TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

A week-day tea-time pop alternative to ITV's Get It Together and Runaround, sometimes directed by Top of the Pops' Johnnie Stewart. Hosted by Keith Chegwin, ex-child actor and part host of Saturday morning's Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. The show was recorded at BBC's Manchester studios. The winners would receive probably the worst looking trophy in TV history.

Two teams of kids, divided up into reds and yellows, representing their school would participate in silly games, occasionally accompanied by a current pop hit. Each team had an adult leader, with Gordon Astley, later to co-host Tiswas in its final death throes, heading the red team.

Two or three pop acts would appear each week, many of them big names at the time. Most would be pre-recorded earlier and edited into the final show, with only a few acts actually appearing in the studio at the time of recording.

A pilot edition had been recorded with Flintlock performing Mony Mony, Tina Charles - I'll Go Where The Music Takes Me and The Jarvis Brothers - One Glance.

The show featured several important early appearances by acts only too grateful for the chance to appear on any TV show, only to ignore the same show later in their career once they'd made it. But as well as attracting the type of pop act that would never make it beyond Get It Together, Cheggers also persuaded The Police and several other big hitters to appear. It was also notable for occasionally straying into John Peel territory by inviting 999, Department S, The Undertones, Tenpole Tudor etc.

Lasting eight series it's a show that's been forgotten about by pop show historians, probably choosing to ignore it due to their aversion to the host, which is unfair. There's plenty to investigate here, but when seventies/eighties compilations are broadcast this one is usually, and needlessly, absent.

CHEGGERS PLAYS POP

BBC1

10th April 1978 - 7th November 1986