“The weekend starts here” was more than just a television show slogan; it was a call to arms to teenagers up and down the land to let their hair down now that it was Friday night and school was over for another week. And the somewhat unlikely face of this appeal to break free from the parental shackles and let rip in the two days of what might pass for unbridled hedonism was Keith Fordyce. The show was Ready Steady Go!, first broadcast in August 1963, and it was strictly for young people.
It coincided with the rise of the Beatles and the dynamic young arts scene in Liverpool, not to mention the advent of Swinging London where Carnaby Street was the epitome of fashion and the Rolling Stones were sending shudders through the older generation.
Youth was in the ascendant for the first time, young people had the money to buy “45s” and to shop for trendy clothes, and Ready Steady Go! exemplified a teenage exuberance which at the time seemed to herald a brave new world.
Fordyce was already a seasoned broadcaster and disc jockey, and the show, transmitted by Associated Rediffusion, was a huge hit from the outset.
It was a fertile time for “beat” music and as well as the Beatles and the Stones, it also showcased The Who, the Animals, Manfred Mann, the Kinks, Marianne Faithfull, the Beach Boys, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Donovan, Marvin Gaye, Sandie Shaw, Dusty Springfield and Gene Pitney among many more.
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The show was broadcast from a studio in Kingsway, Central London, before an audience of young people who danced and struck poses for the cameras. Fordyce was a consummate broadcaster but, already in his mid-thirties and married with children, he soon began to look just a little too avuncular, too much like a safe pair of hands, not sufficiently edgy. He professed to liking Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.
A hint of his being somewhat out of touch was contained in an exchange which to his credit he relished relating in later life. Talking to Mick Jagger, Fordyce predicted with alarming confidence that the Stones’ rebellious streak and long hair would diminish with the passing years. “Nah, it won’t,” came the confident (and apparently prescient) reply.
“The Rolling Stones have surprised me by their durability,” Fordyce later confessed. Elkan Allan, the executive producer of Ready Steady Go!, looked around for someone younger and more in tune with youth and lighted upon the 20-year-old, pelmet-fringed Cathy McGowan who turned out to represent everything teenage girls wanted to be (and everything spotty youths dreamt of). She joined Fordyce on the show in 1964 as its co-host, every inch the dolly bird with her Biba outfits and peppering her largely unscripted conversation with such “in” expressions as “fab gear”, “smashing”, “super” and withering references to all that was “square” and “out”.
The show could be chaotic, but this somehow added to its air of authenticity in an otherwise heavily prescribed television culture.
In April 1965 Fordyce was eased out of the show which McGowan then presented on her own. But although Fordyce had probably reached his peak in terms of popularity he went on to enjoy a steady succession of broadcasting jobs on radio and television.
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Keith Fordyce Marriott was born in 1928 in Lincoln and educated at Lincoln School. In 1946 he won the Lincolnshire Junior Tennis Championship. He first dipped his toe into broadcasting while serving in the RAF with the British Forces Network in Germany — where his commanding officer was Cliff Michelmore, the future presenter of BBC Television’s Tonight programme.
Fordyce then read law at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he founded and edited the university’s sports magazine, Light Blue.
After graduating in the early 1950s he began working as a sports journalist and a football commentator and won a seat on Wimbledon Borough Council as a Conservative. But this career was cut short when he was accepted by Radio Luxembourg as an “announcer” in 1955. There he became an early disc jockey — although he later disparaged the appellation, preferring “compere” — and blew kisses to young women as he played their record requests.
He joined the BBC Light Programme, the forerunner of Radio 1 and Radio 2, in the early 1960s and presented a lunchtime show, Pop Inn. He went on to become one of the hosts of Thank Your Lucky Stars (Brian Matthew was another host), a hugely popular Sunday night pop music show on ITV which ran from 1961 until 1966.
Immediately on quitting RSG! he joined his fellow DJ Anne Nightingale on a request programme, That’s for Me. He also presented the BBC Sunday morning programme Easy Beat, which was also Brian Matthew’s territory. Easy Beat was axed when Radio 1 was launched in 1967 to try to recapture a young audience lost to pirate radio which was then at its zenith. In addition, Fordyce continued to broadcast on Radio Luxembourg. He also presented the Town and Country quiz show on Radio 2.
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In the late 1970s he began hosting the long-running Saturday evening Radio 2 game show Beat the Record, in which listeners were invited to identify pieces of light music. He then became the first presenter of the Saturday morning Radio 2 show Sounds of the 60s in 1983, leaving the show in 1986. He rejoined Radio Luxembourg for a time in the early 1980s.
Other television work included compering Come Dancing, circus shows and New Year’s Eve parties.
He and his wife, Anne, a former microbiologist, and their daughters pursued a rural idyll, first near Chesham in Buckinghamshire and then in a village near Paignton in Devon. For some years they ran an aircraft museum overlooking Torbay.
Fordyce presented a quiz show called Treasure Hunt on Westward Television for 14 years and latterly he worked for BBC Radio Devon before falling victim to Alzheimer’s disease.
He and his wife Anne had four daughters.
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Keith Fordyce, broadcaster and disc jockey, was born on October 15, 1928. He died on March 22, 2011, aged 82