The Long Hot Summer
1976 was famous for one thing, the drought! It became the summer that those of us who could remember it have judged every summer against ever since. In the years before climate change it was a true outlier of a summer. It is true that the previous summer had also been very good, but there had been rain and cooler days interspersed with the higher temperatures. 1976 saw a hot, dry spell lasting from the start of June to the last week of August where temperatures routinely peaked above 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees centigrade) including a run of two weeks where temperatures reached 90 degrees in at least one place in the UK.
A Summer of Cricket
For me it was memorable for two other things. It was the summer after I left Junior School and, unbeknown to me at the time, it marked the start of 7 years of Secondary school where I was to hate every single minute of every single day. It was also the summer where the West Indies came over for what became one of the most extraordinary Test series in history. Tony Greig had promised to make them ‘grovel’, a remark that would have been ill-judged from any England captain but from an England captain brought up in South Africa at the height of Apartheid, it was incendiary. Greig subsequently, and often, apologised for the use of the phrase in later years, but the damage was done and one of the best Test match sides ever were determined to make him pay for those words. Across 5 Test matches they battered English batsmen with a barrage of fast bowling that was unrelenting, and their batsmen made hay on the hard flat pitches with outfields that were yellow instead of green. One batsman in particular stood above all others, the magisterial Viv Richards. His batting was otherworldly throughout the 5 tests and he eventually amassed 829 runs, including two double hundreds. By contrast, England’s best batsman, the redoubtable David Steele once again, managed just 308 runs including his one and only Test match century. He was dropped after the series and was never picked again, in an era when old men who hadn’t played cricket in decades chose the team. The first two matches were actually quite close and produced two hard fought draws, before the West Indies blitzed their way through the next three matches. In the Fourth test Tony Greig and Alan Knott both scored 116 in the England first innings and Greig scored 76* in a valiant rear guard in the second innings but the match was lost. The final Test saw Richards score 291 in the first innings in a total of 687! Dennis Amiss replied with 203 but in a match where all the other bowlers struggled Michael Holding took 8 wickets in the first innings followed by 6 in the second. Towards the end of the match Greig decided it was time to make amends with the West Indies crowd if not the players, who disliked him for many years afterwards, as he got on his knees and grovelled in front of them! https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/0224092243/?coliid=I79PDPGQBMS5I&colid=24PLAUGYEG7O3&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
Three Children’s TV Classics – in my opinion at least!
The TV year got off to a fast start for children with two very different programmes making their debuts on BBC1. Paddington, which replaced The Wombles in the 5 minute slot before the news, was an adaptation of my favourite childhood books. Paddington himself was a 3 dimensional bear while the backgrounds and the other characters were 2 dimensional. It was a very clever approach which put Paddington literally front and centre of every scene. The marvellous narration by Michael Hordern and the instantly recognisable theme tune made it must watch viewing in our household. The way that the adaptations managed to distil the essence of a one chapter story into 5 minutes was close to genius, but of course the real genius was the incredible Michael Bond himself who wrote stories that still resonate with children, and adults, to this day. https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Paddington-Bear-DVD/dp/B0017SBDYG/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=paddington+bear+tv+series&qid=1621251047&s=dvd&sr=1-2
The next programme that captured my imagination and those of my classmates was Rentaghost. With a great theme tune sung by Michael Staniforth, who played the jester Timothy Claypole and, initially at least, very funny scripts it seems on the surface to be just a knockabout TV show. However, underneath there was a melancholier side to the programme. Fred Mumford, played by Anthony Jackson, a ghost who was only recently deceased, set up Rentaghost with Claypole and Hubert Davenport, a Victorian ghost permanently shocked by the modern world, played with an air of pathos by Michael Darbyshire. He set up the firm because they had all been failures in their lives and they finally wanted to succeed even if it was after their deaths. The first few series were underpinned by this idea of exorcising their failures, but after Series 4 had aired, Darbyshire died, and Jackson decided he couldn’t return. With just Michael Staniforth of the original trio still going the decision was made to turn it into a pantomime style romp complete with a pantomime horse called Dobbin. The magic of the first four series was never recaptured, but a children’s show that managed to fit in ruminations about mortality and purpose can be seen as quite a groundbreaking piece of television.
Later in the year came the frankly unmissable Multi Coloured Swap Shop. Well, unmissable for those who couldn’t stand Tiswas at least! There was a clear divide between the two shows with the smoothly professional Swap Shop being very much a BBC show for the ‘well behaved children’ and the anarchic Tiswas being ITV’s pitch for the ‘tearaway youngsters’! That is of course a simplistic reading, but there was definitely an air of playing up to the stereotypes of the core audience, once they had been identified. However, at their heart, both programmes were giving children something they wanted, not what adults thought they should have. From September 1976 onwards every single Saturday morning I was at home saw me glued to the screen for three hours of fun courtesy of Noel Edmonds, Keith Chegwin, Maggie Philbin and John Craven. For me, the combination of presenters, music, chat and cartoons was often imitated but never equalled. Swap Shop was the original and the best. On occasions, over the years, a song played by an artist on Swap Shop would send me on a Saturday afternoon expedition to my local record store, a place I would frequent more and more over the years.
My First Singles
It was a less than spectacular year for music in all honesty, at least looking at it in the cold light of day. At the time, though, it was a year where I bought my first singles for myself. True, they haven’t all exactly stood the test of time (!) but from my early trips to the record shops I realised that I felt at home! My first single was King of the Cops, a reworking of King of the Road that featured bad impersonations of American TV Policemen together with dreadful jokes. Looking back, it was an appalling record, but we all have to start somewhere! However, on the B Side was an absolute gem called Bond is a Four Letter Word with a Sean Connery impression that was actually fairly near the original and a very funny set of lyrics. My second single by The Wombles featured a much better A Side, Womble Shuffle, but once again the best track was on the other side of the single, and again it was Bond themed. To Wimbledon with Love featured a tune that would have been at home in any Bond movie – certainly more so than at least half a dozen more recent efforts – and an atmospheric vocal that conjured up an entire movie in my head in a way only Mike Batt can. Ok, full disclosure, Combine Harvester by The Wurzels was next so you can see that I was obsessed with novelty tracks! What can I say? Even adults liked The Wurzels as Terry Wogan’s show attested to.
Swedish Magic
1976 was the year that Abba really hit their stride. They released three singles that all reached Number 1 and a fourth that ‘only’ got to Number 3. The year started with them finally knocking Bohemian Rhapsody off the top spot with Mamma Mia in the middle of January, then Fernando, Number 1 for four weeks in May and finally the biggest hit of their career in September. In an otherwise run of the mill year, Dancing Queen just exploded into your ears with the opening glissando and the immediately euphoric sound of Agnetha and Frida blasting out the chorus. If music was mainly grey that year, this was a splash of much needed technicolour. For me, to add to the appeal, was the video featuring the young Swedish Dancing Queens, one of whom I developed a real crush on at the time! It was a real favourite then and remains so to this day. Oddly though, the Swedish quartet were considered to be pretty naff at the time, and it was going to be many years before they became recognised as the true geniuses they are. When their final single reached Number 3 it was behind a record that was the other one I bought that year and one that I was more excited to see at Number 1 than any before or since.
Leicester’s Finest and the Stolen Christmas Number 1!
A very quiet year for Showaddywaddy indicated to many observers that their brief moment in the spotlight was at an end. Trocadero was the latest of their self-penned singles to completely underwhelm the record buying public. Then, a cover of an obscure rock ‘n’ roll song from 1961 kick started a run of 7 Top 5 singles with 7 cover versions. Under the Moon of Love was looking set to be the Christmas Number 1, but that particular year their three weeks at the top was ended in the final Christmas chart by the veteran American Johnny Mathis, with his Christmas standard When a Child is Born. Dave Bartram, Showaddywaddy’s lead singer at the time is still frustrated that the track wasn’t Number 1 on Christmas Day, but it sold 950,000 copies on its initial release and eventually broke the one million barrier nearly 30 years later thanks to downloads. So, all in all, they couldn’t really complain too much! In fact, it was pure luck that it was released at all because Mud had already recorded it, unbeknown to Bartram and he said they would never have done their own version if they had known! As I have mentioned a couple of B Sides already, can I recommend the Showaddywaddy original, Lookin’ Back? It is a brilliant track that could easily be an Eddie Cochran original.
Next Time
So, the year of the long hot summer is at an end. What will 1977 bring us? Well, it was a year that started with Johnny Mathis at Number 1 and finished off with Wings selling 2 million. However, punk was starting to rear its ugly head and music would never be the same again, not that I realised at the time!
My Musical History Part 4
1975 – Marking Time
Looking back on 1975, it was a year where things finally settled down after a lot of upheaval in the UK. That said, the same problems were still there but just less obviously than before. Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister and most people seemed to like the avuncular Northerner whatever their politics. I liked him but mainly, I think, because of Mike Yarwood’s impression of him. Yarwood was one of the biggest stars of the time, and politicians like Ted Heath and Denis Healey were his stock in trade. His Saturday night show rivalled Morecambe and Wise in popularity, and his affectionate send ups of the major politicians of the day were something of a contrast to the far more satirical treatments of politicians in the 80s.
Cricket captures my imagination
Outside of politics 1975 was the first Ashes series I had ever seen, and I was instantly captivated. I had been a big fan of the 40 over Sunday League cricket that was shown every week on BBC2. These days most of the cricketers from the England team and pretty much every county cricketer in the country could walk past with no one recognising them. Back in 1975 I could have identified Brian Brain, Bradley Dredge, John Dye, Geoff Humpage and Eifion Jones, along with many other county stalwarts, instantly. That summer two England players captured my imagination. The tall, immensely talented and charismatic Tony Greig, one of the few all rounders to also captain England successfully, was my sporting hero of the time and remains so to this day. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year for that year, however, was a bespectacled, prematurely grey batsman from Northamptonshire called David Steele. I had never seen anyone with more determination than him. He kept the Aussies at bay far better than other, supposedly, more talented batsmen and my admiration for him knew no bounds. I clearly wasn’t the only person who took to him, and by the end of the summer he was a national hero despite England’s narrow loss to Australia.
TV Programmes for children – or perhaps not!
There were still only three channels in those days, although in some families I knew that effectively went down to two as the parents refused to watch ITV! As a latchkey kid I was able to choose for myself. Children’s TV at the time was dominated by the BBC, but I still had some favourite ITV series. One of them that I watched avidly was The Tomorrow People, about a group of young people with special powers, which had the creepiest title sequence in children’s TV at the time. It was groundbreaking in its treatment of ‘minority’ groups, and in Series 3 along with the talented Elizabeth Adare as Elizabeth M’Bondo, a rare black character on children’s TV, they added Dean Lawrence as gypsy character Tyso Boswell. This wasn’t done in a tokenistic way, and it was explained that The Tomorrow People, or Homo Superior were likely to come from either gender and any racial or cultural background. It was years ahead of its time, socially and culturally and is well worth checking out as long as you can allow for the 70s style ‘special effects’! As well as this programme, I loved the supernatural series Shadows, with an episode called ‘The Waiting Room’ with Jenny Agutter being a particular standout.
I was allowed to stay up one night a week until 10pm to watch a series that became my introduction to TV cop shows. It arrived without fanfare on January 2 1975 and quickly became a huge favourite across the UK. The Sweeney with John Thaw and Dennis Waterman was absolutely unlike anything else I had ever seen, and I loved it. The theme tune was exciting, the stories were fast moving for the time and the acting was top notch. A lot of the themes, perhaps fortunately, went over my head (!) but for the time it was impossibly exciting, and I loved the rough and ready humour of the two leads, even if my dad in particular laughed at comments that didn’t seem funny! Later in 1975, the BBC started a new series called Angels which starred Julie Dawn Cole, who I had a crush on when she played Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. My crush intensified when she appeared as student nurse Jo Longhurst and she became the first picture on my bedroom wall and every article I could find about her was cut out of the paper or the Radio Times as soon as it was allowed! I was a huge fan of Angels until she left at the end of Series 3, at which point my obsession with it mysteriously vanished!
Here come the Rollers!
Music and TV were brought together in Children’s TV by the single series of Shang-A-Lang which took its name from a single the previous year by the hosts the Bay City Rollers. It showcased two tracks a week from the Rollers themselves and a huge number of guest stars, who had singles to showcase, appeared on the show over the 20 week run. A spot on Shang-A-Lang was a guarantee of a new entry or a rise in the charts and everyone from Cliff Richard and The Scots Guards to Slade and Marc Bolan appeared on the show. The fact that I was a boy meant I had to keep my love for the Bay City Rollers secret, but it was one show I was determined not to miss. They had had 4 Top 10 singles in 1974, but 1975 was when Roller mania was everywhere. Two Number Ones and a further Top 3 entry were the tip of the iceberg as concerts became massive events and their albums sold in their hundreds of thousands. Tartan was all the rage and virtually every girl I knew was obsessed by them. Bye Bye Baby was Number 1 for six weeks and the biggest selling single of the year, but my favourite track of theirs was their other chart topper of 1975, Give a Little Love. It featured Les McKeown’s finest vocal performance, and it also had a tune that, to my 10 year old self, was as good as anything I had heard up to that point. The combination of that with the heartfelt lyrics made it a song that I stopped to listen to every time it was played on radio or TV. Their success couldn’t have carried on at the same height as it was in 1975, but it was still a shock when they virtually disappeared from the mainstream less than 12 months later.
Steps to chart success
One of the groups who appeared on the show were Showaddywaddy who were in the Top 5 in June with their remake of the Eddie Cochran number Three Steps to Heaven. It was a superb remake with a fantastic vocal performance from Dave Bartram and the booming tones of drummer Romeo Challenger calling out the ‘Steps’. Another remake, Heartbeat, also made it to the Top 10 in September. This proved to be a double edged sword for Leicester’s finest as their self-penned tracks around this time struggled to make an impact and the record company proclaimed that cover versions were the way to go. Given that December 1974 saw Hey Mr Christmas creep up to Number 13, to become their highest charting self-written song since their debut hit Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll reached Number 2, the record company had a point. However, they were savvy enough to write all of their B sides which guaranteed them 50% of the royalties on the sales! Unusually, the Showaddywaddy tracks were credited individually to every member of the band which meant an 8 way split and none of the issues caused by having songwriters in the band who were getting far richer than the musicians.
The Wombles continue to expand my horizons
The Wombles were still very high up in my affections in 1975, and the tape of Keep on Wombling was already having to be tightened up using an HB pencil to keep it from distorting! It is fair to say, however, that in terms of the singles they didn’t have the impact they deserved. Wombling White Tie and Tails, a tribute to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was a song I adored that didn’t make it into the Top 20. Lyrically it was superb, introducing me to the word ‘syncopation’ for instance, but the music could have been fitted in to the score of Top Hat and no one would have noticed the difference. SuperWomble just crept into the Top 20 whilst their final track of the year Let’s Womble to the Party Tonight was released in December and combined Big Band style verses with a Showaddywaddy style chorus, but bafflingly barely entered the Top 40 before it dropped out again. Yet again, this little snapshot of the music of The Wombles shows the dazzling array of styles that children were being introduced to by one of this country’s best and most underrated music artists. Mike Batt had far more success with his infectiously brilliant theme tune for 1975’s new Saturday night variety show Seaside Special. Summertime City became one of the songs of that summer and reached Number 4 in August.
Story Songs
I will finish this year with a roll call of songs that reintroduced me to the story based music I had first come across in 1972 through Don McLean. First of all was Streets of London by Ralph McTell, a Number 2 hit in January. It is a song that contrasts beautiful music and despairing lyrics in order to look at the plight of the homeless. Each verse is a vignette that created a flesh and blood character that you could see in your mind. It touched my heart and opened my eyes to the way that people could find themselves in a position like that, and even at the age of 9 I thought that something was wrong with a city that could see a situation like that on its streets. Nearly 50 years later I still do.
Then in the summer came The Last Farewell by Roger Whittaker, a singer-songwriter who had previously had a chart hit with Durham Town. The Last Farewell was the lament of a sailor who was going off to sea and was telling his wife how much he loved her. It immediately conjoured up the picture in my mind of a sailor in Drake’s Navy going off to fight the Spanish Armada. Why? I don’t really know, but I do know that the scene was vivid and unforgettable. It was a song that was popular around the world and is in a very exclusive list of around 50 singles that have sold 10 million physical copies worldwide!
1975 ended with Queen at Number 1 with Bohemian Rhapsody, a song I would grow to love years later. At the time? Let’s just say I was very unhappy that Laurel and Hardy failed to reach Number 1 with The Trail of the Lonesome Pine!! Childhood memories are a funny thing occasionally.
Next time, it’s the long hot summer of 1976!
Series 12 starts with a two part story of real quality that is a fitting swansong for the great Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman). It is a story that takes us back to 1983 and Gerry’s early days with the Met. In 2015, a body has been dug up in the basement of a house. Danny (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and Gerry head over there. There is little to identify the body, but Danny notices Gerry’s strange reaction to a signet ring that was found next to the body. He doesn’t remark on it then, but he recalls it later. The body is identified as DCI Martin Ackroyd who disappeared in unusual circumstances.
The Background
We find out that around that time Gerry had been transferred to DCI Martin Ackroyd’s team. The Gerry we meet then, a brilliant performance by Samuel Oatley, who channels the Waterman of The Sweeney down to the brown jacket, is a young pup not an old dog, cockier than his older counterpart has become but just as instinctive. His starry eyed recruit to CID gets a very rude awakening. Ackroyd tells two Sergeants, Bryant and McCabe, to show Gerry the ropes. He quickly realises they are on the payroll of local gangster Dominic Chapman and he is determined not to join them. His nickname of Last Man Standing came from this determination not to take bribes even when everyone else was. He reports it to Ackroyd who advises him to take the money anyway and then report back to him with times, dates and places. Gerry does this, leaving the money untouched in a shoebox even though he could really do with it as a young husband and father. Gerry becomes friends with another local gangster, Tommy Naylor, a far less psychotic individual than Dominic Chapman, but still a clearly unwise choice of friend for a young policeman. This friendship comes to the attention of some very dangerous people and places Gerry in a situation that will take all of his cunning to get out of.
In the present day, the team start to investigate Ackroyd’s death and Gerry’s behaviour starts to ring a few alarm bells. They want to know what he is hiding, but he becomes more and more evasive, determined to sort out the case on his own. However, he has come to the attention of Bryant, McCabe and Chapman who have set an ever tighter trap for him which turns out to have been 30 years in the planning. His colleagues have to consider the possibility that the Gerry they have known for so long might have been involved with Ackroyd’s murder especially as the evidence is all pointing in one direction. Can they help to prove his innocence, or will their investigations end up proving his guilt? It is a race against time and for Gerry it could literally be a matter of life and death.
Highlights
Sasha (Tamzin Outhwaite) gets the fright of her life when she discovers Strickland (Anthony Calf) not only in her office but in her chair! He apologises but admits he came to the office as it was the only place he could escape from the crying of his new baby. At that point, Gerry brings his grandson into the office for Steve and Danny to look after and when the baby starts crying Strickland genuinely believes he has lost his mind!
Gerry enquires after Ethan, Sasha’s prospective boyfriend, who we met in the last episode of Series 11. Danny tells him that what happens in Barcelona stays in Barcelona, as did Ethan with a 25 year old occupational therapist!
Gerry’s younger self has a chat with an attractive young WPC and tries to get her to go on a date with him. Ackroyd warns him off, telling him not to go near her as she’s Mr Pullman’s daughter! Clearly Sandra’s reputation as someone not to mess with precedes her!
When Gerry is trying to get baby Caitlin off to sleep, he starts crooning ‘It’s alright, it’s OK’!!
Samuel Oatley shows a dangerous side to Gerry and shows that the lines between cops and criminals may have been unacceptably blurred by Gerry himself, but only in the cause of justice.
The 1983 reconstruction is superb throughout with all the younger characters matching their older counterparts perfectly. The attention to detail with mannerisms and speech patterns really brings the whole story together as there are no jarring inconsistencies to take you out of the story. Oatley is Waterman and there really should have been thought given to a Last Man Standing series, because it would have been every bit as good as Ashes to Ashes was.
When Steve (Denis Lawson) is asked to go on a stakeout after Danny refuses he tells Sasha it will cost her time and a half. She asks where his civic responsibility is and he tells her his civic responsibility costs 50% more after 6pm!
At the end of Part 1, a clearly rattled Gerry refuses to go back to UCOS with Sasha to answer her questions. To everyone’s shock she proceeds to place him under arrest for involvement in the murder of DCI Ackroyd! Tamzin Outhwaite is absolutely not to be messed with and this scene crackles with energy and tension.
At the beginning of Part 2, Strickland’s increasing involvement with the team comes to the fore as he gives Gerry the chance to go off grid to clear his name, before telling Danny to go home because he looks ‘a little unwell’ and not to contact him until the morning! It has become clear to me throughout this rewatch, that Anthony Calf never got the credit that he deserved for his subtle loosening up of the character. You saw how tied he was by his position but here, as on a number of occasions in the later series, he shows he is totally in UCOS’s corner.
Steve, Sasha and Strickland ask Forensic Anthropologist Dr Fiona Kennedy, played magnificently by Tracy-Ann Oberman with a perpetual twinkle in her eye, to rush through analysis of a bloodstained shirt that could clear Gerry, but her answer shocks them to the core. It really plants the seeds of doubt in the audience’s mind.
As ever, Danny’s past in the Diplomatic Service is enquired about, but in this episode it becomes far more part of the plot as Danny tries to keep Gerry alive as the net closes around him. We even find out that he was called ‘The Gardener’, although that may not be entirely accurate!
When Danny and Gerry ask Tommy Naylor to look at a photo of policemen in the upper ranks at the time of Ackroyd’s murder and point out the ones they can trust, his answer is shocking. It does, however, lead them to Ted Case, played by the marvellous Larry Lamb, whose clear headed approach and eye for detail might prove very useful for UCOS in the future!
The Verdict
Gerry, as the last original Old Dog gets a fitting send off in a double episode that just stacks the cards against him and then asks him how much he’s prepared to gamble to see his opponent. The team around him are absolutely magnificent throughout and it shows how important Gerry’s new colleagues have become to him. Part 2 starts with a brilliant set-up which the ending then nails perfectly. Of all the final stories in the series, this one is the best. Dennis Waterman just reminds us what a brilliantly gritty actor he is with a powerhouse performance full of strength, menace and tenderness. Farewell Gerry and farewell Dennis, you were far more than alright and OK!
Political Turmoil and two elections
1974 was an interesting year socially and politically. First of all, Ted Heath the Conservative Prime Minister, who just a year before had finally led us into the EEC held an election to sort out once and for all who was in charge of the country, him, or the miners. Judging by the incredibly close result, with Heath’s Conservative Party getting 37.9% of the vote for 297 seats and Harold Wilson’s Labour Party getting 37.2% of the vote for 301 seats, the country was none too sure! The balance of power was held by Jeremy Thorpe’s Liberal Party who increased their size of the vote from 7.5% and 11 seats in 1970 to 19.3% and … 14 seats in February 1974! Despite the first past the post system not properly reflecting their huge increase in support they were able to end Heath’s tenure as Prime Minister by refusing to support him in a coalition. In the end, Wilson was able to return to Number 10 as head of a minority government with tacit support from both the Liberals and the SNP on certain issues. In October Wilson went to the country again, and this time managed to gain a wafer thin majority of 3 seats due to a 2% increase in the Labour vote and a 2.1% fall in the Conservative vote. The Liberal vote held up well with a small drop to 18.3% and the loss of one of their 14 seats and the SNP gained four seats to sit on 11. These two smaller parties would become incredibly influential given their size in the years before the 1979 election.
So the future that Noddy Holder had told us to look to at Christmas 1973 looked even more confused and precarious by the time Merry Christmas Everybody finally fell out of the charts in February! The three day week had started to conserve dwindling coal stocks and the generation of school children at the time would for ever be able to bore their children and grandchildren with stories of doing homework by candlelight! The three day week ended in March when Wilson reached an agreement with the miners, but that was a rare economic and industrial bright spot for the year. By the end of 1974, inflation which was super charged by the Barber Boom of 1972/3 reached 17% and the wage rises to cope with this were reaching astronomical levels. 1975 would see worse to come, but that’s another blog post!
The Wombles Batt away the doubters
The first children’s supergroup was undoubtedly The Wombles. The characters were created by Elisabeth Beresford in a series of books in the 1960s. They were a group of small furry creatures who tidied up Wimbledon Common in London and used the items they tidied to make various items for their burrow. They first appeared on television in February 1973 in the 5 minute slot developed by BBC1 to bring Children’s TV to an end. The magical narration of the great Bernard Cribbins made this a must see for adults and children alike and it became a programme that your Dad would laugh along with before getting down to the serious business of real life. This slot, before the BBC News at Six, introduced viewers of all ages to Magic Roundabout, Hector’s House, Roobarb and Ivor the Engine amongst many others. However, only The Wombles went on to chart success, a success entirely due to the songwriting genius of Mike Batt.
The theme tune, known as The Wombling Song was released in 1973 but it was not until late February 1974 that it reached a peak of Number 4 in the charts. The follow up was a stomping call and response number in the vein of glam rock songs like ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’ by Slade and hit Number 3 in May 1974. Another Top 10 hit, Banana Rock followed in July, before one of the best Christmas singles of all time ‘Wombling Merry Christmas’ which just missed out on the top spot in the Christmas charts, peaking at Number 2. Alongside that, Mike Batt had further success with the fantastic ‘Keep on Wombling’ which featured a Prog style concept album on Side 1 and across 11 songs took covered styles as diverse as pop, classical and country and western. For a young boy it was an amazing introduction to what the world of music could offer and that Christmas I played the album endlessly on my new cassette recorder. Along with Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes, The Wombles opened up my musical horizons while Bagpuss, which started in 1974 introduced me to traditional English folk music. As an adult I can listen to it now and marvel at Batt’s skill in writing across so many genres whilst never resorting to lazy pastiche. Suffice to say, any primary school child of the time would have had a place in their heart for the rubbish clearing denizens of Wimbledon Common.
Glam Rock continues to dominate
The biggest selling single of 1974 was released at the beginning of the year and made it to Number 1 at the end of January. ‘Tiger Feet’ by Mud was a raucous shout out of a song that featured a ‘roadies dance’ on Top of the Pops that became famous and was easy to copy together with a Shadows style walk that was popular in school playgrounds for many months afterwards. Vocalist Les Gray had a rock n roll style voice that, combined with the crowd pleasing quality of Chinn and Chapman’s lyrics made them irresistible. Chinn and Chapman had an unerring ability to spot a group and then write them songs that produced hit after hit. In 1973 and 1974 alone they were responsible for 19 chart entries, most of them Top 10s. They wrote and produced Number Ones for Mud, Sweet, Suzi Quatro and in the 1980s a US Number 1 for Toni Basil with the cheerleader style ‘Mickey’!
Mud guitarist Rob Davis, who wrote a lot of album tracks that were overlooked as singles, stopped playing when Mud disbanded and became a very successful and respected club and dance songwriter in his own right. In 2000 and 2001 he wrote ‘Groovejet (If this ain’t love), the 8th highest selling single of the year and then the massive ‘Can’t Get you Out of my Head’ which he wrote with Cathy Dennis and was the song with the highest amount of airplay worldwide during the 2000s.
Along with Mud, who had a total of four Top 10s in 1974, Sweet continued to have significant chart success in 1974 with two more Top 10 hits. Alongside them, the leather clad Alvin Stardust, a persona invented by Shane Fenton to fit into the glam rock era, had four Top 10 hits in 1974 with his moody appearance, rock style vocals and catchy songs like My Coo Ca Choo and Jealous Mind. Slade and Gary Glitter racked up another four Top 10s each and The Glitter Band were responsible for three more. However, the relative lack of Number Ones pointed to the slow decline of glam which would gather pace the following year.
Two very different crushes!
At the start of 1974 two solo female artists were in the forefront of my thoughts and they really couldn’t have been more different. The first was Marie Osmond, the sole girl in the family, whose first hit ‘Paper Roses’ reached Number 2 in December 1973 where it was overshadowed by the first real battle for Christmas Number 1. It was a country music single that would have made little impact on me if it wasn’t for her all-American beauty. She got to Number 2 again later on in the year in a duet with brother Donny called ‘I’m Leaving it all up to you’, another country song that showed the quality of their voices and led to them having success in America as hosts of their own show.
At the same time as Marie Osmond was displaying her wholesomeness and talent, another female artist appeared on my radar. Superficially at least, she couldn’t have been more different. In a leather jumpsuit, the guitar playing, hard rocking and massively charismatic Suzi Quatro was increasing the pulse rates of many young men! If Marie was the girl you could take home to meet your parents, Suzi was the girl you would sneak out of the house to be near! Although she had already hit the top with ‘Can the Can’ the previous year, her best known track was Number 1 in January and it was called ‘Devil Gate Drive’. The call and response were present and correct, and the chorus was incredibly catchy. Although on the surface another Chinn and Chapman protégé, she was determinedly in charge of her own career and utilised their songwriting because it suited her so well as an artist. As her worldwide career sales of 50 million records and her continuing popularity as a live act demonstrate there was always more to her than the leather clad glam rock image. She set the template that many other female rock singers have followed in the decades since.
New Faces and Future Greats
In the early 70s, a new talent show came along called New Faces, which was a precursor to Britain’s Got Talent in many ways. Singers, groups, ventriloquists, and novelty acts all jostled for recognition. The roll call of future stars from the show was impressive to say the least, largely helped by a panel of judges like Tony Hatch and Mickie Most who had huge experience in showbusiness and an unerring eye for talent. Amongst others, comedians Lenny Henry, Victoria Wood, Les Dennis, and The Chuckle Brothers all got their big breaks on the show. Music wise the success stories were slightly patchier with Marti Caine and Sweet Sensation building reasonably strong careers but few others really breaking through into the mainstream. However, one act built a long lasting and very successful career after appearing on the show. An eight piece band from Leicester who had over 200 weeks in the charts during a 10 year period of success, a Number 1 single and 9 other Top 10 hits, Showaddywaddy became one of my enduring musical loves. Their appearances on New Faces led them to the 1973 All Winners Show where they were runners up to the completely forgotten Tom Waite. In April 1974 they released the self-penned ‘Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll’ with it’s stomping chorus and I was instantly hooked. They reached Number 2 with this classic song, only kept off the top by fellow revivalists The Rubettes with their track, the falsetto filled ‘Sugar Baby Love’. To say I was annoyed that my new favourite group had lost out on a debut Number 1 was an understatement, but at the age of 9 you do tend to get very invested in the charts! Two more minor hits followed that year, but Showaddywaddy’s time would come later in the 70s.
Love songs, story songs and my favourite summer hit
Away from the glam rock groups this year saw the rise of the Bay City Rollers who were taking over from The Osmonds as the teen heartthrobs of choice. More of them next time as I reach 1975.
One song soundtracked my first crush which developed into the full blown Puppy Love that Donny had sung about the year before. Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks was a huge Number 1 hit that namechecked Michele, coincidentally the object of my affections. We kissed in the classroom and were inseparable all year. It was an idyllic interlude in the only school that I enjoyed going to in 13 years of education. As a result it became the song I identified with most in 1974. It was only when I got older that I realised it was a song about death, which was probably just as well!
After the previous year’s ‘Part of the Union’, my social history of the working class gained more perspective with Alan Price’s ‘Jarrow Song’ about the Jarrow Crusade, a 280 mile march by two hundred unemployed men from the Jarrow region of Newcastle. They walked to Westminster to draw attention to their plight and to plead their case to parliament, but in a sign that nothing ever changes, the politicians completely ignored them! Without knowing it, my sympathy for those men when I found out about their plight would set the tone for my fascination with social history that endures to this day. The opening verse tells of the desperation and anger felt by so many at the time.
‘My name is Geordie Mcintyre, An’ the Bairns don’t even have a fire
So the wife says “Geordie, go to London Town!”
And if they don’t give us half a chance, Don’t even give us a second glance
Then Geordie, with my blessings, burn them down.’
This year was the highpoint for a band called Paper Lace whose biggest hit, a Number 1 single called ‘Billy Don’t Be a Hero’ was based around the American Civil War, as were the uniforms they wore on Top of the Pops. It was a song about a young lad called Billy who was engaged to be married, and whose fiancée was reluctant to let him go. She told him,
‘Billy, don’t be a hero, don’t be a fool with your life.
Billy, don’t be a hero, come back and make me your wife.
And as he started to go she said, ‘Billy, keep your pretty head low
Billy, don’t be a hero, come back to me.’
Sadly, he ignores her advice and is killed after volunteering for a dangerous mission. The final verse is biting in its anger and it really cemented the song in my head’
‘I heard his fiancee got a letter
That told how Billy died that day
The letter said that he was a hero
She should be proud he died that way
I heard she threw that letter away’
The final song in this trawl through my memories is my favourite ever summer song. It was a song that got a lot of airplay, but bafflingly only made it to Number 13 in the charts. ‘Beach Baby’ by First Class was a smooth updating of the California sound written by English husband and wife team, John Carter and Gillian Shakespeare. From the first notes it just tapped into something that few songs had up until that point. There was a real excitement that I felt in my chest, and a feeling that this song was one that I would always love. Now, every time I play the song, I get the same feeling and every time I hear it, I am 9 years old again. Perhaps it was the first time I really understood the power of music, however imperfectly.
As ever, feel free to watch some or all of these songs on You Tube
See you in 1975!
The final episode of Series 11 sees the team investigating the murder of a girl, Amy Taskerland, during her school disco in 1983. she had buried a tape in a time capsule which the gardening club had accidentally dug up and when listening to it Sasha (Tamzin Outhwaite) hears Amy talking about Alec who she surmises is a boyfriend. On listening to Side B of the tape Danny (Nicholas Lyndhurst) recognises it as the speech the Queen would have given in the event of a nuclear attack. ( If you’re interested the full speech is here https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/08/queen-elizabeth-speech-written-for-her-to-give-in-case-of-nuclear-war.html ) The trouble is that the speech was only declassified under the 30 year rule in 2013, so how could a 16 year old schoolgirl know about it? What secret is the headmaster hiding that means he is reluctant to have the crime reinvestigated? What about Amy’s father, an apparently distant man who walked away from Amy that night to her obvious distress? As the team dig deeper, the truth becomes ever more difficult to get hold of, but Wham! could end up holding the key! Finally, will the team frighten off Sasha’s potential boyfriend and why does DAC Strickland suddenly want to go out for a drink with them?
The Background
This episode is based on a genuinely unsettling real life premise. In 1983 the NATO forces held exercises in Western Europe that the Russians were convinced, briefly, were the precursor to a full scale attack. For two days, there was a real chance of the world being plunged into nuclear war. In the event that it became imminent, 600 people from various walks of life were to head to 12 regional headquarters where they would stay for two years or until the country was deemed safe enough to reinhabit above ground. Everyone else was being told to ‘Protect and Survive’ inside their homes, or as Danny noted prepare their own coffins! If you were a teenager in that time, there was a fair chance, as far as you were concerned, of never making it to adulthood. The songs around that time by Nik Kershaw, Ultravox, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Nena were testament to that fear. Well, if you couldn’t affect it you may as well dance to it!
Highlights
When the team go to Amy’s old school (which bears a strange resemblance to Harrow!) Danny and Gerry (Dennis Waterman) are playing basketball. Sasha tells them to come with her and Danny throws a huge three pointer from wide out on the court. Nicholas Lyndhurst’s nonchalance is just superb, but I would love to know how many takes there were for that basket!
Anthony Calf, has played Strickland superbly well throughout the 11 seasons as he has gone from being suspicious and unbending to become steadily more supportive of the team and much more prepared to turn a blind eye to their sometimes unorthodox methods. In this episode he asks to go out for a drink with them which leads to the awkward silence that anyone who has ever socialised with their boss will recognise immediately. Things warm up when Sasha’s new boyfriend Ethan (Alun Raglan) turns up to try to persuade Sasha to go to Barcelona with him. When Danny finds out that Ethan owns a record shop he is immediately interested. To Sasha’s huge embarrassment the discussion moves from vinyl records to a ‘euphemistic’ chat about how you treat vinyl which runs the full gamut from treating it gently to putting the needle in the groove! The scene is hilarious and played with beautifully straight faces by all concerned.
Gerry isn’t at the pub because he has been forced to go to the stag night of his future son-in-law Robin, who is marrying Gerry’s daughter Caitlin. In an attempt to bond with Gerry it takes place in a venue where the guests can try their hands at being butchers, the trade that Gerry’s family had followed for generations, but Gerry isn’t going to play along. The awkward stag do goes from bad to worse as first Gerry finds out that the Best Man hasn’t booked a stripper or even planned to tie Robin to a lamp post. Finally he finds out that Robin has already got Caitlin in the family way! Gerry’s suspicion of a future son-in-law who comes from very different circumstances is clear, but it turns out all is not yet lost.
Steve (Denis Lawson) is not to the fore in this episode although he does make a breakthrough when he goes off piste with Danny investigating the bunker. He also manages to fit in the inevitable, ‘What exactly did you do in the diplomatic service?’ question!
This is definitely Danny’s episode though, and the image that stuck in my mind from the very first time I saw it was the sight of him striding through the school, across the football pitch and up to the steps where Amy was killed, carrying a huge ghetto blaster on his shoulder that is playing ‘Club Tropicana’ (the 12 minute remix version) at full volume! It is just a fantastic moment of physical comedy that Nicholas Lyndhurst has specialised in throughout his career.
The Verdict
This is without doubt one of the top 5 episodes of the entire run with a fantastic mix of comedy and drama. Once you have finished watching AC-12 you really should catch up with UCOS and this episode in particular.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 