ABSTRACT
In this chapter I detail how pervasive discourses sought to understand what was specific about forms of television performance in contrast to radio and music hall. Whilst many of the performers who briefly appeared on television during this period were posited as famous, long-lasting celebrity was often tied to mastering the televisual skill required to ensure regular appearances. As the quote from Waldman suggests, this period was clearly one in which the form of television and light entertainment was being worked out, including the role and nature of television performance – and the production techniques used to broadcast them. Eventually, as television developed into a more confident medium, critics saw music hall and radio performance modes as irreconcilable with the demands of television.2 The first section of this chapter concerns the emergence of a discourse of televisual skill that is linked to the genre of light entertainment and, in turn, the establishment of particular performers as television personalities – famous for, and attuned to, the specificities of the new medium. In the second section, paying particular attention to Benny Hill, I suggest how the persona of performers which developed through intertextual circulation had to be commensurate, or reconciled, with the BBC’s public service ethos. Whilst I suggest that this led to an emphasis on the ordinariness and authenticity of a personality’s persona, this did not rule out a stress and value placed on the popular. In the second
section of the chapter I therefore deal more explicitly with the way competition, in the form of ITV’s arrival, led to a battle over key television personalities that demonstrated the importance of televisual skill and the role of the BBC in shaping television fame.
