TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 -
Brothers Mike and Bernie Winters (Weinstein) had connections with pop music from the very first days of their TV career.
Mike had played clarinet and studied at the Royal College of Music where he dared to start a jazz club, but it was Bernie who harboured comedy aspirations, appearing at the Regency Club in Soho, London. After World War II they formed a musical duet with Bernie on drums, they then took to comedy as a duo, but despite winning a talent contest they split, only to reform just in time for Britain's first popular musical revolution.
Appearing with the brothers on their BBC TV debut in 1955 were Cherry Wainer, later
to appear weekly on Oh Boy, and singer Georgia Brown, however on the 2nd March 1957
they began a regular guest spot on the BBC's first attempt at a teenage pop music
show, The Six-
Big Night Out had been the name given to a series of one-
The brothers had become one of the more sought after acts in showbiz, with Bernie's
buck-
Sunday 3rd April 1966 saw the first of their own series for ABC, Mike & Bernie’s
Show, featuring an eclectic line up of guests including Judy Collins, Eric Delaney,
Janie Jones and Pinkerton's Assorted Colours, while the second series beginning 18th
March 1967, re-
Mike & Bernie's Scene debuted on Thames 27th April 1970, in the usual Monday evening Opportunity Knocks' slot, with guests like Dave Dee and The Tremeloes, but otherwise it was mostly back to Blackpool favourites like Josef Locke and Frank Ifield. The title reverted to Mike & Bernie's Show on Thames in 1972 with guests Clodagh Rodgers and Roger Whittaker.
A one-
It was evident to those around them that the brothers resented each others presence,
just as The Everly Brothers had several years before. For the sake of the family
relationship, the double act had to go. In a remarkable bout of honesty and humility
Bernie told the Daily Mirror in September 1978 "We both felt we were on a dreadful
treadmill, doing endless rounds of nightclubs and summer shows. We've done it all,
topped the bills, appeared on the Royal shows, had our own TV series. There was nowhere
for us to go, except down. We've never kided ourselves. Mike and I were always regarded
as the poor man's Morecambe and Wise. We've taken a lot of stick from ther critics
over the years." Their final show together was at the Pavillion Theatre, on the Isle
of Wight, not the London Palladium, or a TV special send-
The Winters' routine of the daft one and the irritated one then became the property of Cannon and Ball who would become not only the kings of Saturday evening TV, but the kings of Blackpool.
MIKE AND BERNIE WINTERS
ABC / Thames / ATV
1963 -