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TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

Character actor Haynes had been a successful stage and radio performer and after a successful spell on ATV's Strike A New Note in 1956 he was given his own series by London's Associated Rediffusion. However, it wasn't until his move back to ATV that he would become a TV Times cover star. The Arthur Haynes Show show would get to keep script writer Johnny Speight who had been working with Haynes since Strike A New Note. Speight created a collection of new, mostly argumentative working-class characters for Haynes with Nicholas Parsons as his posh, authoritarian straight man, while Irish actor Dermot Kelly played Hayes' sidekick.


Each show would have a musical guest, sometimes two, and as the show progressed through the sixties it would attract many of the biggest British pop stars of the day like The Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five, The Searchers, The Springfields among others.


Although the show wasn't broadcast in the USA Haynes himself made many appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, and it was after one such performance in 1966 that he died suddenly on his return home.











THE ARTHUR HAYNES SHOW


Associated Rediffusion 19th September 1956 - 28th November 1956

ATV 12th December 1956, 2nd January 1957 - 30th April 1966