THAT was a decade that was. That was a decade that was…

Oh, put the emphasis where you like. The fact remains that all of us who were there on the night when Rediffusion and ITV first flickered on to the screen are now 10 – no, 11 – years older.

I’ve changed. How about you?

Rediffusion has certainly altered. For a start it is no longer ‘Associated’.

Incidentally, dear editor, it would be interesting to find out just how many people at present on the pay-roll were with the company on Night One (still known to some as the night they invented champagne).

The answer is 252 – Editor.

From my own memory book I recall Sally Sutherland, Red Lyle, Dennis Atherton, Richard Hawkins, and the late Hugh Finlay – all part of the Press Office over the years.

Where the nostalgia really hit me was at the ITA’s white-tie Guildhall banquet when 10 glorious years and all that were celebrated.

It might have been the wine and brandy but sitting there under the stony stare of Gog and Magog I suddenly realised that 10 years (and part of a hair line) had vanished since I was in almost the same seat for ITV’s curtain-up.

The instant reaction was to check for ‘old familiar faces’ along the tables around me. Of 40 or so TV ‘professionals’ within range only four, perhaps five, had been there back in ’55.

Now I know how Greybeard felt. If my memory is right was Lord Hill, now ITA chairman, at that September 22, 1955, dinner as Postmaster-General?

And at that time didn’t ABC TV consist of just Howard Thomas and a secretary?

Before quitting that particular celebration I wonder if the champagne would have flowed so freely had it been known that within one year Rediffusion would be over £3 million down?

By the way, hasn’t that been perhaps the most important change of all – turning those colossal losses of the early years into a profit?

As a privileged spectator seeing much of the game from close quarters it seems to me that Rediffusion’s development has been in three stages.

The first, naturally, was that somewhat daffy unreal period when the newly recruited army worked excitedly to get the company on the air and keep it there.

Forgive me if there is an overlap for so many shows have been crammed into the decade, but those were the days of Gordon Harker and ‘Sixpenny Corner’. Of Ralph Reader’s ‘Chance Of A Lifetime’.

The weekly sports magazine. The Granville Melodramas. And of Sgt ‘I Only Want The Facts, Mam’ Webb and ‘Dragnet’.

Wasn’t there a freakish series called ‘You’ve Never Seen This’? Book reviews in the morning. Sheila Matthews as Friday’s Girl. Wasn’t this, too, the Jack Hylton variety era… the names which occur being Arthur Askey, Tony Hancock (he once did a one-man show in an emergency), Rosalina Neri, Bryan Michie, Ivor Emmanuel, the Crazy Gang and the Water Rats?

Roland Gillett was the programme controller, Lloyd Williams was on the production staff, and the whole period was like the froth on top of a pint.

The second stage was marked by the appointment of Paul Adorian as managing director and John McMillan as programme controller.

Now the workaday face and output of the company was being established. On went the old originals in ‘Take Your Pick’ and ‘Double Your Money’.

But morning TV disappeared. Much of the early pioneering excitement went with it. And the staff settled down to a more orderly existence.

Schools programmes started – remember Enid Love? Was it in this spell or even earlier that we had those Michael Ingrams’ series? How about those Goonish shows like ‘A Show Called Fred’, ‘Son of Fred’, and ‘Idiots’ Weekly’? Not only Sellers, but Milligan, too.

The work of putting in the foundations went on continuously.

‘Cool For Cats’ caught popular fancy and brought Joan Kemp-Welch’s name to the forefront. ‘This Week’ was going strong. Somewhere around this point Cyril Bennett and Elkan Allan began contributing to the company’s fortunes.

Peter Cotes is one more name I associate with this sector of Rediffusion’s fortune. And was I alone in liking America’s ‘Johnny Staccato’ jazz-thriller series?

I went down the Thames on one Rediffusion birthday party – and across to Paris for another. That was the day that George Sanders, then working on a special programme called ‘Women In Love’, helped to play host. Although only a voyage down the Seine, Captain Tom Brownrigg was also on hand.

So we had ‘No Hiding Place’ and ‘Intertel’, ‘Wagon Train’ and ‘Rawhide’. But where was Tig Roe? Whither Alan Morris? Goodbye Kingsway Corner.

Out went advertising magazines. Out went ‘Jim’s Inn’ – after setting the standard for all shows of this type. But in came the many successful Pinter plays.

The most successful, of course, being ‘The Lover’, with Alan Badel and Vivien Merchant. It must have won almost every award possible… actor, actress, author and director. Surely Rediffusion’s most successful production in all those 11 years?

Just as the TV scene was growing contentedly sedate on came ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ to give half the nation convulsions and the other half blood pressure.

Visiting the ‘RSG’ studio at TV House brought back all the din of 1955 and that drilling year when Adastral House was being converted.

By now Rediffusion was part of life. Dan Farson, always prominent in company affairs on the screen (his ‘Time Gentlemen, Please’ show was not only entered at Montreux but must have been responsible for the introduction of ‘Stars and Garters’), was a notable departure.

But phase two was drawing to a close too. On went John McMillan to general manager and in came Cyril Bennett as the new programme controller.

This is now part of the latest story… come in David Frost, Stella Richman, Benny Green, ‘Three After Six’, ‘The Rat Catchers’, and David Jacobs.

Pausing only to nod a farewell to Buddy Bregman and a friendly greeting to Europe’s favourite TV ‘uncle’ Eric Maschwitz, it scarcely seems credible that Monica Rose was hardly walking when ‘Double Your Money’ was first televised.

Yes, you’ve changed all right. Some more memory jogs… Stuart Hood, that ‘Arabian Nights’ opening for Wembley Studios, ‘Hippodrome’ in colour, the American deal with David Susskind, ‘Dial M For Music’, ‘Alfred Marks Time’, Keith Fordyce, Groucho Marx, Dickie Henderson, and on, and on.

It’s been a long time. Perhaps after all it should be that was a decade that was? What’s more Gog and Magog are still waiting.

The post That was the decade that was appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

This attitude meant there was no local news service in London. But the Independent Television Authority (ITA) kept pushing for one, so Rediffusion came up with Three After Six (so named because it was originally shown at 18:03, but it later drifted to 18:08, leading Rediffusion to retcon the name into meaning Three PEOPLE After Six). This was not a conventional news programme. It wasn’t even a conventional features programme in the style of Midland Montage or About Anglia of the time. This was something very different. The TVTimes for the London region covering 28 November to 4 December 1964 (issue 474) reports.

In theory, it sounds easy – just assemble three intelligent people who take an interest in what’s going on in the world, sit them in front of the cameras and let them chat to each other for 20 minutes. No scripts to be written and learned, no elaborate rehearsals.

But spend a little time with the Three After Six team (presented by Rediffusion on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays), and you’ll find that the secret of the programme’s success is a little more complicated.

The trio have to like each other enough to enjoy discussion, yet have such different personalities that they are constantly disagreeing. It’s generally agreed that the current team of Dee Wells, Alan Brien and Benny Green disagree with rare pungency and wit.

They have the same profession – journalism – in common. But their interests and backgrounds are so diverse that they can never be quite sure what the others are going to think on any particular issue.

The threesome’s alliances, as they contradict each other, are constantly shifting. And each feels differently about the show.

Dee Wells is usually the most apprehensive before they go on the air.

“It’s working without a script that’s so unnerving. You walk in that studio with nothing except those opinions and facts you’ve got inside your head,” she said.

“Some jobs get easier as you get used to the routine. This one gets worse.”

But Dee never worries that she might run out of opinions. “Certainly not. I’ll find something to say about anything. The more subjects we discuss the better.”

Alan Brien, who has been accustomed to bashing out Instant Opinion articles on his typewriter for 15 years, is not bothered by the lack of script – it enables him to deliver his views direct, without the bother of typing. But he’s more cautious than Dee. “There are some very complicated issues I’ve never thought out and wouldn’t care to offer an off-the-cuff opinion on. Steel nationalisation, for example.

“And there are some strong views I hold that I’d rather not discuss in public because it might be needlessly upsetting to people who don’t share them and who are stuck with their own attitudes, no matter what I say.

“I try to remember,” continued Alan, “that, although we are just expressing our quick opinions and are likely to have forgotten what we talked about a few days ago, some of the things we discuss have special significance to some viewers.

“I recently met a woman who took me up on my remarks about publicans who sit at the bar with the customers instead of serving behind it. I’d expressed myself forcefully and had upset her because she and her husband had just taken over a pub.

“I’d made these remarks about three months ago and had forgotten them, but they’d stuck in her mind!”

Benny Green, who finds every show an enjoyable gamble, admitted: “If I don’t know anything much about a subject I try to make a virtue of it. I’m ignorant about motoring, for example, so I say interest in cars is a waste of time – which horrifies Dee!”

“I try to be as funny as possible, to entertain viewers, but I always try to tell the truth as I see it and it doesn’t mean, when I’m treating a thing humorously, that my views are not serious.

“Once, working on a TV show from Manchester, a Frenchwoman – Ginette Spanier – laughed at everything I said. Afterwards, she told me me ‘We don’t have any comedians like you in France.’ I replied: ‘Madam, my opinions were perfectly serious.’ The she laughed some more!”

For the record, Benny was enthusiastic, Alan indifferent and Dee worried.

Although Three After Six is unscripted it still takes up a good deal of the participants’ time. Three days a week they meet for an hour at 10am and look through newspapers and magazines in search of topics. Then they meet again at five and warm up with a discussion, usually on something they daren’t discuss on the air. A typical subject: the news that ladies’ bottoms are back in fashion.

Said Benny, who was a professional dance band musician for 10 years before becoming a full-time writer five years ago: “I live at Wembley, which means that by the time I get back home in the middle of the day, I have only a couple of hours to do some writing before it’s time to set off for the Television House studio.

“But I find that having to read all the papers every day gives me ideas for articles and scripts, so I do well out of it.”

Dee came to London from New York 11 years ago because she thought living would be less expensive here. “Unfortunately, I discovered I had to get a labour permit, which wasn’t easy. But I contributed a few paragraphs to The Guardian, wrote about fashion for the London office of the New York Times and, when I’d got a few cuttings, went to the Sunday Express and told them I was what they needed.

“They said they were doing fine, didn’t need anybody. But I persisted and they gave me a job.”

Now Dee fills in the gaps between Three After Six by contributing to The Sun. While her income has increased, she has a sneaking feeling that London has become as expensive as New York.

Alan, who has a flat in town and a phone-less weekend cottage on the Thames at Cookham, Berkshire, said: “Ten o’clock is the earliest I can manage to think about work. I’ll resort to any excuse, even washing the dishes and mowing the lawn, to avoid starting work before 11.”

As he is the Sunday Telegraph’s drama critic the time of Three After Six suits him well.

“We come off the air at 6.30, just in time for a drink before dashing off to the theatre. I often need that drink: free seats most nights may sound marvellous but there are few things more painful than sitting through a bad play.

“And I invariably know when I’m in for a bad night when my wife refuses to come with me. She has an uncanny instinct for spotting boring plays!”

• Dee Wells was born in Rhode Island, USA, on 19 March 1925; she died in London, UK, on 24 June 2003
• Alan Brien was born on 12 March 1925 and died in London on 23 May 2008
• Benny Green was born in Leeds on 9 December 1927; he died in London on 22 June 1998

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