Jools Holland, presenter
Tyne Tees Television were looking for presenters for this new pop show. I did my audition with Paula Yates and it was chaotic. Paula interviewed a youth and ended up getting so cross she tried to slap him. I interviewed someone who was supposed to be dead and dragged him across the floor. The TV people said that we were hopeless but that they couldn’t stop watching us.
Paula was very quick-witted and we became great friends, travelling by train up to Newcastle, where it was filmed. We’d all stay in the same hotel and it was full-on, with stars like Ian Dury and Chaka Khan. We’d take them to Rose & Crown up the road. When I took Miles Davis in there with his horn, Jimmy, the wonderfully gloomy landlord said, “He’s not playing that in here.”
Showing from 5.30pm till 7pm meant people would watch while they were getting ready to go out. Unlike Top of the Pops, it was live which meant it was genuinely spontaneous and anarchic. It soon became the show everyone wanted to be on. So you’d have Jagger next to people with big hair. We filmed the Smiths in Manchester with Morrissey dancing on truckloads of flowers, spread all over the floor.
There were lots of babyish jokes. We had a hamster called William, which belonged to a Michael Jackson, so we had a competition to guess the weight of Michael Jackson’s willy. I got in major hot water for saying “Be there or be ungroovy fuckers” during a live trailer. Mary Whitehouse wrote to complain and I wrote back saying I agreed. The phones lit up about everything. Rik Mayall did an intro where he said, “It’s Friday, we’re live and the pubs are open”, then vomited into the camera. One man in Northampton was so appalled he called the police.
Malcolm Gerrie, producer
The brief from C4 head Jeremy Isaacs was: “Make it live and give it balls.” We auditioned a young Jarvis Cocker as presenter, who was driven up by his mum in a red Mini. Then a girl in a full wedding dress. When she lifted up her veil it was Boy George. I was blown away but suddenly Culture Club went to No 1, so that was that. Then along came Jools and Paula with this incredible electricity.
By the first show, Paula was pregnant, so opened the programme with the immortal words: “This is a big step for music and an even bigger step for fat women.” Someone at NME didn’t think she was cool and wrote “the only saving grace would be if she miscarried”. Enraged, I phoned demanding an apology. They printed an apology. We got tabloid front pages such as “Channel Swore”, but young people loved us.
We filmed Lee Perry in Jamaica with the biggest spliff ever seen on British television. I phoned the production team to ask how things were going and they said, “The music’s great, but Jools is unconscious.” I saw Madonna in New York and wanted her on when we were live from the Hacienda. Her label, Warner Brothers, told me: “She is not a priority act.” So we had to pay her train fare.
Stephen Fry and Robbie Coltrane would turn up in the audience. We put on Vic Reeves and Fine Young Cannibals when they were unknowns and shot an unsigned Frankie Goes To Hollywood in a Liverpool S&M club. The lineup consisted of two gays, two straights, two trannies and two strippers with whips and butt plugs. I remember thinking: “This is going out while people are having their egg and chips.”
