Launched in the very fi rst week of Channel 4, The Tube was intended to be as radical a music show in 1982 as Ready Steady Go! was two decades previous. With the brief from C4 boss Jeremy Isaacs to “make it live and give it balls”, The Tube was proudly disordered and unpolished in a way that no programme made by the BBC or ITV could ever dare to be at the time.
Fronted by ex-Squeeze keyboardist Jools Holland and former Record Mirror journo Paula Yates, it ran from 1982 to 1987, and was rarely far away from controversy, whether it was Holland being suspended for swearing (he’d used the phrase, “Be there or be ungroovy fuckers” during a live teatime trailer for the show), a clearly sozzled Rik Mayall vomiting on camera (one man in Northampton was so appalled, he called the police) or a pre-ZTT Frankie Goes To Hollywood performing a sexually-charged Relax in elaborate S&M gear. All broadcast at 5.30pm on a Friday, opposite Crackerjack.