The BBC Archive is a portal to a bygone era, showcasing the Corporation’s once unparalleled standards and the captivating stories that defined its legacy – what went wrong?
Roving reporter Fyfe Robertson from 1975 on the BBC Archive (Image: BBC)
Modern BBC television takes more stick than a timber yard – and rightly so. Its news sense seems biased, its satire is defanged, its drama commissions are flawed and its comedy is largely substandard. But it wasn’t always so. The Beeb’s YouTube channel, BBC Archive, is a portal to a world of nostalgic joys from times when the Corporation, less obsessed with empire-building and virtue-signalling, had higher standards and achieved far more.
The channel features wide-ranging informed documentaries, in-depth reports, celebrity interviews, and the kind of wonderful eccentric items that used to close local news reports, including a stake-boarding duck and a Nationwide clip about the Glynne Arms – AKA The Crooked Arms, “Britain’s wonkiest pub” – near Dudley. “This must be quite the most extraordinary and incredible pub to get drunk in,” observed reporter John Swinfield. Sadly it was infamously destroyed by arson in 2023.
In its current incarnation, the Corporation has squandered a fortune in recent months on the schlocky reality contest Stranded On Honeymoon Island, bought in King & Conqueror, an American series riddled with historical howlers, and turned Doctor Who into a woke joke, sabotaging a £100million Disney co-production with tediously right-on scripts.
Racing driver Graham Hill in a 1973 documentary about creating an F1 car (Image: BBC)
Yesterday’s Witness, the documentary series, featured two women talking about being teenagers in Victorian times (Image: BBC)
Instead of “doubling down” on their unique values, as director general Tim Davie promised last year, they continue to undermine them. Thank goodness then for the archive.
In the hours I spent gorging on the priceless material, I came across a 1969 Man Alive report on the Hard Life Of The Farm Workers and a Tomorrow’s World edition showing children from 1966 predicting how technology would change in their lives – one lad’s vision of a “robot court” has yet to materialise, but an AI equivalent can’t be far off. (Worrying yes, but could they do worse than our First-tier Tribunal immigration judges?)
Nationwide’s 1989 report on how our homes would look in 2020 accurately predicted self-activating lights and the dawn of Alexa, and less accurately foresaw power points being replaced by power-bearing walls.
Travelling backwards in time, Michael Grade’s 2011 documentary The Story Of The Music Hall offers a blissful 90-minute trip to the entertainers of yesteryear, when all manner of variety acts vied for audience approval. It wasn’t always granted either. Glasgow concertgoers were notoriously harsh – “no turn un-stoned” was the unofficial motto. When offered a post-war slot at the Glasgow Empire in the 50s, Max Miller famously quipped: “I’m a comedian, not a missionary.”
Lord Grade takes us to Wilton’s Music Hall, East London, and the Britannia Music Hall in Trongate, Glasgow. Immortal turns including Harry Lauder, Vesta Tilly and Stan Laurel trod these hallowed boards. Music Hall audiences were predominantly working class. They didn’t want comic navel-gazing, they wanted to drink, laugh and sing. So the headliners were usually turns like Harry Champion and Marie Lloyd singing raucous comic numbers – some of which offended the moral guardians of their day.
Some “spesh” (speciality) acts were more eccentric than anything you’d see on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent. One chap came on stage with a bull asking the audience to guess its age. While Koringa, a self-proclaimed “fakir and mesmerist”, apparently charmed snakes and crocodiles which had been heavily drugged beforehand.
In 1982, BBC2 had a series called Turns which featured clips of forgotten Victorian stars like the great Gus Elen in action performing Cockney songs like Arf A Pint Of Ale and It’s A Great Big Shame. The archivists need to find that.
Other gems include a 1979 edition of The Book Programme subtitled, What Is Science Fiction? with Robert Robinson hosting a conversation between novelist Ian Watson, sci-fi authors Douglas “Hitchhiker’s Guide” Adams and Harry Harrison (the American creator of The Stainless Steel Rat), and literary scholar Peter Nicholls. All bright and all with something to say. Comparing this show with modern lightweight fluff like Sara Cox’s BBC2 book show Between The Covers is like comparing the late Sir Roger Scruton to H from Steps.
The conversation was sharp-witted, informed, frank and fluent. Crucially it didn’t underestimate the viewers’ intelligence and dumb down.
It is also a pleasure to be reminded of the antics of the late Scottish reporter and miner’s son Fyfe Robertson, who worked for the BBC’s Tonight show from 1957, as “the old chap who covered things he knew nothing about”. Already in his 50s, he appeared in a trilby hat and introduced reports by saying, “Hellooo therrrre, I’m Fyfe Robertson”. His other catchphrases included “I’m standing here…” and “I don’t know, I really don’t know”.
More from reporter Fyfe Robertson (Image: BBC)
Robertson’s haggard, bearded look and slow, clear, Scottish diction led to glorious radio comedy parodies – he was “Forth Robinson” on I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again and “Rife Hoverton” on Beyond Our Ken.
The channel also includes a 1975 authored documentary Fyfe Robertson Wonders: Is Life Getting Worse? where Fyfe, by now in his 70s, looked at the march of materialism, pornography, and the insatiable television media. There is too much TV news, he reflects, saying that in his day “Bad news had to wait for the morning paper, at least you could go to bed in a good mood.” Thank heavens he was spared the onslaught of hysterical 24-hour rolling news channels with nothing to say.
You might also agree with him that older ways of living were richer in community spirit and made personal contentment more achievable.
Sports lovers will find a wealth of forgotten shows as well, ranging from a 1973 episode of Tuesday Documentary: Graham Hill Creating His Own F1 Car, to a 1974 Pebble Mill At One report on women’s rugby. Pebble Mill had the late American wrestler Hulk Hogan answering the outrageous charges that wrestling was fake.
The Archive also features Fred Dibnah’s steeple-jacking and chimney-erecting antics, and work documentaries like 1980: Life On A North Sea Oil Rig, 1973: Life On The Last Lighthouse and a doc on demolition expert Blaster Bates.
Music lovers can delight in forgotten documentaries like Cross The Line’s feature on Belfast punk band Ruefrex from 1980 – they were signed by Terri Hooley’s Good Vibrations records and had two minor indie chart hits. You can also find 1969’s A Year In The Life which followed Brighton pop group, Mike Stuart Span, as they attempted to find fame. (Spoiler alert: They got signed but never made it).
Many of the docs include invaluable oral histories of times past. For example, Yesterday’s Witness: Two Victorian Girls (from 1970) features two women in their 90s, Effy Jones and Berta Ruck, talking about being teenagers in the 1890s. It’s fascinating.
Indian-born, Welsh-raised Berta, who became a successful romantic author, recalls moving to London and finding, “Hansom cabs slurring through the mud, where there wasn’t mud there was fog, and in between was us enjoying ourselves”.
She talks of wearing “profuse underclothes” and spending her days brushing mud from her skirts and darning her stockings.
Berta also remembers Cockneys at closing time singing songs that were still embedded in her memory. She gives a perfect rendition of the popular 1890s James Thornton number, She May Have Seen Better Days.
Elsewhere there are forgotten controversies like a 1982 That’s Life vox-pop titled Do Men Do Any Housework? and 1981’s Are Crisp Flavours Out Of Control? (with hilarious reactions to the new-fangled prawn cocktail flavour).
A 1973 Nationwide report tackled, Should Hornsea Have A Nudist Beach, and was presented by an apparently naked Bernard Falk (shielded by bushes). It wasn’t popular with locals.
“All this sex and every wretched thing, there’s more and more of it,” grumbled an elderly Yorkshire lady. Others called it disgusting and an outraged older man argued it would attract “hooliganism and drinking”.
You can lose yourself for hours in the Archive. The shows aren’t just a nostalgic joy, they also remind you of a time the BBC knew what it stood for, when it actually loved Britain and was at the very heart of our culture.
