God Bless America...

 

...says the Radio Times

We were just ten days into what would prove to be a memorably hot and dry summer when this particular edition of Radio Times appeared in the newsagents, fifty years ago this week. Its cover, featuring the distinctive sculptural caricatures of Peter Fluck and Roger Law, was promoting a series of programmes on TV and radio celebrating the American bicentennial. Fluck and Law would, eight years later, give the world Spitting Image.

This week’s edition was all American, beginning on page 4 where no less an eminence than Andy Warhol provided a piece about his favourite television programmes – few of which would have been familiar to British viewers. His main focus was a series called The Neighbors, which encouraged real people to bitch about their friends in order to win cash prizes. Said Warhol: ‘it shows what ordinary people will do to get on television; in this case they are willing to destroy their social and personal lives’. An interesting observation from the man who predicted that, in the future, everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes.

Butted up against Warhol’s piece, on page 6, is a juxtaposition of which he would surely have approved: a page and a half ad for Crown ready-pasted vinyl wallpapers, showcasing some of their ‘beautiful florals, geometrics and bright modern patterns, in warm, and fresh cool colours’. You can see the reality below. Did people really decorate their homes like that?

On pages 8 and 9, another feature examined how major US film studios were moving increasingly into television production, while page 10 was taken up with an overview of the career of Mary Tyler Moore. On page 11, Philip Jenkinson’s regular film review column previewed the mostly American-flavoured movies to be found this week on BBC1 and BBC2, including, on Saturday morning, the very first appearance on BBC television of the 1936 Flash Gordon serial, edited together into two instalments. (The serial would be shown in full over Christmas later the same year.) Other major films in the BBC’s ‘Great American Picture Show’ season included Psycho (Saturday, 11.30pm BBC1), True Grit (Sunday 8.15pm BBC1) and On The Waterfront (Friday, 11.32pm, BBC1). 

The bicentennial theme extended to radio as well as television: a feature across pages 12 and 13 looked at country music station KLAC, based not in Nashville but Los Angeles. It was all a bit too much for regular RT columnist Peter Tinniswood, who sounded a sour note, dismissing the bicentennial celebrations as ‘tedious’. With his 70s shoulder-length hair and beard, he looked like Reggie Perrin’s boring son in law…

Saturday’s television kicked off with a repeat of the very first Mr. Benn (The Red Knight) at 8.55am, although those of an academic bent might well have been tuned in even earlier to see Foundation Maths – Relations at 7.40am, the first in the regular morning sequence of programmes from the Open University on BBC2. What was I just saying about 70s beards? No OU presenter was complete without one. Over on BBC1, Flash Gordon made his British television debut at 10.35am, stepping aside for Hopalong Cassidy at 11.25, before concluding his adventures on Mongo at 12.30pm.

The afternoon on BBC1 was given over to Wimbledon Grandstand, while an Italian-French film Morgan the Pirate (1960) opened BBC2’s late afternoon schedule (the channel was off air between 1.55 and 3.50pm). BBC1’s early evening news was followed by a magic show For My Next Trick, which included contributions from newcomers Faith Brown and Paul Daniels. The evening’s big American film was The Music Man (1962), followed by a very British slice of light entertainment in the form of Seaside Special, a show I always made a special point of avoiding. Tonight’s edition included The Three Degrees and Kenneth McKellar, which I suppose was diverse if nothing else…

Starsky and Hutch had more or less taken up permanent residence on Saturday evenings since their BBBC1 debut back in 1975, and put in an appearance this evening at 9.30pm, followed by the news at 10.20 and The Spinners at 10.30. Hitchcock fans would have to wait up until 11.30 to see Psycho (1960), clocking up its fifth appearance on British television since its BBC1 premiere in 1968. Over on BBC2, an alternate evening schedule included Victor Borge and something called The Drummonds of Megginch (typing of which is enough to make your spellchecker explode). According to my diary I didn’t see any of these programmes, but I did catch the very first edition of the now legendary late night music show So It Goes over on ITV. I also ignored the BBC's season of American films with one exception: Laurel & Hardy's 1932 short The Music Box, shown at 6.50pm on Tuesday 6 July – the last time that the famous comics would be scheduled during prime time television.

The day’s radio included The Elton John Story on Radio 1 at 1.00pm, up against a Radio 2 offering from forgotten comic David Morgan. Radio 4’s schedule included Pick of the Week, Any Questions and Desert Island Discs, all of them still with us half a century later.

It was on Sunday that the bicentennial celebrations really got under way, with the whole evening on BBC1 from 8.15pm onwards devoted to commemorative material: the movie True Grit was followed by an hour long programme Uncle Sam Celebrates, which saw James Burke presenting highlights of the day’s celebratory outside broadcasts from NBC. Meanwhile, over on BBC2, America Plays (8.15pm) was a celebration of stateside sporting achievement; Bicentennial Summer (9.10pm) focused on the Philadelphia Orchestra; and Alastair Cooke made his own contribution to the festivities with By the Rocket’s Red Glare (10.10pm), ‘a salute to America’. The evening was rounded off with the feature film 1776, an extravagant musical that had proved a costly failure to Columbia Pictures when released just four years earlier.

The Yanks didn’t have quite the whole evening to themselves: BBC1’s early evening programmes included a Blue Peter special revisiting John Noakes’ famous freefall descent with the RAF’s Flying Falcons, followed by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, all quintessentially English viewing. Not to be outdone, the Welsh moved in at 7.25 with a repeat of How Green Was My Valley, a 1975 adaptation starring Stanley Baker and Sian Phillips.

The week’s programme listings were peppered with icons of an eagle’s head, highlighting programmes with an American theme, and fairly plastered across the radio programme pages for Sunday, with much music and drama on Radio 3, G.B. Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple (a satire on puritanism) on Radio 4, and many other themed items. Even Jimmy Savile was getting in on the act, speaking ‘only to Americans’ on his Speakeasy show.

Doctor Who fans were in for a summer treat this week, with two complete serials repeated: Planet of Evil from Monday to Friday, and the two-part Sontaran Experiment shown complete on Friday evening. Monday’s programme page even found room for a neat little illustration from Frank Bellamy, who always nabbed the Doctor Who gigs at the RT. This being the summer, repeats were inevitable, and included The Good Life (at the surprisingly late hour of 9.25pm on Tuesday), The Pallisers (Monday 10pm BBC2), scary kids’ drama The Changes (Wednesday 5.15pm BBC1), Porridge (Thursday 7.50pm BBC1) and David McCallum’s The Invisible Man (Friday 7.15pm BBC1). Another invariable fixture of the summer schedules was It’s a Knockout, which presented a one-off celebrity edition on Friday at 8.00pm. Amongst those taking part were Judith Chalmers, Anita Harris, George Layton, Bernard Cribbins, Frazer Hines, James Villiers (!), Ian Carmichael, Shaw Taylor, Raymond Baxter, Willie Rushton and Z Cars’ James Ellis – a unique and unrepeatable line-up of talent!

One or two series were making their debut: forgotten American cop Bert D’Angelo pounded the mean streets of San Francisco beginning on Friday evening (9.25pm BBC1): it’s safe to say that there really were far too many imported American detective series on British TV at this time – and we only had three channels in which to accommodate them. That aside, the only other new series flagged up in the RT listings were The Mister Men (Sunday), Speed Buggy (Wednesday) Newsround Extra and Bellamy’s Europe (Thursday), the latter providing yet another vehicle for the burbling bearded naturalist famously parodied by Lenny Henry.

Children’s programming included Blue Peter Flies the World and Play Away (Monday), Animal Magic and Lippy Lion (Tuesday), ‘Boss Cat’ (Thursday) and Screen Test on Friday. The pre-news slot was occupied by Barbapapa, a kind of pink blobby thing like a sentient blancmange, whose tales were told by Michael Flanders (and if you want more of this kind of thing – pre-news kids shows I mean, not sentient blancmange – I’ve got a huge item in preparation…)

The letters page reads very much like a primer for Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party (1977), with several readers writing in praise of The Roussos Phenomenon, shown on 10 June on BBC2, and showcasing the then unknown (in England) Greek musician and vocalist: ‘the most fantastic singer I have ever heard’ wrote (Mrs) Linda Reynolds of Cornwall. ‘Truly a great, talented, gifted, natural, joyous man’ agreed Pat de Kercrech of Cowen. One can almost hear Mr. Leigh’s pencil scribbling furiously… But not everyone was smitten with the warbling man-mountain: ‘his only remarkable features are that he weighs 17½ stone and wears silver boots’ complained F.W. Langley of Anlaby.

No review of an old Radio Times would be complete without a look at some of the week’s advertisers. The inside back page looks ironic in retrospect: a full-page colour advert for the ‘Philips Deluxe Sun Lamp’, one item that would certainly not be required over the coming weeks. Elsewhere there are ads for Omega watches, Nescafe Gold Blend (long before the brand was associated with Sharon Maughan and Anthony Head), the Peugeot 104, National Savings Certificates, the QE2, something called ‘the Pifco Steam Valet’ (don’t ask) and WH Smith: ‘a writer’s toy shop’, according to Kingsley Amis whose mugshot dominates a page ad for the once beloved high street retailer.

Across pages 52-57, critic and director Gavin Millar(rrrrrr) examined the world of America’s celluloid heroes, with illustrations from Ralph Steadman in his typical splattery style, and on the penultimate page, Stacey Keach delivered an essay on Kenneth Griffith’s film Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, a personal interpretation of events surrounding the American Revolution. And finally, lest RT’s readers were tiring of the relentless Americanisation of this week’s edition, came a preview of next week’s cover, featuring… wait for it… the Queen and her corgis. The same edition promised recollections of British Army officer Orde Wingate, Beethoven’s Solemnis kicking off the Proms, Patrick Moore looking towards Mars and the imminent touchdown of the Viking lander, and memories of the Spanish Civil War… none of which, I’d like to bet, would get anywhere near a 2026 edition of Radio Times...