in 1969, though about five times as subtly. It’s in the rolling keyboard, the menacing drums, and Marvin Gaye’s haunted voice. Has he heard it through the grapevine, or is he just coming down? Socially, politically and culturally, America was wobbling, and this song perfectly encapsulates that insecurity.

4. The Jackson Five – “ABC”: Suddenly, party time! The most unashamedly joyous song in this list. I can still find a small place in my heart for Michael Jackson, if only for The Jacksons’ output between 1970 and 1973 (with the possible exception of “Ben”). Watching recordings of them is an almost traumatic experience. Where did that carefree young lad go? What happened to the rest of them? This was another close call, actually. Obviously, “I Want You Back” ran it close. However, at the end of the day, you can’t help but love the percussive break in the middle and the plaintive cry of, “Hey, girl” I think I LOVE YOU!”. My particular love for this song was, of course, also amplified by the musical scene in “Clerks 2″.

3. Stevie Wonder – “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”: Another joyous song. You know that absolutely uplifted feeling that you get when you first fall in love? Well, some people don’t. Some people never do. However, Stevie Wonder evidently does. What’s more, he knew it when he was (pause for breath) fifteen years old. Let me just say that again: fifteen years old. It’s an awesome performance and, whilst I recognise the achievements of arguably more obvious selections such as “Superstition” and “He’s Misstra Know It All”, this is still the song. Just listen to the squelching bass at the start of it!

2. The Temptations – “I Can’t Get Next To You”:  It was a close call, but I couldn’t not have my favourite song of all time at number one, could I? So, nudged down into number two place is this brilliant, brilliant song, about a man with all the powers of a God who still can’t impress the woman that he adores. So, what makes this such a great song. Well, after the departure of David Ruffin, The Temptations went off and experimented with the outer edges of what they could do with soul music. No more ballads and doo-wop. They went psychedelic with their “Cloud Nine” album, but made a slight return to pop in 1970 with this song. It’s an ensemble effort, with all five members contributing a line at a time each. More than that, it’s tight and funky, with an expansive eight second long break in the middle of it which gives the impression building up to a crescendo. It went to number one in the USA and made the top ten in Britain (and if you need confirmation of just how wonderful it is, they put in an absolutely killer performance of it on “Top Of The Pops” in 1970).

1.  Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – “The Tears Of A Clown”: Such a tough choice. Anybody that knows me will be fully aware of the extent to which I idolise Smokey Robinson – how do you choose just one song, when the back catalogue contains such moments of genius as “Tracks Of My Tears”, “Second That Emotion” and “Going To A Go Go” (all of which would have made this top ten had it been songs and songs alone)? Well, I had to, and it was this one. Awesome, killer tune? Check. Sumptuous four part harmonies? Oh, check. Magnificent lyrics (without doubt, the finest song lyrics ever written)? Double check. Robinson’s invocation of the spirit of La Pagliacci (the operatic clowns that cry when no-one is around) is the greatest pop song ever written. I’ve never met anyone that doesn’t like it and, on that basis, I hereby nominate it as (should we ever come across alien life-forms and need one) the National Anthem Of Earth.

A Torrent Of Abuse

It is probably a reflection of the extent to which I was aware of such things, but I was blissfully unaware of the existence of “Oink” until earlier this week. There are probably some of you that are wondering how I could have lasted until I was 35 without being aware of the noise that a pig makes, but “Oink” was a private bit torrent site that was shut down earlier this week after a joint operation by the IFPI [International Federation of the Phonographic Industry], BPI [British Phonographic Industry], Cleveland [U.K.] police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch police. The site’s servers have been seized, one man has been arrested and information relating to the site’s users is now reportedly being “analysed”. Ho hum.

It has been a difficult twelve months for the ever-expanding bit torrent community. The ongoing sagas at The Pirate Bay and Torrent Spy are well-known, whilst other sites such as Demonoid have had problems staying online. It should be added that “Oink” didn’t exactly help itself – although early police reports spun the myth that “Oink” was profit-making (later statements were amended subtly to express the truth – the site took donations to cover running costs, but no more). It specialised in “pre-releases” – albums leaked, often presumably from insiders working within the industry itself. This is, one would have to say, one of the more morally dubious sides of bit torrent, and it’s easy to see how this could damage the record industry. There is also the argument that 99.9% of people involved in illegal file-sharing know what they’re doing, and know the legal status. There is little that one could say, if one was caught, other than “it’s a fair cop”.

However.  It would obviously foolish to paint this as a black & white issue, with the likes of the RIAA fighting some sort of “good fight”. When they paid a former Torrentspy employee $15,000 to syphon off information from the site’s server, they themselves were sailing very close to the wind in legal terms, and the accusation that they discussed setting up a fake torrent site with the intention of gathering information about users (including bank details) is easy to believe. It’s also fair to say that relevant “special interest groups” have no concern for morality when they’re prosecuting people, whether it’s a teenager who recorded a minute of a film to show his brother, or a grandmother who didn’t know that her grandson was using P2P technology to file-share music. It’s also worth pointing out that there are more shades of grey in file-sharing than the RIAA would like you to know about, and it’s reasonably common knowledge that they like to publicise raids on the less morally defensible sites. Sites like, for example, UK Nova only put UK-made television programmes that are not available to buy on DVD. Enthusiasts can, therefore, use the site like an online video recorder, and no damage is done to the companies producing the programmes in the first place. Finally, and this, to me, is the most significant point, they only go after smaller organisations and people that cannot afford to defend themselves. There is still, for example, thousands of hours’ worth of copyrighted material on YouTube but, asides from the occasional lawyers’ letters, no action is taken. They’re not going to risk taking on a company backed by Google, who could defend themselves and possibly, just possibly, win what would be a landmark court case, which might see the end of copyright laws as we understand them.

The RIAA are, ultimately, the losers here. Each of these raids is a public relations disaster, no matter what way they try to spin it. They will always be seen as suing their own customers, and as out-of-date and living behind the times. They react to digital technology with fear, rather than embracing it, loading CDs with DRM technology that (in the case of Sony) cross the line into being spyware. They restrict you how you can listen to it when you buy it legally, and they still make enormous profits for, largely, churning out middle of the road crap. And ultimately, the pirates will always be one step ahead of them. They closed down Napster, and they moved on to Soulseek and Limewire. They flooded Limewire with malware and fakes, so they moved on to Bit Torrent. And if they manage to strangle Bit Torrent, you can bet your bottom dollar that another file-sharing technology that it will replace it and that all the time the number of people using it will rise. Home taping is killing music? No. The music “industry” is perfectly capable of doing that on its own.

I Wouldn’t Cross The Road To See Them

Having downloaded three Led Zeppelin live shows recently, I have watched with considerable interest as the world has, frankly, gone mad over ticket sales for their show at what used to be the Millennium Dome in London at the end of November. Tickets are currently selling on Ebay for in excess of £800 each. Insane. It’s worth pointing out that they have a certain rarity value. Led Zeppelin split up in 1980, after the death of their drummer, John Bonham. The band can hardly be said to have flogged the corpse of Zeppelin to death in the years since then. It took them until 1990 to release a “Greatest Hits” album (and even this, considering that they never released any singles while they were still going, was something of a questionable venture) and, though Robert Plant and Jimmy Page have re-united for than once over the last few years, it has always been emphatically as “Page & Plant”, and emphatically not as “Led Zeppelin”.

When I was 17, I loved Led Zeppelin. I was a drummer, and Zeppelin were a fundamental part of the process of learning to play the drums. John Bonham was the man. Never more than five drums, his style was important as much for what he didn’t play as what he did (and I’m disregarding the occasional ten minute long drum solos here – I’m putting them down to the effects of years of cocaine usage). Their songs were as much a part of my adolescence as they were for many people ten years or more older than me. Now, they’re back. Not merely “Page & Plant”, but as near as one can get to the full Led Zeppelin experience, with John Paul Jones playing bass and keyboard, and Bonham’s son Jason on the drums (I was waiting for a call, but they must have mislaid my number).

I didn’t bother trying to get tickets for it. Predictably, their website’s server crashed on the day that applications became available. I wasn’t one of the people frantically hitting F5. If I really put my mind to it – if it meant that much to me, I might have been able to come up with the cost of a ticket from Ebay, but I’m not going to waste my time or money doing that. I’ve got all the albums and a little stack of bootlegs, and I know that it isn’t going to be the Led Zeppelin of my DVDs – it’s going to be an older, wrinklier version of them. Plant’s voice won’t be as sprightly as it’s going to be, Jimmy Page will have grey hair and, no matter how much his son might sound like him, it won’t be John Bonham playing the drums. On the night that they play, I might just settle down on the sofa here, pour myself a stiff drink and watch them in their pomp at Earls Court from 1975. Somehow, I think that I’ll be getting the better end of the deal.

All The News, All The Time

If you think about it, The United States of America doesn’t feature quite as much on British television news as much as you might think. We, for example, take even less interest in their sports than they do in ours, and even on the news, they seldom make the headlines (unless George W Bush has come up with something especially made, like trying to petition the Russians to let him use nuclear weapons and train them on Moscow, or something) often, considering the way in which they dictate every single aspect of our political and cultural life.

With this in mind, it was something of a surprise to switch on BBC News 24 to find that the top news story was the the wild fires that are currently raging out of control in Southern California. I don’t particularly wish to comment on the ensuing events there, but some aspects of the BBC’s coverage of it were, I would suggest, somewhat troubling. First up was the mention of the rescue operation being “bigger even than that implemented during Hurricane Katrina”. Now, over 1,800 people were killed in the United States of America during Hurricane Katrina. So far, the news reports are saying that (and I’m quoting the BBC less than thirty minutes ago, here) “at least six” people have been killed in this fire. I am somewhat surprised that the BBC’s reporter in America decided to mention this in the manner that she did – at best as an afterthought, at worst with a nodding dog approval of the work being done there, which, if we’re honest with ourselves, shows up the American government’s lack of positive action in New Orleans for what it was. I would expect such a comparison to be made pejoratively. Is America now such a divided country that a major disaster in one country kills thousands of people whilst, in another, more wealthy part it it, something of a similar scale kills less than a dozen? If it is, I would expect BBC coverage of this to be critical, to say the least.

By and large, of course, BBC News 24 isn’t anything like Fox News. It is, on the whole, reasonably balanced, and the demands of 24 hour rolling news must, if anything, cause a drop in quality control standards. On the whole, watching rolling news services  is a strange experience. During the day, it’s something of a last refuge – if there is nothing on any of the other channels, then you can turn to BBC News 24 in the knowledge that there will be something going on in the world that will be mildly diverting. More diverting than the trash that everyone puts on during the day, anyway. On the other hand, it is a strangely unsatisfying experience when, as is the case 90% of the time, nothing much is happening. There are only so many times that you can watch the weather report in the course of one day without starting to think that you are going insane.

The Lumpen Proleteriat

As part of my schedule at work, I have a late shift one week in three. This means that I get to spend one week in three in the delightful company of daytime TV again. For the one or two of you that don’t know me, this requires some sort of explanation. Daytime TV is the primary reason behind why I started writing all of this stuff in the first place. My football blog, 200percent, started as a general “life, the universe and everything” blog in January of last year. I updated it reasonably regularly, but we lost internet connectivity when we moved from London to Brighton in April. It took five weeks to get it all sorted out, along with a shiny new laptop. I’d moved to Brighton without a job to go to, though, and finding someone that would appreciate my dubious “talents” was always going to be hard work. It took me until the start of July to get one sorted out.

In the meantime, I needed something to fill the void, and I stepped up the blogging, converting 200percent to a football blog, after a brain-sapping five weeks of daytime television. Daytime television is the visual equivalent of morphine. It’s a painkiller that simultaneously takes you to another place. You settle down to watch five minutes of “BBC Breakfast” and, before you know it, it’s lunchtime and David Dickinson is gurning away at you. You slope off to grab a bite to eat and make mental plans to not waste the afternoon, but your food arrives in the middle of “Neighbours”, so you eat it whilst watching that. Then you realise that there’s a classic black & white film on Channel Four and, before you know it, it’s nearly five o’clock, and you’ve got a notepad out for “Countdown”. Another bright summer’s day wasted.

I will regularly return to the topic of daytime TV over the next few months, but this very morning I caught up with my arch nemesis for the first time in months and months – Jeremy Kyle.  Kyle strikes a chord in me that raises my levels of inner rage to such a level that I often have to switch the television off before his wretched programme even finishes. It is a freak show in the same way that “Big Brother” is a freak show, but it is approximately twenty times as offensive. With “Big Brother”, the people going into the house are kind of aware of what they’re getting involved in, and are taking a calculated gamble that they will become famous. The various freaks and monsters on The Jeremy Kyle Show won’t achieve any sort of fame. They certainly won’t get any sort of answers to the (often serious to the point of being life-changing) dilemmas that they face. You get the feeling that there is no screening process – that the guests are merely wheeled on, made fools of, and thrown out afterwards with the garbage.

The stakes have been being raised for over twenty years. It seems like a very long time since the days of John Stapleton wearing pastel coloured jumpers, gently nudging the “issues of the day” in front of an appreciative audience of pensioners. The juggernaut that blew it all apart was, of course, Jerry Springer and, whilst the BBC muddled along with Kilroy (until he went mad and started blaming the Arabs for bad weather and so on), ITV slowly started to raise the stakes with “Trisha”, which introduced the concept of DNA testing on live television, before eventually going into bad taste over-drive with the cretinous Jeremy Kyle.

Kyle’s style is deliberate and obvious, but his subjects often lack the wit to understand that he has such a clear formula and play straight into his hands.  There are always two parties on at the same time as guests – one has been wronged, and the other is the wrongdoer. First up, Kyle allows the wronged party to air their grievances in such a way that the wrongdoer’s behaviour comes across as inexcusable. Then, he allows the wrongdoer to put across their side of the story, but without the adrenaline rush of righteous anger to propel themselves along, they stutter and offer inconsistencies in their stories. At this point, Kyle starts hectoring them, raising his voice in an aggressive manner and siding with the wronged. His voice rises to a level where he is shouting at the wrongdoer whilst gaining appreciative from the studio audience. Then, suddenly, he lets his voice drop and allows the wrongdoer to put their side again, but temper has been raised and the wrongdoer will often be shouting too, aiming accusations back at the supposedly wronged party. In a sudden volte face, Kyle will take their side – exposing the inconsistencies in the wronged party’s original story. The hectoring will now start again, turning up the volume so you have three people shouting at each other and, hopefully (so far as Kyle is concerned) the two guests having to be separated by his big, burly security staff.

Finally, the cherry on the cake. The third guest. Usually, they take the side of the original wronged party. Sometimes they’re planted in the studio audience. They come on stage, already whipped into a frenzy, shouting and pointing their fingers. After a couple of minutes of frenzied creaking, Kyle intervenes,  softening his voice and finally offering a piece of advice so obvious that they could have pulled it from a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant (“trust each other more”, “stop going out night when you should be at home with your child”, “stop throwing bricks through people’s windows”) but, because of the twenty-minute long slanging match that has preceded it, makes him sound like a mixture of Gandhi, Buddha and Nelson Mandela.

It goes without saying that this crass, exploitative dog dirt would, in a just world, be banned in the same way that bear baiting is, let alone broadcast on national terrestrial television. This, however, seems to be the way of the modern world. Cruelty to animals is rightly anathema. Taking people from Britain’s council estates (and before you start complaining, when did you last see someone from “middle England” on Kyle?) and subjecting them to ridicule under the auspices of offering them “professional help” with regards to often horribly distressing domestic situations, though still seems to be fair game.

Hyuk Hyuk Hyuk Haaaaarrgh

I know that I haven’t updated this page for a little while, but I’ve been busy watching the television. Actually, I’ve largely been watching DVDs this summer, because the schedule is so appalling. Over the last week or so, I’ve been catching up on one of the flickering flames of my childhood, “It’s A Knockout”, which has been being repeated every once in a while on Challenge TV. To say that this has been an unexpected pleasure would be one of the understatements of the summer.

The programme was a pan-European affair, adapted from the French show “Intervilles”. The French invited other countries, under the watchful eye of the European Broadcasting Union, to join a competition called the “Inter Countries Games”, which would later become known as “Jeux Sans Frontieres”. It launched in 1965, and the BBC entered a Great Britain team from 1967 until 1982. At the peak of its popularity, it reached a pan-European audience of 100m people. The show continued to run in Europe until 1999, and the EBU is due to revive it from next year on, though it is unlikely that the British will enter.

The format was fairly simple. Each country would have its own competition to pick a national representative, who would then go on to a live, televised European final. Hosted by Stuart Hall and Eddie Waring, with referee Arthur Ellis, the show consisted of three teams battling against each other in a series of ludicrous games, with points for first, second and third place. Each team had a joker that they could play in one round each, which doubled their score for that round, and there was an individual round called the “Marathon”, in which the teams played out a single event. The British version of the show was probably most notable for Hall’s hosting style. Otherwise best known for his lavish BBC Radio football reporting style, Stuart Hall was a natural choice to succeed the original host, David Vine, as the host of “It’s A Knockout”. His commentary style would be best described as “idiosyncratic”, often collapsing into fits of giggles and hysteria as accountants and estate agents dressed in twelve foot high latex costumes stumbled around a playing field whilst thousands of people screamed deafening encouragement at them.

“Jeux Sans Frontieres” was notable for two things. Firstly, there was a massive budget allowed for the this. On “It’s A Knockout”, the majority of games were run to a tight budget, with something of the feel of a school sports day on testosterone. The final, however, was more like an enormous, ridiculous series of staged events on a national theme. When Britain hosted the competition, the theme was “Camelot”, for example. Secondly, Great Britain didn’t win very often. With four wins in sixteen competitions, they won more than France (who managed a feeble three in twenty-five) and Belgium (who managed an even feebler two in twenty), but the champions of “Jeux Sans Frontieres” were Germany, who won six in sixteen between 1965 and 1980.

It’s probably asking too much for the BBC to bring “It’s A Knockout” back for next year. Channel Five had a go at reviving it between 1999 and 2001, hosted by Keith Chegwin, but it didn’t really work. It needs a big budget, a lot of latex, and it needs Stuart Hall cackling and screaming over the top of it. We can but hope.

Today Isn’t Saturday

I’d had a fair bit to drink by the time that “Tiswas Reunited” started on Saturday night and, to be honest, it rendered my critical faculties somewhat impaired. I was, by 9.15, in a sufficiently catatonic state to be capable of little more than gurgling like a baby at the site of Bob Carolgees & Spit The Dog and John Gorman. This being ITV1, of course, critical analysis was always going to be thin on the ground. However, the programme made something of an attempt at recreating the atmosphere of the original show, and the list of former team members was impressive, though there were (as we shall see, a couple of notable absentees).

“Tiswas” is a prime example of that old truism about some events in human history being so momentous that even people that couldn’t possibly remember them know where they were when they happened. It’s etched into the national consciousness in a way that the truly great TV shows are, and it’s a tribute to the extent to which is shaped the face of children’s television that we can scarcely imagine what the world would have been like without it.

It started as a cheap way for the ITV Midlands company ATV to fill a couple of hours on a Saturday morning. Presenters Chris Tarrant and John Asher sat in a tiny studio at the ATV studios in Birmingham, linking cartoons and pop videos with jokes. Tarrant had been plucked from the local news show (where he had been a roving reporter) and did it for an extra £25 per week. For three years, it stayed in the Midlands only, acquiring a small studio audience of children and a reputation for anarchy that was unheard of anywhere else on British television. By 1977, the programme had been exported to Wales and The West Of England, but it took the female touch to take the programme’s appeal to the next level.

The truth of the matter is that the decision to bring Sally James in to host alongside Chris Tarrant didn’t go down terribly well when it was made. James had been hosting London Weekend’s “Saturday Scene”, and was an accomplished presenter, but Tarrant was reportedly unhappy with the changes. Jim Davidson, of all people, co-hosted a few episodes while James completed her contractual obligations, and within half a dozen appearances of her debut, it had become clear that they had made the right choice. ATV, mindful of the “bad example” that chucking around dozens of buckets of water and custard pies could set, insisted that the production team tone down the level of it all, so producer Glyn Edwards created “The Phantom Flan Flinger”, a nemesis for the team hosting the show.

By 1980, the programme had entered its golden age. In the face of competition from the BBC (“Multi-Coloured Swapshop” had launched in 1976), ATV had increased the budget substantially, enabling the production team to bring in a bigger supporting cast (including Lenny Henry and Sylvester McCoy), and to rely less on cartoons and videos and more on what was happening. For a couple of years, it was the “must-watch” children’s TV show. By contrast, “Swapshop”, hosted by a prematurely avuncular Noel Edmonds and John Craven seemed resolutely staid and polite – yesterday’s values given a sheen of child-friendly gloss. It couldn’t last. One of the curses of children’s television is that it is invariably used as a stepping stone to other things, so when a presenter becomes successful the first thing that happens is that they leave the vehicle that made them in the first place. Tarrant and most of the rest of the team jumped ship in 1981 to produce Tarrant’s now infamous “adult” show, “OTT”, whilst James and new co-hosts Den Hegarty (erstwhile of peculiar doo-wop band “Darts”) and comedian Fogwell Flax limped on with a final series through the winter of 1981.

The final nail in the show’s coffin was ITV’s franchise awards of 1981, which forced ATV into an uncomfortable merger and a name change to Central TV. Central were keen to sweep a broom through what they regarded as a somewhat dusty ATV network schedule. Only sure-fire hits such as “Family Fortunes” were guaranteed aa place in the new schedule, and the disappointing eight series of “Tiswas” was all the excuse that they needed to swing the axe. When another new ITV company, started producing a Saturday morning show called “Number 73″, Central pulled the plug for good.

As I said earlier, there wasn’t much in the way of rigorous critical analysis going on last Saturday night, of course. There was one melancholy moment, as James and Tarrant visited the now-deserted Central TV studios in Birmingham. I don’t know whether they were gagged from commenting upon it or whether it just went unsaid, but I couldn’t help but briefly lament the passing of regional ITV for a moment. There was a time when there were five of these big, regional television “centres” dotted around England – two in London, and one each in Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds. On top of these, there were smaller studios in Southampton, Cardiff, Norwich, Newcastle and Glasgow that were all capable of producing programmes too. Nowadays, everything in centralised from The South Bank Studios in London. The regional studios are little more than news rooms, and ITV has completely lost its way.

The truth of the matter is that ITV wouldn’t be capable of producing anything as radical as “Tiswas” now. With its reality programming, wall-to-wall soap operas and asinine daytime schedule, it resembles little more than a second-rate Sky One nowadays. The stream of eager, young talent like Chris Tarrant has practically dried up, and there isn’t really anyone left to replace those that have moved onto bigger things. Whereas ATV in the 1970s was prepared to risk the wrath of the IBA and take a chance on a format that had never been seen before, ITV1 now takes a scythe to its scheduling on a regular basis. Homegrown Saturday morning programming bit the dust a couple of years ago, and the BBC followed suit. Both now produce near-identical cookery programmes instead.

And they wonder why their ratings continue to fall and fall.

A Lesson In Local Government Politics

It’s Friday night and, while the rest of the world has got its eyes trained on “Big Brother”, I’m sitting here with my eyes trained on ITV3, watching the film version of the hit 1970s sitcom, “Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads”. There was a rush of these film versions of sitcoms in the early 1970s – “Please, Sir!”, “Are You Being Served?”, “Steptoe & Son”, “Dad’s Army” and “Bless This House” all got the big screen treatment and, somehow or other, the “On The Buses” franchise ran to three films. Mostly, they were appalling – at best, they were stripped down versions of the TV shows (one scene of the “Are You Being Served?” film, for example, is a straight copy of the first ever episode of the TV series), and at worst, they were little more than overblown and slightly more raunchy versions of the TV series themselves. The directors of these shows were certainly not above throwing in gratuitous naked ladies for the sake of it. This was the amazingly politically correct 1970s, after all.

The film version of “Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?”, however, was a cut above the rest, and survives as a fascinating document of change and which taps into a true story of local government corruption which seemed to sum up the mixture of progressive politics and chronic wastefulness of post-war Britain. The film opens with Terry & Bob bunking off work to visit their local, The Fat Ox, on the day that it is due to be demolished. These opening scenes, coupled with the numerous scenes showing Terry living in a high-rise block of flats in which the lifts never worked, tied in with the news of the time. The film was made in 1976, two years after the imprisonment of Newcastle’s vainglorious council leader, T Dan Smith, after a series of events that would have graced an episode of “Dallas”. Smith was a former communist who was elected the leader of Newcastle City Council in 1960. His vision was to rebuild Newcastle as an ultra-modern city, to be nicknamed “The Brasilia Of The North” (as a tribute to the recently completed puropose-built Brazilian capital city). Vast tracts of the city’s slum tenements were bulldozed and replaced by high-rise blocks, and a sizeable part of the city centre was replaced with a huge shopping precinct. Smith, however, had betrayed his socialist background by getting involved in corruption on a grand scale with the architect John Poulson and, although he was acquitted in a trial in 1971, when Poulson was declared bankrupt in 1974 further details of Smith’s involvement became public, and he was imprisoned for six years.

There is something very bleak about all British television from this era, but the film version of “The Likely Lads” is unique in its outlook – as far as Ian La Frenais appears to be concerned, Britain is falling apart at the seams, with slum buildings being replaced by slum tenements. Bob had moved up the social ladder, and was in a white collar job, living the middle-class dream with his overbearing wife, Thelma. Terry, meanwhile, was “keeping it real” on a council estate where the lifts didn’t work and the kids would nick the wing mirrors off your car as soon as it was out of your sight. The pessimistic feeling permeates every aspect of the film – even the opening music, a song called “Remember When” (written, as the theme tune to “Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?”, by the former Manfred Mann drummer Mike Hugg, with, notably, lyrics by La Frenais himself) has a melancholy feel to it, with lyrics such as, “we used to think that we’d have forever, now I’m not so sure”.

Equally important in making this film work are the performances of an excellent ensemble cast. Rodney Bewes and James Bolam  are, of course, excellent as Bob and Terry – Bob on the edge of a full-blown mid-life crisis, and Terry’s working class bravado being little more than a veneer papering over his insecurities at a world that is changing faster than he can. The two characters are clearly such a bad influence on each other, but their relationship is the dynamic that keeps the whole film ticking over. As you could say about so many other “odd couple” male friendships, they should have married each other.