TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

Set aboard the ferry Royal Iris, moored on the Mersey at Liverpool it was a rare excursion for Granada as it was Manchester based and rarely moved west to the shore. It was a little unfair to see it just as a Saturday morning summer replacement show, it had enough of its own ideas to have probably run all year. Thankfully for its makers it didn't.

Hosted by 'Captain' Duggie Brown and co-starring fellow Comedians cohort Frank Carson as a pirate it was broadcast between 10.30 am - 12.30 pm just before World Of Sport. The boat also had two regular stowaways, along with its own pirate radio DJ Billy Butler.

It seemed to be more geared towards pop than most of the other Saturday morning shows and had no shortage of guest acts, starting with Lene Lovich and The Dooleys, with Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe in the second show.

Show producer Sandy Ross told the Granadaland web site  about having to keep a dish on the Liver building pointed at the boat, but if it strayed out of the Mersey towards the sea it would lose the signal. Truly a pirate broadcast.

Probably the only clips anyone would immediately remember was The Undertones re-enactng the recording of Teenage Kicks in an article on the making of a pop record as the clip often turns up in compilation shows.

Despite its short run two shows on the 14th and 21st of July were not broadcast. The show was victim of the ITV strike which meant that its summer residency was cut short.

The idea of a 'pirate' broadcast breaking into ITV regular schedules would be revived by Thames' CB-TV in the early 1980s, while Andrew Schofield and Ray Kingsley would reprise their roles as Scully and Mooey in an early Channel 4 series in the mid-1980s.

THE MERSEY PIRATE

Granada

2nd June 1979 - 18th August 1979