TV & film

The shadowy, twilight world of the homosexual was already a cliche and mainstream joke on TV by the late 1970s

In the midst of the hysteria surrounding the TV series “It’s A Sin”, many articles have been published about what gay life was like in the 1980s. Supposedly…  In those days many of us gay men were out and proud and we didn’t seem to face much homophobia personally. If we did, we tended to The shadowy, twilight world of the homosexual was already a cliche and mainstream joke on TV by the late 1970s

Jimmy Savile implicated in the tragic story of a 15-year-old Top of the Pops dancer who took an overdose and died after spending the night with a “well-known disc jockey” in 1971

Back in May I wrote about the tragic story of a 15-year-old girl who killed herself in 1971. A news report in The Guardian on April 6th of that year describes how she had danced on Top of the Pops on four occasions and, according to her diary, spent the night with a man the Jimmy Savile implicated in the tragic story of a 15-year-old Top of the Pops dancer who took an overdose and died after spending the night with a “well-known disc jockey” in 1971

The end of the Oxford Road Show (video)

How the BBC’s studios nearly ended up opposite Platt Fields Park in Rusholme Here in Manchester, New Broadcasting House is being demolished. But back in the mid-1950’s, when the BBC decided to build new northern regional headquarters, this famous location on Oxford Road wasn’t the first choice. At the beginning of 1956 the BBC was The end of the Oxford Road Show (video)

15-year-old girl committed suicide in 1971 after dancing on Top of the Pops and spending the night with a “well-known disc jockey”

I came across this story by accident as I was researching other subjects in back issues of The Guardian. In April 1971, 15-year-old Claire Ufland was found dead on her bedroom floor with empty pill bottles nearby. She had danced on Top of the Pops four times. But her mother had banned her from doing 15-year-old girl committed suicide in 1971 after dancing on Top of the Pops and spending the night with a “well-known disc jockey”

Street View sightseeing: Mr Benn’s house

As anyone who was a child in the 1970’s knows, Mr Benn lives at 52 Festive Road. The artist David McKee lived ‘next door’ at 54 Festing Road in Putney (the house with the red front door) and his drawings of Festive Road were based on the real street.

Audio cassettes go digital

I’ve been transferring my audio cassettes to digital. It’s a job I put off for a long time, as there are about 250 of them. Those that date from 1980 onwards are played in my Tascam Porta05 Ministudio — a multitrack cassette recorder that I bought in 1988. Tapes from the 1970’s are more tricky.