Fact #96453
When:
Short story:
The first edition of a new tv pop music show, Ready, Steady, Go!, presented by Keith Fordyce and David Gell, is broadcast in the UK. Artists appearing include Pat Boone, Billy Fury, Burl Ives, Chris Barber and Brian Poole And The Tremeloes. Dance band leader Joe Loss judges a dance contest.
Full article:
Vicki Wickham (producer) :Ready, Steady, Go! was dreamed up by Elkan Allan, head of light entertainment at Rediffusion TV, in 1963. He got a bunch of young people together who knew nothing about TV and gave us our heads.
Elkan Allan (producer) : We originally planned to have the audience sitting in serried rows like any other show. But when the music started they just jumped up and danced.
During a commercial break, my son Andy rushed up to me and hissed, 'You've got to get rid of the chairs!' So we did, and the dancing became even more uninhibited and an integral part of the show.
Vicky Wickham (production assistant, Ready, Steady, Go!) : On that opening show Brian Poole was good and Billy Fury was our saving grace. He was so cool and sexy. I was in awe because he was a real star and I was so new to it all. He was in all the mags of the time as England's answer to Elvis.
I remember he sang In Summer and Someone Else's Girl – well, mimed actually. Everything was mimed at the time. And he was fabulous, very approachable and chatty. Afterwards we went for a coffee at the Kardomah Coffee Shop next door.
Brian Poole (leader, Brian Poole And The Tremeloes) : At Studio Nine there was a balcony and we used to sneak up there to watch Billy while he was doing his bit on the podium.
He was totally different to everyone else and had a great band. He was the perfect gentleman in an age when many things were different. None of us had ever heard of drugs then, though we all used to drink. All except Billy that is. Though he never made a big thing of it, he had a heart condition and just downed cups of tea.
Frances Hitching (editor) : What made people all over Britain in front of their television screens sit up and take notice was the dancers. One of them, an outraged viewer wrote, was even wearing a hat! And their hair was too long and you couldn't tell the difference between the boys and the girls, and some of them were chewing gum …. What was the youth of this country coming to?
Vicky Wickham (production assistant, Ready, Steady, Go!) : The atmosphere in that studio was terrific. Right from the start we attracted the best looking Mods with great haircuts, great gear and great attitude.
Brian Poole : The music and the clothes – the main thing about RSG! Was always the audience.
Elkan Allan : RSG! Started out as a show that covered all aspects of events for young Londoners – it was just a local programme for the first few months. I inherited one of the show's hosts, Keith Fordyce, from a previous movie-clip show and he stayed 'til the end, making a nice safe balance to Cathy McGowan, whom we recruited later following an ad in half a dozen magazines.
Cathy McGowan (presenter, Ready, Steady, Go!) : At the audition, I was asked about my interests and I said money, clothes, dancing … or something like that. I said I needed the clothes, I thought clothes were very important to me then, because if I didn't have the clothes, I couldn't go to places where I wanted to go, and therefore there was no point in my life.
Anyway, I got the job. It wasn't a job to be on television … it was to tell them the sort of things they should be putting on. And then one day (producer) Elkan (Allan) asked me if I'd like to be on the programme, and I said, 'OK.'
I never actually said anything about clothes on the programme. I just wore the things … I just used to ask the director to show the kids my shoes, the dresses and everything. I was also very clever about that because I knew I could become important to the programme. It wasn't all done in the absolute innocence like it's supposed to have been done.
I would never give any interviews where I would know anything. I just knew that if I appeared in the least bit bright, it would mean it was all manufactured, all geared.
It was just to me, as if, on a Friday night when that programme went out, I never felt any different in my head than when I used to be getting ready to go to the Locarno on a Friday night. I got ready exactly the same. I even put perfume on to go into the studio. To me, I was going out to have a good time. I had all my friends in there, it was great. And, afterwards, we'd all go out and have a booze and dance. It was smashing. It was just like a club.
Vicki Wickham : I came from BBC radio and didn't have a television at home so I'd never even seen pop on TV. My job title was editor but I was actually booker, producer, tea girl, everything. By the time we went on air, I knew how to get hold of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Elkan came up with the slogan "The weekend starts here" and we went through several theme tunes until we settled on Manfred Mann's 5-4-3-2-1. The Springfields played in the pilot, then Dusty [Springfield] ended up presenting. It was a great endorsement, but was always going to be temporary because her singing career came first.
After Dusty left, we advertised for a "typical teenager" and Cathy McGowan became the face of Ready, Steady.
Vicky Wickham (production assistant, Ready, Steady, Go!) : It was an incredible time because everybody was starting out. It wasn't at all sophisticated: everybody just knew everybody, we all went to the same clubs and parties. We didn't realise how fantastic it was because we were just with our mates. And now I look back and think: 'Oh my God.' I really was at several parties with Jimi Hendrix. We sat and chatted. How brilliant. Yeah!
I didn't even know who The Beatles were, and I was thrown into producing and writing it. We booked The Rolling Stones because Cathy and I thought Brian Jones was the most gorgeous chap we'd ever seen. Instead of saying, 'Come up for a cup of tea', we were able to say, 'Do you want to be on our show?'
MEMORIES OF Ready, Steady, Go!
John Steel [The Animals ) : You'd be at the studios all day before they actually went on air, for rehearsals or run-throughs or camera positions, so there was plenty of time to spend talking in the bar. We'd often share a dressing room with the Stones or stand around chatting with The Beatles. It was a very good scene then, in London, England, UK, Europe. The groups would get along together very nicely.
Pete Meaden (publicist) : On a Friday night I would go down to Ready, Steady, Go! groove around there, and one weekend I had three people on there, I had The Crystals, Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones - doing publicity for those three people. They used to say, "The Weekend Starts Here" and the weekend would begin there, I would take my speed and go down there, I would go up to the Green Room, and watch my people that I was working for having a great time on the television. There'd be all the faces and people that I knew. A face is just someone you recognise, you might not even know his name, but he's known as a face.
Ready, Steady, Go! was interesting in so much as it got the vibe right out, with the right amount of grit edge on it. It was no good trying to get in through the doorman, 'cos there was always so many kids outside trying to get in as well, so you had to thrust your way through that with a lot of hard chat, to the main foyer at ATV House, down there in the Strand, and then you go downstairs into ... oh you go into the Green Room first, and you have a few sherbets, to round the edge off the Drynamil, and then down into Ready, Steady, Go!
And there was Mickie Turner and Phil The Greek dancing around with some of the girls and there'd be Sandy Sargent, who is Mickie Turner's wife now, and Cathy McGowan, and there'd be The Stones around, or The Who or Paul Jones, Manfred Mann, and that would be a great foot for the weekend to start off on. That would be a nice edge, like the kick-start on a motorbike — kick it WHOOMP and she starts firing, and you go off into the weekend.
(Source : feature by Steve Turner in NME, November 1979)
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Elkan Allan (producer) : We originally planned to have the audience sitting in serried rows like any other show. But when the music started they just jumped up and danced.
During a commercial break, my son Andy rushed up to me and hissed, 'You've got to get rid of the chairs!' So we did, and the dancing became even more uninhibited and an integral part of the show.
Vicky Wickham (production assistant, Ready, Steady, Go!) : On that opening show Brian Poole was good and Billy Fury was our saving grace. He was so cool and sexy. I was in awe because he was a real star and I was so new to it all. He was in all the mags of the time as England's answer to Elvis.
I remember he sang In Summer and Someone Else's Girl – well, mimed actually. Everything was mimed at the time. And he was fabulous, very approachable and chatty. Afterwards we went for a coffee at the Kardomah Coffee Shop next door.
Brian Poole (leader, Brian Poole And The Tremeloes) : At Studio Nine there was a balcony and we used to sneak up there to watch Billy while he was doing his bit on the podium.
He was totally different to everyone else and had a great band. He was the perfect gentleman in an age when many things were different. None of us had ever heard of drugs then, though we all used to drink. All except Billy that is. Though he never made a big thing of it, he had a heart condition and just downed cups of tea.
Frances Hitching (editor) : What made people all over Britain in front of their television screens sit up and take notice was the dancers. One of them, an outraged viewer wrote, was even wearing a hat! And their hair was too long and you couldn't tell the difference between the boys and the girls, and some of them were chewing gum …. What was the youth of this country coming to?
Vicky Wickham (production assistant, Ready, Steady, Go!) : The atmosphere in that studio was terrific. Right from the start we attracted the best looking Mods with great haircuts, great gear and great attitude.
Brian Poole : The music and the clothes – the main thing about RSG! Was always the audience.
Elkan Allan : RSG! Started out as a show that covered all aspects of events for young Londoners – it was just a local programme for the first few months. I inherited one of the show's hosts, Keith Fordyce, from a previous movie-clip show and he stayed 'til the end, making a nice safe balance to Cathy McGowan, whom we recruited later following an ad in half a dozen magazines.
Cathy McGowan (presenter, Ready, Steady, Go!) : At the audition, I was asked about my interests and I said money, clothes, dancing … or something like that. I said I needed the clothes, I thought clothes were very important to me then, because if I didn't have the clothes, I couldn't go to places where I wanted to go, and therefore there was no point in my life.
Anyway, I got the job. It wasn't a job to be on television … it was to tell them the sort of things they should be putting on. And then one day (producer) Elkan (Allan) asked me if I'd like to be on the programme, and I said, 'OK.'
I never actually said anything about clothes on the programme. I just wore the things … I just used to ask the director to show the kids my shoes, the dresses and everything. I was also very clever about that because I knew I could become important to the programme. It wasn't all done in the absolute innocence like it's supposed to have been done.
I would never give any interviews where I would know anything. I just knew that if I appeared in the least bit bright, it would mean it was all manufactured, all geared.
It was just to me, as if, on a Friday night when that programme went out, I never felt any different in my head than when I used to be getting ready to go to the Locarno on a Friday night. I got ready exactly the same. I even put perfume on to go into the studio. To me, I was going out to have a good time. I had all my friends in there, it was great. And, afterwards, we'd all go out and have a booze and dance. It was smashing. It was just like a club.
Vicki Wickham : I came from BBC radio and didn't have a television at home so I'd never even seen pop on TV. My job title was editor but I was actually booker, producer, tea girl, everything. By the time we went on air, I knew how to get hold of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Elkan came up with the slogan "The weekend starts here" and we went through several theme tunes until we settled on Manfred Mann's 5-4-3-2-1. The Springfields played in the pilot, then Dusty [Springfield] ended up presenting. It was a great endorsement, but was always going to be temporary because her singing career came first.
After Dusty left, we advertised for a "typical teenager" and Cathy McGowan became the face of Ready, Steady.
Vicky Wickham (production assistant, Ready, Steady, Go!) : It was an incredible time because everybody was starting out. It wasn't at all sophisticated: everybody just knew everybody, we all went to the same clubs and parties. We didn't realise how fantastic it was because we were just with our mates. And now I look back and think: 'Oh my God.' I really was at several parties with Jimi Hendrix. We sat and chatted. How brilliant. Yeah!
I didn't even know who The Beatles were, and I was thrown into producing and writing it. We booked The Rolling Stones because Cathy and I thought Brian Jones was the most gorgeous chap we'd ever seen. Instead of saying, 'Come up for a cup of tea', we were able to say, 'Do you want to be on our show?'
MEMORIES OF Ready, Steady, Go!
John Steel [The Animals ) : You'd be at the studios all day before they actually went on air, for rehearsals or run-throughs or camera positions, so there was plenty of time to spend talking in the bar. We'd often share a dressing room with the Stones or stand around chatting with The Beatles. It was a very good scene then, in London, England, UK, Europe. The groups would get along together very nicely.
Pete Meaden (publicist) : On a Friday night I would go down to Ready, Steady, Go! groove around there, and one weekend I had three people on there, I had The Crystals, Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones - doing publicity for those three people. They used to say, "The Weekend Starts Here" and the weekend would begin there, I would take my speed and go down there, I would go up to the Green Room, and watch my people that I was working for having a great time on the television. There'd be all the faces and people that I knew. A face is just someone you recognise, you might not even know his name, but he's known as a face.
Ready, Steady, Go! was interesting in so much as it got the vibe right out, with the right amount of grit edge on it. It was no good trying to get in through the doorman, 'cos there was always so many kids outside trying to get in as well, so you had to thrust your way through that with a lot of hard chat, to the main foyer at ATV House, down there in the Strand, and then you go downstairs into ... oh you go into the Green Room first, and you have a few sherbets, to round the edge off the Drynamil, and then down into Ready, Steady, Go!
And there was Mickie Turner and Phil The Greek dancing around with some of the girls and there'd be Sandy Sargent, who is Mickie Turner's wife now, and Cathy McGowan, and there'd be The Stones around, or The Who or Paul Jones, Manfred Mann, and that would be a great foot for the weekend to start off on. That would be a nice edge, like the kick-start on a motorbike — kick it WHOOMP and she starts firing, and you go off into the weekend.
(Source : feature by Steve Turner in NME, November 1979)