Big Beatles & Sixties Sort Out Podcast

Well we’ve completed our NME Number 1s rundown now, but we’ll be back tomorrow with some rambling about Anthology and other Beatles bits (before we start looking at more 60s chart stuff in the coming weeks!)

Recreated BBC1 clock circa 1991

BBC Two Northern Ireland clock

1970s mechanical BBC1 clock

1980s electronic BBC1 clock

It's still a work in progress, but seems stable enough for "public beta", so by popular demand here's a standalone version of the parametric clock generator I recently added to my online teletext viewer:
zxnet.co.uk/clock/#templ...

Thanks! x

I’m annoyed I didn’t check the download before I put it up here. Silly me.

Ha ha. Excellent.

Just think of the money the Polo marketing board could have made off him wearing that waistcoat! Free advertising!

From the Liverpool Daily post, 6th December 1965. A crowd of mainly girls stands outside the Empire Theatre in the rain awaiting the arrival of the Beatles.

The headline alongside the picture in the following day's paper is "Decorum and delight on the Beatles' return". Although apparently the second house was "rougher", everyone seems to have been on their best behaviour. Much screaming, no disorder!

Some girls refused to leave / they left.

Beatles 'Boss' Alert. Police were called to the Belgravia, London, home of Beatles manager Brian Epstein early yesterday after two girl fans entered and refused to go. Later the girls left.

In the Sunday newspapers, sixty years ago today was the most thrilling Beatles related story you'll ever read.

*Eric Idle voice* “And it was through these very doors, or one of the side entrances, that 60 years ago today, 5th December 1965, the fabulous Beatles entered the Empire Theatre, Liverpool, for the final concerts they would ever give in the city.”

It’s Good, Except It Sucks: Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer With Garry Abbott Garry Abbott joins Tim Worthington for a chat about Victor Von Doom’s cunning plot to become the next Wrong Kind Of Marty McFly in Fantastic Four.

When you've made one movie with well-loved characters and not really got them right, what's the obvious move for the sequel? Turn their biggest enemy into a cloud, apparently. Here's me and Garry Abbott on Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer.

timworthington.org/2024/12/12/i...

I love that Billy J Kramer was at a Paul McCartney show and has been excitedly sharing his photos, including a close up of the Cavern wall backdrop that Paul uses sometimes, zoomed in to find his own name on it! Quite right too.

My tiny piece of Yellow Submarine - an original animation cel of Toulouse Lautrec going through a white door from 18 minutes and 50 seconds into the film.

I’ve got a film strip cel, not an animation one somewhere. I got it as a teenager and was very excited!

Very often it’s With The Beatles for me as well (P)

And of course you can also revisit our Yellow Submarine podcast from back in 2022. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

All celebrations of this wonderful movie are welcome!

‘The Beatles’ Biopics Cast Paul McCartney’s Dad, John Lennon’s Aunt, Plus Roadies, Managers and More David Morrissey, Leanne Best, Bobby Schofield, Daniel Hoffman-Gill, Arthur Darvill and Adam Pally have joined the cast of Sony's The Beatles biopics

And the biopic casting news keeps coming!

For the Mendes films, we’ve now got names for so many of the key supporting roles.

variety.com/2025/film/gl...

That's good to know!

I understand your feelings re: that. We tend to find things are in development so long in advance of them even starting production now, that the speculation creeps in to fill the void of that time.

Steve Cropper was an amazing guitarist. He knew when to play, when to groove. Much more of a lasting influence on me (and I'm sure many, many folk) than early obsessions with Hendrix, Clapton and the like.

I've done a mix highlighting his guitar on Johnnie Taylor's Who's Making Love (right channel)

Good question from Andy here... we usually know who takes the photos, but who did the actual design and layout?

I was expecting to see a bit more chatter about this, but it seems to be a bit below the radar at the moment.

Thoughts?

(L-R) American musician, record producer, engineer, and music supervisor, Bruce Robb, American guitarist, songwriter and record producer Steve Cropper, English musician, singer, songwriter and actor Ringo Starr and American singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson (1941-1994), talk in the recording studio circa 1980 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images)

Let's have a photo of Cropper with a few other musicians hanging around...

(LOOK AT THE GLOVES ON RINGO!)

Properly sad news.

Steve Cropper of Booker T and The MG's performing at a 'Guitar Greats' concert at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey on November 3, 1984. (Photo by Ebet Roberts/Getty Images)

I was doing my usual I LOVE STAX RECORDS bit in this episode and here we are a few days later finding out that Steve Cropper has died. Without Cropper's guitar and his (very collaborative) songwriting, we'd be without some of the most amazing records ever made. (P)

I don’t know. You try and add a nice video, but it’s too big to upload, so you download a version from Instagram and then it’s gone out of sync. WELL I TRIED.

No, it’s the download from Insta. Sigh. START AGAIN.

I think it’s Bluesky’s terrible video handling.

Unglued at the bottom, but otherwise okay.

Oh, it only crops them in preview. Then adds them in TERRIBLE QUALITY.