# Let's get together, oh yeah yeah yeah,
# We'll have a swinging time
It'll never be a hit.
It was a very exciting program to be on.
They had phone calls, saying, you know,
that the world was falling apart
and what was happening to these foul mouthed people.
Shocking!
We were walking round TV Centre the corridors like youg lions.
It was magic.
# But how far can you go? #
Unbelievable!
We wanted something like That Was The Week That Was
without knowing that it would ever come along.
That Was The Week That Was did more than just drag the stuffy old BBC
into the swinging '60s when it first went out live
at 10.50pm on Saturday the 24th of November 1962.
It tackled topical and taboo subjects in a way that had never
And just as The Beatles were and changing popular culture,
and changed public attitudes towards those in authority forever.
Understanding how this revolutionary programme came about
takes us back to 1960 and the appointment of Hugh Carlton Greene
as he put it, prick the pomposity of public figures
He charged current affairs producers Donald Baverstock and Alastair Milne
to come up with an idea that would mix current affairs and entertainment.
At the time, Baverstock and Milne were responsible for Tonight,
It was directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by Cliff Michelmore.
You're late. I thought you were all listening to The Archers.
After studying law at Oxford, Ned Sherrin decided to take up
and went to work in the brand new world of independent television.
In 1957, he left to join the BBC - a round which led him to Tonight.
Somebody says we appear to have lost that film.
We'll try and find it between then and now.
And it was Sherrin's talent for misschien making...
...that the producers decided was needed on the new show.
The only person on the whole Tonight team
who'd had any show business experience was Ned, and so
Ned Sherrin was charged with trying to pull something together as it were.
The natural parents, I suppose, of TW3 were the journalism
the current affairs feeling and research feeling
that one had upon Tonight. Plus it was a whole time of change.
The '60s were not so much a change as the start of an exploding
and the new magazine Private Eye.
What Sherrin needed was a versatile team of talents
able to embrace the potent mixture of
conversation, satire, comedy, debate, and music.
David Frost had studied at Cambridge alongside Peter Cook.
He'd also studied Cook himself and the lessons he'd learnt
helped Frost perform stand-up at the Blue Angel club.
while working by day for the TV company Associated Rediffusion.
He had quite a smart technique of asking a question and then
not quite answering but working round
to whatever prepared joke about MacMillan he had.
He'd say, "Give me another subject!"
Somebody said, "The Queen!"
and David very quickly said, "The Queen is not a subject."
A quick-witted fast-on-his-feet smart-arse
was just what Ned Sherrin needed to front the new project.
We met for lunch the next day at Percerose in Shepherd's Bush Green.
The cast for the pilot saw Sherrin involve young
Cambridge Footlights graduates John Bird, John Fortune, and Eleanor Bron,
alongside co-founder of Private Eye Willie Rushton.
From his own doorstep at Tonight, Sherrin took Brian Redhead, and
Lance Percival. And with Bird browsing West End musicals
he added Tonight's regular singers, David Kernan and Millicent Martin.
What Ned said was "We're going to do a pilot,
"and we'd like you to come in and do it. It's a completely new format.
"We want you to sing the opening number,
we want you to do some sketches with the rest of the cast,
and we want you also to sing a jazz number."
It was time to put the format to the test and make the pilot.
There was one sketch I remember that was some linking stuff
that David and Christopher Booker
and there was a discussion group and 12 Conservative ladies.
acerbic journalist, parliamentary sketch writer and theatre critic.
Yet another Tonight regular, his notoriously argumentative
With the sense of its own history for which the BBC is famous,
And they kept coming up with double
There was this wonderful woman who said, "Mr. Levin, mr. MacMillan
has always satisfied me.", and she said it five times.
At one point, he said to them, "Thanks to ridiculous letters you send them
"Conservative Party Central Office has bigger wastepaper baskets
than anywhere else in Brittain.".
And one woman said, "And they need them, mr. Levin, and they need them.".
And Bernard said, was that my point or yours?
The show went on and some middle higher ups in the BBC
were recruited to look at the pilot the following week.
And they for some reason thought it was disgraceful and said no to it.
The show seemed destined to be That Wasn't The Week That Was,
The Conservative ladies were so shocked,
they protested to Central Office, who protested to the BBC.
So some rather more senior and sophisticated people at the BBC
and they thought it was rather good.
And they said one more pilot, and then let's go.
So without the Conservative ladies and of course Bernard,
it wouldn't have happened.
But Brian Redhead had returned to Tonight and Bron, Bird and Fortune
had taken THEIR satirical review, The Establishment,
to New York, so were unavailable.
New performers were required and remembered Roy Kinnear from a review
and invited him to join the cast cartoonist Timothy Birdsall.
The very last to join was seasoned actor Kenneth Cope who, at the time,
was playing villain Jed Stone in Coronation Street.
Do you know a character who hangs out round here name of Dennis Tennant?
Aye, he lives just down the road - Number 11 Coronation Street.
Thanks, Da'. Ta-ra, well! By gum... he looks a real life case doesn't he?
Sherrin had assembled his team for a project that still carried
conceived at an early meeting with a performer from the first pilot.
There was an exploratory lunch with John Bird.
I was explaining the ethos of the programme -
the idea that every Saturday night ought to be like a mini New Year.
There was a feeling that the week is over - let it go,
it was a good time to get it out of your system.
I was explaining this to John and he said, quoting the old Shell
the car whizzing by and "That was Shell, that was..." - and he said,
Just 5 or 6 weeks before we thought we were supposed to be doing it,
Stuart Hood, the controller of BBC Television, said in a press
"but it certainly won't have That Was The Week That Was!"
It wasn't until we got the Radio Times for that particular Saturday,
that we were really sure we were actually on, that we were.
They were on, and the viewers in the BBC wouldn't know what hit them.
The studio audience was in place, the ridiculous title came up,
# That was the week that was
I would give a synopsis of all the different things that had happened
I ended up doing 40 of them,
# That was the week that was
# People are mending a few slips
# Teachers getting an £80 rise
# But you can't say this is putting # Mr. Chips in the chips
She used to set it up for us.
the beginning of the show with that lovely Dave Lee Orchestra
just set the show up for us,
That Was The Week That Was was, above all, topical. It was sketches, songs,
skits, arguments, regarding events of that particular week.
Although of course they did do some subjects of eternal importance.
An early target for TW3's elephant gun
was the previously sacrosanct world of politics.
For example Gerald Kaufman's first sketch, which was...
ten silent MP's who'd never spoken
in the 13 years or something that they'd been in the House.
Labour Charles Key, MP for Poplar. In his election address he called for:
The greatest effort and enthusiasm! With the very greatest enthusiasm
it's been impossible to trace a speech by him in the House
One of them got up to protest a breach of privilege or something -
and he was laughed out of the House.
Before That Was The Week That Was,
There is an assumption that every single politician is only in politics
entirely because of his sense of self sacrifice. He's doing it all for us,
nothing for himself, and that was the whole picture of politicians.
I wanted TW3 to be intensely topical, intensely aware of what was going on
in the world of politics, the various debates about religion,
the attitude to class, and news that came up.
And we were able to distill this, I suppose to a certain extent,
because so many of the writers had journalistic backgrounds.
The backbone of TW3 was its strong writing team, a winning combination
of star journalists and leading comedy writers.
Christopher Booker, Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall, Gerald Kaufman,
Johnny Speight, Dennis Potter, Richard Ingrams, Jack Rosenthal,
Herbert Kretzmer, Carol Brahms...
There were dozens of contributors, all with attitude.
While Frank Muir and Denis Norden were established comedy names,
they were joined by others just starting to make theirs,
including Peter Cook, Bill Oddie, and John Cleese.
Frost and I lunched a lot of people
we used to find halfway between Fleet Street and Shepherd's Bush
was the Cafe Royale and so we quite often prized a script out of somebody
by taking them to lunch and chatting them up.
For every week's show he had more material than would fit into one show,
to give him a chance to discard and be discriminating some.
That was the week that was. That'll be current affairs. Yeah...
Although TW3 often had an improvised look, most of it
was tightly scripted, rehearsed, and performed with the autocue.
But towards the end of the show some things were left to chance,
or, more accurately, to Lance.
The only improvising was me making up clips about topical events.
What was the one down here?
One of those jokes have come out,
# Well I must admit sir,
# I'm not being very swisher
# I assume you're referring to Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher
Just in case you don't know
# We've got to be very careful
# And she might be watching
Paul Merton and Ian Hislop use on...
In order to be able to be quick
listen to the radio the whole week.
# That's the end of... 1962. #
I would now like to present to you for sound radio, David Frost.
And it was that young cocky face that came to sum up everything
the rest of us. He was the presenter.
He used to do occasional sketches,
He was infinitely better when he was not doing a sketch
and simply holding the whole thing together
and tossing off the quips and comebacks and that sort of thing.
I wondered why in all the rehearsals you refused to do that last link.
But it was Ned Sherrin who ran the show. TW3 was very definitely
his baby. And everybody knew it.
To us in the cast, Ned Sherrin was very simply...God.
I mean, he made all the decisions.
I mean, he was 23, 24, 25...
and he seemed to be pretty much
He used to come and stand in front of us like a U-boat captain.
He looked like a German U-boat captain -
For the first time, Ned put the cameras on camera -
you saw people dashing backwards and forwards.
The mechanics of television were revealed
which was an interesting innovation in itself.
They thought it was funny and people were awarding Ned all sorts of prizes
but Ned admits himself that when you're doing a live show
with about six or seven cameras occasionally you have to cut a sketch
and camera 6 can't get back to... can now no longer get through.
Everything was a media and so we couldn't worry about
running into a shot or seeing a back wall or seeing a camera.
I felt that the more we had the the band in the background,
and the cameras and microphones
Being live, Ned was always ready to point the camera
at whatever was happening. Occasionally upstaging the host.
One news item this week,
a peaceful Sunday afternoon, Salvation Army banned.
The cast were having a great time,
and they needn't have worried about the critics
as right from the start, they loved it.
Next morning, Ned and I were having didn't expect reviews that quickly.
An entire column of absolute rave,
and not showing his feelings,
with TW3's goofy licensed jesters.
There were these enormous number of phone calls. People phoned in
300 "for" and 120 "against".
Why so many people wrote in favourably was obviously because
they were terrified this thing was about to be swept off the air.
We knew whether we'd been successful
Lorry drivers were having accidents
as they see you sitting in the car. "Keep it up!" They'd draw off
Talking about '62, '63 - we had a viewing figure of 12 million
at 11 o'clock till midnight.
They were staying in watching our show on a Saturday night,
so the restaurants, God bless 'em, put TVs in their dining rooms.
People were leaving to go home and watch the show,
so they started putting TV sets into the pubs
Well, because TW3 was produced
that had been issued to the light
Even today, this song and dance routine with the young Babs Windsor
but in 1962, it was dynamite.
You have to see That Was The Week
nothing in it was shocking in the way that we define the word these days.
I defy anybody to think of three words you can't say on television.
In the time of That Was The Week,
there were maybe 25 words you couldn't say on television.
Not to mention topics you couldn't deal with on television.
Politics, religion, and sex. Not necessarily in that order.
With the BBC it wasn't no-noes, it was no-no-no-no-NOes.
No politics, no impersonation of public figures,
no royalty, no religion.
The blinkers were on and you didn't
That's why they called it Aunty BBC
And for them to let us go crazy
I don't want no-one to hear.
Look, just say it out loud.
that made That Was The Week That Was absolutely right for the time.
to which the times influenced
or that That Was The Week That Was
a powerful synergy together.
One of TW3's achievements was to take aim at some of the most sacred
often attracting the attention
It was so much more satisfying to either get preached about
or have front page stories saying, "These guilty men must go,"
rather than a little congratulatory That became very small beer for us.
So, of course, they kept pushing.
One subject was perennially controversial,
and, therefore, perfect for the TW3 treatment.
This week, your consumer guide presents its report on religions.
we investigated the following six -
Judaism, the Roman Catholic Church,
They didn't do a metaphor for religion.
It was also an extremely good parody of a Which report.
We began by applying three basic tests -
a) What do you put into it? b) What do you get out of it?
there were an awful lot of calls.
We particularly like the guarantee
through a messiah who will take responsibility for all your guilt...
who said, "Why don't you do something about the ridiculous reverent way
of their reporters."
a silk ensemble in canary yellow.
so I get into my nighty then."
Bernard Levin's run-in with the Tory ladies on the pilot show
not only led to the series being commissioned, it also earned him
Unlike previous BBC interviewers, Levin used rudeness as a technique.
It wasn't always appreciated.
Don't talk so much and listen bigoted as the people you stand for.
The most notorious of Levin's
but for an interruption from a disgruntled member of the audience.
Peace and disarmament was the most famous one
because halfway through, a man in the audience got up
who was also a theatre critic
that he'd written a terrible review
..Of unilateralists... One minute, Mr Levin, before you begin.
Would you stand up? Mr Levin, your review of Savagery And Delight
It was a vicious attack... Would you mind going back to your seat.
It was a lively scene and, of course,
those live moments, they happen so fast. It was astonishing.
"Get all the cameras on that!"
But luckily, David jumped up and stopped it and pulled him off
Can we concentrate on non-violence, you and I.
disgruntled viewers' letters of complaint were Levin-esque.
He would write back a letter and say "Dear sir, I thought I should write
"that an unregistered lunatic has obtained a supply of your notepaper
"and he's sending out insane memos over your name
and doing immense damage to your reputation." He was a joy.
Another way TW3 reacted to controversial world events
was through song, where strong messages
could be delivered via polished showbiz routines.
There had been yet another lynching in Alabama and Herbert Krasner wrote
a wonderfully poignant and powerful Black And White Minstrel number.
# Welcome to the state of Masachuss'
# Where we hate all the darkies And the Catholics and the Jews
# Where we welcome any man
# If he's white and strong...
And we're doing it as a very very happy
"I want to go back to Mississipi", but the lyrics...
# Where the Mississippi mud
# Kinda mingles with the blood
# Of the niggers who are hanging # from the branches of the trees
It was another trail-blazing piece of television,
impossible to have imagined coming from the BBC a year earlier.
In its first series, That Was The Week That Was had proved there were
no subjects or events, British or otherwise,
that weren't fair game for the TV satirists.
With an audience that had built up to to 12 million viewers,
the TW2 team were pretty pleased with themselves
and began to feel they could do just as they liked.
All through the first series, we were open ended.
If we had 50 minutes of material, we did 50. If we had 55, we did 55.
And that we thought in a sort of naive way
was our right as human beings, simply open ending.
So when series 2 started in 1963,
they were flabbergasted to be treated just like any other show
They put after us...repeats of The Third Man with Michael Rennie,
We were outraged by this, and "Tell you what we ought to do,
"since these are repeats...
of each of these programmes,
to the end of the programme, why don't I give the plot?"
The plane which Harry Lime says
is in fact, working for the enemy.
I thought that we'd be stopped
I was allowed to do it a second week, they took The Third Man off
It was a sign of the programme's
that they would see off competition
But on 22nd November 1963, the satire stopped dead in its tracks.
US president John F Kennedy was assassinated -
an event which shocked the world, and the TW3 team.
It was a Friday, the day before the programme's transmission.
All irreverence went out the window
as the production team took the decision to play it straight.
It became very clear, very quickly, that there was no "rest of the week".
That WAS The Week That Was.
We were all shocked. The audience was shocked.
The TV audience I'm sure was shocked at what had happened.
So they were probably radiant amazed to see what we could do.
which was a very respectful program about president Kennedy.
One of the most memorable moments was a song of tribute to JFK,
its lyrics hastily put together
by the future lyricist for Les Miserables, Herbert Kretzmer.
Producer Donald Baverstock had the canny foresight to record the show
on a format which could be shown in the States.
And then he had it flown over to NBC immediately,
so they were able to play it practically every hour on the hour
the next day and that was what made the impact in America.
Despite British complaints that the JFK tribute was sycophantic,
in America, it caused a sensation, and NBC bought the rights to make
their own version of TW3.
Henry Fonda played the role of David Frost in the pilot.
But Frost himself appeared in the subsequent series alongside
MASH's Alan Alda and Tom Bosly from Happy Days.
Pretty soon, there were imitations.
Producer George Schlatte was so impressed, he made
a psychedelic ripoff, the hugely influential Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.
I was talking at a conference at Denver and I
bumped into George Schlatter, who'd done the Laugh-In.
I said, "You must've cribbed a bit
it was "arrivederci" to TW3.
The powers that be at the BBC decided that enough was enough.
The official reason being that the political content
might influence voters in the forthcoming General Election.
The announcement that it was being axed was not pleasing.
It was good that there was this excuse of the election coming up
that made us, I suppose, seem that we had more teeth than perhaps we had.
But it was simply an excuse.
The real reason was the fact that we were running out of steam.
It wasn't as funny as it was before,
and like a lot of these programmes on TV, there's a time to go.
In fact, not just the novelty had worn off,
TW3's viewing figures dropped dramatically from 12 million
to under 7 million by the second.
But satire's young barbarians had broken through the gates.
The Establishment would never feel quite as cozy again.
As far as changing the face of TV's concerned,
we broke a lot of rules which weren't unbroken again.
We were the first that ever burst into
that silent sea of what became known as satire.
It was on long enough that people said, "This is a format that works."
Presenting stuff that happens in the world in a different way
Ordinary people loved the programme,
We were "us" and the Establishment or whoever it was was "them"!
TW3 was extremely liberating for television.
Whether it was a good idea is like Lady Chatterley, you know -
it freed everybody, but has the freedom worked?
After TW3 the cast continued to cut a sway through respectable broadcasting.
Not So Much A Program More A Way Of Life was Ned Sherrin's next project.
For which Frost, Rushton and Levin were joined
by Bron, Bird, and Fortune, who had returned from their US tour.
And so the controversy continued, this time, three times a week.
And of course, religion continued to come in for a regular bashing.
Oh father! Well have you sinned mrs. O'Hara?
Have you been using them black protestant pills?
I have not! Although...
it does say in the newspaper that they don't do much harm.
Ah, you read the wrong newspaper, Mrs O'Hara.
Them pills enable you to predict the time of ovulation!
Have you been predicting the time of ovulation? Bless you, no, Father!
where her morals were and started the "Clean Up TV" campaign,
of Ned Sherrin's achievements.
Not So Much A Programme was another series that courted controversy.
But Bernard Levin took it a step too far when he insulted
former prime minister sir Alec Douglas-Home.
If people have seen Sir Alec on the television only,
they may even come to the conclusion he's a cretin!
They really may! Because of his bad lighting and his spectacles.
If they have him on the doorstep, they'll be damn sure he's a cretin!
After only six months, the BBC took the opportunity to pull the plug.
After Not So Much A Programme, David Frost finally got his name
and provided the springboard for future members of TV comedy's hall of fame.
But we must remember that the language of brochures
Caters specially for children.
Everything closes at seven.
Miles of deserted golden sands.
Landmines.
Friendly local inhabitants.
Rapists.
An unforgettable experience.
Dysentery.
After Not So Much A Programme, Levin returned to dishing it out
while Ned Sherrin's next stab at a satirical format was BBC3
featuring Millicent Martin, and a clutch of TW3 writers.
BBC 3 also did its best to be controversial,
most famously during a censorship discussion
when critic Kenneth Tynan became the first person in television
to utter the F-word, in front of the camera, that is.
Despite it being an auspicious occasion, the footage is nowhere to be found,
but the producer remembers. What Ken said was,
"I doubt if anybody in this studio or anybody viewing at home
would be very surprised if I used the word 'fuck'!"
Well they were, and all hell broke loose.
Naughty, naughty.
After BBC 3 Ned Sherrin went on to produce several controversial movies
and has hosted Radio 4's Loose Ends
Lance Percival had his own sitcom -
and a chart hit with a calypso shame and scandal in the family.
He co-starred in the sitcom Up The Workers,
and continued to be a regular guest on radio panel shows.
During TW3 Kenneth Cope continued to appear in Coronation Street,
playing Jed Stone until 1966.
In 1969 he became famous again as Marty Hopkirk,
the dead half of Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased).
How can I lie quiet in my grave while my murderer goes free?!
Murder? It was an accident, Marty.
Cold-blooded murder! It might've been dangerous driving, but...
Look! I was there! He swung right accross the road to get me.
I saw the car, it was a black saloon.
You must go to the police, tell them they've got a murder on their hands.
On what evidence? Eyewitness evidence, I was there!
On the evidence of the ghost of my dead partner. Yeah, they'll like that.
After the demise of Randall And Hopkirk Cope continued writing and acting,
returning to soaps as Ray Hilton in Brookside.
Millicent Martin followed her own series
with a co-starring role in the movie Alfie.
She starred in the detective series Moon And Sun
then stage success in America led to a plum role in the sitcom Frasier
after creator Devid Lee saw her work.
He came to me in the middle of rehearsals and said, "We're looking
"Would you like to play it?" I went, "Oh, I'll get back to you."
I said, "I would absolutely adore to play it.
And so, that was me for three seasons. Yes, yes, wonderful.
After The Frost Report, David Frost exec-produced At Last The 1948 Show,
his famous and talented friends in front of the camera as guests
on many of the subsequent chat shows
In 1983, Frost was one of the famous five responsible for starting TV-AM,
as well as going Through The Keyhole into celebrity hose for the first time.
From 1993 BBC viewers were invited to Sunday breakfast
Say what you like, that's a career, that was.
I'm proud of what the series achieved in force
and even more than that, grateful really of the opportunity of doing it
because it was a dream come true, or the first of a number of dreams
We all enjoyed the notoriety, I suppose, but none of us was
conceited or pushy or arrogant. Apart from David Frost.
I don't mean that, I don't mean that.
David was lovely. It was smashing.
I'd never been really recognised by the public,
and that show gave me the rest of my career.
The most important thing about TW3 was that we who were in it
should be very grateful to it 'cause it changed all our lives completely.
# That Was The Week, That Was! #