Monday 1 August 2016

454 Angela Rippon Reporting




First  viewed : 3  September  1980

This  was  a  three  part  series  of  special  50  minute  reports   made  by  BBC  Bristol  and   led  by  the  Beeb's  superstar  newsreader.

I  only  saw  the  first  one , subtitled  The  Soap  Business , which  saw  Angela  trace  the  development  of  the  soap  opera  from  its  early  days  as  a  cash  cow  on  US  radio  for  the  likes  of  Proctor  and  Gamble  to  the  dominance  of  Dallas. Pre-advertising  for  the  show  made  sure  people  knew  she'd  be  interviewing  Larry  Hagman  and  Linda  Gray  during  its  course.

At  this  point  of  course  BBC  TV  didn't  have  a  home -grown  soap  so  part  of  the  programme  concentrated  on  long-running  radio  soap  The  Archers   where  a  small  part  had  been  written  in  for  Angela  as  a  date  for  Nelson  Gabriel. My  mum  was  a  big  fan  of  The  Archers  so  she  was  thrilled  to  see  some  of  the  faces  behind  the  voices  and  noted  that  Eddie  Grundy  was  just  as  she'd  pictured  him.

The  subsequent  programmes  were  about  psychics  and  salesman  techniques.

There  wasn't  another  season  made  which  may  have  influenced  Angela  to  defect  to  ITV  and  her  ill-fated  stint  on  TV-am. She  bounced  back  of  course  in  many  different  shows  but  I  think  this  was  the  last  time  she  had  her  name  in  the  title.    

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