Party Vibe

The track they are plugging has a direct reference to Dexys in the lyrics (its impressive they got past the often heavy censorship of British mainstream media in comparison to today)

Kevin Rowland himself has quite impressively survived addiction, bankruptcy and some bizzare choices – including singing ropey cover versions of Whitney Houston songs whilst cross dressing at Reading Festival, he was forced off the stage in the traidtional manner by a hail of urine-filled plastic bottles…. and Dexys (albeit with many new band members) are still performing raaa

@tryptameanie 984914 wrote:

I’m not even slightly convinced she knows what dexys are lol.

bear in mind this TV show was transmitted from Birmingham (where Kevin Rowland is from) – kids/youth TV on ITV always tended to be produced by companies outside the capital and she is from a posh suburb of London (originally worked for London Weekend Television) so would have had to get up at 05:00 to travel there every Saturday :laugh_at:

There are reasons why this recording hasn’t emerged for 30 years; although UK TV industry of that era has been proven notorious for sheltering older male thugs and pedos, the younger presenters (especially if they were female, ethnic minorities, LGBT etc) were always judged a lot more closely even if the industry seemed “right on” – sometimes they got away with more edgy stuff, sometimes they were hauled up for compliance and their careers stalled.

Lenny Henry was on the same show and played a Rastaman character who was addicted to bread and condensed milk sandwiches although nowadays he says he regrets playing this character saying it was “racist” and never once mentions the “munchies” factor :laugh_at: I still have a lot of respect for him and his views about diversity (or the lack of it) in the media but preferred his earlier comedy than the more heavily political stuff….

@tryptameanie 984917 wrote:

She did sound a bit higher up the class ladder than they did lol. They sounded bored and anxious to get back to their smack in the dressing room :lol_big:

I have had to work with Brummies in the past (including a fair few who used to work at the same studios or their 1990s incarnations that got split off across most of the Midlands) and they can sound like they are on smack even when reasonably sober – in the late 90s they started monitoring some TV industry workers for signs of drug/alcohol use (starting with the tech staff so they didn’t forget to play out ad breaks or crash the scanner (outside broadcast) vans) as well as introducing rampant budget and job cuts which made them perhaps understandably sound even more miserable than normal.

when Dexys played “Jackie Wilson said” on TOTP a big banner of the 1980s Scottish darts champian Jocky Wilson was unveiled behind the stage – in part due to the BBC producers at London mishearing Kevin Rowlands accent :laugh_at: