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HE is a small, dapper man with the kind of smile you normally associate with toothpaste ads.

And from lunchtime to midnight Saturday and Sunday, brief flashes of that whiter-than-white grin belonging to David Hamilton punctuate the breaks between television programmes in the North.

On the surface the job holds not much limelight.

But over the four and a half years he has been doing it, 27-year-old Hamilton has made the scant few minutes between the commercials and big features make as much impact as anything on the programme forecast.

“When you were on, I laughed more than I did at Harry Secombe,” wrote one viewer.

He gets 150 letters like that every week. Because with his “special” goodnights and sly bits of business with any prop that immediately comes to hand he has become, in his own words, “more than just a filler-in — an anonymous face sprouting words not meant to be heard or understood.”

To David Hamilton this is important. Not for the fan mail, or for the fact that at Ken Dodd’s personal request he is acting as feed man on his new TV series, but simply for his own satisfaction.

“I started this ad-libbing as a sort of challenge,” he says.

CRAMPED

“Anybody can learn a script and recite it. A lot of announcers say “goodnight everyone” as if they were talking to a Bank Holiday crowd over a public address system.

“But there’s more to it than that. Looking at it coldly you’re there to sell the programme. The way I see it, if I can sell myself, then that takes care of the programmes as well.”

After leaving his home in Marple, Cheshire, Diddy David, as Ken Dodd referred to him on TV last night, spends most of his working life in a Manchester TV studio the size of a small broom cupboard.

“To a lot of people I suppose it sounds a bit boring sitting for hours and hours on end watching a monitor screen.

“I suppose it would be if you weren’t on edge all the time wondering if the show will run early and someone will shove a mike under your nose and say ‘Talk.'”

His feelings about his present position are mixed.

“I love this job. But at the same time it gives me satisfaction and security (he gets £60 [£1065 in 2018 allowing for inflation] for two days work) it is a millstone round my neck.

“You see, under the terms of my contract I cannot appear on any other national TV network. In the past I’ve turned down good offers to keep this job.

A CHANCE

“And that’s why I’m a bit nervous of this Ken Dodd spot. You see, if it leads to other things, I’m going to have to make a decision.

“To drop the security and take a chance. Or to go on the same way as I have been doing for the past four years — and risk being typed as just another announcer.”

If he goes on doing as he has been doing, I should say that risk is negligible.

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11.55pm on 28 July 1968: Goodbye from ABC. After twelve years as the Weekend Independent Television Programme Company in the North ABC Television is closing down tonight for good. David Hamilton and Keith Martin who, as station hosts, are the personalities most often seen by our viewers over these years, look back at past programmes and personal memories from our studios in Manchester, switch off the Didsbury lights and put out the studio cat for the very last time.

Produced by the Presentation Department, ABC Television.

(Editor’s note: a Midlands version of this programme, with substantially the same script, was aired at the same time from the Alpha Studios in Aston, Birmingham, presented by Sheila Kennedy and Philip Elsmore)

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This weekend sees the passing of a TV Studio that has made history. A history that spans 12 years of weekend programmes from an address millions of viewers have written to – ABC Television, Didsbury, Manchester 20.

Appropriately, the last show to be made in the studio is Hughie Green’s Opportunity Knocks!. Called ‘Goodbye to Didsbury’, it will be shown on Saturday. And on Sunday, I have the sad honour of closing down the station with my own programme of memories of people and events that have been shared by viewers.

It was May 5, 1956, that ABC Television went on the air for the first time in a cinema converted to a TV studio in the remarkable time of 12 weeks.

And what a programme to open with – the F.A. Cup Final, when Manchester City beat Birmingham City 3 to 1.

That first weekend went on with film star Hazel Court, Macdonald Hobley and Ludovic Kennedy reading the news. There was also the first showing of Robin Hood and the first weekend drama, The Last Reunion, with Eric Portman and Michael Gough.

Through the doors of Didsbury walked stars of show-business, leading politicians and top businessmen. The names are endless. Premier Harold Wilson, the late George Formby, Sir Donald Wolfit, Lord Arran. I could go on forever.

In Studio One came the birth of Armchair Theatre, a drama series that was to shake off the cobwebs of old-fashioned theatrics and make way for what some call, in derogatory fashion, “kitchen sink drama”.

But it made playwrights like Alun Owen, and helped Ruth Dunning to win an Actress of the Year award. It also saw the start of Billie Whitelaw’s great career in a comedy series called My Wife and I.

This Saturday, Hughie Green will be talking about the tragedies and the fun that has gone on at Didsbury studios. For there have been heartbreaks and joy behind the scenes.

I wonder how many people realise that The Avengers really started in these studios. In those days it was called Police Surgeon and starred Ian Hendry and Patrick Macnee as the mysterious agent.

(Editors’ Note: David Hamilton’s memories and those of the TVTimes caption writer are at variance with the established facts of The Avengers. Although the first – live – series did star Hendry, he was not playing the same character he created in Police Surgeon.)

It was in these studios that Mike and Bernie Winters became national names. And I will always have a tremendous affection for this cinema-turned-TV-studio because it was the place I first met Ken Dodd and found myself with a national name – “Diddie” David Hamilton. Ken, of course, couldn’t resist calling the studios “diddie Didsbury”.

Diddie it may be in some ways now but gigantic studios have, or are, being built all over the country ready for ITV’s new look which you will see on Monday.

But it has been a giant of a studio so far as paving the way for programmes in the past. Adult education started from here, teaching viewers everything from how to write correctly, to learning the background to their Sunday newspapers, to the geography of their own country, to simple cooking with Philip Harben.

The great days of rock ‘n’ roll began in Didsbury with programmes like Boy Meets Girl and Wham!! – those two exclamations were insisted upon – with stars such as Marty Wilde, Cliff Richard and the glamourous Vernons Girls. A young man starting his career here was guitarist Joe Brown, who later became a West End star in Charlie Girl.

To pop fans, one corner of Didsbury is almost sacred. It is the place where four young men from Liverpool made their first appearance before the nation. Yes, you’ve guessed it – The Beatles.

I well remember passing Brian Epstein and the boys on the steps up to my announcers’ booth and hearing Brian getting very angry with one of them because he hadn’t been to the dentist!

Another of my memories will always be the formation of ITV’s top, regular orchestra in the North, the ABC Television Showband with Bob Sharples. What a swinging sound those boys have made for people like Eamonn Andrews, Bruce Forsyth, Doddy and Matt Munro.

Unknown to most viewers, Didsbury has been the headquarters for the vast outside broadcast fleet of vehicles (until recently the biggest in ITV) that has brought viewers such sports programmes as wrestling, horse racing, rugby league and car racing.

These vehicles have enabled viewers to see programmes like The Blackpool Show and, years ago, Holiday Town Parade.

But this weekend it will all be memories. I shall take my place for the last time in the tiny announcers’ studio to bring you the final programme of a television era. And after saying my “Special goodnight to you” I shall feel sorrow as we lock the doors for ever on a building that has entertained a nation.

This article was first published on 25 July 1968 as part of the first TVTimes Granada (west of the Pennines) edition, for 27 July to 2 August. This was the last TVTimes to feature an ABC weekend. The article was not published in the east of the Pennines (ie YTV) region.

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The post David Hamilton appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

He was born in Manchester, Lancashire, in 1938. He adopted his mother’s maiden name as a show business name.

He attended Glastonbury Road Grammar School at St. Helier in Surrey, until aged 17. On leaving school Hamilton became a script-writer for the TV series Portrait of a Star.

In 1960 he became an in-vision television announcer for ABC in Didsbury, Manchester and appeared with Ken Dodd in the TV series Doddy’s Music Box, acquiring the nickname, ‘Diddy’. Throughout the 1960s he hosted shows for the Tyne Tees, Anglia and Westward Television companies.

He joined the then new Thames as an announcer in 1968, subsequently hosting many shows for them including Miss TV Times, TV Times Gala Awards and The World Disco Dance Championships, as well as many outside broadcasts, circus and sports shows. He appeared alongside comedians Benny Hill and Tommy Cooper and hosted Thames TV’s showcase weeks on television in New York City and Los Angeles. Later he hosted ATV’s Saturday night series Up For the Cup, and four series of ITV’s Hangman-style game show All Clued Up.

For BBCtv he compered Top of the Pops and Seaside Special and in 1986 the Eurovision Song Contest previews. For seven years he was the main host of one of the earliest satellite TV stations, Lifestyle.

In February 2012 at the age of 73 he danced to the track “Push it” with fellow DJ Tony Blackburn as contestants on the charity show “Let’s Dance for Sport Relief”.

Article source: Wikipedia | Contributors | CC-BY-SA 3.0

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How was ABC to respond, in such a way as to make its presence felt? How to find a way not to be overwhelmed by the Granada or ATV identity?

The answer was to be as different as possible from their opposite numbers. With Granada being Northern, dour and serious, ABC always felt lighter, with a more cosmopolitan touch. Against ATV in the Midlands, itself a lighter station, ABC went in the opposite direction, and became more heavyweight, emphasising its Adult Education and Sunday Arts programmes in extensive trailers.

This odd dichotomy of identity worked well in both cases, though seemed slightly more successful in the North. The Midland output suffered from sharing studios with ATV, and having to work hard to look different. In the North, separate studios seemed to facilitate a quite different weekend ‘feel’ to the station. This policy was successful with advertisers and ABC was always fully booked, and its rate card was more expensive than the Granada or ATV equivalents.

How did this affect the viewer?

As an ABC viewer in the early sixties, I was always impressed by the ‘balanced weekend package’ that ABC worked to provide. There was something for everyone – arts, variety, music, nostalgia, drama, ABPC’s films, children’s programmes, news and adult education, not to mention those weekend staples of sport, religion, and the Avengers.

Specialist programming abounded in the daytime slots, weekend programming generally starting before lunchtime, while weekday programmes started at teatime. Typically, in the early sixties daytimes, ABC had cookery, music, gardening, farming, and a highbrow cultural programme early on Sundays, with a magazine programme at teatime. These quality programmes balanced the more glitzy evening fare of films, drama and variety.

The weekday programming, hemmed in as it was between fixed points like news, Coronation Street and regional programming, was hard to vary and became predictable. With ABC at weekends, there was always something different, something special, or something unexpected. It could be “Teach Yourself Russian” from Tyne Tees on Saturday lunchtimes, “The Grammar of Cookery” on Sunday mornings or a joint production of “The Struggle for Peace”, with America’s Westinghouse for US education stations, on Sunday afternoons.

ABC offered a package of delights that made the weekend distinctive, and the weekdays with Granada or ATV predictable.

With a team of regular and friendly ‘in vision’ announcers, known on air as ‘station hosts’, and led by John Benson, John Edmunds, David Hamilton and Sheila Kennedy, ABC were never patronising, and always interesting. The contrast with the weekday companies was stark and very evident.

ABC succeeded in presenting a station personality that was quite unique in the television of the fifties and sixties.

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