Curly-wurly haired Noel Edmonds interviews softly-spoken musician Kate Bush on the show that started and revolutionised Saturday morning's TV for kids and adults alike "Multi-Coloured Swap Shop".There is a second part to the interview. Taking a look at the comments and the quality of the video, it seems this is the only way now, we will ever view this clip, because it doesn't exist in the BBC archives anymore, which was a regualar occurence in the 70's and before. Only this video recording helps it to survive to this day. This is one of the great things about youtube and the internet today.
This was following 20-year old Kate Bush's climb to music fame in the previous year, 1978, led by her big No.1 hit song, "Wuthering Heights", which is talked about in the interview. Also, there is also that in-famed, unpredictable section where celebrities take part in the phone-in from children, a great TV innovation at the time. Arghh! Kate comes across very well here.
Before 1976 and the arrival of "Multi-Coloured Swap Shop", Saturday mornings were boring for children. Open University programming was not "spiffing good fun" on a Saturday! So, "Swap Shop" took much of it's inspiration from "Tiswas", which was a growing popular Sat. morning, wacky kids/family shows, currently being shown in the ATV Midlands region. Swap Shop became the first nationwide Saturday morning live show on British TV. Swap Shop, typical of the BBC, definitely didn't have the sort of mayhem and flinging flan-flingers, like "Tiswas", it was a more organised and sensible and well, trying to keep the balance appeal to adults and kids. They're were only 3 channels back then, there were no kids channel to dump it on, and be as childish as they want! So, Noel Edmonds, previously known as a Radio One DJ and "Top of the Pops" presenter, and future sidekick of the immortal "Mr Blobby", steered the show along with Maggie Philbin, John "Newsround" Craven, and Keith "Get up all you Beggars, it's Cheggars!" Chegwin, who did the swap element of the show. The show really tried to make kids feel inconclusive, and it was a great idea, where kids could either dial up the show, or attend Chegwin shrines around the country to swap their goods -no, not drugs or money- but innocent of the essence stuff like toys and stereos. The success of the show attracted people of high importance to the show, such as your celebrities and politicians. This all started with Swap Shop, as well as you're phone-in's. This continued into it's future evolutions like "Going Live!", however, today, the importance of Saturday mornings has fizzled out. You won't see Gordon Brown appearing anytime soon on "TMI", the scattered remains of a once unifying element of TV genre, now getting ready for the graveyard shift.
Aha, and just as I was saying about material being lost or missing from the archives, Wikipedia says, the BBC got rid of many of the episodes of the show back in the early 90's, as they felt they were of no use anymore. So that under-dealing trade did not stop in the 70's.
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