2 hours ago
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Pete Waterman, presenter
Stock Aitken Waterman were flying. We’d had one of the biggest records in the world – Never Gonna Give You Up with Rick Astley. Rick’s manager rang and said: would I like to go for lunch with Granada TV? We had a very pleasant lunch with David Liddiment, head of light entertainment, but I didn’t really understand why he wanted to meet me.
Night-time television was relatively new. I’d seen a few things, but thought: “Who’d want to watch Elvis Costello talking about Irish politics at 1am when you’ve been for a curry and 10 pints?” I said: “What you should do is take a film crew to a nightclub.” David said: “Could you do that?” I said: “Sure.” I’d grown up watching Ready Steady Go! I knew I needed a co-presenter. I’d seen Michaela Strachan because my kids watched Wide Awake Club. When I was introduced to her, I thought: “She’s bubbly. She’d be great.”
Although the idea was to go out live from real nightclubs in the middle of the night, for some reason we did a pilot at 2pm on a Saturday at Mr Smith’s in Warrington. The dancers made the turntables jump. The cameramen wanted the lights up full and complained it was too loud. Michaela and I had no idea what the other was saying. To say it was a disaster is an understatement. The worst thing you can try to do is create two hours of nightclub entertainment on a Saturday afternoon where nobody’s had a drink. How David ever commissioned a series based on this pilot, I still don’t know.
When the series went out for real, we were beamed live at 1am via satellite. But Granada decided it was too expensive, so we’d tape it, the tapes would be biked back to Granada, and it would be broadcast an hour later. At one point it was so cold driving over the Peak District, the tapes had to be thawed out with a hairdryer. The audience were just regular punters. We’d say: “If you’re here with somebody else’s wife, stand apart.” The police watched to find criminals who’d jumped bail and would turn up and arrest them. It was chaotic.
Some sections were so outrageous we got warned by the authorities: people drinking custard out of condoms at 1am was not acceptable. But we didn’t dream this up. This was what was happening in nightclubs up and down the country. There were downsides. Driving home at 3am in my bright red Porsche, I got so fed up with being stopped by the police, I bought a Land Rover on the grounds it would never do more than 70mph. Bugger me, the next Saturday night, they pulled me over at 3am and went: “We’ve just been watching you on television.”
Michaela Strachan, presenter
I was doing the Wide Awake Club on Saturday mornings and a show called Michaela on Sundays singing The Wheels on the Bus for preschoolers. I hadn’t asked TV-am if it was OK for me to present this late night adult music show in case it got in the way of me presenting children’s TV – I doubt these days you’d be allowed to do both – and hadn’t signed the contract. They called it The Hitman and Her in case they’d had to replace me with another her.
I twisted my ankle just before the pilot. The physio said: “There’s no way you’re going to be walking.” I said: “Not only have I got to walk, I’ve got to dance.” No wonder Pete seemed so stressed. We were given a run of six weeks that lasted four years. It was hugely successful. The viewing figures got up to 1.3m. I’m astonished how many people still say: “I remember you from The Hitman and Her.” I think: “Who were all these people watching at 2am?”
Much of it we would not get away with now, like Clothes Swap, where people would swap clothes behind a sheet and we’d drop the sheet on purpose. Get Your Gums Around These Plums was bobbing for apples in custard. There was a suggestion of a game where the bloke was blindfolded and had to feel different girls to see if he could guess which one was his girlfriend. Thank God one of the female researchers said: “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I quickly learned to look after myself, otherwise you’d get your bum pinched. Even the dynamic of Pete and me was quirky. He gave me the most backhanded compliment. He said: “Do you know why you work on this show? It’s because you’re attractive, but not attractive enough to make other women hate you.” In other words: you’ve got enough of the girl next door for people to think that you are their friend rather than a threat.
People say: “You should bring it back.” It was a lot of fun and has become iconic but some of it was incredibly tacky. Let’s not bring it back and analyse it in today’s world because I don’t think it would be so fondly remembered.
