Lord Brett

Yonks ago I picked up at a charity shop (for 30p, reduced from a pound!) a video released some ten years ago called Party Political Broadcasts - The Greatest Hits. I've only just got round to watching it and there are some real treats on it.

It's almost three hours long, and I haven't got through the whole thing yet, but among the highlights are a pre-teen Honeysuckle Weeks in a Green Party broadcast from the mid-eighties, and Fry and Laurie in an excellent series of Labour Party broadcasts from 1992.

It goes right back to the 1950s and is well worth tracking down.

oxfam1uk

So excellent ... that Labour lost the election !
Did your tape have the ones that John Cleese made for the SDP / (same result). Or what about Gillian Taylforth demonstrating that "Labour isn't working"?

Actually, the broadcasts that I remember most clearly were the ones made by the politicians themselves. I vividly recall silly old Jim Callaghan going on TV at the end of 1978 to tell us that he would not be calling a General Election, to the consternation of all journalists, who had been predicting one for weeks. A few weeks later ... the Winter of Discontent.

That's politics. What a marvellous reminder of those times we are having today, concerning Northern Wreck ! Where's the International Monetary Fund when we need it ?

Harleybloke

.....You couldn't hear it, if they were shooting at me with howitzers!

batman

IMF - they self destructed in five seconds!

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

Steve Crook

Wasn't "Labour isn't working" the famous Tory li(n)e?
They had pictures of people queueing outside the dole office and it turned out that they hadn't used real unemployed people but party workers. Keep it all in the family

That's one of the campaigns that got Maggie into power - which led to even longer lines outside the dole office

Steve

Windthrop

It was Bryan Forbes who started the 'modern' political broadcast in this country for the Tories in the late 60s before being dumped by Mrs T's advisors in favour of Saatchi & Saatchi.

I tend to avoid them myself - Jay Leno's phrase 'Politics is just showbusiness for ugly people' seems uncomfortably true to me. Did he mean physically or morally - or both ?

The most absurd one I ever saw was a Labour one in the 80s with a vague old man, in tatty tweed jacket, wandering round a childrens playground (a wise idea ?) muttering to himself, in between munching on wine-gums, about 'poll-tax - what's all that in aid off' and 'they say hospital beds are closing down, ee I don't rightly know' before scratching his head and wandering off. I don't know which PR firm was responsible for that but it might have well have been Bernard Miles ruminating away in some pre 60s comedy.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

Tony Pendrey

What I remember most about all that was the fact that the posters were everywhere and they had saturation coverage in the cinemas.

The Saatchi mob were quick to cotton onto the fact that political advertising was
un-restricted on the big screen.

Ah Yes, the Soviet Union. All them wheatfields and ballet in the evenings

Lord Brett

Yes, there are two John Cleese ones on there, which is another reason why I thought the tape deserved some more publicity. There's also the Natural Law Party's yogic flying broadcast, and a Sean Connery-narrated one for the Scottish Nationalists.

There's also a fabulously rubbish Liberal one from 1974, which spends most of its time reading out telegrams of support from celebrities such as Alec Guinness and Miora Sheerer.

I am reminded of what Peter Cook said in the sixties when setting up his satirical comedy club the Establishment. It was along the lines that he thought it would have the same success in changing political opinion as the Berlin political caberet clubns of the 1930s had in combating the Nazi party!

oxfam1uk

John Cleese, if I remember the broadcast correctly, made a big thing out of the reports that a London Labour council had banned children from singing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" ...

Yes and at the same time there was a Conservative PPB on the same theme, which featured a pre-Eastenders Gillian Taylforth. Her career has been, ahem, going down ever since ...

Steve Crook

Moira Shearer's old man was Ludovic Kennedy who once stood as a liberal candidate - and lost

Steve

Marky B

No matter what political party it is,they are waste of time!
Ta Ta
Marky B

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

Edward G

There's a great line from a Christy Moore song on this very subject that goes :

"When the elections are all over,
We'll all be pushing up clover,
Sure, everyone in the graveyard votes the same!"


Edward G.

I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!

Lord Brett

Last one for this thread - I finally got to the end of the tape, to find Leo McKern fronting a broadcast for the UK Independence Party.

Hang about, wasn't he Australian?

Steve Crook

That's brilliant
The party that's most against immigration has a broadcast fronted by an immigrant

Steve