Hospital Radio: Remember when Swedish stars took to Torquay stage?

Picture the scene, it is August 16, 1975, the BBC have had a big top in Torquay for well over a week.

  Cameramen and technicians are busily preparing for a big show, right here on the English Riviera. I am not overselling it, this was a big show, a hugely popular part of Saturday nights on BBC 1. 

The exact viewing figures for Seaside Special are a bit elusive but what we do know is that it regularly pulled in millions of viewers, thanks to its mix of music, comedy, circus acts and seaside charm.

But why was this week so special? Well, this was the day that Abba played Torbay. Yes, the Eurovision winners played here. They only did two songs, including Waterloo, but they were here. 

The previous week, the same big top in Torbay had what I would call a less glamorous line-up, hosts Radio One DJ Noel Edmonds and Irish crooner Val Doonican and guests that included  Windsor Davies and Don Estelle with a comedy routine and two songs including their number one hit, Whispering Grass.

So, everyone would have been looking forward to the Scandinavian foursome who would go on to be one of the biggest bands in the world, the two headline acts bearing no resemblance, or so you might think. Both  shows' headliners hit Number 1 on the UK singles chart but Whispering Grass actually outperformed  Waterloo in terms of chart longevity at the top. 

Waterloo reached number one on April 30, 1974 and stayed there for two weeks. But just over a year later the novelty duet from a sitcom duo were there for three.

The sitcom was of course, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, which was about a Royal Artillery concert party based in the fictional village of Tin Min in Burma during the final months of the Second World War. 

I am not sure if Abba considered the fact that they were following such an iconic duo on this TV show but in fairness it did not seem to hold them back and it is not as if the Seaside Special was a springboard for their success.

Weirdly, later in the year Windsor Davies, Don Estelle and Abba all appeared on the same episode of Top of the Pops, with the Swedes riding high on their post-Eurovision fame, and Davies and Estelle basking in the success of what was originally a 1940s standard.

Can you imagine the green room banter between those two acts! That was the seventies for you, bonkers or what?

Anyway, back to the big top on that day in 1975. Abba sang Waterloo and  SOS. The latter was the song that saw renewed interest in the band after their initial Eurovision success, reaching number six. Six of their next seven singles topped the UK charts. To put that in perspective, Windsor and Don only had two chart hits and only one topped the charts.

Another curious fact is that Lulu (who is  at the Princess Theatre in October) was also on the Abba show, making it two Eurovision Song Contest winners on the same bill.

Seaside Special came to Torbay a total of 12 times between 1975 and 1978 and featured many differing types of musical acts, including Boney M and The Wurzels.

 I don’t have time to do a  comparison of those two bands but it just shows the diversity and eclectic nature of TV shows in the seventies. 

Just out of interest, Boney M sold over 100 million records whereas the Somerset boys’ sales are possibly just over a million worldwide. The Wurzels’ 2007 version of I Am A Cider Drinker featured DJ Tony Blackburn. And that neatly brings us back to August 1975 as he was the host of the Seaside Special show that Abba appeared on. The world is a circle after all.