TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

A weekly pub-based variety show with singers and comics performing to a crowd of extras and locals from Wembley.

Inspired by Rediffusion’s Time Gentlemen Please it was first hosted by comic Ray Martine, with a regular team of singers including Kathy Kirby, Clinton Ford, Tommy Bruce and Vince Hill. Martine was a well-known London pub comic, but had new material provided by writers including Barry Cryer, Dick Vosburgh and Marty Feldman.

Directed by Rediffusion regular Rollo Gamble, it was referred to by producer Elkan Allan as a "lusty gusty show" and was usually shot at Rediffusion's studio at Wembley, but the 22nd June 1964 show saw the team go outside onto the River Thames for a one-off summer special, while later in the year they pitched up at West Ham's Stadium for a night of greyhound racing. Like other successful shows there was also a live stage show in 1963. In late 1963 the producers went on a talent search, bringing in sixteen new discoveries to the show.

Another regular on the show was singer Debbie Lee and was, like Kathy Kirby, blonde. Kirby's manager Evie Taylor suggested that there was room for only one blonde on the show, so the distraught Lee had to wear a dark wig on the next show.

By 1965 Kirby, Ford and Hill had gone, replaced by Susan Maughan and Al Saxon, but one notable show from this era unusually featured The Joe Cocker Group, while other acts from the pop/rock world would occasionally appear.

August 1965 saw Ray Martine leave the series and the show was re-launched in October as The New Stars and Garters with actress Jill Browne as the new owner, Dodie West, Arlene Dorgan and Gary Miller were the new regular singers along with “Man-About-Pubs" William Rushton. To prove her credentials TV Times took Jill Browne to the Ye Olde Bull and Bush on Hamspstead Heath for a colour photo shoot behind the bar. There were also now three singing barmaids, while Lonnie Donegan would also be an occasional guest. It was the intention to attract a younger, "smarter" audience to Stars and Garters, according to director Robert Fleming, but the show was actually heading for closing time.

There would be one, kind of, return trip in the form of Down At The Old Bull And Bush, broadcast by Rediffusion on Boxing Day 1967, featuring those well known pub entertainers Scott Walker and Kiki Dee. The format was dormant, but not dead, as it would later inspire Granada's Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club in the early seventies.

In 1964 Pye Records released a tie-in album featuring many of the singing stars from the show, while Kathy Kirby released her own album 'Sings 16 Hits From Stars And Garters' the previous year.

In June 2023 colour home movie footage of the show in the Ray Martine/Kathy Kirby era was shown at an event hosted by television archivists Kaleidoscope.

STARS AND GARTERS

Rediffusion

31st May 1963 - 3rd January 1966