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JULIE BISHOP, co-host with David Gell in Granada’s Concentration, can certainly claim to be the mostest hostess. This 20-year-old ash blonde — a dancer since she was nine — has been a hostess on and off since January, 1958, in Spot the Tune, Twenty-One and now Concentration.

Between times, she’s fully booked as a model — “It makes a nice change, and I find the work very interesting.”

When she does manage to snatch a breather, she takes to the water — either in it or on it.

“When I was dancing in a summer season show at Coventry, Jon Pertwee, who was one of the stars, taught me to water-ski.”

Julie’s green eyes sparkle as she recalls her days in variety at the London Hippodrome. “I used to dive into a pool on stage. Only one slip in 500 performances…. We had to dip under a bar, and that night I hit my head on it.

“There was real panic for a moment. AH the stage manager could see was my head floating just below the surface, and he yelled, frantically ‘Drop the curtain — she’s drowning.’ But I was only stunned, and my partner pulled me to safety.”

Born with the sound of the sea in her ears — on the island of Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames — she loves nothing better than “just messing about in boats.” Mostly, it’s been plain sailing. “But one day the engine gave out on us,” she I laughed. “We were drifting helplessly. Then along came a tanker. One of the crew repaired our engine, and the skipper invited us on board for tea. It was a bit of luck they happened to be there.”

Julie’s real name is Jeanette. Julie is a nickname.

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TAKE a pianist, guitarist, bass player and drummer. Give them a tune. Pick a rhythm that has an exciting beat. That’s the style of the Derek Hilton Quartet, which has been presenting a new sound on some Granada programmes.

Viewers have heard it in The Youngsters, People and Places, Sharp at Four and even in a Shadow Squad night club scene.

Welsh viewers hear it even more frequently. For Derek adds something new to traditional Welsh ballads for Granada’s Welsh programme Dewch I Mewn, seen on Channel 9 only in the North.

The quartet’s clear, haunting style reminds me of another group – the Modern Jazz Quartet. So I was hardly surprised when Derek said: “They are my favourites. I have many of their records, and like their style.” Derek admitted that this kind of music was not yet very popular. “But it will be,” he prophesied, confidently.

Certainly Derek’s modern jazz interpretations are keeping him busy, and his quartet is used in many Granada programmes. Derek himself used to play the piano in Spot The Tune!

He does the arrangements which are played by drummer Red Carter, guitarist Les Beavers, bass player Bob Duffy and Derek on the piano.

Derek Hilton, who is married to a Dutch girl he met when he was in the army, does not have a piano at home, so I was interested to know how he works.

“A piano would be no help,” he explained. “Arrangements that are good on a piano do not always sound well when played by a quartet. A piano would be a hindrance, and that is why I do not have one.”

Derek has a keen knowledge of music, gleaned since he began learning to play at the age of seven. “I read the music and can hear the tune in my mind,” the tall, bespectacled band leader told me.

Derek has to work quickly, for he spends so much of his time playing. Since his quartet first began broadcasting on the Welsh programme, he has arranged more than 30 Welsh ballads to suit his team’s style.

“I find Welsh songs are easy to arrange. They have a clear melody, and I enjoy playing them much more than some of the new songs which are being published today,” he said.

Derek explained: “The scope for arrangements in modern tunes is limited, but I can do a lot with Welsh tunes.”

He has the music for 60 Welsh ballads. “I think that most of the country’s folk songs have been published,” said Derek. “but I am on the lookout for some more.

“I would be glad if viewers would tell me of any lesser known Welsh songs which we could play in the programme.”

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A TELEVISION network must serve the tastes of many kinds of viewers. There must be light entertainment as well as serious drama, popular music and variety as well as news, information and discussion.

Some of television’s most difficult problems have arisen in providing light entertainment which is original, fresh and suitable to the medium.

The music-hall, the ‘straight’ theatre, the cinema and the kerb-side busker have evolved patterns of light entertainment that can be traced back to the Commedia dell’ Arte. The range is wide and well-established, from the red-nosed dialect comedian to the sophisticated satirist in the topical revue; from the broad music-hall sketch with collapsing honeymoon beds and nagging mothers-in-law to the acidulated intellectual skit. By means of varying formulae, sometimes traditional, sometimes based on American models, sometimes new and indigenous, the media of light entertainment have striven to excite the belly-laugh, or the civilized chuckle.

Today television is the major medium of light entertainment, and it sets a fast pace. An old-time comic could tour the halls for a couple of years with the same opening gag, the same patter, the same sentimental songs, the same exit line. Transpose him to television and he must create his act anew with each appearance: every night is opening night; indeed, for television programme-planners, every night can be the opening nights of half-a-dozen half-hours to be filled with fresh entertainment.

Even in the pioneering days it became clear that it was not enough merely to put the stage performer before the camera and leave him to go through his act as in the theatre. There is a place for this kind of entertainment in television — in the straightforward music-hall programme before a live audience, for example — but it is not original television. It is music-hall photographed for TV—a kind of outside broadcast.

So far, four main distinct types of television light entertainment have been evolved; the situation comedy, the viewer participation programme, the ‘series’ programme, and the personality programme.

It is, perhaps, not too fanciful to relate the popularity of some at least of these four kinds of programme to the intensely domestic nature of the medium. Television is part of modern family life: ‘going to a show’ is an occasional family event—or, more often, something that individual members of the family do on their own, or with friends.

The appeal of the situation comedy is based on the regular presentation of a group of characters who are, in time, thought of almost as intimates of the family. The situations in which they are involved are not impossibly remote from the viewers’ own family experience, but everyday life is transmitted in them by comic exaggeration. Granada’s most successful essay in this field was My Wife’s Sister, featuring Eleanor Summerfield — a series considered by some critics equal to the most popular American situation comedies.

Quizzes and panel-games give the viewer, vicariously or in person, some degree of participation. When the quiz or panel-game involves the questioning of experts on their own subjects, viewer-participation is almost entirely vicarious. Most viewers cannot themselves know most of the answers, but they identify themselves intensely with the studio contestants: they share their delight in winning and their despondency in defeat—and take pride in their sportsmanship in accepting the toughest challenges.

The sense of participation is keener in the type of quiz and panel-game requiring an average standard of general knowledge and experience. Here the viewer is on the same level as the studio contestant or panel. He can pit his wits against the programme in competition with the contestants. It has been Granada’s policy to produce shows of this type, such as ‘Spot the Tune’, ‘Make Up Your Mind’ and ‘Black and White’, rather than the more limited and expert type of panel and quiz programme.

The ‘series’ programmes — sometimes semi-documentary in character — consist either of short self-contained playlets featuring regular characters or of ‘continued-in-our-next’ serials which seek to create suspense by melodramatic plot-structure.

With the exception of the music-hall show, the personality programme is perhaps the least intrinsically televised form of light entertainment on tv. It consists, basically, of a sketch or recital built round a popular comedian or singer, and is really an offshoot of the stage revue. In television, however, this type of programme can sometimes have a more immediate impact on the audience than is possible in even an intimate living theatre.

Television cannot be static. Its enormous consumption of material and the developing tastes of viewers demand constant experiments not least in light entertainment. On first nights, every night, every week, this will always be a major challenge to television producers and artists.

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