Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006

Subject: Jake Thackray TV programme
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Sep 06 - 02:53 PM

9pm a week Friday BBC4 October 6th
looks interesting

contribution from McTell

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray TV programme
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 26 Sep 06 - 02:58 PM

Brief contribution from M Carthy too as well as archive footage (more in the programme following at 10pm).

Several of us are planning to issue a DVD of TV performances under licence from the BBC during 2007. News at www.jakethackray.com when things fall into place.

Ian

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray TV programme
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 26 Sep 06 - 03:14 PM

Link to the above with a YooTube rendition of "Sister Josephine"

Subject: Jake Thackery on BBC4
From: GUEST,Dazbo
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 08:45 AM

From the Beeb's website:

JAKE THACKRAY TV DOCUMENTARY [27/09/06]
The much-missed Yorkshire humorist, folk songwriter and poet, Jake Thackray, is the subject of a BBC Four documentary to be screened next month. Jake On The Box, presented by Victor Lewis-Smith, will run at 9pm on Friday 6th October and will be followed by an extra half-hour of Thackray performances not featured in the main documentary.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery on BBC4
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 08:50 AM

Fab! And he played a real man's guitar.(nylon strung)

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery on BBC4
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 09:17 AM

Unfortunately Vic Lewis-Smith tends to do things where he is making fun of people ( I remember when he presented Snooze Button on BBC Radio York on a Sunday Morning - which was one of the most dodgy programmes I heve ever heard ). I hope that he doesn't spoil what ought to be an interesting programme about an incredibly entertaining performer.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery on BBC4
From: GUEST,Dazbo
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 09:25 AM

Didn't a "celeb" give VL-S a bloody nose a few years ago after some 'comic' comments?

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery on BBC4
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 09:54 AM

V L-S. He's about as funny as Ali G isn't he?


Jake Thakray though, pure magic mate!
G.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery on BBC4
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 12:16 PM

Here's a link to the Jake Thackray web site, with details of the programme and a YouTube link for "Sister Josephine".
I'm sure I already posted this, but it may be in a thread with different spelling.

CHEERS
Nigel

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery on BBC4
From: Scrump
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 12:28 PM

I think it was V L-S who did a BBC Radio 2 documentary on JT a year or so back. He is a JT fan and didn't take the p*** on that, AFAIR.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 12:48 PM

Thanks to whichever mud-elf combined the two threads

Nigel

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 28 Sep 06 - 03:03 PM

The programme does not take the p*** and contains some vintage performances as well as comments from other performers, Jake's family and some old pupils from when he was a teacher.

Ian

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: GUEST,Dazbo
Date: 29 Sep 06 - 04:14 AM

I'm glad to hear that programme doesn't take the piss. Unfortunately, I can't stand Victor Lewis-Smith (and taking the piss is his forte) so you've alleviated my main fear about watching the prog.

Subject: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 04:42 PM

Jake Thackray on BBC 4 Friday 6th. October 9:00pm - 10:30pm

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: Effsee
Date: 03 Oct 06 - 10:04 AM

Repeated the following evening at 11:35pm if you miss it on Friday!

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: Cordwangler
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 03:51 PM

On in 10 mins..... QUICK!!!!!

Subject: Jake Thackray
From: Effsee
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 04:10 PM

Now! On telly,BBC4!

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 04:13 PM

Watching now.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: Micca
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 05:08 PM

Recording onto DVD

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: nutty
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 05:29 PM

One and a half hours of sheer joy. What a marvel that man was.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: John J
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 06:05 PM

Truly excellent programmes.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: Lanfranc
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 06:12 PM

I enjoyed that 90 minutes more than anything I've watched for ages!

Furthermore I, too, now have the whole thing on DVD.

Alan

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: Tig
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 06:26 PM

Any chance of a copy? I thoroughly enjoyed it - even if some of the people interviewed I hadn't seen since I was very young (and dad was teaching at Intake with Jake).

Guesses as to which festival some of it was recorded at?

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 06:31 PM

The festival bits (Sr Josephine, The Kiss and The Hair of the Widow of Bridlingon)were the 16th Cambridge Folk Festival (I was there!)

Ian

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 07:07 PM

Very fine tribute to a special man with a special talent. He had more to do with Englishness than 90% of what is on the present folk scene. And what about the audiences, particularly at Cambridge, sitting down and listening intently and missing nothing. Ah, those were the days!!

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: Effsee
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 09:43 PM

Did anyone else notice the resemblence between the bass player and Danny Thompson?

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Oct 06 - 09:58 PM

Jake's songs were hilarious. Too bad he's not with us anymore.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 02:24 AM

Strangely enough, it had the exact opposite effect with me. Whilst he was telly, I never liked him or his music much. I think it had much to do with that awful programme he was on. It was a sort of consumer programme - some git moaning cos there weren't enough sheets of peper in his toilet roll - that sort of thing, with Esther , Kieran and Glyn doing witty ripostes to some hapless tradesman. Christ, it was insufferable.

It was only later when he started appearing in folk clubs that I liked him. he was a damn sight better live than he was on tv.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 05:07 AM

WLD, that would be 'That's Life', where many people of my generation got introduced to him (and Cyril Fletcher's odes but that's a whole other story).

I suppose I really heard him properly first at a Weymouth Folk Day, where I had the responsibility of lighting him. He was already fairly lit up as it were, and didn't look well, so we gave him a magenta glow that at least made him look alive. He turned up on time (a small miracle I now realise) and was fantastic. Again, I now realise that he much prefered the smaller gathering - witness the buckets of sweat dripping off him in the concert tent shots last night - which Weymouth was. But it was at the organisers' house afterwards that he really shone out. He sank 2/3rds of a bottle of scotch and it didn't register on him, he was the sweetest, friendliest and most entertaining guest you could ever wish for, at his best playing the small, intimate gatherings.

From what I saw of the programme, it was fair, honest and not at all sycophantic, but there just wasn't enough music!

LTS

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 06:23 AM

No arguing with the talent. He was brilliant. I did just hated the programme though, and unfairly judged him because of it. When I say hated, loathing and detestation don't even approach the feeling it engendered. I still cringe at the thought of those awful 'smiles to camera', when they had trapped some lowly official into saying something stupid. I used to wish I was Elvis and could machine gun the telly.

But thats what some of us are like when young. in fact some of us are a bit like that, well into our more mature years.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 07:22 AM

Of course they didn't have remote controls in those days, so you couldn't just mute the sound till Jake came on. You'd have actually had to climb to your feet and go over to the telly.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 07:45 AM

No the problem was, I was a junior member of the family and I didn't get the final say in what was watched.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: GUEST,Ann
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 01:07 PM

I missed the prog last night................................hope the video comes soon.
What a lovely man.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 01:13 PM

"Telly is no place for a singer. A singer's place is on his feet on public floorboards in front of paying punters and not ducking and weaving and smirking on the flickering rectangle. Besides, viewers seldom listen; viewers view - they view your suit, your shirt, your fillings and ear-hair, your pockmarks and your haircut. ('Course it's a wig! They all wear wigs').

"And telly people do not listen at all; they stride around in cheesecloth and earphones and frig everybody about - 'QUIET EVERYBODY! Right Jakey love, start. No, stop, start again. Now everybody, CLAP! CLAP! STOP CLAPPING! QUIET! Now my love three...two...one...'; prats!"

From Jake's sleeve notes to "Jake Thackray and Songs", Dingle's Records DIN 314; recorded at a concert in Milton Keynes in the late 1980s.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 01:17 PM

Sister Josephine production

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: alanabit
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 01:25 PM

"You'd have actually had to climb to your feet and go over to the telly."
I think Thackray would have loved that...
We will all make great grandads, won't we, preaching about the hardships of our youths... "Do you realise, many years ago, when I was young and you were watching ITV and you wanted Channel Four, you had to get up and walk all the way..."

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Effsee
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 01:36 PM

It's repeated tonight at 11:35pm.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 03:54 PM

Channel Four??? When I were young we only had the three channels, and bloody lucky to get them we were.... BBC 2 hardly ever worked and BBC 1 went off before midnight!

LTS

Subject: RE: Jake Thackray on BBC 4
From: Cordwangler
Date: 07 Oct 06 - 04:19 PM

Three channels?... You were lucky...

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: GUEST, Topsie
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 06:38 AM

Many years ago I had a husband. He used to watch television in bed, and if he wanted to change channels he used to call me to come upstairs to switch over for him.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Flash Company
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 11:47 AM

I was in Cornwall when this was first shown, in an area where there are still only four channels (this is starting to sound like a Ronnie Barker joke!). I arrived home last evening too shattered to watch telly, but recorded the late broadcast for future consumption.

FC

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Pistachio
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 03:38 PM

I got the first hour but was 'over-ruled' and missed the next 'half'
.... some one else had the 'b.....' remote,
What a talented man. I knew I'd liked his work all those years ago but hadn't (in my youth) grasped quite why. Wonderful. H.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Emma B
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 04:00 PM

I've not opened this thread before because I'd planned to watch the video recording after a rather fine meal tonight - the perfect post-prandial experience! I only ever once saw him perform live once (when he stopped in the middle of an introduction and "identified" me from the stage for taking my seat "late" - some friends were backing him and I'd been backstage) but my first ever memeory of him was as a schoolgirl listening to the Northern Drift on steam radio - pity that never got a mention.

Sadly missed

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 04:44 PM

Hi Emma

I've just checked with the editor of The Northern Drift who replied:

"Jake never did The Northern Drift - Alex [Glasgow] was the only singer the programme ever used. On this I can be 100% certain as I was the programme's editor, immediately following Alan Plater, and in fact it was while working on the programme in the BBC in Leeds that I first met Jake - who at the time was working on a different radio programme for Pamela Howe called The Northcountryman. The two programmes were very friendly with each other but there was absolutely no crossover between them."

...unless of course you know differently :)

Ian

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Emma B
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 04:53 PM

well I must have got that wrong - I WAS very young at the time - but definately remember listening to the Little Coal Black Foal song at that time.....

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 05:24 PM

Yes I remember the Northern Drift - Alex Glasgow singing My Daddy is a left wing intellectual.

Its hard to believe there was a small window of time when it was cool to be northern. Writers like David Mercer, Henry Livings and Alan Sillitoe, actors like Tom Courtney, the beatles thing, the Liverpool poets...wonder if it will ever happen again.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 05:30 PM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/g/getthedrift_12990

for those interested.

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 05:31 PM

oops!

second go -


http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/g/getthedrift_1299001256.shtml

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 08:16 PM

"Cool" - that sounds like the kind of soggy southern expression northerners take the piss out of.
..............................
I just found a collection of Jake's lyrics put out in 1977 - "Jake's Progress" (nice wordplay).

As well as 49 sets of words it's got a great seemingly rambling but in fact precisely engineered set of reminiscences by Jake, which I could quote at length, but won't just now.

He makes it pretty clear he sees the best place for songs as in folk clubs and small venues, not concer thalls and arenas and studios, or even on records.

"The first eleven songs in this book are the ones I remember fondest...When all I did all day was be a teacher and read and at night go and see Sheila and drink and laugh in the Packhorse.

... (Later on) I was singing in folk clubs anf small theatres. And that is what I prefer.clubs and theatres where you just sing and the people laugh and clap, drink, flirt, sit close together for one good night together."

Subject: RE: Jake Thackery (Thackray) on BBC4 - Oct 6 2006
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 08:38 PM

i saw him mid 70's at a small arts centre gig when i was about 15 or 16..

me and my mate were well impressed by his dismissive disaproval
of tired old ritualistic performance conventions and audience expectations..

he told the audience outright he didn't agree with the artifice of 'encores'
said in advance he'd decline to do any..
so there was no point us all wasting time and energy at the end of the show
continuing to applaud
in the wasted hope it'd persude him to come back on stage for a few more songs..

and true to his word he finished his set.. walked off stage..
and that was the last we saw of him..

brilliant..


the seeds of 'punkrock' attitude were sewn in our impressionable rebelious teenage minds
a good couple of years well before any of us ever heard of anything
like the damned or sex-pistols..