Radio Stars Story of Light Entertainment

This programme contains some strong language.

In the world of light entertainment, everyone knows that television is king.

But it wasn't always like that - radio used to be the home of entertainment.

Radio is the mother of television, and they're still looking for the father.

Some of the biggest names in front of the camera started their careers behind the microphone.

In fact, radio has created more entertainment formats,

game shows and comedy stars than any other branch of show business.

There's no finer place than this side of the camera.

It's 4.35am. You're listening to Up With The Partridge.

I wonder what's on television.

You can't underestimate how important radio was in developing British comedy.

I am the only gay in the village.

It's all done in the best possible taste.

But the legacy of all these ideas is largely forgotten today.

Somehow, the world of the wireless is seen as desperately old-fashioned.

A dusty old place where has-been DJs go to die.

But as you'll discover tonight, radio was one of the most ruthless areas in the entertainment industry.

I'm the boss. I'm in charge. I'm doing this. Bosh.

It was a horrible time.

Goodnight and good riddance.

A vicious world of overactive egos and monstrous personalities.

Oh, yeah!

I was me. I did my thing. People either bought it or they didn't.

Where's my BAFTA? Where's the BAFTA?

If you've got anybody hailing Chris Evans as a genius,

something's very wrong in the world.

We're sorry, we're sorry.

We'll reveal how radio and television have been involved

in a 50-year non-stop battle for supremacy,

and we'll discover the truth behind some of the casualties.

He should have been a big, big star.

And then it all fell apart.

It's very easy to go nuts.

It's a bugger of a business, this, when it goes wrong.

Now, are you sitting comfortably?

# The folks are very wealthy Down upon the farm

# But if the life is good and healthy, down upon the farm... #

In the 1920s, unlike every other country in the world, the British Government effectively nationalised

the fledging radio industry and brought all the existing private

stations under the banner of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The royal charter of the newly formed BBC was to educate, inform and entertain.

The BBC felt that its place was more to educate than to entertain,

because if you wanted entertainment you could go to the Variety Hall,

and you could listen to low comedians doing their low comedy.

But it wasn't long before a sanitised version of music hall

variety found its way onto the airwaves in the early '30s.

The BBC did its level best, although they didn't have any systems

for finding out what people wanted, to give the people what they wanted.

And every Saturday night there was an hour's variety show.

The BBC Dance Orchestra is going to play to you Piccadilly Ride.

The quality and quantity of BBC entertainment was strictly controlled.

The first director-general, John Reith, was a staunchly conservative religious man

who laid down a series of precise rules of taste and decency for whatever was heard on the BBC.

And on a Sunday, entertainment was completely banned.

Lord Reith was a very strict Presbyterian,

and didn't believe that anything should be,

any kind of entertainment should be allowed on a Sunday night.

He thought Sunday was the day for God and worship

and it should be used for that.

Enlighten the minds which without thee are dark and blind...

Although the BBC was the only radio station in Britain,

it did have competition from commercial channels transmitting from continental Europe.

These foreign rivals were quick to exploit the BBC's rigidly

highbrow stance on entertainment, and broadcast popular music, quiz shows and comedy seven days a week.

Launched in 1933, Radio Luxembourg broadcast English programmes at night.

It was an instant success in the UK, and attracted around 80% of the listening audience on a Sunday.

# We are the Ovaltinies Little girls and boys

# Make your request we'll not refuse you

# We are there just to amuse you... #

Radio Luxembourg, of course, was a prime source of opposition

to the the BBC for a number of years.

It had a great appeal to the...

shall we say - the lowest educated people, I would say.

If you went to the north of England, among the coalminers

and millworkers, they'd all listen to Luxembourg.

Of course the BBC were doing the opposite.

They were taking sound radio up, very brilliantly.

Whereas commercial radio was aimed at

the lowest common denominator.

The snobbish attitude of the BBC was only broken in World War II, when radio ceased to be a novelty

and became the only form of entertainment available.

ANNOUNCEMENT: 'All cinemas, theatres and other places of entertainment,

'are to be closed immediately until further notice...'

Millions more radios came into use during the War, and it was to

the BBC that all these new listeners turned at the nation's darkest hour.

The war brought a kind of crashing down of class barriers and it was part of the BBC's remit to keep up

morale, and that meant keeping up morale of the whole country.

The BBC lowered its standard, as you might say, in order to attract many more people to listen.

Because many important announcements were given over the radio -

government announcements, and announcements about call-up and things like that.

so as many people as possible were expected to listen

and the way to get them to listen is to give them what they wanted.

They wanted jokes and... pop songs of their era.

And the man with the jokes was music hall star, Arthur Askey.

Ladies and gentlemen, Band Waggon!

MUSIC: Theme from Band Waggon

Band Waggon was the first weekly comedy and the first to be specifically designed for radio.

Band Waggon was one of my favourites, Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch.

"Stinker" Murdoch, as he was known!

'Arthur Askey borrowing protection from the rain, and helping him, his playmate, "Stinker" Murdoch.

'Step inside, Stinker and big-hearted Arthur are entertaining the boys.'

LAUGHTER

ASKEY: I thank you, I thank you.

MORE LAUGHTER

Am I standing in a hole, or are you on horseback?!

Band Waggon had a sort of sitcom element to it.

They always, supposedly, had this flat above Broadcasting House.

And I think they kept a goat on the roof.

The other characters came, for whatever reason, to visit them there.

And the idea of living in a flat on the roof of Broadcasting House with a goat just really made me laugh.

This is the last straw! Take all this rubbish and clear out!

By the 1950s, radio was entering its golden age, and produced so much

entertainment that it quickly became the natural showcase for the cream of comedy writers and performers.

There was very little television,

and there was very little comedy on television.

So, it was to the radio that you turned to have a good laugh - Hancock's Half Hour, Raise A Laugh,

they were part and parcel of our lives.

I can remember cycling home from church on a Sunday morning,

and you cycle like mad to get back to, not to miss anything like that.

Because church first, and radio second.

What's that?

WHOOPING

-What's that?

-It's the wha-whoops of the Nakataka Indians.

-Are they the ones that commit atrocities?

-Yes.

I'll go upstairs and get ready.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The Goons sort of divides opinion now.

In fact, it divided opinion then. I mean, some people always hated it, some people always loved it.

But in a way, it was the ultimate radio show.

-Oh, hello!

-And you've picked a funeral for three o'clock?

Sometimes radio is simply more visual than TV.

The Goon Show, for example, was a radio phenomenon

because you could see the pictures in your mind.

Nine times out of ten, the script was written about three hours before they hit the air.

It was Spike, very often, came up with paper and handed - I've known it - on transmission.

1953 finally saw television as a viable competitor to radio, when the BBC covered the coronation,

and a more affluent Britain could afford the highly sought after box in the corner.

But TV was still looked on by radio veterans as an inferior medium to be made fun of.

Hello, Playmates, well I..

I think we'll commence the meeting by bowing our heads

in memory of all those listeners who have passed over to television.

Tell me, what do you do?

Well, perhaps you haven't seen me on TV?

TV? Oh, TV! Terrible Value. No, I haven't.

I never see it, the only time there's anything worth watching, I'm too busy doing it.

When television came in, there was a great

snobbery amongst the radio people, because they were all established.

A lot of them had been in radio for 40-odd years and things like that.

The baby, the new baby, was television.

While TV was finding its feet, on radio there was once again a totally new kind of comedy.

We present Tony Hancock, Sidney James, Bill Kerr, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams in...

.. H-H-Hancock's Half Hour.

HATTIE: Oh, look, it's started raining!

TONY: That's all we wanted.

-What's the time?

-SIDNEY: Two o'clock.

Is that all?

Oh, dear, oh, dear.

Ah, dear me.

Tony was so good at... "Ah, dear, oh, lord.

"Oh, dear, oh, lord.

"Hah, oh, dear."

His timing in between, all these little, "Oh God, what's the time?"

and "Oh, dear, doesn't time drag?" His timing was absolutely superb.

The TV version of Hancock's Half Hour appeared in 1956 under the same

name and with the same writers, and with the same sense of simplicity.

Whole episodes were set in one room or in a lift, famously.

Or in, you know, one room of his flat.

And this was not only astonishing writing, which it would be today, but it also perfectly suited

television of the time because it was quite limited, technically, in what it could do.

Time is the most precious commodity at our disposal.

I must not waste it. To waste one second of one's life is a betrayal of one's self.

I wonder what's on television?

# All my love, all my kissing

# You don't know what you've been missing... #

Surprisingly, in the late '50s and early '60s, radio was behind TV when it came to popular music.

While the explosion of rock'n'roll was all but ignored by the BBC radio monopoly,

television welcomed it with open arms, and DJs took their first tentative steps into television.

BBC television didn't really feel at home

or au fait with music and kind of went, "Oh, who does?"

David Jacobs and Pete Murray and people like that.

It's time to jive on the old Six-Five.

Of all the programmes that have ever been done on television, Six-Five Special was way ahead.

# Where the deep And pearly waters... #

It was the first programme to incorporate the audience

into the show, and that's what really made it quite exciting.

Not only did it create the hits, it was sort of a much more

varied style of music, you had every kind of music on there.

The Deep River Boys!

# Bless my soul What's wrong with me... #

While Pete Murray jived on the Six-Five,

the gentlemanly tones of David Jacobs could be found on Juke Box Jury.

Good evening and welcome to another session of Juke Box Jury.

Everybody working on radio wanted to work on television

and I was one of them.

I was lucky enough that I had a transportable talent

that seemed to work on both media.

# Poetry in motion

# Walkin' by my side... #

-Nina, what do you think about it?

-Well, I must say, I rather liked the beginning of it.

The, what I call the dirty saxophone!

Clearly, "dirty saxophones"

were never to be heard on BBC radio.

Even by the early '60s, pop was as stringently rationed as before the war.

'Good morning, ladies. Our first request this morning is from Mrs

'Ada Spillington, Oak Lodge, Crawley, Sussex - for her daughter, Eleanor.

'She says you'd like some jolly music to help you start the day, so what about this?'

They really were very starchy in those days.

And as a teenager, and as a youngster, they didn't really talk

to me, they were talking to, always entertaining older people, I thought.

But the stuffy old BBC was still at the cutting edge of radio comedy.

Mrs Olga Cremorne requests the pleasure

of Mr Kenneth Horne's company at a meeting...

Beyond Our Ken and Round The Horne, that followed, were laced with

an incredible amount of double entendre

and innuendo for their time.

# Dear Ken Jim Pubes With his splod so bright

# As he traddles his nadger in the bright moonlight

# He wurdles his pawcet all through the night

# But he can't turn it off in the morning... #

I don't think one could ever say, "Well, Round The Horne was grubby."

But it was cheeky, if you like.

One chap there who'd been arrested for kissing a strange girl in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

A foolish thing to do and as the magistrate said...

In future, you'll want to use a bit of common.

Round The Horne at its peak got an audience of around 20 million,

and was the last radio comedy to get figures anywhere near this size.

# She loves you Yeah, yeah, yeah... #

But even as Beatlemania shook the world of entertainment,

the BBC was having none of it,

and continued blithely to ignore popular music.

This is the British Broadcasting Corporation...

And once again, Radio Luxembourg reaped the benefit,

by re-branding itself Fab 208, and playing non-stop pop.

# The ring-a-ding swinging station of the stars! #

I think Radio Luxembourg was probably a favourite with everybody

because there hadn't been another station like it before.

Just the fact that it was playing lots of pop music was stunning, as far as kids were concerned.

# Well, it's Saturday night and I just got paid... #

With the government's continuing resistance to commercial radio,

Luxembourg was the place to go for aspiring British DJs.

One of its recruits in the late '50s was the dapper young Jimmy Savile.

I was working my dance hall in Leeds,

and a guy came up to me afterwards

and said, "I've never seen records played like that before."

"Would you like a job on the radio?" And I said,

"Yeah, why not?" He said, "I'm from Radio Luxembourg,

"and if you come for an audition next week..." I said, "No."

He said, "Why?" I said, "You've seen all there is to see.

"You either want it or you don't." And he said,

"You're a character, aren't you?" I said, "It's the way it is."

Ladies and gentlemen, here we are, Percy and Jimmy Savile,

the Savile Twins, so let's go inside and...

HE HUMS

All the English-speaking DJs worked out of the studios in London.

I did the show, they flew the tapes over and that was it. Never been to Luxembourg in my life.

When I started the Luxembourg thing, it was for Warner Brothers Records.

When they sent the tape to Warner Brothers in Hollywood and they heard this Yorkshire voice saying,

"Welcome to the Warner Brothers Show," they said, "..the hell's that?

"Who the...?" and they sent a letter back and they said,

"Look, try and find another voice, will you, and send us a tape of the voices and we'll decide what..."

by which time I'd turned a 600,000 listening figure to 2.3 million in three weeks.

No way you're gonna shift that, baby. No way.

# Come on, honey, shake that thing All right!

# Hey hey... #

By 1964, music programmes on TV were getting more adventurous.

BBC Two's short series, The Beat Room, had been so popular

that it was decided that a new show on BBC One would be the flagship for pop on TV.

By this time the BBC had acknowledged that pop music was gonna be here to stay, so they wanted something on TV.

Despite working for a foreign broadcaster,

Jimmy Savile was the country's most popular DJ at the time, so BBC TV looked to him for inspiration.

My Luxembourg show was called The Teen and Twenty Disc Club.

The Beeb says, "That's a bit long. Can you shorten it down a bit?" I said, "Yeah.

"Call it Top Of The Pops." And that was it.

Wednesday, January 1st 1964, 6.30 in the evening live.

The first band, Rolling Stones.

And here they come right now.

# Ba-ba la-la ba ba ba-da da... #

It was decided that Top Of The Pops should be presented by four different presenters -

Jimmy Savile, Pete Murray, Alan Freeman and myself.

Top groups, top records, top everything.

There was one group that was in and out of the British Top 20 for something like 25 weeks this year.

Now we move onto our next record. It didn't make number one in the charts

but it's a beautiful record and one of my favourites.

We were the top disc jockeys of the day.

I used to come top in the poll every year

until Jimmy Savile came along and he took over.

And I did it once a month,

all the way along.

We have got a young lady.

The BBC hoped it was a short series cos they didn't trust pop people,

and in those days, the average pop person, even if they were properly dressed almost,

were the equivalent to punks were later on and not to be trusted and all this, that and the other.

And good morning, everyone. Welcome to the exciting new sound of Radio 1.

And now that BBC radio had its own pure pop station,

BBC television had fresh faces to plunder for Top Of The Pops.

Radio 1 and, and BBC Light Entertainment having close ties,

it made perfect sense that Radio 1 DJs would do the show.

'Yes, it's number one, it's Top Of The Pops.'

When I started presenting Top Of The Pops, it changed my life.

I had Radio 1 doing the Breakfast Show, and then Top Of The Pops, then visually people knew me.

Right, now here's a lovely record and it's number 21 this week.

It's called Venus and it comes from Shocking Blue.

Radio 1 DJs were recognised not because they were on the radio,

it's because they did Top Of The Pops,

and that was a fantastic marketing exercise for Radio 1.

It was almost accepted and expected.

They created names overnight, and of course you've got to remember

in those days Top Of The Pops was getting 18, 19 million people.

So everywhere we went, we got mobbed.

# MUSIC: "Hey Boy, Hey Girl" by the Chemical Brothers

The side effect of all this new-found fame, to some of the DJs, was egomania gone wild.

When you have the whole country hanging on your every word, it can go to your head.

Rosko, flash, brash, easy riding to the top.

# Hey, girls

# Hey, boys

# Superstar DJs

# Here we go... #

A glass of water for the Emperor!

The Rosko Show on Saturday was a complete party.

Hey! Wey!

I just want to rock and roll.

# Superstar DJs

# Here we go! #

To be a DJ then on Radio 1 was, you know, almost like having a number one in the pop charts.

We were as big as the acts were. Maybe not as big as the Stones or the Beatles,

but we had our own following and they cheered for us just as much as they would for the act.

GIRLS SCREAM

They were all now big names by the time I got to Radio 1,

and they were all fighting each other's egos.

Former pirate and Radio 1 DJ Simon Dee was THE king of egos.

But his belief that he was a star would prove to be his undoing

and he was tipped over the edge by the attention from television.

He was the first DJ to really hit big outside of the pop world

with his 1968 chat show Dee Time on the BBC.

Simon Dee!

APPLAUSE

-You wanna ask me anything?

-Um...

-How did you start?

-Funny you should ask me that.

Um...bribe.

-Bribe?

-Yeah, I bribed the head of BBC Television.

Simon Dee was, um...a forceful young man, you know.

He wanted to do things his way.

I wasn't hard to handle. I respected my producer and director and my team,

and anything they said I went along with, except sometimes when...

You know, it is my show, or my name on a show, and sometimes I needed

an edge just to let them know it was me out in the cold there.

Simon was a bit of a fruit cake.

Nice guy. A bit bananas.

Simon was like the James Bond of DJs, by that time.

He had a TV show and the intro had girls draped all over a Jag,

so he was very much that image and he played up to it.

He was a man of his time.

There were the Beatles and all that, and he was very well dressed, very smart.

I've always wanted to meet you for...

Well, I wanted to meet you too. You're very good looking.

Oh, don't you start! Oh, God!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Zsa Zsa Gabor Show!

And then it all fell apart.

Simon Dee was, of course, retailed to us because we knew he had a massive ego.

I remember doing his television programme once as a singer

and he went on there and the warm-up man was saying,

"Please give a nice round of applause for our host of our show, Simon Dee,"

and Simon Dee came on and said, "Give me a camera.

"When I say something funny, laugh, cos the tickets are difficult to get."

I thought, "That isn't the way to last."

And afterwards I said to him, "Simon, why do you do that?" and he said, "I'm Simon Dee."

I think at one point he did say to Radio 1,

"I've got my own TV show so I want more money than the other DJs,"

and they went, "Oh, shut up, Simon."

And he was offered...

a sum of money by London Weekend Television that I was not able or prepared to match.

And then he left the BBC, said, "I don't need you guys any more,"

burning bridges as he went - not a good idea - and went to ITV.

But the huge increase in salary went to Simon's head and his demands and ego went out of control.

Good evening. APPLAUSE

There's nobody here. That's all taped applause.

Nobody here. See, it's all taped.

I pull a little button there, see?

I can cue little, small laughs. Listen.

TITTERS

See?

And having fallen out with the BBC, there was nowhere else to go,

so Simon's broadcasting career was over.

It's very easy to go nuts when you get that kind of prominence.

It's remarkably easy to lose the plot.

I might have had a couple of self-destruct buttons myself,

but not to the degree he had.

He should have been a big, big star, he really should have been.

He had it all there, and he lost it.

You've got to have an internal governing system which keeps telling you

that all this adulation is irrelevant and you mustn't be driven haywire by it.

As they say, that's show business,

and it's very unfortunate.

After two years of being one of the most famous and well-paid men

in the country, Simon Dee was forced to sign on.

And I had to go to this grill, and the girl said, "Yes?"

I gave my name. She said, "What do you do?"

I said, "I'm a disc jockey."

"Oh, you're Simon Dee.

"Look how the mighty have fallen."

I thought, "Yes, what a line, and how true." But she loved saying it.

"Look how the mighty have fallen." I thought, "Yeah, you're quite right."

I, actually funnily enough, learnt a lot from Simon Dee, and Simon,

please forgive me for saying this, but I learnt how not to do it.

# I like to play on the record machine

# All the popular records that there might have been... #

There was one DJ, though, who didn't fit the typical profile.

# Kenny Everett! #

By common consent of everyone in the profession, the best of us.

A lot of people take the easy route.

They come in without a thought in their heads and cruise through it,

say the first thing that comes into their heads, which often isn't worth hearing.

Kenny Everett meticulously planned and structured all his programmes.

He'd come up with all these extraordinary characters

from his imagination.

He was in a league of his own.

Excuse me, sir. Basement Bill here.

I just want to know if you want any revived 45s cos I'm going down

to the basement in amongst the filth and the muck to dig you some out.

He did really use radio in that theatre of the mind way

that very few people can.

He would take the listener to another place just by his inventiveness.

-Hey, I went to see the Director General the other day.

-You did, sir?

Oh, yes, very good friend of mine, the old Dir Gen, you know.

We have tea together and you should see the pad he's in.

Oh, my God, I entered trembling footsteps.

DISTORTED CREAKING AND STEPS

What a place! Cor, talk about marble 'alls! Oo-er!

Kenny Everett couldn't seem to resist pushing boundaries

and was sacked by most of his previous employers at one time or another.

The BBC proved to be no different.

Isn't it strange that I'm being filmed by one end of the BBC about being sacked by the other?

By the 1970s, Radio 1 DJs were a familiar sight on our screens

and the BBC discovered a whole new area where their talent for talk

could be put to good use - presenting children's shows.

It's Friday.

Yes, and it's five to five!

And it's...

ALL: Crackerjack time!

I was the obvious choice because I was doing Junior Choice with its huge audiences.

We've got three marvellous couples and if you look down at their feet

you can see also that we're gonna play a sort of three-legged race!

That's it. Whoops!

It's not as easy as it looks, you see.

You walk down the street or go to parties now

and 30 to 40-year-old men and women will shout "Crackerjack" at you,

because that's the impact it used to make. Crackerjack!

ALL: Crackerjack!

So I've been very fortunate in that way.

But there was never a conscious decision.

I like to be on television, but I don't like the shape of my nose for a start, so I never liked being on it.

I thought, "Oh, God, why have they got that shot again?"

One radio star who was never reluctant to appear on TV

was to create another classic children's show,

but on his own terms, of course.

As I was walking down the corridor at Television Centre,

and one of the executives was coming in the opposite direction and he said, "Hey, you!"

That's the way they talked to me down there.

He said, "You've been fixing things for people all your life.

"Why don't we put pictures to it and make a show?"

And I said, "Yeah, OK, we'll call it Jim'll Fix It."

and he said, "Jimmy Will Fix..."

I said, "No, Jim apostrophe double L, Jim'll Fix It" And he said, "OK."

And we didn't actually stop.

He kept going and I kept going,

and all of a sudden a guy turned up and said, "I'm the producer of your show."

I said, "Are ya?" He said, "Yeah, what do we do?"

# Jim'll Fix It, Jim'll Fit It... #

What they did was produce one of the nation's favourites

that made dreams come true for hundreds of kids, but it wasn't an original idea.

Wilfred Pickles had been doing a similar show on the radio for years

in the '40s before bringing it to TV in 1954 with Ask Pickles.

But good ideas don't die, and Jimmy Savile's version of the format ran for nearly 20 years.

One of the reasons it lasted that long is because I kept a 100% high moral standard.

There was absolutely no chance of getting any nudge, nudge, wink, wink or anything like that.

Not that I'm a prude - anything but - but it was the wrong place for it.

One, two, three!

He's done it!

'I never would dream of imposing my personality on the show cos it was nothing to do with me.'

It was to do with letters that we got in.

All we did was make sure that the letters were televisually good.

I wanted to appear with Morecambe and Wise.

You did?

-Here we go.

-Yaah!

Cor!

Have you got short, fat, hairy legs?

What can you say? I mean this is a children's...

-Just a quick flash?

-You gonna do it?

-You wanna see 'em?

Here we are, look at that!

In the 20 years that we operated, we got over 5.5 million letters.

I get maybe now still 30, 40 letters a week,

and people write to me as if it were still on!

# Ch-ch-ch changes

# Turn and face the strain... #

In 1973, the 50-year BBC monopoly was finally ended

and commercial radio was now legal.

With all this new competition, Radio 1 had to become more entertaining,

so new blood was drafted in to take the station into the '70s.

# Noel Edmonds. #

One man who wasn't pleased to see the new handsome young face

was Tony Blackburn, who'd been relegated from the high-profile breakfast slot.

When Noel took the Breakfast Show from me,

yeah, it was really annoying, really, really, really annoying!

# ..Headin' for a showdown... #

The original Radio 1 star...

..finally eclipsed.

I don't think I was the nicest person to Noel. I didn't welcome him into the fold.

Doing anything over the weekend?

Er, well I'm going down to Shirley in Southampton in actual fact.

-You doing anything?

-Er, no, nothing at all.

-No, I'm gonna stay in the studio and wait for Monday to come round.

-How terribly boring for you.

I couldn't forgive him for being younger and talented and better looking than me!

It's really annoying when that happens.

Mrs Scott has written to me from High Street, Riddings, Derbyshire,

and says, "I saw a picture of you recently with half your beard missing.

"Have you really shaved it off?"

No, Pauline. Have a listen.

That's me beard. It's still there.

It's a kind of design classic in a way, isn't it, you know?

The tidy beard and the kind of, that haircut that's never changed

and that sort of smooth and unthreatening and sort of semi-beige sort of image, you know.

# ..the children of the revolution

# No, no... #

After attracting a record-breaking audience on his Breakfast Show, Noel didn't hang around.

He moved swiftly into what was then the dead zone of TV -

Saturday mornings, and started a light entertainment revolution.

Yes, there is no finer place to be on a Saturday morning than in front of a TV set tuned to BBC One

and there's no finer place than to be on this side of the camera.

When Noel Edmonds started the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop

in the early '70s, it was a natural way forward

because daytime TV was almost non-existent and weekend TV started with him, so to speak.

Noel's training and background on radio was enormously helpful

when he came to television, because the absence of an earpiece,

the absence of autocue meant you were removing two barriers between you and the audience.

They are a lovely lot, really.

Aren't you?

You really are lovely. What does that do?

He just had that knack which very, very, very few presenters,

whether they be radio presenters or TV presenters have got of doing live

television and being completely at ease, as though it was pre-recorded, and he was the master of that.

# You've done it all

# You've broken every code... #

Never one to do the expected, Kenny Everett's move to television broke with two traditions.

He didn't do children's TV and he didn't do it on the BBC.

Today the BBC.

Tomorrow...ITV if they'll have me!

They did have him, for three very successful years.

The thinking was at Thames Television

he would be the whacky, funny DJ introducing the bands.

Radio will be a thing of the past, and now stand by to see our first viewing item.

Eyeballs at the ready? Paul McCartney and Wings, start viewing now!

His input was thinking of characters and what he would do with them.

I hope you'll all go and see my new movie, Bloodbath Of The Naked Vixens.

It's all done in the best possible taste!

I came from an old school where you rehearsed it

and then you did it in the studio in front of an audience

and the audience laughed or applauded in front of a set, whatever.

There was a, a fixed way of doing it.

With Kenny Everett, suddenly I found myself in a very, very small studio

with Kenny, with Barry Cryer, with Ray Cameron, a cameraman, a boom operator, and that's it!

No audience. If you heard any laughter it was the crew, and we never asked them to laugh

that would be insulting.

Any laughter you heard was them and I loved that atmosphere.

It's rock and roll time on The Kenny Enema Show,

cos rock and roll's my favourite kind of music, you know what I mean?

Kenny Everett, I think, is the single most innovative artist

that TV ever had and his early death was a great, great loss

and the results he got on screen were just astonishing.

But he'd pioneered most of that fantasy and imagination on his radio show.

Radio was his spiritual home, but he became very good on television.

He adapted to it brilliantly.

In 1981, Kenny was brought back into the bosom of the Beeb

to produce almost the same show with almost the same title.

Hello and welcome to our brand new series with brand new jokes from a brand new TV station!

-It's still the BBC.

-What?

-It's still the BBC.

-Still the BBC?

-Yeah.

-Oh, bum!

And the BBC tried to turn him into a BBC comedian -

rehearse through the week and the audience come in on the Friday night,

and then he became very good with a studio audience. They loved him.

Hello, darlings,

and welcome to the show!

I don't know. Kenny's not with us any longer.

I can't ask him. I wish I could.

But I think he preferred the ITV way of doing it.

I think if Ev was still with us, he would have been back in a big way with the young generation.

With the advanced technology, he'd be able all sorts of stuff with it now.

I think he would have survived triumphantly.

Meanwhile, Noel Edmonds, having conquered Saturday mornings, moved on to Saturday nights,

a slot he would hold in one form or another for almost 20 years.

He took the creativity which he'd done on the radio, and transferred it

to television, and very few programmes had happened like that.

It's really just a number of little sketches put together,

a bit like an old-style radio variety show.

It's got crazy sort of stunts on it that appeal to everybody,

it's got stuff that kids are in,

it's got stuff where adults get covered in gunge which kids like.

At the same time Noel Edmonds is keeping it all together with a knowing wink!

Thank you very much indeed, and a very good evening to you.

It's great to be back, another series of the Late, Late Breakfast Show.

And every Saturday teatime, I'm going to be taking you through

until Christmas with all sorts of wonderful things. I mean it.

Those "wonderful things" included

some very dangerous-looking live stunts where anything could happen.

Well, obviously we'll keep you posted as to exactly what happened with that attempt.

It certainly looked remarkably frightening from the pictures I can see. They're sorting him out.

That driver was OK, but another contestant's Houdini-style escape

from a suspended cage went horribly wrong.

The BBC is carrying out a full investigation after a man was killed

when rehearsing a stunt for tomorrow's Late, Late Breakfast Show.

25-year-old Michael Lush from Southampton fell more than 100 feet from a crane.

I didn't know what had happened. I walked into Jim Moy's office and there were

more grey men than normal all sitting around this table,

all looking like their careers had ended.

And then the story came out and initially it was

he'd been seriously injured and then we heard he'd died, and...

That was how I heard. I was dragged into an executive's office and told it.

Noel wasn't there, Noel wasn't at the location.

There've been lots of stupid stories told over the years.

Neither of us were anywhere near Michael Lush that day. He was at a rehearsal site out in Oxfordshire.

And the incident occurred,

and we still don't know why.

ANNOUNCER: Because of the tragic accident involving Michael Lush

while preparing for tonight's edition of the Late, Late Breakfast Show,

the BBC has decided to cancel this and all future editions of the programme.

I think it was beyond any doubt that this show would not be coming back.

There was no way you could do it because the press would have been against the BBC.

Essentially my BBC television career was stopped in its tracks by that at that stage.

Noel and Smithie's successful partnership was dissolved forever,

allowing Noel to distance himself from the Michael Lush affair.

But it wasn't long before he was back on Saturday nights, bigger and better than ever.

He gave birth to House Party and he was back live,

and the rocket took off, and off he went.

Welcome to The House Party! Yes, my new live 50-minute show...

And this is where Noel really became a major star.

Eddie the Eagle Edwards!

What it had was a kind of sense of being improvised,

but within a narrative or a context,

ie the "house party", the conceit,

the door opening, someone... "Who's at the door now?" had a very clever format.

Hello to each wing.

One of the things you felt when you watched Noel's House Party was not just whether you were being

entertained but you would sort of gasp at its accomplishment. How could it be doing that?

And then it sort of finished on time and you got on, it was all live.

The most, I suppose, noteworthy element of that was NTV,

when suddenly we were in somebody's living room!

This is the moment I love, I absolutely adore.

This is one of the highlights of my week, and so let's go and meet this week's star of NTV.

Hello!

Hello, Andy!

-Hello, Noel!

-How are you?

I'm all right, mate. I can't... no!

And of course the ever-popular gungeing of guests never seemed to lose its appeal.

It was a critical part of that Saturday night schedule

and actually it was a show we were proud of and pleased to have.

But it was an overnight success, and allowed us to do anything.

Which included having an eight-foot tall man in a plastic suit as your co-star.

Mr Blobby must be still out there.

What is he now, is he like a Tramp? Where is Blobby?

Sadly, Mr Blobby and all the other characters from Crinkly Bottom

were retired in 1999 after audiences plummeted.

You know, it had exhausted the audience really by then.

They'd seen it, they knew what Noel's House Party was like,

and however much it was changed, it still was the same programme,

and inevitably, after a while, they'd had enough of it.

So after entertaining the nation for nearly a quarter of a century,

Noel was dropped like a stone from the schedules.

For a man used to the limelight this was a cruel blow.

If you've been the centre of attention for years on a Saturday night,

to actually acknowledge that the audience has sort of no longer got an appetite for it

is quite a difficult thing to do, so I'm quite sympathetic to that.

At the same time, there isn't any doubt that the show had ended.

Well, I think it's Noel's pride and his belief that he was a good programme-maker that BLEEPED him off.

While Noel took the classic route from DJ to TV superstar,

another major entertainer who began in children's TV

was making an unusual move in the opposite direction.

This is ghastly even by his own low, vile unspeakable standards.

He's covering them, they're dancing, he's throwing, there's muck going everywhere, that's...

Back in 1977, TISWAS was ITV's rough-and-ready alternative

to the polite Multicoloured Swap Shop,

and made Chris Tarrant a cult among kids and hung-over students.

But in 1987 when he left TISWAS behind, radio was still seen as

the poor relation to TV and a retrograde step in showbiz terms.

I don't think Tarrant had much television work at the time

and I think he was looking for an opportunity.

And we saw in him, you know, the management team saw in

him a real personality, somebody who could really connect with audiences.

And connect he did.

Chris Tarrant's 16-year career at Capital is one of the most successful in commercial radio.

He was up for a challenge, for something different.

But in those days nobody moved from TV to radio,

everybody moved from radio to TV, was seen to be the dream path,

and it was a big jump to go to the prime show on the prime station

for somebody who hadn't, until six months before or whatever, done the radio at all.

But he took to it like a duck to water and came out the traps flying!

It was during that time at Capital that Chris and his producers developed their radio quiz,

Double Or Nothing, into perhaps the most successful entertainment format ever,

selling worldwide and making Chris Tarrant, you guessed it, a millionaire!

Chris was part of the whole birth of the show.

It was very much what he did on radio, and it was David Briggs,

who was his producer at Capital, who was one of the people

that worked on the idea and, you know, came up with it.

Let's play Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

I think a lot of the style of Chris Tarrant, that you see when he does Who Wants To Be A Millionaire now,

is based on what he and I worked on when we were doing radio shows and doing radio competitions.

What staggered me was that the format gave away the answers

to the questions, that it was a multiple choice quiz.

It is Nelson Mandela. It's not Gorbachev either,

I'm sure it's Nelson Mandela. I'd like to play.

-Final answer?

-Final answer.

The reason Chris is so good at Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

is that he wants everybody to win a million quid.

He really, really does.

We don't wanna give you that!

It offered a million pounds as a prize in a game show and that had

never been done before, and that was quite an eye-catching thought.

But ITV's accountants must have trembled at the prospect of giving away millions of pounds.

My anxiety about it was whether it would bankrupt the network!

Would someone be winning a million pounds every night?

That was the responsible question that you had to ask -

would you be giving away a million pounds every night that it was on?

And actually as you played it you realised it was really hard to win

a million pounds because, even at £2,000, at £4,000, at £8,000,

this is cash that you're not going to jeopardise,

you're not going to take crazy risks on questions

you don't know the answers to.

I think it's worth going for.

AUDIENCE GASP

And then I realised that the format was a work of genius!

You've just won one million pounds!

£1 million!

It was during Chris Tarrant's reign at Capital that commercial radio really hit its stride, new stations

playing jazz and classical opening up, and the first national station Virgin coming on air.

Radio 1 now looked very old-fashioned indeed.

..the final half-hour of the programme,

it's the Rolling Stones with Little Red Rooster.

Radio 1 was still stuck firmly in the past, and Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse made sure they knew it

with their spoof DJs Smashie and Nicie.

'Hello?'

Right, here's a bunch of crazy loonies who are almost as bonkers as me!

Ma-a-a-a-a-a-a-adnesssss!

# Madness, madness, they call it madness... #

You just can't underestimate the impact

that Smashie and Nicie had on Radio 1. I mean, it was huge.

It was very, very well informed,

very astute and made uncomfortable viewing for many people!

Here were these DJs with this massive radio audience

but suddenly made to look really cheesy, really old-fashioned.

These people really considered themselves as having jobs,

if not for life, certainly until they decided to retire

or go and do something else, which, when you think about it,

is a fairly bizarre state of mind to get into if you're on a pop station.

So Matthew Bannister, the man who launched Chris Tarrant on Capital,

was brought in as the new controller to revive the station.

Someone, somewhere in the BBC had decided to give Matthew the mandate to do whatever it took.

So the atmosphere in the building, in the ladies' loo, in the toilet,

that's where you'd try and find out as much as you could.

It was a horrible time.

Before Bannister even started his new job, one of his main targets made a pre-emptive strike.

Dave Lee Travis, one of the BBC's longest-serving disc jockeys,

announced his resignation today live on Radio 1.

'Changes are being made here that go against my principles, and I just cannot agree with them.'

Am I sorry I left? No.

Am I sorry I did it on air?

No, not at all. I would do exactly the same thing over again.

Simon Bates also resigned, knowing his time was up.

But over the course of the next few months, a major cull took place as 38-year-old Gary Davis,

47-year-old Bob Harris and 66-year-old Alan Freeman

were all told to pack up their records and leave.

We-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-bye-bye!

And this is Dave Nice saying I invented the '60s and they were a roaring success.

In the '70s I founded glamorous rock, that too was phenomenal.

In the '80s, Smashie and I ruled the world.

Now it's the '90s and the new Controller of FAB FM thinks we're for the scrap heap!

Well, I've got a message for you Mr So-Called Mr Sir from Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

You think we're finished? You ain't seen nothin' yet!

I'm sure there was a great deal of anger and bitterness,

because these were people who'd given a lot of service to the BBC.

It was just like...

here the man who's been given a big BBC axe to chop down everything,

to get rid of everybody, you know, the ultimate hatchet man!

I mean, if I'd been in Matthew Bannister's position

and I'd been still on the stage, I'd have sacked myself!

Because I'd have been too old for it.

The end result of Matthew Bannister's cull was disastrous,

with listeners leaving Radio 1 for its commercial rivals.

At the same time as the station was going through big changes,

another former DJ was making a big splash on The Big Breakfast.

Welcome back, viewers, to the Big Breakfast studio!

It was a revolution in terms of breakfast television,

in the sense that it was a radio show on TV,

and Chris took a lot of those radio show

ideas and elements that he'd honed over the previous few years into television.

# There's Chrissie and Gaby and there's the crew

# We're on every day and we love you

# Zig and Zag and Peter too

# But there's no fourth line So shooby-dee-doo... #

I learnt so much from Chris.

I think all the television I'd done till then...

I'd been in TV four or five years already,

and it had been very structured, and I sort of learnt to...

take all that out of the way!

You were watching a TV show, but you didn't know

if it would drift off into chaos...

It's New Year's Eve and we've got a girl called Eve who works here,

so let's have a look at New Year's Eve Eve! Here she is!

It was everybody all in together.

The crew were very involved, it was, as Chris always used to say,

"This is the best job in the world."

And those first few years on The Big Breakfast for us were magical, absolutely magical.

I tell you what, it's been a good year, hasn't it, Dan?

It's been a great year, mate!

After two years of Big Breakfast, Chris formed his own company and produced his own show.

They've brought their suitcases!

-You've brought your toothbrushes?

-ALL: Yeah!

-And you've brought your passports?

-ALL: Yeah!

Don't Forget Your Toothbrush sold all over the world and made

Chris Evans one of the richest and most powerful men in British media.

But Chris's old boss at Radio 1 was in deep trouble.

The listening figures were at rock bottom and they needed to

attract a big star for the prestigious breakfast show.

We hadn't thought we could get Chris Evans, to be honest,

because we thought he'd done his radio time and was heading off on a meteoric rise to television stardom.

I knew, because I'd worked with him in the past, that he was a brilliant radio professional.

So it wasn't about just plucking a star off the shelf,

it was getting somebody who had built a reputation on television

and bringing him home to radio, where we knew he could do the business.

But surely ailing Radio 1 was a downward step for a man at the top of the TV world?

I walked in and said to him, "I suppose you know what I've come to talk to you about?"

And he said, "Don't even pitch it to me - I want to do it."

"I know I want to do it because every time I think about it, it makes me want to go to the toilet."

A few days later, Chris phoned me and said,

"We're gonna do the Radio 1 breakfast show."

And I was, like, "OK!"

This is BBC Radio 1, and we're on the air!

Chris Evans was the right man at the right time.

I've been practising for this job for the last 20 years, that's what I say!

It was Britpop, it was the mid-'90s, everybody thought we were great,

we thought Britain was great.

We were probably wrong!

Oasis and Blur were in the charts, and we were pretty pleased with ourselves.

There was a euphoria - probably slightly over-inflated

- and Chris Evans was right in the middle.

At the epicentre of the Zeitgeist, if you like!

It's seven and a half minutes to nine, and that was, er Strike and U Sure Do. Coming up, Oasis.

Oh, I like them! Oasis! Oasis!

So, in a way, he's an emblem of the mid-'90s, Chris Evans.

He was absolutely on the top of his game, and there was no-one to touch him at that time.

Now, not many people can say that!

As if five mornings a week of live radio wasn't enough, in 1996

Chris Evans took on the extra challenge

of presenting live television every Friday night on Channel 4.

Good evening, and welcome to the second live TFI Friday Late Night.

After a few months of this gruelling schedule, Chris decided that Radio

One should give him Fridays off to concentrate on his new TV show.

He saw it that he could do a perfectly good service

for Radio 1 Monday to Thursday

and a perfectly good service for Channel 4 on Fridays,

and why on earth couldn't people see that that was the best result for everybody concerned?

And then one Thursday I got a letter hand-delivered to me in my office

from his agent which said, "Unless Chris has tomorrow

"and every subsequent Friday off, we're giving you three months' notice to quit under our contract."

I can understand wanting Fridays off. Who wouldn't want Fridays off?

Chris, by his own admission, became a bit of a monster, and I think that he thought

that people couldn't say no to any of his demands.

And I thought, "Well, I can't possibly just give him tomorrow off.

"Maybe we can talk about this."

Unable to get his own way, Chris decided that he wanted to be released from his BBC contract

and started sending out none too subtle messages on air.

# Please release me, let me go... #

And then...we didn't turn up one day.

The BBC this afternoon agreed to release the Radio 1 DJ

Chris Evans from his contract with immediate effect.

He had resigned after management refused to give

him Fridays off, but he wasn't due to leave until the end of March.

But today the presenter didn't turn up for work.

That was it. You know, we kind of got fired...

which was quite cool, really!

A couple of years down the line - we were on Virgin at the time -

I went for lunch with Chris and said, "Do you think we made a mistake leaving Radio 1?"

And he said "Yes," and that was the first time he'd admitted to it.

Although 20 years separate them, there are striking similarities between Chris Evans and Simon Dee.

Both tried to juggle radio and TV unsuccessfully, both let fame and

adulation go to their heads and both were ultimately fired for their arrogance.

Whatever you think of Chris Evans he showed that radio was a cool place to be,

and in his wake more TV talent was eager to get behind the microphone.

Zoe Ball and Sarah Cox were just the tip of this new trend.

Well-established stars like Jonathan Ross, Ricky Gervais and Michael Parkinson had discovered

that you CAN work in TV and radio without losing your credibility or your pay packet.

Top names now command top sums, and radio is no longer seen as

a poor cousin to TV, but more like a wise old rich uncle.

There do seem to be a lot of people now that come from the TV world into the radio world,

and I don't think that's a bad thing, because what it's suggesting is that radio is worth doing.

Given the choice out of radio and television, I tell you now,

the greatest medium is radio, bar none.

Radio is more fun than television, for sure.

The difference between radio and television is you can get into people's heads on the radio.

As a training ground, as a communication medium,

radio is far superior to TV. Always will be.

Next time in The Story Of Light Entertainment, we look behind

the laughter at the unstoppable rise of television's greatest comics.

My turn now, darling!

-Comedy does pay you a lot of money if you get it right.

-Hello, Dave!

And there's something about human nature that as soon as it

sees a kind of chink in your armour they don't feel sorry for you,

they just want to hurt you even more.

I'm in the dressing room before I go on, it is so lonely,

waiting for the clock to go to eight o'clock.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd