TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

Hosted by record producer Pete Waterman and ex-WACaday presenter Michaela Strachan the show pitched up at nightclubs throughout the UK and had an enthusiastic audience dance to new releases and the occasional live appearance.

Unfortunately the producers of the show caught the UK dance scene in a state of flux. Traditional nightclubs where not where most people were going by the late 1980s. Where they were going were warehouses and open fields, the only venues that could take the huge number of followers of the new type of dance music that had been filtering through the club scene since the early 80s. The "where are ya, where are ya" clubs (not called 'discos' anymore) as favoured by the white sox wearing Shalamar fans were now cemeteries by comparison. Chris Hill was out, Mike Pickering was in. No-one told Pete Waterman however and his show concentrated mostly on the new version of the old fashioned.

From TV Times 3rd September 1988 - "Pete Waterman is the Hit Man. And he plays the hottest dance music around and predicts next month's hits now. And her? She's 'showing out' with the best club dancers and gives you a chance to meet a disco date. There's 1060 - a phone-in video competition; Pete's latenight love-in. The latest in High Street fashion; and live performances from a top pop act." Still using the word 'disco', 'high street fashion', everything sounded wrong, it was like an uncle trying too hard to impress his embarrassed nieces.

The nightclubs chosen were usually in the midlands and the north and several hours on a Saturday night would be recorded and be edited ready for broadcast at 2.00 am in some regions and 4.00 am in others, just about the time when things were just getting underway in warehouses and fields across England. The show tried to be "in with the kids" as it turned up at the Hacienda in Manchester in 1989, one of the few indoor venues that helped create the new mood. Waterman's instinct knew that this was how pop needed to change, but despite many Chicago / Detroit house anthems reaching the top of the UK chart he was still making white sox soul like Roadblock.

The Gulf War saw the show suspended in early 1991 as all-night rolling news on ITN took precedence, but came back as the war, unfortunately for news broadcasters, only lasted a few weeks.

In October 1990 one of the show's resident dancers Jason Orange would appear with his new singing group, Take That.

To be fair, if you were coming back from a club and didn't want to go to bed then The Hitman and Her was ideal viewing, but it probably showed you a better night than you just had.

If you'd like to enter 'showing out', send a message to Pete's latenight love-in, or write to The Hit Man and Her, Music Box, 19-21 Rathbone Place, London, WI. And send a picture of yourself!

THE HITMAN AND HER

Granada / Music Box

3rd September 1988 - 5th December 1992