Michael Jackson - Up the Wall

There is a recording studio in London called The Premises. Until a couple of weeks ago, it was best known for its commitment to renewable energy and the recordings that have been made there. Right now, though, it's best known as 'that place with the statue of Michael Jackson dangling the baby out of the hotel window', and the studio website has been deluged with messages from Jackson fans condemning both the statue and The Premises for displaying it. The artist has, according to one fan, racked up a hell of a lot of 'Karmic debt'. What's the karma exchange rate for dangling a child out of a window? Anyway, three questions spring to mind:

1) Is art that depicts distasteful events intrinsically distasteful?
2) If you have a problem with what the statue represents, don't you have a problem with Jackson himself and his baby-dangling antics?
3) Do you have to be stupid, mad and deluded to be a Michael Jackson fan, or is it optional?

We've been here before, of course.

Lovely...lovely...

It takes a hell of a lot to get me wearing a tie these days. Why, then, did I wear one to sit watching archive television and drinking myself into oblivion (or Mr TSW 1982, as oblivion is known officially) with several good friends last Saturday?

This is not just any old piece of neckwear. It is the LWT staff tie I was given for use in last year's advent calendar. It says everything about the quality of the company I was in last Saturday that I was lucky to escape with both my life and the tie when I finally made my exit. No item of clothing owned by me has ever been coveted by anyone (and, in this assessment, I am including nude tramps) before.

So, what other broadcasting-related ties are out there? I know of an excellent one, owned by a friend and sometime reader of these pages. Also, which bit of broadcasting iconography would you most like to see embroidered into a bit of neckwear? I'm in the market for a cravat depicting the original Harlech ident.

The Daily Mail: what is point?

Bloody hell, I knew that the Daily Mail was a stinking dross-heap of a publication, but even I was slightly taken aback to read this tale of its non-existent ethics. At the moment, the degree of blame to be shouldered by the journalist who wrote the article is unknown. A hell of a lot can happen when subs get their hands on an innocent article, with 'improving' it on their minds.

Happy 80th Birthday Les Dawson part 3

Here, from 1984, is a snippet of Les Dawson in conversation with Roy Plomley about his epiphany in Hull, and whether he can play the piano for real:

Happy 80th Birthday Les Dawson part 2

For the second part of this blog's efforts to mark what would have been the great Les Dawson's 80th birthday, let's go back to 16 November 1974 for Dawson's debut appearance on Parkinson:

Happy 80th Birthday Les Dawson - part 1

Right, let's get the Les Dawson 80th birthday celebrations underway with this spiffing show opener from the first Sez Les of series 8, currently available on DVD. Script by Cryer and Nobbs, tailors to the gentry:

The Dawson Watch

Les Dawson would have been 80 this coming Wednesday. As my biography of him is nearing completion, I am more aware of this than most. I've spoken to many of the people who worked with him, and all loved him. His spirit has been a benign presence in my house for the two and a half years since the book was commissioned, and while many biographers end each book with diminished respect for their subject, mine for Dawson, already high when I set out, has grown. I shall mark the occasion with fine Scotch whisky and a black pudding taste test. Dawson once got into a heated debate about the way this fine delicacy should be cooked. Dawson maintained that they should be boiled, but the other participant held that they should be fried. That the other participant was the Duke of Edinburgh and that Dawson was able to disagree with him good-naturedly but forcefully in the face of protocol and etiquette says much about both men and the respect they had for each other.

Meanwhile, how is this occasion being marked by broadcasters? ITV is showing a 10-year-old half-hour documentary about the great man. I'm not complaining, because my VHS recording of the original transmission is missing the first five minutes, but is that really it? The BBC, which employed him for the last 15 years of his life, and which could repeat his excellent and charming Comic Roots documentary from 1982, where he visits the Mancunian streets of his youth and the cotton mills where the prototypes for Cissie and Ada worked, isn't bothering at all. Sadly, I can't share that one, but expect some good clips to appear here on Wednesday.

In the mean time, enjoy my good friend Walty Dunlop's review of the new Jokers Wild series 1 DVD set.

Frinton for the incontinent

Happy new year to all my reader. Take your place at Miss Sophie's dinner table.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 24 part 4

To close the festivities, we return to Marty Feldman, aided and abetted by Tim Brooke-Taylor, in a Punch and Judy show. After this, Marty pays tribute to the unsung heroes of the BBC. About time that someone did, too.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 24 part 3

Nearly there. The penultimate selection in this year's advent calendar is a festive selection of items from the Fishguard news desk, staffed by Hugh Pugh, a man with an abrasive manner and a microphone that's never plugged in. Watch out for the table of Jesus-related artifacts. Re-watching that bit earlier caused the inhabitants of the Cheeseford living room to burst out laughing in a manner that bordered on indecent.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 24 part 2

From Danny Baker's appearance on the TV version of Room 101 (Get well soon, Candyman), here's a devastating critique of consumer shows. "Heh heh. Old Joe...".

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 24 part 1

As it's Christmas Eve all day and gremlins have hitherto prevented me opening some of the windows of this advent calendar at the correct time, we end with a bumper rollover jackpot of clips, chosen largely out of pure selfishness. We kick off with Martin Alan Feldman and John Junkin with the George Mitchell singers, rewriting 'The Whiffenpoof Song'. My good friend Gavin Sutherland showed me this sketch during a mammoth session of port and brandy at his luxury Wanstead penthouse flat over a decade ago, and it's been in my pantheon of TV greatness ever since. Not least because the end credit is sung. Take it away, ladies and gentlemen.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 23

Here we see Les Dawson getting a curiously muted response to one of his gags. What's wrong with this audience? Don't they appreciate quality? What's wrong with the audience is that there isn't one. Any laughter you hear is the crew in studio D at the BBC's Elstree centre at the stagger-through for the 1990 live final of Opportunity Knocks.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 22

Take two grown adults arsing about on a hillside in fake slow motion, an election slogan that we can all stand by and Frank Ricotti's wonderful arrangement of 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever', and you have my favourite closing credit sequence of any programme ever: the end of the last episode of The Beiderbecke Affair. Alan Plater was a great man and, on the one occasion when I met him, everything I hoped he would be. Funny, interesting and kind. He's missed already.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 21

On the 21st day of Advent, a nice chap sent to me a tie saying LWT. I don't wear ties much any more, but I have a real need to give this one an outing on some suitable occasion, says the man who graduated from university in a green Young's brewery tie.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar days 18, 19 and 20

Apologies for radio silence (my favourite station) over the last couple of days. I have been away from home, and had unexpected trouble uploading various goodies at various points. So, here's a bumper package. Firstly, the fruits of a recent fact-finding mission in the environs of the remains of ATV Centre, B1 2JP.

Above, we have the back end of this fine edifice. Why does it say 'Accident and Emergency' over the ramp? Ah, well, the derelict building was used as a location for the remade Survivors. Then, slightly to the left, we have some fetching octagonal planters, the honeycomb being very much a motif used in the building's construction.

Meanwhile, the only visible signage linking the concrete hulk with its illustrious past was on the door of the electricity substation by the scene dock doors. Maybe one day, when Uncle Lew's pile is finally demolished, a blue plaque will be erected on the replacement saying "Crossroads was perpetrated here".

The reason for being in the West Midlands at the time was one of the always-excellent Kaleidoscope shindigs in Stourbridge, after which the following artifact was brought forth by one of the revellers and snapped. Layzengennelmen, I bring you a genuine LWT mug. (Bottle Boys something something, the punchline writes itself).

This is not the only item of London Weekend merchandise we'll be featuring in this parade of jollification. Oh noes. Be patient, dear anoraks. Tomorrow will bring hither the one item that everyone should be wearing to the office Christmas party.

Before then, though, another coffee-slurping implement from the glory days of the federal ITV system, courtesy of BBC Radio Norfolk's Graham Barnard, who gets to drink out of it, the lucky so-and-so.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 17

At the risk of peaking too soon, let us go back to BBC1 on Saturday 25 September 1993. The show is Danny Baker After All. The guest is Bob Monkhouse. This was about the time that Monkhouse was emerging from years of being dismissed as just a game-show host, and being recognised as the serious comic contender that he really was. It's Baker, it's Monkhouse. It's Baker and Monkhouse. There's your top of the shop right there.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 16

A few years ago, perhaps conscious of the sedentary nature of many of TV viewers, ITV decided to get pro-active. As part of its 'Britain On The Move' initiative, it doled out any number of these stylish pedometers, all the easier to calculate how close one is to one's required 10,000 steps a day. The nation took the hint, lost weight and obesity ceased to be a major problem. Tomorrow: The Border Television meter-wheel, issued to Cumbrian residents to help them calculate how far they'd walked that day to avoid watching Look Who's Talking.

Cheeseford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 15

Welcome to transmission control at Cheeseford Towers. 'scuse the mess. On the right is my trusty late-model GPO 746 (so late it says BT on the bottom), and on the left is my daughter's favourite toy. It's the one in the middle that concerns us. It comes from Kent House (aka the London Weekend building on the South Bank of the Thames) and was part of the communications network between transmission controllers at the various regional ITV stations. Now, with all of ITV played out from two sites (Chiswick and Leeds), the network is redundant, and these glorious red batphones were skipped, apart from those salvaged by staff, one of whom sent me this example. I have considered plugging it in and telling "that cow in Network 1 to shut up", but what if it works? And yes, I know it's BBC, but who cares. Not sure what I'm on about? Show, don't tell.

Cheesford Virtual Archive TV Advent Calendar day 14

John Dankworth is largely responsible for my love of jazz. It's equal parts him, Duke Ellington and my grandad, who introduced me to both. Obviously I know my grandad well, but I never met the Duke. I did, however, meet Sir John when he played a jazz festival in Guernsey in 2004, which I was covering for Crescendo magazine. He was a delightful, patient man, who put up with all of my anoraky questions and answered them. It was a thrill also on that gig to renew my acquaintance with the great Allan Ganley, a drummer of distinction and a lovely bloke. Passing his Ludwig 400 up to him on stage, I said "Ah, you've got a brass shelled one". He said "Yes, how can you tell through the chrome?". My reply: "Mine's an alloy shell. Yours is about twice the weight." Name-drops over. When BBC4 hoiked out a few clips of the great JD recently, I was knocked bandy by this arrangement of 'Just In Time', and thrilled to see and hear heroes like Kenny Wheeler, Alan Branscombe and Ronnie Stephenson going to town (Ronnie's the drummer - he began life as a tap dancer, and he drummed like one, with great lightness and grace). A shame it was cropped to 16:9 and shown slightly out of sync. I can't fix the former, but I have the latter, and with just over 4 hours to go until day 14, here is 'Just In Time'.