Podcasts about z cars

LISA PARKER with someof her recent TV viewing.This week, after far too long an absence, LISA PARKER from the ROUND THE ARCHIVES PODCAST is back and, as is often the case, we spend a very pleasant hour just chatting about what kind of archive television shows she and her partner ANDREW have been watching during the intervening months.So we talk a little bit about their recent viewing choices which include season thirteen of DOCTOR WHO (The one that includes such classics as TERROR OF THE ZYGONS and THE SEEDS OF DOOM which is yet to be released on Blu-Ray) and her recent rediscovery of the nineteen-nineties sci-fi classic BABYLON 5, and if both of those series don't convince you of our sci-fi credentials this week, we also give a nod towards PICARD, season seven in the DOCTOR WHO BLU-RAY COLLECTION, and even BLAKE's SEVEN.Although, to be fair, the bulk of our conversation is given over to an appreciation of Z-CARS (as can currently be enjoyed on TPTV) and her recent rediscovery of THE COLLECTORS, an almost forgotten one-series wonder of a drama series which was filmed in the town of POOLE where they now live, which prompts a few thoughts on the joy of seeing familiar locations in the TV series we enjoy.And if that's not enough, we also get a swift update on their epic CROSSROADS marathon viewing, and touch on one or two other series along the way.First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 4th 2025.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

It's that time of year again, our pre-Gallifrey One rundown of the greatest convention on Earth as we go through the schedule with a fine tooth comb, examine which panels and other events we and others are excited about, and as a special bonus this year you'll get to hear Steven go completely off the rails about UK television stalwart Z-Cars! Next stop: Gallifrey One, and Episode 1000 with Steven Moffat and Julie Gardner LIVE on stage on Friday! Links: Support Radio Free Skaro on Patreon Gallifrey One Preview Gallifrey One schedule Gallifrey One convention map Gally changes due to escalator issue Catherine Tate announced as guest at Calgary Expo April 24-27 The War Games in Colour got 0.43M viewers ‘Doctor Who' Producer Jane Tranter to Chair 50th Edinburgh TV Festival The Tenth Planet coming to vinyl for Record Store Day on April 12 Ace Jacket: A Doctor Who Celebration for Fans and Cosplayers coming July 2025 Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia due Oct 29, 2026 BF Doctor Who – The Fugitive Doctor: Dead or Alive due July 2025 BF Doctor Who – The Sixth Doctor Adventures: The Cosmos and Mrs Clarke due May 2025

George Layton is prolific - he's done the lot - and he's still working in his early 80s. Both an actor and screenwriter, his career stretches from the early 50s and Children's Hour and working with Violet Carson (who played Ena Sharples in Coronation Street), through years as a star on shows like Doctor in the House and It Aint Half Hot Mum, via  cameos on The Likely Lads and semi regular roles in Minder and more. He's also a big friend of Richard O'Sullivan, so we'll no doubt find out how he is.This is the first of a series of interviews we're sure as there's so much more to talk about with George who was also in EastEnders, Doctors, Casualty, French and Saunders (The list goes on)....plus there's all those scripts he's written or wanted to write. Enjoy!Presented and produced by Ashley Byrne. Research by Andrew EdwardsContinuity: Andy Hoyle and Jonathan Kydd.A Made in Manchester Production.Distinct Nostalgia costs money and time to make and we'd welcome your support through Patreon. You can donate via the link below.Support the Show.Support the Show.

Hosted by Fast Lane Jane Thurmond and Design Muse Theresa Contreras SEMA President and CEO Mike Spagnola sits in to share his story from the OBS truck days in the ‘90s at Trader's Trucks to Street Scene. There he and Theresa collaborated on many trucks and SEMA builds. Initially joining SEMA managing the SEMA Garage helping companies he became the President of SEMA. Mike helps usher in a new era for the SEMA Show and also protects our hobby and industry. His family's love for racing Nissan/Datsun cars runs deep. Follow SEMA at @SEMAshow, on www.sema.org and follow Mike Spagnola @spagssr. Produced by Auto Revolution Auto Revolution produces automotive TV Shows,  Podcasts, Promotional Videos, and more. Watch at www.autorevolution.tv and follow @autorevolution Recorded at Autotopia LA The premier automobile storage & concierge facility in Los Angeles. Collector car storage. Vintage car storage. Luxury car storage. Exotic car storage. Visit Autotopia LA at www.autotopiala.com Baja Forged Timeless design. Race inspired. BAJA proven! We love looking good driving on and off road.  Baja Forged offers products to be capable when we need them. So we built Baja Forged. Visit Baja Forged at www.bajaforged.com ENVZN For more information on the 2018 GMC Denali Duramax truck Giveaway, visit www.envznsupplyco.com

Hosted by Fast Lane Jane Thurmond and Design Muse Theresa Contreras SEMA President and CEO Mike Spagnola sits in to share his story from the OBS truck days in the ‘90s at Trader's Trucks to Street Scene. There he and Theresa collaborated on many trucks and SEMA builds. Initially joining SEMA managing the SEMA Garage helping companies he became the President of SEMA. Mike helps usher in a new era for the SEMA Show and also protects our hobby and industry. His family's love for racing Nissan/Datsun cars runs deep. Follow SEMA at @SEMAshow, on www.sema.org and follow Mike Spagnola @spagssr. https://youtu.be/1Gfh3Kd2gS4 Produced by Auto Revolution Auto Revolution produces automotive TV Shows,  Podcasts, Promotional Videos, and more. Watch at www.autorevolution.tv and follow @autorevolution Recorded at Autotopia LA The premier automobile storage & concierge facility in Los Angeles. Collector car storage. Vintage car storage. Luxury car storage. Exotic car storage. Visit Autotopia LA at www.autotopiala.com Baja Forged Timeless design. Race inspired. BAJA proven! We love looking good driving on and off road.  Baja Forged offers products to be capable when we need them. So we built Baja Forged. Visit Baja Forged at www.bajaforged.com ENVZN For more information on the 2018 GMC Denali Duramax truck Giveaway, visit www.envznsupplyco.com

On episode 107 if Inside ChampCar out Guest is Zinnia Hathiram. From the Z-Car burning down to its revival and return to Harris Hill. We talk to Zinnia about her seat time in the Z-Cars return. Inside ChampCar is the weekly deep dive into the TireRack.com ChampCar Endurance Series. Hosted by veteran sports broadcaster and producer Brian Bielanski and ChampCar's director of marketing, Bill Strong. We will discuss the races and their happenings each week and talk with team owners, drivers, and crew. Episodes are released every Thursday morning on the Racing Wire Podcast Network on your favorite podcast platform. ChampCar Endurance Series is for people like you who have always wanted to go road racing without all the hassles, giant rulebook, or obscene expense. All you need is a valid driver's license, some safety gear, and a race car, which you can rent from arrive and drive teams or build your own vehicle! Brought to you by Candelaria Racing Products and Better Call Kaul. https://candelaria-racing.com/ Eric Kaul - 5G home and Wireless Expert Call 01-508.834.3311 eric.kaul@wireless-zone.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/racingwire/support

George Layton is best known as Doctor Paul Collier from the comedy series', Doctor at Large, Doctor in Charge, Doctor in the House and Doctor at the Top and as Bombadier Solly Solomons in the sit-com It Ain't Half Hot Mum. He was also Des the Mechanic in Minder. Other TV credits include The Likely Lads, Z Cars, The Liver Birds, The Sweeney and Doctor Who. George started writing for TV with the Doctor shows with a former co-star of the show, Jonathan Lynn. Together they wrote for On the Buses, Nearest and Dearest, and My names Harry worth. George went on to write Don't Wait Up starring Nigel Havers and Tony Britton and Executive Stress with Geoffrey Palmer and Penelope Keith .George Layton is guest number 318 on My Time Capsule and chats to Michael Fenton Stevens about the five things he'd like to put in a time capsule; four he'd like to preserve and one he'd like to bury and never have to think about again .Follow George Layton on Twitter: @Thegeorgelayton . Follow My Time Capsule on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook: @MyTCpod .Follow Michael Fenton Stevens on Twitter: @fentonstevens & Instagram @mikefentonstevens .Produced and edited by John Fenton-Stevens for Cast Off Productions .Music by Pass The Peas Music .Artwork by matthewboxall.com .This podcast is proud to be associated with the charity Viva! Providing theatrical opportunities for hundreds of young people. Get bonus episodes and ad-free listening by becoming a team member with Acast+! Your support will help us to keep making My Time Capsule. Join our team now! https://plus.acast.com/s/mytimecapsule. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on August 20th 2023 Often it was the exciting thumping nature of the theme music that became most identified with so many TV series, and was remembered long after the various shenanigans of that week's episode was forgotten, and so, for one week only, VISION ON SOUND presents an hour of what might be the most exciting TV theme tunes ever...! In a playlist including STINGRAY, SUPERCAR, FIREBALL XL5, THUNDERBIRDS, UFO, CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS, SPACE: 1999, THE AVENGERS, REDCAP, THE NEW AVENGERS, THE PROFESSIONALS, Z CARS, THE PRISONER, HAWAII FIVE-O, KOJAK, IRONSIDE, THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, THE APOLLO LAUNCHES, DEPARTMENT S, RETURN OF THE SAINT, and THE SWEENEY, with me burbling on in between them trying to make some kind of sense of what makes each of them feel so very, very exciting...! Whilst we can't quite promise to deliver the most exciting hour of radio you've ever heard, I hope that you enjoy it. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

Three grumpy old men convene to moan about pretty much everything! Subjects include (but are not limited to) Elton John anthems and Z-Cars, not Coldplay, Gwynyth Paltrow scented candles, Justin sings - The Lion King, Jimmy Hill's song writing capabilities, Who likes, loathes or is still emotionally processing the home shirt and ask where the red has gone, Barnsley's new home shirt (REALLY!), fixtures on new years day, signings, Pete's continued admiration of Paul Ince, Jake Livermore and Slimani rumours, stair lift and other adverts for old people, Liquorice vs Blackcurrant, why are confectionary and Ice Creams getting smaller and swindle, the unfortunate invention of crinkle cut pringles, who puts wrappers back in the celebrations box, a lack mens grooming product advice, Bake off updates, why you shouldn't wear a gas mask whilst under a bed, Pete's lowest wattage impression to date and we finally put the 2022/23 seasons A-Z on a Viking long boat and throw fire arrows at it. We finish by looking at the brand of shoe worn by Gino and realise we are all in the wrong jobs!!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode features a writer who would be familiar not only to Hull residents but also to keen telly watchers, radio listeners and theatre goers across the country. Alan Plater was born in Jarrow in 1935  but having moved to Hull when he was just three years old, the city was pleased to adopt him and he lived there for much of his life. His most famous writing credit was probably Z Cars. Alan Plater was also a huge fan of jazz music and his ITV comedy drama The Beiderbecke Affair staring James Bolam and Barbara Flynn in the mid 1980s was a massive success. He went on to win countless awards and accolades for his wonderful writing. Alan Plater was enormously generous with his time, and made a huge contribution to the Hull arts scene of the 1960s and 70s, developing a gentle friendship with Philip Larkin along the way. This speech was recorded on 28th November 1998,  and was given at that year's PLS AGM.   Thank you so much to Alexandra Cann who is the agent for the Alan Plater Literary Estate Ltd for giving us the initial approval to use this recording, and to Steve Plater and John Rubinstein who are the joint Directors of the Lit Estate. If you are interested in seeing an Alan Plater play this summer, then the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough is putting on a production of the Blonde Bombshells of 1943 which is full of swing and jazz, from 2-26th August 2023. https://sjt.uk.com/events/blonde-bombshells-of-1943 References: Alfred Bradley https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/about/successes/alfred-bradley-award/ ·         The Occasional Smell of Fish (poem) ·         Waiting for Gladys (Becket parody) ·         Bete Noire (Hull poetry journal) ·         Z Cars One Day In Spring Street ·         Jazz Notes- BBC radio programme ·         On Sunday January 4th I had Mild Constipation ·         Names (poem written for Three Trawlers fundraising) ‘my only grown up poem' ·         Swallows on the Water (play) ·         The Fosdyke Saga sonnet ( BBC radio tripe themed -parody of The Forsyth Saga,)- sent a copy to Larkin who responded with a signed copy of the High Windows calling him ‘sonnetteer extraordinaire' ·         Sweet Sorrow (1990) Plater's play about Larkin Matthew Arnold, Ogden Nash, Dylan Thomas, Alan Bleasdale, Ted Hughes, Barry Hines, Vera Wise, Henry Livings, Alex Glasgow, Carla Lane, Adrian Mitchell, Allan Ginsburg, Carole Mills (rude songs and low down blues), Robin Kay (flamenco guitarist), Max Boylett (jazz pianist), Ian Clarke and Chris Rowe, Sid and Norm (artists without category), Joe Orton, The Beatles, John Ford (director of westerns), Roger McGough, Jimmy James (music hall performer),Ken Wagstaff- (footballing hero), Fleur Adcock, Jeff Nuttall (had a pee in a bucket on stage), Roni Scott, Suzi Quatro, Mike Bradwell (theatre director), Jess Stacy (jazz pianist), Shakespeare, Max Wall, Peter Brooke (director),  and many more Hull poets listed by Plater. Pubs mentioned – (in Leeds and Hull) The Bluebell, The Bull, The Fenton, the Hayworth Arms, Philip Larkin judging poetry competition for the Hull Arts Centre at Spring Street in 1970 which eventually became Hull Truck Theatre. The loss of the three Hull trawlers in winter of 1967, 59 trawlerman died- the poets organised a reading and Plater wrote ‘Names'. Produced by Lyn Lockwood and Gavin Hogg PLS Membership and information: The Philip Larkin Society – Philip Larkin Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Buy 'The Righteous Jazz' at their Bandcamp page: https://themechanicalsband.bandcamp.com/album/the-righteous-jazz

Live at Leicester Square's world-famous Prince Charles Cinema, Brian Blessed surpasses the swear quota of all previous 95 episodes combined, and covers what 'Gordon's Alive' has become, Peppa Pig, Patrick Stewart, burping, Z Cars, sparring with Muhammed Ali, wrestling a gorilla, Blackadder, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Peter O'Toole, being in a plane crash, meeting The Queen, creating the South Downs, being a trained cosmonaut, Kenneth Branagh, I Claudius, an absolutely cutlery-dropping, eye-popping, 100% hard 18 certificate Maggie Thatcher's funeral skit and a dazzlingly operatic finale recalling being in Stars In Their Eyes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In their 20th Episode, Sean, Bay and Andy continue their journey through that greatest of British Exports, Z-Cars. In this exploration of human misery, a couple of no good hoodlum kids steal purses and toss them into the river, all so they can buy some coats and not freeze. Wow, such fun!

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 9th 2022 On this week's VISION ON SOUND we welcome MICHAEL SEELY who is well known in Archive Television circles for the books he has written about certain television series, and for his biographies of some well recognised names from television production from the sixties and seventies. PROPHETS OF DOOM, his unauthorised history of the BBC television series DOOMWATCH is very possibly the definitive current work detailing the production of that well-remembered and influential show that ran for three series between February 1970 and August 1972. This series, which told terrifying tales based around the fears of the possible corruption and future progress of science, as well as breaking the hearts of a nation after an incident at the end of a pier, was created by KIT PEDLAR and GERRY DAVIS, who had both written scripts for 1960s DOCTOR WHO which also examined the dramatic possibilities that came about when you chose to imagine what horrors some areas of modern science might unleash into the world. Whether it was COMPUTERS seeking world domination, or the dehumanising possibilities of overzealous replacement of human organs and body parts with artificial equivalents, you can be pretty sure that they had a hand in it, as it were, and the controversy-creating series DOOMWATCH does seem to be the natural progression of all of their “What if…?' discussions, dealing, as it did, with the terrors of plastic viruses, super evolved rats, pollution, and the consequences of unscientific experimentation when unfettered by any kind of morality or control. KIT PEDLAR was brought aboard by the DOCTOR WHO production team to add his scientific imagination into the mix of the types of stories they wanted to tell, and his own somewhat fascinating life story was one of those that MICHAEL also felt compelled to cover in his well-received biography. MICHAEL also wrote a biography of the much loved and well-regarded television director DOUGLAS CAMFIELD, whose distinctive touch graced many a series in the 1960s and 1970s, from SWIZZLEWICK, to BEAU GESTE, Z CARS to THE SWEENEY, PUBLIC EYE to THE LOTUS EATERS, DANGER UXB to VAN DER VALK, and many others, quite a few of which we have discussed in this show over the past couple of years. In preparation for today's programme, and because he also has a new book looking into the series coming out fairly soon, I rewatched one of his later works, the four part serial THE NIGHTMARE MAN adapted by ROBERT HOLMES for the BBC from the book CHILD OF VODYANOI by DAVID WILTSHIRE which terrified viewers on Friday evenings back in May 1981, so we also chat about that for a while. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

Well no-one is a big fan of this funny old story - well, apart from Doctor Who novelist and audio writer (and documentary maker and all sorts of other things) James Goss. Who could wish for a more charming advocate for this under-celebrated slice of 80s Who? And it is very 80s. So sit back and enjoy a (very) leisurely journey through some of Doctor Who's best ever corridors, as Chief Inspector Barlow off of Z-Cars inspires Tegan to become the best draughtsperson an airline could hope for. Please support these podcasts on Patreon, where you will get advance releases, exclusive content (including a patron only podcast - Far Too Much information), regular AMAs and more. Tiers start form as little as £3 per month.  patreon.com/tobyhadoke   Or there is Ko-fi for the occasionally donation with no commitments: ko-fi.com/tobyhadoke   Follow Toby on Twitter @tobyhadoke And these podcasts @HadokePodcasts   www.tobyhadoke.com for news, blog, mailing list and more.     

On today's show, we have a special guest who is a British actress that's perhaps best known for her appearances in several horror films in the 1970s. She's still working today and has quite the impressive resume! Judy Matheson was in such films as “The Exquisite Cadaver” (1969), the Hammer Horror films “Lust for a Vampire” (1971) and “Twins of Evil” (1971), “The Flesh and Blood Show” (1972), and “The Haunting of Margam Castle” in 2020, among many others. Her extensive television work includes “Coronation Street,” “The Professionals,” “Z-Cars,” and “Blake's 7” also among so many others. So sit back and get ready for an interview with an amazing horror icon! Judy can be found at: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063560469851 Twitter: https://twitter.com/judyjarvis Rick Melton's painting of Judy and his other works can be found at: https://www.stunninglysavage.com/product/judy-matheson/ Chris can be found at: http://www.storiesmotion.com Haven Podcasts: Then Is Now will be at the Parafest in Maine, October 15, 2022 - 10am – 4pm! We'll be doing a live show from there! Details to come... https://www.facebook.com/parafestmaine/ Fright Lounge: Our monthly live streaming show where we talk about ALL Horror Media! https://www.facebook.com/frightlounge Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ThenIsNowPodcast Now only $3!! Help support your favorite Pop Culture show. Not only do you get access to our special filmmakers series, but new subscribers will be entered into a contest to win a free copy of actor Sean Kanan's amazing book, Way of the Cobra!! TeePublic: http://www.teepublic.com/stores/havenpodcasts Feedback: thenisnow42@gmail.com Join the conversation at our Facebook Group Twitter: @HavenPodcasts Website: havenpodcasts.com where you'll find our sister show, The East Meets the West, in which we discuss Shaw Brothers films and Spaghetti Western movies! Please SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube page, also! Don't forget to go to wherever you download your podcasts from and leave us a great review so more listeners can find us! You can find us on all the podcasting apps, especially the big 3: iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher! Enjoy, Re-Gor

This episode: we recorded this before canon Thasmin and god does it show, Rosie shares a brief but extremely embarrassing anecdote, we forecast a future Mountain Goats release, there is (no joke) a tangent about the development of elevator technology, and our ongoing Z-Cars references finally reach their logical conclusion.

Part 2 - The Golden Decade. GETTING CARTER author NICK TRIPLOW chats to Paul Burke about Ted Lewis and Brit Noir as No Exit Press reissue 2 of his classic novels Jack Carter's Law and Billy Rags. In this second part we discuss the novels of Ted Lewis from Plender to GBH, the film Yellow Submarine, tv cop show  Z Cars and Mary Whitehouse. NICK TRIPLOW GETTING CARTER: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir is a meticulously researched and riveting account of the career of a doomed genius. Long-time admirer Nick Triplow has fashioned a thorough, sympathetic and unsparing narrative. Required reading for noirists, this book will enthral and move anyone who finds irresistible the old cocktail of rags to riches to rags. Nick is also the author of the novel Frank's Wild Years.Jack Carter's Law  Ted Lewis returns to his greatest invention, a smooth-operating hardcase named Jack Carter, who is about to burn a city down in order to silence an informant... London. The late 1960s. It's Christmas and Jack Carter's the top man in a crime syndicate headed by two brothers, Gerald and Les Fletcher. He's also a worried man. The fact that he's sleeping with Gerald's wife, Audrey, and that they plan on someday running away together with a lot of the brothers' money, doesn't have Jack concerned. Instead it's an informant - one of his own men - that has him losing sleep. The grass has enough knowledge about the firm to not only bring down Gerald and Les but Jack as well. Jack doesn't like his name in the mouth of that sort.Billy Rags  It's the 1960s and Billy Cracken is a hard man to keep locked up. An austere and troubled childhood has given way to life as a hardened criminal and now status as one of the most feared prisoners in England. He has been moved from one maximum security prison to the next. Guards and inmates alike fear and begrudgingly respect the powerfully-built Cracken. But a life doing his porridge, even if as a minor celebrity, isn't the one he wants. A girlfriend and a child await Cracken on the outside and he'll stop at nothing to get to them. While plotting his escape he crosses a powerful mobster who vows to make Cracken's life hell, and if nothing else succeeds at making his escape all the more difficult, something the ever-rebellious Cracken defiantly relishes. Billy Rags is a fascinating look into the lives of British inmates serving time in a maximum security prison. Lewis manages once again to tell an exciting, action-filled story with a soul - demonstrated most clearly in a series of brilliant flashbacks to Billy's childhood and in the end conjures a character that will remind readers of both Tom Hardy in Bronson and Lee Marvin in Point Blank.Produced by Junkyard DogMusic courtesy of Southgate and Leigh Crime TimePaul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover, NB Magazine and the European Literature Network.

Part 1 - GETTING CARTER. Author NICK TRIPLOW chats to Paul Burke about Ted Lewis and Brit Noir as No Exit Press reissue 2 Lewis novels Jack Carter's Law and Billy Rags, (Plender & GBH came out last year). In this first part Nick talks about his biography of Lewis, the author's background, influences and debut crime novel Jack's Return Home, filmed as Get Carter.GETTING CARTER: The story of Ted Lewis carries historical and cultural resonances for our own troubled times Get Carter are two words to bring a smile of fond recollection to all British film lovers of a certain age. The cinema classic was based on a book called Jack's Return Home, and many commentators agree contemporary British crime writing began with that novel. The influence of both book and film is strong to this day, reflected in the work of David Peace, Jake Arnott and a host of contemporary crime & noir authors. But what of the man who wrote this seminal work? Ted Lewis is one of the most important writers you've never heard of. Born in Manchester in 1940, he grew up in the tough environs of post-war Humberside, attending Hull College of Arts and Crafts before heading for London. His life described a cycle of obscurity to glamour and back to obscurity, followed by death at only 42. He sampled the bright temptations of sixties London while working in advertising, TV and films and he encountered excitement and danger in Soho drinking dens, rubbing shoulders with the 'East End boys' in gangland haunts. He wrote for Z Cars and had some nine books published. Alas, unable to repeat the commercial success of Get Carter, Lewis's life fell apart, his marriage ended and he returned to Humberside and an all too early demise. Getting Carter is a meticulously researched and riveting account of the career of a doomed genius. Long-time admirer Nick Triplow has fashioned a thorough, sympathetic and unsparing narrative. Required reading for noirists, this book will enthral and move anyone who finds irresistible the old cocktail of rags to riches to rags.Nick Triplow is the author of the south London crime novel Frank's Wild Years and the social history books The Women They Left Behind, Distant Water and Pattie Slappers. His acclaimed short story, Face Value, was a winner in the 2015 Northern Crime competition. Originally from London, now living in Barton upon Humber, Nick studied English and Creative Writing at Middlesex University and, in 2007, earned a distinction at Sheffield Hallam University's MA in Creative Writing. Since completing his biography of British noir pioneer, Ted Lewis, Nick has been working on new fiction.Produced by Junkyard DogMusic courtesy of Southgate & LeighCrime TimePaul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover, NB Magazine and the European Literature Network.

Episode 144 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Last Train to Clarksville" and the beginnings of the career of the Monkees, along with a short primer on the origins of the Vietnam War.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a seventeen-minute bonus episode available, on "These Boots Are Made For Walking" by Nancy Sinatra, which I mispronounce at the end of this episode as "These Boots Were Made For Walking", so no need to correct me here. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. The best versions of the Monkees albums are the triple-CD super-deluxe versions that used to be available from monkees.com , and I've used Andrew Sandoval's liner notes for them extensively in this episode. Sadly, though, the only one of those that is still in print is More of the Monkees. For those just getting into the group, my advice is to start with this five-CD set, which contains their first five albums along with bonus tracks. The single biggest source of information I used in this episode is the first edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees; The Day-By-Day Story. Sadly that is now out of print and goes for hundreds of pounds. Sandoval released a second edition of the book last year, which I was unfortunately unable to obtain, but that too is now out of print. If you can find a copy of either, do get one. Other sources used were Monkee Business by Eric Lefcowitz, and the autobiographies of three of the band members and one of the songwriters -- Infinite Tuesday by Michael Nesmith, They Made a Monkee Out of Me by Davy Jones, I'm a Believer by Micky Dolenz, and Psychedelic Bubble-Gum by Bobby Hart. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've obviously talked in this podcast about several of the biggest hits of 1966 already, but we haven't mentioned the biggest hit of the year, one of the strangest records ever to make number one in the US -- "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Sgt Barry Sadler: [Excerpt: Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Berets"] Barry Sadler was an altogether odd man, and just as a brief warning his story, which will last a minute or so, involves gun violence. At the time he wrote and recorded that song, he was on active duty in the military -- he was a combat medic who'd been fighting in the Vietnam War when he'd got a wound that had meant he had to be shipped back to the USA, and while at Fort Bragg he decided to write and record a song about his experiences, with the help of Robin Moore, a right-wing author of military books, both fiction and nonfiction, who wrote the books on which the films The Green Berets and The French Connection were based. Sadler's record became one of those massive fluke hits, selling over nine million copies and getting him appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, but other than one top thirty hit, he never had another hit single. Instead, he tried and failed to have a TV career, then became a writer of pulp fiction himself, writing a series of twenty-one novels about the centurion who thrust his spear into Jesus' side when Jesus was being crucified, and is thus cursed to be a soldier until the second coming. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived until he shot Lee Emerson, a country songwriter who had written songs for Marty Robbins, in the head, killing him, in an argument over a woman. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail for this misdemeanour, of which he served twenty-eight. Later he moved to Guatemala City, where he was himself shot in the head. The nearest Army base to Nashville, where Sadler lived after his discharge, is Fort Campbell, in Clarksville: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] The Vietnam War was a long and complicated war, one which affected nearly everything we're going to see in the next year or so of this podcast, and we're going to talk about it a lot, so it's worth giving a little bit of background here. In doing so, I'm going to use quite a flippant tone, but I want to make it clear that I'm not mocking the very real horrors that people suffered in the wars I'm talking about -- it's just that to sum up multiple decades of unimaginable horrors in a few sentences requires glossing over so much that you have to either laugh or cry. The origin of the Vietnam War, as in so many things in twentieth century history, can be found in European colonialism. France had invaded much of Southeast Asia in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and created a territory known as French Indo-China, which became part of the French colonial Empire. But in 1940 France was taken over by Germany, and Japan was at war with China. Germany and Japan were allies, and the Japanese were worried that French Indo-China would be used to import fuel and arms to China -- plus, they quite fancied the idea of having a Japanese empire. So Vichy France let Japan take control of French Indo-China. But of course the *reason* that France had been taken over by Germany was that pretty much the whole world was at war in 1940, and obviously the countries that were fighting Germany and Japan -- the bloc led by Britain, soon to be joined by America and Russia -- weren't very keen on the idea of Japan getting more territory. But they were also busy with the whole "fighting a world war" thing, so they did what governments in this situation always do -- they funded local guerilla insurgent fighters on the basis that "my enemy's enemy is my friend", something that has luckily never had any negative consequences whatsoever, except for occasionally. Those local guerilla fighters were an anti-imperialist popular front, the Việt Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh, a revolutionary Communist. They were dedicated to overthrowing foreign imperialist occupiers and gaining independence for Vietnam, and Hồ Chí Minh further wanted to establish a Soviet-style Communist government in the newly-independent country. The Allies funded the Việt Minh in their fight against the Japanese occupiers until the end of the Second World War, at which point France was liberated from German occupation, Vietnam was liberated from Japanese occupation, and the French basically said "Hooray! We get our Empire back!", to which Hồ Chí Minh's response was, more or less, "what part of anti-imperialist Marxist dedicated to overthrowing foreign occupation of Vietnam did you not understand, exactly?" Obviously, the French weren't best pleased with this, and so began what was the first of a series of wars in the region. The First Indochina War lasted for years and ended in a negotiated peace of a sort. Of course, this led to the favoured tactic of the time, partition -- splitting a formerly-occupied country into two, at an arbitrary dividing line, a tactic which was notably successful in securing peace everywhere it was tried. Apart from Ireland, India, Korea, and a few other places, but surely it wouldn't be a problem in Vietnam, right? North Vietnam was controlled by the Communists, led by Hồ Chí Minh, and recognised by China and the USSR but not by the Western states. South Vietnam was nominally independent but led by the former puppet emperor who owed his position to France, soon replaced by a right-wing dictatorship. And both the right-wing dictatorship and the left-wing dictatorship were soon busily oppressing their own citizens and funding military opposition groups in the other country. This soon escalated into full-blown war, with the North backed by China and Russia and the South backed by America. This was one of a whole series of wars in small countries which were really proxy wars between the two major powers, the USA and the USSR, both of which were vying for control, but which couldn't confront each other directly because either country had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world multiple times over. But the Vietnam War quickly became more than a small proxy war. The US started sending its own troops over, and more and more of them. The US had never ended the draft after World War II, and by the mid sixties significant numbers of young men were being called up and sent over to fight in a war that had by that point lasted a decade (depending on exactly when you count the war as starting from) between two countries they didn't care about, over things few of them understood, and at an exorbitant cost in lives. As you might imagine, this started to become unpopular among those likely to be drafted, and as the people most affected (other, of course, than the Vietnamese people, whose opinions on being bombed and shot at by foreigners supporting one of other of the dictators vying to rule over them nobody else was much interested in) were also of the generation who were the main audience for popular music, slowly this started to seep into the lyrics of songs -- a seepage which had already been prompted by the appearance in the folk and soul worlds of many songs against other horrors, like segregation. This started to hit the pop charts with songs like "The Universal Soldier" by Buffy Saint-Marie, which made the UK top five in a version by Donovan: [Excerpt: Donovan, "The Universal Soldier"] That charted in the lower regions of the US charts, and a cover version by Glen Campbell did slightly better: [Excerpt: Glen Campbell, "The Universal Soldier"] That was even though Campbell himself was a supporter of the war in Vietnam, and rather pro-military. Meanwhile, as we've seen a couple of times, Jan Berry of Jan and Dean recorded a pro-war answer song to that, "The Universal Coward": [Excerpt: Jan Berry, "The Universal Coward"] This, of course, was even though Berry was himself avoiding the draft. And I've not been able to find the credits for that track, but Glen Campbell regularly played guitar on Berry's sessions, so it's entirely possible that he played guitar on that record made by a coward, attacking his own record, which he disagreed with, for its cowardice. This is, of course, what happens when popular culture tries to engage with social and political issues -- pop culture is motivated by money, not ideological consistency, and so if there's money to be made from anti-war songs or from pro-war songs, someone will take that money. And so on October the ninth 1965, Billboard magazine ran a report: "Colpix Enters Protest Field HOLLYWOOD -Colpix has secured its first protest lyric disk, "The Willing Conscript,"as General Manager Bud Katzel initiates relationships with independent producers. The single features Lauren St. Davis. Katzel says the song was written during the Civil War, rewritten during World War I and most recently updated by Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe. Screen Gems Music, the company's publishing wing, is tracing the song's history, Katzel said. Katzel's second single is "(You Got the Gamma Goochee" by an artist with that unusual stage name. The record is a Screen Gems production and was in the house when Katzel arrived one month ago. The executive said he was expressly looking for material for two contract artists, David Jones and Hoyt Axton. The company is also working on getting Axton a role in a television series, "Camp Runamuck." " To unpack this a little, Colpix was a record label, owned by Columbia Pictures, and we talked about that a little bit in the episode on "The Loco-Motion" -- the film and TV companies were getting into music, and Columbia had recently bought up Don Kirshner's Aldon publishing and Dimension Records as part of their strategy of tying in music with their TV shows. This is a company trying desperately to jump on a bandwagon -- Colpix at this time was not exactly having huge amounts of success with its records. Hoyt Axton, meanwhile, was a successful country singer and songwriter. We met his mother many episodes back -- Mae Axton was the writer of "Heartbreak Hotel". Axton himself is now best known as the dad in the 80s film Gremlins. David Jones will be coming up shortly. Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe were record executives then at Kama Sutra records, but soon to move on -- we'll be hearing about Krasnow more in future episodes. Neither of them were songwriters, and while I have no real reason to disbelieve the claim that "The Willing Conscript" dates back to the Civil War, the earliest version *I* have been able to track down was its publication in issue 28 of Broadside Magazine in June 1963 -- nearly a hundred years after the American Civil War -- with the credit "by Tom Paxton" -- Paxton was a popular singer-songwriter of the time, and it certainly sounds like his writing. The first recording of it I know of was by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, "The Willing Conscript"] But the odd thing is that by the time this was printed, the single had already been released the previous month, and it was not released under the name Lauren St Davis, or under the title "The Willing Conscript" -- there are precisely two differences between the song copyrighted as by Krasnow and Ashe and the one copyrighted two years earlier as by Paxton. One is that verses three and four are swapped round, the other is that it's now titled "The New Recruit". And presumably because they realised that the pseudonym "Lauren St. Davis" was trying just a bit too hard to sound cool and drug culture, they reverted to another stage name the performer had been using, Michael Blessing: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "The New Recruit"] Blessing's name was actually Michael Nesmith, and before we go any further, yes his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, did invent the product that later became marketed in the US as Liquid Paper. At this time, though, that company wasn't anywhere near as successful as it later became, and was still a tiny company. I only mention it to forestall the ten thousand comments and tweets I would otherwise get asking why I didn't mention it. In Nesmith's autobiography, while he talks a lot about his mother, he barely mentions her business and says he was uninterested in it -- he talks far more about the love of art she instilled in him, as well as her interest in the deep questions of philosophy and religion, to which in her case and his they found answers in Christian Science, but both were interested in conversations about ideas, in a way that few other people in Nesmith's early environment were. Nesmith's mother was also responsible for his music career. He had spent two years in the Air Force in his late teens, and the year he got out, his mother and stepfather bought him a guitar for Christmas, after he was inspired by seeing Hoyt Axton performing live and thinking he could do that himself: [Excerpt: Hoyt Axton, "Greenback Dollar"] As he put it in his autobiography, "What did it matter that I couldn't play the guitar, couldn't sing very well, and didn't know any folk songs? I would be going to college and hanging out at the student union with pretty girls and singing folk songs. They would like me. I might even figure out a way to get a cool car." This is, of course, the thought process that pretty much every young man to pick up a guitar goes through, but Nesmith was more dedicated than most. He gave his first performance as a folk singer ten days after he first got a guitar, after practising the few chords in most folk songs for twelve hours a day every day in that time. He soon started performing as a folk singer, performing around Dallas both on his own and with his friend John London, performing the standard folk repertoire of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly songs, things like "Pick a Bale of Cotton": [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith, "Pick a Bale of Cotton"] He also started writing his own songs, and put out a vanity record of one of them in 1963: [Excerpt: Mike Nesmith, "Wanderin'"] London moved to California, and Nesmith soon followed, with his first wife Phyllis and their son Christian. There Nesmith and London had the good fortune to be neighbours with someone who was a business associate of Frankie Laine, and they were signed to Laine's management company as a folk duo. However, Nesmith's real love was rock and roll, especially the heavier R&B end of the genre -- he was particularly inspired by Bo Diddley, and would always credit seeing Diddley live as a teenager as being his biggest musical influence. Soon Nesmith and London had formed a folk-rock trio with their friend Bill Sleeper. As Mike & John & Bill, they put out a single, "How Can You Kiss Me?", written by Nesmith: [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "How Can You Kiss Me?"] They also recorded more of Nesmith's songs, like "All the King's Horses": [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "All the King's Horses"] But that was left unreleased, as Bill was drafted, and Nesmith and London soon found themselves in The Survivors, one of several big folk groups run by Randy Sparks, the founder of the New Christie Minstrels. Nesmith was also writing songs throughout 1964 and 1965, and a few of those songs would be recorded by other people in 1966, like "Different Drum", which was recorded by the bluegrass band The Greenbriar Boys: [Excerpt: The Greenbriar Boys, "Different Drum"] That would more successfully be recorded by the Stone Poneys later of course. And Nesmith's "Mary Mary" was also picked up by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Mary Mary"] But while Nesmith had written these songs by late 1965, he wasn't able to record them himself. He was signed by Bob Krasnow, who insisted he change his name to Michael Blessing, and recorded two singles for Colpix -- "The New Recruit", which we heard earlier, and a version of Buffy Saint-Marie's "Until It's Time For You To Go", sung in a high tenor range very far from Nesmith's normal singing voice: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Until It's Time For You To Go"] But to my mind by far the best thing Nesmith recorded in this period is the unissued third Michael Blessing single, where Nesmith seems to have been given a chance to make the record he really wanted to make. The B-side, a version of Allen Toussaint's swamp-rocker "Get Out of My Life, Woman", is merely a quite good version of the song, but the A-side, a version of his idol Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" is utterly extraordinary, and it's astonishing that it was never released at the time: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Who Do You Love?"] But the Michael Blessing records did no better than anything else Colpix were putting out. Indeed, the only record they got onto the hot one hundred at all in a three and a half year period was a single by one David Jones, which reached the heady heights of number ninety-eight: [Excerpt: David Jones, "What Are We Going to Do?"] Jones had been brought up in extreme poverty in Openshaw in Manchester, but had been encouraged by his mother, who died when he was fourteen, to go into acting. He'd had a few parts on local radio, and had appeared as a child actor on TV shows made in Manchester, like appearing in the long-running soap opera Coronation Street (still on today) as Ena Sharples' grandson Colin: [Excerpt: Coronation St https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FDEvOs1imc , 13:30] He also had small roles in Z-Cars and Bill Naughton's TV play "June Evening", and a larger role in Keith Waterhouse's radio play "There is a Happy Land". But when he left school, he decided he was going to become a jockey rather than an actor -- he was always athletic, he loved horses, and he was short -- I've seen his height variously cited as five foot three and five foot four. But it turned out that the owner of the stables in which he was training had showbusiness connections, and got him the audition that changed his life, for the part of the Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's West End musical Oliver! We've encountered Lionel Bart before a couple of times, but if you don't remember him, he was the songwriter who co-wrote Tommy Steele's hits, and who wrote "Living Doll" for Cliff Richard. He also discovered both Steele and Marty Wilde, and was one of the major figures in early British rock and roll. But after the Tommy Steele records, he'd turned his attention to stage musicals, writing book, music, and lyrics for a string of hits, and more-or-less singlehandedly inventing the modern British stage musical form -- something Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example, always credits him with. Oliver!, based on Oliver Twist, was his biggest success, and they were looking for a new Artful Dodger. This was *the* best role for a teenage boy in the UK at the time -- later performers to take the role on the London stage include Steve Marriott and Phil Collins, both of whom we'll no doubt encounter in future episodes -- and Jones got the job, although they were a bit worried at first about his Manchester vowels. He assured them though that he could learn to do a Cockney accent, and they took him on. Jones not having a natural Cockney accent ended up doing him the biggest favour of his career. While he could put on a relatively convincing one, he articulated quite carefully because it wasn't his natural accent. And so when the North American version found  in previews that their real Cockney Dodger wasn't being understood perfectly, the fake Cockney Jones was brought over to join the show on Broadway, and was there from opening night on. On February the ninth, 1964, Jones found himself, as part of the Broadway cast of Oliver!, on the Ed Sullivan Show: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and Georgia Brown, "I'd Do Anything"] That same night, there were some other British people, who got a little bit more attention than Jones did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on Ed Sullivan)"] Davy Jones wasn't a particular fan of pop music at that point, but he knew he liked what he saw, and he wanted some of the same reaction. Shortly after this, Jones was picked up for management by Ward Sylvester, of Columbia Pictures, who was going to groom Jones for stardom. Jones continued in Oliver! for a while, and also had a brief run in a touring version of Pickwick, another musical based on a Dickens novel, this time starring Harry Secombe, the British comedian and singer who had made his name with the Goon Show. Jones' first single, "Dream Girl", came out in early 1965: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Dream Girl"] It was unsuccessful, as was his one album, David Jones, which seemed to be aiming at the teen idol market, but failing miserably. The second single, "What Are  We Going to Do?" did make the very lowest regions of the Hot One Hundred, but the rest of the album was mostly attempts to sound a bit like Herman's Hermits -- a band whose lead singer, coincidentally, also came from Manchester, had appeared in Coronation Street, and was performing with a fake Cockney accent. Herman's Hermits had had a massive US hit with the old music hall song "I'm Henry VIII I Am": [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry VIII I Am"] So of course Davy had his own old music-hall song, "Any Old Iron": [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Any Old Iron"] Also, the Turtles had recently had a hit with a folk-rock version of Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe", and Davy cut his own version of their arrangement, in the one concession to rock music on the album: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "It Ain't Me Babe"] The album was, unsurprisingly, completely unsuccessful, but Ward Sylvester was not disheartened. He had the perfect job for a young British teen idol who could sing and act. The Monkees was the brainchild of two young TV producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who had come up with the idea of doing a TV show very loosely based on the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night (though Rafelson would later claim that he'd had the idea many years before A Hard Day's Night and was inspired by his youth touring with folk bands -- Schneider always admitted the true inspiration though). This was not a particularly original idea -- there were a whole bunch of people trying to make TV shows based in some way around bands. Jan and Dean were working on a possible TV series, there was talk of a TV series starring The Who, there was a Beatles cartoon series, Hanna-Barbera were working on a cartoon series about a band called The Bats, and there was even another show proposed to Screen Gems, Columbia's TV department, titled Liverpool USA, which was meant to star Davy Jones, another British performer, and two American musicians, and to have songs provided by Don Kirshner's songwriters. That The Monkees, rather than these other series, was the one that made it to the TV (though obviously the Beatles cartoon series did too) is largely because Rafelson and Schneider's independent production company, Raybert, which they had started after leaving Screen Gems, was given two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to develop the series by their former colleague, Screen Gems' vice president in charge of programme development, the former child star Jackie Cooper. Of course, as well as being their former colleague, Cooper may have had some more incentive to give Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider that money in that the head of Columbia Pictures, and thus Cooper's boss' boss, was one Abe Schneider. The original idea for the show was to use the Lovin' Spoonful, but as we heard last week they weren't too keen, and it was quickly decided instead that the production team would put together a group of performers. Davy Jones was immediately attached to the project, although Rafelson was uncomfortable with Jones, thinking he wasn't as rock and roll as Rafelson was hoping for -- he later conceded, though, that Jones was absolutely right for the group. As for everyone else, to start with Rafelson and Schneider placed an ad in a couple of the trade papers which read "Madness!! Auditions Folk and Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys ages 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank's types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview" There were a couple of dogwhistles in there, to appeal to the hip crowd -- Ben Frank's was a twenty-four-hour restaurant on the Sunset Strip, where people including Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison used to hang out, and which was very much associated with the freak scene we've looked at in episodes on Zappa and the Byrds. Meanwhile "Must come down for interview" was meant to emphasise that you couldn't actually be high when you turned up -- but you were expected to be the kind of person who would at least at some points have been high. A lot of people answered that ad -- including Paul Williams, Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks, and many more we'll be seeing along the way. But oddly, the only person actually signed up for the show because of that ad was Michael Nesmith -- who was already signed to Colpix Records anyway. According to Davy Jones, who was sitting in at the auditions, Schneider and Rafelson were deliberately trying to disorient the auditioners with provocative behaviour like just ignoring them, to see how they'd react. Nesmith was completely unfazed by this, and apparently walked in wearing a  green wool hat and carrying a bag of laundry, saying that he needed to get this over with quickly so he could go and do his washing. John London, who came along to the audition as well, talked later about seeing Nesmith fill in a questionnaire that everyone had to fill in -- in a space asking about previous experience Nesmith just wrote "Life" and drew a big diagonal line across the rest of the page. That attitude certainly comes across in Nesmith's screen test: [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith screen test] Meanwhile, Rafelson and Schneider were also scouring the clubs for performers who might be useful, and put together a shortlist of people including Jerry Yester and Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet, Bill Chadwick, who was in the Survivors with Nesmith and London, and one Micky Braddock, whose agent they got in touch with and who was soon signed up. Braddock was the stage name of Micky Dolenz, who soon reverted to his birth surname, and it's the name by which he went in his first bout of fame. Dolenz was the son of two moderately successful Hollywood actors, George Dolenz and Janelle Johnson, and their connections had led to Dolenz, as Braddock, getting the lead role in the 1958 TV series Circus Boy, about a child named Corky who works in a circus looking after an elephant after his parents, the Flying Falcons, were killed in a trapeze accident. [Excerpt: Circus Boy, "I can't play a drum"] Oddly, one of the other people who had been considered for that role was Paul Williams, who was also considered for the Monkees but ultimately turned down, and would later write one of the Monkees' last singles. Dolenz had had a few minor TV appearances after that series had ended, including a recurring role on Peyton Place, but he had also started to get interested in music. He'd performed a bit as a folk duo with his sister Coco, and had also been the lead singer of a band called Micky and the One-Nighters, who later changed their name to the Missing Links, who'd played mostly covers of Little Richard and Chuck Berry songs and later British Invasion hits. He'd also recorded two tracks with Wrecking Crew backing, although neither track got released until after his later fame -- "Don't Do It": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Don't Do It"] and "Huff Puff": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Huff Puff"] Dolenz had a great singing voice, an irrepressible personality, and plenty of TV experience. He was obviously in. Rafelson and Schneider took quite a while whittling down the shortlist to the final four, and they *were* still considering people who'd applied through the ads. One they actually offered the role to was Stephen Stills, but he decided not to take the role. When he turned the role down, they asked if he knew anyone else who had a similar appearance to him, and as it happened he did. Steve Stills and Peter Tork had known of each other before they actually met on the streets of Greenwich Village -- the way they both told the story, on their first meeting they'd each approached the other and said "You must be the guy everyone says looks like me!" The two had become fast friends, and had played around the Greenwich Village folk scene together for a while, before going their separate ways -- Stills moving to California while Tork joined another of those big folk ensembles of the New Christie Minstrels type, this one called the Phoenix Singers. Tork had later moved to California himself, and reconnected with his old friend, and they had performed together for a while in a trio called the Buffalo Fish, with Tork playing various instruments, singing, and doing comedy bits. Oddly, while Tork was the member of the Monkees with the most experience as a musician, he was the only one who hadn't made a record when the TV show was put together. But he was by far the most skilled instrumentalist of the group -- as distinct from best musician, a distinction Tork was always scrupulous about making -- and could play guitar, bass, and keyboards, all to a high standard -- and I've also seen him in more recent years play French horn live. His great love, though, was the banjo, and you can hear how he must have sounded on the Greenwich Village folk scene in his solo spots on Monkees shows, where he would show off his banjo skills: [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Cripple Creek"] Tork wouldn't get to use his instrumental skills much at first though, as most of the backing tracks for the group's records were going to be performed by other people. More impressive for the TV series producers was his gift for comedy, especially physical comedy -- having seen Tork perform live a few times, the only comparison I can make to his physical presence is to Harpo Marx, which is about as high a compliment as one can give. Indeed, Micky Dolenz has often pointed out that while there were intentional parallels to the Beatles in the casting of the group, the Marx Brothers are a far better parallel, and it's certainly easy to see Tork as Harpo, Dolenz as Chico, Nesmith as Groucho, and Jones as Zeppo. (This sounds like an insult to Jones, unless you're aware of how much the Marx Brothers films actually depended on Zeppo as the connective tissue between the more outrageous brothers and the more normal environment they were operating in, and how much the later films suffered for the lack of Zeppo). The new cast worked well together, even though there were obvious disagreements between them right from the start. Dolenz, at least at this point, seems to have been the gel that held the four together -- he had the experience of being a child star in common with Jones, he was a habitue of the Sunset Strip clubs where Nesmith and Tork had been hanging out, and he had personality traits in common with all of them. Notably, in later years, Dolenz would do duo tours with each of his three bandmates without the participation of the others. The others, though, didn't get on so well with each other. Jones and Tork seem to have got on OK, but they were very different people -- Jones was a showbiz entertainer, whose primary concern was that none of the other stars of the show be better looking than him, while Tork was later self-diagnosed as neurodivergent, a folkie proto-hippie who wanted to drift from town to town playing his banjo. Tork and Nesmith had similar backgrounds and attitudes in some respects -- and were united in their desire to have more musical input into the show than was originally intended -- but they were such different personalities in every aspect of their lives from their religious views to their politics to their taste in music they came into conflict. Nesmith would later say of Tork "I never liked Peter, he never liked me. So we had an uneasy truce between the two of us. As clear as I could tell, among his peers he was very well liked. But we rarely had a civil word to say to each other". Nesmith also didn't get on well with Jones, both of them seeming to view themselves as the natural leader of the group, with all the clashes that entails. The four Monkees were assigned instruments for their characters based not on instrumental skill, but on what suited their roles better. Jones was the teen idol character, so he was made the maraca-playing frontman who could dance without having to play an instrument, though Dolenz took far more of the lead vocals. Nesmith was made the guitarist, while Tork was put on bass, though Tork was by far the better guitarist of the two. And Dolenz was put on drums, even though he didn't play the drums -- Tork would always say later that if the roles had been allocated by actual playing ability, Jones would have been the drummer. Dolenz did, though, become a good drummer, if a rather idiosyncratic one. Tork would later say "Micky played the drums but Mike kept time, on that one record we all made, Headquarters. Mike was the timekeeper. I don't know that Micky relied on him but Mike had a much stronger sense of time. And Davy too, Davy has a much stronger sense of time. Micky played the drums like they were a musical instrument, as a colour. He played the drum colour.... as a band, there was a drummer and there was a timekeeper and they were different people." But at first, while the group were practising their instruments so they could mime convincingly on the TV and make personal appearances, they didn't need to play on their records. Indeed, on the initial pilot, they didn't even sing -- the recordings had been made before the cast had been finalised: [Excerpt: Boyce & Hart, "Monkees Theme (pilot version)"] The music was instead performed by two songwriters, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who would become hugely important in the Monkees project. Boyce and Hart were not the first choice for the project. Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems Music, had initially suggested Roger Atkins, a Brill Building songwriter working for his company, as the main songwriter for The Monkees. Atkins is best known for writing "It's My Life", a hit for the Animals: [Excerpt: The Animals, "It's My Life"] But Atkins didn't work out, though he would collaborate later on one song with Nesmith, and reading between the lines, it seems that there was some corporate infighting going on, though I've not seen it stated in so many words. There seems to have been a turf war between Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems' music publishing, who was based in the Brill Building, and Lester Sill, the West Coast executive we've seen so many times before, the mentor to Leiber and Stoller, Duane Eddy, and Phil Spector, who was now the head of Screen Gems music on the West Coast. It also seems to be the case that none of the top Brill Building songwriters were all that keen on being involved at this point -- writing songs for an unsold TV pilot wasn't exactly a plum gig. Sill ended up working closely with the TV people, and it seems to have been him who put forward Boyce and Hart, a songwriting team he was mentoring. Boyce and Hart had been working in the music industry for years, both together and separately, and had had some success, though they weren't one of the top-tier songwriting teams like Goffin and King. They'd both started as performers -- Boyce's first single, "Betty Jean", had come out in 1958: [Excerpt: Tommy Boyce, "Betty Jean"] And Hart's, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me", under his birth name Robert Harshman, a year later: [Excerpt: Robert Harshman, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me"] Boyce had been the first one to have real songwriting success, writing Fats Domino's top ten hit "Be My Guest" in 1959: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Be My Guest"] and cowriting two songs with singer Curtis Lee, both of which became singles produced by Phil Spector -- "Under the Moon of Love" and the top ten hit "Pretty Little Angel Eyes": [Excerpt: Curtis Lee, "Pretty Little Angel Eyes"] Boyce and Hart together, along with Wes Farrell, who had co-written "Twist and Shout" with Bert Berns, wrote "Lazy Elsie Molly" for Chubby Checker, and the number three hit "Come a Little Bit Closer" for Jay and the Americans: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Come a Little Bit Closer"] At this point they were both working in the Brill Building, but then Boyce moved to the West Coast, where he was paired with Steve Venet, the brother of Nik Venet, and they co-wrote and produced "Peaches and Cream" for the Ikettes: [Excerpt: The Ikettes, "Peaches and Cream"] Hart, meanwhile, was playing in the band of Teddy Randazzo, the accordion-playing singer who had appeared in The Girl Can't Help It, and with Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein he wrote "Hurts So Bad", which became a big hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials: [Excerpt: Little Anthony and the Imperials, "Hurts So Bad"] But Hart soon moved over to the West Coast, where he joined his old partner Boyce, who had been busy writing TV themes with Venet for shows like "Where the Action Is". Hart soon replaced Venet in the team, and the two soon wrote what would become undoubtedly their most famous piece of music ever, a theme tune that generations of TV viewers would grow to remember: [Excerpt: "Theme from Days of Our Lives"] Well, what did you *think* I meant? Yes, just as Davy Jones had starred in an early episode of Britain's longest-running soap opera, one that's still running today, so Boyce and Hart wrote the theme music for *America's* longest-running soap opera, which has been running every weekday since 1965, and has so far aired well in excess of fourteen thousand episodes. Meanwhile, Hart had started performing in a band called the Candy Store Prophets, with Larry Taylor  -- who we last saw with the Gamblers, playing on "LSD-25" and "Moon Dawg" -- on bass, Gerry McGee on guitar, and Billy Lewis on drums. It was this band that Boyce and Hart used -- augmented by session guitarists Wayne Erwin and Louie Shelton and Wrecking Crew percussionist Gene Estes on tambourine, plus Boyce and session singer Ron Hicklin on backing vocals, to record first the demos and then the actual tracks that would become the Monkees hits. They had a couple of songs already that would be suitable for the pilot episode, but they needed something that would be usable as a theme song for the TV show. Boyce and Hart's usual working method was to write off another hit -- they'd try to replicate the hook or the feel or the basic sound of something that was already popular. In this case, they took inspiration from the song "Catch Us If You Can", the theme from the film that was the Dave Clark Five's attempt at their own A Hard Day's Night: [Excerpt: The Dave Clark Five, "Catch Us If You Can"] Boyce and Hart turned that idea into what would become the Monkees theme. We heard their performance of it earlier of course, but when the TV show finally came out, it was rerecorded with Dolenz singing: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Monkees Theme"] For a while, Boyce and Hart hoped that they would get to perform all the music for the TV show, and there was even apparently some vague talk of them being cast in it, but it was quickly decided that they would just be songwriters. Originally, the intent was that they wouldn't even produce the records, that instead the production would be done by a name producer. Micky Most, the Animals' producer, was sounded out for the role but wasn't interested. Snuff Garrett was brought in, but quickly discovered he didn't get on with the group at all -- in particular, they were all annoyed at the idea that Davy would be the sole lead vocalist, and the tracks Garrett cut with Davy on lead and the Wrecking Crew backing were scrapped. Instead, it was decided that Boyce and Hart would produce most of the tracks, initially with the help of the more experienced Jack Keller, and that they would only work with one Monkee at a time to minimise disruption -- usually Micky and sometimes Davy. These records would be made the same way as the demos had been, by the same set of musicians, just with one of the Monkees taking the lead. Meanwhile, as Nesmith was seriously interested in writing and production, and Rafelson and Schneider wanted to encourage the cast members, he was also assigned to write and produce songs for the show. Unlike Boyce and Hart, Nesmith wanted to use his bandmates' talents -- partly as a way of winning them over, as it was already becoming clear that the show would involve several competing factions. Nesmith's songs were mostly country-rock tracks that weren't considered suitable as singles, but they would be used on the TV show and as album tracks, and on Nesmith's songs Dolenz and Tork would sing backing vocals, and Tork would join the Wrecking Crew as an extra guitarist -- though he was well aware that his part on records like "Sweet Young Thing" wasn't strictly necessary when Glen Campbell, James Burton, Al Casey and Mike Deasy were also playing guitar: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Sweet Young Thing"] That track was written by Nesmith with Goffin and King, and there seems to have been some effort to pair Nesmith, early on, with more commercial songwriters, though this soon fell by the wayside and Nesmith was allowed to keep making his own idiosyncratic records off to the side while Boyce and Hart got on with making the more commercial records. This was not, incidentally, something that most of the stars of the show objected to or even thought was a problem at the time. Tork was rather upset that he wasn't getting to have much involvement with the direction of the music, as he'd thought he was being employed as a musician, but Dolenz and Jones were actors first and foremost, while Nesmith was happily making his own tracks. They'd all known going in that most of the music for the show would be created by other people -- there were going to be two songs every episode, and there was no way that four people could write and record that much material themselves while also performing in a half-hour comedy show every week. Assuming, of course, that the show even aired. Initial audience response to the pilot was tepid at best, and it looked for a while like the show wasn't going to be green-lit. But Rafelson and Schneider -- and director James Frawley who played a crucial role in developing the show -- recut the pilot, cutting out one character altogether -- a manager who acted as an adult supervisor -- and adding in excerpts of the audition tapes, showing the real characters of some of the actors. As three of the four were playing characters loosely based on themselves -- Peter's "dummy" character wasn't anything like he was in real life, but was like the comedy character he'd developed in his folk-club performances -- this helped draw the audience in. It also, though, contributed to some line-blurring that became a problem. The re-edited pilot was a success, and the series sold. Indeed, the new format for the series was a unique one that had never been done on TV before -- it was a sitcom about four young men living together, without any older adult supervision, getting into improbable adventures, and with one or two semi-improvised "romps", inspired by silent slapstick, over which played original songs. This became strangely influential in British sitcom when the series came out over here  -- two of the most important sitcoms of the next couple of decades, The Goodies and The Young Ones, are very clearly influenced by the Monkees. And before the broadcast of the first episode, they were going to release a single to promote it. The song chosen as the first single was one Boyce and Hart had written, inspired by the Beatles. Specifically inspired by this: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Hart heard that tag on the radio, and thought that the Beatles were singing "take the last train". When he heard the song again the next day and realised that the song had nothing to do with trains, he and Boyce sat down and wrote their own song inspired by his mishearing. "Last Train to Clarksville" is structured very, very, similarly to "Paperback Writer" -- both of them stay on one chord, a G7, for an eight-bar verse before changing to C7 for a chorus line -- the word "writer" for the Beatles, the "no no no" (inspired by the Beatles "yeah yeah yeah") for the Monkees. To show how close the parallels are, I've sped up the vocals from the Beatles track slightly to match the tempo with a karaoke backing track version of "Last Train to Clarksville" I found, and put the two together: [Excerpt: "Paperback Clarksville"] Lyrically, there was one inspiration I will talk about in a minute, but I think I've identified another inspiration that nobody has ever mentioned. The classic country song "Night Train to Memphis", co-written by Owen Bradley, and made famous by Roy Acuff, has some slight melodic similarity to "Last Train to Clarksville", and parallels the lyrics fairly closely -- "take the night train to Memphis" against "take the last train to Clarksville", both towns in Tennessee, and "when you arrive at the station, I'll be right there to meet you I'll be right there to greet you, So don't turn down my invitation" is clearly close to "and I'll meet you at the station, you can be here by 4:30 'cos I've made your reservation": [Excerpt: Roy Acuff, "Night Train to Memphis"] Interestingly, in May 1966, the same month that "Paperback Writer" was released, and so presumably the time that Hart heard the song on the radio for the first time, Rick Nelson, the teen idol formerly known as Ricky Nelson, who had started his own career as a performer in a sitcom, had released an album called Bright Lights and Country Music. He'd had a bit of a career downslump and was changing musical direction, and recording country songs. The last track on that album was a version of "Night Train to Memphis": [Excerpt: Rick Nelson, "Night Train to Memphis"] Now, I've never seen either Boyce or Hart ever mention even hearing that song, it's pure speculation on my part that there's any connection there at all, but I thought the similarity worth mentioning. The idea of the lyric, though, was to make a very mild statement about the Vietnam War. Clarksville was, as mentioned earlier, the site of Fort Campbell, a military training base, and they crafted a story about a young soldier being shipped off to war, calling his girlfriend to come and see him for one last night. This is left more-or-less ambiguous -- this was a song being written for a TV show intended for children, after all -- but it's still very clear on the line "and I don't know if I'm ever coming home". Now, Boyce and Hart were songwriters first and foremost, and as producers they were quite hands-off and would let the musicians shape the arrangements. They knew they wanted a guitar riff in the style of the Beatles' recent singles, and Louie Shelton came up with one based around the G7 chord that forms the basis of the song, starting with an octave leap: Shelton's riff became the hook that drove the record, and engineer Dave Hassinger added the final touch, manually raising the volume on the hi-hat mic for a fraction of a second every bar, creating a drum sound like a hissing steam brake: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] Now all that was needed was to get the lead vocals down. But Micky Dolenz was tired, and hungry, and overworked -- both Dolenz and Jones in their separate autobiographies talk about how it was normal for them to only get three hours' sleep a night between working twelve hour days filming the series, three-hour recording sessions, and publicity commitments. He got the verses down fine, but he just couldn't sing the middle eight. Boyce and Hart had written a complicated, multisyllabic, patter bridge, and he just couldn't get his tongue around that many syllables when he was that tired. He eventually asked if he could just sing "do do do" instead of the words, and the producers agreed. Surprisingly, it worked: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] "Last Train to Clarksville" was released in advance of the TV series, on a new label, Colgems, set up especially for the Monkees to replace Colpix, with a better distribution deal, and it went to number one. The TV show started out with mediocre ratings, but soon that too became a hit. And so did the first album released from the TV series. And that album was where some of the problems really started. The album itself was fine -- ten tracks produced by Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets playing and either Micky or Davy singing, mostly songs Boyce and Hart wrote, with a couple of numbers by Goffin and King and other Kirshner staff songwriters, plus two songs produced by Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, and with token participation from Tork and Dolenz. The problem was the back cover, which gave little potted descriptions of each of them, with their height, eye colour, and so on. And under three of them it said "plays guitar and sings", while under Dolenz it said "plays drums and sings". Now this was technically accurate -- they all did play those instruments. They just didn't play them on the record, which was clearly the impression the cover was intended to give. Nesmith in particular was incandescent. He believed that people watching the TV show understood that the group weren't really performing that music, any more than Adam West was really fighting crime or William Shatner travelling through space. But crediting them on the record was, he felt, crossing a line into something close to con artistry. To make matters worse, success was bringing more people trying to have a say. Where before, the Monkees had been an irrelevance, left to a couple of B-list producer-songwriters on the West Coast, now they were a guaranteed hit factory, and every songwriter working for Kirshner wanted to write and produce for them -- which made sense because of the sheer quantity of material they needed for the TV show, but it made for a bigger, less democratic, organisation -- one in which Kirshner was suddenly in far more control. Suddenly as well as Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets and Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, both of whom had been operating without much oversight from Kirshner, there were a bunch of tracks being cut on the East Coast by songwriting and production teams like Goffin and King, and Neil Sedaka and Carole Bayer. On the second Monkees album, released only a few months after the first, there were nine producers credited -- as well as Boyce, Hart, Jack Keller, and Nesmith, there were now also Goffin, King, Sedaka, Bayer, and Jeff Barry, who as well as cutting tracks on the east coast was also flying over to the West Coast, cutting more tracks with the Wrecking Crew, and producing vocal sessions while there. As well as producing songs he'd written himself, Barry was also supervising songs written by other people. One of those was a new songwriter he'd recently discovered and been co-producing for Bang Records, Neil Diamond, who had just had a big hit of his own with "Cherry Cherry": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] Diamond was signed with Screen Gems, and had written a song which Barry thought would be perfect for the Monkees, an uptempo song called "I'm a Believer", which he'd demoed with the regular Bang musicians -- top East Coast session players like Al Gorgoni, the guitarist who'd played on "The Sound of Silence": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "I'm a Believer"] Barry had cut a backing track for the Monkees using those same musicians, including Diamond on acoustic guitar, and brought it over to LA. And that track would indirectly lead to the first big crisis for the group. Barry, unlike Boyce and Hart, was interested in working with the whole group, and played all of them the backing track. Nesmith's reaction was a blunt "I'm a producer too, and that ain't no hit". He liked the song -- he wanted to have a go at producing a track on it himself, as it happened -- but he didn't think the backing track worked. Barry, trying to lighten the mood, joked that it wasn't finished and you needed to imagine it with strings and horns. Unfortunately, Nesmith didn't get that he was joking, and started talking about how that might indeed make a difference -- at which point everyone laughed and Nesmith took it badly -- his relationship with Barry quickly soured. Nesmith was getting increasingly dissatisfied with the way his songs and his productions were being sidelined, and was generally getting unhappy, and Tork was wanting more musical input too. They'd been talking with Rafelson and Schneider, who'd agreed that the group were now good enough on their instruments that they could start recording some tracks by themselves, an idea which Kirshner loathed. But for now they were recording Neil Diamond's song to Jeff Barry's backing track. Given that Nesmith liked the song, and given that he had some slight vocal resemblance to Diamond, the group suggested that Nesmith be given the lead vocal, and Kirshner and Barry agreed, although Kirshner at least apparently always intended for Dolenz to sing lead, and was just trying to pacify Nesmith. In the studio, Kirshner kept criticising Nesmith's vocal, and telling him he was doing it wrong, until eventually he stormed out, and Kirshner got what he wanted -- another Monkees hit with Micky Dolenz on lead, though this time it did at least have Jones and Tork on backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] That was released on November 23rd, 1966, as their second single, and became their second number one. And in January 1967, the group's second album, More of the Monkees, was released. That too went to number one. There was only one problem. The group weren't even told about the album coming out beforehand -- they had to buy their own copies from a record shop to even see what tracks were on it. Nesmith had his two tracks, but even Boyce and Hart were only given two, with the rest of the album being made up of tracks from the Brill Building songwriters Kirshner preferred. Lots of great Nesmith and Boyce and Hart tracks were left off the album in favour of some astonishingly weak material, including the two worst tracks the group ever recorded, "The Day We Fall in Love" and "Laugh", and a novelty song they found embarrassing, "Your Auntie Grizelda", included to give Tork a vocal spot. Nesmith called it "probably the worst album in the history of the world", though in truth seven of the twelve tracks are really very strong, though some of the other material is pretty poor. The group were also annoyed by the packaging. The liner notes were by Don Kirshner, and read to the group at least like a celebration of Kirshner himself as the one person responsible for everything on the record. Even the photo was an embarrassment -- the group had taken a series of photos in clothes from the department store J. C. Penney as part of an advertising campaign, and the group thought the clothes were ridiculous, but one of those photos was the one chosen for the cover. Nesmith and Tork made a decision, which the other two agreed to with varying degrees of willingness. They'd been fine miming to other people's records when it was clearly just for a TV show. But if they were being promoted as a real band, and having to go on tour promoting albums credited to them, they were going to *be* a real band, and take some responsibility for the music that was being put out in their name.  With the support of Rafelson and Schneider, they started making preparations to do just that. But Don Kirshner had other ideas, and told them so in no uncertain terms. As far as he was concerned, they were a bunch of ungrateful, spoiled, kids who were very happy cashing the ridiculously large cheques they were getting, but now wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. They were going to keep doing what they were told. Things came to a head in a business meeting in January 1967, when Nesmith gave an ultimatum. Either the group got to start playing on their own records, or he was quitting. Herb Moelis, Kirshner's lawyer, told Nesmith that he should read his contract more carefully, at which point Nesmith got up, punched a hole in the wall of the hotel suite they were in, and told Moelis "That could have been your face". So as 1967 began, the group were at a turning point. Would they be able to cut the puppet strings, or would they have to keep living a lie? We'll find out in a few weeks' time...

Zooming from Australia with its unique brand of music:Alternative rock, pop/rock band, PRINCESS PLANET's Ros Crook, Chris Crook, and Dave Cottingham --- and Russell Diggins, aka "Russell Street," from the punk band, Z-CARS, who were at the forefront of the Melbourne punk scene in the late 70's/early 80's, join host Steve Ludwig to share plenty of awesome music along with plenty of awesome stories about the Australian music scene.This is Show # 174 of Steve Ludwig's Classic Pop Culture (PlanetLudwig.com).#Australia #AustralianMusic #PrincessPlanet #ZCars #RosCrook #ChrisCrook #DaveCottingham #RussellDiggins #RussellStreet #AlternativeMusic #RockMusic #PunkMusic #PopMusic #PlanetLudwig #SteveLudwig #ClassicPopCulture

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 24th 2021 Inspired by their purchase of the recent blu-ray release of the entire 1960s BBC series, LISA PARKER and ANDREW TROWBRIDGE from the ROUND THE ARCHIVES PODCAST return to talk about MAIGRET in his various television incarnations, but mostly the RUPERT DAVIES version. That said, sometimes the conversation train from VISION ON SOUND HQ heads off in several completely different directions, so all sorts of series get at least a namecheck, including SERGEANT CORK, QUATERMASS II, DIXON OF DOCK GREEN, VAN DER VALK, DIAL 999, NO HIDING PLACE, NEW SCOTLAND YARD, THE SWEENEY, NYPD BLUE, CADFAEL, and the Z CARS universe. We also ponder briefly upon the different structures of various TV Cop Show formats like MIDSOMER MURDERS, INSPECTOR MORSE, CRACKER and PRIME SUSPECT, and give some consideration to which television detectives you might want investigating any crime that you might have been wrongly accused of. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

Episode three of the 2021/22 season sees blue panelists Judgy and Pricey joined by reds Terry and Phil to discuss all of the football fallout on Merseyside this week. The transfer window has now closed and the show begins with Terry and Phil expressing their views on Liverpool's transfer business, or lack thereof. The blues then go back and forth discussing Everton's incomings and the notable absence of a player who will be able to really impact the first eleven. Along the way both sides react to some of the many comments and questions received from listeners. Sticking with transfers, “This Week In History” sees the red side look back at Roy Hodgson's summer transfer window in 2010 and recall their emotions at the time, whilst the blues reminisce on what was one of the best transfer windows of their lifetimes. Focus then turns to last weekends fixtures which saw Everton take all three points at Brighton with a comfortable 2-0 victory, whilst Liverpool were held to a 1-1 draw in a massive fixture against Chelsea at Anfield. The show closes with another round of the ever popular “Higher Or Lower?” Will it be You'll Never Walk Alone or Z-Cars pumping out of homes around Merseyside this week?

We welcome in a new friend and talk about the results of Car Week as well as the new Nissan Z!

We made it! The final episode of the first series of 'An A to Z of UK TV Drama' is in the can. Rather than choosing the rather obvious Z Cars we thought instead that with this instalment that we'd take a much overdue trip into the world of ITC with the French Riviera-set crime caper The Zoo Gang. First broadcast in 1974 this series, based on the book by Paul Gallico (The Poseidon Adventure), was filmed in Nice and at Pinewood and starred Sir John Mills, Lilli Palmer, Brian Keith and Barry Morse who played four former resistance agents reunited 28 years after the war. Termed The Zoo Gang because of their codenames during the war: The Elephant, The Leopard, The Fox and The Tiger. A raft of familiar guest stars include Roger Delgado (in his last starring role post-Doctor Who), Jacqueline Pearce, Peter Cushing, and Philip Madoc. Both Andy and Martin find much to enjoy here and not just because they get the opportunity to try out their French or, rather, their French accents! Highlights include the title theme by Paul and Linda McCartney, the performances of the main cast, and the fun heist & hustle plots. Some of the acting isn't that great (coo-ee Ingrid Pitt!) and some of the storylines a bit convoluted but this limited-run 6 episode series still feels like a fun and upbeat way to end our series. This episode was brought to you by the words: malheureusement, maintenant, and perdue. As for 'Another A to Z of UK TV Drama' you'll just have to wait and see.

Welcome to the Dialed In Podcast! The E36 is moving along as well as the garage. Dynaudio Music's are getting ready to launch in the OG store along with other Dynaudio stuff. Matt enlightens everyone on why under cabinet nugget ice makers are super legit. Matt also talks about his new classic porsche head unit going into the E36. For all the Bimmer bros out there, There will never be a Z car in the fleet. As always Chris asks Matt questions from Instagram, Facebook, and the Live Stream. 

Benji, Nick and Shelley discuss the first ever episode of Z Cars (BBC 1962) and have a bit of a disagreement! Also featured: The Loch Ness Live Lounge! Emails sent to podcast@nicholasbriggs.com

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 28th 2021 Regular contributor WARREN CUMMINGS returns to VISION ON SOUND to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of POLICE DRAMAS on television, in a wide-ranging discussion that takes us from G F Newman's LAW AND ORDER through DIXON OF DOCK GREEN, BETWEEN THE LINES, LINE OF DUTY, DIAL 999, NO HIDING PLACE, Z CARS, "MURDER ISLAND" (ahem!), through INSPECTOR MORSE to, um, DUCK PATROL. But we also touch on corruption, the Thames Valley documentary, MITCHELL AND WEBB and 'professional advisers", the thirty minute drama, DOCTOR WHO, and the strangely extreme and heightened worlds in shows like SPECIAL BRANCH, THE SWEENEY, and TARGET, and even get quite philosophical from time to time about the area of law and order generally. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

John Thaw's hard-drinking, rule-bending detective Jack Regan was a 70s TV icon - and amazingly, he was inspired by a real policeman. Acclaimed scriptwriter Ian Kennedy Martin gives Stephen Wright the inside story on The Sweeney, the legendary ITV series he created. The cop show pioneer also tells all about his other hits including Juliet Bravo, why filming car chases was easier in the 70s (the cars were all dirt cheap) - and how he had the original idea for iconic Michael Caine crime caper The Italian Job (but sold it to his script-writing brother Troy Kennedy Martin, who wrote the BBC's long-running Z-Cars). Strap in for half an hour of TV crime drama nostalgia. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Datsun/Nissan Z cars Pt.2 In this episode, I cover the latest generations of the Datsun/Nissan Z cars, starting with the 300ZX all the way to the newly shown off Z Proto. With the first 300ZX, things were looking up in terms of performance, but the car still had a long way to go. By 1990 the Z32 300ZX was out and this car became incredible, utilizing a twin-turbo V6 engine, 4 wheel steering, and many other upgrades. The Z32 would become one of the best sports cars of the time. The 350Z and 370Z both continued the trend of good performance and a good price, the next-generation Z Proto was just shown off and things are looking good again for this latest Z car Thanks for Listening! Music Finally by Loxbeats https://soundcloud.com/loxbeats? Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download: http://bit.ly/FinallyLoxbeats? Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/fGquX0Te1Yo Damtaro - Nothing [FTUM Release] · Future Bass / Energetic Background Music "Energy to get up after falling" - Damtaro Alive by LiQWYD https://soundcloud.com/liqwyd? Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/l_alive? Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/8xXFbq4J52E Beauty Flow by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5025-beauty-flow License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Joseph McDade-Backplate Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Z-car https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g15377615/my-fair-lady-a-visual-history-of-the-nissan-z-car/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-VCT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_300ZX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7JdE1Gq8IY https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15136959/nissan-350z-road-test/ https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/future-concept/new-nissan-z.html

Datsun Z Cars In this episode, I cover the first generations of the Datsun Z cars. The first of these, the 240Z, or Fairlady Z in Japan, was an affordable high-performance car based on the successful rally car, the Datsun 510. Not only did the 240Z offer an amazing driving experience but it was also offerable, costing a little more than the MGB GT. The engine size would increase leading to the 260Z and the 280Z. Unfortunately by the 280ZX generation the car had become a luxury car with a sloppy suspension and had lost its high-performance identity. Luckily a turbocharged version was looking to change that and bring the z car back to its former glory. Thanks for Listening. Music: Finally by Loxbeats https://soundcloud.com/loxbeats? Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download: http://bit.ly/FinallyLoxbeats? Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/fGquX0Te1Yo Damtaro - Nothing [FTUM Release] · Future Bass / Energetic Background Music "Energy to get up after falling" - Damtaro Beauty Flow by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5025-beauty-flow License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Dark Times by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3611-dark-times License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Sources: https://silodrome.com/history-datsun-240z/#:~:text=Sales%20began%20in%20October%201969,carburettors%20and%20delivering%20151%20hp.&text=In%20the%20US%20the%20240Z,and%20over%2040%2C000%20in%201973. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_S30#:~:text=The%20Nissan%20S30%20(sold%20in,Japan%20from%201969%20to%201978.&text=The%20240Z%20used%20twin%20SU,%2Dbarrel%20side%2Ddraft%20carburetors. https://www.topspeed.com/cars/nissan/1970-1978-nissan-z-car-240z-260z-and-280z-ar36401.html#:~:text=The%20name%20was%20changed%20from,countries%20was%20available%20until%201979. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Z-car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_S30 https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g15377615/my-fair-lady-a-visual-history-of-the-nissan-z-car/

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 17th 2021 The main guest this week is LISA PARKER who is one half of the team behind the popular ROUND THE ARCHIVES archive television podcast, which is one of the reasons VISION ON SOUND exists at all. As she is here mostly to discuss her television memories, SANDY and I have a brief chat about our more recent viewing which involves modern historical dramas like THE CROWN, THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT and THE TRIAL OF CHRISTINE KEELER. In her interview, LISA talks about topics as diverse as her life as a young DOCTOR WHO FAN, spotting the difference between video and film on screen, FRAGGLE ROCK, THE BOX OF DELIGHTS, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, childrens TV, horror films, TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, THE GENERATION GAME and Z CARS, as well as lots of other adventures in the life of a young telly viewer at the dawn of the VHS age. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

This episode, the Watchers in the Fourth Dimension struggle to hide their sniggers as the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria face off against some evil weed and its calming effect on people as it tries to take over Earth! It may sound like Reefer Madness, but it’s actually the (sadly) missing story Fury from the Deep!   Over the course of our discussion, Anthony relentlessly makes weed jokes, Julie ponders the seaweed’s relationship with its foam, Reilly laments the poor characterization of Victoria across her run on the show, and Don complains repeatedly about Robson. The whole crew discuss the recurring tropes of the season that are repeated through the entire season – including the legendary BBC foam machine.   For those of you who want to watch this along with us, this story is sadly missing, but there is a full animation available through both Amazon US and Amazon UK. Sadly, this is story is not yet available to stream.   Other media mentioned in this episode: Carry On – The Complete Collection (Amazon US | Amazon UK) The Complete Steptoe & Son (Amazon US | Amazon UK) Z Cars (Amazon US | Amazon UK) The Beach House (Amazon US | Amazon UK – also on Shudder) Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Complete (Amazon US | Amazon UK) Game of Thrones: The Complete Series (Amazon US | Amazon UK) Gavin & Stacey: The Complete Collection (Amazon US | Amazon UK) The Mighty Boosh: Series 1-3 (Amazon UK only) Doomwatch (Amazon UK only) Blake’s 7 – The Complete Series 1-4 (Amazon US | Amazon UK) The Tingler (Amazon US | Amazon UK) John Carpenter’s The Fog (Amazon US | Amazon UK) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Amazon US | Amazon UK) The Day of the Triffids (Amazon US | Amazon UK) The Twilight Zone – Season 3 (Amazon US | Amazon UK) Mars Attacks! (Amazon US | Amazon UK) Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (Amazon US | Amazon UK) The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (Amazon US | Amazon UK)   Finally, you can also follow us and interact with us on various forms of social media - Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also e-mail us at watchers4d@gmail.com. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating or review.

The Christmas Special that very nearly wasn't! After losing most of our first recording of this episode - ironic given the episode we were reviewing is the most missing Doctor Who episode of them all - we proceeded undaunted and re-recorded our thoughts on this the first Doctor Who Christmas Special: episode 7 of The Daleks' Master Plan - The Feast of Steven. Along the way - thanks to the Time-Space Visualiser - we play some Christmas tunes, consider the Christmas of 1965, try out our Scouse accents, rail against everyday Sixties sexism and racism, and ultimately decide that we would like to spend our Christmas with a Dalek rather than the non-Z Cars policeman or the Hollywood crazies the regulars meet in this episode. Incidentally, a Happy Christmas to all of you at home - very much at home this year. May you have comfort, joy, green Fanny Cradock mashed potatoes, and as much Terry's Chocolate Orange as you want. Music from: The Waitresses, Kim Appleby and The Go Go's (not those ones). We highly recommend Gavin Rymill's excellent video on the behind-the-scenes story of The Feast of Steven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD3JyJvjr8A We will return on New Year's Day with... Warriors of the Deep (gasp!)

It was Nissans turn, the 370z is 10 years old and it was time for a change, a big change! In 2019 we saw two big names release some game changers, with the all new A90 Toyota Supra, and Chevy had a go with the new Corvette C8. All seeming like old news at this point, and now it's Nissans turn to wow us all. Let's start off by talking about the elephant in the room, or should I say front bumper in the room? Every car or automotive sketch artist I can think of on youTube seems to have a better idea of what the front bumper should look like. Is it missing something? More details? Are they making the same mistake as BMW with an out of this world front bumper? However Nissan does claim the car is not 100% completed, so the photos and videos all over the internet are not a completed product. In the interview during the release they did state “ its very close”. So we can expect the car to be very close to what we will see in a final product.According to many online sources, the powertrain will be very close, if not identical to the Infiniti's Q60 Coupe engine. Nissan confirmed the Proto Z will feature a twin-turbo V6, which we expect to be the same unit from the Q60. Now here is where it gets interesting...Will the “400Z” name and some claims online state the goal of 400HP? That platform is already developed with the Q50 Red Sport, but if we plunk that into a much lighter vehicle...crazy track monster? I think so!! So, are we going to see a Nismo version, with the carbon accents, bigger brakes and a 400HP drivetrain? And then a base, or limited model with the 300HP twin turbo like the Q60 base? Another points to mention would be the suspension, we at Paradigm are all about suspension tuning, so this interests me the most. Nissan states they will have a completely updated version of the 370Z chassis and suspension design. Its expected to have options or certain models with adjustable suspension, upgraded steering, most likely electric, and a limited-slip diff in the rear! Thats awesome, and I cant wait to drive one!Now lets get to the best part.. the part we as car enthusiasts have all been waiting for, the mistake they made with the New Supra.... The Nissan 400Z comes stock with a MANUAL TRANSMISSION!! Thats right! This is something that too many manufacturers have been getting away from. But why? There is nothing like cruising down a long curvy road, making every decision possible. Braking, down shifting, hugging the corners and reacting with every feeling the road gives you. Shifting with a manual transmission is such a pure driving experience. Not to mention drifting, auto cross or other motorsport potential this car will offer right out of the box! I think this car is a bit of a game changer, even though we have still not seen a 100% finished product. We also have to talk about one final thing before we go. It's an important thing that we do not want to leave out. THE PRICE TAG?? What is Nissan going to do here? It's been said to release with an MSRP of $42,000 US, but that has not yet been confirmed. We have no idea what to expect, and I think this will play a major role in how this does in the car scene and or car market today. If they price this too high, then they will compete with way too many cars, if they price it just right, 45k mark or less? I think there may be a lot of 370Z's for sale

Pictured: Kenzo Takada Matthew Bannister on: Kenzo Takada, the Japanese-born fashion designer who made Paris his home and was known for his bold use of colour. Colonel John Waddy, the former head of the SAS who was wounded at the Battle of Arnhem. Frank Windsor, the actor best known for playing Detective Sergeant Watt in Z Cars and Softly Softly. Ann Getty, who married into the Getty family and used her fortune to rescue a publishing house, support the arts and start an interior design company. Interviewed guest: Dana Thomas Interviewed guest: John O’Reilly Interviewed guest: Niall Cherry Interviewed guest: Amanda Windsor Interviewed guest: Bill Fellows Interviewed guest: Diane Dorrans Saeks Producer: Neil George Archive clips from: Flower by Kenzo, directed by Patrick Guedj 2018; The Clothes Show: Catwalk Special, BBC One 23/10/1994; Kenzo Takada – Renegades of Fashion, Fashion Industry Broadcast 01/03/2020; Red Devils of Arnhem (1944), British Pathe 13/04/2014; Today, Radio 4 08/05/2020; A Bridge Too Far, directed by Richard Attenborough, Joseph E Levine Productions 1977; Oosterbeek Battlefield Tour 2011, Bart H 18/03/2016; Woman’s Hour, Radio 2 24/03/1971.

Robert Ross is joined (online) by Pete Evanow, author of the book "Nissan Z: 50 Years of Exhilarating Performance" to discuss Z history, the impact the six generations of the Z-Car had on the automotive industry, and what the future might look like in the collectible market. After introducing Pete, Robert shares his thoughts on Pete's book, "Nissan Z," and Pete shares how the book came to be (1:01). Then Robert rewinds and asks Pete to go back and look at the origins of the Z legacy (2:34) before Robert asks Pete to talk in in more detail about Yutaka Katayama, father of the Z-Car (5:09), and then Pete explains why Datsun rebranded as Nissan (6:39). The two men then discuss how the release of the 240Z 'changed the game' for Nissan (7:11) and Pete details the designers who created the automobile (9:18). Pete then shares some of the racing history of the Z-Cars, including how P.L. Newman brought credibility to the make (10:21), and then they both review the model numbers that brought the car to present day (12:56). Before a short break, Pete shares abou this time working for Nissan when the company partnered with Renault (14:33). Then Robert asks Pete to talk about the GTR (16:55), before discussing the more recent Z-Car models (18:12) and considering what the future might hold for the next Z-Cars (21:00). Then Robert turns the conversation towards the collector market (22:16). Then Robert asks Pete what cars he has in his own garage (28:42) before concluding the show with Pete giving some insight into his own inspiration in life (31:05). Get the Book: https://www.amazon.com/Nissan-50-Years-Exhilarating-Performance/dp/0760367132 ----------------- Learn More: https://www.curtco.com/carsthatmatter Follow Us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carsthatmatterpodcast Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/carspodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carsthatmatterpodcast ----------------- Hosted by: Robert Ross Produced and edited by: Chris Porter Theme Music by: Celleste & Eric Dick A CurtCo Media Production https://www.curtco.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Robert Ross is joined (online) by Pete Evanow, author of the book "Nissan Z: 50 Years of Exhilarating Performance" to discuss Z history, the impact the six generations of the Z-Car had on the automotive industry, and what the future might look like in the collectible market. After introducing Pete, Robert shares his thoughts on Pete's book, "Nissan Z," and Pete shares how the book came to be (1:01). Then Robert rewinds and asks Pete to go back and look at the origins of the Z legacy (2:34) before Robert asks Pete to talk in in more detail about Yutaka Katayama, father of the Z-Car (5:09), and then Pete explains why Datsun rebranded as Nissan (6:39). The two men then discuss how the release of the 240Z 'changed the game' for Nissan (7:11) and Pete details the designers who created the automobile (9:18). Pete then shares some of the racing history of the Z-Cars, including how P.L. Newman brought credibility to the make (10:21), and then they both review the model numbers that brought the car to present day (12:56). Before a short break, Pete shares about this time working for Nissan when the company partnered with Renault (14:33). Then Robert asks Pete to talk about the GTR (16:55), before discussing the more recent Z-Car models (18:12) and considering what the future might hold for the next Z-Cars (21:00). Then Robert turns the conversation towards the collector market (22:16). Then Robert asks Pete what cars he has in his own garage (28:42) before concluding the show with Pete giving some insight into his own inspiration in life (31:05). Get the Book: https://www.amazon.com/Nissan-50-Years-Exhilarating-Performance/dp/0760367132 ----------------- Learn More: https://www.curtco.com/carsthatmatter Follow Us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carsthatmatterpodcast Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/carspodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carsthatmatterpodcast ----------------- Hosted by: Robert Ross Produced and edited by: Chris Porter Theme Music by: Celleste & Eric Dick A CurtCo Media Production https://www.curtco.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Following swiftly on from Everton revealing their new hummel kits ahead of the 2020/21 season, the ECHO's Everton reporter Adam Jones has been speaking exclusively with hummel Chief Brand Officer Filip Trulsson. Catch their conversation as Filip explains the lengths hummel have gone to in order to deliver a bespoke design for their first set of Everton kits. He also explains why the brand were keen to get involved with the Blues and also touches on the guided tour he was given at Goodison Park by Graeme Sharp. Plus, we ask more about the links between Everton and hummel with their famous chevrons set to don the famous Blue shirts and also how club's iconic Z-Cars anthem is the inspiration behind that idea, with its soundbar expanded and embossed in a striking manner. Enjoy.

Lynda LaPlante joins Twiggy today for a cup of Tea!Born and brought up in Liverpool, Lynda trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). After finishing herstudies, and using the stage name Lynda Marchal, she appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company in a variety of productions, as well as securing roles in popular television series, such as Z-Cars, The Sweeney, The Professionals and Bergerac.Her breakthrough as a writer came in 1983 when she created the six-part robbery series Widows for Thames Television. This was followed by a debut novel, The Legacy, published in 1987, which received both critical and best-seller success. Her second, third and fourth novels - The Talisman (1987), Bella Mafia (1990) and Entwined (1993) - also became best sellers.In 1990, Lynda wrote her most successful television series, Prime Suspect, which starred Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. The series aired in the UK as well as on PBS in the USA (as part of the anthology program Mystery!), and won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Lynda also wrote the TV series The Governor (ITV 1995-1996), Killer Net (Channel 4, 1998), Trial & Retribution (ITV 1997), Mind Games (ITV 2001) and The Commander (ITV), all of which scored significant viewer figures. During this period, shealso released the Cold series of books: Cold Shoulder, Cold Blood and Cold Heart, followed by Sleeping Cruelty (2000) - adding to her list of best sellers.Lynda was awarded a CBE in the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to Literature, Drama and to Charity, and in 2009 she was inducted into the Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame. In April 2013, Lynda was awarded an honorary fellowship by the Forensic Science Society.The music for the podcast is Twiggy's version of "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks and can be found on Apple Music at this link https://music.apple.com/gb/album/romantically-yours/693460953If you’ve enjoyed listening to “Tea With Twiggy” please give take a moment to give us a lovely 5 STAR rating on Apple Podcasts. It really helps other people to find the show.If you haven’t done so already please subscribe to this podcast so you auto-magically get the next episodes for free and do tell all your friends and family about it too. If you want to connect with me I’d love to hear from you.You can find me on Twitter @TwiggyOr you can find me on Instagram @Twiggy LawsonMy thanks go to all the people that have helped this podcast happen:● Many thanks to James Carrol and all the team at Northbank Talent Management● Thanks to all the team at Stripped Media including Ben Williams, who edits the show, my producer Kobi Omenaka and Executive Producers Tom Whalley and Dave CorkeryIf you want to know more about this podcast and other produced by Stripped Media please visit www.Stripped.media to find out! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In an Everton FC edition of Across The Park Extra, Millsy & Judgy are delighted to be joined by ex Everton & Republic of Ireland International midfielder, Gareth Farrelly. We chat Gareth's Everton career in detail, from him being present at Howard Kendall's press conference and signing a blank contract to his hurt at leaving the club in 1999. The scorer of one of the most important goals in Everton's history, we re-visit that day against Coventry in 1998 in detail. From the build up and the team asking to forfeit their day off in the week, to the day itself and the pressure as a young Evertonian he felt walking out to Z-Cars with the club's Premier league status on the line. We talk merseyside derby memories, the influence of Duncan as captain, the arrival of Walter Smith and his special relationship with Howard Kendall in a must listen for all blues!

Benji and Nick are chatting about what they're watching at the moment – The Man in the High Castle, The Crown, The Man Who Haunted Himself, Z Cars... but where is Jamie Anderson? Emails sent to podcast@nicholasbriggs.com

The film director Ken Loach talks to Michael Berkeley about the classical music he’s loved throughout his life and the dangerous power of music in film. Ken Loach began his career directing Z Cars - but very soon entered the national consciousness in the late 1960s with films such as Cathy Come Home, Poor Cow and Kes. He’s kept up this prolific pace in the subsequent fifty years, making more than fifty award-winning films for cinema and television, and achieving a level of realism rarely captured by other directors. His latest film, Sorry We Missed You, is about the impact on families of the gig economy. Ken talks to Michael about the music of his childhood growing up in Nuneaton after the war – he chooses Brahms's Academic Festival Overture to recall music lessons at school - and he we hear a piece by Schubert which reminds him of his own children growing up. Ken picks recordings which bring back particular moments in his life: the sheer energy and excitement of Carlos Kleiber’s 1974 recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; the 1968 recording of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto by Mstislav Rostropovich and Herbert von Karajan, which brings back memories of making Kes; and Geza Anda’s recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 21, which was used in the film Elvira Madigan. Every one of Ken’s films has a cause at its heart such as homelessness, unemployment and civil rights. We hear the music of resistance that reflects the struggle of ordinary people for justice and dignity that has driven his career. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Welcome to Overdrive, a program about the wonderful world of motoring and transport. I’m David Brown In this program we have: News stories 1. Car companies withdraw ads from the Alan Jones program (1:31) 2. Heads of GM, Ford among CEOs rejecting shareholder-centric model (2:39) 3. The $8 Million Bugatti Centodieci's Radical Design Captures The Spirit Of The EB110 (3:40) 4. GetCharged unveils e-scooter charger in New York City (4:57) 5. The Problem with Amazon’s Cheap Gas Stunt (5:46) 6. Motoring Minute – Nissan GTR (7:35) 7. And we have the first instalment of an interview with David Berthon and his 1913 Rolls Royce.(9:15) 8. Motoring Minute – Jaguar e-Pace (16:07) 9. We hear from Rob Fraser who went to the 50th anniversary of the Nissan Z cars. (17:32) 10. And Brian smith joins us again for some quirky news including celebrating potholes (21:51) You can find more information at Driven Media or previous programs are available as podcasts on iTunes or Spotify. OR our Facebook site OverdriveCity So, let’s start with the news Originally broadcast 24 August 2019

John talks to top stage and TV actor VIRGINIA STRIDE, who was in the original hit series Z Cars.

The sirens roared, Z-Cars played, and Arsenal were bombarded from the first whistle to the last. Marco Silva led the Blues to a third consecutive victory and clean sheet. We talk plenty of MOTM shouts, Phil Jagielka’s performance, team togetherness, Baines the hipster, and giving Bernard a hug. 

On this week’s James Whale Radio Show. Penis enlargement, Whale Mail, Tech Talk, questions for the Whale and more. Music By Crimson Death vs Pixieguts.. – Show Produced by Rob Oldfield. Download the mp3 Mobile Phones – If the audio isn’t playing click the pause button and press play!   Click ...

Orpheus Brewing and The Woodlands talk sour and wild beers Wild and sour beers continue to grow in popularity.  From "simple" sour beers like Berliner Weisse and Gose to complex, spontaneously fermented ales with funky, earthy, cheesy character.  There's a huge variety out there. When you think of SweetWater Brewery, you may not think of sour beers - but you should.  Nick Burgoyne, Lead Brewer and Blender at SweetWater's The Woodlands focuses on brewing wild, sour, funky and barrel-aged beers.  He recently won a Silver Medal for Cambium (an American Wild Ale) at the US Open Beer Championship. Orpheus Brewing opened in Atlanta in 2014.  Brewmaster and President Jason Pellett had a goal to introduce an approachable, sour beer that anyone could afford and his Atlanta (Tart Plum Saison) did just that.  In the past 4 years, Orpheus has brewed many more sour beers, and recently won Bronze for Lambic-style Ales at the Great American Beer Fest. Burgoyne and Pellett join us this week to talk about the adventure of expanding the acceptance of sour beers.  We talk simple kettle sours like Berliner Weisse and Gose, and more complex sours like Lambic and Gueze.   We also discuss the challenges facing American brewers as they mimic these styles and try to name them without offending traditional Belgian brewers, and how that brought about the move towards the Méthode Traditionnelle under the guidance of HORAL (High Council for Artisinal Lambic Beers).  As we sip through several beers, the conversation moves to the process of traditional spontaneous brewing and blending sour beers. The show was taped at SweetWater Brewery during ZCON Atlanta's brewery night.  We talk with Z Car Club Association President Chris Karl about Z Cars, the club and ZCON - their annual national convention. Beer Guys Radio Craft Beer Podcast 147 Guests: Nick Burgoyne, SweetWater Woodlands | Jason Pellett, Orpheus Brewing | Chris Karl, ZCCA - The Z-Car Club Association Topic: Sour and Wild Beer Primer and intro to Z-Cars Episode Guide Sponsor thanks and show intro | 0:00 Nick Burgoyne intro | 01:50 Jason Pellett intro | 2:08 Week in Review | 2:29 Woodlands Circle Beer Club | 3:04 Blue Ridge, GA Brewery visits | 3:59 Brian's wrong opinion on stouts | 5:08 Beers of the Week | 6:58 Craft Beer News | 7:45 Climate change and craft beer Sustainability in brewing Orpheus "Even the Furies Wept" and Tribute Barrels | 12:52 Breaking down "sour" beers | 14:13 American brewers naming of sour beer styles | 16:10 Orpheus process in canning sours | 16:32 Kettle sours: Berliner Weisse and Gose | 17:35 Substituting lactic acid for lactobacillus | 19:23 Heavy fruit blurring Berliners and Goses | 20:59 Z-Car Talk and ZCON Atlanta | 23:50 Oud Bruin / Flanders Red discussion | 29:27 How not to pronounce Belgian beer names | 34:40 Lambic and Geuze discussion | 35:32 Spontaneous fermentation and koelschip/coolship | 35:32 Kriek, Framboise, Faro | 38:40 Méthode Geuze / Méthode Traditionnelle | 40:35 HORAL (High Council for Artisinal Lambic Beers) | 42:07 American Wild Ale | 43:00 BEGIN 5th SEGMENT | 44:40 Orpheus Everything Last's Forever / Méthode Traditionnelle MT III | 45:15 ABV potential in spontaneous brewing | 47:34 Wild wine | 45:55 Introducing sour beers to America | 52:58 Orpheus markets sours to the masses | 54:55 Tim gets tipsy, rambles | 55:15 SweetWater introduces hop heads to sour ales | 56:18 How SweetWater got involved with sour brewing | 56:50 SweetWater alumni | 59:50 Blending sour beers | 1:00:20 Alternative lambic brewing - Labeau and DKZ methods | 1:04:50 Green bottles and skunking your lambics | 1:07:28

Everton ran out to their traditional Z-Cars anthem on Saturday - but that was where all similarities to the Blues home form ended. Another insipid away performance ended in another away defeat - and Phil Kirkbride, who was at Vicarage Road, and Dave Prentice and Chris Beesley, who watched it from between their fingers on TV, discuss the ramifications. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

It's a Thursday, so it's time for a fresh and free download and podcast from Toby Hadoke, who tracks down a new interviewee

Kevin is an accomplished actor, who prides himself on never having been unemployed in his long career. He was in the acclaimed British gangster film The Long Good Friday, through to Z Cars, Downton Abbey, and more recently in Designated Survivor as well as being the beloved Mr Gibbs in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Please sit back and enjoy as I ask your questions, and a bit of banter with Kevin McNally --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

We celebrate one of the most influential comedies that has ever come out of the BBC, HANCOCK’S HALF HOUR but even more so we celebrate Tony Hancock himself. This episode features the first of a two part interview with the Archivist of the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society, Tristan Brittain-Dissont. He brought some incredible audio to share over the course of the two episodes. This episode we hear a recently discovered crystal clear clip from THE HORROR SERIAL that has only previously existed as a very poor audio copy and an audio clip from the recently found soundtrack to THE ITALIAN MAID. Plus information of how it was found. We then catch up with Chris Perry over the recently announced discoveries that have been announced by Kaleidoscope including some exclusive audio clips to the recently recovered Z CARS episode TRUTH OR DARE and a clip from MY PAL BOB. We also talk about Kaleidoscope’s new online research tool culminating in over 30 years of research into British television, TV Brain and how everyone can have access to this powerful database. If you have feedback or questions you would like to have read on the podcast or general inquiries, please contact us at feedback@fromthearchive.co.uk. We would love to hear from you! This podcast is a co-production between From the Archive: A British Television Blog and Kaleidoscope. Thank you for listening. Tony Hancock Appreciation Society: www.tonyhancock.org.uk TV Brain: www.tvbrain.info

Episode 123 - Austin is at Corner 3 Motorsports in Laguna Hills, CA talking with friend of the show Steve Doherty.  John Capati, and Malko Izurieta join us to talk about Nissan Challenge, driving techniques, the benefit of having a coach, and learn the history of Corner 3 Garage.  We also learn about Nissan S Chassis cars and explore the newer Z33 and Z34 chassis Z Cars.  For more on Corner 3 Motorsports, visit http://corner3motorsports.com/.

Libby Purves meets actor Brian Blessed; midwife Mark Harris; artist Alinah Azadeh and environmentalist and peace campaigner Satish Kumar. For 20 years Mark Harris has worked as a qualified midwife, delivering hundreds of babies. He is one of just a small number of male midwives currently practising in the UK. Mark is also founder of the birth education programme Birthing For Blokes, a service providing antenatal classes designed to prepare men for fatherhood. Men, Love and Birth by Mark Harris is published by Pinter and Martin. Actor Brian Blessed is the son of a miner who left school at the age of 15 and worked as an undertaker's assistant before training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He has played a variety of roles on stage, television and in film including Z-Cars, I, Claudius, the Blackadder series, Flash Gordon and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. He is also an explorer and mountaineer, becoming the oldest man to reach the North Magnetic Pole on foot and to reach 28,000 feet up Everest without oxygen. His autobiography, Absolute Pandemonium, is published by Sidgwick and Jackson. Alinah Azadeh is an artist. She is taking part in a special evening of activities at the Freud Museum in London as part of the Museums at Night Festival. The night will include the first public screening of Alinah's film Burning the Books which is based on her personal experience of debt and explores the themes of gift and generosity, debt and gratitude. All About the Gift is at the Freud Museum, London NW3 5SX. Satish Kumar is a peace and environmental activist. A former Jain monk, he is editor-in-chief of Resurgence and Ecologist magazine which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. Born in Rajasthan, India, at nine he decided to follow a spiritual life and became a Jain monk, travelling from village to village with few possessions. In 1962, inspired by Bertrand Russell, he embarked on an 8,000-mile peace pilgrimage from India to the US, via Moscow, London and Paris. He is hosting The Resurgence Festival of Wellbeing in London. Producer: Paula McGinley.

They seek him here, they seek him there... Anyone looking for actor, comedian and TV encyclopedia Toby Hadoke need only hang out near a person from the last 50 years of TV Doctor Who, and he'll be there to interview them for a free podcast eventually!

Roy Holder (born 15 June 1946) is an English television actor who has appeared in various programmes including Ace of Wands, Z-Cars, Spearhead, the Doctor Who serial The Caves of Androzani and Sorry! His first notable appearance on the screen was in the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind. He also starred in the 1968 film Romeo and Juliet. More recently, Roy played the part of 'Friar Tom' in Robin Hood, and 'Fred Goddard' in Warhorse. Holder was born in Birmingham. He plays in several celebrity golf tournaments throughout the year and is currently 1st team captain at his home club. His loveable attitude and shaggy hairstyle have made him one of East Molesey's most popular celebrities.[citation needed] Roy is also a big name in the local Drama School industry, having lived in East Molesey for most of his life with his partner and two children. Roy also plays the part of Father Christmas at local primary schools

Elisabeth Claira Heath Sladen (1 February 1946 – 19 April 2011) was an actress best known for her role as in the television series . She appeared as a regular from 1973 to 1976, opposite both and , and reprised the role many times in subsequent decades, both on Doctor Who and its spin-off . Contents [] [] Early life Sladen was the only child of Tom Sladen, who fought in and served in the during .[] Her mother Gladys' maiden name was , which is a Northern Irish name commonly seen in Liverpool.[] Sladen developed an interest in performing at an early age, beginning dance lessons when she was five, and dancing in one production with the . She was a primary school contemporary of future politician (née Cohen), appearing in at least one school production with her; and a contemporary of , the future Attorney-General, when both attended Quarry Bank School (now ). [] Career [] Early career After attending drama school for two years, Sladen began work at the repertory company as an assistant stage manager. Her first stage appearance was as a corpse. However, she was scolded for giggling on stage, thanks to a young actor, , whispering the words, "Respiration nil, two" in her ear while he was playing a doctor. Sladen was so good as an assistant stage manager that she did not get many acting roles, a problem she solved by deliberately making mistakes on several occasions.[] This got her told off again, but she started to get more on-stage roles. Sladen made her first, uncredited, screen appearance in 1965 in the film as an extra. Sladen eventually moved into weekly repertory work, travelling around to various locations in England. Sladen and Miller, now married, moved to , spending three years there. She appeared in numerous roles, most notably as in , her first appearance as a leading lady. She also got the odd part on and , eventually appearing as a barmaid in 1970 in six episodes of the long-running soap opera . In 1971, Sladen was in two episodes of . Then, in 1972, she was appearing in a play that moved down to , and they had to move along with it. Her first television role in London was as a terrorist in an episode of . This was followed by guest roles in (again), , and . [] Sarah Jane Smith In 1973, Doctor Who actress , who was playing the 's assistant opposite , was leaving the series. Producer was growing increasingly desperate in his search for a replacement, when Z-Cars producer gave Sladen an enthusiastic recommendation. Sladen arrived at the audition not knowing it was for the new role, and was amazed at Letts's thoroughness. She was introduced to Pertwee, whom she found intimidating at the time. As she chatted with Letts and Pertwee, each time she turned to look at one of them the other would signal a thumbs-up. She was offered and accepted the part of investigative journalist . She stayed on Doctor Who for three and a half seasons, alongside Pertwee as the Third Doctor and as the , receiving both popular and critical acclaim for her role as Sarah Jane. When she left the series, in the 1976 serial , it made front page news,[] where previously only a change of Doctors had received such attention. In October, 2009, Sladen paid tribute to her boss and friend, Barry Letts, after he died. She said Letts was her closest friend on Doctor Who. Sladen returned to the character of Sarah Jane Smith on numerous occasions. In 1981, new Doctor Who producer asked her to return to the series to ease the transition between Tom Baker and new Doctor . She declined but accepted his second offer of doing a pilot for a spin-off series called , co-starring , the popular from Doctor Who. However, the pilot was not picked up for a series. Two years later Sladen appeared in the 20th anniversary special . She reprised the role in the 1993 special , and in the 1995 independently produced video alongside former co-star as and as Victoria Waterfield. This was her last on-screen appearance as Sarah Jane Smith for some time. Sladen played Sarah Jane in several . Two of them were produced for , (, 1993), and (, 1996), together with Jon Pertwee and Nicholas Courtney. has also produced two series of audio adventures set in the present day, released in 2002 and 2006. Her daughter Sadie has also appeared in the audios. In later years, Sladen had also participated re-visiting a few classic Doctor Who serials on DVD in doing audio commentaries and interviews (in the stories she starred in), but as of 2008 she stated in an interview that she was no longer doing them due to "contractual reasons with ". Following the successful revival of Doctor Who in 2005, Sladen guest starred as Sarah Jane in "", an episode of the , along with , who returned as the voice of the robot dog , and as the . Sladen was ever faithful to the character and worked a lot of the characterisation herself, in the lead-up to the broadcast of "School Reunion" she was quoted in as saying: "Sarah Jane used to be a bit of a cardboard cut-out. Each week it used to be, 'Yes Doctor, no Doctor', and you had to flesh your character out in your mind — because if you didn't, no one else would." She also spoke favourably of the characterisation in the new series. Following her successful appearance in the series, Sladen later starred in , a Doctor Who spin-off focusing on Sarah Jane, produced by for and created by . A aired on New Year's Day 2007, with a 10-episode series commencing broadcast in September 2007. The programme was nominated for a prestigious award and was recommissioned for a second 12-episode series which was broadcast in late 2008. The third series was broadcast in Autumn 2009, and again achieved audience ratings well in excess of the usual average figures for the time slot (sometimes even double). A fourth season began airing in October 2010. Sladen also read two original audio stories for The Sarah Jane Adventures, which were released in November 2007 on : The Glittering Storm by and The Thirteenth Stone by . This was the first time that BBC Audiobooks have commissioned new content for exclusive release on audio. Two new audio stories ("Ghost House" and "Time Capsule") were released in November 2008, both read again by Sladen. Sladen appeared in the final two episodes of Doctor Who's 2008 series (season 4) finale "" and "" and was credited in the title sequence of both episodes. Her final appearance in Doctor Who was a cameo in the concluding part of "", Tennant's last episode as the Doctor. [] Other work After Doctor Who, Sladen returned to Liverpool with her husband and performed in a series of plays. This included a two-hander with Miller in . Notable appearances following that include a two-year stint as a presenter for the children's programme , a lead role with Miller playing her husband in ITV drama , a BBC , a role as a stand-up comic's spouse in , and a small part in the movie as a bank secretary in 1980, only her second motion picture appearance. In 1981, former Doctor Who producer cast her as the female lead in the BBC Classics production of . She continued to appear in various advertisements and in another Letts production, (playing the Dormouse), as well as attending conventions in the . After the birth of her daughter in 1985, Sladen went into semi-retirement, placing her family first, but finding time for the occasional television appearance. In 1995, she played Dr Pat Hewer in 4 episodes of . In 1996, she played Sophie in , and appeared in 15 episodes of the BBC schools programme , which was repeated annually for around ten years. This was her last television acting appearance until the 2006 Doctor Who episode "". In 1991, she starred as Alexa opposite in audio adventure The Last Mission for Audio. Sladen also appeared in a audio drama, 's . In 2008–09, Sladen appeared in a production of at the , playing Mrs. Darling and a beautiful . [] Personal life Sladen married actor in 1968 in Liverpool; the marriage lasted until her death. Their daughter, , appeared with her in the range of Sarah Jane Smith audio plays by . As a child, Sadie appeared alongside Sladen in the 1996 documentary, Thirty Years in the TARDIS, wearing a replica of the overalls Sladen wore in . Sladen died early on 19 April 2011, after having cancer for several months. The first episode of series six of the revived version of Doctor Who "" aired on the Saturday following Sladen's death. The episode started with a screen announcing that it was dedicated to the memory of Elisabeth Sladen. Straight after 'Doctor Who', a special tribute called 'My Sarah Jane: A Tribute to Elisabeth Sladen' was aired on . Sladen had also been interested in being involved in the Doctor Who Fourth Doctor Big Finish series. [] References

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actor Brian Blessed.He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about Z Cars - the series which first brought him to public prominence in the 1960s, about his friendship with the actress Katherine Hepburn and his obsession with climbing mountains - mountains like Everest and Kilimanjaro - when he isn't acting.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Rite of Spring The Adoration Of Earth by Igor Stravinsky Book: In Search of the Miraculous by Peter Ouspensky Luxury: Scarf given to him by the Dalai Lama

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actor Brian Blessed. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about Z Cars - the series which first brought him to public prominence in the 1960s, about his friendship with the actress Katherine Hepburn and his obsession with climbing mountains - mountains like Everest and Kilimanjaro - when he isn't acting. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Rite of Spring The Adoration Of Earth by Igor Stravinsky Book: In Search of the Miraculous by Peter Ouspensky Luxury: Scarf given to him by the Dalai Lama

This week's Desert Island Discs castaway is playwright Alan Plater. He has been writing plays for radio, television, theatre and cinema since the early 1960s, having served his apprenticeship on Z-Cars in the days of live television drama. Since then, he has been associated with major television adaptions like The Barchester Chronicles and Fortunes of War. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his work, as well as recalling his childhood in the north of England in the 1930s and 1940s - an idyllic time for him despite the inconveniences of the Depression and the Blitz.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Fine & Mellow by Billie Holiday Book: Smell of Sunday Dinner by Sid Chaplin Luxury: Writing materials

This week's Desert Island Discs castaway is playwright Alan Plater. He has been writing plays for radio, television, theatre and cinema since the early 1960s, having served his apprenticeship on Z-Cars in the days of live television drama. Since then, he has been associated with major television adaptions like The Barchester Chronicles and Fortunes of War. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his work, as well as recalling his childhood in the north of England in the 1930s and 1940s - an idyllic time for him despite the inconveniences of the Depression and the Blitz. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Fine & Mellow by Billie Holiday Book: Smell of Sunday Dinner by Sid Chaplin Luxury: Writing materials