First on this tape, episode 3 of Dennis Potter’s Lipstick on your Collar. Can we expect lip-syncing to old songs, deeply buried trauma and an old man obsessing over a beautiful young woman?
The credits reveal this was the first screen appearance of Ewan McGregor.
There’s also some distinctly disturbing imagery on show.
Here’s a platinum blonde, Louise Germane (also in Potter’s Midnight Movie)
And here’s Peter Jeffries lip-syncing to Blue Suede Shoes.
This is all within the first two minutes of the show. I’m not saying Dennis Potter is predictable, but sometimes it really does seem like he’s just doing the same old schtick every time. They even manage to get a naked woman into this dance sequence set in the house of commons.
Douglas Henshall plays McGregor’s horrible superior officer.
It takes a full fifteen minutes for one of the characters to speak of his childhood memory of his father, and use it as a motivation to use force in the Suez crisis. Our Potter Bingo is going well.
And mere seconds after this, Roy Hudd is poised outside Louise Germane’s house, acting for all the world like someone obsessed…
That’s a full house. Oh, and Shane Rimmer is in this too.
The next episode is basically more of the same. Tiresome.
After this episode, it’s over the BBC2 and Horizon with Whatever Happened to Star Wars, a look at Ronald Reagan’s ‘peace shield’ that was supposed to develop a set of technologies to protect the US from nuclear attack.
It’s quite interesting hearing the scientists and politicians all basically saying “Nobody knew how to achieve any of this”. They even discussed anti-matter weapons – which seems a little silly, since all the effort was to negate the power of nuclear weapons, why would you try to create an even bigger bomb? Here one of them with a cool model of a X-Ray laser.
Edward Teller seems like a fine fellow, grossly exaggerating the effectiveness of the X-Ray Laser.
The end titles are a small piece of genius, though, playing to the Thunderbirds theme.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 15th March 1993 – 20:00
After this, recording stops and underneath there’s a bit of The Krays before the tape stops.
Adverts:
- Munchies
- Salon Selectives
- Bernard Matthews Golden Drummers
- Alliance and Leicester – Fry and Laurie
- Child Support Agency
- trail: Distant Voices Still Lives
- Suzuki
- Cusson’s Pearl
- Herta
- National Savings
- Consenting Adults
- Mercury – Harry Enfield and Jon Glover
- Pizza Hut
- H J Heinz – Alastair MacGowan
- Heineken
- Bird’s Eye Fish Cuisine
- Clorets
- Batchelors Super Noodles
- Prudential
- The Sun
- Vauxhall Airbags
- Ariel Color
- V05
- Frish
- Sun Progress
- Daily Express
- trail: Harry Enfield’s Guide to Opera
- trail: The Krays
- BMW
- Canon
- Scottish Widows
- Nescafe – Andre Agassi
- Nicotinell
- Bass Ale
- Yellow Pages
- Renault Safrane
- Woolworths – Ladybird
- Cadbury’s Chocolate Break
- Tampax
- Cadbury’s Twirl
- NatWest
- trail: Secret Nature
- trail: Red Dwarf (partial)
- Bird’s Eye Menu Master
- Lexus
- Nike Air-Max
- The Sun
- Tampax
- Harp
- Clerical Medical
- Bird’s Eye Menu Master
VHiStory 