Bill Cotton - Double Bill (Text Only)

Thus ended my first year in television. I still went back to the office in Denmark Street occasionally and kept an eye on what was going on. Johnny was by then the uncrowned king of the TV jingle, though the music business generally was on the back burner. But every now and again, someone would record a song from our catalogue which ended up on the B-side of a hit, and then the royalties would roll in. It might be the A-side of a record the public wanted, but the B-side got the same royalties.

Back at the Television Centre, having completed a series of Off the Record, The Show Band Show and some music specials under the generic title of Summer Serenade with Geraldo and Frank Chacksfield, I was accepted as a full-blown producer/director. Around the department there were some mutterings about nepotism, but nothing serious. If anybody hinted at it, I would be quite brazen and unapologetic. In all walks of life, from the professions to the trade unions, being the child of an established father has its advantages. Sure, doors open and you get to walk through them, but the important thing is what you do with the chances you’ve been given.

Our boss, Ronnie Waldman, was a great talent-spotter and he laid the foundations of a department which in the 1960s and 1970s regularly out-performed ITV, the channel supposedly set up in order to be the nation’s main entertainment outlet. Elitists both inside and outside the BBC who had greeted the arrival of ITV with relief because they thought it meant the BBC could concentrate on education and information, leaving entertainment to the commercial sector, were forced to eat their words.

Some of my colleagues had come over from radio: Duncan Wood, who produced Hancock and Steptoe and Son; Johnny Ammonds, who was responsible for shows featuring Val Doonican, Morecambe and Wise and Harry Worth; and Dennis Main-Wilson, who was the glue that held together Till Death Do Us Part and The Rag Trade. Dennis was an extraordinary character; he’d been blooded on The Goon Show and became inured to the good-natured ridicule of Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers. Dad christened him Dame May Whitty which fitted perfectly his rather fussy and punctilious manner – but no one doubted that he was a great producer.

Some of that first generation of television producers were imports from the theatre: Jimmy Gilbert, for example, who had written the successful West End show Grab Me a Gondola. He became one of the most distinguished television producers of situation and sketch comedy, and later whenever I had a risky new show to launch I entrusted it to him in the absolute confidence that if it was workable at all, Jimmy would bring it off. There was also the occasional producer who had started his career as an engineer or floor manager and moved up through the ranks. Outstanding among them was T. Leslie Jackson, who master-minded This Is Your Life and What’s My Line? Ronnie Waldman used to hold a producers’ meeting every Monday morning during which we discussed and critically analysed the previous week’s output. One of the most vocal contributors was George Inns, who had produced Jewel and Warriss’s 1950s radio hit Up the Pole. He suggested a solution to what had become an intractable programme problem and in the process launched one of the great television and theatre shows. Every year there was a Radio Show at Earls Court or Olympia which was set up along the lines of the Motor Show and exhibited the latest models of radio and television sets. For a couple of years, we had built a makeshift studio at the show from which we broadcast some of our television programmes. Our producers hated it because the audience kept invading rehearsals and there were numerous technical breakdowns. Frankly, it was a mess, an embarrassment to the department, yet it was unthinkable that the BBC’s Television Service should ignore an exhibition dedicated to selling television sets.

For ages, dear George had been plugging his pet idea of a black-and-white minstrel show, and yet again on this occasion he went through his usual routine, insisting that the Radio Show would be an ideal setting for his great project. We all groaned, but nobody could come up with a better notion, so George was given the go-ahead. The Black and White Minstrel Show was born, and as is often the case in television, everybody in the business hated it except the audience. It became and remained a huge success. It was the BBC’s first entry for the Montreux Television Festival and swept the board. In the end, political correctness decreed that the idea of blacked-up performers was racist, so the show died and has never been replaced.

Meanwhile I had turned my attention to the upcoming series of my father’s show. It was to go out fortnightly on BBC1, alternating with The Vera Lynn Show. Once I became Dad’s TV producer, the dynamics of our relationship changed. Throughout my childhood and schooldays, I had hero-worshipped him. During my time in the army and my career as a music publisher I had been quite dependent on his patronage, support and influence. Now the balance of power had shifted and to a marked degree he depended on me. Radio was still his great love but the proceeds didn’t pay the rent. His main source of income was the variety theatre. Television paid good money, provided the band with regular work and gave him huge publicity – so he just had to knuckle down and accept that I was now in the driving seat.

For my part, I was simply happy to be able to repay Dad for all he had done for me. He knew he could trust me; I would never put him in a situation on television where he was asked to do something he couldn’t do well. I was determined to exploit his strengths and build on the solid foundations his producer Brian Tesler had laid down. Our biggest problem was the one facing all general entertainment shows: how to find an adequate supply of interesting and talented guests. I looked around for a pianist, preferably someone who played the piano like the bloke down the pub. I mentioned this one day to Richard Armitage, who had taken over the Noel Gay agency. He told me about a young man EMI had just recorded and fixed it for me to hear him in Richard’s office. He was actually called Trevor Stanford but was renamed Russ Conway by EMI. The name stuck and I was glad to sign him because he played just the sort of music I was looking for. And he was to become a big star.

I was due to produce the Six-Five Special show from Barry in South Wales, so I booked Russ to appear on it. I wanted to see how he looked on camera. It was a disaster. The studio was filled with fans of the reigning king of skiffle, Lonnie Donegan. That’s what they’d come for, skiffle music, not honky-tonk piano-playing, so the applause was underwhelming. His confidence shattered, Russ dashed off the set and headed for the railway station. When I caught up with him in town, I managed to convince him that life on The Billy Cotton Band Show was going to be better than that. And it was, thanks partly to a song he’d composed called ‘Side Saddle’ which sold well and fitted the show like a glove. So Russ went from strength to strength, for quite apart from his good looks and pianistic virtuosity he got on well with my father. Jimmy Grafton wrote a duet for them called ‘What Will They Do Without Us?’ with flexible lyrics that could be adapted for different occasions: the chemistry between them was magical. Some of this magic must have affected me, for I seemed to have a capacity to communicate with Russ from a distance without benefit of wires. On the studio floor, he could look quite solemn while he was playing, so I’d mutter to myself, ‘Smile, you bastard!’ and at that instant, uncannily, he would look up at the camera and break into a broad grin.