by Joe Moran
29. ‘The truth about Coronation Street’, Daily Mirror, 6 August 1971.
30. Chris Waters, ‘Representations of everyday life: L. S. Lowry and the landscape of memory in postwar Britain’, Representations, 65 (Winter 1999), 131; David Bret, Morrissey: Scandal and Passion (London: Robson Books, 2004), pp. 7, 65.
31. Georgina Henry, ‘Top soap washes too white for TV watchdog’, Guardian, 15 October 1992.
32. Vera Gottlieb, ‘Brookside: “Damon’s YTS comes to an end” (Barry Woodward): paradoxes and contradictions’, in George W. Brandt (ed.), British Television Drama in the 1980s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 53; Nancy Banks-Smith, ‘Feather-brained wedding’, Guardian, 15 August 2009; Nancy Banks-Smith, ‘Like her or Kuala Lumpur’, Guardian, 14 November 1996.
33. Neil Powell, Amis & Sons: Two Literary Generations (London: Macmillan, 2008), p. 233; Kingsley Amis, Difficulties with Girls (London: Penguin, 1989), p. 266; Kingsley Amis, The King’s English (London: Penguin, 2011), p. 189; Eric Jacobs, Kingsley Amis: A Biography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995), p. 15.
34. Zygmunt Bauman, Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), p. 173.
35. Mark Lawson, ‘Life can be spooky in the fourth person’, Independent, 14 November 1991; John Sutherland, Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography (London: Viking, 2002), p. 543.
36. Petrie, ‘Critical discourse and the television audience’, p. 106.
37. Michael Wearing, ‘What about real life, Mr Birt?’, Independent, 28 August 1998; Thomas Quinn, ‘Wogan hits out at BBC’, Daily Mirror, 17 November 1999.
38. Georgina Born, Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC (London: Secker and Warburg, 2004), p. 287.
39. Rolf Harris, My Autobiography: Can You Tell What It is Yet? (London: Corgi, 2002), p. 359.
40. Peter Conrad, ‘See no chimps …’, Observer, 19 October 1997; John Ellis, ‘Scheduling: the last creative act in television?’, Media, Culture and Society, 22, 1 (January 2000), 32; Gauntlett and Hill, TV Living, p. 48.
41. John Ellis, ‘Documentary and truth on television: the crisis of 1999’, in Alan Rosenthal and John Corner (eds), New Challenges for Documentary (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 343.
42. Joan Bakewell, ‘Delia Smith, BBC2’, The Times, 15 March 1980; John Ezard, ‘Delia finds the recipe for long-lasting fame’, Guardian, 3 December 2001.
43. ‘Postgate calling’, TV Mirror, 2 January 1954, 22.
44. ‘The empty lobster pots’, Financial Times, 8 August 1962; ‘New taste for scampi brings Scots fishing prosperity’, The Times, 6 August 1962; Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 789; Alison Bowyer, Delia Smith: The Biography (London: André Deutsch, 1999), p. 90.
45. Emily Green, ‘First, catch your bandwagon’, Independent on Sunday, 10 November 1996; Cathy Newman, ‘Celebrity endorsement proves recipe for success’, Financial Times, 23 November 1998.
46. Bob Chaundy, ‘Obituary: Colin McIntyre’, Guardian, 12 June 2012.
47. Bowyer, Delia Smith, pp. 153–4.
48. Bowyer, Delia Smith, p. 174.
49. Charles Leadbeater, ‘Delianomics’, Mail on Sunday, 12 December 1999; Charles Leadbeater, Living on Thin Air: The New Economy (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 28–30.
50. Bowyer, Delia Smith, pp. 189, 174; Green, ‘First, catch your bandwagon’.
51. Eric Griffiths, ‘Hegel’s winter collection’, Times Literary Supplement, 8 March 1996, 20–21.
52. Alan Warde and Lydia Martens, Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 58–61.
53. Bowyer, Delia Smith, p. 161.
54. Andy Medhurst, ‘Day for night’, Sight and Sound, 26, 6 (June 1999), 27.
55. Jewkes, ‘The use of media in constructing identities’, 215; Deborah Cohen, Household Gods: The British and their Possessions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 207.
56. Hilary Kingsley and Geoff Tibballs, Box of Delights: The Golden Years of Television (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 36; Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, Volume 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994), p. 72.
57. Michael Leapman, ‘The Mel Gibson of the potting shed meets his mulcher’, Independent, 21 September 1997; Sue Arnold, ‘These days you can’t see the trees for the wood’, Independent, 10 April 2004; Eric Robson, ‘Why I loathe TV garden makeovers’, Daily Mail, 10 April 2004; Alan Titchmarsh, Knave of Spades: Growing Pains of a Gardener (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2010), p. 274.
58. Titchmarsh, Knave of Spades, p. 273.
59. Gay Search, Gardeners’ World Through the Years (London: Carlton Books, 2006), pp. 65–6.
60. Charles Leadbeater, Up the Down Escalator: Why the Global Pessimists are Wrong (London: Viking, 2002), pp. 65–6.
61. Medhurst, ‘Day for night’, p. 26.
62. Justine Picardie, ‘Dale Winton, the king of the aisles’, Independent, 8 January 1995; Polly Toynbee, ‘Most daytime TV is a tepid dishwater soup’, Radio Times, 11–17 May 1996, 14.
63. Letters, Radio Times, 1–7 June 1996, 119; Gauntlett and Hill, TV Living, pp. 245, 288, 222–3.
64. Janet Willis, ‘Staying in touch: television and the over-seventies’, in Petrie and Willis (eds), Television and the Household, p. 38; Gauntlett and Hill, TV Living, pp. 107–8; Auberon Waugh, ‘Creating new jobs’, Daily Telegraph, 8 February 1997.
65. George Mackay Brown, The First Wash of Spring (London: Steve Savage, 2006), pp. 240–42.
66. Gerard Gilbert, ‘Make your own entertainment’, Independent, 20 April 1998.
67. Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Britain (London: Quartet, 2000), pp. 142, 146; Peter Hitchens, Monday Morning Blues (London: Quartet, 2000), pp. 49–50.
68. Oliver James, Britain on the Couch: Treating the Low Serotonin Society (London: Arrow, 1998), p. 29; Oliver James, ‘It keeps them quiet now but …’, Observer, 29 November 1998.
69. Winifred Holtby, Anderby Wold (London: Virago, 1981), p. 239.
70. Mark Rowe, ‘Eighteen months of TV ends in a flash’, Independent on Sunday, 23 May 1999.
71. Sean Day-Lewis, ‘Langham Diary’, Listener, 8 December 1983, 20.
72. Alexandra Frean, ‘Viewers have no right to watch TV, say law lords’, The Times, 25 April 1997.
9. A glimmer on the dull grey tube
1. Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), p. 345.
2. Dennis Potter, Seeing the Blossom: Two Interviews and a Lecture (London: Faber, 1994), p. 55; Dennis Potter, ‘Hurrah for the gogglebox’, Daily Herald, 31 August 1962.
3. Humphrey Carpenter, Dennis Potter: The Authorised Biography (London: Faber, 1998), p. 123.
4. Carpenter, Dennis Potter, p. 133; Lewis Chester, All My Shows Are Great: The Life of Lew Grade (London, Aurum, 2010), p. 94.
5. Arena, BBC2, 30 January 1987.
6. Dennis Potter, ‘Some sort of preface …’, in Blue Remembered Hills and Other Plays (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), pp. 28–9.
7. W. Stephen Gilbert, Fight and Kick and Bite: The Life and Work of Dennis Potter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995), pp. 44–5; Potter, Seeing the Blossom, pp. 52–4.
8. Tony Garnett, ‘Notes for the Raymond Williams Memorial Lecture’, Critical Quarterly, 40, 3 (October 1998), 33–4; Chris Barrie, ‘Pay TV warning for “all live sport and top shows”’, Guardian, 6 November 1998.
9. Peter Bazalgette, ‘Golden age? This is it’, Guardian, 19 November 2001; Peter Bazalgette, ‘TV totalitarianism is dead. Power to the digital people!’, Observer, 30 November 2003.
10. Chris Tarrant, Millionaire Moments (London: Time Warner, 2002), p. 6; Mike Wayne, ‘Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? Contextual analysis and the endgame of public service television’, in Dan Fleming (ed.), Formations: A 21st Century Media Studies Textbook (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 209–10.
11. Cosmo
Landesman, ‘Not so much Big Brother as the little exhibitionists’, Sunday Times, 23 July 2000; Will Self, ‘It’s National Service for navel-gazers’, Independent, 20 August 2000.
12. J. G. Ballard, ‘Thirteen to Centaurus’, in Ballard, The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1 (London: Harper Perennial, 2006), p. 447; J.G. Ballard, The Day of Creation (New York: Liveright, 2012), p. 64.
13. John Baxter, The Inner Man: The Life of J. G. Ballard (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011), pp. 306–7.
14. Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, ed. Francis Darwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 154, 175.
15. Christopher Dunkley, ‘That’s enough of the navel-gazing’, Financial Times, 23 August 2000, 16.
16. Laurie Taylor and Bob Mullan, Uninvited Guests: The Intimate Secrets of Television and Radio (London: Chatto and Windus, 1986), p. 62.
17. Ferdinand Mount, Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us (London: Simon and Schuster, 2010), p. 206; see also Brett Mills, ‘Television wildlife documentaries and animals’ right to privacy’, Continuum, 24, 2 (April 2010), 193–202.
18. David Attenborough, Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (London: BBC, 2002), pp. 187–8; Elaine Morgan, ‘The greatest story ever told’, Radio Times, 13–19 January 1979, 77.
19. Desmond Morris, ‘The day of reckoning’, Guardian, 15 September 2000.
20. ‘Active life for zoo animals’, New Scientist, 29 June 1961, 773; Desmond Morris, Watching: Encounters with Humans and Other Animals (London: Little Books, 2006), pp. 171–2.
21. Desmond Morris, ‘Oh, Brother!’, Daily Mail, 31 May 2005; Desmond Morris, ‘Rumbled in the jungle’, Daily Telegraph, 18 November 2006; Jenny Johnson, ‘Nicest man on the planet?’, Daily Mail, 31 May 2006.
22. Charlie Brooker, Screen Burn (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), pp. 17, 276–7.
23. James Harding, ‘Davies has a bad week at the office’, Financial Times, 16 March 2002; Ben Walters, The Office (London: BFI, 2005), pp. 40, 45.
24. Graham McCann, ‘You never had it so good or so funny’, Financial Times, 13 November 2002.
25. Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You: Why Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter (London: Penguin, 2006), pp. 65–6; Clive James, ‘Fantasy in the West Wing’, in The Meaning of Recognition: New Essays 2001–2005 (London: Picador, 2006), p. 32.
26. Richard Hoggart, An Imagined Life: Life and Times, Volume 3: 1959–91 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 26.
27. Richard Hoggart, ‘Dumb and dumber’, Guardian, 14 March 2002.
28. David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (London: Profile, 2006), p. xii; John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), p. 16.
29. Urmee Khan, ‘Nearly 30,000 homes in the UK still have black-and-white TVs’, Daily Telegraph, 14 November 2009; Chris Mullin, Decline & Fall: Diaries 2005–2010 (London: Profile, 2011), p. 334.
30. Department for Culture, Media and Sport, A Public Service for All: The BBC in the Digital Age (London: The Stationery Office, 2006), p. 16.
31. Paul Smith, ‘The politics of television policy: The case of digital switchover in the United Kingdom’, International Journal of Digital Television, 2, 1 (January 2011), 42; Department for Culture, A Public Service for All, p. 4.
32. Emily Dugan, ‘Cumbrian town paves the way for television’s big switchover to digital’, Independent, 16 October 2007.
33. A. J. Pollard, ‘Introduction’, in Christian D. Liddy and Richard H. Britnell (eds), North-East England in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), p. 3.
34. Geoff Phillips, Memories of Tyne Tees Television (Durham: GP Electronic Services, 1998), p. 51.
35. Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now – As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It and Long for It (London: Granta, 2011), p. 255.
36. ‘One Man quits, fed up with sheepdogs’, Daily Mail, 27 September 1993; Anne Evans, ‘Minister backs sheepdog show’, Observer, 21 February 1999; Anne Evans and Peter Hooley, ‘Smith cultivates dropped collies’, Observer, 21 February 1999; Robin Page, ‘Come bye and see us – sheep are back on TV’, Mail on Sunday, 9 December 2007; Julia Stuart, ‘One Man and His Dog’, Independent, 24 March 2001.
37. Hansard, HL Deb, 12 March 2001, vol. 623, col. 539.
38. Louise Gray, ‘Adam Henson receives death threats over badger cull’, Daily Telegraph, 9 May 2011.
39. Rob Young, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music (London: Faber, 2010), p. 410; Peter Hall, Diaries, ed. John Goodwin (London: Oberon, 2000), p. 154.
40. Dennis Potter, The Changing Forest: Life in the Forest of Dean Today (London: Minerva, 1996), p. 2.
41. Craig Taylor, Return to Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village in the 21st Century (London: Granta, 2007), pp. 227, 112.
42. Eric Robson, The Border Line (London: Frances Lincoln, 2006), p. 61.
43. Rhys Evans, Gwynfor Evans: A Portrait of a Patriot (Tal-y-bont: Y Lolfa, 2008), pp. 407, 413, 428.
44. Jamie Medhurst, A History of Independent Television in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010), p. 175; Evans, Gwynfor Evans, p. 428.
45. John Caughie, ‘Scottish television: what would it look like?’, in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television (London: BFI, 1982), p. 120; Duncan Petrie, ‘Television in Scotland: audience and cultural identity’, in Duncan Petrie and Janet Willis (eds), Television and the Household: Reports from the BFI’s Audience Tracking Study (London: BFI, 1995), p. 87; Wilson McLeod, ‘Gaelic in the New Scotland: politics, rhetoric and public discourse’, Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues, 2, 2 (Summer 2001), 11–12.
46. Allan Brown, ‘BBC Alba shows power of Gaelic lobby’, Sunday Times, 5 October 2008.
47. Andrew Tolmie, ‘Cho tin ris a pearraid’, Daily Mail, 18 February 2008; Kathleen Nutt, ‘Gaelic TV station loses a third of its viewers’, Sunday Times, 1 February 2009.
48. Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (Altona, Victoria: Common Ground, 2003), p. 150.
49. John Durham Peters, Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 52, 155.
50. Sheila Whitely, Too Much Too Young: Popular Music, Age and Gender (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 173; ‘Telescope technical know-how helps give TV audience star-maker power’, PR Newswire Europe, 8 February 2002.
51. Peter Bazalgette, ‘Foreword’, in Stephen Coleman, A Tale of Two Houses: The House of Commons, the Big Brother House and the People at Home (London: Hansard Society, 2003), p. 3.
52. Institute of Education, University of London, University of Sheffield, University of East London and British Library, Children’s Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age 2009–2011: Project Report (2011), pp. 13, 21; Sanna Inthorn and John Street, ‘“Simon Cowell for prime minister”? Young citizens’ attitudes towards celebrity politics’, Media, Culture and Society, 33, 3 (April 2011), 6.
53. Marista Leishman, My Father: Lord Reith of the BBC (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 2006), pp. 112–13.
54. Ned Temko, ‘Brown outlines his vision for an “X Factor” Britain’, Observer, 5 November 2006; Jonathan Freedland, ‘Inspired by TV, Brown gets the X factor’, Guardian, 13 February 2008; Gordon Brown, ‘We’ll use our schools to break down class barriers’, Observer, 10 February 2008.
55. Tony Benn, Years of Hope: Diaries, Letters and Papers, 1940–1962 (London: Hutchinson, 1994), p. 567; Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Britain (London: Quartet, 2000), p. 7; Adam Sherwin, ‘Phone lines go quiet as the Idol bubble pops’, The Times, 20 December 2003.
56. David Cameron, ‘I am pro-BBC’, Evening Standard, 27 April 2010.
57. Jeremy Hunt, Speech at the Royal Television Society, London, 28 September 2010.
58. Commercially Viable Local Television in the UK
: A Review by Nicholas Shott for the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (December 2010), p. 12.
59. Piers Morgan, Misadventures of a Big Mouth Brit (London: Random House, 2010), p. 10.
60. Pete Waterman, ‘Why I refuse to watch X Factor’, Daily Mail, 11 December 2009; Adam MacQueen, Private Eye: The First 50 Years (London: Private Eye, 2011), p. 168.
10. Closedown
1. Ronald Blythe, Word from Wormingford: A Parish Year (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2007), p. 49.
2. ‘How Emley Moor’s giant crashed’, Yorkshire Post, 20 March 1969.
3. ‘Yorkshire’s giant TV mast crashes on village’, Yorkshire Post, 20 March 1969; Malcolm Barker, ‘Ice crushes the TV monster’, Yorkshire Post, 20 March 1969.
4. ‘YTV could be back tonight’, Yorkshire Post, 21 March 1969; ‘ITV back soon for 4m viewers’, Yorkshire Post, 21 March 1969.
5. Simon Armitage, All Points North (London: Penguin, 1999), p. 22; Jonathan Meades, Even Further Abroad: I Remember the Future, BBC2, 15 February 1996.
6. Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness (London: Jonathan Cape, 2011), p. 159.
7. ‘Manchester on TV: Ghosts of Winter Hill’ at news.bbc.co.uk/local/manchester/low/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8332000/8332589.stm (accessed 13 March 2009).
8. Rosie Millard, ‘Do not adjust your mindset’, The Times, 21 April 2012.
9. ‘Seen and heard’, Manchester Guardian, 1 April 1930.
10. Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 1.
11. Jonathan Eberhart, ‘Giving ourselves away’, Science News, 113, 9 (4 March 1978), 138–9.
12. Jean Heidmann, Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 174–5.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During some of the writing and research for this book I held a British Academy Mid-Career Research Fellowship, and I am grateful to the British Academy for this support, which freed me from teaching and administrative duties and provided funding to visit archives. The Mass Observation material quoted in the book is reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, and is copyright © the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive. The material from the BBC’s Written Archives is reproduced with permission of the BBC and is copyright © the BBC. Jessica Scantlebury at the Mass Observation Archive at Sussex and Louise North at the BBC Written Archives at Caversham were particularly helpful in retrieving material for me and dealing with my queries. Jez Lowe kindly allowed me to quote some words from his song ‘Mike Neville Said It (So It Must Be True)’, which are copyright © Jez Lowe/Lowelife Music. I would like to thank the following people for reading draft material or offering ideas, information and other assistance: Jim Barnard, Michel Byrne, Jo Croft, Ross Dawson, Alice Ferrebe, Elspeth Graham, Colin Harrison, Jackie Kelly, Liam Moran, Michael Moran, Wynn Moran, Glenda Norquay, Joanna Price, Amber Regis, Helen Rogers, Gerry Smyth, Karolina Sutton, Kate Walchester and Andy Young. Penny Gardiner and Penny Daniel took enormous care in preparing the manuscript for publication. And, as usual, this book has been immeasurably improved by the work of my wonderful editor, Daniel Crewe.
