Long-lost French TV Appearance Unearthed

Forty-two years after it was broadcast on June 11 1978, rare footage of The Boys performing “Brickfield Nights” on French TV programme Blue Jean 78 has turned up online.

The Boys’ singer/guitarist Matt Dangerfield recalls: ”The show was recorded just before we went on a tour of France. It was a kind of French version of the UK’s Top of the Pops where we had to do three runs through our song miming for the cameras while they got their camera angles and herded the audience around.

“The only other artists on the programme that we knew of were Talking Heads doing “Psycho Killer” and Serge Gainsbourg doing a song called “Sea, Sex and Sun”. I don’t think Talking Heads had ever mimed for TV before, as they looked decidedly uncomfortable performing with unplugged guitars and no microphones and David Byrne looked to be on the verge of breaking out laughing at any moment.

“The next day we embarked on our tour of France together with a French support band. Two or three gigs into the tour we were told that the programme was going to be on TV. It was during the day on a Sunday.

“By then we’d got to know our support band quite well. They were really good though I can't remember their name. While watching the programme, we were surprised to see their lead singer in the studio audience and in shot during almost every performance.

"He hadn‘t introduced himself to us at the TV studio. But he had watched where the cameras would be for every act and managed to get in view and doing something strange in most of the camera shots.

“For instance, he’d be sitting on the stage right next to one artist who was singing and playing an acoustic guitar and staring at her tits for the whole song. And when Serge Gainsboroug’s spot came they had the French legend reclined on a deck chair in a kind of a beach scene. Gainsboroug was chain-smoking as usual but when he tried to light up another cigarette mid-song, he accidently dropped his cigarette packet. I’d gone over to watch him perform and saw this singer, a stranger to me then, lob a handful of cigarettes at Serge, who managed to catch one and light it up whilst looking a little confused. On the TV screen, all you saw was this shower of cigarettes hitting him halfway through his song.

“I wish I could see the whole show again, just to see this singer’s antics again.”