Dave Bartram:
The band that I was a part of, The Choice, played largely its own material, but it was always stylized by and influenced by 50s rock & roll to a degree. Eventually in 1973 it amalgamated with what was basically a new band called The Golden Hammers, and it became an eight-piece and decided to go more for a much heavier rock & roll influence, performing rock & roll classics and also some songs that we felt were classics but had never really been that successful first time around. As soon as the two groups amalgamated the name Showaddywaddy was born.
We'd been on the road for a few months and we were creating a stir, especially on the Northern club circuit, which was very vibrant at that time, and a guy from the audience one night in Birmingham said, 'Would you like to be on television?' And we thought, well that can't be a bad move. We didn't have to audition or anything, and we found ourselves in the middle of one of the first New Faces programmes. We did a medley of classics, a bit of Buddy Holly, a bit of Eddie Cochran - it was a very visual, fast-moving, hard-hitting four minutes of trying to show what Showaddywaddy was all about. Which was loads of energy and visually very original. And the roll-on effect was pretty incredible.
I remember the judging panel for us on the first show was Mickie Most, Noele Gordon and Clement Freud. All Clement Freud wanted to talk about was my set of teeth, so there wasn't really any constructive criticism from that end. Noele Gordon was a very nice lady, but she might as well have been on a different planet, but Mickie Most was very constructive and gave us a very high mark. Mickie Most certainly tried to sign us and Tony Hatch wanted a piece of the pie.
We won it, I think with a record score, and we went on to do the 'All Winners' show, and we came second. It was fixed anyway. The winner went on to the Palladium and got a management programme with MAM - well, the guy who won it was already signed to MAM. He was never heard of again.

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Dave Bartram

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