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Cathy McGowan | |
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 Cathy McGowan and Arnold Schwartzman of Ready Steady Go! | |
| Born | Cathy McGowen 1943 (age 80–81) |
| Spouse | |
| Partner | Michael Ball (1992–present) |
| Children | Emma Bennett |
Cathy McGowan (born 1943) is a British broadcaster and journalist, best known as presenter of the 1960s pop music television show Ready Steady Go!
Ready Steady Go! (RSG) was first broadcast in August 1963, coinciding with the rise of the Beatles in Britain and internationally. [1] As one historian of television reflected in the 1970s, "the revolution had the greatest possible effect on television ... and hindsight commentators were to see the year (1963) as a line of demarcation drawn between one kind of Britain and another". [2]
With its slogan, "the weekend starts here", [3] RSG was shown on Fridays from 6 to 7 pm. [4] Its original presenter Keith Fordyce (1928–2011), a stalwart of the BBC Light Programme and Radio Luxembourg, was joined in 1964 by McGowan and Michael Aldred. [5] McGowan, recruited as an advisor from 600 applicants, had been in the fashion department of Woman's Own . She is said to have secured the role in a "run off" with journalist Anne Nightingale, later a Radio 1 disc jockey, by answering "fashion" to a question from Elkan Allan (1922–2006), RSG's executive producer and head of entertainment at Rediffusion, [6] as to whether sex, music or fashion was most important to teenagers. [7]
McGowan seemed in tune with the times, "the girl of the day", according to Eric Burdon of the Animals [7] – and, through her fashion sense, acquired the nickname, "Queen of the Mods". [8] (This term has been applied to others, such as Dusty Springfield and, in New Zealand, Dinah Lee. [9] ) Much of her appeal lay in the fact that she was the age of RSG's viewers: [10] young women regarded her as a role model, while men were attracted by her looks. Anna Wintour, future editor of American Vogue , was, according to her biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, among teenagers whom the show introduced to fashion. [11] Another, Lesley Hornby, who became better known as Twiggy, regarded McGowan as her heroine: "I'd sit and drool over her clothes. She was a heroine to us because she was one of us". [10]
A similar empathy extended to the artists that McGowan interviewed. Donovan, launched in 1965 by his appearances on RSG, recalled McGowan as the "young Mary Quant-look hostess" (Quant being the leading British proponent of the mini-skirt, which McGowan helped popularise), with whom he developed an "easy-going" style of on-screen conversation. [12] In the words of Dominic Sandbrook, a social historian:
The show's most celebrated presenter, McGowan was the same age as the national audience; she wore all the latest trendy shifts and mini-dresses; and she spoke with an earnest, ceaseless barrage of teenage slang, praising whatever was 'fab' or 'smashing', and damning all that was 'square' or 'out'. 'The atmosphere', one observer wrote later, 'was that of a King's Road party where the performers themselves had only just chanced to drop by'. [10]
McGowan was an early patron of Biba, [13] whose first store opened in September 1964, and had her own fashion range at British Home Stores. [14] She endorsed a portable make-up set known as "Cathy's Survival Kit". Barbara Hulanicki, who founded Biba, observed that "the girls aped Cathy's long hair and eye-covering fringe and soon their little faces were growing heavy with stage make-up". [8] Julia Baird, half-sister of John Lennon of the Beatles, recalled how, despite wearing black eye make-up, black polo necks and dyed black jeans "à la Cathy McGowan", she was unable to convince doormen at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, where the Beatles came to prominence, that she was over 18, the age for admission. [15] It has been claimed that the formation in 1966 of a British Society for the Preservation of the Miniskirt was prompted by McGowan's indicating that she would wear a long skirt on RSG. [16]
After Fordyce's departure in March 1965, McGowan continued to present RSG until it ended on 23 December 1966. In 1965 a decision that artists should perform live [17] gave it immediacy that its BBC rival, Top of the Pops (1964–2006), never acquired; indeed, the latter retained a Mancunian model, Samantha Juste – in television, McGowan's rival – as its "disc girl" until 1967. Although RSG's momentum had begun to flag, its impact on music and, through McGowan, on the "swinging" '60s more generally was widely acknowledged. As Sandbrook put it, "Thanks to the enthusiastic salesmanship of McGowan and her fellow presenters, the emerging youth culture that had once been confined to the capital [London] or to the great cities could now be seen and copied almost immediately from Cornwall to the Highlands". [10] The musician and jazz critic George Melly thought RSG "made pop music work on a truly national scale ... It was almost possible to feel a tremour of pubescent excitement from Land's End to John O'Groats". [10]
McGowan, who was a 5 ft 4½in (1.64m) brunette, modelled and also presented a show on Radio Luxembourg.
Once RSG had ended, McGowan's star began to wane. By way of illustration, The Sunday Times , previewed an exhibition 40 years later of photographs by Patrick Lichfield who described Queen 's use of his shots in 1967:
[Lichfield] was ... a great one for persuading people to join in, even if the outcome was not always the one they expected. In the 1960s he took a series of group portraits for Queen magazine supposedly documenting the movers and shakers of the time – except that some, such as Jonathan Aitken and Cathy McGowan, were deemed not to be "in", and were labelled as "out" in the magazine. But Lichfield, with his impeccable manners, refused to upset his subjects by letting them know that in advance. [18]
However, in 1978, McGowan was the subject of a tribute: the song "Ready Steady Go" by the English band Generation X contained the line "Because I'm in love with Cathy McGowan." The single hit no. 47 on the UK charts. The social historian Alwyn W. Turner has cited the band's "hymning" of McGowan as an example of punk's indebtedness to mod culture. [19] She was also prominently seen in the video for the 1978 Elton John hit "Part-Time Love", having known John since the 1960s when, as Reg Dwight, he had been a member of Bluesology, the backing band for Long John Baldry.
McGowan continued in journalism and broadcasting. She was a board member of London's Capital Radio when it was launched in 1973. In the late 1980s she worked for the BBC's Newsroom South East, specialising in entertainment. [20] She interviewed celebrities, including some she had known in the 1960s and others such as singer Michael Ball, who became her partner, and Deborah Harry, lead singer of Blondie, whom she described as the most beautiful woman she had met.[ citation needed ] McGowan hosted the Brit Awards in 1990. In 1991, McGowan co-hosted with Alexei Sayle and Jonathan Ross a show by British comedians to mark the 30th anniversary of Amnesty International.[ citation needed ]
In 1970, McGowan married actor Hywel Bennett. [21] They had a daughter, Emma. The marriage was dissolved in 1988 and, since the early 1990s, she has been the partner of Michael Ball. [22] Ball is godfather to McGowan's grandson, Connor Bennett.
McGowan's brother John McGowan was a disc jockey in 1965 on King Radio, a pirate radio station broadcasting from a fort in the Thames Estuary. [23]
A miniskirt is a skirt with its hemline well above the knees, generally at mid-thigh level, normally no longer than 10 cm (4 in) below the buttocks; and a dress with such a hemline is called a minidress or a miniskirt dress. A micro-miniskirt or microskirt is a miniskirt with its hemline at the upper thigh, at or just below crotch or underwear level.
Dame Barbara Mary Quant was a British fashion designer and icon. She became an instrumental figure in the 1960s London-based Mod and youth fashion movements, and played a prominent role in London's Swinging Sixties culture. She was one of the designers who took credit for the miniskirt and hotpants. Ernestine Carter wrote: "It is given to a fortunate few to be born at the right time, in the right place, with the right talents. In recent fashion there are three: Chanel, Dior, and Mary Quant."
The Swinging Sixties was a youth-driven cultural revolution that took place in the United Kingdom during the mid-to-late 1960s, emphasising modernity and fun-loving hedonism, with Swinging London denoted as its centre. It saw a flourishing in art, music and fashion, and was symbolised by the city's "pop and fashion exports", such as the Beatles, as the multimedia leaders of the British Invasion of musical acts; the mod and psychedelic subcultures; Mary Quant's miniskirt designs; popular fashion models such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton; the iconic status of popular shopping areas such as London's King's Road, Kensington and Carnaby Street; the political activism of the anti-nuclear movement; and the sexual liberation movement.
Helen Kate Shapiro is a British pop and jazz singer and actress. While still a teenager in the early 1960s, she was one of Britain's most successful female singers. With a voice described by AllMusic as possessing "the maturity and sensibilities of someone far beyond their teen years", Shapiro recorded two 1961 UK chart toppers, "You Don't Know" and "Walkin' Back to Happiness", when she was just 14 years old.
Hywel Thomas Bennett was a Welsh film and television actor. He had a lead role in The Family Way (1966) and played the titular "thinking man's layabout" James Shelley in the television sitcom Shelley (1979–1992).
Biba was a London fashion store of the 1960s and 1970s. Biba was started and primarily run by the Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki with help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon.
Alma Angela Cohen Cogan was an English singer of traditional pop in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dubbed the "Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice", she was the highest paid British female entertainer of her era.
Anne Avril Nightingale was an English radio and television broadcaster. She was the first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 in 1970 and the first female presenter for BBC Television's The Old Grey Whistle Test where she stayed for four years.
Ready Steady Go! was a British rock/pop music television programme broadcast every Friday evening from 9 August 1963 until 23 December 1966. It was conceived by Elkan Allan, head of Rediffusion TV. Allan wanted a light entertainment programme different from the low-brow style of light entertainment transmitted by ATV. The programme was produced without scenery or costumes and with a minimum of choreography and make-up. Allan recruited a fellow journalist, Francis Hitching, as producer. Hitching became a major figure in light entertainment in the 1960s. Robert Fleming was the first director, followed by the documentary director Rollo Gamble, then Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Daphne Shadwell and Peter Croft.
Youthquake was a 1960s cultural movement. The term was coined by Vogue magazine's editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland in 1965. Youthquake involved music and pop culture, and it changed the landscape of the fashion industry. The movement is characterized by looking to youth culture for a source of inspiration, taking dominance away from the English and Parisian couture houses.
Fashion of the 1960s featured a number of diverse trends, as part of a decade that broke many fashion traditions, adopted new cultures, and launched a new age of social movements. Around the middle of the decade, fashions arising from small pockets of young people in a few urban centers received large amounts of media publicity, and began to heavily influence both the haute couture of elite designers and the mass-market manufacturers. Examples include the mini skirt, culottes, go-go boots, and more experimental fashions, less often seen on the street, such as curved PVC dresses and other PVC clothes.
Barbara Hulanicki is a fashion designer, born in Warsaw, Poland, to Polish parents and best known as the founder of clothes store Biba.
Keith Fordyce Marriott was an English disc jockey and presenter on British radio and television. He is most famous as the first presenter of ITV's Ready Steady Go! in 1963, but was a stalwart of both BBC Radio and Radio Luxembourg for many years.
Elkan Allan was a British television producer and print journalist. Allan is best remembered for his creation of the pioneering 1960s TV rock/pop music show Ready Steady Go!. After 1968, he was for many years the television editor of The Sunday Times.
The "Fab 40" was a weekly playlist of popular records used by the British "pirate" radio station "Wonderful" Radio London which broadcast off the Essex coast from 1964 to 1967.
This is a list of British television related events from 1966.
Cathy McGowan may refer to:
Kiki Byrne was a Norwegian-born, London-based fashion designer who is mainly remembered as Mary Quant's rival on the King's Road in the late 1950s and 1960s.
Michael Aldred was a British record producer, music journalist, and television presenter. He is best remembered as co-presenter of the 1960s music show Ready Steady Go!.
Patrick Kerr was a British dancer and choreographer who introduced and demonstrated dances on the influential TV show Ready Steady Go!.
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