A Comedy On This Day: Sez Les (22 February 1974)

  Les Dawson is all well and good, but his comedy is of secondary interest to the amount of thought and imagination that went into the light entertainment sections of his shows. This week's musical guest is Lynsey De Paul (performing one of her signature flirtations, 'Let's Boogie'), sat behind the piano and singing in a sequence of close-up asides to various cameras with interesting mixes between shots.

 Of yet greater interest are the Irving Davies Dancers, whose routine is of the same idiosyncratic quality as their science fiction number of the 25th of January. I don't recognise the song, which lists the senses with a 'touch me' chorus, of the school of Hair or Tommy. It is interpreted with an Eastern spiritual theme, the troupe forming a deity with multiple arms, and an interest in choreographing the unit into one organic entity, from which individuals then break away from and again coalesce. As well as vivid colour lighting - a lime green filter this week - there's an interest in superimposing images, with the lead dancer wearing an enormous blue cloak which then becomes CSOed into a close-up of her face. These bold sequences must have been some of the most ambitious and abstract performance on British television at the time, and it’s exciting to think that they went out on such a mainstream show.