TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 -
It was quite a coup for the BBC to acquire the services of Shirley Bassey whose United Artists release The Singles Album was one of the biggest sellers of the early seventies, and although she was still having album chart entries she wasn't a regular on British TV, although she had appeared on Top Of The Pops in 1975 promoting Good Bad But Beautiful.
Ahead of the series she was given a one-
The series must have been seen as the best way to remind a larger audience that had
stopped buying her records that she was still here. The producers must have been
happy with the one-
Despite the number of TV appearances and specials over the years, this would be her very first TV series in Britain, with the first show broadcast by BBC1 Saturday 30th October 1976, sandwiched between new episodes of The Duchess of Duke Street and Starsky and Hutch. There were no shortage of stars willing to appear on the show, Charles Aznavour, The Three Degrees, Janis Ian, Johnny Nash, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Morris Albert, Stan Getz, Mel Torme, Bobby Goldsboro, Rod McKuen. In fact, songs by several of these artists would be covered on her next album Love, Life And Feelings which got her back into the UK LP chart, reaching 13. But there was still a feel of 'cheap' about the presentation with the set design (there was none), but the reality was that this show could have been fronted by Lulu, or Cilla or Cliff, with only her hits to distinguish it was any other show of its type or time.
Location filming did not go smoothly. She got soaked during the filming of a sequence
for the song Don't Rain On My Parade while aboard a lifeboat, fell from a horse in
one clip and would regularly trip over her Old English Sheepdog Emma who appeared
in each show. The dog had also attempted to eat diamonds that Shirley had been pouring
from one hand into the other in one sequence filmed at Cartier's in London. She also
fell over a couple of times while water-
The Daily Mirror reported towards the end of the first series that despite taking a prime spot in the Saturday night schedules previously held by highly successful Two Ronnies her show had fared badly, starting way down the top twenty rankings before disappearing completely. The last show was 4th December 1976, and preparations would have been made for a return to the BBC, however it would take three years.
Her 1978 album The Magic Is You would be her last for United Artists and managed
one week in the UK top forty LP chart, so a taxi was booked for Television Centre
for her second series. This time it would be broadcast fortnightly, alternating with
Mike Yarwood In Persons and placed in the schedule between Secret Army and for the
second time, Starsky and Hutch. Despite the fact that ITV was on strike it still
didn't attract a huge audience. It was in reality the tail end of these kind of singer-
However, she enjoyed a well-
The shows were repeated by the Super Channel in the 1990s and on BBC4 in early 2022.
SHIRLEY
BBC1
30th October 1976 -
29th September 1979 -