It's Christmas Day evening, 1969, presents unwrapped, turkey devoured, and family around the television. offers the staple festive offerings of hosted by Val Doonican, and .

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Two, as usual, offered some alternative viewing. At  you could take an aerial tour above the British seaside while listening to the rhyming narration of John Betjeman. Even better, you can still do so from your 2016 armchair by  You might still enjoy his depiction of that unavoidable element of the British seaside holiday...

"...All put your Macs on
Run for shelter fast
Crouch where you like until it's fine again
Holiday cheerfulness is unsurpassed
Why be put out by healthy English rain
Are we down-hearted? No, we’re happy still.
We came here to enjoy ourselves
And we will..."

Don't forget you can find more Ö÷²¥´óÐã archive content by running a search on Genome and filtering the results by Programme Available. If you're feeling adventurous, just run an empty search and click on Programme Available, There are more than 11,000 programmes you can watch or listen to on those dark December nights...

Today's window opens up this archive gem: a clip from the first operatic version of broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1962.

The opera was specially commissioned for Ö÷²¥´óÐã Television and starred Stephen Manton as Scrooge. The website released if for your enjoyment - along with clips of the

Don't forget you can find more Ö÷²¥´óÐã archive content by running a search on Genome and filtering the results by Programme Available. If you're feeling adventurous, just run an empty search and click on Programme Available, or  There are more than 11,000 programmes you can watch on those dark December nights...

joined the Ö÷²¥´óÐã in 1964 as secretary in Ö÷²¥´óÐã Enterprises – she then progressed to the Drama Serials Department where she worked up the ladder from Assistant Floor Manager to Associate Producer. She worked in Doctor Who, EastEnders, Silent Witness, Man in the Iron Mask, War and Peace and many other Ö÷²¥´óÐã productions. She left the staff in 1994 and worked as a freelancer until 2005 when she retired for production work – she occasionally works as a background artist.

What was your first job in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã? My first job was acting in the children’s drama which was transmitted live from Lime Grove. It was telerecorded then transmitted again in April. I also appeared in Jack in the Box, Women of Troy, The Common Room, The Lady from the Sea and Champion Road for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã plus Cool for Cats, Emergency Ward 10 and The Lonely World of Harry Braintree for ITV amongst others. These were whilst I was still at my school,The Arts Educational.

Were you ever mentioned on the Radio Times magazine? Or is there any particular magazine you have kept as souvenir?  I have never been interviewed for the Radio Times, only had my name listed in the casts of the above productions. I have kept the front covers of the Radio Times for the programmes I worked on as part of the production team, such as Prince Regent, War and Peace, plus many others. I also kept the supplement that came for War and Peace.

How do you use Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome? And have you found any particular programme episode you are fond of? I sometimes look to to jog my memory of which actors were in certain series. I was particularly fond of any of the Francis Durbridge serials which always had wonderful cliff-hanger end of episodes!

Can you share any special memories you have of the programmes and features you worked in? It is very difficult to pick out any special memories from Doctor Who and many of the other productions I worked on, as they mostly have all been memorable. However a Dr Who I did with Patrick Troughton called gave me the chance to fly in a helicopter for the first time. As we took off from a cliff edge to go down to the beach, I screamed as I watched the earth disappear from beneath my feet which encouraged the pilot to swerve around, very exciting.

Another memorable moment was on a serial with Frank Finlay, when we were filming a scene on the Isle of Wight that involved convicts in chains. These 20 or so actors were costumed and made-up in Portsmouth and I had to get the ferry tickets and march the men on board with their chains clanking away to get them to the location.

Trudging 14 times up and down St, Michael's Mount in a day on is seared into my brain as is hiding in cars to cue the drivers on Z Cars before the days of walkie-talkies.

On we had a thousand Yugoslav soldiers for several days and the organisation involved in getting them ready and into position was impressive.

Filming in the centre of Bern for which involved closing the streets for a night shoot; Filming on in Switzerland and France was a challenge, especially the beach scenes with strong winds blowing away the parasols and having to reschedule due to the rain.

Shooting Old Men at the Zoo with wild animals was interesting, plus having to find enough male extras prepared to have their bottoms exposed for injections as part of one scene shot in a disused biscuit factory near Hereford.

Trying to shoot London street scenes for was problematical as it was supposed to be deserted of any moving traffic. I enjoyed filming in Bath on as to see the actors in period costumes in the actual places in the book was a delight.

When finding locations, the variety of places I have been to has added to my education: inside prisons, mortuaries, council flats then stately homes, hospitals, court rooms, the working end of crematoriums, factories, dock yards and airports.

Working with the Visual Effects on makes one a bit blasé about body parts and post mortems!

How important do you think it is to preserve the history of TV and radio listings? I think it is very important to preserve the history of TV and Radio listings to show future generations the breadth and level of productions of the past. Looking at the pages in the 1950s and comparing them with the present day listings, shows how trivial much of today's output has become. It is also a great reference source.

Two years ago , the huge project that digitised Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Times listings from 1923 to 2009,

We have a lot to celebrate – to this date, we’ve accepted more than 170,000 edits from volunteers and we’ve linked more than 10,000 listings to programmes that are available to hear or watch online.

But on these two years you've also shared your stories about memories juggled by Genome listings. One of the first emails we received when first went live came from Kitchener, Canada. "I would like to point out that your opening page includes a picture of ME. I’m flattered. Nice to be able to show my family that I did actually work for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã", said Michael Du Boulay.

So, to mark our second year online, we’ve interviewed Michael Du Boulay, a true Star of Genome:

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How did you feel when you saw yourself?

I was impressed that you should choose me to represent a Ö÷²¥´óÐã cameraman. I laughed because certainly my “jersey,” was not typical working dress of the day. Jacket and tie would be more truthful. I suspect whoever chose my picture wanted to change the image of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. It was early on in my career there so much of my wardrobe originated in Canada! I think I was shooting Juke Box Jury.

How did you start working for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã?

My grandmother, who lived in England, sent me a Ö÷²¥´óÐã handbook of 1957 that outlined all things Ö÷²¥´óÐã. This was the spark that ignited my interest in working for such a prestigious corporation. I had toured England in 1959 then returned to Canada where I worked as an operator in Kitchener’s TV station. All along I was attracted to working in a larger more experienced service. I was in possession of an ITV glossy booklet showing off their studios in Elstree. This was the kind of facilities I hankered for.

My buddy and I sailed for Southampton in October 1962 with an introduction to Roy Thomson, who later became Lord Thomson of Fleet. He owned Scottish Television in Glasgow. We did not meet Roy but a director who gave us rail tickets to Glasgow to check out Thompson Television International. This was his company selling used TV equipment to offshore locations. We were involved in electronic conversions of cameras from 405 to 625 line standard. Scottish Television had purchased a mansion (Kirkhill House) outside of Newton Mearns to set up as a training college for staff from the recipient countries. All the while I was writing letters to Ö÷²¥´óÐã London in hopes of gaining an interview to no avail. I left Scotland early in December moving to London and finally got an interview in February 1963. Ö÷²¥´óÐã 2 needed more crews to produce programmes through existing studios.

What was your job at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã?

I was hired come March 1963. I started in crew 2 where Frank Wilkins was the senior cameraman with the famous Jim Atkinson as number two. Another crew member, Peter Hider, was assigned to me with the task of making me familiar with all the technical facilities in a larger studio. I began on cameras but moved to inlay/overlay then vision control. I thoroughly enjoyed the high standards of all skills serving Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s productions.

Could you share some of your memories?

My time at Evesham in Tech Ops course No. 16 was a great experience along with learning where in the country to place some of the accents I heard in class.

On April 20th, 1964, was marred by a massive power failure. I was working on at Lime Grove and waited around hoping we would get power back and go to air. so off I went home and Panorama transmitted from Alexander Palace.

On the Friday that President Kennedy was assassinated, I was off at home. Heard the news on radio and the "bottom" of my stomach fell out! I had a date that evening to see The Balcony. Within the story there was a discussion about the merits of driving through the town in an open car. That was very hard to take. The next day I worked the at the theatre and all eyes were on network transmissions when possible to see the aftermath of that horrible event.

On October 15th, 1964 Britain had their general election. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã used two studios (TC1 and TC2) to facilitate 14 cameras covering and following returns. Richard Dimbleby did a fantastic job. This was the only time I was required to sleep over at the Centre. They put us up in East Tower so we could meet the 07:30 hr crew call to cover the results. I was camera control of the five studio cameras in studio 2 while other operators controlled the nine other cameras looking at caption boards updated with county results in studio 1. I worked on and off all day finishing at 21:20 hrs.

During a recording of the Beatles on Top Of The Pops, Paul McCartney came up to control room to sit in gallery and watch proceedings. I was doing vision control that day. I was tempted to go and talk but Ö÷²¥´óÐã culture frowned on operators mixing with show-business types.

If the bands had a number on the charts for more than a couple of weeks the practice was to bring them in to record their number for next airing of Top Of The Pops. I worked on two Rolling Stones numbers. and Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown. Cilla Black also was recorded. This was early beginnings of "music videos!"

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã had been around for many years so staff benefits were established such as providing lunch vouchers and a soft-shoe allowance for crews working on studio floors. The latter ensured quiet crew movements while mics were open.

Having a "pub" in the Television Centre was a novel feature for me coming from Canada where no such facility existed in the work place. Much drama was produced in those years and I was very impressed with the high standard of performance from all the actors. We rehearsed everything and each rehearsal was the same. While working on you couldn’t help but notice the attention to details in the set dressing with all items accurate to the period... a 1928 Scottish practice at "Arden Hoose!"

I think that everybody was very proud of working for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã in those days. I was very impressed with the work day in the studio. When a "tea break" was called everybody vanished. Actors and crew were always on time. The crew calls were well attended with all arriving a good twenty minutes before starting the day’s work on studio floor. The planning of all the elements involved filled the time allotted with no overtime.

How important is it to preserve the history of TV and Radio listings ?

Your new site is a huge resource nailing down historic transmissions. I looked up the details regarding which was on the Friday night after President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22nd 1963. This meant viewers were drawn elsewhere. They re-transmitted that first episode the following week.

Have you spotted yourself in any of the listings? Have we stirred any particular memories that you would like to share? On our 2nd birthday we would also like to thank all of the volunteers who have helped make Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome better by editing the listings, and those who have taken the time to write to us with their stories.

David Rose from Stockwell in London got in touch via to tell us about his moment of television fame as a teenager back in 1966. We thought you'd like to hear his story in his own words...

On 29 January 1966, about 40 of us from the Youth Club at St Andrew's Church, Mottingham, met at the church hall to take a coach to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã to see Club leader Pat said the Ö÷²¥´óÐã had told them that for this new series they were trying out having a young, fifth panellist to give a “teenager's view” and would pick a member of our party to be that extra panellist.

A vote resulted in me being chosen to be the guinea pig. How that happened I can’t remember but I’m sure I didn’t volunteer. Maybe it was because I was dressed for the part. I was wearing a shirt from which I’d removed the collar and cuffs and dyed them black, whilst the body of the shirt I’d dyed purple. I stitched it all back together again - by hand! I wore it with a yellow tie and my new first made-to-measure suit with 12-inch flares and flared cuffs in a bright fawn corduroy with a bright red lining. I felt the bees knees! Sadly, it wasn’t colour TV in those days.

As soon as we arrived at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Television Theatre they asked me to fill out a release form before being whisked into the make-up room to emerge a few minutes later looking like I’d arrived fresh from the Bahamas.

In the green room I met my fellow panellists - only two of whom I can remember. There was Spencer Davis (of the Spencer Davis Group who were number one that week with Keep on Running) and Marion Ryan, a pretty blonde singer who had no hits but was still famous.

I also met DJ Alan Freeman, Hayley Mills and Marianne Faithfull, who were there for the next Juke Box Jury, which was to be recorded immediately after ours went out live.

I was ushered onto the stage to cheers of approval from the club and shook David Jacob’s hand before taking my seat behind my name, which they had obviously just put together from plastic letters slotted into a black velvet stand.

We then did a short run-through of a couple of records, chat and voting, then a man with a clipboard and head set chatted to the audience about when to clap and to be 'natural' and not to look into the camera if it was pointing at them - and then he counted down from ten... at 5.15 the theme music started - Hit and Miss by The John Barry Seven.

During the programme I was called on several times to give my esteemed 'teenage opinion” and vote - but the only record I can recall from the show was I'll Never Quite Get Over You sung by Billy Fury. After some chat from the panel the record had two 'hits' and two 'misses'. The celebrity panel was split. My moment had arrived...

"So let’s see what our teenager makes of this one," said David Jacobs. "Over to you, David."

I loved Billy Fury. Before the Beatles came along I wanted to be Billy Fury, then I wanted to be John Lennon - but, strangely, never Paul McCartney, Elvis or Cliff. I used to mime in my bedroom mirror Halfway To Paradise and Jealousy and I still sported a Billy Fury quiff. So it was a no-brainer. I said I loved the song, the orchestra, the words... and it would be a huge hit.

Meanwhile, back at home, my grandparents were My grandpa set up his camera on a tripod and started to take endless photographs of the tiny TV screen - so photographs exist of this momentous moment.

I’ve contacted the Ö÷²¥´óÐã on a few occasions to see if the show exists in the archives but as the programme went out live, it seems no record of it exists - except for my grandfather’s blurry snaps. Recently my daughter called a friend at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã who dug out the running order and 'cast' - and there I am listed as a panellist.

In the event I'll Never Quite Get Over You was a minor hit. But that didn’t matter... I’d said the right thing.

On Monday morning I got a call from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. It was The Duty Officer who told me that they had received two phone calls following my appearance on Juke Box Jury and wanted my permission to give the callers my telephone number and address.

The first was from a Mrs Baran in Wales who said she had a son called David Rose and she wondered if I was he? It was, indeed, my mother whom I hadn’t seen for more than 15 years. The second was from a Mr Larry Parnes - Billy Fury's manager. As a wannabe pop star my heart leapt with excitement.

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Thank you to David for his wonderful recollections. This edition of Juke Box Jury doesn't exist in the archives, so his memories and photographs are very valuable.

Have you made an appearance on television and would like to share your memories? Please get in touch with us here via our email address.

At the end of June 1960, the new Ö÷²¥´óÐã Television Centre sprang into life with great fanfare.

The to come from the new purpose-built facility was a variety extravaganza called First Night starring the likes of Arthur Askey and magician David Nixon.

While the television service went to town on welcoming the futuristic building in west London, the Radio Times that week also accorded it great fanfare. The cover illustration (below) featured its curved lines along with some of First Night's star turns.

The magazine had a two-page spread about TVC, with a detailed plan of this "giant bowl of bricks and glass and concrete and mosaic", and described how it had been built to serve the needs of a rapidly expanding industry.

You can download a PDF version of the original article in full  Feel free to share your thoughts about it at the end of this post.

1) Who is this russet-haired gentleman from Scottish historical series The Borderers, which screened in 1968? He has since gone on to become a Knight of the realm and starred in countless memorable roles. You might see him at the moment in a senior role at the movies.

2) This studio shot from 1974 is from a production of Greek tragedy Electra. Can you identify the actor being locked in an embrace? He has gone on to take on a host of lead TV roles, including pillars of the establishment.

3) This actor, regularly a romantic lead and dashing hero on the big screen, goofed it up for 1993 one-off comedy Mama's Back, which starred Joan Collins. 

4) You'll find this actor fully in character as Sigmund Freud in an 1984 television drama about his life. His most famous character is suitably hirsute in the facial department - and also European.

5) A little behind-the-scenes moment from a popular 2005 costume drama. Our heavily draped star has appeared in a number of period pieces, including a recent epic.

Feel free to leave your guesses in the space below or share your thoughts about any of the programmes mentioned in our quiz!

The format of Juke Box Jury doesn’t sound very enticing to modern ears. 

New records played to a panel of four celebrities (who were not necessarily at the younger end of the age spectrum) who then gave their opinions of them, and at the end of each round voted whether they thought the disc would be a ‘hit’ or a ‘miss’. 

There were no videos, not even any live performances, and only occasional personal appearances by the artists concerned.  And yet it was a highly popular show for most of its original eight-year run from 1959 to 1967.

As with a large number of successful quiz and panel show formats, Juke Box Jury was an American concept.  Devised and hosted by the disc jockey Peter Potter, Jukebox Jury began in Los Angeles only in 1948, before having a network run in 1953-4.  The original version was a broader format than the Ö÷²¥´óÐã version, with more panellists per show, and features other than record reviews.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã saw a recording of one of the shows and made their own untransmitted pilot version to try it out in early 1959.  This was deemed successful enough to be commissioned as a series, so the Ö÷²¥´óÐã negotiated to be allowed to make the programme in its own way, without interference – although Potter was always credited with devising it.  A deal was struck and was transmitted live on Monday 1 June 1959 at 7.30 pm.

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Light Programme disc jockey (and occasional actor) David Jacobs was hired as compere, and the first panel consisted of his colleague Pete Murray, singers Alma Cogan and Gary Miller, and ‘typical teenager’, Susan Stranks (who went on to present ITV children’s magazine series Magpie from 1968 to 1974). Jacobs did not feel the show had gone well, but Ö÷²¥´óÐã management thought otherwise.

The eight records played on the first programme included Personality by Anthony Newley (followed by another version of the same song by Lloyd Price and his Orchestra), Say One for Me by Bing Crosby and More, More, More Romancing by Jo Shelton.

The series’ original theme tune was Juke Box Fury by Ossie Warlock and the Wizards, but following a dispute with producer Russell Turner, it was replaced by Hit and Miss from the John Barry Seven.  This record was actually reviewed on the 6 February 1960 show, then adopted as the theme from the next edition.

The first shows were all broadcast live, but eventually one live and one videotaped show made on the same day became the norm. It was a relatively simple show which needed little rehearsal and this made good use of studio time.

Some shows were missed in the early months, as when Jacobs hosted the ‘Star’ Ballroom Championships. Given the show’s popularity and chances it would fall prey to the schedules, from from 5 September 1959 Juke Box Jury , which would be its regular day until late 1967.

Even when pre-recorded the videotapes of Juke Box Jury were  not kept for long after they were shown, partly because they were topical and were seen as having little use afterwards, and because tapes were expensive, and the fact that they could be reused was part of their advantage over filming.  There was no market for foreign sales of the series, and no prospect of a domestic repeat.  The only two complete examples of the show from its original run were some of the occasional editions recorded onto 35mm film telerecording, namely the editions from and 12 November 1960. 

Scandal and controversy

Very little information about the shows overall has survived, other than documentation about who appeared and what records were played – and even at the time information was basic.  In a 1966 edition Anthony Booth made remarks critical of the release of a particular Roy Orbison record when Orbison had recently suffered a personal tragedy, and Jacobs concurred. But the Ö÷²¥´óÐã was unable to supply a transcript of the programme to the record company when requested to, as the show had been live, unscripted, and no precise notes were made of what had been said.

The fact that so few editions remain from the series means that it is left to the imagination how the wide range of music and showbusiness personalities who featured as panellists came over.  There is some evidence from reactions in correspondence and editions of Points of View, such as the fact that one appearance by American comedian Stubby Kaye was criticised, not for his opinions, but for the fact that he during the show. 

The series attracted an eclectic range of celebrity panellists from Sean Connery and Peter Sellers to US film star Jayne Mansfield and music producer Phil Spector. More parochial talents such as Thora Hird and Twiggy also graced the line-ups.  Though many were of the young generation of actors and musicians, there was always a balance between them and older opinions – sometimes the combination of personalities was odd to the point of surrealism.

Occasional editions had a themed panel, for example when Cliff Michelmore, Derek Hart, Fyfe Robertson and Kenneth Allsop appeared in August 1961.  After the episode which featured the Beatles, other groups sometimes formed the panel, including the - the only time there was a fifth desk.  One early edition had a non-celebrity panel, consisting of teenage students from the American Dependant High School, Bushy Park, but apart from them and Susan Stranks, the only element of the non-celebrity world was the introduction of voters chosen from the audience, who decided if the panel didn’t achieve a majority verdict.

From 1961 there was the innovation of the Hot Seat, where one of the artists whose records had been reviewed would be interviewed, one the first of these being Spike Milligan.  His record was Sideways Through the Sewers of the Strand, though it is hard to imagine that the discussion stayed on the subject in hand for long, given Milligan’s propensity for anarchy.  

Another attempt to pep up the format of the show was trialled on , which was to have a panel consisting of the four disc jockeys – Pete Murray, Jimmy Savile, Alan Freeman and Simon Dee.  This line-up became standard for eight weeks in early 1967, but although at first there was a slight rise in viewing figures, Ö÷²¥´óÐã management was not keen on the idea and it was soon dropped, although DJs continued to featured frequently, including new faces like Kenny Everett and John Peel.

Towards the middle of 1967 it was beginning to be felt that the programme had run its course.  With the start of Radio 1, there was a lot more coverage of pop music on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã than there had been the case in 1959, and there were many more television programmes featuring it than previously.  The cost of the rights to the show no longer seemed to be justified, and it was felt it was time for a change. 

In the last few months production of the programme was moved from London to Manchester, perhaps an odd decision given that its days were numbered. But facilities there were not as good as in the capital and simple things like using zoom lenses and superimposing captions became more difficult.

Revived 45s

 A replacement programme was sought, and finally it was decided that Manchester would produce a new show starring Alan Freeman from the start of 1968.  Juke Box Jury had been moved to Wednesdays in September 1967 as part of a rejig of the Saturday schedule when was promoted to that day.  The of the original Ö÷²¥´óÐã Juke Box Jury went out a few days before the end of 1967, and featured two of the panellists from the first show - Pete Murray and Susan Stranks - with frequent guests Eric Sykes and Lulu making up the numbers. 

The records on this edition were Honey Chile by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas;  Lantern Light by Peter and the Wolves;  Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt by Billy Fury;  I Can Take or Leave Your Loving by Herman’s Hermits;  Mr Second Class by the Spencer Davis Group;  For Your Information by The Cedars;  and Don’t Change It by Ferns Brass Foundry.  The ‘Hot Seat’ guest was Spencer Davis.

The new would be in an early Friday evening slot between the antiques show Going for a Song and soap opera The Newcomers.  It promised ‘a look at the latest pop releases with artists live and on film, plus comment and opinion on the pop music scene’.  All Systems Freeman only ran for 12 editions in total, and Freeman returned to radio.

We had not seen the last of Juke Box Jury, as it was and 1989-90 (following a in March 1989 as part of a night celebrating the centenary of the jukebox). 

For all the apparent limitations of the programme, in its heyday Juke Box Jury gathered more than respectable audiences, and at a time when the generation gap seemed to be constantly widening, it helped to bring them a little closer as the disparate panel members weighed up the varied music of the era.

Do you think Juke Box Jury is a classic programme? Which music programmes that succeeded it have caught your eye? Let us know your thoughts in the space below.

To mark the period of Thanksgiving (hey, we do Black Friday now, so why not…), here are some reminiscences of the most notable US programming that has been shown on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.

When the Ö÷²¥´óÐã television service started officially in November 1936, while most of the programmes were live, it was realised it would be helpful to allow resetting of studios if film material could be arranged to supplement the schedule. 

Apart from cinema newsreels which were bought in to provide topical material, there was a shortage of alternative film content.  Distributors of feature films were reluctant to co-operate with television, so very few features were seen on television in the early days. 

One source that was willing to allow their material to be used however was the Walt Disney studio, which proved to be the beginning of a long relationship between that company and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.  Many and other Disney cartoons were to be shown between 1936 and 1939, when the service closed down – in fact the last programme to be transmitted in 1939 was, famously, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey’s Gala Premiere – which was then repeated on the day the television service resumed in 1946.

Gradually through the course of the 1940s and 1950s film companies relented a little, and more purchased material, including series made for television, was made available to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.  Perhaps the earliest full-length American film to be shown on British television was The Fighting Texan, an obscure Western made in 1937 and shown on Ö÷²¥´óÐã television in May 1939.  Other films such as Whistling Bullets and Galloping Dynamite were also shown before the war, but it can safely be assumed that these were not particularly lucrative properties.  Post-war, American cowboy films became one of the staples of daytime programming, and the adventures of Hopalong Cassidy and others were widely shown in the 50s, often as part of Children’s Television.

US film studios had initially been hostile to the new medium of television, but by the 1950s they saw they had more to gain by working with TV and producing material for it.  With America’s huge landmass encompassing several time zones, it made sense to produce non-topical material such as comedy and drama on film, which also had the advantage of high production values.  

There was simultaneously what has been described as a ‘golden age’ of live American television comedy and drama in the 1950s, with comedies such as The Honeymooners and single plays like Marty and Twelve Angry Men being produced.

Most of the widely-exported US shows were filmed productions.  Comedy greats such as Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy and its successors, and The Phil Silvers Show (better known as Sergeant Bilko) were among the early programmes which were successful on this side of the Atlantic as well as back home. 

Ö÷²¥´óÐã television had to wait until the last day of 1962 to transmit The Lucy Show, but it had been .  Silvers’ success with British audiences saw him interviewed for Alan Melville’s alphabetical showbiz magazine A-Z in 1959.  There were selected repeats under the title The Best of Bilko in 1961, and specials featuring Silvers including  were also purchased.  The Phil Silvers Show, recognised as one of the greats of American comedy, was revived a number of times on Ö÷²¥´óÐã television, as late as 2004.  Imported comedies continued into the 60s, including hits like The Dick van Dyke Show and Bewitched.

US drama series were also bought in by the early 50s, with George Raft series I’m the Law, shown from 1954.  With the start of ITV, there was competition with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã over who would obtain which programme.  Among the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s purchases were the hugely popular courtroom drama , medical drama Dr. Kildare, and during the mid-60s spy boom, kitsch espionage series  (and its sequel The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.). A slightly less eccentric espionage series in the 70s was.  

While ITV was able to produce some of its own filmed series for both domestic and export markets, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã was confined for the time being to making part-videotaped shows, so its only real source of faster-paced, slicker drama material was America.  As with the earliest bought-in US shows, Western series remained popular, with titles like , The Virginian, The High Chaparral and Alias Smith and Jones remaining a staple of Ö÷²¥´óÐã programming in the 60s and 70s, before America itself fell out of love with the Wild West.

One great hit that was emblematic of the 60s was comedy/music serial . Based on the style pioneered by Dick Lester in the Beatles' first two feature films A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, the show featured a manufactured pop group who got into crazy adventures, punctuated by specially written pop songs – many of which charted very highly.  Although this series was filmed in colour, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã could only show it in black and white at the time, as while the US networks were converting to colour by the mid-60s, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã only had limited colour transmission, on Ö÷²¥´óÐã2 from 1967, and on Ö÷²¥´óÐã1 (and ITV) in 1969. 

One of the first programmes to benefit (for those viewers with colour sets) from the coming of colour to Ö÷²¥´óÐã1 was Star Trek.  Originally produced from 1966 to 1968, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã  in summer 1969 as a replacement for Doctor Who,  now being reduced to six month-long seasons.  Star Trek soon acquired a loyal audience, though the Ö÷²¥´óÐã regarded it as a family programme, but thought some of the episodes weren't suitable to be shown before the watershed.

A new crime series that began on Ö÷²¥´óÐã1 in 1967 was  (known in America simply as Ironside), and it was now possible to see this in colour.  The 70s saw a number of memorable US police and private eye series bought by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, including , The Rockford Files, Cannon and Starksy and Hutch. 

These were often shown on peak time Ö÷²¥´óÐã1 and got big audiences, becoming cults and allowing their stars spin-off careers as recording artists in some cases.  At one point Ö÷²¥´óÐã1 would alternate different shows in the same slot called The Detectives, rather than run a single series at a time.  One highly successful US show picked up by Ö÷²¥´óÐã2 was the Depression-era family drama , which gained a faithful audience with a mixture of humour, sentiment and likeable, plausible characters – as well as a novel way of rounding each episode off, with characters talking in voice-over as they prepared to go to sleep at night.

Ö÷²¥´óÐã2 also had a line in importing high quality comedy shows, such as brilliant Korean War show , which benefited from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã choosing to use the laugh-track free version of the programme.   That said, it was made on location, while studio-recorded programmes such as the soap-ish but well-written and acted Rhoda did have audience laughter it was from a live audience, like most home-made shows.  It was seen as a daring experiment to have live studio audiences on filmed shows, with US executives worried that they might not laugh enough and in the right places.

US TV experimented with a new drama forms in the 70s too.  The Ö÷²¥´óÐã did not pick up the feature length detective series like Columbo at first, but did but the new ‘mini-series’ on ‘difficult’ subjects – , which told the story of the African slave trade, and Holocaust, which showed the plight of European Jews before and during the Second World War.  Both these series faced accusations of turning serious subjects into soap opera, and though they did show the darker side of historical events there was still a temptation to provide a happy ending. 

Towards the end of the 70s came the advent of the expensive, high-quality soap operas like , which gained a level of hype not seen before – the furore over ‘Who Shot J.R.?’ in 1980 was even covered on the News (which was an unusual event in those days).

Through succeeding decades, US shows kept on being used for some time as a ratings-grabbing way of filling schedules.  Gradually this tendency was reined in, though cult hits like The X-Files, “Star Trek: The Next Generation and Twin Peaks still commanded an audience – usually on Ö÷²¥´óÐã2. 

Gradually with the advent of Sky and other cable and satellite channels there was more competition to secure the rights to American programmes, and while certain programmes such as  are still shown on the main Ö÷²¥´óÐã channels (at least for the time being), American programming no longer features anything like as heavily in the schedules as it did in former decades.

Hundreds of US shows have been imported to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã over the decades, so we couldn't include them all in this post. Are there any you would like to mention? Please do so using the space below.

Gilbert Harding, notorious as “the rudest man in Britain”, was one of the most colourful of television personalities in the second age of television, when it started to become the favourite medium of most Britons. 

In his 1950s heyday he was a regular panellist on What’s My Line?, but made many appearances on many other programmes as host, presenter and contributor, starting as a radio commentator in the early 1940s.

Harding was born in 1907 in Hereford.  After school in Wolverhampton he studied French and German at Queen’s College, Cambridge, before beginning studies to become an Anglican priest, converting to Catholicism soon afterwards.  He spent most of the late 20s and 30s as a schoolteacher, although he also served as a policeman in Bradford, and latterly began to study for a career in law.  

Having briefly been the Times corresponden in Cyprus, he had failed to break into journalism in England, until the outbreak of the Second World War, when he was offered a job in the Monitoring Department of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Overseas Service.  He was promoted to Information Bureau Supervisor, collating salient points from foreign radio bulletins at Broadcasting House.

Rudeness and intolerance 

He later worked at the Monitoring station at Wood Norton as one of a team compiling weekly summaries for the Cabinet. His reports were complimented by Churchill for the “succinct mind” behind them.  His first broadcast was during this time, for an Overseas Service series called , standing in for the usual speaker.  On the back of this, he was offered a job by Michael Standing of Outside Broadcasts in 1942.

Harding worked as an interviewer on programmes for overseas consumption such as Meet John Londoner and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Service’s .  His first domestic credit was for, showing how an evacuated school coped with its new location. After a stint in Canada, Harding found difficulty in obtaining a role, although still on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã staff, but decided to go freelance when offered a presenting job on a new show.   succeeded Transatlantic Quiz, which had had to be abandoned due to government restrictions on spending British dollar reserves.  Harding became a roving quizmaster on the series, travelling around the country while Lionel Hale presented from London. Known for its fiendish difficult cryptic questions, the programme continues to this day.

His profile greatly increased, Harding was now approached to be the chairman of in 1948 and later became a panellist on , in which a team of two men faced four women in a light-hearted discussion of various topics.  

It was on this programme that Harding first acquired his reputation for irascibility and ‘calling a spade a spade’ – which many interpreted as rudeness and intolerance.  He was also accused of hating women, which impression the format of the show may have encouraged.  In 1950 he added the chairmanship of another radio quiz, , to his C.V., but on one occasion various technical difficulties resulted in him losing his temper live on-air and was suspended from the programme for some months.  However, on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s other medium, television, he was about to enter his period of greatest fame.

Harding had made occasional television appearances in Crossword in September 1948, but had never made any great impact – even in a short-lived television version of We Beg to Differ.  In May 1951 he was invited to Lime Grove studios to view a recording of a US programme, a parlour game in which four celebrities had to try to guess the job of a challenger – What’s My Line?. 

Though not overly impressed, Harding saw potential if it was adapted to British sensibilities. But he wrongly assumed he was being sounded out as chairman rather than as a panellist.  A colleague attending the screening with him, along with other potential panellists, was a young Irish journalist called Eamonn Andrews – and he was the intended chair.  However the producer agreed to give Harding a shot at and he was assigned to the second programme. 

Again technical problems – a mix-up between the details of two guests – got in the way of Harding’s success, although he kept his temper sufficiently to come back as a panellist after a few weeks, and Andrews became the regular host of the show.

After its shaky start What’s My Line? soon became a phenomenon of early 50s television, and Harding’s regular appearances and brusque manner, was an almost essential part of the mix.  Other regulars in the first few years included the comic actor Jerry Desmonde, Barbara Kelly, Elizabeth Allen, Ghislaine Alexander, Lady (Isobel) Barnett, magician David Nixon and Marghanita Laski. 

Kelly and Lady Barnett were perhaps the best remembered, but they were outshone by Harding, who made more appearances than either.  The show’s success made it one of the highlights of the era, and made household names of its stars.  The members of the public who came on gave a mime of their job, and then could only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions about it by the panel.  If they succeeded in getting 10 ‘nos’ before the panel worked out what they did, they had won – and got a scroll commemorating the fact (no cash prizes on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã in those days).

Man of the people

There was also a guest celebrity round, for which the panel were blindfolded – the celebrity put on a funny voice (on one occasion the impressionist Peter Cavanagh mimicked Harding himself), and the panel had to guess who they were rather than what they did.  Harding’s interaction with the challengers was the main cause of his temper fraying if he felt he was being misled in any way.  Another well-remembered aspect of the show was occasional oddly-named or obscure jobs.  The most celebrated of these was a job associated with pottery-making, a ‘sagger-maker’s bottom-knocker’.

The show’s success resulted in Harding making guest appearances in other programmes, and even in feature films.  He was a frequent host of radio series such as Gilbert Harding’s Book Club and The Harding Interview, which solicited the audience’s opinion on who should next be interviewed.  The 50s were a great time for the panel game, and Harding was a panellist on   a member of the TV Brains Trust, chairman for the pilot of Ask Your Dad (but replaced for the series by Humphrey Lestocq, then Peter West),  and ‘judge’ in a short-lived series called on the Light Programme. 

He was a guest on a Frankie Howerd vehicle Nuts in May and fronted his own show about his personal tastes, A Little of What You Fancy.  His own view that women should be banned from universities was challenged in an edition of  Leisure and Pleasure in the For Women strand.  In 1955 he presented his own television show,  in which he answered viewers’ questions, and in 1956 in a show just called Gilbert Harding where he was able to give his thoughts on any subject he chose, in the role of a ‘television columnist’.

Harding’s unlikely reputation as a ‘man of the people’ was exploited by radio series On the Spot, in which Harding acted as studio anchor interrogating Ö÷²¥´óÐã reporters who brought back stories from around the country.  In the same week Harding was still appearing on Twenty Questions and Round Britain Quiz, as usual.  The former also acquired a television version, and again Harding was the compere. He could also be avuncular, and was picked to preview the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s  for 1958 in Gilbert Harding says ‘I Hope You’ll Like…’ 

As the 50s continued, Harding’s popularity did too, and his regular appearances both on What’s My Line? and numerous other programmes went on unabated – he was ubiquitous, the very epitome of the television (and radio) personality, and the workload must have been intense.  Harding was not a well man – he was an asthmatic, and kept a supply of oxygen with him in case of emergencies.  He drank, took little exercise, and was, not unusually for the time, a heavy smoker.  His stress levels, given his occasional apoplectic eruptions, cannot have been good.

As the sixties dawned, Harding even appeared twice on the new record review programme and his reaction to the popular music of the era can be imagined.  On 18th September 1960 , he was the latest of John Freeman’s interviewees in the series .  This series saw each subject constantly on camera, with Freeman barely seen, and they were questioned in depth about their beliefs and influences, and how they saw themselves and their place in the world. 

While potentially insightful and revealing, this could on occasion prove uncomfortable for the ‘victim’, and such was the case with Harding.  He was asked whether he had ever been with someone who was dying, in Harding’s case this was his mother, who had passed away not long before (his father died when he was a child).  Pressed on the matter, Harding could not hide his tears.

Prhaps this programme unlocked many self-doubts in Harding’s mind.  He had written books including 1953 autobiography (serialised on the Light Programme in 1956), in which he already showed how uncomfortable he felt being a celebrity, how worthless he thought his career was, and which ends with the chilling line “But I do wish the future were over”. 

The part of Harding’s life that he could not admit to, as its practice was illegal, and which some felt that Freeman was getting at with the probing about his mother, was that Harding was gay, and society’s attitude at that time cannot have helped his evident feelings of self-hatred.  One of the quotes from his Face to Face was “I should be very glad to be dead, but I don’t look forward to the actual process of dying.” 

On 16th November 1960, Harding collapsed and died while getting into a taxi outside Ö÷²¥´óÐã Broadcasting House in London, after recording two editions of Round Britain Quiz.  To the panellists on the shows (which were never broadcast) he appeared ill, his breathing laboured and alleviated by oxygen and whisky, but he seemed his old self during the actual recordings. The following Sunday, Ö÷²¥´óÐã television showed a tribute called Profile: Gilbert Harding, in place of the usual edition of What’s My Line?.  

Harding, though seemingly a symbol of a bygone age, has never quite been forgotten, and his name occasionally surfaces when broadcasting in the 50s is discussed.  His life was considered in Late Night Line-Up’s Plunder feature in 1966, and he was profiled in In Search of Gilbert Harding in 1973 and in 1990, and was also the subject of a 2005 radio play . 

For an age written off as deferential, he is a reminder, as more of an Angry Old Man than an ‘Angry Young Man’, that not everything is as they seem. In spite of his public image, those who knew him well remembered him as a loyal and steadfast friend.

I was on a suburban London railway platform the other day and thought I recognised one of the other people waiting for a train: I did, it was the actor Trevor Peacock, now best known for his appearances in The Vicar of Dibley. He has had a long career as an actor, and before that as a songwriter, and before that as a scriptwriter, for, among other things, the Six-Five Special.

Six-Five Special was one of the programmes brought in when the Ö÷²¥´óÐã ended its ‘Toddlers’ Truce’, when television closed down from around 6pm to 7pm, supposedly in order for parents to be able to put their children to bed. The ITV companies, who were obliged to have the same break by the Independent Television Authority, had objected as they were losing potential revenue, though the Ö÷²¥´óÐã actually saved money by not having to fill that time.

When the practice was abolished, on weekdays the Ö÷²¥´óÐã had the popular light current affairs series Tonight. On Saturdays it decided to present a show to appeal to the burgeoning teenage market. As it was to transmit at five past six, following the 6pm news, it was called Six-Five Special, and in line with the railway imagery the title sequence showed a steam train travelling at speed, with the signature tune performed by resident band, Don Lang and his Frantic Five. The hosts were Jo Douglas (who also co-produced) and Pete Murray.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã had wanted a magazine programme that would feature topics other than music, so there were celebrity guests and a sports section presented by boxer Freddie Mills. But producer Jack Good knew that it was the music content that attracted his audience. After a year Good became disenchanted with the struggle to get his way and defected to ITV, where he started Oh Boy!. Six-Five Special carried on, but was eventually dropped when ratings struggled, in December 1958. (Quirky note, there was a  in the early hours of January 1st, 1958, called Twelve-Five Special, broadcast from a restaurant overlooking London Airport.)

Six-Five Special was of course not the first Ö÷²¥´óÐã programme that took an interest in popular music - it had been a feature of broadcasting both in sound and vision since the start of the two media. However it was perhaps the first show aimed at young people with music at the centre of its content. Other shows featured pop acts, including rock and roll – one long-running television show of the 50s was  presented by former bandleader Jack Payne, which included performances by many music acts of the time, including , in the last episode of the show, in March 1958.

Rock and roll and other pop music was to gain another outlet in April 1959, when a  Drumbeat was launched. This featured a regular roster of acts, including Bob Miller and the Millermen, and the John Barry Seven, as well as frequent appearances by Adam Faith, Vince Eager and other early British rock and rollers. Having made appearances in sketches in Six-Five Special as well as scripting it, Trevor Peacock became the presenter of Drumbeat after the first few episodes (the original host was Gus Goodwin). The show only lasted one series, finishing in August 1959.

In the meantime though, another much longer-running show had begun, based on a US format, the Juke Box Jury. Presented by DJ David Jacobs, this ran from June 1959 until December 1967, with revivals in 1979 (with Noel Edmonds) and 1989-90 (with Jools Holland). The format was simple, a panel of four celebrities listened to newly released records and gave their opinions whether they would be a hit or a ‘miss’.

With no live performances, and only occasional personal appearances by the artists who made the records, it’s hard to understand the appeal other than the scarcity of pop music on television or radio at the time. The panel was not particularly young and trendy, though there was initially a ‘typical teenager’, one Susan Stranks, later to present the ITV children’s show Magpie. Pop artists would often be at least one of the line-up, but the majority seemed to be fairly middle-aged entertainers or ‘personalities’. There was the occasional attempt to be more relevant, as with special shows featuring groups, on 7th December 1963, the same night as the Ö÷²¥´óÐã broadcast a concert of theirs from Liverpool. Later the  and one or two other bands repeated the trick (the Stones’ appearance being the only occasion where there were five panellists instead of four).

Towards the end of its initial run, DJs such as Pete Murray and Alan Freeman having been frequent guest panellists over the years, it was decided to have all-DJ panels for a while, but this too was dropped after a few months. The final edition on 27th December 1967 had Pete Murray and Susan Stranks (both of whom were in the first edition) along with Lulu and Eric Sykes.

Flagship of pop coverage

With the resurgence on interest in home grown rock and ‘beat’ music in the early 60s, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã decided to try its luck with a new regular programme featuring pop music, this time based on records that were making their way up the singles charts. With pop music on Ö÷²¥´óÐã radio still confined to a few shows on the Light Programme, this was to be a major new attraction – albeit a belated reaction to ITV shows Thank Your Lucky Stars which started in 1961, and Ready Steady Go which began in 1963.

Debuting on 1st January 1964, and initially broadcast from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s Manchester studio (a converted church in Dickenson Road), it was entitled , and would become the flagship of Ö÷²¥´óÐã pop coverage. Lasting until 2006 in its regular format, with only Christmas specials, spin-offs like Top of the Pops 2 and archive repeats since, TOTP was a winning formula, especially in the first few decades of its existence, with live performances predominating - live in the sense of the artists being in the studio, only occasionally were they not miming to pre-recorded tracks.

For many years these were supposed to be specially recorded, but given the difficulty of replicating the carefully crafted sound of the original record, it is believed that this was not always adhered to. Over the years the amount of live performances decreased – even in the early years, acts like the Beatles (who only appeared in the TOTP studio once, to promote Paperback Writer/Rain in 1966) would be represented by film (either stock shots or specially made promos) or videotaped performances, as their schedules prevented them from making the studio recordings. In the early 70s some acts who could not turn up in person had their records ‘interpreted’ by specially made film clips. One or two acts also thought it beneath them to appear, and some records were banned by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã as not being suitable for a family audience.

By far the best-known replacement for artists though was having the show’s resident dance troupe perform a routine to accompany a song. The first of these was The Go-Jos, who were succeeded in 1968 by the most famous dancers, Pan’s People, choreographed by Flick Colby. In 1976 they were replaced briefly by Ruby Flipper, then within the same year by Legs & Co. The latter survived until they were phased out in autumn 1981, then in December that year the last in-house dance act, Zoo, started a run of just under two years. From October 1983 it was felt that pop videos made a dance troupe unnecessary, and the style of the whole show had moved on as well.

Concurrent with early Top of the Pops, Ö÷²¥´óÐã2 was not afraid to present its own take on the medium, in the form of , which favoured less chart-oriented fare, namely acts in the rhythm and blues genre, though it was advertised as ‘twenty-five minutes of non-stop beat and shake’, which sounds like someone cleaning a carpet. The first show featured Millie, The Animals and Lulu and the Luvvers, later episodes had Manfred Mann, The Hollies, The Kinks, Tom Jones, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye and many more. One early act was Davy Jones and the King Bees, whose lead singer went on to greater things once he changed his name to Bowie.

The Beat Room finished at the end of January 1965, to be succeeded immediately by , which had many aspects in common (as well as, additionally, a silly title – which was changed to “Gadzooks! It’s the In Crowd” after a few months. Much better…)

Over on Ö÷²¥´óÐã1, late 1965 brought , a pop show made in Glasgow which included some elements of Gadzooks, but the beat boom was losing its impetus. Pop acts had long been featured on children’s programmes such as Crackerjack and occasionally Blue Peter, and this continued with acts appearing on The Basil Brush Show when it began in 1968. Also that year The Animals’ former keyboard player Alan Price presented , an educational children’s series about the evolution of rock and roll. The following year saw Price present a more straightforward music show Monster Music Mash, including performances by Fleetwood Mac (mark 1), The Moody Blues, and Slade in their early skinhead phase.

Sole survivor

Ö÷²¥´óÐã2 continued to promote ‘serious’ rock music, firstly through Late Night Line-Up occasionally featuring artists like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, which developed into the spin-off programme  in June 1968. As the title implies, it was in colour, and the few existing editions provide some of the earliest colour pop footage. The first edition featured Manfred Mann, with each show usually based around a single artist performing either their greatest hits, or sometimes tracks from a new album. This series lasted 18 months, and was succeeded at the start of 1970 by Disco 2, another Line-Up spin-off, presented at first by Tommy Vance, and later by Richard Williams. This had a more varied content, and started to feature commentary and reviews, as well as more adventurous types of music. When this ended in July 1971, the format was rejigged, though Williams continued to present.

The new version was named after the music industry story that new tunes would be tried out on doormen, cleaners etc, to see if they could whistle them after one hearing - this was called . After the first series Richard Williams left and was replaced by DJ Bob Harris, the best-remembered host of the programme, whose laconic style and garish tank tops defined an era – to a certain section of the population at least. Harris himself left the show as punk and new wave music began to be featured at the end of the 70s. Anne Nightingale, who had latterly been his co-host, took over, and the show survived into the late 80s under the stewardship of David Hepworth, Mark Ellen, and later Andy Kershaw – by which time the title had been curtailed to just Whistle Test.

 Sight and Sound in Concert (which had stereo sound from Radio 1 to replace the tv sound, if you wanted) and Rock Goes to College though 'OGWT' did its own occasional special broadcasts of concerts – notably Queen, Rod Stewart and Elton John. As well as music performances, the show was known for in-depth interviews, and in the absence of actual film of bands, many early editions featured unrelated archive footage to go with album tracks. In those days, album tracks mattered…

At the end of the 70s the genre of youth programming began to emerge, and this naturally featured a lot of music. Shows like Something Else, which hailed from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s Community Programmes Unit, were succeeded by the likes of  and Riverside, which ironically were more like magazine programmes – shades of Six-Five…? At the end of the 80s came the dedicated youth strand Def II which featured shows like Behind the Beat and .

With the advent of dedicated music cable and satellite channels, was the death knell being sounded for a certain kind of music television? Perhaps the sole surviving serious music show is “Later… with Jools Holland” which has , preserving something of the spirit of Whistle Test, even transmitting live as did the first Whistle Tests, and itself a spin-off from The Late Show’s music content. As for the rest, while there is now blanket coverage of music festivals, and various channels showing music videos to choose from, television coverage of pop and rock music seems dominated by talent shows, while the nostalgia market is catered for by repackaging archive material on Ö÷²¥´óÐã4.

I didn’t like to ask Trevor what he made of it all.

Andrew Martin will be your regular Sunday guide through the history of broadcasting by digging out archive gems and information from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome listings.

Alan Stratford Johns was born on 22nd September 1925 in Pietermaritzburg, Natal Province (now Kwa-Zulu Natal), South Africa. After service in the South African Navy during World War Two, he became involved in amateur acting and in 1948 decided to travel to the UK to work in the theatre professionally. Starting at Southend Repertory Theatre, he broke into films with minor roles in the mid-50s including a small part in Ealing comedy The Ladykillers. As with many an actor, while struggling to find work he supplemented his income with various jobs, including running a small hotel for actors in central London.

His credited involvement with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã began with an appearance in two episodes of the soap opera  in November 1958. Various roles followed, including that of a police sergeant in the thriller serial The Days of Vengeance, co-written by the creator of Dixon of Dock Green, Ted Willis.

1961 saw him appear in two episodes of , and Big Time,  in which one of his co-stars was Frank Windsor. Some months later, Johns and Windsor began a long career together when they were cast in a documentary-drama series based around the new ‘crime cars’ in use with Lancashire Constabulary. Initially called Crime Patrol, this was felt to be insufficiently dramatic, so the title was changed to Z Cars, based on the call-signs Z Victor 1 and Z Victor 2 assigned to the two main vehicles featured.

, Four of a Kind, written by Troy Kennedy Martin and directed by John McGrath, was transmitted on 2nd January 1962. Johns was cast as Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Barlow, and was an immediate hit as the irascible but effective officer in charge of the C.I.D. at Newtown police station. Under him was Frank Windsor’s Detective Sergeant John Watt, who as Crime Prevention Officer was directly responsible for the two Z Car crews.

Stratford Johns quickly made the part of Barlow his own, rationalising him as the kind of man who would have had a row with his wife and then sat up drinking whisky half the night, before coming to work with a hangover – certainly the character had a reputation for shouting at subordinates and suspects alike, and was often the target of complaints from senior police officers who insisted there were no Chief Inspectors who behaved like that. Barlow still became a much-loved character, as there was always an element of humour and humanity in Johns’ performance.

As with all the cast, he had to deal with the strain of long series of the show, and the fact they were almost all produced live. However the format of the series allowed for this, in that regular characters would not appear in every episode, or at least not with too many lines to learn…

Johns soon became a celebrity, with guest appearances on programmes such as The Kathy Kirby Show, , Hugh and I and Star Story, on which he read his own story . In 1964 he was featured in Ö÷²¥´óÐã for a Day on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Service in an item called My Dream Boss. He also for a week and for Desert Island Discs  – he had also issued an album of songs himself. More seriously, he fronted an appeal for Oxfam, as himself but .

Z Cars continued to be a success and Barlow remained a major part of its appeal, but gradually it was felt that it had started to become stale, and it was decided to end it in 1965. During the last series an edition of Line-Up Review (an off-shoot of Late Night Line-Up) called A to Z Cars showed the production of an episode through location filming and rehearsals to transmission, and together with his wife Nan Ryder and their children.

However the end of Z Cars (which proved temporary, as it was revived in 1967) was not to spell the end of the characters of Barlow and Watt. A sequel was devised that would take them to another part of the country, the fictional ‘Wyvern’ district (effectively Bristol), where they would run one of the new Regional Crime Squads. They acquired a new set of subordinates and bosses, chief among the former being Detective Sergeant Harry Hawkins (Norman Bowler), who would stay with the series to the end of its run ten years later.

which began in January 1966, was about the ‘investigation of the criminal – not the crime’, and was called Softly Softly. John Watt was promoted to Detective Inspector, and through the run of the series made his way gradually up the ranks to Detective Chief Superintendent. Barlow was promoted immediately to DCS, but was fated never to rise higher, despite a couple of ‘near misses’.

Unlike Z Cars, Softly Softly phased out live episodes after the first year or so, so some of the strain associated with making it was reduced, although each season was still lengthy – usually at least 26 weeks (although this was less that Z Cars, and such long runs were not uncommon in the 60s). Barlow’s character went through the ordeal of being investigated for corruption in a three-episode story  during the second series, which may have in the episode Selection a couple of months later. His original boss A.C.C. Calderwood (John Welsh) was replaced by A.C.C. Gilbert (John Barron), who had been involved in investigating him, though they went on to have a good working relationship. (Barron had fond memories of the Selection episode it as he chose it for the Star Choice repeat series in 1969. 

After three and a half years of Softly Softly it was again decided to vary the formula. The idea was again to keep up with innovation in the police force, and this time it was the new Task Force concept that was chosen. Once more, this involved relocation of the central characters, now to the Medway town of ‘Thamesford’, which again allowed a refreshment of ideas and situations. Barlow was put in charge of CID with two Task Force units, helped by Watt and Hawkins (now an Inspector), and more new characters, who included instinctual Welsh Detective Sergeant Evans (David Lloyd Meredith), and lugubrious dog-handler PC Snow (Terence Rigby).

The change in format happened during the new series of Softly Softly in autumn 1969, and was timed to coincide with the start of regular colour transmission on Ö÷²¥´óÐã1. Originally to be named just Task Force, a compromise was reached to retain the old title this time – so it became Softly Softly: Task Force, although the first episode was still billed just as Softly Softly, with the  name introduced in the end credits. 

Watt, who had been divorced from his first wife during the run of Z Cars, was given a love interest, Dr Jean Morrow, in an early episode of Task Force. Barlow’s wife, despite a couple of fleeting glimpses, was one of those characters like Mrs Mainwaring in Dad’s Army who never really appeared properly (if she was seen briefly, Nan Ryder played her, uncredited).

After a couple of years of the new format, another experiment was tried, with Barlow being seconded to investigate a difficult case in Wales. The three-part story, made entirely on film and with some foreign location work, went out under the punning title in 1971. Following this, it was decided to develop this into a spin-off series proper. During the 1972/3 series of Softly Softly: Task Force, Barlow was again up for promotion – at which point it was decided to kill off his wife.

Despite an intensive interview process where he also had to deal with by a criminal he had once put away, Barlow was not promoted but ended up leaving the Thamesford force to work with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office, investigating particularly complex cases as a kind of troubleshooter. Once more, this was titled Barlow at Large, and John Watt became Barlow’s successor in Thamesford.

Barlow at Large saw Barlow working for suave civil servant A.G. Fenton (Neil Stacy), assisted by Detective Sergeant Rees (Norman Comer) and later Detective Inspector Tucker (Derek Newark). After one series the to Barlow, and an attempt was made to make it more action-packed and modern – largely by having a new title sequence and theme tune, though there was occasionally more filming abroad.

Somehow the concentration on Barlow alone never had the same appeal, and the long-running sparring with Watt was hard to replicate. There was a reunion between the characters in summer 1973, with Barlow and Watt now both Detective Chief Superintendents, re-investigating one of the most famous and mysterious series of historical crimes, in . As the two fictional detectives went over contemporary accounts and evidence of the Whitechapel murders, these were re-enacted in cutaway scenes. The series, made in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s Glasgow studios, got a mixed reception, but nevertheless there was a follow-up in 1976, Second Verdict, which had investigations of cases like the Lindbergh baby, the Reichstag fire, Lizzie Borden and the An odd and jarring mixture of drama and documentary, this never really excited much interest, and only one series was made.

Barlow had come to an end in 1975, and it was decided that Softly Softly: Task Force had run its course too, with its final series in 1976. Watt was still in charge, and there is a reference to his friend at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office in the last episode. With the advent of fast-paced film series like ITV’s The Sweeney, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s studio-bound offerings were starting to feel clunky. Z Cars was still on-going, though a shadow of its former self (even the venerable Dixon of Dock Green only in 1976).

Z Cars ended in 1978, with an attempt to recapture some of the gritty atmosphere of the earlier series, and a noticeably more down-beat tone. No longer made live since 1965, but now recorded on outside-broadcast video, it was still looking tired. The final episode was written and directed by the same people as the first, Troy Kennedy Martin and John McGrath. These two mavericks produced one of the of series television, entitled Pressure, transmitted on 20th September . Among its stranger elements were appearances by early stars Joseph Brady, Brian Blessed, Jeremy Kemp and Colin Welland as members of the public – their colleague James Ellis was still playing Bert Lynch, by now a uniformed Inspector. Frank Windsor made one last appearance as John Watt, back in Newtown to investigate a corruption case. Also featured was actor John Phillips, playing Chief Constable Robbins – who had been Barlow’s boss, as a Chief Superintendent, in the first episode. Somehow though, it felt as if the character should have been Barlow – whether or not that was the intention, it didn’t happen, so the fate of Charlie Barlow was left unresolved.

With the Z Cars franchise finally wound up, Johns continued a varied acting career until the late 90s, appearing in everything from feature films to the likes of  and , and the dark Channel 4 series Brond. He was an excellent Magwitch in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s 1981 , and had a central role in an episode of . One of his last appearances as himself was in in 1996, where he reminisced about 1962 alongside Honor Blackman, Dennis Law and Bernard Cribbins . By the start of the 21st century his health was sadly failing, and he died at the age of 76 in early 2002. Never a huge star outside Britain, Stratford Johns nonetheless created in acting terms one of the great characters of the television age, who could be authoritative, funny, frightening – often in the course of one scene.

Every Sunday, Andrew Martin will be guiding you through the history of broadcasting by digging out archive gems and information from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome listings.

On 26 August, 1991, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã marked the closure of the Lime Grove Studios with a series of programmes. The studio in Shepherd's Bush, London, had closed a month before after being used by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã for more than forty years. The studios were bought by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã as a 'temporary measure' until Television Centre was ready.

The special programming began with a  which included programmes such as  Muffin, Bunter, Toytown and Bill and Ben.

The schedule also included , a "classic melodrama" starring Margaret Lockwood, the Doctor Who pilot or first episode , and a compilation of the most memorable films filmed in the studios.

The evening continued with  ("was Nationwide tea-time trivia, tabloid television or the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's first and last truly populist current affairs programme?") and episodes of soap opera (who were named after the studios), Dixon of Dock Green and This Is Your Life.

The day of memories finished with the airing of which was filmed in Lime Grove Studios in 1935, when the studios belonged to the Gaumont Film Company.

Update, 27/08/2015: We just wanted to include two very interesting comments left on our  Paul Burton shared: "I still have those programmes on video! That year also saw the Ö÷²¥´óÐã move out of Ö÷²¥´óÐã Television Theatre (Shepherd's Bush Empire) and Ö÷²¥´óÐã Ealing (which is once more called Ealing Studios). Then in 1995, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã moved out of the Paris Studio, Lower Regent Street (it's now a swimming pool)."

Meanwhile, Aidan Lunn added some more information about the cameras on the photograph of Studio E below: "The cameras are Link 110s. Introduced in 1977, IIRC, and installed in Lime Grove in 1981, to replace the EMI 2001s that had been there since 1970."

Remember the Lime Grove Studios with this small collection of stills from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Archive:

That Was the Week That Was, whose first episode  was one of the most influential comedy series transmitted by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. Oddly enough, however, it was not made by the Comedy Department, but by the Talks Department, at that time headed by the formidable Grace Wyndham Goldie, although she had little to do with it personally.

The show was hailed as one of the main pillars of the 'satire boom' of the early 1960s, whose other expressions included the stage revue Beyond the Fringe (which starred and launched the careers of Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore; it is often stated to have been part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but was hence 'Beyond…'), Peter Cook’s night club ‘The Establishment’, and , now the sole survivor of the phenomenon. 

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Director General Hugh Greene was keen on reviving the spirit of 1930s German cabaret clubs which he had witnessed himself (memorably, and satirically, described by Peter Cook as having “done so much to prevent the rise of Nazism”), but with the “Beyond the Fringe” team having taken their show to America, an alternative cast was sought. Ned Sherrin, a graduate of  was appointed producer of That Was the Week That Was, while John Bird, star of ‘Establishment’ shows, was considered for the anchor man role, but this did not work out. With Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller having at various times been associated with the famous Cambridge Footlights club, Sherrin eventually cast a recent past president as his host – David Frost. Pilot recordings were made to test the new show’s format, and at first Frost was to share the role with , Frost having had only minimal previous experience on television, but in the event this was not felt necessary.

Other cast members were found, a mixture of seasoned showbusiness professionals who could add gloss, such as singers  and  who had worked with Sherrin on Tonight, and up-and-coming actors such as Roy Kinnear, Kenneth Cope and Lance Percival. One of the founders of Private Eye, cartoonist William Rushton, was also recruited, although not in that role, while another cartoonist, Timothy Birdsall, was to provide a weekly slot creating a cartoon live on air. Finally,  contributed a weekly item where he debated an issue with a group of interested parties, such as farmers, restaurateurs, or scientists.

The show was more or less an instant hit, catching the mood of the time. It was also lucky. Until the early 60s, deference was the rule, and it was a brave person who questioned the institutions of the country – it was just not done to doubt the place of the law, religion, monarchy or politicians, let alone make fun of them. In the wake of the Suez crisis of 1956, which saw  succeed Anthony Eden as Prime Minister and preside over a rise in living standards (“You’ve never had it so good” was how it was popularly expressed), Beyond the Fringe had made a start on the process, though its practitioners later denied their intention was anything other than to make people laugh. Perhaps all they did, in a way, was to say on stage the kind of things people had been saying in private for years. As a stage show it had, at that time, to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s office for censorship, but there was little comment on its content other than to tone down a stage direction (!) in a sketch about four outrageously camp actors.

Television curiously was another matter – not subject to direct censorship, but with a far greater audience, even at the late Saturday night timeslot allocated to TW3 (as it soon became known for the sake of brevity) it was more exposed to public criticism. As sacred cows began to be attacked, politicians and others mentioned by name (one sketch had the temerity to mention certain MPs who had not spoken in the House of Commons for a very long time; when one got up in the House to complain about this he was met with laughter), the show began to become unmissable. One advantage of its late slot was that it became almost open-ended, as there was nothing but the closedown routine to be delayed if it over-ran. But inevitably the opposition began to mount against it (although the Opposition, i.e. the Labour Party, was quite pleased, as the show of course attacked those in power, i.e. the Conservative government). including the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Secretary Henry Brooke, who proved reluctant to commute death sentences in any circumstances, or allow even deserving political refugees to stay in the country.

The first series ended on the 27th of April 1963, having among other things revived the career of Frankie Howerd, who appeared on one of the last editions. Having had great success in the late 40s and early 50s, work had started to dry up, but after an ‘Establishment’ gig had gone down well he was invited to come on TW3 and shone; this in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which itself led to , and to his own Ö÷²¥´óÐã tv series written by Galton and Simpson. Bernard Levin’s combative encounters had been immortalised also when the husband of an actress he had criticised in a press review, got into the studio in one edition and swung a punch at him. The cast had all become stars however, especially perhaps Millicent Martin whose rendition of the theme song was a highlight, its lyrics rewritten to comment brilliantly on the week’s news (the tune was by the ).

The writers too must not be forgotten, as well as Frost and other cast members they included the late David Nobbs, Dennis Potter, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, John Cleese and Bill Oddie (the latter also made a couple of early on-screen appearances) and Private Eye’s Richard Ingrams, among many others.

The luck of events providing good topics for satire was not so evident in 1963, as that year’s great political scandal, the Profumo Affair, mainly took place during the show’s summer break (meanwhile Sherrin’s team were making a about The Englishman Abroad. When TW3 returned on the 28th of September, it was able to cover the on-going fallout. However change was in the air, and not in a way that was going to guarantee the programme’s future. Nervousness at the satirical content of the show was heightened with such political uncertainty as the resignation of Harold Macmillan in the wake of Profumo. In a crude attempt to rein the show in it was decide to stop it being the last programme on Saturday night, by of The Third Man series after it. TW3 responded by having Frost read out the plot of the night’s episode, and the repeats were dropped soon after. Unable to publicly criticise the show for its political content, people resorted to saying that its humour was vulgar and crude – and to be fair some of it was. With the last election having been in 1959, 1964 would inevitably be an election year, and this was finally to provide the excuse for dropping the show. Liberally interpreting the rules about political reporting in the run-up to an election, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã announced that TW3 would end on 28th December 1963.

One of the last editions was a truncated episode on 23rd November, a tribute to President Kennedy who had been assassinated the day before. The show was running out of steam, and morale was lowered by the death from leukeamia of one of its original cast, during the summer break. The 21st December edition was a rather lacklustre , and 1963, like 1962, finished with a ‘best of’ show, That Was the Year That Was –

The cast went on to other things, Roy Kinnear and Lance Percival had long careers in comedy, while Kenneth Cope notably in ITV’s Randall and Hopkirk [Deceased] and Coronation Street. Millicent Martin and David Kernan continued to work with Ned Sherrin on musical projects, while Sherrin came back with successors to TW3 after the election (itself marked by a one-off A Last Word on the Election, produced and directed by Sherrin, and starring ), namely , and Ö÷²¥´óÐã3, before moving into film production. David Frost of course, who someone once said “rose without trace”, continued his inexorable rise, fronting Not So Much…, then  (with John Cleese and two actors called Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett), before moving to ITV and America, and , the culmination of his earlier invention of ‘trial by television’.

It's easy to exaggerate the importance of television programmes, and it’s possible that without TW3 the course of television history might not have been too different. What it did might have been done by other shows in other ways. But it did what it did, and started many careers as well as reviving others, and led, arguably, to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Two Ronnies, Not the Nine O’Clock News and Have I Got News for You. It was one of the things that kick-started the 60s as we know them…

Every Sunday, Andrew Martin will be guiding you through the history of broadcasting by digging out archive gems and information from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome listings.