I had forgotten that I was exposed to it at an early age until I checked out Mark Evanier’s consistently enjoyable blog, News From Me, and read an entry where he reminisces about his days as a writer on “The Bay City Rollers Show.”
Evanier comments on how it used to run in a really early timeslot that didn’t exist in all NBC markets, and he’s right; I remember that I’d only catch it if I happened to wake up really early…like, 6:30 AM…on Saturday mornings. (That was back in the days when you could start at 6:30 and have something great to watch straight on through to “American Bandstand.”) He also recollects that “it was actually a fun show to do if you could get past the fact that the most of the Rollers had such natural thick Scottish accents that American audiences could never have understood them. A dialogue coach named Jonathan Lucas worked wonders with the lads but by their own admission, they weren’t equipped to host a show of this sort. It was kind of like: Forget about comedic delivery. Let’s be happy if they just get the words out clean.”
Check out this brief clip of the opening and closing of the show; there’s just enough dialogue for you to understand what he’s talking about…
