JEREMY LUBBOCK, who brings a new face and a new style of playing to Granada’s Piano Pops, is including many “oldies” from the pages of composers like Gershwin, Rodgers and Jerome Kern.

“And why not?” he said, “Their numbers may not be in the Top Twenty, but some of them are still as popular as ever. An up-to-the-minute example is Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, which is enjoying new lease of life.”

Not that Lubbock’s appreciate of music is restricted to any particular style. His musical education has ranged from harpsichord classics to the latest thing in “rock.”

It all started when Jeremy was a toddler. The Lubbock home in Berkshire was the centre of musical life in the neighbourhood. At the age of four he began to explore the keyboards of the two pianos his parents owned.

He had a strictly classical upbringing. Beethoven and Bach were his childhood heroes.

But as Jeremy grew older his taste changed to lighter compositions. “My preference,” he says, “is for tunes that are of popular appeal and yet have a lasting value … and it is my opinion that there are only half-a-dozen people who have written tunes that come into this category.”

Lubbock admits that none of the tunes he has written has reached the high standards he has set. His own contributions to music so far have included jingles for television commercials and a score for a short film.

He has also written a blues number, which had its first public hearing in Piano Pops. It took him 10 minutes to compose and is called Nameless. “It is tremendously difficult to find a title for a blues, so I just took the easy way out,” he says.

Lubbock is 6ft 3in tall and in the studios is provided with a grand piano that matches his proportions. But he tends to dwarf the miniature piano he uses for rehearsing the programme in his flat in London’s Holland Park.

This is an unusual instrument, decorated in Chinese lacquer — jet black with gilt illustrations of traditional Chinese figures with a background of rustic bridges, pagodas and willow trees.

Lubbock, now 28, was originally meant to be an architect. It was only three years ago that he decided that he wanted to be a full-time musician.

“I’d always had a hankering to move into show business, but it took me a long time to take the plunge,” he said. “Whether I took the right decision remains to be seen, but right now I don’t regret the change.”

Even so, he’s not taking any chances. On the drawing board in his flat are the plans for a shop he is designing for one of his friends. “An interesting project which I cannot resist doing,” is how he describes it.

Since his appearances in The Sunday Break last year, he has spent three months playing in a Paris night club.

“I suppose it was good experience,” he says, “but I didn’t care much for the hours. I was on duty from nine o’clock at night until four or five o’clock in the morning. Then I would have breakfast and take a swim in a floating pool moored in the River Seine before going to bed.”

The post New style old tunes appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

MAGICIAN Billy McComb was sitting in a comer of the studio talking into an empty cocoa tin and writing “Yours, Ahkkx LbBnla” in an autograph book.

Even for a master of the unexpected this was an unusual performance … one that demanded an explanation. As if he read my thoughts, Billy whispered into the tin, mysteriously: “Hold on a minute. I’ve got a visitor.”

Then he turned, and said: “I’m just trying out our new studio telephone. All you need are two tins, two nails and a length of string. But it really works.”

That made sense — the tin can telephone was a trick I remembered from my own boyhood. For the uninitiated — you take two cans, bore a hole in each, tie a piece of string to a nail each end, passing it through the holes. Two people then hold the string taut, one listening while the other speaks. The sound vibrations travel down the stretched string.

But what about “Ahkkx LbBnla”?

Said Billy: “Oh, that’s my code name -just another of the things we’ve been getting up to in It’s Wizard. It’s simply Billy McComb with each letter moved a step backwards in the alphabet.”

Since this Granada children’s programme started three weeks ago, Billy McComb has been devoting his spare time to the fascinating ways of presenting science with smiles.

“It’s one of the most satisfying shows ever done,” said the veteran of 200 television appearances. “In fact, everything I have learned in my life seems to have been leading up to It’s Wizard.

“There’s been the pre-medical course I took at Trinity College, Dublin and the medical and Bachelor of Science course I took at Queen’s University, Belfast, which have given me the scientific background that is essential for this programme.

“Then my long study of magic helps me in the presentation of effects. And my experience as a cartoonist makes it easier for me to give clear blackboard demonstrations.

“It’s Wizard is one of the hardest types of show to put on,” he said. “You can either make it wildly complicated and unentertaining or extremely simple and still unentertaining. However, we feel I have found the perfect formula for presenting science to children in a way they can all understand. Everything I do in the show is tried out beforehand on my boy Sheron. He understands exactly what I’m doing and what I’m getting at, and he’s only nine.

“The main idea is that almost every experiment we do can be repeated by a child in his own home and using everyday objects. The average child cannot ask his mother for a cathode-ray oscilloscope, but he can borrow a basin of water or a packet of baking powder to try out something he’s seen on the programme.”

But whatever ingredients are required, there will never be any risk of a young viewer blowing up the kitchen after watching It’s Wizard. One important rule of the programme is that no experiment must be attempted that is in any way dangerous.

“In fact, we would like parents to cooperate with us,” said Billy, “not only by watching the programme but by helping children try out experiments for themselves.

“An interested mother or father can be of great help to a child, and they will find that It’s Wizard will also broaden their own knowledge about the workings of things around them.

“I know it’s doing a lot for me personally. Every now and then a bell rings in my mind as I relearn something I first knew about during my own schooldays 15 or 20 years ago.”

Since he gave up medicine to make a profession of his boyhood hobby of conjuring, Billy McComb has travelled widely.

He has been seen on television in seven countries. Viewers from the north of Germany down to Monaco have known him as a magician. The Italians have seen him as an illusionist, the Spaniards as a lightning cartoonist. And in America he has worked as a television producer.

But his first interest has always been magic.

He is an international authority on the subject. One of his books on magic is a standard textbook within the profession. He is one of the three examiners who test magicians for membership of the Inner Magic Circle.

And in July he will be the No 1 lecturer at a world gathering of wizards, when he flies to Boston, Massachusetts, for the International Congress of Magicians. This will be the second time he has been star attraction at the Congress.

The post It’s Wizard – but it’s safe! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

IN the surgery of the People and Places doctor, not a stethoscope was in sight. His desk was covered with photographs of sporting celebrities — and some of them you can see here.

“These are for Granada’s Evening Surgery next Friday,” he said. “I shall be giving a doctor’s eye view of some of the giants of the world of sport. All have in common one remarkable quality, which I think will be a surprise to many viewers.

“I don’t want to say what it is in advance, but these pictures might suggest the link they have between them.”

As we went through the photographs, discussing the achievements that have made world headlines, I discovered the doctor is a sportsman.

Since he was given his first cricket bat at the age of five, he has tried his hand at most sports. But, as the picture of Ben Hogan reminded him, golf is the one he took up late.

All the same, he has done well at it. In two years he got his handicap down to three, and then went on to win a top Northern tournament.

Sam Langford’s photograph recalled his interest in boxing and the time he was President of Manchester University Boxing Club. That phase came roughly between the lacrosse period, when he was picked to play for Lancashire schoolboys, and the rugby period, when he played for the university. But of all the sports stars we talked about, Fleetwood-Smith, the Australian bowler, was obviously the one admired most by the doctor, and cricket the game he loved above all the others.

By the time he was a medical student he was captaining the combined English Universities team. At 42, he has just stepped down as captain of his local eleven.

Today his sport is divided between cricket — he plays once and sometimes twice a week throughout the summer — and golf — two or three rounds a week in the winter.

“Golf,” he said, “is particularly suitable for a doctor, because it can be played at any time. Cricket is different. Someone has to be found to look after things for me.

“Fortunately, I have a good arrangement with another doctor who likes football just as much as I like cricket. In winter I stand in for him so that he can go to his football matches. In summer he stands in for me so that I can go to my cricket.”

And the result of all this exercise? Well, the doctor may be going rather bald on top, but he can still put in a half hour session on his bagpipes without losing his breath and he hasn’t had an illness since his schooldays.

Which isn’t bad for a man on the wrong side of 40.

The post Sporting doctor finds a link appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.