470 Russell Harty

First  viewed  :  Autumn  1980

While  ITV  were  luring  away  some  of  the  Beeb's  big  hitters  ( Yarwood, Forsyth , Morecambe  and  Wise  etc  )  there  was  some  movement  the  other  way.  Harty, a  former  public  school  teacher  in  Yorkshire , had  come  up  in  the  wake  of  Simon  Dee's  demise  as  a  chat  show  host  on  ITV    and  established  himself   as  their   main  rival  to  Parkinson  . The  two  guys   couldn't  have  been  more  different  in  their  approach  with  Harty's  camp  insinuation  the  antithesis  of  Parky's  bluff  Yorkshire  blokiness. Quite  why  it   appealed  to  Harty  to  switch  to  interviewing  B-listers  on  BBC  2  mid  week  while  Parky  reigned  supreme  on  Saturday  nights , I'm  not  too  sure.  Perhaps  with  his  educational  background  he  felt  the  Beeb  was  the  more  appropriate   environment  for  his  talents. He  was  not  always  deferential  to  his  guests  and  his  rather  hostile  questioning  of  David  Bowie  in  the  mid-seventies  was  much-criticised.

  I've  no  recollection  of  who  the  guests  were  on  the   shows  we  watched  but  I  remember  that  we  didn't  see  the  infamous  encounter  with  Grace  Jones,  three  episodes  in ,  which  ended  with  her  pummelling  him  for  turning  to  another  guest. ( Jones  has  recently  admitted  she  was  off  her  head  on  cocaine  at  the  time ). That  gave  the  show  a  priceless  publicity  boost. Two  years  later  it  switched  to  BBC 1  in  the  post-Nationwide  slot   where  it  was  just  called  Harty.

At  the  beginning  of  1985 Michael  Grade  replaced  him  with  Wogan  but  he  remained  a  popular  presenter  with  the  BBC  on  both  TV  and  radio  and  had  a  stint  replacing  Barry  Norman  as  host  of  Film  87.  Harty  actually  appeared  as  a  guest  on  Wogan  ( although  Sue  Lawley  was  standing  in  for  Terry ) where  he  joined  in  the  ridiculing  of  Vivienne  Westwood's  designs  in  one  of  his  last  public  appearances.

He  died  just  a  few  months  later  aged  53.  He  had  tried  to  keep  his  private  life  secret  but  his  death  from  AIDS -related  Hepatitis  B  threw  an  unwanted  spotlight  on  his  partner , the  future  author  James O'Neill  , who  hadn't  told  his  parents  about  the  relationship. I  hadn't  realised  it  was  quite  that  long  ago  to  be  honest.