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TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

A fifteen minute quickie interview and clips show, similar in content to They've Sold A Million in the mid-sixties. Initially run as a part of BBC1's daily summer morning filler show But First This.


Switching between BBC1 and BBC2, Radio 1 DJs and BBC1's broom cupboard regulars were usually the hosts talking to practically any pop star on the plugging trail. However, the late eighties was a time when interviewers were becoming less referential to stars, making them look, and maybe feel, ordinary. Previously interviewers had to suck up to them, thanking them for their precious time and acknowledging that the interview opportunity was a "privilege." From the punk era era onwards the public had become less convinced of the self-importance of pop stars and wanted to know more.


Luckily, the O Zone was there for Brit Pop and the show talked to all the most incomprehensible and surly of the bands, and those tasked with this unenviable job were Jamie Theakston, Jayne Middlemiss, Andi Peters and Rajesh Mirchandani.


Radio Times never gave the show much promotion, at the beginning calling it a 'music magazine', later upgraded to 'Fast-moving music magazine.'


The show was spoofed in the late 1990s by UK Play's Rock Profile, starring Matt Lucas and David Walliams, and hosted by The O Zone's Jamie Theakston.




THE O ZONE


BBC1 / BBC2

14th July 1989 - 1st December 2000