Five O' Clock Club
Every Tuesday and Friday tea time from 1963 to 1966, children
throughout Britain settled down in front of the telly to watch the
glove puppet antics of Ollie Beak and Fred Barker (pictured below
left) on The Five O'clock Club.
 Ollie (an owl) and Fred (a dog), with assistance from Muriel
Young and Howard Williams (later replaced by Wally Whyton), would
introduce star turns from Kathy Kirby and Sandie
Shaw, while Fanny
and Johnny Craddock taught the kids Happy Cooking, Graham
Dangerfield talked about pets, and Jimmy Handley (father of future
Magpie presenter Jenny) made models.
There were also guitar spots from show regular Bert Weedon. Ah,
innocent days . . . Or were they?
Since Alexis Korner was the musical director on the show and
was so kind-hearted that he would regularly give chances to
musicians that other people just wouldn't work with, the studio
band for The Five O''clock Club were renowned for their .
. . shall we say, chemical ingestion. It became a kind of
rehabilitation unit for ailing jazz musicians.
The
Five O'' Clock Club had previously been known as Small Time,
Lucky Dip (1958) and Tuesday Rendezvous (1961)
and was an attempt by ATV to repeat the BBC''s success. In 1965
the show was re-titled Ollie and Fred's Five O'clock Club
- a mark of recognition for the popularity of the owl and the dog.
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