TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

This show started off as an occasional feature of daily culture review show Late Night Line Up in May 1968, "Late Night Line-Up's Saturday diversion", but by the following month it was launched as a weekly show on its own, making it Britain's first colour pop show. There would have been two flavours of the show Colour Me Pop and Colour Me Jazz, depending on the content, but the jazz element would be dropped before the first broadcast.

Featured acts played thirty minutes live (or singing live to the backing track) in the studio each week with occasional forays to the exotic location of The Fairfield Hall, Croydon for several live sets recorded on the 29th September 1968 as a Mexico Olympic Games fundraiser.

The show recognised that albums were now taken seriously as a new musical format in its own right, rather than just a collection of songs or a studio recreation of the band's live set. Among those who visited were The Small Faces, The Hollies, The Kinks, The Move, The Moody Blues, David Ackles, Eclection, Fleetwood Mac and many others. However, the show wasn't just given over to the progressive tendency, with time given to pop acts like Clodagh Rodgers and The Fortunes.

Two retrospective compilation shows were assembled in 1969/70, but that would be the last anyone saw.

The show was produced by Steve Turner who would later produce the shows' descendent Disco 2.

Several of the few surviving shows have been released on DVD and CD.

COLOUR ME POP

BBC2

18th May 1968, 14th June 1968 - 30th August 1969