Soon after the recording of the pilot episode of a new pop music show was completed on Tuesday July 16th 1963 the presenter Keith Fordyce (previously involved with ABC’s ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’) approached a group of Mods who had travelled from Sheffield’s King Mojo club and said ‘so you chaps have come all the way from Sheffield on a Tuesday no less. I expect you’ll be eager to go home and get back to work, what with the weekend coming up and all.’
John Varney, Sheffield ‘Ace Face’ replied ‘are you kidding mate – the weekend starts here’ and the slogan was born. Over the next three years Pete Stringfellow and the Sheffield Mojo crowd were regulars on the now renamed Ready Steady Go!.
Ready Steady Go! was a British rock/pop music television programme produced by Associated-Rediffusion broadcast on Friday evenings from 9 August 1963 until 23 December 1966 and presented usually by Keith Fordyce and the demure ‘Queen of the Mods’ Cathy McGowan. McGowan had been working in an office at the television company when she answered an advertisement for a ‘typical teenager’ to act as a ‘youth advisor’ to the show and was thrust, without any previous experience whatsoever, in front of the cameras as one of the main presenters. George Harrison described her as ‘….the posh bird who gets everything wrong’ “.
Rediffusion at the time, according to the Guardian, was a company headed up by ex-naval types who ran it like a ship, posting schedules in seafaring jargon: “Rehearsals will begin at eight bells on the lower deck.” The artists, of course, were the stars of show but the trendy audience, chosen the day before from Carnaby Street by the production team, came close.
The series was initially recorded at small studios in Rediffusion’s headquarters in Kingsway. As the studios were compact, to say the least, it was not possible to hide cameras which then became a featured part of the show with audience members shoved out of the way by panicking camera operators. The show later moved to Rediffusion’s Studio 5 at Wembley, enabling artists to perform live. Artists’ own recorded backing tracks were not allowed by the Musicians’ Union so the whole of Studio 5 (normally divided into 5a and 5b) was used so an orchestra could perform the backing live.
The show was cancelled late in 1966. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, one of the directors, once said, “Most of the shows were wiped because tape was so expensive, so stuff like the James Brown special and The Who special are gone forever. I took home £37 a week but, every so often, I’d buy a video tape and preserve it. It cost me £1 a minute, but the only reason any shows survive is because I did that.”
https://flashbak.com/weekend-starts-fabulous-photos-classic-pop-tv-show-ready-steady-go-361445/
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