TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

TV Times described the debut show in August 1963; "Keith Fordyce invites you to join him and David Gell to meet a host of guest stars from all sides of entertainment including Billy Fury, Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, listen to hit discs, see a scene from a recent movie, dance with the teenagers in the studio, find out what's swinging this weekend." This gave the impression of the show as some sort of youth club with elders keeping an eye on the audience. Joe Loss was the judge of a dance contest on the first show which was won by someone doing the twist. This wouldn't last long, it couldn’t. The debut show was given a two page spread in that weeks' TV Times, so the ITV network must have had some expectations of success for the show.

A-R commissioned five shows with a further run if it proved successful. The idea was to hold the main bulk of the broadcast in Rediffusion's basement studio in Kingsway hosted by radio and TV host Keith Fordyce with an audience of 150, while Canadian co-host David Gell would be in the lobby talking to the audience about their current music favourites. A member of the audience would get to play disc jockey and given a pile of new releases to take home to listen to and return the following week with their choices and predictions, while another would have a chance of winning that week's top fifty singles. Another idea was to blindfold three members of the audience and get them to identify a current chart hit, while the title and artist was displayed on a monitor, but the idea was quickly dropped, as was a weekly piece on showbiz news. There was also a movie spot introduced by actress Polly Perkins, but this too only lasted a few weeks, despite attracting big name stars like Pat Boone and Stanley Baker. Dusty Springfield also helped to commere for the first few weeks, but the demands of her new solo singing career meant that was always going to be a temporary post. At the end of each show there would be an impromptu press conference where anyone from the audience could ask a question of the artists appearing that night, but again, the idea was quickly dropped.

Initially RSG replaced The Dickie Henderson Show in the schedules, but when it moved to an earlier slot it would be another Keith Fordyce fronted show for A-R that got the chop. Close-Up was a weekly film news and reviews show but was now deemed superfluous if RSG was to cover the same topics.

Rehearsals would be between two and five in the afternoon and according to Keith Fordyce talking in 1985 "...when the kids came in, about twenty to six, you could forget it. You hope to get the same running order, but where the cameras went, and so on, was a matter of luck if you could get through the crowds and managed the best you could."

The green room backstage would not only host that week's performers but also anyone that wanted to pop along, like actors and artists.

Despite the inclusion of Billy Fury and others from the Larry Parnes finishing school of credible but polite British rockers the show producers' suspected something new was about to happen. By the summer of 1963 full-scale Beatlemania had yet to happen, but the mod scene had been around and making waves in London's west end clubs since the early sixties, so was on the show's doorstep, it just had to be let inside. To further underline a probable change in tastes The Springfields, a trio of home-counties pop-folkies, had a blazing argument backstage at one of the early RSG shows in August 1963, furthering the desire of their lead singer, Dusty, to leave for a solo career and take things further. Helen Shapiro, Eden Kane and others of the immediate past were invited on to the show in order to fulfil a need for familiarity, but they looked a little staid compared to the new wave of singers like Lulu and Cilla, but they were still having hits, and would continue to do so for another few months.

The first eighteen months saw a mixture of live or pre-recorded broadcasts, all made at studio nine at Rediffusion’s studio at Kingsway, London. Radio Luxembourg and BBC radio personality Keith Fordyce hosted the show for its first year or so, along with his co-hosts David Gell, Polly Perkins and later Cathy McGowan and Michael Aldred, and then later joined by Gay Shingleton and Anne Nightingale. Although it was felt by many that Fordyce was probably too old even then to host a show so obviously targeted at teenagers A-R argued that the show needed experience out front, with Fordyce having hosted Jack Good's Wham! back in 1960 and more recently Thank Your Lucky Stars, so he was considered a safe pair of hands.

The show was a success, but Rediffusion quickly moved it from its prime time-hogging 7.00 - 7.30 pm slot to 6.30 - 7.00 pm from the 13th September 1963 to make way for established quiz show hit Take Your Pick, and then extending its opening hours the following week from 6.15 to 7.00 pm. David Gell's last show appears to have been the 6th September as Keith Fordyce's name is the only one to appear over the following weeks. Polly Perkins appeared for a few weeks before being let go and eventually returning to a career in acting. Despite the perceived success in the London area, by 13th September 1963 the show had already been dropped by most of the other ITV stations on Friday evenings. According to a Daily Mirror article only London and Tyne Tees were showing the programme by this time.

It was decided that hiring professional dancers to demonstrate new dances to the home audience could be a winner, so Patrick Kerr and Theresa Confrey joined the show on the 27th September 1963. Both had been working on cruise ships to and from America so had been exposed to what new moves were being made across the Atlantic.

The show's first producer Francis Hitching and his production team chose an open set design which was a popular concept on British television at the time. The whole studio was also exposed to an aerial camera which the show would later open with. A typical opening scene would have the aerial camera staring down on the dancing audience then it would cut to a ground level camera which would be on Keith Fordyce in time for his opening line "well, hi there!"  Cameras would be in full view most of the time, particularly if they were ploughing through a crowd of mods to get nearer the stage. The open studio set was first used by A-R's mid-fifties' comedy series A Show Called Fred, starring Spike Milligan and directed by Richard Lester, but the style was also adopted and adapted by BBC's That Was The Week That Was in 1962.

The show initially relied on local British acts, but the word got around to agents of visiting American acts that this was the show to do, however as some shows were broadcast live there could be little anyone could do about the diva-like behaviour of some of the performers or attention hungry members of the audience. On one occasion singer Dion took offence at the audience dancing around him while he performed and walked out of the studio after just one song. On another occasion a friend and bandmate of presenter Polly Perkins leapt in front of the camera to kiss her, later revealed to be stunt set up by Perkins' manager without her knowledge or permission. They also held a Beatles look-a-like contest which resulted in 200 look-a-likes infesting the studio for auditions.

In autumn 1963 the show's producers advertised for the post of 'teenage adviser' in national newspapers. A £10 a week magazine secretary from Streatham called Cathy McGowan replied and after a series of interviews and camera tests she was offered the job. Talking to Disc magazine about the job in August 1965 McGowan said "I was working as a secretary on a magazine. Then I saw the ad in all the musical papers for an interviewer for a pop TV show. I said to my mum 'It must be a joke', but I went along, as I've always wanted to be a journalist." Elkan Allan later claimed in his tell-all piece in The People in early 1967 "We interviewed Cathy and found her a bright kid, but nobody thought she'd photograph in a million years. And that voice!" Talking to the Daily Mirror in March 1965 Allan also claimed "She was awfully gauche and raw and desperately nervous, but she was worth taking on because she was obviously terribly switched on in a teenage way and a very nice girl as well."

In November 1963 a team from the show pitch up in Digbeth, Birmingham for auditions to find future mime time contestants and five of them are used on the night of November 22nd, at about the time President Kennedy was shot. It was also the intention that some kind of Birmingham special was to be broadcast in early 1964, but nothing seems to have come from it.

Both McGowan and Michael Aldred were given 'assistant' credits on the show in the TV Times for the 15th November 1963 edition, so (presumably) on the show's closing credits too. The TV Times for 1st December 1963 featured McGowan in a two page article in which she explained not only her 'teenage adviser' role, but explaining the differing factions of mods and rockers. Mods had their own dances as well as fashion, and one of those dances was (allegedly) the Hitler, which the article explained "you cavort with the right arm held in Hitler like salute." Despite the attention TV Times gave her she might have not actually appeared in front of the cameras until the following week. Michael Aldred, her new screen partner, had briefly shared a flat with The Kinks' Dave Davies, but Davies quickly had enough of Aldred's tantrums and told him to leave.

Keith Fordyce, although a reliable and experienced host, found it tough interviewing some guests, occasionally fluffing it (a notable example being PJ Proby), or just not getting what these much younger artists where about, so it was left to Cathy McGowan to chat to the acts, despite an irritating tendency to say "amazin'" about anything or anyone. So much so that it wasn’t long before people were imitating and spoofing her, but not only her voice and mannerisms. Her dress sense became the standard that girls followed and not long after she found herself advertising clothes and cosmetics. Through her the show was now making a welcome move into the mod scene.

Cathy's fashion style was given a test. Elkan Allan would later claim "I tried an experiment. I made Cathy wear a velvet bow in her hair. That was on Friday. By Monday lunchtime you couldn't buy a bit of velvet ribbon anywhere in London." Cathy's salary was £20 a week for the show, with further £10 a week for clothes, with many of her outfits designed and made by Barbara Hulaniki, later to create the legendary Biba range.

With RSG! modern British pop music finally had its own outlet. For the first time pop music had broken free from its variety show status into an identifiable slot of its own. No more Arthur Haynes introducing The Rolling Stones, but people who were either knowledgeable or at least used to introducing pop music for a living. The show was NOW.

The show had become very popular very quickly and anyone within London Underground or bus reach could go along to Kingsway and try to get in or at least hang around outside. However, Rediffusion told the TV Times in October 1963 "Please tell your readers our waiting list is now so long we cannot accept any more applications." Despite occasional police protection for some acts it was still necessary to employ a ruse to get them out of the building. According to Elkan Allan in The People, January 1967 "Eventually we had to ask the London School of Economics, which backs onto our building, to let us use their corridors as an escape route for the artists."

Go to 1964

READY, STEADY, GO! / READY, STEADY GOES LIVE

1963