Episode 1 Happy Birthday BBC Two

-Good evening.

-This is BBC Two.

-Blast off!

I've got a story to tell you.

What happened?

-# Da-da-da-da, doo-doo-do-doo-doo. #

-Give us a job.

My darling John.

I miss him, I know I shouldn't do this.

Hello and welcome to this week's Whistle Test.

BBC Two hit the air

on 20 April, 1964.

This anniversary series tells

the stories of some of the programmes that shaped it.

But first, how it all began.

TRUMPET FANFARE

When BBC Two was announced, ie the second channel,

an awful lot of those who would be involved

were already whacked from the effort

of finding a competitive response to ITV.

The idea of another channel was, "Oh, my God, not more," you know!

It was 625 lines, not 405,

so somehow we had to persuade the world at large

that they should spend some money on a new set.

That was only half the problem.

Every studio in which we made programmes had to have new cameras

and it tested every system the BBC had at the time.

I was required to create a complimentary alternative,

so that when you came to the end of a programme on BBC One, you could

switch across and there would be a lovely programme on BBC Two.

The fact of the matter is

I didn't have anything like enough programmers.

We were supposed to start the network off

and having gone through the rehearsals,

and they had gone quite well, for a nine-minute programme

so you can't have too much go wrong,

or at least that's what we thought.

I was in my office obviously intending to watch there

with friends. And at seven o'clock, suddenly all the power went.

All the screens that I was sitting looking at went blank

and then people burst into the production gallery,

a couple of engineers saying, "Disaster,

"there's been a power failure due to a fire at Battersea Power Station.

"There are no lights in all of West London."

I said something silly like,

"Well, what's that going to do for BBC Two?"

And the guy looked at me and said, "Without power we cannot transmit."

Tonight of all nights there has been a loss of electric power

at our main studios at Television Centre in West London.

The newsroom were asked to put out a bulletin to explain

what was happening, to those who COULD receive BBC Two.

TELEPHONE RINGS

Excuse me.

Just like Channel One. Hello.

Unlike Channel One, there's nobody there.

By nine o'clock, we were thinking, "We'll be on the air until midnight

"if the power comes on just now."

And then, of course, by half past nine it hadn't come on

so we decided the only thing to do

was to start again the following day.

That is all for the moment, I think.

Anything else?

That's all we have for the moment, but we will be keeping in touch.

It was, of course, wonderful publicity.

-NEWS REPORT:

-'A massive breakdown at Battersea Power Station

'brought chaos to the centre of the capital,

'but the biggest disappointment

'was at BBC Television Centre where the curtain failed to go up

'on the opening night of a brand-new channel, BBC Two.'

We decided that we would not actually specifically refer

to the disaster of the night before,

but the first thing you'd see would be this candle

and it would stay like that, flickering away,

until the time came to start.

Good evening, this is BBC Two.

The first programme that went on the air for BBC Two

was in fact Playschool.

TITLE MUSIC PLAYS

Hello. I'm Virginia.

Hello, I'm Gordon.

I came up with this seven faces of the week idea

which took each night and said

it's only going to have one sort of programme.

And by doing it that way, themed nights if you like,

I was able actually to create seven days of television.

One night was all repeats, for example,

but it did allow us to get on the air in April.

THEME MUSIC TO THE GREAT WAR

Individual programmes got particular notice by critics and the fact

that they were well received reflected well on the channel.

-FILM NARRATION:

-'You ate beside the dead.

'You drank beside the dead.

'You relieved yourself beside the dead.

'You slept beside the dead.'

We had a regular series called "Jazz 625",

which is just what it sounds like.

Every week, we had some really good jazz people. We had Duke Ellington.

MUSIC: "Take the A Train."

'And now we come to Match Of The Day.'

TITLE MUSIC PLAYS

We persuaded the football league to let us show recorded

highlights of matches that day at seven o'clock on a Saturday night.

And we had the presumption

to break the FA's rule, which was

no televised soccer before ten o'clock at night because it might

affect the spectator gate for soccer

and we hadn't told them either.

Well, all hell broke loose.

Welcome to Match Of The Day,

the first of a weekly series coming to you every Saturday on BBC Two.

The trouble eventually blew over and Match Of The Day was soon to head

a long list of successfully negotiated

transfer deals to BBC One.

THEME TUNE PLAYS

Dick was a trainee at the BBC

and I was in what I suppose I'd now call my "gap year".

Ian was out of work

and living with a couple of Geordies around the corner.

A really good person working with me in those days was Bill Cotton.

And Bill came into my office one day and he said,

"Mike, I've got a training exercise which Dick Clement has done."

Bill Cotton, legend has it, rushed in to see Michael Peacock,

Chief of Programmes,

carrying a 16mm projector and a tin of film

and showed it on Michael Peacock's wall.

Get away!

And there was what became The Likely Lads.

You must be joking?!

We just couldn't believe our luck.

Hey, it's massive! Look at the size of it, eh?

-Come on, get up on the back.

-No.

-Come on, come on.

Hey, it's great.

-Vroom! Raaar!

-Vroom! Vroom! Vroom! Vroom!

Highway patrol, highway patrol.

Follow that car.

THEY MIMIC MOTORBIKE ENGINE

Are Batman and Robin enjoying themselves?

We didn't specify exactly where it was.

We made it vaguely northeastern.

All systems go. Three, two, one, blast off!

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

It was mostly shot in Harlesden, actually.

Audience research had something called the RI,

the reaction index.

And ours was incredibly high.

And they weren't even from the northeast these people,

they were all in Barnet or Hertfordshire.

If you can't lick 'em, join 'em.

I'm in.

I'm in the REME with you.

Well, what's the matter?

You've signed on?

Three years, yeah.

Where are you going? What's this?

I'm going home.

What, you're on leave already?!

No, I've been discharged.

They failed me on my medical.

What?

Flat feet.

I was sad, I was sad when it came to an end

because we had such physical fun making it.

We had a rapport, Jim and I.

I got it working.

LAUGHTER

TRUMPET FANFARE

Good evening.

Up to now, this particular spot on BBC Two just before the main

programmes of the evening begin has been the Line-Up spot.

When BBC Two began we had this early evening publicity programme

called Line-Up and that's all it was,

it was a little ten minutes that puffed upcoming programmes.

However from now on, the Line-Up programme takes on a new

late-night look and moves on to the end of the evening.

They realised they could switch Line-Up from its early position

and put it on late at night, make it longer

and we could talk much more about television.

Homosexuality male and female in Britain today was

the subject of a Man Alive enquiry on BBC Two.

But of course it was wildly unpopular

amongst my producer colleagues

who didn't actually care for somebody to appear on the programme

half an hour after their show just finished and say,

"Well, that was a load of rubbish, wasn't it?"

I thought it was quite a good programme,

in a way slightly unambitious.

I suppose Line-Up was my big break.

It really did make a difference to my life.

When you come to television do you find it an incomplete medium

compared to stage?

Er, yes.

Mr Crosby, this is the first time

you've done situation comedy on television, isn't it?

That's true, Joan.

It was a time when there weren't women in

daily, current affairs television programmes at all.

It was a time of short skirts

and general friskiness.

And I suppose I was as frisky as anyone

and that got noticed too.

A legendary night in the history of Late Night Line-Up

was what was known as comedy writers' night.

Well, we have an extra guest with us who's just leaving.

'Another comedy writer who hadn't been invited

'broke into the studio and was hauled off

'physically by the director who ran out from the gallery.'

I am a comedy writer!

John, cool it, for God's sake!

'Then Johnny Speight began to be very talkative.'

If I had to live by myself...

If I'm writing rubbish I can't live with myself...

INDISTINCT

And I was told that if I didn't do something about this,

the programme was going to be pulled off the air.

LAUGHTER

Could I please...

We'll wrap this up in 60 seconds

if I can't make a point without being heard.

We managed to reach our own wrap-up

without the plug being pulled,

that's all I can claim happened.

I think there's no doubt that comedy on tonight's evidence is

certainly a serious business.

That's all from Line-up Review, good night.

# Tell your mama

# Tell your pa

# Or get back to Arkansas... #

Monday night was Beat Room night.

# ..I say don't do right, yeah... #

Chart-topping acts and of course the Beat Girls.

# ..What I see

# I tell them what I see... #

Some of whom went on to BBC One

and Pan's People fame.

The Beat Girls in the weekly Beat Room.

Appealing to perhaps another sector of the '60s youth market

was Let Me Speak.

I am a communist and I'll tell you why.

Described as the speaker's corner of television,

young people were given

the opportunity to air

controversial views in front of Malcolm Muggeridge.

In power, is the Communist Party of Great Britain going to

-differ from all other Communist parties in permitting dissent?

-Yes.

Why? Because we feel that when we get into power we'll have

the vast mass of the working people behind us.

In my job as a senior technician in the physics field

I observe the orderliness

and intelligence of the great scientist and creator Jehovah God.

I treat people the way I expect them to treat me.

I don't care who they are,

if they're television announcers or just people that come from Sweden.

Yes, I applaud that.

And now Not Only But Also.

The pilot that we were commissioned to do was originally called,

with great originality,

the Dudley Moore Show.

Then Peter Cook came in.

And a colleague of mine for 60 or 70 years now, Mr Peter Cook.

APPLAUSE

Michael Peacock saw it along with Bill Cotton.

They suggested maybe it would be good to have Peter Cook

the whole time.

We're pleased to have with us the Mabel Pringle Singers.

-And with us indeed the leader of the group, Mabel Pringle.

-Good evening.

And so we thought it would be current affairs with comedy,

music and a guest star.

Would it help if I told you that I was the Duke and Duchess of Windsor?

Sorry, sir, didn't recognise you, Your Majesty.

Well, actually, Sir, there's a £5 waiting list.

I understand, it's one of the blue ones.

Thank you very much indeed.

I love your Oxford accent.

-Follow your nose, Sir.

-Thank you.

And Madam.

Dudley always told me, he didn't realise until he started

doing it, how absurd some of the situations and the words were.

That's when he started to laugh.

I was just about to drop off when suddenly,

tap, tap, tap at the bloody windowpane.

-I looked out, you know who it was?

-Who?

Bloody Greta Garbo...

LAUGHTER

..bloody Greta Garbo,

stark naked...

..save for a shorty nightie.

-DICK CLEMENT:

-It was really the top show at the time.

And I can see, I can see...

I can see her knuckles all white.

And Peter was so incredibly funny

that I felt totally intimidated,

which I found out later was Alan Bennett's reaction as well.

So then I felt that I was in better company.

But it was a fantastic opportunity for me to do it.

TINKLY PIANO MUSIC

We were doing extraordinary stuff.

We lowered the piano into the Thames and then filmed them

playing the piano underwater in Butlins holiday camp.

Every Sunday night, people were begging for tickets to come

and see the show.

I think I had more fun directing that than anything I have ever done.

One and a half, please.

LAUGHTER

TITLE MUSIC FOR MAN ALIVE

Man Alive was principally the brainchild of ex-tabloid

reporter Desmond Wilcox.

Desmond had a very un-BBC attitude

towards documentary.

Do you think it's possible for other parents to understand

the feelings of a mother when something like this happens?

No.

It's impossible.

His famous question was how does it feel?

-They never caught the man.

-No.

How do you feel about that?

I feel very bitter.

Very bitter indeed.

It irritated a lot of constipated critics, who couldn't take

the emotional power of these stories.

If he's breathing,

my child should be breathing.

And if the Lord answers my prayers,

he will suffer the way that we suffer.

Light Entertainment said, "We've got to have a quiz,

"we do need a quiz programme.

"I mean, they're very cheap and they're very popular

"and they get a big audience, a loyal audience," and so on.

So I said,

"OK, but it's got to be an intelligent quiz."

Welcome to BBC Two's game of words and wit, Call My Bluff.

-Hick-boo.

-Gruma.

-Alductum.

-Trubilian.

-Hinch pinch.

-Yarum.

-Afoofoo.

-Lomi lomi.

-Trolloper.

Now, Hannah Gordon.

Akame.

-Cherma.

-Coptanks.

-Spava.

-Holv.

-Mon.

-Talloum.

-Dildnell.

-Conky.

-Yinkiny.

-Jip.

-Sniddell.

-Atunk.

'For the viewers on the BBC, the dramatisation of this

'long-neglected saga has become a television legend

'of fact and folklore.'

The Forsyte Saga was an expensive gamble which paid off.

Running for 26 weeks and costing

an unprecedented quarter of a million pounds,

it told the story of one feuding family, and revolved

around the turbulent relationship between Soames and his wife, Irene.

-Hello, Soames. Nose down to business?

-Shouldn't I?

Certainly, but don't deprive your pretty wife of her pleasures.

-Champagne.

-She's a good-looking woman. I'm told they don't get on.

'Traditional British drinking habits

'have been disrupted to suit the saga.'

'It became quite clear very early on'

this was phone-off-the-hook time,

because the country was hooked.

Very pretty.

It was the kind of forerunner of the soaps we have today.

It was a posh soap, really.

Kill me if you like. I'd rather you killed me.

Kill you? Why should I? No, there's no need to kill you.

-Anybody can have you, can't they?

-No! No!

'The public reacted very strongly,

'either on the side of Soames or on the side of Irene.'

If I had to marry over again, I would marry my same wife over again,

or a woman as near to Irene as I could find.

To me, he's a figure like Othello or Orpheus,

dedicated to love, and this is perhaps not a very British type,

but I hope that it will become more so in the future.

Irene and Soames were to part, but the feuding carried on

into the next generation, coming between young lovers Jon and Fleur.

Hello, Jon.

Hello, Fleur.

There was a way that we had of acting,

which was very well-spoken, of course.

It would hurt Mother terribly.

You've got to choose.

I would say, "I love you, Fleur." She'd say, "I love you, Jon."

Good night, my darling Jon.

Dream about me.

'We just did it like a live show. There wasn't any time to spare.'

'I had to race across the studio, out of my pyjamas, I'd already got

'my dinner jacket trousers on underneath,

'the dresser would put my jacket and everything, smarten me up,

'and I'd trip over a couple of cables on my way to the drawing-room set,

'where Ny was just finishing this Chopin Etude, and I'd get into place,

'leaning on the piano, just as the camera came round to me.'

When I commissioned the Forsyte Saga for BBC Two,

a couple of years later, I had started London Weekend

and I had Forsyte Saga against me on BBC One,

so I was really hoist on my own petard.

'The results so far,

'sales to 27 countries ranging from Sweden to Zambia.'

SOAMES DUBBED: Stupido! Impossible!

Tomorrow, BBC Two starts it colour-launching programmes.

I thought, "Well, the BBC was the first in the world to produce

"public viewing television pictures. We aught to be the first in colour."

But the difficulty was we hadn't got enough cameras.

It suddenly dawned on me that if we put just four of those cameras

in Wimbledon, we could televise for hours and hours and hours and hours.

We guaranteed if you'd got a colour set, you would get

so many hours of colour a week, and boy, did Wimbledon help in that.

And we were the first in Europe, as a consequence.

The Germans were furious, I'm happy to say!

CHURCH ORGAN PLAYS

David Attenborough's BBC Two really wanted to put TV colour to the test.

Architecture and works of art were the ideal subjects.

There could only be one man to front it.

What is civilisation?

I don't know.

If there was a big exhibition on,

K Clark was the man who was called in to do it.

I can't define it in abstract terms yet,

but I think I can recognise it

when I see it, and I'm looking at it now.

Clark produced the first script, the first programme,

and Michael Gill read it and went to Clark and said, "This is hopeless."

And Daddy had to go to him and tear it all up,

and say, we've got to start again, and wrote it with him.

Ruskin said,

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts.

"The book of their deeds, a book of their words and a book of their art.

"But of the three the only trustworthy one is the last."

He thought he had a very off-putting manner, and that he was very cold.

The long dominance of the barbarous wanderers was over,

and Western Europe was prepared for its first great age of civilisation.

GREGORIAN CHANTING

'People feel embraced by the grandeur of the arts,'

without really being talked down to.

One does think of him as lofty, but actually,

that script was very simple,

'and the mellifluousness of it was a kind of friendly act on television.'

What happened?

Well, it took Gibbon nine volumes to describe

The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire,

and I shall not embark on that.

When colour came, of course, we were able to do snooker,

and that was a HUGE success.

Nobody had been able to do it before

because all the balls were looking grey.

TED LOWE: For those of you in black-and-white,

it's the green over that bottom pocket that he's looking at.

POT BLACK THEME PLAYS

In 1969, when I first put Pot Black together,

I couldn't get eight players.

There were only seven.

'Pot Black was born by creating

'a professional of the amateur champion to make up eight players.'

At the moment, Charlton, with a break of eight,

sits right in the middle of the reds.

'When I first started, there was no such things as commentary boxes.'

I sat in amongst the audience who I was scared to death might hear

what I was going to say.

(So I talked very quietly into the microphone.)

The culmination of 16 weeks.

The grand finale, and it's the defender

versus the challenger, the challenger breaking off.

The big break for me was getting invited into Pot Black.

I mean, that was the big thing,

'because it got your face known around the country.'

Dennis Taylor, making his debut,

and at the same time giving four points away.

The grounding you got just playing that one frame

enabled you to cope with all sorts of pressures

later on in your career.

A big smile.

'What the professionals of snooker are receiving'

today is all down to that funny little programme called Pot Black.

POT BLACK THEME PLAYS

GOODIES THEME PLAYS

The Goodies combined the comedic talents of Bill Oddie,

Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor...

..together with a whole bunch of technical wizardry.

This is day two of Twinkle's occupation of the City of London.

Michael Aspel, BBC, London.

Hello, and welcome to this week's Whistle Test.

WHISTLE TEST THEME PLAYS

The BBC were looking to find a niche

for this kind of new, developing album music,

singer-songwriter, progressive music,

and across the board, you know,

the programme became fantastically eclectic.

Music was being treated a bit more seriously.

It wasn't just the pop of Top Of The Pops,

and I thought television should reflect that.

# The world is getting out of our control. #

It was so great to work in there for bands who came in.

I mean, there was a sense of freedom about the programme

that encouraged them to be expressive.

The time that we realised the impact the programme was beginning to have

was when Focus appeared on the show.

Polydor, the record label,

had had to transfer all pressing plant activity

to the pressing of Focus albums

for the next ten days to try and keep up with the demand

that had been created from their appearance on the programme.

If you're putting out something and you don't really know

whether people want to see it or not and you get that response,

it sort of charges the battery to go on for a bit longer.

It became one of the great experiences of my life,

you know, my seven years of Whistle Test, it was fantastic.

The late '60s and early '70s saw an explosion in costume drama.

Ingrate!

But perhaps the most unlikely success of all

was an everyday story of Roman folk.

I, Claudius was a kind of

domestic drama about the most powerful family in the Western world.

It's the story of

an apparently semi-idiotic Roman aristocrat

'called Claudius.'

If that head of yours doesn't stop twitching,

I'll have it off and stuck on a pole.

That'll fix it.

Th-th-thank you, Grandma.

Who, as a result of all kinds of miserable and violent,

vicious manoeuvrings, eventually finds himself

in a position in which he is being made Emperor of Rome.

Senators, I understand you do not want another emperor,

but it seems you have... been given one.

The decision to shoot I, Claudius in the studio was an artistic one.

It wasn't based on money.

There is an intensity and a concentration in a studio

that you do not get, I feel, on locations.

He believes that she poisoned our grandfather.

He believes she will stop at nothing to ensure Tiberius follows Augustus.

He believes she's mad!

-SIAN PHILLIPS:

-'We didn't get very good notices at first.'

And I said all that - p-p-p-p - without stuttering! Well, n-nearly.

The fact that we were all in togas and doing very authentically

Roman things, but talking in modern English, they found it very weird.

What is the watchword for tonight, Caesar?

What about, give us a kiss?

Then the critics started to realise the style of it,

and then people caught on.

-How long have we been married?

-Don't you remember?

50 years, and in all that time,

you've never been able to tell one plant

from another, and suddenly, you know all there is to know about pruning.

Wonderful!

The things that work best on television are the family.

'I think that was the fascination of it.'

To tell you the truth, I couldn't give a damn about Drusus and Nero.

But they're your brothers!

Yes, I know, but then you don't like Aunt Livilla,

and she is your sister.

Now, I love my sisters, Uncle.

Yes, I know.

It is the king the king of soaps. It is what a soap should be.

Quite a story, wasn't it?

# Oh, what happened to you?

# Whatever happened to me?

# And what became of the people

# We used to be?

# Tomorrow's almost over

# Today went by so fast

# It's the only thing to look forward to

# The past... #