Top of the Pops, 10 October 1974: Pan’s People dance to I Get a Kick out of You by Gary Shearston.
Pan’s people in white lacey undies dancing to Gary Shearston, singing an old Cole Porter classic. Rescued from oblivion by the sainted Grant Watkins, who included this routine on his demonstration tape, presumably because of the sophisticated multi-layered blue-screen matting & feedback effects: the fact that it features Pan’s People in stockings and suspenders would have had nothing to do with it. Oh no.
Gary Shearston turns out to be an Australian folk singer: so that accounts for the slightly unusual accent in this performance, when I had always taken to be some sort of cockney.
From the old blog, Monday, 24 December 2012:
I’ve received an interesting video disk from a generous anonymous donor: labelled “BBC Demonstration Tape”, it contains various clips from BBC music and comedy shows from the seventies, including a few performances from Pan’s people and Legs & Co. Most of them are on the blog already, but here’s one we don’t have: Pan’s People dancing to I Get a Kick out of You.
From the line-up, this must be sometime in late 1974 or early 1975. I had idea who the singer is, but PattiforPM has identified him as Gary Shearston, and the TOTP date was October 10 1974. While the inserted clip of Dick Emery & Henry McGee is not ideal, let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. At the end, we get the now-very-familiar “Beautiful Babs” clip from Porridge.
My donor is keen to give credit for the tape to the late Grant Watkins, who was also responsible for the BBC VT Department’s traditional christmas blooper tapes for 1978 and 1979 which both featured guest appearances from Legs & Co.
Merry Christmas and many thanks to my anonymous benefactor.
