Rock Stars Stole my Life!: A Big Bad Love Affair with Music by Mark Ellen

Author:Mark Ellen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2014-05-07T23:00:00+00:00

21

The Empire Strikes Back

But the BBC decided to fight. Cash rained down upon The Old Grey Whistle Test. It was ripped from the night-time schedules, slapped into Tuesday evenings at half past seven and broadcast live. The words ‘Old’ and ‘Grey’ were quietly dropped and the shiny new Whistle Test was hauled, kicking and screaming, into 1984. Even its title sequence was updated: the sign-of-the-zodiac humanoid cavorting in space that had made us leap, hooting, from our chairs at college to kick invisible stars was replaced by a synthesised version starring a robot.

And new presenters were recruited, so many we couldn’t all be on at the same time and took weekly turns on the subs’ bench. There was the charmingly shy Ro Newton with her big hair, white pixie boots and belted tops, who had even less TV experience than we did. There was Radio 1’s softly crackling Richard Skinner, who’d had a love affair with Sheena Easton and was soon to marry ‘Delightful Deborah’ from The Steve Wright Show. For bank-holiday specials there was the flinty Janice Long, who’d shot to fame when Frankie Goes To Hollywood tore their clothes off on her Liverpool radio show demanding to be interviewed naked. ‘It’s been said by many,’ she told our audience, ‘that Bryan Ferry is a national treasure and should be mounted in the Tate. I’m sure many of us would go along with that …’ And in a knee-jerk reaction to The Tube’s street philosopher Mark Miwurdz, we occasionally got NME’s ranting poet Seething Wells, though he was ‘let go’ after a sketch with a plastic skeleton he claimed was the late John Lennon.

But the key new arrival was a powerful presence from Rochdale, the gruff and charismatic Andy Kershaw. The entertainments secretary at Leeds University, he’d famously walked out of one of his finals to make sure Elvis Costello’s gear had turned up. He’d worked at Radio Aire and as Billy Bragg’s roadie and, when Bragg appeared on the formerly Old Grey Whistle Test, he’d impressed new producer Trevor Dann with his bristling opinions, been auditioned and signed a week later. Dave and I were magazine editors and used to the idea of presenting music we didn’t personally adore. If we liked stuff, we enthused; if we didn’t, we might drop the odd hint – ‘Sting there with his new single “Russians”,’ Dave announced. ‘They should never have given that man a library ticket.’ But Andy was mortified if he had to introduce anyone that wasn’t dead-centre of his universe, in fact refused point-blank even to be on a show that featured the ‘glutinous bed-wetters Tears For Fears’. Viewers were in no doubt as to his personal taste – boyish joy for his favourites, amusing sarcasm for everything else.

‘More from middle-of-the-road maestros Hall & Oates later,’ he winced. ‘Now it’s Sade, about to perform something new and suitably sophisticated.

‘After having a hit in Britain, Pat Benatar disappeared for a bit. Now, I’m told, she’s back!

‘The new one from Midge Ure.

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