Nurse – the screen!

DISCS A GOGAN
A ’60s rip-off of the BBC’s Juke Box Jury with our Larry of the title spinning the discs on a real record player which on a least one occasion failed to operate according to the manufacturer’s expectations. Visiting acts often mimed to their new release, a section of the programme which caused distress to the Swinging Blue Jeans who were all set to go with ‘The Hippy Hippy Shake’ when the needle started the track a couple of bars into the song.

ALLEGRO, 1,2,3
In the very early days, RTE wanted a really hip tv programme, so they handed the presenting duties to radio DJ Arthur Murphy. Arthur had previously enjoyed some notoriety as a recording star with a much-played rocked up version of ‘Molly Malone’ under the name Mark Dwane (a fiendishly clever pun on Mark Twain). The show was a great success, mainly because there was nothing else to do in Ireland at the time, as sex hadn’t caught on.

LIKE NOW
Presented by Danny Hughes in the early ’70s. Hughes was a popular local club DJ who once recorded a copy of Jeff Beck’s ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ and received a substantial cheque which should have gone to Jeff. Against all the rules of rock’n’roll, Hughes sent the cheque back!
Like Now would regularly feature a fair sprinkling of local rock acts of the vintage of Jamie Stone, The Urge and Time Machine alongside early attempts at promo videos by acts of the calibre of the post-Taste Stud.

THE BEAT BOX
Until Ian Dempsey took it by the scruff of the neck and turned it into a national institution that skilfully bridged the gap between pop and rock fans, Beat Box had been presented by Barry Lang and Simon Young, neither of whom will be editing the next Encyclopaedia of Rock. But the show reached its nadir when Mick Ryan, a fine engineer but not a great TV performer, was asked to review rock books. Beat Box also featured regular contributions about the rock scene from Smiley Bolger who always seemed as if he’d accidentally walked onto the set while on his way to somewhere else.

ANYTHING GOES
Presented every Saturday morning by Dave Heffernan and allegedly for the kids, there was such a dearth of decent music on RTE in the early eighties that hardened rockers would risk ejection from the rock fans union by getting up before lunch on a Saturday. Such a sacrifice would be rewarded by sights of local acts like Autobop, featuring a post-pubescent George Byrne, perform “live” and members of the music industry offering advice to kids about “the business”.