1977: EXTRAORDINARY woman remembers the dawn of TV | Voice of the People | BBC Archive
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
- An extraordinary vox pop with an unidentified woman from London's East End, who - when likely approached for a snappy soundbite - delivers this beautifully earnest and evocative five-and-a-half minute monologue about the wonders of television in the early days of the BBC.
This was broadcast as part of the BBC's Festival 77 series of programmes - which reflected on the first 25 years of television in Britain, collecting praise, criticism and personal memories from viewers across Britain.
Clip taken from Thanks For The Memory: The Viewers View, originally broadcast 31 July, 1977.
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off she goes, and no-one stopped her. Wonderful.
This is like a script from a monologue from a play. Either way she is quite brilliant. Rarely pauses, perfect recall and conveys simple and profound thoughts with the face and mannerisms of someone born for the stage.
Also no stumbling, no um or er, and beautifully clear.
Exactly, she's glorious. Without distracting from her own personality, I agree the monologue could be one of Alan Bennett's 'Talkng Heads'. That being said, she's a one-woman documentary, and no one could out-script her.
@@markszawlowski867 Or she's read the script many times in preparation, obviously.
What a marvellous woman. An absolute natural public speaker. Intonation, non verbal communication, clear and flows naturally. I wonder if it's worth sharing on social media until we find out who she is and more about her. Someone would know her.
I saw this clip first on Facebook and there was a comment from the woman’s daughter in law. She said she had died just a few years ago of old age.
They didn't shut off from the highbrow programmes, they aroused their curiosity.
My great grandparents lived in a little terraced house but were great fans of opera and passed that love onto my mother. Ordinary people back then didn't think "I'm not watching that, it's for snobs and toffs". Television offered a chance to try operas, plays, ballet, etc. Also documentaries, science programmes, natural history all became available.
Apart from a few exceptions, all that is gone. TV executives have pursued the lowest common denominator for so long now that they've stifled a lot of people's appetite for anything other than reality shows, soaps and celebrity game shows.
Completely agree - and dumbed-down television appears, to a large extent, to have sadly bred dumbed-down audiences.
@@davidkmatthews Hasn't it just? It's depressing.
She reminds me so much of my mummy (she was born in 1933). While we were from Belfast, and the accent was completely different, her headscarf, intonation, attitude, fluency of thought...it could be my mummy standing there. What a lovely interview.
I watch this every few months and it is so perfect. This could've been written by Alan Bennett or Victoria Wood, but it's so nautral.
It's a great piece of film.
I'm sure someone could identify where this was filmed, and maybe even track down this lady's family- they might like to know how many people this clip has reached on TH-cam.
@@alisonabedelmassieh9193 Absolutely agree.
I was thinking of Joyce Grenfell.
What a nice lady she is.
And from the east end she speaks so clearly and nicely.
Rainy cold day in 1977 I love this stuff
She's so natural behind the camera
I love the red. Some people are like that today - they've got an aerial but there's nothing on the other end.
Thats like my Ex mother-inlaw, she has a head with nothing in it!
Lovely Lady. Very Bright.
What a lovely character. Cool coat as well 😎👍🏾
Wouldn't it be amazing if this lady could be positively identified! Of course, she may no longer be with us, but you never know! It's also interesting to me that this "feels" so long ago, the clothes, the cars etc...and yet this was the year Star Wars was released!
It was a long time ago. I saw Star Wars when I was 11. I'm an old boy of 56 now!
Yeah, not to be a killjoy, but this lady is long gone as of 2022..
@@kingwinter2024 Not certain- people looked older than their years in those days. This was 45 years ago, and if she is 40, as some have suggested, she would be 85 now. So very possible she is still alive. She is so charismatic, it would be lovely to trace her whatever her future held.
she was only in her 30's in this so she could still be alive
Her name was Mary Barritt, born in 1929. We know a lady who used to live next door to her on Garford Street. She wrote up her life story in a short book called “The Barritts of Wapping High Street”.
Lovely lady. No rush to get home.
It's raining, so she's glad of an opportunity to stand in archway.
good old days when i was "tv remote controller" of the family as the youngest child
I was born 1962 and my Grandfather was a Londoner who was a tv 📺 engineer.
I loved the Liverly Birds and man about the house on TV .
She's wonderful! "And what's so marvellous about Superman ... he actually flew! ... not like today ..." :)
How lovely is this lady?
How funny! They thought they had to watch TV in the dark to keep from going blind, but it's the watching it in the dark that strains your eyes more.
Now watching on a smartphone
Thought it was Queenie Watts. Till I read the comments. Wonderful speaking voice.
Goodness, I was alive then. I wasn't really conscious, but I was alive. Personally, hard to believe.
I've always loved this vox pop.
What an admirable lady..this should be required viewing for anyone who wants to know what people of previous generations (and she spoke for every previous generation before her)thought and believed about things ,which ironically the 'telly' overturned
She so fashionable and stands out .
My mum also wore a head scarf like that all her life. In 1977 we couldn't afford a colour tv, we got a colour in the 1990s. This is who Dot cotton was modeled on.
My era. This lady so genuine. This could of been my nan... My dressed like this in those days.... Words and everything so elegantly put. Not like today. What a huge shame. I wish we could turn on time travel and go back!
I love how she said " In those days" I mean how long ago was it for her in 1977
She was talking about the early to mid 1950s, so only 20-25 years before the interview. Its the equivalent of somebody today talking about their early experiences of the Internet in the late 1990's.
Over 20 years...long enough.
the program was to mark the 25 years of BBC in 1977
Don't forget 1977 was the age of Concorde, a more advanced technology than is available today in aviation.
She's a nice woman
That’s a fire jacket, came out looking clean.
This is spooky how much this sounds like my Nan! So many people these days associate the London working class accent with usual stereotypes but it has much more variety subtly. This reminds me of being young 😊
Beautiful statement
Here I am watching this on a recent TV set, made for streaming. After the iPhone came out, I went back to school and got an engineering degree and did some grad school and studied circuits for the cell phones. A lot of weird stuff happened, then more weird stuff. I remember the media a few years ago was stuff like "ban on CRT"- no, not cathode ray tubes, but was that some kind of hint? What was "disruptive technology" from recent past silicon Valley really supposed to mean?
How perceptive this lady was . We had ' standards ' in those days .
Non-Standard English is always interesting. She uses the high-falutin' "obtain" (instead of the simpler "get" and the clearer "buy" and "rent"), and "[to be] able", instead of "can" and "could"-but still conjugates her verbs in a non-Standard way. Her ungrammatical "We was able to obtain" could have been "We got".
In the end, her intelligence shows right through both her linguistic background and her efforts to move beyond it.
I wish more like you would distinguish between intelligence and academic or even intellectual accomplishment..
@@PK-yf3hd I don't think he is judgemental, just observational. It is interesting that her vocabulary is broad and accurate yet she makes grammatical errors. My father, now in his 90s has a pronounced cockney accent with all the commensurate mistakes, and appears to have no concept of the subjunctive - I know! Imagine. I am sure some have assumed his vocab is limited. But it is actually rich and wide. Although he had no formal education beyond interupted primary school, he has always been an avid reader and I suspect that is the case with this woman and many of her generation. The tiktok generation may struggle more.
The working class would almost certainly have commonly used a high-falutin’ phrase or word to describe their having obtained or experienced a high-falutin’ thing (such as a television set) or event. As the lady herself said, they had standards. Standards that have gone out the window today. They said “We were married”. Today, people say “We got married.” Or “We got divorced”. Not “our marriage sadly ended.”
And because certain words were commonly said, they weren’t even seen as especially grand or high-falutin’.
Today we all affect the mock weariness of indispensable little busy executives, declaring “We got a flat screen, 48-inch.” And got ourselves a flat head, a big head and a tin ear into the bargain. In the olden times, in the working-class areas, if one had spoken like that, one would have been given a clip round the ear. “People will think you are burglars acquiring stuff!”
Which we all are today. Burglars of sorts. Acquiring or obtaining stuff. Money no object. In many instances!
And today’s product tomorrow no longer the high-falutin’ object. Just like that!
Not only did people used to aspire to be grander, but became so through their, as you would put it, great efforts, in spite of their difficult circumstances. In dress, speech, mannerisms and so on. It’s not like that today - because nothing is seen as high-falutin’ anymore. Such is the cynicism and impatience of society now. Is it a society even?
Her linguistic background? Her what? I thought so! They don’t speak our language, do they? Poor you.
By the way, “We was able to obtain” is a very perceptive phrase for that lady and … her kind. It’s basically “We got”, yes. But it’s a more thoughtful “We got” and the “was” hints at a pleased self-sufficiency that would not be there if she had said “We were able to obtain”. “We were able to obtain” hints at a gratefulness to be respectfully extended to charity from well-to-do people or organisations. Similarly, “We got” would, or would have back then, hinted at a certain breezy lording it over one’s neighbours. N’est-ce pas? As Del Boy Trotter might have said?
"We was," "you was," and so on ARE part of the grammar of the spoken language in much of England, though they may not have been approved of by school teachers in 1977. Many dialects seem to condense or simplify the system of verbal conjugation.
Nowadays, it's uncommon to view anything native speakers habitually say as "incorrect." We understand that there are sociolects as well as idiolects.
That has broadened to allowing children to "Warble their native wood-notes wild." To put it more generally, anything goes!
Our first tv you had to put coins in the back...like the gas meter..
Be great to identify the railway viaduct (maybe Bow or Stepney?).
Probably one of those.
Is it just me but she reminds me of a female Kenneth Williams
Yes but that's because this was the normal accent of Londonders at that time.
If this was filmed in 1977, then it’s probably a piece to accompany many others by broadcasters in a series to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Many regional as well as national newspapers, for instance, at the time had colour supplements that looked back on the twenty-five years that had passed in the life of the country since Her Majesty’s coronation. In the Yorkshire Evening Post, over the relevant weekend in June, of 1977, there was a piece on what went wrong with the new “Look Back In Anger” style of kitchen-sink plays that came around in the late 1950s. I certainly recall reading about how film had changed over the twenty-five years. The Post article reminded readers that a film with much nudity and an X-rating was called a skin flick. (How quickly things began to descend into ugliness in the ‘seventies!). The well-spoken lady in the piece above was right to observe a where-it-all-went-wrong moment. Even Superman has never been as immune to shock as we are today, what with the numbing imagery of violence in the internet age. The treat of television had meant that people felt a little thrill run through them whenever they saw their own lives sensitively portrayed in drama. With the arrival of television, people no longer had to scrap for whatever piece of amusement, distraction or performance that had been near to them. They could find simple pleasures and respectful delights on television. But already within the first quarter of a century of the Queen’s reign, the first signs of a grimness to fare broadcast was evident: the willingness to shock people in their own homes … as this lady refers to those avant-garde writers …. as if to rouse “the masses”. This rousing of a viewership is all the rage today, of course, in our instant visual age. It has spun out of control in the multichannel age we are firmly ensconced in now.
And folk are fed up!!!
Nothing nice to watch, as the lady here might have said herself. Whereas the airwaves had once been dominated by light entertainment and drama, now they are full of grim “shows” and non-stop posers pontificating about this and that. It used to be a treat to be entertained. And entertained in the company of family. So little cheer in so much misery these days. Society has cut its nose off to spite its face. Those old kitchen-sink plays that thrust reality (rather than portrayed them) onto people who went to see them have percolated through the cracks to drip down into our new luxurious chambers of entertainment and man-caves to warp minds to cheerlessness and grimness. What a way for the West to shoot itself in the foot!
Well said. Those were the days. They've shot both feet.
The real life Dot Cotton
Not even close. Dot Cotton's character was a neurotic with low self esteem. This lady oozes self-confidence and charisma.
ahh yes, batman, the superman of today... doesn't even fly though 🙄
Dot Cotton in her younger days.
I bet she had one of those really quiet husbands......
Looks like naked gun
I was just surprised yoga was already a fad in the 70s!
My mum started doing yoga in about 1980 and that was outside London, so you'd expect the capital to be a few years ahead.
Today
It electric cars blow up
😂😂😂
Today we have thousands of channels
All rubbish
Part free u tube ❤❤
Today bbc out of date like the council tax
Back then was great tv
Only few channels
But great happiness watching dramas and flims great stars Alway
England was great back then 1960 /70 /80
Naughty old BBC. She’s talking about tv in the early ‘fifties, with all those programmes. But BBC television ‘dawned’ in 1936..
Technically yes. But there were only a handful of TV sets in private ownership then, perhaps as few as 10,000 across the whole country. It was very much an experimental service. And of course TV then closed down during the war. The early 1950's really were the dawn of mass TV in a form anything like we recognise today.
@@Garybaldbee 1977. Jubilee year. They probably asked her about TV in the time of the coronation. That was when demand and affordability met.
Can't help think that this has been rehearsed ???????
Yes. I'm sure I've seen her in another voxpop clip too. Possibly an actress?
Not at all.
@@scottread listen to the flow of words, hardly any pauses, the setting. The content is genuine, because this is what went on back then and this gives it credence. She in my opinion a paid actress who is speaking about the life and times of that era.
@@tararuaman why comment like this on TH-cam no ones gonna read it
waste of words and eloquence sorry
might as well blog
Well you read it !!
Yeah. Who wants to be a peeping tom ?
Men
All men
@@Patrick3183 Who wants to be accused of being a peeping tom in public ?
this is propaganda.
propaganda ?
You must be prone to conspiracy theories.
This is definitely scripted.
Why do you say that? I remember lots of older people talking in this way. They could talk for hours, and it was off the top of their head.
@@ajs41 Hmm, maybe you are right. Just seems very self sure. Reminds me of an Alan Bennet Talking Head.
@@AshtonArcher They simply talked a lot more and were well-spoken as a result.
This doesn't seem real to me...like it's scripted. She doesn't pause to think or reflect.
People used to be able to talk like this. I remember people, especially women able to talk like this when I was a child.
It's not scripted. It's just an interview with a lady on the street. Wonderful isn't it.
That's because you're expecting people in 1977 to be the same as people today. They weren't. Talking like this was one of the main things they did in life.
Shame Peter Sutcliffe didn't travel to London that day. 🔨 🔨
He was busy that day with your mother
@@amoxzi Oh well, get used to it
@@mjstefansson7466 We're used to shameful comments on the internet, alas! May your incel ice-picks rot!
BBC only ? ITV was up and running in the mid 50's me finks..she is posh for an east ender but her true great voice come ouuuut when she says saaaaaaaaaaaaaaandwich... @1.45 on.. What a tuned up women...Very intelligent ....and she says think ,nor fink...