I'm Your Puppet

Today’s horror is the 1961 offering from disgraced talent show host and right-wing megalomaniac Hughie Green, The Puppet Song and The Valley Of Peppermint Springs

Green will always be remembered for hosting TV talent show Opportunity Knocks. The show began on radio, initially on the BBC Light Programme where it ran from February to September 1949, before moving to Radio Luxembourg It was first shown on ITV from 20 June 1956 to 29 August 1956, but a second run, that commenced in July 1964 and lasted until 20 March 1978, saw it become one of the highest rated shows on British television.

Opportunity Knocks was huge, and the list of people that went on to carve out a career in entertainment is endless: the show helped make stars out of Mary Hopkin, Les Dawson, Paul Daniels, Lena Zavaroni, Pam Ayres, Peters and Lee, Bobby Crush and countless others. As hit rates go, it did better than either the X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent. But Green didn’t always get it right. In 1975, after an audition in Surbiton Town Hall, he passed on a young three-piece band from London who went on to find fame as The Jam.

The show was axed in 1978, shortly after Hughie went on a crazed political rant on-air. Inspired by the rise of Maggie Thatcher and a resurgent Tory Party, In December 1976, at the end of an episode of Opportunity Knocks, Green performed a bizarre piece about the state of the United Kingdom, Stand Up and Be Counted, which was released as a single by Philips in 1977 (backed with a grotesque rewrite of Land of Hope and Glory) with the distinctly patriotic catalogue number GB1. You can read more about that particular debacle HERE 

Opportunity Knocks was revived by the BBC and ran from March 1987 to June 1990, hosted initially by Bob Monkhouse (under the title Bob Says Opportunity Knocks!) and subsequently by former winner Les Dawson. Green never got over the humiliation of being axed and sank into a mire of alcohol-fuelled self-loathing. He was not the nicest of men: one of his mistresses killed herself when he left her by pouring petrol over herself and setting herself on fire, but he left the best until last. At his funeral in 1997, it was revealed that he was the real father of TV presenter (and wife of Bob Geldof) Paula Yates, a fact the poor woman was unaware of until she herself read it in the News of the World. There’s little doubt that this contributed to poor Paula’s personal problems and death, from an accidental overdose, in 2000. 14 years later her second-oldest daughter (and Hughie’s granddaughter) Peaches also died of a heroin overdose, aged just 25.

Anyway, here are both sides of the 45.

Enjoy!

Download Puppet HERE

Download Peppermint HERE

(if the links aren't working, give them a couple of hours and try again!)