Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 2 July

It would be impossible to overstate, I think, the influence that Walking to New Orleans had on me – my taste in television, music and sense of humour.

It was the first time that the irreverent bunch at Channel 4’s Friday night music show, The Tube, had been given a decent budget and told to go off and make a documentary. This they did, and they also rewrote all the rules about music docos as they did it.

The setup is that Tube presenter Jools Holland is walking – in cool black and white – on a path beside the Thames with his Squeeze bandmate, Gilson Lavis. A portentous Stephen Fry voiceover suggests that something is about to happen that will change the young man’s life. Fellow Tube presenter Paula Yates (RIP) offers a quick assignation in the back of a car before her pimp (Robbie Coltrane) takes over and furiously persuades the bemused Holland to accept a trip New Orleans along with the credit card, firearms and sunglasses that are the necessary accessories for such a journey.

(Coltrane is hilarious: “Do you have any – what we like to call – money as such? You know, folding pieces of paper with pictures of the Queen on them? Money?”)

Holland then commences his walk to New Orleans through the damp Greenwich foot tunnel under the Thames, serenaded by Sting playing his current hit, “Moon Over Bourbon Street”. After dispatching Sting with one of the aforementioned firearms, Holland emerges from a dank and overgrown railway underpass in steamy Louisiana.

Over the next 90 minutes or so, Holland gives us a rough and ready guided tour of Louisiana music, including renting an impromptu convertible Oldsmobile from Lee Dorsey, piano lessons from Fats Domino, and live performances from Allen Toussaint, The Neville Brothers, Dr. John and many more. In the process he goes to prove what an enormous television talent he would become (along with those prodigious keyboard skills).

The Tube was such a breath of fresh air when it started on the new Channel 4 in 1982. Previously, young British music fans would have to put up with the lame lip-synching of Top of the Pops or the beautifully recorded but all-too-serious rock of The Old Grey Whistle Test – which was on far too late at night for me in any case.

The Tube was like a music version of the ‘alternative comedy’ scene of the early 80s and the crossover between them – Rik Mayall also appears – is another highlight of Walking to New Orleans.

The film wasn’t re-broadcast and has never been made available on DVD – for music licensing reasons, I presume. I was a dedicated recorder of music television at the time and have carried my VHS copy of the original broadcast with me around the world for nearly 40 years, watching it regularly, eventually intending to digitise it for posterity. Imagine my surprise to find that someone else has already done it. Not only had they already done it, but their recording was from a cleaner transmission than my slightly ghosty version (remember, when TV aerials had to be aligned correctly and it wasn’t always possible to get perfect picture on every channel?).

Like me, they also knew that videotape in the 80s was expensive and didn’t record the commercials. After all, why would anyone in the future ever want to watch old TV ads?

Here’s an embedded preview of part one:

The complete eight-part playlist can streamed here.