Zodiac and Co.

This week, I have watched two things from 1977. One was The Spy Who Loved Me. The other was a mostly-forgotten BBC South West regional programme called Zodiac and Co. You will be unsurprised to hear I have more to say about one of those things than the other.

Zodiac and Co., best described as an astrological What’s My Line?, was presented by Jan Leeming. Her fantastic autobiography¹, Addicted to Love (Robson Books, 2003) gives a good account of the series:

“I’d been approached by Bryan Skilton, a colleague from my BBC Bristol days, and asked to front a new series of programmes to be recorded in Plymouth. Zodiac and Co.² had an interesting format. Very often with a new idea, a series will have a local showing. Then, if it is successful, it might go nationwide. This was the hope with Zodiac. However, to begin with, it was only for transmission in the West Country and our guests had to either live in the area or have an association with it.

The programme comprised a team of an astrologer, a graphologist, and a palmist. Julia Parker, whom I knew well from Women Only, was our astrologist. In advance of the programme, she would be given the guest’s birth date, time and place; Albert Hughes, the graphologist, would receive a sample of handwriting, and Lori Reid, our palmist, got a palm print. The three team members would have to reduce their deductions to one and a half minutes on camera, in which they delivered their findings about the guest. The guest would remain in a room hidden away from the panel, but a camera would record their reactions, which were shown to the audience at home. After the prognostications, the guest would join me and the team to discuss the findings.”

All very interesting. Not least because Jan Leeming has just taught me the word “prognostications”.

But there’s a particular reason why the show is of interest to us here, and it’s related to the one complete edition of the programme available on YouTube. For those of you who want to experience the complete programme as you might have done back in 1977, I’ll only give away the identity of the guest in the second half of the show after the cut.

Yeah, so it’s John bloody Cleese.

OK, first things first: that upload states the TX date as 1977, but that’s not quite enough for this site. A bit of digging around on BBC Genome lists a guest from the central segment of the show as Jeffrey Iverson, which matches the video above. Therefore, it seems likely that this edition aired on the 25th November 1977. Right bang in the middle between the first and second series of Fawlty Towers.

Other programmes which aired in this slot give a good sense how much the regional offering could vary in 1977. South gets It’s Your Bid, an antiques gameshow; Midlands gets Look! Hear!, this week about young people in care; and West gets Jazz on the Quay, an open-air concert. Oh, and North gets… erm, Politics North. Bad luck, Leeds.³

Getting John Cleese must have been somewhat of a coup for the programme, and Jan specifically recalls this particular edition in her autobiography:

“It was amazing how accurate the team could be, often seeing facets to the guest about which the public were completely ignorant. One of the biggest surprises was John Cleese. Our experts saw his other side, a morose one, and when he came on stage to meet the panellists, he admitted that they had seen sides of him which were hitherto unknown and that their assessments were perfectly accurate.”

At this point, I will lean back, look incredibly smug, and simply point out that the show does the age-old trick beloved of psychics everywhere: saying lots of very generic things, with the hope that some of it sticks and makes them look clever. Though it is indeed true that Cleese seems to be genuinely interested, engaged, and at least partially convinced by proceedings.

To me, the most fascinating moment occurs from 25:04 onwards, where Cleese, in a friendly but firm fashion, tries repeatedly to nail what Albert Hughes meant by his comments on “breeding”. The version of Cleese we get in this show is him at his most genial and relaxed – the kind of person I’d be delighted to have at the one and only dinner party I might ever bother to throw – and yet he’s always happy to wander into something uncomfortable, even when it would be far easier to just smile and nod.

*   *   *

Jan Leeming says one other interesting thing about the show in her autobiography:

“After several series Zodiac and Co. did get on to network television. The format was changed, so was the panel and the presenter became Michael Aspel. Of course, I was upset that I didn’t transfer with the programme but if I has to lose it to anyone, I can’t think of anyone better than Michael, whom I like and admire greatly. I felt the changes in the programme format were not for the better, however, and the show was to have a very short life.”

What Jan doesn’t mention is that the show was actually renamed; from Zodiac and Co. to the rather more prosaic Star Signs. This aired in February/March 1979 on BBC2, for a single series of six episodes. The Radio Times description indicates that the overall format of the show was virtually identical, as does one of the few clips of the show available online, with guest Larry Grayson:

The odd thing about this: the failure of Star Signs didn’t quite mean the end of Zodiac and Co. While Genome only details episodes of the programme from 1977, it’s always a little spotty when it comes to regional programmes; newspapers from the time reference a new series in Autumn 1979, with the final episode seemingly broadcast on the 30th October 1979, a full six months after Star Signs.

Great, I now feel the need to write a Zodiac and Co. episode guide. Send help.

With many thanks to Billy Smart, for pointing me towards the wonderful YouTube upload of Zodiac and Co. I also highly suggest you visit the 5PY Heritage account for more wonderful archive treats from the South West.

1. It really is worth reading, by the way. Anecdotes like this are typical, regarding her attack by strangers at TV Centre in 1987:

   “There was a lot of discussion about security at the BBC. Actually in my opinion it was a joke. At the front of Television Centre it is like Fort Knox… but at the back of the building it was a leaky sieve. All my assailants had to do was shin over the iron railings and get in through the scene dock, or the Outside Broadcast Bay, where the cars were constantly coming and going.” ↩

2. You will be unsurprised to hear that this programme has many permutations when it comes to the title. Despite the logo of the programme itself not including the full stop, I’ve decided to go with the format that Jan herself uses here, which was also mostly used in contemporary publications. ↩

3. As opposed to North West, which broadcast Home Ground, where Brian Redhead and Frank Mellor “meet inhabitants of the North West”. Which sounds far more fun. ↩