Everyone's Aunt Sally

The revolving potter's wheel on BBC was still exciting and we watched in wonder as the little dot disappeared from the centre of the screen when the set was switched off.

Through a fog of doubt Roy Thomson, amiable Canadian financial swashbuckler, had sailed in with our first commercial station. The BBC Scotland monopoly was over.

There were only 187,000 sets capable of receiving the new channel (a number that was to rise to 436,000 before the end of the year), yet an incredible 750,000 viewers saw the opening programme, a 90-minute spectacular starring David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Jack Buchanan, Jimmy Logan, Stanley Baxter, and Kenneth McKellar. Featuring dancers and singers and the Geraldo Orchestra. All held together by the formidable presence of James Robertson Justice.

With his wizardry of words Thomson had won the franchise, omitting to say he knew nothing about running a television station. He was recruiting people off the streets, using press photographers as cameramen. He had to find at least one person who knew the business and lured dynamic fellow-Canadian Rai Purdy from NBC in New York to

be first Programmes Controller. Years later Purdy told me that when he arrived in Glasgow he thought he had made the biggest mistake of

his life.

Kenneth McKellar remembers the panic of the opening night. So many artists packed into a tight studio space. Going out live. Purdy trying to maintain sanity from the control room. ''Getting everyone into the right place, getting the timing right, was a nightmare,'' he says. ''There was a patriotic march sequence and you could see the same faces passing the cameras several times.'' Logan and Baxter, starring in Five Past Eight at the Alhambra, did a couple of sketches; one as babies, the other as Teddy Boys. Baxter recalls Jack Buchanan in top hat and tails singing I Belong to Glasgow, with ''a terribly cut-glass accent'', and over the phone he gives a hilarious impersonation. ''He was a wonderful artist, star of West End, Broadway, and films. But, oh my God, that was a mistake!'' It was to be Buchanan's last public appearance. No-one knew he was ill at the time. Logan says: ''His wife didn't

want him to go on. But he insisted, saying 'The public doesn't want to know our problems. We are here to help them forget theirs.' For a while it was to be Do-It-Yourself television with everyone on a sharp learning curve.

Two days after the opening, the One O'Clock Gang began, on Monday, September 2. Forty five-minute shows going out at lunchtime five days a week. It ran for nearly eight years, was hugely popular with the masses, and made Larry Marshall the king at STV. Eventually the king had to be professionally assassinated. In franchise renewal battles, presenting their pitch for balanced quality scheduling, the station could no longer have a flagship programme appealing mainly to the elderly, the very young, and the unemployed, even although it had become the most successful lunchtime show in Britain.

Marshall was previously known by his real name, Henry Tomasso, in amateur productions at Rutherglen Rep and church halls before joining comic Tommy Morgan at the Pavilion, Glasgow. At the behest of Archie McCulloch, in agent mode, he went to Rai Purdy applying for a job as a writer. Purdy took one look, said: ''I want to see your face in front of the camera.'' He then switched on a microphone and secretly listened while Larry bantered with workmen for 40 minutes in the shell of the old Theatre Royal. Then he said: ''I've seen you on camera, I've heard you. I want you to front this show starting next week.'' The working title was The Goofy Gang. Might have worked in Canada or America but not here. It was to bring instant fame to fellow Gang members like Sheila Mathews, Hilary Paterson, Charlie Sim, Jimmy Nairn, Dorothy Paul, and The Tommy Maxwell Quartet.

Homely, friendly, much of it was very good. Jimmy Logan admired what they did, adding: ''But it became everyone's favourite Aunt Sally. There were some great jokes against the Gang and I was as guilty as anyone.

''Their great problem was doing new sketches every day, written, remembered, and delivered in 24 hours,'' says Logan. Campbell Lennie, one of the writers, speaks of hair-tearing sessions, trying to think of a tag line. Then they would write: ''Larry hits Jimmy over the head with a rolled-up newspaper.'' Larry would rage at his critics. Now aged 73 and mellowed, he admits: ''Trying to do new sketches every day was the rock on which we foundered. I would say that the show was right for the time but it would not work today.'' While the Gang was getting knocks, This Wonderful World was getting kudos in every ITV region of Britain, winning awards. Presented by John Grierson, the father of documentary films, it was a series of clips. But really it was the linking by the bow-tied extrovert Grierson that was the secret - ''From the Highlands and the Lowlands, from across

the Border, we bring you some of the

rich and strange things, the wonderful things the camera has seen.'' He was to do more than 300 Wonderful Worlds.

An early television chef series, with Eric Milligan (uncle of the present Lord Provost of Edinburgh), got hundreds of letters from housewives. Its title: How to Keep Your Man. PC was unknown then.

Bill Tennent and Bill Simpson arrived direct from drama college. Tennent became Personality of the Year for Here and Now. Simpson, a news reader, went on to international fame in the name role of BBC's Dr Finlay's Casebook. Also out of drama school, an unknown Andy Stewart presented Dance Party Roof, a showcase for early rock'n'roll groups. Arthur Montford, the man in the jacket, presented Scotsport, Britain's longest-running sports programme.

Talented rebels at the start included writer Eddie Boyd and all-round genius John Byrne in the graphics department. Criticism of lack of drama was soon compensated by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, starring Geraldine McEwan, leading to many award-

winning productions. The tartan kitsch years of Jigtime and Thingummyjig with the statutory straw bales were counter-balanced with Karl Rankl

conducting the Scottish National Orchestra, the long association with Scottish Opera.

A youthful Paul Young and Morag Hood, presenting Countdown, had as guests an unknown group called The Beatles who were so grateful they came back again when they were famous.

Recording of programmes started in the early sixties. Rikki Fulton and Jack Milroy did three brilliant Francie and Josie series. Rikki is still devastated that nothing of that remains. The tapes were thrown out to make more shelf space. Roy Thomson had launched STV with the notorious phrase: ''It's like a licence to print money.'' Perhaps injudicious, he conceded, but with characteristic robustness he added: ''It was certainly right.''