Nothing is Real by David Hepworth

Author:David Hepworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2018-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT ROCK TV

IN EARLY DECEMBER 1980 I got a call from Mike Appleton. I knew Mike because a few years earlier I’d been working as radio and TV promotion man for the independent label Beserkley. Mike was the producer of The Old Grey Whistle Test, which had been the BBC’s ‘flagship’ rock magazine programme since its launch in 1971. Ever since then I had been watching it with my lip curled. This didn’t make me uniquely cynical. Most of the people of my acquaintance who reckoned they knew a thing or two about music, who worked in record shops or read the NME, might admire the people who were guests on the show but jealously reserved their right to sneer at all the people who put on the show.

When Mike Appleton rang me that day his call wasn’t a complete surprise. A week earlier, on a trip to New York, ostensibly to see the Police, I’d managed to get a ticket to see Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden on Thanksgiving. After the show they had a party in the bowling alley in the Garden and I had bumped into Mike there. Emboldened by drink I had told him that he ought to have me as one of the presenters on his programme. Now he was on the phone asking if I could come on the programme and ‘do the Christmas books’.

‘Doing the Christmas books’ was a standard seasonal item for any magazine programme, either on radio or TV, which had any kind of claim to ‘doing rock’. In those days the racket of publishing books about music was in its infancy so I wasn’t making a choice from the widest selection. Anyway I agreed I would do it, put the date in my recently acquired Filofax, and waited for the standard bike to arrive bearing the books I had to talk about.

The recording took place at Shepperton Studios, because there was no room for us at Television Centre. I don’t remember much in the way of detail other than the fact I was ill with nerves before doing the segment, which involved Annie Nightingale, who had been the presenter since Bob Harris left the show in 1978, gently guiding me through the items and ensuring that I didn’t make too much of an ass of myself. Following the recording I experienced a level of profound relief which was almost sexual. The best thing about telly, I quickly decided, was the feeling of having just done it.

Nonetheless I wasn’t immune to the seductive appeal of being on it again. Whistle Test was the only kind of programme that was ever going to ask me to take part. It was the only place on television where you were likely to see the kind of acts that were written about in the NME or talked up by the guys who worked in smart record shops. I was one of that generation who made sure I didn’t miss the appearances of favourites such as Little Feat, Ry Cooder, Richard Thompson, Tom Waits and Jackson Browne.

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