Frights, camera, action

HAVE you noticed just how confident members of the public tend to be these days when they appear on television? The cameras, the lights, the studio audience, the thought of all those people watching at home – none of that stuff seems to faze them in the least.

They relax, enjoy themselves, crack a joke or two, maybe even try to upstage the presenter.Yep, no doubt about it – some of them can be seriously annoying.

Take a look at some of the old TV clips on YouTube or wherever, and you’re reminded it wasn’t always this way. Contestants on old shows like The Generation Game or Bullseye or Sale Of The Century invariably wore rabbit-in-theheadlights expressions and looked appropriately ill at ease.

Likewise, kids in the audience on music programmes like Top Of The Pops, or its various short-lived commercial rivals, such as Supersonic and The Geordie Scene (yes, quite). No disrespect, but audience members on pop shows back then mostly danced like vicars with haemorrhoids.And why wouldn’t they? A television studio is a strange, intense, uncomfortable place and no self-respecting, well-adjusted human being should ever feel relaxed in one.

It’s just not natural. Which is one of the many reasons I enjoy Sky Arts’ music archive series GUY GARVEY: FROM THE VAULTS, continuing tonight (8pm).

I don’t just love this programme for all the vintage performances it treats us to, and which in most cases it kindly allows to play out in full (this evening’s episode, focusing on 1976, includes The Kinks, David Essex, Kiss,The Walker Brothers, Procol Harum and Rod Stewart).

I also love it for the incidental bits and bobs going on in the background of these old clips.

And yes, those ill-at-ease audience members are a particularly fine reminder of a different age, when it was perfectly OK not to be an attention-seeking Insta-ninny.

The other thing this show reminds us of is that, while songs from that long ago can often stand the test of time remarkably well, the same can’t always be said of the way they were performed.

An obvious example is the clip of Rod Stewart performing his 1976 hit The Killing Of Georgie, about the murder of a gay man in New York. Hearing that song today, nearly half a century on, you’re struck by how boldly it addressed such a sensitive issue, particularly in an era not exactly known for its enlightenment.

Take a look at the video, however, and look at the way Rod writhes around the stage while performing it.

Let’s just say you’re quickly reminded they still had some distance to go.