528 Oxford Road Show

First  viewed  : 20  November  1981

We're  back  to  Yoof   TV  here.

At  least   initially,  The  Oxford  Road  Show  had   a   more  or  less  identical  premise  to  Something  Else , the  first  regular  episode  of  which  was  based  in  Manchester. It  looked  like  BBC  North  West  didn't  want  to  wait  for  their  annual  turn  at  hosting  the  programme  and  came  up  with  their  own  version  instead.

The  first  series  was  broadcast  at  the  beginning  of  1981  and  completely  passed  me  by. It  was  presented  by  unfamiliar  names  like  Rob  Rohrer  and   Jackie  Spreckley  and  doesn't  seem  to  have  featured  much  music  apart  from  turns  by  Graham  "Jilted  John"  Fellows.  When  it  came  back  in  the  autumn, tellingly  in  the  same  Friday  evening   BBC2  slot   as  the  just-ended  Something  Else , it  featured  chart  bands  and  Rohrer  had  moved  behind  the  cameras  as  a  co-producer  and  Spreckley's  co-presenter  was  journalist  Robert  Elms.

I  must  admit  I  can't  picture  Spreckley  at  all  but  Elms  was  one  of  the  reasons  I  now  tuned  in. He  was  a  familiar  name  from  the music  papers  I  was  reading  as  a  champion  of  the  New  Romantic  scene  and  cheerleader  for  Spandau  Ballet. I  was  interested  to  see  what  he  looked  like  and  was  quite  surprised  that  he  was  a  chirpy  Cockney  enthusiast   rather  than  the  austere  intellectual  I'd  pictured.

The  show  never   quite   became  appointment  TV   for  me  . It  depended  what  bands  were  going    to  be  on  whether  I  was  prepared  to  sit  through  the  endless  discussions  about  unemployment  ( Not  The  Nine  O  Clock  News ' Hey  Wow  sketch  was , as  usual, on  the  money ).  Early   musical  guests included  Japan, Spandau  Ballet  ( I  wonder  how  they  got  on  the  programme )  and  XTC  and  Ben  Elton  had  a  semi-regular  slot.

When  it  returned  in  the autumn  of  1982   Peter  Powell  was  now  presenter  and  the  vox  pop  debates  had  been  junked. It  was  now  an  arts  magazine  with  a   slot  for  a  new  band  alongside   the   big  name  act  and  a  regular  arts  slot  for  Dick  Witts  , lead  singer  of  third  division  indie  act  The  Passage. His  sneering  delivery  never  failed  to  get  my  back  up.

A  lot  of  the  bands  were  actually  lip-synching  on  the  programme. I  remember  John  Peel  on  Did  You  See    deriding  his  R1  colleague  Powell  for  saying  "Play  a  good  set  lads "  before  Duran  Duran  started  miming  to  Is  There  Something  I  Should  Know ?   

For  its  fourth  season  the  show  had  had  another  overhaul. It  was  now  re-branded  as  ORS  84  and  a  year  later,  ORS  85. Apart  from  introducing  two  special  concert  editions  featuring  those  twin  totems  of  mid-eighties  mediocrity,  Howard  Jones  and  Nik  Kershaw  , Powell  wasn't  involved   in  the  latter  series   and  Witts   had  gone  too . Instead  they  used  guest  presenters  such  as  Carl  and  Suggs  from Madness  and  Tom  Robinson  to  work  alongside  tiresomely  childish  local  DJ  Timmy  Mallett. His  involvement  symbolised   the  programme's  final  break   away  from  any  interest  in  "alternative"  culture  as  it  went  for  a  younger  audience .  Indeed   it  was  difficult  to  see  much  difference  between  it  and  things  like  Saturday  Superstore.

I  didn't  see  much  of  those  final  two  series  as  I  was  at  University  by  then  and  usually  still  on  the  train  back  home  when  they  were  broadcast. I  did  however  catch  surely  the  best  bit  in  1985   when  Morrissey  was  let  loose  to  roam  around  his  home  patch  of  Stretford  and  stopped  in  front  of  his  " quite  sadistic " old  school  to  deliver  a  diatribe  about  it. I   could  just  imagine  the  producers  gathered  on  the  following  Monday  morning  , waiting  to  see  if  there  was  a  writ  in  the  post.

The  programme  ended  in  the  spring  of  1985. It  might  have  been  interesting  to  see  how  they  covered  the  beginnings  of  "Madchester"  but  it  wasn't  to  be.