Thursday 18 February 2016

341 Sit Thi Deawn



First  viewed  :  January  1978

There  is  a  bit  of  a  hole  in  Genome  if  you  don't  live  in  London. It  doesn't  consistently  give  you  the  variations  in  the  Regional  TV  slots. And  so  throughout  the  early  months  of  1978 it  shows  a  half-hour  edition  of  news  magazine  Tonight   in  the  22.15  pm   slot  on  a  Friday  night  when  the  other  regions  were  broadcasting  something  completely  different.

In  the  early  part  of  1978  it  was  "Sit  Thi  Deawn" . As  the title  would  suggest   it  showcased  "traditional"  Lancashire  entertainment i.e  non politicised  folk  music  and  humourous  dialect  poetry. It  was  profoundly  backward-looking  and  you  suspect  that  much  of  its intended  audience  would  already  be  in  bed  with  a  cup  of  cocoa  by  the  time  it  was  broadcast  but  the  programme  ran  on  until  the  mid  eighties  so  someone  was  watching  it.

The  programme  was  hosted  by  the  Westhoughton  folk  group  the  Houghton  Weavers  and  named  after  one  of  their  songs. They  were  generous  enough  to  give  some  exposure  to  a  rival  outfit  The  Oldham  Tinkers. In  the  latter  part  of  1978  I  discovered  that  the  Tinkers  were  not  a  full time  outfit  because  one  of  their  number  Gerry  Kearns  was  a  geography  teacher  at  my  final  school. He  wasn't  very  popular. I  didn't  do  geography  but  he  had  the  reputation  of  being  strict, humourless  and  unyielding. That  was  only  among  the  pupils  though ; the  staff  I've  talked  to  since  remember  him  as  being  very  charming  and  obliging. His  son  is  the  successful  actor  Gerard  Kearns  ( the  gay  lad  in  Shameless )  who  must  live  somewhere  near  me  as  I've  seen  him  in  church  a  few  times.

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