Armchair Nation

by Joe Moran

  40. Cooper, Skye, pp. 138–9.

  41. Kim Twatt, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: The Orkney Herald, 1950–1961: The Paper and its People (Kirkwall: Orcadian Ltd, 1996), p. 155.

  42. Rob Young, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music (London: Faber, 2010), p. 34; Edwin Ardener, ‘“Remote areas” – some theoretical considerations’, in The Voice of Prophecy and Other Essays, ed. Malcolm Chapman (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), p. 219.

  43. Iain Crichton Smith, ‘Real people in a real place’, in Towards the Human: Selected Essays (Edinburgh: Macdonald/Saltire Society, 1986), p. 17.

  44. Paul Gilchrist, ‘Reality TV on the rock face – climbing the Old Man of Hoy’, Sport in History, 27, 1 (March 2007), 49; Dougal Haston, In High Places (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2003), p. 95.

  45. Carol Osborne, ‘An extraordinary Joe: the working-class climber as hero’, in Stephen Wagg and Dave Russell (eds), Sporting Heroes of the North (Newcastle: Northumbria Press, 2010), p. 61; Simon Thompson, Unjustifiable Risk: The Story of British Climbing (Milnthorpe: Cicerone Press, 2010), p. 231.

  46. Tom Patey, ‘The professionals’, in One Man’s Mountains (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1997), p. 225.

  47. A. Kenneth MacKenzie, ‘Points from the post’, Radio Times, 20 July 1967, 2; Chris Bonington, The Next Horizon (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001), p. 202; Gilchrist, ‘Reality TV on the rock face’, 58.

  48. Patey, ‘The professionals’, pp. 217–18; Irene Shubik, Play for Today: The Evolution of Television Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 161.

  49. ‘TV viewpoint on the Beatles’, Daily Mirror, 30 December 1967; Kenelm Jenour, ‘Beatles’ mystery tour baffles viewers’, Daily Mirror, 27 December 1967.

  50. Garth and Carol Tucker, ‘The Beatles’ film’, Listener, 18 January 1968, 84.

  51. ‘Second class viewers’, The Times, 12 January 1967; Malcolm Muggeridge, ‘Story behind the saga’, Observer, 18 June 1967.

  52. A. Boydell, ‘Forsyte enchantment’, The Times, 6 March 1969; Tracy Hargreaves, ‘“There’s no place like home”: history and tradition in The Forsyte Saga and the BBC’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 6, 1 (May 2009), 39.

  53. Stanley Reynolds, ‘The Forsytes on Late Night Line-Up’, Guardian, 12 February 1969; Anne Chisholm, ‘Why in mid-whirl of the permissive society, as we swing into the ’70s …’, Radio Times, 8 January 1970, 55.

  54. ‘Television and church work’, Manchester Guardian, 17 January 1952; Gordon Ross, Television Jubilee: The Story of 25 Years of B.B.C. Television (London: W. H. Allen, 1961), p. 115; Lewis Chester, All My Shows Are Great: The Life of Lew Grade (London: Aurum, 2010), pp. 105–6; ‘Epilogue’, Guardian, 9 May 1966.

  55. Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 72; Mary Whitehouse, Who Does She Think She Is? (London: New English Library, 1971), p. 46.

  56. David W. James, ‘The Forsyte threat’, The Times, 12 September 1968; Rowland Hill, ‘The Forsyte threat’, The Times, 17 September 1968; A. N. Wilson, Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II (London: Hutchinson, 2008), pp. 123–4.

  57. Simon Schama, ‘No Downers in “Downton”’, Newsweek, 16 January 2012, 12; Ronald Blythe, The Bookman’s Tale (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2009), p. 88.

  58. Bernard Davies, ‘Non-swinging youth’, New Society, 3 July 1969, 8.

  59. Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 98, 237, 91, 241, 140, 142.

  60. J. G. Ballard, Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography (London: Fourth Estate, 2008), p. 226.

  61. J. G. Ballard, ‘Escapement’, in Ballard, The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1 (London: Harper Perennial, 2006), p. 17.

  62. Bea Ballard, ‘J. G. Ballard’, Observer, 13 December 2009; Bea Ballard, ‘Daddy saw such horrors as a boy in a prison camp …’, Daily Mail, 18 June 2011; John Baxter, The Inner Man: The Life of J. G. Ballard (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011), p. 27.

  63. Ballard, Miracles of Life, p. 226.

  64. Raymond Williams, ‘A new way of seeing’, in Raymond Williams on Television: Selected Writings, ed. Alan O’Connor (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 48.

  65. Fred Inglis, Raymond Williams (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 223–4; ‘“Hostility” by minister’, Guardian, 10 April 1961.

  66. Raymond Williams, ‘Watching from elsewhere’, in Raymond Williams on Television, p. 67.

  67. Patrick Moore, The Autobiography (Stroud: Sutton, 2003), p. 67.

  68. Audience Research Department, ‘Audience research report, Omnibus: An Entertainment for Moon-Night: So What If It’s Just Green Cheese?, 20th July 1969’, 26 August 1969, BBC WAC, R9/7/100.

  69. Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir (London: Atlantic Books, 2010), pp. 210–11; Michael Palin, Diaries 1969–1979: The Python Years (London: Phoenix, 2007), p. 5.

  70. ‘You write …’, Radio Times, 31 July 1969, 2; Paul Trynka, Starman: David Bowie: The Definitive Biography (London: Sphere, 2010), p. 100; Peter Doggett, The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s (London: The Bodley Head, 2011), p. 53.

  71. Doggett, The Man Who Sold the World, p. 55; Trynka, Starman, p. 100.

  72. Henry Raynor, ‘Reality through the spectrum’, The Times, 15 November 1969.

  73. Peter Black, ‘New dimension for the viewer’, Illustrated London News, 7 November 1970, 18.

  74. Martin Sherwood, ‘Visit to a small planet’, New Scientist, 8 July 1971, 85.

  75. George Melly, ‘Losing out on the lunar drama’, Observer, 23 November 1969; George Melly, ‘Flogging one’s wonder’, Observer, 1 June 1969.

  76. Adam, ‘American television’; Stanley Reynolds, ‘Television’, Guardian, 6 July 1967.

  77. Peter Nichols, Diaries, 1969–1977 (London: Nick Hern Books, 2000), p. 60.

  6. The dance of irrelevant shadows

  1. Irene Shubik, Play for Today: The Evolution of Television Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 163.

  2. Michael Palin, Diaries 1969–1979: The Python Years (London: Phoenix, 2007), p. 15.

  3. Geoffrey Giuliano, Dark Horse: The Life and Art of George Harrison (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1997), p. 223; Joshua M. Greene, Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison (London: Bantam, 2006), p. 230.

  4. Laura Mulvey and Margarita Jiminez, ‘The spectacle is vulnerable: Miss World, 1970’, in Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 5.

  5. ‘Germaine Greer’, Listener, 21 January 1971, 79.

  6. Christopher Hitchens, ‘Credibility politics: sado-monetarist economics’, in For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (London: Verso, 1993), p. 162.

  7. BBC Annual Report and Accounts, 1969–70 (London: BBC, 1970), p. 25; BBC Annual Report and Accounts, 1970–1 (London: BBC, 1971), p. 21.

  8. ‘Watching TV is favourite attraction of tourists’, Guardian, 14 October 1970; Anthony Sampson, ‘Doing our own thing’, Observer, 12 July 1970; Anthony Sampson, New Anatomy of Britain (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971), p. 427.

  9. Central Statistical Office, Social Trends, No. 3, 1972 (London: HMSO, 1972), p. 103; Milton Shulman, The Ravenous Eye: The Impact of the Fifth Factor (London: Cassell, 1973), p. 1.

  10. Ernest Dewhurst, ‘Granada viewers are now good listeners’, Guardian, 9 June 1970.

  11. Auberon Waugh, ‘Welcome to Ruritania’, Time, 26 November 1973, 48; James Lees-Milne, Diaries, 1971–1983 (London: John Murray, 2008), p. 118.

  12. Simon Hoggart, ‘Labour derides clamp on TV’, Guardian, 26 January 1974; Andrew Roth, Heath and the Heathmen (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 213; Keith Waterhouse, ‘The light fantastic’, Daily Mirror, 14 January 1974.

  13. Peter Fiddick, ‘The interesting thing is that people are relieved of some awful frustration …’, Guardian, 28 January 1974.

  14. David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of Fe
bruary 1974 (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 67.

  15. Rex Cathcart, The Most Contrary Region: The BBC in Northern Ireland 1924–1984 (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1984), p. 257.

  16. Andrew McKinney, Our Jimmy: A Celebration of James Young (Belfast: Brehon Press, 2003), p. 114; Jonathan Bardon, Beyond the Studio: A History of BBC Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2000), p. 86.

  17. Pat Loughrey, ‘Culture and identity: the BBC’s role in Northern Ireland’, in Martin McLoone (ed.), Broadcasting in a Divided Community: Seventy Years of the BBC in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1996), p. 70; McKinney, Our Jimmy, pp. 118, 123.

  18. Burton Paulu, Television and Radio in the United Kingdom (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), p. 351; Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (Rockville, MD: Arc Manor, 2008), p. 11; Katharine Whitehorn, ‘Coachloads of clappers’, Observer, 10 March 1974.

  19. Leon Hunt, British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 53; Francis Bennion, ‘Laugh at thy neighbour’, New Society, 31 July 1975, 256; John Twitchin (ed.), The Black and White Media Book: Handbook for the Study of Racism and Television (Stoke on Trent: Trentham, 1990), p. 124.

  20. Kenneth Williams, ‘Preview’, Radio Times, 27 September – 3 October 1975, 15; David Croft, You Have Been Watching … The Autobiography of David Croft (London: BBC Books, 2004), p. 193.

  21. Peter Kane, ‘A Goodies fan dies laughing’, Daily Mirror, 29 March 1975; Brian Viner, Nice to See It, To See It, Nice: The 1970s in Front of the Telly (London: Simon and Schuster, 2009), p. 12; Palin, Diaries, pp. 282, 290.

  22. Jimmy Perry, A Stupid Boy (London: Arrow, 2003), p. 105; Audience Research Department, ‘Audience research report, Dad’s Army, Wednesday, 31st July, 1968’, 16 August 1968, BBC WAC, VR/68/461; Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Bird, Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 191–2.

  23. Perry, A Stupid Boy, p. 176; Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, Love in a Headscarf (London: Aurum, 2009), p. 33.

  24. Ruvani Ranasinha, South Asian Writers in Twentieth-Century Britain: Culture in Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 222; Philip Howard, ‘Immigrants in Southall form a tightly knit community’, The Times, 9 June 1976.

  25. Peter Fiddick, ‘It is on the cards that 1976 will prove to be the year the box lobby lost its grip’, Guardian, 5 April 1976; Kenneth Gosling, ‘Colour TV sets outnumber black-and-white’, The Times, 12 October 1976; ‘1-in-5 dole scroungers, says MP’, Guardian, 12 July 1976; Michael Parkin, ‘The benefit of the doubt’, Guardian, 3 January 1977.

  26. George Mackay Brown, ‘The last ballad’, Listener, 20 June 1968, 800.

  27. Maggie Fergusson, George Mackay Brown: The Life (London: John Murray, 2007), p. 182; Ron Ferguson, George Mackay Brown: The Wound and the Gift (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 2011), p. 164; Mackay Brown, ‘The last ballad’, 801.

  28. George Mackay Brown, An Orkney Tapestry (London: Quartet Books, 1973), pp. 20, 50–51; Mackay Brown, ‘The last ballad’, 800.

  29. George Mackay Brown, Letters from Hamnavoe (London: Steve Savage, 2002), pp. 91, 87.

  30. George Mackay Brown, Under Brinkie’s Brae (London: Steve Savage, 2003), p. 56; George Mackay Brown, Rockpools and Daffodils: An Orcadian Diary 1979–1991 (Edinburgh: Gordon Wright Publishing, 1992), p. 119; Brown, Letters from Hamnavoe, p. 119.

  31. Brown, Letters from Hamnavoe, pp. 144–5.

  32. Brown, Under Brinkie’s Brae, p. 22.

  33. Tom Stoppard, ‘Preview’, Radio Times, 7 November 1974, 5; D. J. Enright, ‘Quick brown fox’, Listener, 15 March 1973, 326.

  34. ‘So who’s afraid of Dr Who?’, Daily Mirror, 22 January 1975; Nancy Mills, ‘The man Who is’, Guardian, 4 September 1976; James Chapman, Inside the Tardis: The Worlds of Doctor Who: A Cultural History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 99, 114.

  35. Richard North, ‘Nice to see you – to see you, nice’, Listener, 23 December 1976, 805.

  36. Bruce Forsyth, Bruce: The Autobiography (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 2001), p. 11.

  37. Joanne Turney, The Culture of Knitting (Oxford: Berg, 2009), p. 38; Hilary Kingsley and Geoff Tibballs, Box of Delights: The Golden Years of Television (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 158.

  38. ‘TV fury over rock boot filth’, Daily Mirror, 2 December 1976.

  39. Jonathan Ross, Why Do I Say These Things (London: Bantam, 2008), pp. 259–60; Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 3.

  40. Simon Frith, ‘Look! Hear! The uneasy relationship of music and television’, Popular Music, 21, 3 (October 2002), 279; Paulu, Television and Radio in the United Kingdom, p. 309.

  41. Marc Spitz, David Bowie: A Biography (London: Aurum, 2010), p. 194.

  42. Dylan Jones, When Ziggy Played Guitar: David Bowie and Four Minutes That Shook the World (London: Preface, 2012), pp. 1–2, 136–7.

  43. Boy George, Take It Like a Man: The Autobiography of Boy George (London: Pan, 1995), p. 61; Dave Rimmer, New Romantics: The Look (London: Omnibus Press, 2003), pp. 102–3.

  44. Paul Baker, Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 117.

  45. Dick Emery, In Character (London: Robson Books, 1973), p. 84.

  46. Andy Medhurst, A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 86; Baker, Polari, p. 118.

  47. Home Office, Report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting (London: HMSO, 1977), p. 58; Jonathan Raban, ‘Preview’, Radio Times, 11 July 1974, 5.

  48. David Hendy, Life on Air: A History of Radio Four (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 243; D. A. N. Jones, ‘Spokesmen and professionals’, Listener, 28 October 1976, 551.

  49. Michael Barrett, ‘Enabling communication – a fourth function for television?’, Learning, Media and Technology, 5, 1 (Spring 1979), 19.

  50. Barrett, ‘Enabling communication’, 19; Home Office, Report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting, p. 293.

  51. Antony Brown, Tyne Tees Television: The First 20 Years: A Portrait (Newcastle: Tyne Tees Television, 1978), p. 26.

  52. A Knight on the Box: 40 Years of Anglia Television (Norwich: Anglia Television, 1999), p. 67.

  53. Colin Willock, ‘How to land a peak audience’, Observer, 19 March 1967.

  54. Jimmy Reid, ‘Does the lens put us truly in the picture?’, Glasgow Herald, 24 January 1981; George Harrison, ‘Foreword’, in I Me Mine (London: Phoenix, 2004), p. 11.

  55. Brown, Tyne Tees Television, p. 48; Home Office, Report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting, p. 355.

  56. Russell Harty, ‘Shadow across the screen’, in Brian Wenham (ed.), The Third Age of Broadcasting (London: Faber, 1982), p. 134.

  57. Dave Lane, Winter Hill Scrapbook (Knutsford: Dave Lane, 2007), p. 72.

  58. ‘Welsh viewers prefer “Z Cars”’, Guardian, 1 February 1964; ‘Welsh language TV at peak time attacked’, The Times, 31 August 1973; ‘Dubbing for roots’, The Economist, 7 October 1978, 30; Jamie Medhurst, A History of Independent Television in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010), p. 172.

  59. Parkinson, BBC1, 28 November 1971; John Davies, Broadcasting and the BBC in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994), p. 298; Medhurst, A History of Independent Television in Wales, pp. 171–2.

  60. Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume V: Competition 1955–1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 949; J. A. R. Pimlott, The Englishman’s Christmas: A Social History (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978), p. 170; Jonathan Coe, The Rotters’ Club (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 274.

  61. Paul Dacre, ‘Why I want to cut the comedy’, Daily Express, 28 December 1973.

  62. John Peel, ‘What’s so funny’, Listener, 7 July 1977, 6; James Thomas, ‘Was it all worth it?
’, Daily Express, 28 December 1977.

  63. Peter Fiddick, ‘BBC steals march on Christmas viewing’, Guardian, 6 December 1977; ‘Britain’s most watched TV’ at bfi.org.uk/features/mostwatched/1970s.html (accessed 9 January 2009).

  64. Graham McCann, Morecambe & Wise (London: Fourth Estate, 1999), p. 140.

  65. John McGrath, A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audience, Class and Form (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981), p. 56; Maria DiCenzo, The Politics of Alternative Theatre in Britain, 1968–1990: The Case of 7:84 (Scotland) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 143.

  66. Harry Thompson, Peter Cook: A Biography (London: Sceptre, 1998), pp. xi–xii; T. C. Worsley, Television: The Ephemeral Art (London: Alan Ross, 1970).

  67. Humphrey Carpenter, Dennis Potter: The Authorised Biography (London: Faber, 1998), p. 202; Dennis Potter, ‘Poisonous gas’, New Statesman, 28 May 1976, 725.

  68. Gerald Priestland, Something Understood: An Autobiography (London: André Deutsch, 1986), p. 206; Dick Fiddy, Missing Believed Wiped (London: BFI, 2001), p. 10.

  69. McCann, Morecambe & Wise, p. 311; Steve Bryant, The Television Heritage: Television Archiving Now and in an Uncertain Future (London: BFI, 1989), p. 17; Graham McCann, ‘Duo in the crown’, Observer, 20 December 1998.

  70. Stephen Smith, ‘Bringing back the sunshine’, Evening Standard, 15 November 2001; Paddy Shennan, ‘Is Xmas telly a turn-off?’, Liverpool Echo, 8 December 2003.

  71. Dacre, ‘Why I want to cut the comedy’; McCann, Morecambe & Wise, p. 231; ‘Does that mean there’ll be no more magic?’, Daily Mirror, 29 May 1984.

  72. N. Ratcliffe, Guardian, 14 March 1979.

  73. Fergusson, George Mackay Brown, 249; Brown, Under Brinkie’s Brae, pp. 173, 125.

  74. Fergusson, George Mackay Brown, 249; Ferguson, George Mackay Brown, pp. 245, 250–51, 116.

  75. David Attenborough, Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (London: BBC, 2002), p. 280.

  76. Brown, Under Brinkie’s Brae, p. 206.

  77. Dennis Potter, ‘Trampling the mud to the wall’, Sunday Times, 6 November 1977.