Tonight’s Anglia TV… in 1971 

19 September 2018 tbs.pm/67552

From the pages of TVTimes, a look at Anglia’s schedule for Sunday, September 19, 1971. Worth noting:

1100 – Starting the day, a live church relay from Scotland. An oddity, since Grampian, along with STV and Ulster, didn’t normally carry ITV’s Sunday morning service. The Cowcaddens boys and girls didn’t even bother with this one. Less Scotsport, more spoilsports.

1205 – Adult education was a key component of Sunday daytime schedules for both BBC-1 and ITV from the later sixties until the mid-eighties. A new slate for the autumn starts with a profile of Dorset-born Phillip Sutton; still with us, aged 89, at the time of writing. Your host is Devon painter Trewin Copplestone, who died in 2012.

1230 – Mr. Joy Beverley, ATV’s Head of Sport, is joined by future Wolves manager Sammy Chung for a coaching session. Rugby union, rugby league, Badminton and squash (sharing a show), Swimming, Tennis and Cricket would all feature later in the series.

1255 – The glut of new learning opportunities continues with the Barry Bucknell of the early colour years, Yorkshire’s Mike Smith. Looks like there’s scope for some location filming here – a contrast to his usual studio-bound workshop. Can anyone shed light on Mike’s background?

1326 – Delightfully precise interval timings from the TVTimes. Fourteen minutes to allow all that deep thinking to settle, before…

1340 – Weather Trends – which suggests either Michael Hunt or David Brooks had their weekend interrupted by a trip to Anglia House to give the weather for farmers.

1345 – Malory Maltby headed the Telewest consortium which bid for the Southwest ITV region in 1991 against TSW and eventual winner, Westcountry.

1415 – With its voodoo themes, Anglia’s seventeen year old afternoon film is unlikely to resurface today due to prevailing political fashions. John Agar is perhaps best recalled today as Shirley Temple’s first husband.

1545 – In place of a regional Match of the Week, Anglia have recorded London Weekend’s earlier Big Match screening for consumption in the East – featuring Spurs v. Crystal Palace, Swindon hosting Fulham, and a George Best v Clyde Best showdown with Man. United at home to West Ham.

1645 – I’ve not seen film clips mentioned as a feature in The Golden Shot before, so this Disney special seems a little off the beaten track. Marilyn Rickard features elsewhere in TVTimes in a brief picture feature. She also starred in a well-known naturist magazine, and was chased around a field at least once by Benny Hill, which demonstrates both Health and Efficiency.

1735 – Our fourth new series of the day, as the autumn season gets into full swing. Yorkshire’s Flaxton Boys return for the third of four seasons. After earlier seasons set in the nineteenth century, this time Flaxton Hall is the backdrop for the boys’ adventures in the late 1920s. A job change for writer Gloria Tors, who had acted in an earlier series.

1805 – News. Yes, the first ITV bulletin of the day. In the seventies, the country still got its news and entertainment from the Sunday papers, before settling down to the telly later in the day. They were a part of popular culture in a way unimaginable now. Figures for 1976 show the three populars shifting 14 million copies between them. Another 3 million for the mid-range Express, and a further 3 million shared among the highbrow titles.

1815 – Into the Godslot we go, and it’s quiz time. Not Yorkshire’s Sunday Quiz, or even its junior variant, but an ATV venture on similar lines. I trust future Westward and TVS announcer Jennifer Clulow has had some coaching from dad.

1835 – Q: When is a religious programme not a religious programme? A: When it’s from Granada. A vaguely ethical slab of current affairs talk. At least the dependable Mike Scott is in charge.

1900 – No mention of Jess Yates in the billing, but the returning Stars on Sunday is very much his baby. Unlike Paula. Note the improbably named Lovelace Watkins, who seems to have been briefly in favour at ITV, even meriting an early seventies TVTimes front cover. The chicken-in-a-basket circuit was his bread and butter. If you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor.

1925 – The fifth series of On the Buses in just two and a half years begins. Two more would be made before Chesney and Wolfe ran out of situations to make comedy from.

1955 – ITV viewers will see quite a bit of Glenn Ford over the next couple of years, in his western Cade’s Country. Here, he’s the ostensible lead in a picture stolen by ‘Ronnie’ (later noted actor/director Ron) Howard. Stella Stevens, later to star in much ballyhooed yet largely unwatched soap Flamingo Road, also features.

2200 – After the News, a ‘Weather Forecast Summary’ – presumably the duty announcer reads a quick bit of copy rather than Michael or David getting busy with the isobars.

2215 – Even before he dreamed up Emmerdale Farm, Kevin Laffan was one of YTV’s go-to writers. He created the company’s first soap opera, Castle Haven, as well as contributing to series such as Kate and Justice, as well as one of the station’s first one-offs, The Best Pair of Legs in the Business, later made into a cinema film

Tonight, one of three plays from Kevin under the heading Fly On the Wall. Note a pre-Herriot Christopher Timothy in the cast. Was he doing his fast-talking super soaraway Sun ads by this point? The delightful Julia Foster is the lead – a later play featuring her, Mr. Axelrod’s Angel, was well-remembered enough to be repeated for Yorkshire’s twenty-first birthday in 1989 – by which time the single play was just about dead to ITV.

2315 – In common with most US imports of the time, Marcus Welby was never fully networked – ITV companies played it all over the schedule from 1969 to 1978. Episode seven of the first series, if you’re counting.

0015 – And so to bed, with the parish priest of St. Marks, Ipswich.


External links

You Say

6 responses to this article

Dave Rhodes 19 September 2018 at 12:25 pm

Thanks to the invaluable ITV Football 1968-83 website http://carousel.royalwebhosting.net/itv/ITVfootball68-83.html for details on The Big Match.

Arthur Nibble 19 September 2018 at 1:45 pm

I like the way the church service gets three different names in the regional listings.

“Golden Shot” guest David Tomlinson lived in the Buckinghamshire village of Mursley and was buried in his garden, upside down, on request.

Other regions’ football matches were Southampton 3 Coventry City 1 on Southern (the station’s first football coverage at all that season!) and Midelesbrough 1 Cardiff City 0 on Yorkshire, the Swindon Town match having been covered by ATV.

I’m assuming “Moving Target”, the 7.55 film in three regions, is the 1966 Paul Newman movie named “Harper” in the USA. Southern’s film “Vicki” appears to be a 1953 film starring Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters.

Mark Jeffries 19 September 2018 at 6:49 pm

By what seemed to be the usual standard for “Morning Service,” was ITV covering a football match near the church the previous day?

Arthur Nibble 20 September 2018 at 11:15 am

I didn’t see Dave Rhodes’s reply on the site before I typed my details in due to a time delay when responses are checked, hence the double entry regarding football.

I was on holiday on the south coast at this very time and I vividly remember that, in one of the Sunday slots where other regions showed football, Southern decided viewers should be treated to a bowls tournament!

Tina King 27 September 2018 at 1:27 pm

This Sunday saw ITV on the air from 11.00am until around 12.25am (with just a slight “intermission” at lunchtime, so just over 13 hours, that is good going, since they have just 8 hours of regulated programming hours, along with the adult education, religion and the compulsory religious slot at 6.15pm, makes Sundays one of the longest broadcasting day on ITV, until the 1972 lifting of the restrictions.

Dave Rhodes 28 September 2018 at 2:44 pm

To answer Mark’s question, Aberdeen were indeed at home the day before, beating Airdrie 5-0, but there’s no sign of any soccer that weekend on Grampian or STV.

Your comment

Enter it below

A member of the Transdiffusion Broadcasting System
Liverpool, Friday 29 March 2024