Roy Jay's Final Appearance on TV?
A curious curtain closer
Are we on the cusp of a Roy Jay reappraisal? Could his talent finally burst forth into the public consciousness? No, it certainly couldn’t. But after yesterday’s article on him, it was brought to my attention that what appears to be his final television performance is up on YouTube.
Materialising on Pebble Mill at One - a programme I despised as a toddler, but now adore with endless glee - Roy Jay was promoting his new single Spookin’ Down the Street. It was a slice of vinyl which failed to trouble the charts but, as ever with Roy, it was the performance that mattered - compulsively watchable, although not always for the right reasons.
The song is far from memorable, although I’ll concede that Jay has a serviceable voice. The real draw here, however, is the spectacle. The Pebble Mill set - with an almost Wes Anderson dedication to symmetry - takes on a ghostly air, and the appearance of the stereotypical ‘spook’ gives the performance a wonderfully camp air. Jay, of course, does his usual slithering and rope pulling trick, but it’s a familiar repertoire by now and does little to indicate any sense of progress.
More troubling than the spectral connotations of the song is Jay’s physical condition. A little fuller in the face, he appears to be struggling with the performance and sweating with the vigour of a man trying to escape his demons. Numerous rumours regarding various addictions haunt Jay’s legacy and his appearance here does little to exorcise these accusations.
And so, this was Roy Jay’s final curtain call on his television career. Even as he faded away from the public gaze and affection, there was something about his sweaty, frantic performance which lingered. He came, he slithered, he spooked - and he remains unforgettable.
P.s. That feature at the start of the clip on bats looks just as fascinating, right?
It's extraordinary that this obscure piece of television turned up on YouTube, yet as CBT has often pointed out, such curiosities can appear out of the blue, some of them genuinely missing from the archives, such as episodes of Bric-a-Brac and The Adventure Game in recent years. How and why Roy Jay managed to appear on Pebble Mill at One is not entirely clear; he had not appeared on TV for nearly a year since The Laughter Show, it seemed as though the song performed itself was promoting the release of a new single, but there's no indication any was released as such (it may have featured on an LP Jay released some years earlier), he clearly looks to be miming his way through the performance, not helped by odd appearances from a female performance artist in ghostly make-up walking on and off camera in the background, as he looks clearly the worse for wear during his appearance, moving awkwardly, sweating profusely halfway onwards, and looking as though he'd aged about a decade from his previous spot on The Laughter Show barely 12 months before. Perhaps this last pitiable attempt at reviving his fading TV career truly finished any hopes of its continuation, as he vanished from view, working in clubs and small venues for the rest of his life.
roy jay is an AI demon who is rewriting himself into the history of our universe