✎ Bruce Forsyth 1928-2017 

18 August 2017 tbs.pm/13478

Sir Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson, a powerhouse performer known to the entire country across a career that began in 1939, has died aged 89.

He discussed the start of his long career with the TVTimes at Christmas 1959, and we have serialised the three-part article on Transdiffusion, starting here.

When he wrote those words in 1959, his crowning moment was yet to come. In 1961, a strike threatened to take ATV London’s popular Sunday Night at the London Palladium off the air. A stripped-down version of the show was prepared just in case, but the strike was averted. Nevertheless, the stripped-down version with just Forsyth and Norman Wisdom was still made, producing some of the most amazing live television ever seen.

Courtesy of Pickles Norman on YouTube.

You Say

3 responses to this article

Paul Mason 19 August 2017 at 7:15 am

I had that 1980 TV Times but lost it. As for the cover nice to see it, to see it- nice.

Paul Mason 19 August 2017 at 7:30 am

Looking at the other covers* the Radio Times one dates from late 1965 after he had given up SNALP (he gave up once before when Norman Vaughan took over) but his BBC2 show would have only received.a small audience.
Another 1978 TV Times cover features the ill-fated Bruce’s Big Night in which he anchored an evening of different t elements, a quiz, a game of “Pong”, and sketches of comedies “The Worker” starring Charlie Drake and the Glums starring Jimmy Edwards, Ian Lavender and Patricia Brake.
plus performances from Bruce plus guests. It was a FLOP and the last show contained a question and answer session with the audience in which Bruce tried to answer his critics. Anyway there were to be other successful TV shows in his long career.

Joanne Gray 27 August 2017 at 5:24 pm

I’ve never seen the Palladium two-hander all the way through (I’m a seventies child) and my ribs are aching. Brilliantly performed and timed to perfection, far superior to anything that today’s modern performers could ever come up with.

I’d like to think that just after Brucie shuffled off his mortal coil last week, Norman was there waiting for him at the Pearly Gates with a bucket of paste, a brush and some rolls of paper in his hands.

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