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Dire Straits, The Eurythmics, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Culture Club, The Jam, The Smiths, Fine Young Cannibals… the list of acts that performed on Channel 4's cult TV show The Tube reads like a who's who of 80s music.

Edgy

The programme, which was first aired on 5 November 1982, was broadcast live from Tyne Tees Studio 5 in Newcastle and ran for five years, breaking acts and causing plenty of controversy along the way.

Chris worked as a guest booker

"The programme was this sort of big irreverent mixture, very edgy, the sort of chemistry you take for granted now on TV," says documentary maker Chris Phipps who worked on all 150 editions of the show.

Chris moved to Tyneside from the Midlands to join The Tube as a guest booker and had the enviable job of finding bands and solo acts to play live on the one-and-a-half hour show, which also included comedy performances.

One band he remembers booking before they were big are The Proclaimers.

"They sent me a video showing them singing Letter from America walking along Leith quayside and I booked them straight away really on the strength of that because I thought they were intriguing looking because they were twins.

"I stood or fell by the decision I made when I booked an act and they weren't always the right bookings… but that's the thrill of it really, taking that chance."

The show featured comedy as well as music

Big names

The Tube became famous for its unpredictable and irreverent presentation style and not surprisingly Chris, who later became an assistant producer, remembers that things could get a bit hair-raising on set.

"The hairiest moments really were when you couldn't find people prior to their appearance - like Iggy Pop completely disappeared before he was due on and was found like one minute before he was due to go on in the entrance, lost."

"There's always this horrible thought just before you go on air 'are the timings going to work', because until you're on air you don't know really. And of course you always wondered what Jools [Holland] and Paula [Yates] were going to say."

As you'd expect with so many pop stars involved there was also an element of "divaism" at times – Chris recalls that Morrissey demanded truckloads of flowers to be spread over the floor before he would perform!

Of it's time

There were also tensions within the production team and these are often cited as one of the main reasons the programme came to an end in 1987. However Chris thinks these tensions had their advantages.

"It's like a band – out of the tensions come the good decisions. Tensions are ultimately creative."

So why does he think The Tube came to an end after just five years?

"I think it had run out of steam – the whole dance and club influence was coming into the charts and into music and it's very limiting showing dance and club music – it's very difficult to show visually… and times were changing, MTV was coming in.

"I think the programme was perfect for the 80s – all good music programmes are of their time."