Teenage Kicks Those Were the Days

For more than half a century, the BBC has captured the changing

face of life in Londonderry and the North-west.

In good times and bad times this vibrant region has given us

some of our finest singers and writers.

These are the archives and those were the days.

I think it's absolutely essential to preserve

and hold on to archive footage,

because it's the memory of our community.

I think the existence of an archive is hugely important.

If we don't know where we come from,

I think it's doubly hard to know where we're going.

We need our memories to make sense of our lives today.

And we need to remember, you know, the stars of the past

and the places we grew up in.

And I think it's wonderful that this footage exists.

I just wish there was more of it.

''Number 38, first time in - Undertones and Teenage Kicks.

Blasting their way onto the nation's biggest music show

these five energy-fuelled lads unleashed a punk classic

on Top Of The Pops.

# Teenage dreams so hard to beat

# Every time she walks down the street...#

The first we knew about our Top of the Pops appearance

we were up the town and they called into Feargal's work.

Fergal worked for Radio Rentals at the time.

And he'd got the phone call from the record company

to say that the record had charted and that we'd got Top Of The Pops.

# I'm gonna call her on the telephone...#

For me, the occasion of Top Of The Pops

was overshadowed by the fact that I got pyjamas from my aunties.

I was 19 years old,

and they heard that I was going to London to do Top Of The Pops,

and for whatever reason they thought I'd need pyjamas.

But that's my memory of doing Top Of The Pops.

There's something about it.

I don't think you can ever put your finger on what makes great music.

It's that riff, it's that lyric.

Teenage Kicks... It's almost a timeless quality.

I don't think they'd even have a clue at the time

that what the were writing was a little bit of genius

in this part of the world.

And time tells us that this music,

they'll still be playing this stuff in 100 years.

It'll still THE Derry anthem.

# I wanna hold her, wanna hold her tight

# Get teenage kicks right through the night...#

I think, Teenage Kicks is just two minutes, 26 of pure pop perfection.

Everything about it is just magical for me.

It's got an incredible chorus, it's got handclaps -

it's got everything that a good pop song should have.

Teenage Kicks... The lyrics really explain the song.

It's not a complicated or in-depth theme to the song.

It's just about wanting to meet a girl in the local area.

And hoping that sometime you get the chance to meet her.

And hopefully a chance to get a date.

Any top ten that you get chosen by top people, Teenage Kicks is in it.

And, of course, the great John Peel -

it was probably his favourite song of all time.

So if it's good enough for John Peel, it's good enough for me.

The fact that John Peel liked the record and then

when the record had stopped he picked up the needle

and played it the second time, so it was played back to back,

and we were thinking this is absolutely...

This is the greatest thing.

Now even to this day,

I've never heard a record played back-to-back ever.

Derry people to this day, absolutely adore The Undertones.

Not just for the music they wrote, which was superb,

but for what they represented.

# Teenage dreams so hard to beat...#

This is a Derry band, who put Derry on the map.

We weren't trying to go against the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

But it didn't prevent us from doing what we wanted to do.

I don't think it changed anybody.

And anyway in Derry, if you got above your station,

they'd throw you in the river anyway.

'Home again, and back to Derry to see Billy Kelly in action.'

A world away from showbiz pomp, 1955 saw another local hero

slugging it out on a very different public stage.

But he attracted as much acclaim as his pop successors.

And the BBC cameras were there to document Billy Spider Kelly's

preparations for the biggest fight of his life.

The British title.

Billy Kelly was a huge star. Not only in Derry.

You go anywhere...

practically in the world, anywhere where there's boxing,

they will know of Billy Kelly.

I never saw Billy box,

but you knew of Billy Kelly and you knew of his father.

And what they had achieved in boxing.

'The 22-year-old boxer is himself the son of a famous father,

John Spider Kelly who won the British and Empire Featherweight titles 16 years ago.

When I was growing up, the Kellys were sort of Bogside royalty.

Because there was a dynasty there, or so there seemed to be.

The position of being a great hero of Derry was being

passed down from father to son.

So it became not just an achievement in the past,

but a living tradition, almost.

To see where they trained, it was so primitive.

This little room or gym, produced a British and Empire champion.

His timing was perfect, his movement was perfect, he bobbed

and weaved like no other fighter that any of us had ever seen.

He wasn't a knockout specialist,

but he was a specialist at avoiding knockouts.

People in the Bogside fed off the glamour of Spider Kelly.

And it was all the more wonderful that you could see him

in the morning running through the area.

And wonderful that you could see his father,

the previous Spider Kelly, cycling along.

'Turning professional, he has worked his way up under the expert eye of

'his father, who although retired from the ring,

'still paces his son through the streets of Derry on training runs.'

My father had a very long career in boxing.

But when you think back to those times,

it overhung their professional fights.

And I think there was a natural progression there,

that he would follow in his father's footsteps.

'Last October, Billy Kelly completed half of his father's double

'when he took the Empire title from Roy Ankrah at the King's Hall.'

I did notice one thing, that as he was going down the street,

he seemed to have big army boots on.

And apparently that's what he wore, so that when he went in the ring

and put on these light boxing boots, it felt he was gliding.

He was on air.

And I did notice too,

when he was running across Craigavon Bridge a wee bit of a belly.

I would have blamed his wife Pam for that.

Because it takes you back to his house then

and you see her preparing steak for the champion.

# Some people say a man is made out of mud

# A poor man's made out of muscle and blood

# Muscle and blood and skin and bone...#

But the thing that amazed me most of all was,

here you have the little baby sitting in the high stool,

and Billy's cutting the steak

and he puts it over to the baby's mouth...

And even the baby's saying, "Wise up, Da."

And he keeps on!

And you're..."He's not going to give that to the baby, is he?"

And he puts it up to the baby's mouth

and the baby's sort of going...

"Da, no teeth. Take it away."

And Billy's, "No, you're going to be a champion some day. Like me."

Actually, I am that baby in the high chair. Now, 58 years ago.

That is a big steak.

It looks as if someone pulled the horns off a cow and sat it there.

And the reason that steak's there is

round the corner from our house was the slaughterhouse.

So all the men there knew that he was fighting

for the British and Empire title,

and so we were very well fed with high quality meat.

He lifted people up like nothing else did at the time.

Here's something that we could do. Look at that.

Here's Billy Kelly on the front page of the Daily Express.

With his fist raised above him in triumph.

If you came from the Bogside, you didn't get many opportunities.

To see something like that and to feel that sense of triumph

and achievement and vindication that Billy Kelly supplied to us...

So he was terrifically important, far beyond the sporting arena.

But beyond the sporting arena, for young people Billy's age,

entertainment venues in downtown Derry were in short supply.

'In the evening there is not a great deal to do.

'And it's only on the teenage beat scene that there is variety,

'choice and the odd, big-name, one-night stand.'

However the dawn of the Swinging Sixties saw more stars play Derry.

And the unmissable Embassy Court had a new generation jiving.

Fashion-conscious factory girls boogied with boys with big hair -

as this rare BBC film reveals.

The Embassy, of course, was a very smart place to go to.

But it was for slightly older girls.

And it was much patronised by visitors to the town,

like the sailors and airmen from Ballykelly

and the boats that would come in.

People dressed to the nines to go to the Embassy!

Factory girls particularly could come out of work,

buy a remnant of something,

and have a dress ready to go out to the Embassy that night.

The floor was always crowded,

and many Derry girls smoked while they danced,

so there was always a lit cigarette hovering around about ear level.

And you had to be careful, one of you would look in one direction,

one the other, because you could be set light to from either end.

The bands of course were terrific. They got the big names.

And it was very much a rather classy kind of place to go.

'Coleraine is the location of the new University of Ulster.'

Fast forward to the '70s.

And the seven-year-old university of Ulster at Coleraine was being

given the once-over by a fresh-faced BBC reporter Mike McKimm.

But would this academic newcomer pass its first test.

It was very interesting for me that particular film,

because I was actually at the new University of Ulster in Coleraine

at the very time that that was being shot.

So to be made to face some of those issues that Mike was talking about

within that film was really interesting.

'NUU's fundamental problem is its lack of students.

'There is just over half the projected number

'at the university at present. With 1,000 empty places to fill,

'NUU has little choice in its student intake.'

It was trying to get across this message

that the university wasn't operating correctly.

Vast sums of money had been spent, and it simply wasn't going to last.

As though the university had been something of a mistake.

'Despite a vociferous campaign by the people of Londonderry,

the decision was taken to site the university on 300 acres

given by the little market town of Coleraine.

In every Derryman's heart of hearts they're thinking why did

they put it there?

It could have been so much better!

So much faster...had it been located here.

where there was already the hub of Magee College

which could perfectly adequately have been used to start it off.

Even all these years later,

this simple decision not to put the new university in the heart of this cultural, historic city,

and instead sit in a couple of fields outside Coleraine...

It's amazing because even the guys in this footage,

the locals are going, "We didn't want it."

The Coleraine people were

so underwhelmed about getting a university.

'What's the university meant to you,

'now it's been here six or seven years?

'Well, it hasn't really been a benefit really in the long run.

'I can't see that it's done any harm.

'Originally, when we heard it was coming to Coleraine

'we had the fear of drugs and things like that,

'but as I say, it's done no harm.'

'Although it's often dubbed Coleraine university,

'the campus is actually outside the town and surrounded by fields.

'Indeed it's often described as a nine-to-five university.'

As students we weren't in the centre of Coleraine very much.

We wouldn't have gone into town too much.

We tended to stay on campus.

Interestingly, they call it a nine-to-five university.

I'm not sure quite why that is,

people were maybe commuting more at that point,

but we were there to stay.

A dynamic combination of sporting resources,

state-of-the-art media resources,

and new to Northern Ireland universities, an on-site creche,

were all part of life for students at the Coleraine campus.

My first impression, I have to admit of the university

when I arrived up as a fresh-faced first year,

was that I may well have signed to join a Soviet bloc sausage factory.

Because I mean it is a bit of a carbuncle.

It almost looked like a Korean nuclear plant.

Because none of the foliage had grown, none of the trees had grown around it.

It was just these stark white buildings.

It's an amazing university for that sense that it may not look great,

but there was a great sense of community in Coleraine

and a great sense of student community.

And there were people from all over the UK and Europe

at the university when I was there. I thought it was a fascinating place.

It was a real melting pot for cultures.

There were a lot of very earnest young men there and you can see those guys in the documentary.

You can see the guys who've spent more time growing a beard

than actually going to lectures

I love the footage of the students lounging about and reading papers

and drinking tea and smoking, lying out right outside the refectory, you know.

It maybe doesn't do them any favours, because it's playing into all the cliches about lazy students,

but that's how I remember it, as lazing about in the summer.

And it's great to see that old footage again.

For many, academic life contrasted sharply with dreams of the open road.

One such free spirit was Bangor grocery Jim Beck,

who turned his childhood dreams

of running away with the circus into a reality.

Named after his wife, Jim launched Circus Dellabeck.

And the couple and their three young daughters headed north-west to entertain the crowds.

I know that my dad's circus brought a lot of joy into people's lives

in the '70s when there was nothing. We actually were entertainment,

which sounds a bit strange now, but we definitely were.

And the people who came to see the circus wanted to see it.

And whatever town we pulled into, he was determined to make sure they enjoyed the show.

So whether the tent was half full, Dad always got the audience to interact

and that generated a real buzz about the place.

So he was quite a showman as well.

-I want to have a drink with this guy. I want to meet this guy.

-HE LAUGHS

I mean, he turns up in the town...

and let's be honest about Jim and his circus,

there are no tigers in this circus, there are no leopards.

Jim has a couple of horses. Jim has a dog that jumps up and down.

But he arrives in a sports car at the front of the cavalcade

and the crowds turn up.

Isn't there something absolutely magical about what this guy did.

I just thought the whole footage was absolutely hilarious from start to finish,

just everything about it.

The fact that he'd been a grocer and then decided, you know...

I think he had quite a successful cash and carry.

And to just throw that all away, in a way, I really admired him.

He followed his dream, didn't he?

You know, you think a lot of people have fantasies about things

but he actually put it into practice.

The stars of the show and the love of Jim's life are his Appaloosas,

eight matched stallions and the reason for owning a circus.

He had always had a passion for training horses,

so he decided he had trained them so well that Northern Ireland should see them.

So the best way for that to happen was to start up a circus.

And... that's really how it all started.

And then we were all taken off into this circus world,

which was very different from our normal lives.

MUSIC: "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer

If life seemed like a circus for the Beck family,

there was no clowning around for this hard-working clan.

Behind the scenes of the Big Top,

everyone had a role to play to keep this show on the road.

Down the line, I saw other artists doing acts

and I just thought, "You know, I am going to do that."

And then I got my younger sister

and we decided to teach ourselves to do an aerial act.

So we both taught ourselves and the next thing we were a circus act in the Big Top.

-SHE LAUGHS

-That's how it happened.

I absolutely hate clowns and Bilbo the Clown was a particularly creepy clown. It was bad.

But the nose, that was the most award-winningly evil clown nose I've ever seen in my life.

And it was just, I'm sorry, that really freaked me out.

-Bilbo the Clown.

-SHE SHUDDERS AND LAUGHS

As Bilbo the Clown, Billy has been about circuses all his life.

His wife, Betty, is a comparative newcomer but a trooper nonetheless.

Well, there's three of us.

Betty here and a son.

And we started off with David throwing knives.

I think we can learn a lot, firstly, from the guy with the knives.

So let's look at his technique here.

Betty, stand there for a minute, right. Wear a wee skimpy skirt

and I'm going to get a few knives here and chuck 'em at you.

And that was fine in Jim Becks. "You want a go at it?"

"You want a go at the trapeze? Don't worry about safety."

So he used his mother and he threw the knives at his mother.

And it was so funny when Betty got hit.

Well, as a matter of fact, I got stabbed in the arm.

-How did it happen?

-David was firing the knives and one of them sort of missed.

He went too close and one of them missed and I got it right in the arm.

"He sort of stabbed me. He sort of stabbed me."

And I'm thinking, "Betty, there's no such thing as sort of stabbed."

And it was so funny, "The blood was running down me arm, but I would do it again."

Well, I would do it again, all over again.

They don't make women like Betty McCormac any more.

You know, that good, stoical woman that just does what her husband tells her

and lets the son throw knives at her. Those were the days(!)

There's just something very homely about this which is probably timeless.

And I'm sure his family cherish it.

It brought back happy emotions. Really genuine happy emotions.

You just think, "Wow! Did I really do that?"

-And you just go, "Yes, I did!"

-SHE LAUGHS

From the raw energy of the Big Top to the cutting-edge technology of TV

the 1980s saw a new BBC programme made for and by young people,

Channel One.

And when the show broadcast from Derry,

local presenter Jackie Hamilton

gave viewers an insight into the city's youth culture...

and questionable headgear.

CHEERING

Hello and welcome to our second Channel One On The Road.

And tonight we're coming live from The Venue in Derry/Londonderry.

MUSIC: "Into The Groove" by Madonna

That show, Channel One On The Road, it's... just the '80s.

Caron Keating's there. Caron's like Madonna,

complete with the beads, everything, the hair, all Madonna-ish.

Jackie Hamilton's shoulder pads.

The whole thing was just, like, my teenage years.

It was just them encapsulated in one programme.

Just the whole scene was, you know, it was really... it was really buzzing.

The band scene was buzzing

and everybody was writing their own stuff. And they look so young!

Channel One On The Road also provided a rare opportunity for new bands to get on television

and grasp their chance to become Derry's next big thing.

ROCK MUSIC

In the '80s it was all about the talent, really, wasn't it?

Just young kids getting together, putting a band together,

ending up on television.

One thing that struck you was that the music was good, you know,

that those bands... They were good original tunes.

And they could all play an instrument.

I thought watching back it was great that the people such as John Roddy

were trying to get a platform for something different in Derry.

MUSIC: "Male Model" by The Undertones

Music and fashion go hand-in-hand and local model agent John Roddy

was determined to drag Derry's fashion scene kicking and screaming into the 1980s.

And what better catwalk than Channel One's studio floor.

Like, trying to start a model agency.

That was stuff you did in London it wasn't stuff you did in Derry.

But he was deadly serious about it

and the people taking part at the time were deadly serious about it.

He was trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear with some of those boys.

Those boys were just, like, straight off a tractor.

You know, this big gulpin in a... you know,

in a jumper that he had squeezed into his jeans.

And then the girl. The girl was hilarious with that whole big swagger up and down.

And it was just hilarious.

I mean, no sophistication about the whole thing.

Well, to find out what has the men of Derry all rushing off to the catwalk,

I have with me the man responsible for it all, John Ruddy.

John, it used to be that all male models were very skinny and the arty type,

yours are all fairly natural and well built.

I think that's maybe the image I'm after anyway.

It takes away from the usual run-of-the-mill sort of small and skinny.

I prefer them tall.

I think he's in awe of Caron Keating to begin with. SHE LAUGHS

And John's trying to tell her about models. SHE LAUGHS

And it's... it was just funny.

As the glamorous '80s made way for the alternative '90s,

Derry's live band scene was witnessing a renaissance.

These wannabe rock stars needed a secure space to hone their performing skills.

And captured on the BBC TV series 29 Bedford Street was the new Northwest Musicians Collective.

All those guys in that collective were playing in their own bands,

your Stooms, your Cuckoos, your Turtle Assassins.

Suddenly the Collective comes along and they're going,

we can do something bigger together.

And then the Nerve Centre comes along and almost put a capital N and a capital C on those endeavours.

The Nerve Centre was set up in Derry around about 1999

and the main thrust of the Nerve Centre was to provide facilities

for bands where they could rehearse and they could get equipment and they could record.

Which is a very positive thing for them to do,

because when The Undertones were starting out there was no such facility.

We couldn't find a room in the city where people could set up a drum kit

and then amplifiers and, you know, play in a rock band.

And somewhere far away

that wouldn't make too much noise and annoy anyone.

That was the original vision of the whole place.

MUSIC: "Jimmy Jimmy" by The Undertones

The Undertones achieved pop success without this level of support.

But as he explained in this BBC documentary

the band's rhythm guitarist John O'Neill was keen to share his skills

with this new generation of musicians.

There are about 30 bands that actively use the building that we have,

so we've built quite a big following among young people.

There really has never been anything for the youth in Derry.

John wasn't just an inspiration,

it was the experiences he had throughout the '90s when we were developing the Nerve Centre.

And then having him and his band open it,

I suppose for me that's a bit like all your dreams coming true.

This is the hottest ticket in Derry tonight

the reunion concert by The Undertones

to mark the official launch of the Nerve Centre here in Derry.

And, of course, Newsnight has a sneak preview.

I think what those guys were really doing was taking control

and taking the power. What they were doing was saying, let's bring this back to Derry,

let's take control of the space, of the contract, of the deal,

of the skills and let's give that to young Derry musicians.

As the Nerve Centre evolved, so too did its proteges.

Animators, photographers and film directors were among its apprentices.

Derry had discovered a new cultural heartbeat.

Back then these guys were absolute innovators.

It was only the networks or the broadcasters, your BBCs, your ITVs, who could do this stuff.

Suddenly you had kids in Derry doing it for themselves

behind the scenes in the Nerve Centre.

It's not just the Nerve Centre and the trendy stuff

we saw up front, the gigs, the bands, the films and the animations,

but behind them, almost from the ground upwards was this army of young people being skilled up.

And, what, 30 years later that Nerve Centre is still doing that.

MUSIC: "Those Were The Days" by Max Bygraves

From The Embassy to The Undertones

the story of the Northwest's music, culture and young people shows us how we used to live.

And thanks to a rich archive and the magic of film,

we can bring those bygone days back to life.

# Those were the days, my friend

# We thought they'd never end

# We'd sing and dance for ever and a day

# We'd live the life we choose

# We'd fight and never lose

# For we were young and sure to have our way... #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

# ..Those were the days

# Oh, yes, those were the days. #