TV Cream

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Other Side of Midnight, The

IT WAS the best of times, it was the blurst of times. Having manufactured, variously, a menstrual egg-timer, record sleeves made of sandpaper, a desk that hung from a boardroom ceiling and numerous long-running feuds, the late great TONY “ANTHONY H” WILSON decided to turn his hand to, naturally, a late night magazine programme. After all, Manchester was where it was all happening back then, even if it amounted to little more than yet another re-release of Blue Monday. Hence this: a pretentious-as-hell “arts review” which somehow landed a slot on night-time network ITV. From within a set entirely furnished by IKEA (when they only had one store in Warrington and they were trendy), Tone held forth on acid house, himself, the opening of the Liverpool Tate (“Have they got the Rothkos right?” Anthony says: yes!), Martin Amis, Peter Greenaway, Factory Records, himself, why Manchester was the greatest city in the world, the Hacienda, why Ian Curtis would have been bigger than Bono, and himself. It’s claimed every single person who saw the show later went off and formed a band. Sadly, they were all shit.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Glenn A

    March 28, 2015 at 6:32 pm

    At last another Tony Wilson detractor, could this man’s ego get any bigger? Like the comment about the bands that formed after this show being shite, I too despised the whole Madchester/ baggy/acid house whatever thing with a passion. In 1990, I referred to the Happy Mondays as looking smelly and unwashed, spent the whole of Italia 90 watching films on BBC 2 and when everyone was getting loved up on E, was listening to NWA records.

  2. Richardpd

    November 4, 2023 at 10:38 pm

    Even New Order were at loggerheads with him at the end of the 1980s. Electronic’s Getting Away With It was supposed to be a dig at him!

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