Lift Off With Ayshea

In studio 6 at the Granada Television studios in Quay Street, Manchester, Paul and Wings assemble to perform a mimed version of ‘Helen Wheels’ in today’s edition of Lift Off With Ayshea, hosted by Ayshea Brough, and transmitted live across the ITV network between 4:21 and 4:49pm. The show also features musical performances by Marc Bolan & T.Rex and Freddie Garrity, the former lead singer of Freddie and The Dreamers.

Badman, Keith. The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-2001 . Music Sales. Kindle Edition.

In 1996 – thru my contacts at Granada – I was put in touch with a most delightful chap who worked on Lift Off With Ayshea from 1972 onwards at the time of the show’s revamp. His memory of his time on the program was pretty good as well. I was also hoping he might have some lost clips from the series (sadly he didn’t).I showed him a VHS of the Helen Wheels MPL promo film and he said he was pretty certain it wasn’t the one used on the program. He also said he remembered it being a straight performance clip rather like all the other acts on Lift Off.

I put all this information in my 1999 book The Beatles After The Break Up and then in 2002 (not long after the second version of my tome had gone to print) another piece of industry trivia turned up… Wings’ performance was actually a pre-taped insert and not actually a part of the live broadcast as I once assumed. It was no wonder then that Ayshea had no recollection whatsoever of Paul and Wings appearing personally… Because they didn’t. 

Keith Badman – From Paul McCartney Wings Lift Off with Ayshea December 19 1973 | www.missing-episodes.com (proboards.com)

Setlist for the concert

1. Helen Wheels

   Written by Paul McCartney, Linda Eastman / McCartney

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