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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-making songwriter Chris Andrews were given the weekly guest artist spot. Sometimes looking almost avant garde for a light entertainment show it proved too taxing for a public expecting to see her performing skits and sketches like Dusty and Lulu. Talking to Disc ahead of the series she said "I was given a free hand for the series. I chose everybody for it - and what I wanted to do. Then if anything goes wrong it'll be all my fault!" But she seemed happy, despite her obvious nerves of having an entire series to herself "When I watched the first of the series I smoked non-stop with nerves. But it was worth it, It's given me so much more confidence in myself and when it's your own ideas you're putting across you don't mind the endless work." Talking about a possible comparison between this and other shows she claimed "I would never do an ordinary TV series where I just stood and sang through eight numbers. Eve, my manager, was right. What's the point? Everyone's done it before, and well, Jeff (her then husband) and I thought about the programme for a long time. Bill Cotton Jnr. thought it was a good idea and suggested Mel Cornish, who was a designer on 'Top Of The Pops' to direct it." The show was criticised for looking too much like recent TV commercials for cigarettes and petrol, with scenes of Sandie riding horses and driving cars along the shoreline, but the alternative would have been an unimaginative studio-bound affair with an under whelmed audience.


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 -I can't do it!' I could see the dancers waiting, so I just held my nose-like you do before you jump into a swimming pool-and leapt off."


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-commissioned for a second series and only two shows out of the six broadcast still survive. However, a Pye tie-in album was released using Pye studio recordings, rather than the TV show versions.



THE SANDIE SHAW SUPPLEMENT


BBC1

10th September 1968 - 5th November 1968