Sunday Night At The London Palladium

From Anthology 1 liner notes:

Just as the apex of TV entertainment in the USA was once The Ed Sullivan Show, so the British equivalent was Val Parnell’s Sunday Night At The London Palladium. Both were broadcast on Sunday evenings from the late 1950s through the 1960s, when, after a quiet and reverential day of rest, viewers were more than ready for an hour of Variety. To be offered an engagement on Sunday Night At The London Palladium was, for most British entertainers, a pinnacle career achievement, and very few ever had it so good.

With She Loves You propelling the Beatles not just to the top of the British singles chart but into the very fabric of the nation in the late summer of 1963, the group were quickly invited on to SNALP. The first of their two appearances went out on 13 October, and they headed a bill that also included the compere Bruce Forsyth with his ever-popular audience-participation game Beat The Clock, American balladeer Brook Benton and the British comic / singer Des O’Connor.

The Beatles treated the viewers at home and the Palladium audience itself to a ten-minute routine distilled from their current stage act and from which I’ll Get You (the B-side of She Loves You) is presented here.

From Wikipedia:

Tonight at the London Palladium is a British television variety show that is hosted from the London Palladium theatre in the West End. Originally produced by ATV for the ITV network from 1955 to 1969, it went by its original name Sunday Night at the London Palladium from 25 September 1955 until the name was changed to The London Palladium Show from 1966 to 2 February 1969. […]

The regular hosts of the show were Tommy Trinder (1955–1958), Bruce Forsyth (1958–1960 and 1961–1964), Don Arrol (1960–1961), Norman Vaughan (1962–1965, 1974), Jimmy Tarbuck (1965–1967), Jim Dale (1973–1974) and Ted Rogers (1974). Other guest comperes were: Hughie Green, Alfred Marks, Robert Morley, Arthur Haynes, Dickie Henderson, Dave Allen, Des O’Connor, Bob Monkhouse and Roger Moore.

The first ever show was compered by Tommy Trinder with Gracie Fields and Guy Mitchell being the night’s big guests. The programme was one of ITV’s most watched, reaching its biggest audience in January 1960 while Bruce Forsyth was the host, in an edition featuring Cliff Richard and the Shadows, watched by more than 20 million people.

However, according to the book Television’s Greatest Hits written and researched by Paul Gambaccini and Rod Taylor the biggest viewing audience was 9.7 million in 1964 (although this would have been homes, rather than viewers, as this was the way British television viewing figures were recorded at the time). This was on Sunday 19 April when Bruce Forsyth introduced the Bachelors, Hope and Keen and Frank Ifield with the Pamela Devis Dancers.

After the Tiller Girls and the lesser acts in the first part was a game show imported from America, Beat the Clock, the format of which was rather like Bruce Forsyth’s later hit in The Generation Game. […] The second part of the show was where the big stars shone. It featured many top people over the years including Bill Haley rocking around the clock, Chubby Checker who introduced the “new dance” the Twist to the country with a whole stage full of people dancing the Twist and Sammy Davis, Jr. met the Tiller Girls in 1961. Other star guests included: Judy Garland, Bob Hope, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, Petula Clark, the Seekers, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Italian mouse puppet Topo Gigio came back a number of times.

The Beatles’ publicist Tony Barrow said that after the band’s first appearance on the show on 13 October 1963, Beatlemania took off in the UK. […]

London Palladium

This was the 1st concert played at London Palladium.

A total of 4 concerts have been played there • 1963 • Oct 13• 1964 • Jan 12 • Jul 23 • Jul 24

Setlist for the concert

The setlist for this concert is incomplete, or we have not be able to confirm in an accurate way that this was the setlist. If you have any clue, pls let us know and leave a comment.

1. From Me To You

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Album Available on The Ultimate Live Collection Vol. 01

2. I'll Get You

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Album Available on Anthology 1 (2016 remaster)

   Album Available on The Ultimate Live Collection Vol. 01

   Album Available on Anthology 1

3. She Loves You

   Written by Lennon - McCartney

   Album Available on The Ultimate Live Collection Vol. 01

4. Twist And Shout

   Written by Phil Medley, Bert Russell

   Album Available on The Ultimate Live Collection Vol. 01

Going further

• https://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/10/13/beatlemania-begins-sunday-night-at-the-london-palladium/

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.