Bill Cotton - Double Bill (Text Only)

I had my first success as a television talent-spotter when I was working on Off the Record. I had a friend called Hugh Mendl who worked for Decca Records and whom I’d known since my days as a song-plugger. He asked me to go and see a young rock and roll star who was appearing in Soho. We found ourselves in a reclaimed public toilet that posed as a club in the heart of Frith Street. We ordered a drink and settled down to wait for the boy to come on stage. Suddenly at our table appeared a bouncer the size of a house who said the manager was aware we were auditioning in his club and he’d like to see us in his office. I refused his invitation – the reason being that he terrified the life out of me. We found ourselves on the street and called it a day. Hugh, however, was nothing if not tenacious and pestered me until I went along to another club where the boy was appearing. He was a sensation. I asked Hugh what recordings he’d made. ‘None,’ he replied, ‘but if you’ll give him a spot on your show I’ll record him tomorrow.’ We shook hands on it and Tommy Steele had his first recording, ‘Rock with the Caveman’, on the show the following week. I knew this was a big star in the making.

Discovering Tommy Steele presented me with an ethical dilemma. The man who wrote Tommy Steele’s hit was Lionel Bart, who when I came on the scene hadn’t found a publisher for the song. I had not divested myself of my interest in music publisher Michael Reine, but I had promised the Head of TV Entertainment, Ronnie Waldman, that I would not take advantage of my position in the BBC to advance the interests of my private company. I felt it right that I should not tell my partner at Michael Reine, Johnny Johnston, about the existence of Lionel Bart or the brilliant song Tommy Steele was turning into a hit. And that’s why we didn’t sign up Lionel Bart, who of course went on to write ‘Fings Ain’t Wot They Used To Be’ and Oliver. Johnny was not best pleased.

By now, my dad’s show was nearing its transmission date. The combination of Billy Cotton as presenter and the Silhouettes worked a treat. Jimmy Grafton wrote the comedy script; there were some instrumental numbers and a guest spot. Brian Tesler had got an ideal television format, infinitely flexible, and Dad was smart enough to stick with it for his entire television career. He may not have been the best song and dance man in the business but when the audience saw the sweat on his forehead they knew he was giving everything he had to entertain them, and they loved him for it.

Because office space was at a premium at the unfinished Television Centre, I worked from a caravan behind the scenery block in the carpark. It was a little like a holiday camp, and the occupant of the next caravan along was a brilliant young producer called Jack Good who was busy working on an idea that was to revolutionise pop programmes. He named it Six-Five Special and proposed employing a quite original production technique. The perceived wisdom at the time was that none of the technology which transmitted the programme – cameras, lighting, microphones – should be visible to the viewer, who was supposed to assume the event was taking place in a corner of the living-room. It was a hanging offence to allow the tip of a microphone to appear in shot, and if one of the technicians was inadvertently picked up by the camera, the standard sarcastic quip was ‘I hope he’s a member of Equity’, the actors’ union.

Jack Good came up with the idea of letting the viewers see all the inner workings of television: cameras moving around, lighting rigs being adjusted, scenery pushed into place. It was an unheard-of innovation and some members of the department found it hard to swallow. Josephine Douglas, who was the co-producer and presenter of the show, came into my caravan in tears one day. She felt that Jack was taking all the magic out of television and blowing away its mystery. She pleaded with me to talk to Jack to persuade him to revert to the old formula. I did talk to him and thank God I wasn’t able to change his mind, because he had hit upon a way of revitalising television. He stayed with the BBC for a while and then left to join ITV to produce Oh Boy! which launched Cliff Richard’s television career.

After Jack Good had gone, we took turns in producing Six-Five Special, and it fell to me to produce the first show from outside London. We transmitted it from the town hall in Barry in South Wales. The guest presenter was Lonnie Donegan who had very pronounced ideas about what he wanted to do, which included doing without the other presenter, Pete Murray. Lonnie insisted he could handle it on his own. In the end we reached a creative compromise: Lonnie would do a little of what he wanted and a lot of what I wanted. This is what being a producer is all about; he carries the can and in the end what he says goes, however big the star with whom he’s working. Compared to the Television Centre, the makeshift studio in the town hall was relatively small so I told the local BBC man that in order to allow as many people as possible to enjoy the show, we’d let in one audience to watch the run-through and another to attend the actual transmission.

There was only a thirty-minute gap between the run-through and transmission which meant we required a slick and orderly audience turn-round. At the due time, the red light went on and we were live on air. As we’d planned, I cued the number one cameraman to track in on Lonnie. He didn’t move. I was bawling down the intercom at the floor manager until another cameraman turned his camera round and showed me his colleague’s predicament. The first audience were so keen to see the show they refused to leave after the run-through, but the second audience had been allowed in and the camera was pinned against the studio’s rear wall by a mass of screaming teenagers. For the first five minutes of the show, the pictures were all over the place, but we eventually sorted it out and the viewers assumed the chaos was the style of the show.

In 1957 Brian Tesler, having produced sixteen of Dad’s shows, announced that he was leaving the BBC to join Lew Grade at ATV. The BBC therefore needed another producer to do the Cotton Show. Unbeknown to me, Dad had spoken to Ronnie Waldman to ask if I could take the show over, but Ronnie told him he and I had an agreement that I would not be asked to do shows with my father. Ronnie promised Dad he’d look around for a suitable replacement. I got home that evening to find my father sitting comfortably on the settee entertaining my wife with some of his numerous stories. Just a little suspicious, I asked him whether there was anything particular on his mind. He replied that he’d just come for supper – indeed, he’d brought it with him: smoked salmon and a good bottle of wine. So we had a very enjoyable evening.

At eleven o’clock he stood up, glanced at his watch and uttered one of his ritual phrases: ‘Time a decent man was akip in his bed.’ Then as he reached the door, he turned, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Why won’t you produce my show?’ I was completely unprepared for that question and it took me a few moments to realise I’d been bushwhacked. Eventually I said, ‘Dad, the producer of a show is in charge of it, and that often leads to arguments with the performers. I wouldn’t want to argue with you and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to win.’

‘OK,’ he replied, ‘you have my word that I will never argue with you in public; we’ll have all our discussions in private. Is it a deal?’

Of course it was. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse and I realised I didn’t want to. So ‘Produced by Bill Cotton Junior’ was the credit at the end of The Billy Cotton Band Show from April 1957 and for the next four years.