TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 -
It was odd that despite being a Pye Records' artist and a hit maker since 1964 Shaw had not been offered a TV series by the label's owners, ATV. Having won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1967 the BBC rewarded her with her own series, but Sandie would not be visiting the BBC Television Centre exclusively. Many of the songs' routines were shot on location around the UK while each show had a theme for which the chosen songs were hung around.
The show was due for broadcast from April 1968 onwards, but according to her manager Evie Taylor "Sandie wants Mike Mansfield to produce the shows, but he is tied up with his current Tony Blackburn series now being networked. Sandie won't do it with anyone else, so we have postponed the series until the autumn." Mansfield was employed at Southern Television so was not able to produce the show anyway, so the task was given to future Top Of The Pops producer Mel Cornish.
The show presented Harry Nilsson on British TV for the first time, while John Walker,
Alan Price, Paul Jones and her hit-
Taking to Radio Times after the first shows had been broadcast she claimed "When we planned the shows, I thought about the girls coming home from work and watching telly, and what they would like to see. I know what I would have liked to have seen when I was one of them."
Not content with having her sing the producers had her do location work "We went
to Wales for the credits and some of the film shots. In one of the programmes to
be screened I'm in the sea next to a great cutout of Marilyn Monroe. The thing is
I can't swim and I kept drifting away out of camera range! Another time I have to
leap off a bridge into the arms of the dancers. At rehearsals they piled chairs half
way up to the ceiling, got me on top and then said, 'right, jump.' "I was petrified.
I kept looking down and thinking `Now why did I suggest this -
Although she was never employed as an actress in a movie at the time she got to play around in the dressing up box, playing Marlene Dietrich and Ginger Rogers.
The show was not re-
THE SANDIE SHAW SUPPLEMENT
BBC1
10th September 1968 -