Beakyobit: Keith Mitchell

He'll be remembered for his acting rather than his strange pop career, of course: Keith Mitchell has died.

The story of Captain Beaky is probably more interesting than the tale of Captain Beaky as sung by Mitchell.

On the long-lost Captain Beaky website, Jeremy Lloyd tells how Keith, a freak accident and Start The Week came together in 1977 to give Beaky wings:

"Keith and I met when we were working together in Robert and Elizabeth at The Lyric. He being the leading man while I clanked on and off stage in Household Cavalry armour, as a dotty lover of his girlfriend's sister. To pass the time I would scribble about the trials and tribulations of a lonely frog or a penniless French mouse (both situations closely akin to my circumstances at the time) and Keith, an excellent artist with a great sense of humour, illustrated them. Our collaboration ceased abruptly when the Management allowed me to appear in a film, on the condition I would be back for the evening performance. All my part required was that I should stand in front of a
cannon and be shot. The explosion blew me across the studio, resulting in a lot of surgery and a get well slowly card from my understudy. I convalesced for part of the time in Jamaica and wrote Dilys the Dachshund on the back of an old record cover, which I received intact, minus Joe Loss's Greatest Hits, 12 years later.

"The reason I was suddenly trying to recover the poems was due to Lance Percival reading one on the radio show 'Start the Week'. A publisher expressed interest, but I was told that at least 30 would be required to make up a book. About this time I got a call from Keith: could he read some on a TV show? Delighted, and please could I have them back? Fate was obviously taking a hand, for a few days later I met Jonathan Rowlands, whom I had known in LA when I was writing 'Laugh In'. I discovered that together with his partner, Hugh Murphy, his company had produced the Sir John Betjeman albums, of which he gave me copies. I was enchanted by Jim Parker's music, to which the poems were read, and showed him mine. In between writing 'Are You Being Served?', Jim, Hugh and I worked together for a year, with me writing new poems, Jim composing the music and Hugh producing the album. I still find it hard to believe that these characters have come to life as a book and a record album, but they have and I'm delighted as they are."

For younger readers: in case it's not obvious, Start The Week was a very different sort of programme in 1977.

The album didn't set the world alight; but in 1980, it was to get a second wind from Radio 1. Which was also a different sort of place in those days.

Tony Blackburn played it first on Radio One - in his internal exile on Junior Choice era; Noel Edmonds then grabbed the record and played it on his Sunday morning proto-House Party show. This snowballed into a Hissing Sid Is Innocent campaign - borrowing both from the George Davis Is Innocent graffiti protests, and the Who Shot JR tropes of the same era. It was enough to catapult Beaky - and with it, Keith Mitchell - into the Top Five.

Kate Bush will knock your block off, Steve

That's a song ruined, then. Steve Blacknell reckons he was Kate Bush's Man With The Child In His Eyes.

Yes, that Steve Blacknell. The Daily Mail suggests this:

Steve himself had a successful career in music and TV, and he's best known today for having interviewed Phil Collins on Concorde as the Genesis drummer 'commuted' between the London and Philadelphia stages of Bob Geldof's pioneering Live Aid concert in 1985.

But he's actually best remembered - if at all - as the bloke who did Knock Your Block Off.

Blacknell's own website, by the way, describes his filling-air-time interview with Collins thus:

a year later took a pivotal role in "Live Aid", interviewing Phil Collins on his historic transatlantic concorde flight between London and Philadelphia.

Yes, that was the pivotal part of Live Aid; right up there with Frank Partridge doing news headlines at 3pm.

So, what is the evidence that Blacknell is the Man?

He was Kate Bush's boyfriend at the time she wrote the song - she was 13 at the time; Blacknell was born six years before her. Don't do the maths.

He also has the handwritten lyrics for the song:

Steve Blacknell, 58, of Hythe, Kent, said: 'By the spring of 1975 she had become my first true love.'

'All I really knew about her was that she wrote songs, played the piano and lived in a lovely house with an equally lovely family.

'But I've been told by those around her that I was indeed The Man With The Child In His Eyes and I know that those words were given to me by someone very special.

'They say you never forget your first love and in my case it's as true as it is for anyone. It's true too that she went on to charm, enlighten and entrance people all over the world.'

'I'm proud to have known and loved her, and proud to have shared such amazing times with the genius that is Kate Bush.'

Yes, yes, I'm sure you have a small tear in your eye that you're wiping away, although given that we know about this because Blacknell has put the lyrics up for sale, you might want to feel less moved and more slightly nauseated.

Against his suggestion that he is The Man is that the song doesn't really seem to be about an actual man, and most - if not all - of Bush's work is based on fiction. Perhaps Blacknell also believes he's that there Heathcliff out of the other one.

And, perhaps more importantly, there's Kate on Swap Shop:



About five minutes in, a caller asks Kate what the song is about. "It's about men generally" she explains. To be fair, Steve Blacknell is a man, generally, but there's not any indication that the song is about a specific person at all.

Being an article on Kate, the Mail, of course, is obliged by law to suggest that Bush is some sort of weird recluse:

Kate Bush, now married to guitarist Danny McIntosh, completely withdrew from public life in 1998 following the birth of her son Albert.

Really, Daily Mail? Never mind the 2005 album and promotional stuff, who's this, then, on stage with Dave Gilmour in 2007?

Noel Edmonds' dummy friend

Noel Edmonds drives round in a London taxi, but has had problems because people won't believe he isn't a taxi driver. So he came up with a cunning plan:

"Noel's wife Liz came up with the idea of putting a shop mannequin dressed in real clothes on the back seat so it looks like there is always a passenger on board.

'And to make it more realistic she gave the giant doll a mobile phone constantly held to her ear! Now Noel hardly ever gets bothered - and he's delighted.'"

It's quite inspired. Although you'd have thought having Noel Edmonds in the driving seat would have been more off-putting than having a rubber lady in the back.

Blobby Blobby Blobby: That's the sound of the Daily Mail

(It's a slight stretch, but Mr. Blobby did have a couple of novelty hits and so just scrapes in under the remit...)

The Daily Mail takes time out of demanding that Stephen Gately's corpse be used as a deadly warning to gays to stop it, in order to revist Blobbyland, discovering that Noel Edmond's playground now lies in tatters.

Somewhat oddly, the Mail insists that the place has been destroyed by "ravers" (dictates of space in the article apparently left out the explanation that, following his 1989 Tory conference speech, Douglas Hurd had all the acid-house ravers fired so far into space they landed 20 years in the future.)

Still, it might all sound fun, but won't someone think of the children? Oh, hang about, someone has:

Mr Blobby fan Chris Bryant, 25, said he had visited the theme park in 1998 with his parents.

He said: 'I remember it being really good fun. It was amazing wandering round Mr Blobby's house, and it's a shame it's now been completely wrecked.

'The ravers should have more respect for Mr Blobby. He was a hero to a lot of kids and the thought of them taking drugs and having all-night raves in his house is completely disrespectful.'

I would have assumed that Chris was merely taking the piss out of the Mail, had he not revealed that he visited Blobbyland when he was a teenager. That detail alone must, surely, mean he's serious?

Good news, Chris: any "kids" who Blobby was a hero to would have been kids in the early 90s, so by now, they'll probably have more pressing worries, like sexually transmitted diseases or mortgage arrears to be worrying about. Although if they had had a hero who did little more than fall over a lot, perhaps not.

To be fair, Blobby did have one other talent, of managing to make Noel Edmonds not the most annoying person on the Noel Edmonds Programme That Isn't The One That The Guy Died On. Perhaps the druggies should respect Blobby for that, if nothing else.

Radio One More Time: Perkins Grange

If you ever needed evidence that some ideas work much better on radio than on television, Noel Edmonds' Sunday morning trips to Perkins Grange, compared with the same idea, transplanted to BBC One and Crinkly Bottom, pretty much makes the case open-and-shut.

What on radio could be implied and glossed over - naturally, you're in the baronial home of Radio 4 newsreader Brian Perkins, who happens to be on hand to help out during the morning - needs to be shown on television; where Perkins Grange existed as a perfect mental image, Crinkly Bottom was clearly a cheap studio set in a television hangar in London.

Other elements lost something in translation.

On Radio 1, Noel pretty much invented the funny phone call. Actually, the Funny Phone Call, for that's what he called them. Before every idiot able to operate a mixing desk phone got in on the act, and the wit was bludgeoned out to make room for Scott Mills telling parents their kids are changing their name to Wanker, there was still something amusing in the idea of Noel ringing up in a "disguised" voice, making a mild claim (traffic lights outside your window, that sort of thing), letting the victim get slightly riled, before the big reveal "it's Noel Edmonds, on Radio 1..."

Actually, we don't know why Noel bothered putting on a fake voice, as it was always the same fake voice. As a relatively fresh idea, it never needed to push itself to levels of credulity-stretch or cruelty to get its laugh, and was so popular BBC Cassettes even stuck out a couple of compilations of the 'best' calls.

When taken to television, though, the concept was ratcheted up into the Gotcha, and the extra budget required celebrity targets, and before long it was all about Dave Lee Travis and Keith Chegwin. Interestingly, the move to celebritising the format had been presage during Mike Read's period on the Sunday morning show, where he took to doing prank calls on celebrities - most notably, persuading Su Pollard she'd been chosen to sing the lyrics that were about to be added to the EastEnders theme tune.

Likewise, the readings of Thomas The Tank Engine - the 'something for all the family' element of Sunday Mornings - somehow worked itself up into being Mr. Blobby on the TV. Presumably, these days, no Radio 1 show would be able to the cost of rights to bring Thomas to the air, but Edmonds was working back before Ringo Starr built the Tank Engine's stock to such levels.

Noel might point to the surprisingly high figures for Noel Edmond's House Party and proclaim it a success. On the other hand, when he did the Radio 1 show, he was one of the most popular presenters in the UK; by the end of House Party, Noel was something of an entertainment pariah. It all depends, of course, on what you see as a success.

[Part of Radio One More Time]

Archbishop's son makes Debretts. Sorry, what was the news again?

People of Today: Westwood in, DLT out. Also Mark and Lard filling a space left by the booting out of Noel Edmonds. Apparently reruns of Telly Addicts aint enough to ensure your fame.