All Our Yesterdays
Article dated: Wednesday 22 May 2002
Dee Time
Like the footballer Martin Peters, Dee may have been ahead of his time. His teatime chat show on BBC (Tuesdays and Thursdays) was billed as "an early evening scene", and was much closer to the casual style familiar to us now from people like Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton, than to the rather formal interview format favoured at the time. As a result, the former pirate radio dj became something of a national joke, the popular radio show Round the Horne being particularly fond of having a pop.
Such clips as remain from the shows, however, do not look half bad. Dee was definitely a talent in a "TV personality" kind of way. He was also something of a "perfectionist", who didn't suffer fools gladly etc. etc., so when a 1970 late night ITV version of his show was cancelled after one season, he did not find it easy to get back on to TV, and in no time at all became a favourite subject for where-are-they-now? columns. The line-up for his first show demonstrates what a figure of the sixties he was; Lance Percival, Libby Morris, Cat Stevens, Kiki Dee, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Happy days.
