TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 -
A weekly pub-
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-
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-
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.
January 8th 1964 saw Wembley's studios evacuated during a rehearsal for the show as a bomb threat had been called in.
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-
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 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 -