The first episode of Channel 4's The Tube was broadcast live from Newcastle's Tyne Tees Television studios on Friday, November 5, 1982
Britain had a new television station this week 40 years ago - Channel 4.
At a time when there was no satellite TV and only three terrestrial channels, it was a big deal. One of Channel 4's first major offerings was a weekly show called The Tube. Capturing the musical as well as the fashion and comedy spirit of the 1980s, it would showcase everyone from Madonna to French and Saunders to Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It was also made in Newcastle.
Kicking off with a Bonfire Night bang, the first show was broadcast live from Tyne Tees Television's Studio Five on City Road at tea time on Friday, November 5, 1982. A welcome antidote to BBC1's formulaic Top Of The Pops and its simpering, cheesy Radio One DJ presenters, The Tube injected much-needed edge, cool and occasional anarchic chaos back into TV pop.
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Among the show’s creators and producers were the North East-based trio of Malcolm Gerrie, and Andrea and Geoff Wonfor. "We got together and I’d had this idea of taking Ready, Steady, Go, which was basically a similar music show in the '60s, and blowing it up into representing everything that had gone after it – let’s have bands playing on the Tyne, let's have Sting busking in the Bigg Market. And all these things happened," Gerrie told the Chronicle years later.
The programme took its name from the circular covered walkway leading to the studio, while its distinctive theme music was provided by an instrumental called Star Cycle performed by legendary guitarist Jeff Beck. The Tube would make household names of presenters Jools Holland, the former keyboard player with chart band Squeeze, and Paula Yates who would die in tragic circumstances in 2000. The live audience was made up of hip young Tynesiders who'd managed to get their hands on much sought-after passes.
Malcolm Gerrie recalled: “Everybody said it would never work in Newcastle and that we’d never get the stars up there. But look who we got. It did work." Many of pop and rock's biggest names headed to the City Road TV studios. Elton John, Tina Turner, U2, Culture Club, The Jam (who played their last TV set on the first ever Tube), Bon Jovi, Paul McCartney, Dire Straits and INXS were just some of those who appeared. If the show was firmly rooted in the East End of Newcastle, its production team also travelled across the globe with features filmed as far afield as Japan, Jamaica and the United States
The Tube helped launch careers of the likes of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Terence Trent D’Arby, The Proclaimers and Madonna (in a performance broadcast from Manchester’s Hacienda nightclub). Rising comedy stars such as French and Saunders, Vic Reeves, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson also appeared.
Cult comedian Wavis O'Shave, who hailed from South Shields, became a regular favourite. "My first appearance was on the third show," he recalls today. "I would just pop in. It was all very spontaneous." Sometimes labelled as Britain's 'first alternative comic', his best-known character was a Geordie tough nut known as 'The Hard' who famously "felt nowt" whenever he was banged over the head. "I also turned down the chance to meet an up-and-coming singer from New York - who turned out to be Madonna," Wavis remembers. "The success of the show was based on the fact it was live and literally anything could happen."
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Regulars in the pub next door to Tyne Tees, the now-demolished Egypt Cottage, would often rub shoulders with famous faces from the world of entertainment. The late media historian Chris Phipps who worked on The Tube recalled how Ozzy Osbourne insisted on being interviewed in an upright coffin leaning against the bar and how two unsuspecting visitors to the pub left very quickly without finishing their drinks.
Chris also had this to say about the show's two main presenters: "Jools and Paula were the epitome of The Tube and what it represented in television terms. They were anarchic, irreverent, chaotic and informed and very credible. They paved the way for so much of what we take for granted in television style today. They made Newcastle the capital of cool."
After five years and five series, The Tube began to suffer from falling ratings and problems with internal politics, and there was adverse publicity when Holland swore live on peak-time air. Duran Duran would be the last act to perform on the final show which was broadcast on April 24, 1987. Malcolm Gerrie recalled: "The main reason we eventually killed it off was because I didn’t want it to just fizzle out like The Old Grey Whistle Test did. So we thought we’d end it on a high."
A one-off episode of The Tube, hosted by Donna Air and Chris Moyles, was broadcast on Sky 1 in 1999, and in 2012 there were whisperings that a revival of the show was on the cards, but nothing would come of it. Back in April 1987, it was Paula Yates who had uttered the final farewell: "Here it is, the moment we’ve all been dreading. It’s the last moment of The Tube. It’s been wonderful. You’re going to miss us when we’re gone." And we would...
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