This is the second series of articles about BBC programmes from the 40s and 50s, when the corporation was a much-loved institution broadcasting material the listeners wanted to hear. This time I will be including some early TV shows. You can see earlier episodes in the series here, and the first series is here.
IN THE post-war years, when the BBC was the sole broadcaster in Britain, it suspended television programmes between 6pm (the end of children’s programmes) and 7pm (the start of adult viewing) so that parents could put their young children to bed without distractions. When ITV came into existence in September 1955 it was required to observe the same policy, which became known as the Toddlers’ Truce.
However by 1956 the ITV franchises were struggling to make money and could not afford a dead hour with no advertising. They began agitating to have the Toddlers’ Truce abandoned. The BBC was quite happy to keep it going as it saved it an hour’s programming expenditure. The Conservative government’s Postmaster General, Charles Hill (the wartime ‘Radio Doctor’), disliked the policy, which he saw as BBC paternalism, saying: ‘It was the responsibility of parents, not the state, to put their children to bed at the right time . . . I invited the BBC and the ITA [Independent Television Authority] to agree to its abolition.’
The BBC refused to accept this or even to reduce the period to 30 minutes. Hill had to ask Parliament for the abolition, and this was agreed on October 31, 1956. Since the BBC and ITA could not even agree a date for the change, Hill decided on Saturday February 16, 1957.
So it was that at 6pm that day there was a short news bulletin on BBC TV followed by a programme called Six-Five Special after its start time.
The man behind it was 26-year-old Jack Good. He was born in London in 1931 and after National Service he read philology (the study of language in historical sources) at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was president of the university debating society. He wanted to be an actor and studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. For a short time he worked as half of a comedy double act with Trevor Peacock (1931-2021).
It’s a bit sad that Peacock is best known for his role as Jim Trott in the BBC comedy series The Vicar of Dibley because he was an astonishingly prolific stage and screen actor and writer. Among the pop hits he wrote were That’s What Love Will Do for Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, which reached No 3 in the UK charts in 1963,
and the haunting Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter which Herman’s Hermits took to No 1 in America in 1965 (it was not released as a single in Britain),
though I prefer the more wistful version by Tom Courtenay which he sang in a 1963 ITV play called The Lads.
In 1956 Jack Good was appointed a trainee light entertainment producer at the BBC. He was told to make a programme for adolescents: ‘Something with mountain climbing for boys, fashion for girls, that sort of thing.’
At this point most popular music was of the crooner/ballad/novelty variety. Hits in 1956 included Pat Boone’s I’ll Be Home,
The Stargazers’ Twenty Tiny Fingers,
and Doris Day with Que Sera Sera (shown here with clips from the 1956 Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much, in which it featured).
But rock ’n’ roll was starting to make its presence felt. In September 1956 Elvis Presley reached No 2 in the UK charts with Hound Dog,
and Bill Haley and His Comets got to No 4 with Rip It Up.
I defy anyone to watch these clips without smiling.
Just for good measure, here is another of The King in 1956.
Jack Good had just seen the US film Rock Around The Clock which excited British teenagers so much that they took to the cinema aisles to dance. Here is a trailer (I couldn’t find one without subtitles).
(Thinking about it, the film was probably the first time many British youngsters had seen the pop stars on a screen rather than listening to them on the radio. There were about 5.7million television sets in Britain in 1956, equating to about one household in three. My friend Helen’s family had one in a cabinet; the screen must have been about 12in square. The top half of the picture was reasonably ok, if green-tinged, but the bottom half was compressed in some way so that everyone had very short legs. My own family started renting one in 1960 so that we could watch Princess Margaret’s wedding.)
It was the high-energy participation inspired by Rock Around The Clock that Good wanted to infuse into Six-Five Special, with the audience milling around the studio floor with the performers instead of in seats. BBC executives preferred a magazine format, but Good persuaded the suits to give his idea a try, and the show was commissioned for six weeks. The BBC chiefs ordered sets to be built but Good had them pushed to one side to leave the floor clear. In the event the show ran for two years, and Good’s innovative format has influenced pop music shows ever since.
The programmes were live and no recordings were kept, so all that remains of this TV breakthrough is the title sequence, with a tantalising second or two of Pete Murray, one of the presenters.
The opening shot is of the Coronation Scot passenger train, hauled by the magnificent Coronation locomotive designed by William Stanier and named in honour of the 1937 coronation of King George VI. It is taken from a film about the locomotive’s construction and its run on June 29, 1937, when it set a British and Empire steam speed record of 114mph.
Here is the film.
Rail buffs will appreciate these pictures.
Several other locomotives are featured in the sequence, including an LNER Pacific crossing the Forth Bridge and an LMS ‘Black Five’ 4-6-0, also designed by William Stanier. (This is the type of locomotive featured in René Magritte’s 1938 painting La Durée poignardée, usually translated asTime Transfixed, though Magritte preferred Ongoing Time Stabbed by a Dagger.) There is also footage from the window of a train passing through Twyford station in Berkshire.
This station has a niche in literary history. Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Gaol on May 19, 1897, and was to catch a train to Paddington. To save him from being recognised (and no doubt insulted) he was taken by a warder to the next station along the line from Reading, which is Twyford. On arrival he saw the station flowerbeds and fell to his knees crying: ‘Oh beautiful world! Oh beautiful world!’
To this the warder remarked, ‘Now, Mr Wilde, you mustn’t give yourself away like that. You’re the only man in England who would talk like that in a railway station.’ Next day Wilde took a boat train for the ferry to Dieppe and never came back to England.
The Six-Five Special title song was written by Julian More and Johnny Johnston andinitiallyperformed by the Bob Cort Skiffle Band. Later editions featured the song performed by the show’s resident band, Don Lang and his Frantic Five. This group’s main claim to fame is their recording of Witch Doctor with its immortal refrain of
Ooh ee, ooh ah-ah, ting tang
Walla-walla, bing-bang
Ooh ee, ooh ah-ah, ting tang
Walla-walla, bing-bang
which I have got stuck on the brain now. It reached No 5 on the UK Singles Chart in 1958.
(The writer of Witch Doctor, Ross Bagdasarian, better known by his stage name David Seville, deserves a dishonourable mention for creating the ghastly Chipmunks, later rebranded as Alvin and the Chipmunks. Here they are on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1958.)
The show was presented by Pete Murray (with the opening remark ‘Time to jive on the old six-five’) and Josephine Douglas, who was co-producer with Jack Good. At the time she was the only woman producer of light entertainment in Europe. After a few episodes the champion boxer Freddie Mills was co-opted to present a segment on boxing.
In keeping with Good’s desire for an impromptu feel to the show, the running order was sketched out on Friday morning. There was only one complete run-through, immediately before transmission on Saturday evening. I found this anecdote from singer Vince Eager on the Turnipnet website.
‘Directly opposite the Riverside Studios [in Hammersmith, where the programme was made] was a pub. Immediately following the final dress rehearsal, which finished at approx 5pm, the band musicians would head to the pub for a loosener.
‘Above the bar was a TV, tuned in and ready for the show. At the end of the news bulletin, and just as the weather report started, those musicians in the first number would stroll across to the studio leaving unfinished pints on the bar. As they reached the lobby entrance to the studio, to the strains of Don Lang singing, the titles would roll. Following the intro from Pete Murray or Jo Douglas there would always be a band number.
‘As the camera picked up the shot of the band, there would be sat the musicians who had two minutes earlier left the bar. Number complete, a cut to Jo or Pete for the next artist intro, and walking through the pub bar door would come the boys, ready to finish their drinks. As they strolled up to the bar it was difficult to take in that 3-4 minutes earlier they had appeared live on TV.
‘They would repeat this ritual every time they had a number to play, which was sometimes three times during the show. They often received a phone call in the pub from the studio gallery reminding of some directional point. What fantastic characters, as well as musicians, they were.’
The show was a runaway success. Internet authorities report that it regularly achieved audiences of 12million, but I think that may be a bit on the high side given the number of TV sets at the time. Anyway it was a lot. Among the artistes who appeared were Petula Clark, Jim Dale, Johnny Dankworth, Cleo Laine, Terry Dene, Lonnie Donegan, Russ Hamilton, Wee Willie Harris, Marty Wilde, the Dallas Boys and Tommy Steele.
Comedy performers included Trevor Peacock, who was also a script writer for the show, Spike Milligan and Mike and Bernie Winters.
This clip of Lonnie Donegan singing Woody Guthrie’s Grand Coulee Dam, which reached No 6 in April 1958, is from the spin-off film Six- Five Special, which was released that year.
I have found a few clips from around the same time by performers who appeared on the show.
Here is Tommy Steele with Singing the Blues which topped the chart for one week in January 1957. (The US original by Guy Mitchell was at No 1 for several weeks before and after.)
Marty Wilde with Teenager in Love (actually this is from 1959, shortly after the demise of Six-Five Special, but it’s too good a track to miss)
Finally Jim Dale with Be My Girl which got to No 2 in 1957. Such innocence!
Incidentally Six-Five Special is credited with inventing the hand jive. I love this clip from the film:
Despite its success the BBC hierarchy could not resist interfering and insisted on including educational and information elements, which interrupted the continuity and diluted the music, much to Jack Good’s displeasure. In addition he was hardly being rewarded with a king’s ransom at £18 a week (£370 now). In early 1958 he quit and went straight to the new ITV company ABC where he started a very similar programme called Oh Boy! running at an overlapping time. Without the BBC stuffed shirts leaning on Good, it was all rock ’n’ roll and did not have the ‘public service’ elements. It rapidly overtook Six-Five Special in the ratings, and the BBC took the latter off the air within weeks. Here is an audio recording of the very last show.
Good spent most of the rest of his career as a musical theatre producer. He lived in New Mexico for many years, but returned to Oxfordshire, where he died in 2017 aged 86.
