I've spent the last three hours having a rummage through the VHS's in the library and there's a few interesting things in there although nowhere near as big as the BFI archive.
I've just finished watching a VHS of BBC 2's Radio 1 Night from September 1997 celebrating the station's 30th anniversary.
The first programme on there was "The Radio 1 Story" which was a warts and all account of the station straight from the DJ's mouths and the behind the scenes staff including controllers Robin Scott, Derek Chinnery, Johnny Beerling and Matthew Bannister.
Amongst the key points were the how many thought and still do, that Radio 1 wasn't as good as the pirate stations such as Radio London, and Radio Caroline, and the divides between those who presented during the daytime and at night with that much shown clip of John Peel saying that "If you listen to Radio 1 during the day for a week, you don't learn anything".
It was in the 1980s when things really started happening where narrator David Essex explained that the idea of being a celebrity in your own right as a Radio 1 DJ was long gone, with people such as Noel Edmonds now making succesfull moves to television.
I've never really thought of Noel as a radio presenter as he'd left Radio 1 by the late 80s when the Saturday Roadshow started.
On that subject they showed a clip from Swap Shop in 1980 where Keith Chegwin went behind the scenes at Radio 1 and interviewed future colleage Tony Blackburn where he blatently lied about how he enjoyed presenting Junior Choice at weekends.
17 years later Tony admitted that he hated presenting that programme as by then he was only doing weekends with not just Junior Choice on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but also the Top 40 rundown on Sunday afternoons.
And I fully agree with his points on a radio station being like a graveyard at weekends although ironically, that's when he happens to be presenting with his shows on Smooth Radio, BBC London and KMFM all going out at different points of those vital days off.
The late John Walters who produced John Peel's show for over 20 years spoke about Radio 1's attitudes towards public service broadcasting around that time, which involved playing promotions with Simon Bates advising people to stay away from drugs.
I'm pretty sure I've got one with Dave Lee Travis advising drivers
"not to have one for the road".
Presenters such as Peter Powell and Adrian Juste explained how they never took holidays in fear that they would lose their jobs. In the case of Adrian Juste, he ended up taking an extended holiday by December 1993.
Which moves nicely on to the 1990s where Smashie And Nicey emerged and quite rightly ripped the piss out of the old DJs such as Dave Lee Travis and Mike Read.
Former Radio 1 breakfast presenter Mike Smith suggested that Smashie and Nicey were responsible for "the destruction of Radio 1" and although I wouldn't really put it that way it did make people realise that they'd spent several years of their life listening to such idiots.
With pressures from the government and the BBC management, changes were slowly being made which resulted in Dave Lee Travis resigning live on air in 1993, shortly followed by Johnny Beerling's departure with Matthew Bannister taking over his job as controller.
Although Matthew's revamping of the station and sacking of some of the presenters was rather hasty, he did make a point that the reason he did so was because the station should have started transforming five years earlier.
To be honest Radio 1 in the early 90s was developing a younger sound gradually with new DJs such as Pete Tong, Mark Radcliffe, and Claire Sturgess who took over the Friday Rock Show from Tommy Vance who left to help launch Virgin 1215.
They even had fresher sounding jingles sounding nothing like any other stations
as Johnny Beerling realised that with the Musicians Union ban lifted and commercial stations buying resings of JAM packages originally done for Z100 as such,
Radio 1 had to take things to the next level.
They acheived this by commisioning some very unique ID packages from JAM
with LA vocalists giving a fresher younger sound
and possibly the most unique jingles JAM have ever done in their 35 year history.
But Bannister wanted to take things even further and aimed to base the station's main priority on new music. However it wasn't as easy as it appeared to be and the hiring and firing of Chris Evans on the Breakfast Show didn't really do any favours.
By the time the programme was made Mark Radcliffe and Lard were on breakfast but just two days before transmission, it was annouced that they would move to an afternoon slot and be replaced by Kevin Greening and Zoe Ball.
What I'd call the beginning of the end of me listening to Radio 1 as a station overall.
The second programme was nothing to do with Radio 1 but a very interesting topic nonetheless, a look back on the many One Hit Wonders over the last 35 years up to 1997.
Unlike the many similar programmes that followed, this had no C-list celebrities talking about how awful they thought the records were, but the performers and composers of the songs themselves.
Some of them ended up being banned by the BBC including "Tell Laura I Love Her" by Ricky Valance which was about a stock car racer who got killed, and "Je T'aime" by Serge Gainsborough and Jane Birkin which was just too saucy for the BBC.
The documentary illustrated this by playing a rather poor instrumental version of the song over an image of Test Card D which was pretty interesting for the television fan.
It would have been more appropriate to show F with Carole and the doll as it was released in 1969 when colour television was in full flow.
Not to mention that the iconic but in my opinion creepy image was also 30 years old that year.
Other records included "Fire" by The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown who lives not too far from my hometown in Faversham. He reminds me a bit of my Mum's father although I'm not sure if he would have appreciated the comparison.
There was also "Spirit In The Sky" by Norman Greenbaum although they interviewed Doctor and The Medics who took the song back up to the top in 1986. And we'll try and forget Gareth Gates's version 6 years later.
Onto the novelty records and the first one was "Grandad" by Clive Dunn which was actually written by Herbie Flowers who was responsible for one of the most recognisable basslines in music, that being "Walk On The Wildside" by Lou Reed.
The song came about by accident as Herbie met the Dad's Army star in a fish and chip shop in Barnes, and Clive was stumped for a song idea just days before he had to record a record
so Herbie stepped in and came up with a simple song structure
similar to "Go Now" by the Moody Blues as he pointed out.
The chorus for Grandad came about when someone rang Herbie's doorbell
and the sound of that essentially became that well known refrain.
Herbie was also the bass player on "Barbados" by Typically Tropical which wasn't surprising considering how it sounds very similar to the Lou Reed song.
Two years later it reached a new generation as "We're Going To Ibiza" by The Vengaboys and I can remember at the time it was a hit, when there was an edition of Catchphrase and a contestant randomly selected Barbados as the star prize holiday destination.
This prompted the soon to be sacked Roy Walker to give a short burst
of the original song and I bet many younger viewers would think he was "down with them" in a similar way to Bruce Forsyth's utterance of The Killer's "Human"
on Strictly Come Dancing last series.
Staying on a tropical theme, there was the rather impressive "Uptown Top Ranking" by Althia & Donna although judging by their Top Of The Pops performance they weren't the best looking of performers.
One of them looked very similar to Sefura, a student who used to do a jazz show on Smoke Radio two years ago but she was a lot nicer looking than the Jamaican vocalist.
From the same year came Brian And Michael with "Matchstalk Men" and the programme revealed that the record had backing vocals from the St Winifred's School choir.
However the law wouldn't allow them to perform live on Top Of The Pops so while the disapointed children stayed in the entrance to BBC Television Centre, a London based vocal group came on and ended attempting to put on Northern accents and singing "alley-alley-o" which wasn't even in the original song.
Luckily for them, but unfortunately for us, the choir did get to appear on Top Of The Pops in 1980 with "There's No One Quite Like Grandma" a record that would make anyone appreciate Clive Dunn's offering.
It's the sight of Dawn the little girl with a lisp who sings the lead that's the worst part although she wasn't actually interviewed because she had just given birth to a baby at the time.
The teacher Miss Foley revealed that they had signed a 9 year record contract and the follow up was to be a record called "My Mum Is One In A Million" which she refused thank goodness.
A couple of months later was the record that kept Ultravox's "Vienna" from the top spot, Joe Dolce and "Shaddap Ya Face".
The UK release of the song very nearly didn't happen as Andrew Sachs had recorded a version as Manuel from Fawlty Towers.
If that record was released, in my opinion Jonathan Ross would have had every right to tell him that Russell Brand had fucked his granddaughter.
1982 saw the release of "Save Your Love" by "Hilary And Renato" to give the woman her real name. She was also absent from the video as well where they got a platinum blonde model to play the part of Renee.
Keeping in line with the Radio 1 theme, they showed a hilarious send up from Kenny Everett on his TV show playing both Renee and Renato where the woman ended up falling off the balcony as seen in the original video.
Five years later was one of the original dance anthems "Pump Up The Volume" by M/A/R/R/S which upset Pete Waterman for using a sample of one of Stock Aitken And Waterman's more credible records "Roadblock".
The record producer mentioned that "sampling isn't plagiarism, it's theft" although it could have been suggested that he used that excuse as a ploy to stop people getting the record to number one knocking Rick Astley off the top spot which it finally did.
And there's another link with Radio 1 there as "Pump Up The Volume" was the first number one on the UK Top 40 since it started being revealed on Sunday itself coinciding with the launch of the legendary "Britain's Favourite" jingle package introduced the day after it's 20th birthday.
The final record in the programme was the Macarena and during the closing credits it showed the likes of Brian and Michael, Typically Tropical and the fella from Edison Lighthouse having a go at it although Herbie Flowers got the dance completely wrong which there's probably no shame in doing.
I can't believe it's taken me an hour to write this post proving that these really are the wee small hours of the night.
Expect another one of a similar nature later on.
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