I Found a 1985 Anglia TV Closedown on Betamax
How to say goodnight properly
Lately, I’ve been wandering down the dimly lit corridors of broadcast nostalgia, writing about the death of the television closedown and the golden age of regional ITV franchises. Then, by sheer serendipity, I discovered the perfect distillation of both on a Betamax tape from 1985.
This week, I decided to scan through some vintage tapes for flashes of ephemeral British television. I found very little. But I did find something. A flickering jewel of a world now long forgotten: an Anglia Television closedown. So, without further ado, let’s dive in and take a look at it.
The Anglia knight arrives first, of course, all regal, majestic and serene. This is the real thing, ITV before it came a conglomeration of banal uniformity. Then, without ceremony, we’re plunged into the world of commerce. Wallace King and Home City - a prestigious East Anglian chain of furniture stores - trumpet the announcement of Super Saturday, with an urgent insistence that these bargains won’t last.
A chirpy, quirky advert for Harvest Crunch follows and declares that “It’s nice. It’s natural. It’s knobbly.” Not sure it’s one of marketing’s finest slogans, but it’s harmless fluff. Next, it’s time for Maxwell House, and an advert which, curiously, barely mentions coffee until the final frame. At least we get the soft-focus nostalgia of glass milk bottles waiting patiently on the doorstep.
And then we get the dulcet Irish brogue of Terry Wogan narrating something that isn’t quite a public information film, but carries the same paranoia. “Be a good neighbour” it urges over scenes of a comedy crook arousing the suspicions of a vigilant neighbour.
Cut to a set of velvet curtains - deep burgundy and wonderfully plush - and there sits Keith Martin, the very embodiment of 1980s continuity: beige suit, cream shirt and a tie which co-ordinates perfectly with the velvet backdrop.
Martin’s here to gently usher in the end of the day, but first it’s time for The Magic and the Music - although this is actually a rare blot of Martin’s copybook as it’s called The Message and the Music.
And this is our regional oddity. Recorded in Norwich, and only broadcast in the Anglia region, The Message and the Music tiptoed its way onto the airwaves between 1985 - 86. No other footage of the programme survives online, so this is a true rarity - don’t say I don’t spoil you.
This edition finds Graham Kendrick perched on a stool with an acoustic guitar, keeping in line with the usual budgets - about the cost of a KitKat - associated with these late-night programmes. Wearing a jumper that screams St Michael so loudly it threatens to induce tinnitus, Graham speaks softly - perfect for this time of evening - about songwriting and influence. And then the G word: God.
Yes, “the message” of The Message and the Music is unmistakably religious. Through a series of chords, Kendrick wants to guide us out of our own concerns and into the light of God. While it’s devout, and I won’t be in a rush to track down Kendrick’s back catalogue, the gentle fingerpicking is a suitable closer for a world which is winding down.
And then, the mechanics of the closedown click into place. Martin bids us goodnight. A slide follows, offering a glimpse at Saturday night’s schedule - a greatest-hits compilation of Game for a Laugh, 3-2-1 and Dempsey and Makepeace. We briefly see the Anglia clock ticking away before it vanishes and the national anthem swells over a montage of the Royal family, with Princess Diana at her peak of luminosity.
The strains of God Save the Queen fade out. The screen goes black. But it’s not over yet. Hang on for a few seconds longer and you’ll hear the disembodied voice of Martin reminding viewers to turn off their television set. Finally, the day’s broadcast is over.
There is no closedown now, so it would be redundant to compare this with the modern day. But watching this relic from 40 years ago highlights just how utterly television has been transformed. Once, an evening’s viewing could feel complete, but now the schedules have lost all sense of time and rhythm.
Can we even remember what it felt like to truly say goodnight to television?
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P.s. If you have ancient Betamax or VHS tapes sitting about, please get in touch!
It’s amazing when you look back in hindsight at all the now-interesting stuff like this that one could have recorded back in the day and kept. I bought a VCR in April 1983 when I was still living at home, although I moved out a few months later when I got married. As my parents were pretty tight with money, I thought we’ll never get one unless I buy one – I’d been working for over five years by that time, so I splashed out and bought an Akai (no idea of the model number) for the princely sum of about $700.
Of course, there’s no way in the world I would have had the foresight to record such everyday stuff such as this, or things like commercials and continuity. It just wasn’t on your radar to record & keep such trivial (and then-uninteresting things). For about the first 12 months I think I only had one 3-hour tape. Even if some strange person appeared circa-1984 (or any time in the 80s) and told you: “You must record and keep these things, believe me, you won’t regret it”, you’d write them off as a nutcase!
I guess it’s why a few of these things exist, they were recorded unintentionally. But it’s always fascinating how many times yesteryear’s “trash” can be today’s “treasures”. In a similar way to old photos, you took decades ago, back then they were “boring” pictures, of boring everyday subjects, now they’re not so boring and you think, why didn’t I take more?
Is that Ken Stott getting knobbly?