Let’s Go… again!

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Alpha’s Saturday sports and features programme ‘Let’s Go’ returns for a second series in 1960

Article from the TVTimes Northern edition for 14-20 August 1960

The new-look Let’s Go, streamlined, trim and with the accent on sport, comes back for its second season on ITV, starting on Saturday afternoon next week.

Horse racing (flat and steeplechasing), professional wrestling and boxing—the most popular sports in the ITV ratings—will be the main regular items in the programme. Out are the dog shows, dancing and off-beat activities.

Racing will be “on” – from courses in almost every part of the network area. So will wrestling — by special request. Amateur boxing will come into the programme planning, probably every fortnight, after the season starts in October.

There will be athletics, too, and motor racing, plus the classified football results and full sports news and results.

The racing outlook is good. Let’s Go will take three or four races from the chosen meeting, spotlight any feature event, give the betting market moves, interview trainers, jockeys and paddock personalities and sum up prospects.

…to wrestling

Said Peter Moor, ITV racing adviser: “We’ve got a good team, and I believe we provide the best racing coverage. Certainly that is our aim all the time.

“The courses we cover are all good for the viewers, and we do have plenty of first-class racing. In fact, the only thing our critics demand is —more racing.” Ripon is the scene of next Saturday’s meeting, with the St Leger Trial as the highlight.

Wrestling, which shares the first programme of the new series, also seems to be the sport of which many viewers cannot get enough. Their critical letters have demanded wrestling every week. And that is what they are going to get — 45 minutes each week, with some of the most colourful characters in the game.

…to the races

So look out for Canadian-Indian Billy Two Rivers; European star Tibor Szkacs, whose contest with Mike Marino in Leeds during the first Let’s Go series was generally rated in wrestling circles to be the best TV bout of the entire season; and Britain’s champions, Billy Joyce, Ernie Riley and Norman Walsh. And coming over to wrestle here are the 16st Japanese Great Togo, giant Bert Stein from Germany and Hungarian ex-Olympic competitor Mihalyi Kuti.

The proportion of “More, please,” letters from women viewers during the summer was incredibly high for a sport that prides itself on its masculinity.

Fashion shows will be featured once a month. But they will be fashion shows with a difference, where the surroundings and background tie up with the clothes.

…to amateur boxing

Not for Let’s Go the parade of models on a platform. As producer Stephen Wade says: “We think that’s dull. If we want to show a model in travel clothes, we’ll put her on a train, or in a plane.”

…to the fashion shows

Tim Brinton and Roger Malone will feed news and comment into the programme between items and at the end, when the results are ticker-taping into the studio.

Brinton, ITN newscaster and Roving Report reporter, took over from Berkeley Smith as link man in the last series. Malone, ex-Fleet-street sports journalist, is now on the staff of Alpha Television. Interviews and comments are his job in Let’s Go.

There are plans, too, for a specially-designed electric score-board to bring the football results to viewers within seconds of the scores being known.

Cameras will show the results as Malone comments. Then, when they are complete, there will be a classified run-through for a Pools coupon check.

About this author

Tommy Long was a writer at the TVTimes

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