Autumn View(ing)

Originally invented by Americans as a way of flogging even more cars than usual, the idea of the 'Autumn Season' is deeply embedded in television scheduling culture. Although the BBC never actually had anything to 'sell' (well, unless you count things like the output of their record label), they nonetheless saw it as a good way of drawing viewers in with a largely manufactured sense of new programmes carefully tailored to suit cosy winter-draws-on evenings gathered around the telly. Needless to say, and indeed as you can see from this Dougal-meets-The-Machine-Stops cover, Radio Times was right behind this, although their attempts to construct a 'New... For Autumn!' narrative and fill the requisite amount of pages at the same time often led to desperate flanneling, bewildering leaps of logic and inappropriate levels of excitement about programmes that most viewers could probably take or leave really. And as you can see from these extracts from the Autumn Preview in the Radio Times dated 2nd October 1965, not everything that showed up in the run-up to Christmas was quite as thrilling as Rubber Soul...

You'd have to have had your ears filled in with cavity insulation foam whilst on your way to return your MBE in 'protest' at Ringo Starr having recieved one to have been unaware of the increased prominence, importance and relevance of the ever-amorphous concept of 'The Arts' in the mid-sixties. As this peculiar illustrative mish-mash featuring binoculars, a violin and a Bridget Riley painting calling to mind The Clown off Camberwick Green getting 'cultured' suggests, the BBC were only too aware of and indeed only too keen to reflect this, and Autumn 1965 saw the launch of four new arts programmes - Sunday Night on BBC1 and New Release, Intimations and the proto-aaaaaaaaahhhhh archfest Line-Up Review on BBC2 - which were to all intents and purposes the exact same programme only with a different producer and a marginally different chair.

It was a bumper autumn for Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, with a brand new series of their unprecedented hit Steptoe And Son - seriously, several of the earliest episodes were in the list of top ten most-watched UK television programmes for over a decade - and 'selected' repeats of Hancock's Half Hour at its 1959-to-1960 peak, which Radio Times are careful to emphasise featured Sid James alongside The Lad Himself. There is a bittersweet air to this repeat season and its conspicuous prominence, sat somewhere between celebration of what was even then already evidently a high watermark of the small screen, and a determined distancing from the shambolic mess that followed it. Since their acrimonious split in October 1961, the two hapless writers had systematically trounced the genius comic - well, maybe not with Citizen James, but you can't win them all - on both commercial and artistic terms, and in September 1965 Tony Hancock was hard at work on being 'between projects' while they continued to ride high. Elsewhere there are big-ups for the not exactly unexpected likes of Sykes, Harry Worth, The Benny Hill Show, The Dick Emery Show and Meet The Wife, but only right at the very end do they throw in a mention of Not Only... But Also.... And the series with John Lennon doing his guest-rhyming bit at that. You could probably just about argue that this was possibly intended as the setup for a convoluted 'not only but also' gag that they forgot to actually put in, but either way, small wonder that they wiped them all the second that Peter Cook's back was turned. Meanwhile, the less said about what may or may not be them driving a car at the head of that horse-scoffs-astrakhan-collar 'comedy' procession, the better.

Apparently the BBC were still pushing The Voord from Doctor Who And The Keys Of Marinus as late as 1965, this time as a popular beat combo. Who - sadly - did not get their own series, though fans of pop music could continue to enjoy Top Of The Pops and Juke Box Jury, along with Stramash!, an 'explosive new show' from Scotland with a name that apparently essentially translates as 'riot'. Somehow you can't help but suspect that it may not have lived up to its billing. Folk who like folk get a bit of a cursory brush-off with a vague suggestion that if they like that sort of thing then they might as well try Show Of The Week where they might potentially find the not particularly folky likes of Nina And Frederik, while jazz enthusiasts are casually told that there's so much jazz about that the BBC might as well not bother showing any of it; followed by a throwaway mention of upcoming performances by Thelonius Monk, Oscar Peterson and Jimmy Smith. The reason for this glib disinterest in those pesky styles of music that are popular enough to require deliniation is that anything more serious apparently comes under the simple banner of 'Music', be they 'public concerns or one-act operas specially mounted for BBC-tv at Glyndebourne', the Tortelier Master Class with 'this most televisual of maestros', or a headlining series for the unfortunately appropriately named baritone Tito Gobbi. Yes, well, we'll see how many people are still listening to Catch The Wind and Look Through Any Window half a century later, 'Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra'.

Despite the illustration showing what appears to be absolutely nothing being filmed on a blank white set, this was something of a boom time for standalone television drama, with new Dennis Potter, David Turner and N.F. Simpson works in the offing, not to mention The Wednesday Play, Theatre 625 and Thirty-Minute Theatre continuing apace. So much so, in fact, that it's nigh on impossible to come up with any pithy or perceptive observations about any of it. 1965 was slap bang in the middle of a time when everyone involved at every level treated television drama with the utmost seriousness and many believed it would come to be the benchmark by which all other artforms would be judged. Until television was invented by HBO in 1990, that is.

There's something oddly melancholy about seeing the Home Service, the Light Programme and the Third Programme proudly announcing their brand new autumnal wares, blissful in their lack of awareness of the fact that they wouldn't really exist for very much longer. Nonetheless, there were some clues that all was not well across the pre-Flowers In The Rain wavelengths, not least the Home Service announcement that longstanding Current Affairs cornerstone The World At One was being replaced by the essentially identical This Time Of Day, accompanied by small print-esque statements about their most popular shows being shunted around the schedules. Things seemed a bit brighter - well, obviously - over on the Light Programme, with the launch of the Andrew Sachs co-penned Dear Girls, a fascinating-sounding daily soap set in the 'happening' world of fashion models and photographers. Over on the Third Programme, heavyweight epic The Thirties In Britain looks at the anxieties and intellectual climate that led up to what they tactfully refer to as 'strife', and considers whether there are any parallels with events in Britain in the early to mid-sixties. There is absolutely no reason to dig this series out of the Sound Archive and give it another airing now, obviously. Meanwhile, while there's no doubt that companion series The Negro In America was well-intentioned... well, it was a different time. Anyway, on a lighter matter, get a load of those illustrations. Radio Times was absolutely full of this sort of throwaway Pop Art/Post-Advertising icon-heavy visual collision, which probably went mostly unnoticed by people looking to see when Hardluck Hall was on, but is the sort of thing that really ought to be collected into one of those big lavish hardback books now.

Following the blockbusting news that the BBC will keep showing Westerns on Saturdays and 'A Film' on Tuesdays, there's more or less the same bafflingly-fanfared lack of innovation on display in sporting coverage, though admittedly the fact that there had never been a fully televised rugby season prior to 1965 does come as something of a surprise. Nature and Science lovers get to look forward to a similarly welcome but hardly thrillingly new line-up boasting the return of Horizon, Tomorrow's World and Look, while Variety boasts the all-new up-and-coming eight millionth series apiece of Billy Cotton's Music Hall, The Good Old Days and the sodding Black And White Minstrel Show. There's also yet another plug for Nina And Frederik on Show Of The Week. Someone must have REALLY been a fan.

Under the bafflingly mismatched Sam-Tyler-Meets-Captain-Zep heading of 'Spies... Cops... Spacemen', and in amongst a head-walloping array of clashing fonts, we get to possibly the most fascinating corner of this Autumn Preview. Alongside the expected likes of Dixon Of Dock Green and Z-Cars, there are three new series that speak volumes about where the UK - and the BBC - had its head 'at' circa 1965; imported procedural drama Arrest And Trial getting yanked over to the main channel after a well-recieved showing on BBC2, Dinsdale Landen fighting the Cold War undercover in the ficititious Soviet state Amalia in The Mask Of Janus, and full-blown paranoia as an electrical engineer gets falsely accused of spying in Moscow in An Enemy Of The State, with only the launch of BBC2 sci-fi anthology series Out Of The Unknown on hand to justify the 'Spacemen' tag. And it didn't even have that many spacemen in. 'The Past' promises a standard array of historical documentaries alongside BBC2 clip show Plunder, which intends to raid the BBC Archive for 'recordings of pre-1955 television programmes'. It's astonishing, frankly, that they'd survived long enough to be trawled for clip shows, and deeply ironic in turn that the clip shows in question have long since been wiped. 'Series' concentrates its efforts on promoting two new, erm, series - Jimmy Hill technically-advised weekly chronicle of the trials and tribulations of a second division football team United!, and city-types-go-rural gritty social issue hard-hitter The Newcomers, both of which ran to hundreds of editions yet only five of the latter now survive, along with absolutely nothing of the former. Unless anyone and their 'lockup' knows different. Finally, as well as a roster of returning Children's Programmes that includes - ha! - Doctor Who, younger viewers can also look forward to 'quirky' American cartoon that wasn't Hector Heathcote, unappealingly titled folk song showcase Dance And Skylark, and the first of approximately eighty four billion Radio Times billings for The Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe. They're also the only ones not to get an illustration, which seems a tad unfair given that the 'Series' one is almost as big as the boxout itself.

Anyway, that's Autumn on the BBC, and hopefully you'll have found loads of things that you want to watch. And Nina and Frederik. Incidentally, yes, I did know that the cover at the top of this article dates from 1966. It just looked a bit more eyecatching and in tune with the mood and tone than the genuine article. And if misleading viewers about contents isn't the true spirit of Autumn, then I don't know what is.

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If you've enjoyed this article, you can find lots about sixties television in Not On Your Telly, which is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

The Original Peter

For some reason, the late sixties and early seventies in particular seem to have been full of musical acts who are held in high regard now but went almost unnoticed at the time. When you look into it more closely, though, it invariably turns out that they had a much higher profile than anyone might reasonably have expected, and the reason why they've since been largely forgotten becomes clear. The most significant indicator of their popularity is usually how often they turned up on television and radio, and as most if not all of that will usually have long since been wiped, there's never really been that much around to remind people. They had their moment in the centre of attention, and everyone moved on, without much evidence of their fleeting fame ever remaining.

Part of a movement that could loosely be termed 'Prog Jazz' - blending modern jazz styles with avant-garde and psychedelic influences from the Pop Art scene and acts like The Beatles and The Jimi Hendrix Experience - pianist Mike Westbrook had intentionally moved into the live pop circuit in 1967 with his 'Concert Band'. This outfit could vary wildly in size, although mainstays included saxophonist Mike Osborne, bassist Harry Miller and vocalist Norma Winstone. Signed to Decca's 'progressive' imprint Deram - where, significantly, their labelmates included Cat Stevens, David Bowie and Amen Corner - they released a series of albums culminating in 1970's Mike Westbrook's Love Songs. A remarkable set somewhere between a Michael Caine film soundtrack and Mr. Benn incidental music, the whole album is a minor masterpiece though particular highlights include moodily exuberant opener Love Song No. 1, Winstone yodelling sternly at a wayward lover in Love Song No. 3, and the celebrated Original Peter, in which a catchy abstract funk riff is repeated into a hypnotic dance groove. There was also a single released to accompany the album, featuring a shorter and faster take of Original Peter with the bass funked up and electric piano hammering to the fore, backed by Winstone's hallucinogenic travelogue The Magic Garden, which doesn't appear to have been directly inspired by The Magic Roundabout but frankly may as well have been.

Original Peter, in case you were wondering, was the closest thing that there ever was to a 'Prog Acrobat', who would frequently perform his countercultural handstands as part of music and arts happenings; indeed, on the back cover of Mike Westbrook's Love Songs, there is a frankly alarming photograph of him spinning around on his hands while the band play on obliviously in the background. To call The Mike Westbrook Concert Band's live shows 'multimedia experiments' would be selling them somewhat short, as at any given time they could include theatrical special effects, pyrotechnics, tightrope walkers, high divers, animal acts, back projections, magic tricks and more often than not their gymnastically-inclined associate, all of which were carefully planned and choreographed to fit around the music. The overall effect was apparently basically akin to a giant psychedelic circus, and if you stumble across an online discussion of the album, chances are you will find someone with hazy and slightly bewildered recollections of having seen this dazzling spectacle on television. This, I later discovered when trying to pin down details of something else entirely, was as part of the BBC2 arts show Review; and, not unreasonably, I assumed at the time that this would have been yet another of those long-wiped appearances that nobody at the time imagined anyone would ever want or need to see again.

As some of you are probably already suspecting, Review was exactly the sort of late-night arts show that the Monty Python team took such great delight in subverting and undermining, usually in the brazen knowledge that one or more of them would be appearing on one or more of such shows later that same week. Devised to take full advantage of BBC2's recent move to colour broadcasting, it ran weekly from September 1969 through to December 1972, when it was decommissioned to make way for a series of individual focused arts strands. Presented at that point by the urbane James Mossman, Review was a good deal more high-minded than many of its peers, preferring to concern itself with heavyweight literary criticism and stage plays, although there were lighter moments including an in-studio concert by the pioneering jazz-rock outfit Nucleus, and a poetry competition judged by George Martin and Mike D'Abo. And they did not come much lighter than the 'entertainment for television' devised by Mike Westbrook in conjunction with John Fox, better known as the prime mover in performance art troupe The Welfare State. It's worth noting at this juncture that The Welfare State, Mike Westbrook and indeed Original Peter himself were scarcely off television and radio or the 'culture' pages back then, which makes it all the more significant that most people reading this quite probably have little idea of who any of them were.

During the March to April 1970 sessions for Mike Westbrook's Love Songs, The Mike Westbrook Concert Band, The Welfare State, Original Peter and a whole host of other long-forgotten performers and speciality acts including the esoterically named likes of The Amazing Mas-Kar, The Edmund Campion Gymnasts and, erm, 'Cherokee Indian Joe The Great Leaping Bison' (we can probably safely assume that he wasn't) took part in an ambitious small screen extravaganza somewhere between a progressive rock concert and a down-at-heel carnival, which was captured by the Review cameras in all of its chaotic glory. The film was first broadcast on Saturday 25th April 1970, as part of an edition that also featured a report on the Hayward Gallery's major retrospective on reclusive photographer Bill Brandt, and was subsequently selected for the highlights special Summer Review on 22nd August, where it appeared alongside a lively interview with William Hobbs, 'Fight Director' at the National Theatre. We can only hope that he wasn't the sort of individual to take his work home with him. Shortly afterwards, the ensemble took the entire spectacle on the road as the centrepiece of their lengthy 'Earthrise Tour', which must have caused no little alarm for audiences in search of rock posturing, lengthy soloing and the usual hard and heavy 'serious' early seventies clichés. By the time of the repeat showing, the album and single were both on general release, but despite considerable radio support - notably from Radio 1's Jazz Club which featured them in session twice, as well a feature on the tour on Radio 3's Jazz In Britain (on another edition of which the Concert Band essayed an early version of Westbrook's next album Metropolis) - it does not appear to have vastly improved the commercial fortunes of either.

With tastes and fashions changing, and Mike Westbrook himself promptly leaving Deram and heading off in a more conventional jazz-rock direction, Mike Westbrook's Love Songs soon faded into musical history and drew little interest outside of the jazz fraternity; even the exhaustive artist-by-artist guide to the sixties-to-early-seventies beat/prog/psych/folk boom The Tapestry Of Delights could find literally nothing to say about the album other than that it was "jazzy". More recently, however, the album has started to become regarded as something of a forgotten classic, particularly since Original Peter showed up on the first of the splendid Impressed With Gilles Peterson compilations. One of its most prominent champions has been Jonny Trunk of Trunk Records, who named his range of record bags after Original Peter. When I appeared on Jonny's radio show recently to talk about Top Of The Box, the conversation got around to the Review appearance and the fact that I had recently discovered that it still existed in the BBC's archives. Various attempts at getting to see it, however, had drawn a blank until - literally by accident - I clicked on the wrong link on YouTube and found that the programme's original director Tony Staveacre had uploaded his copy only hours beforehand. One of those incidents that really does make you believe in the interconnectedness of things. Either that, or that I've previously invested far too much time and effort in searching for it.

You can watch the entire performance below, and it really is much wilder than it's actually possible to make it sound. It begins with cardboard cutouts of the band being carried through the streets and lowered into the venue, where they promptly transform into the actual musicians in full flow, and while they thunder through their numbers including spirited renditions of The Magic Garden and Original Peter, we are also treated to wrestling, acrobatics, trampoline acts, puppet shows, hallucinogenically-lit fire-eating, live painting and tattooing, film montages satirically juxtaposing Richard Nixon and Edward Heath with Victorian dancers, pet food cans and The Woodentops, and lifesize playing cards doing lord alone knows what, and of course some of that fabled hand-balancing. Apparently, when she was shown the film recently, Norma Winstone had to confess to having absolutely no recollection of it whatsoever. It must have been quite an evening.