Nostalgically watching someone being nostalgic about nostalgia.

The film segment might have been lamenting the loss of community and childhood freedom in the television age, but watching it nearly 50 years on makes me lament the decline in standards of journalism and programme-making in the present day. A beautifully-written script delivered to camera at a perfect pace. Gorgeous camerawork with each shot given the time it needs to take effect. As a whole it succeeds in conveying more in a few minutes than a contemporary programme would in an hour. The creative people involved back then understood that the right space and pacing allowed the viewer to fill in the gaps in the story and form an impression of the issues being discussed without being condescended to. It was a pleasurable thing watching this stately kind of programming; nowadays one feels like someone is force-feeding you visual and sonic confectionery until the onset of nausea.

I absolutely love these old reels. Its the closest thing to a time machine we have. ❤

I feel so bad for kids that grow up in cities. I was born in the late 70s in a tiny village in the Scottish highlands beside the sea. We grew up playing in the hills and we learned to swim in the sea. Our mums would chuck us out in the morning and we’d only come home for lunch then we’d be out til dark. We’d swim out to the wee islands or build dens in the hills. I still live in the same village and my kids are all grown up and have left home. They grew up doing the same as we did and weren’t allowed a mobile phone or iPad until they were in high school. I’ve been to London many times and the change over the years has been insane…..not just the new buildings, but the population too. My granny was from the east end and moved up here when she married my grandad from the Isle of Skye after they met in the RAF. Any time I hear a person from the east end I can’t help but smile…..they remind me of my nanna and her wicked sense of humour.

It’s amazing that back in the 70s people were expressing concerns of London not being what it was. If those people were still alive/or are, they’d be horrified

I was a Thames Producer in the 70's and all I could think about watching this was "How the heck did they get the bean counters to shell out for that expensive crane shot at the beginning?"

i was born in '72 in wirral, and we played out everyday from 8am until 6pm never came home once, had cuts bruises from climbing and fights etc...all from being a normal child, the 70's were my best years im 51 now and still reminisce.

Oy gevalt ! My Dad always listened to Benny Green on Radio 2, of a Sunday afternoon. That mild Cockney Jewish voice essaying on easy listening - boring to me at the time - is now a fond memory.

I was a youngster in the 70's. Playing in Adventure playgrounds (built out of wood and rope - our local one was called 'The Tarzan Park, next to the old Convoys factory). Building go-karts out of old pram wheels, bikes races with no brakes,, playing in dumps and making camps, removing led from derelict buildings and taking it down the scrap yard for cash (illegal now!), going to saturday morning cinema and spending my summer holidays down at Dymchurch. We all have our childhood memories and nostalgia. No doubt every generation will also.

1975 is an absolute vision of heaven compared to the absolutely vile state of everything in 2023. ONE WAY TICKET PLEASE !!

Superb - beautiful reportage and film. 'A day at the cricket is still one of the cheapest pleasures available to a Londoner' - until the moneymen came and took entertainment and sport away from the lower classes, extracting yet another freedom; local and cheap cinemas another case in point; communities, etc. Though a pleasure just to watch and listen to Benny for a few minutes - wise words at the end.

Loved Benny Green, an intelligent an erudite man. Great Jazz aficionado too.

What an amazing piece of television. The whole thing was slickly made, wouldn't seem out of place today. I loved the wry humour of the presenter ("Children have lost their sense of enterprise by not not trying to enter the cinema without paying"). It seemed that "the television" was considered the same destroyer of socialisation that the smartphone is today/at time of writing).

It may not have been ravaged by war like the 40"s, but the 70's was still a pretty grim decade. Very idiosyncratic and probably the worst decade in the 20th century for trains. Power cuts, high inflation, and strikes blighted the decade. Driven by high oil prices following the oil crisis of 1973. It's hard now to believe how 'seedy' some parts of London were, how run down things were (both city centres and public services .... winter of discontent in 1978); and how there were still areas of London that were pretty much as they were in the late 40's. I was born in this decade so I have abit of a soft spot for it, but there's no doubt it was a very odd decade - eccentric, sober, and at times apocalyptic. But it was still a decade of great togetherness, and great moments like the Silver Jubilee in 1977.....and extremes - summer 76 and winter 78/79....and dramatic changes (Thatcher winning in 1979). There will never be a decade like it again.

So sad at the end as it was so poignant and true for today’s world.

Wonderful film and evocative for me. My grandparents lived in a council house on Avondale Pk Rd, just off Holland Park, where my grandmother was a dinner lady at Holland Park Primary School. Benny Green looks and sounds like all my Dad’s relations and friends. I can remember in about 1969 when I was 6, a rag and bone man came by the house with his horse and cart. First and last time I ever saw one!

I seriously miss the 70s, although a lot of that is probably because I was a young kid without a care in the world. Thanks mum and dad.

Haven't had a TV for the last 13 years such a relief to be free of it! A few good KZfaq videos like this one is enough to interest me.

Benny Green was a great story teller and a good broadcaster and musician as well

Me younger: *Benny Green banging on about the good old days again?* Now I agree with most of what he says.. the last scene is relevant, as I watch it from a tablet!

Benny Green was a lovely man. I only dealt with him when I worked in a bookshop in the West End, but he was so pleasant and polite to a nobody like me.

In case you don't know who Benny Green is. He was a British jazz saxophonist who was also known for his radio shows and books.

I wish i could go back in time ,and know now what i know now..

I loved 70's London, Britain still was in the balmy days after the sixties and the mood of the people was generally happy and the man in the street was happy with his lot having a place to live, nice family, decent schools, decent hospitals and a guaranteed job then Thatcher turned everything on its head and now Britain is full of people who sneer at those with a penny less than 'em and fawn at those with a penny more and they are never happy even living in houses far too big, drive cars far too costly to run and playing juggle the credit cards every month so they can live their extravagant lives which those in 1970's would have been shocked at the level of. I remember an uncle who always asked for "just a ha'penny more than I can spend..." and he was happy with his little house, his little British car, his twice a year holiday to the Kent coast or the New Forest and he worked all the hours he could to give the family some extras and a decent level of food on the table. See Thatcher's lot tried to turn Britain into America MK2 and its failed miserably, most the things they brought in didn't work for America and now we have a NHS in distress, awful schooling, no job security and more importantly you can end up being truly homeless and destitute incredibly quickly with levels of poverty climbing towards the levels of Victorian Britain.

Benny Green's memories of London , on TV and on his BBC Radio 2 Show, much missed. His son still works and comments on Jazz on the radio and elsewhere

Oh how .. its changed .... and for the better - i think not ... i love the presenter and his calm London voice

Thank you for posting this.

This is amazing, thank you for bringing this to our digital screens 👏

70s flares......miss them😂 with Dunlop green flash trainers, splash of "Hi Karate" the ladies didn't stand a chance!!😂😂

Ah the days before the car when the roads were the children's playground. You came home from school had your tea, then into the road you would go to join into the games with other children in your road until one of your parents called you in for bedtime. What a lovely time it was.

I enjoyed every minute of this. As others have said, despite the passage of time many sentiments have not changed.

Superb document , thanks for uploading.

This would be a fabulous documentary to watch in its entirety.

The message is as true today as it was then.

“Why not take a walk, read a book, listen to some music? Do your own thing?” Good advice for all of us glued to our telephones, watching YT day and night 😢🚶🏻‍♂️

No doubt there were problems back then,but I would trade in today's world and go back to then in a heartbeat!!

Wonderful documentary, love any video about 60s / 70s (and before) London

Benny Green had a show on R4 - he would take listeners through Big Band greats. I love his voice.

I grew up on TV, but when I found records that all began to change. I haven’t watched broadcast Television in more than two decades - even the sound of it now irritates me. I still play records everyday, though.

It's not quite the place it was because it has an additional 3 million people, millions of cars, and the demographic has changed from 93% White/White British to around 53% White and White British (36%). The communities we had were intentionally torn down and ripped up, eg Deptford, by the illegal and unnecessary actions of the local council that razed it to the ground under the lie of 'unsafe housing' when it was just that they received massive backhanders from building contractors. All of those people - my family included - dispersed out to other areas, breaking up the long-establlished community. TV was never the reason for the changes in London. Governments, councils, bribery, and excessive immigration that broke up the long-established (hundreds of years) communities were.

A London thats gone forever 😢

Benny Green was a great presenter

I do miss the old England

“A day at the cricket is still one of the cheapest days out for a Londoner.”. Oh dear…

Absolutely love the Thames television theme, brings back so many happy emotions and memories , tv just before your favourite programme came on. Free view is tumble weed or junk 'I survived evil', nauseous celebrity quizzes and endless other meaningless and depressing crap.

Tolmers Square doesn't look that way anymore. Most of the victorian housing is gone, replaced by a red-bricked council estate built on the eighties.

The 1970s was the high point of TV watching. I don't know why anyone would say otherwise. TVs started to come in big in 1952/53 for the coronation and took off from there. By the end of the1970s/start of the 1980s computers and video games began to compete with TV and took off from that time.

1970s childhood was great.

We still played cricket down my street in South London in the 1960s. And, during the Wimbledon two weeks, we could still string a rope up across the road as a pretend net! 🤣 What a brilliant video!

If he thinks the 70s were bad I'd like to hear his views on today's society or lack of any society.

Life after telivision is great. I chucked my one out 20 years ago and i've never regretted it.

Thought provoking and really well made

Just wait till computers come along. We're stuffed.

St Vincent’s school, Marylebone. I was a pupil there in the 1979s. I remember the roof playground well.

Great video thanks

Brilliant post!

It must be so dull for kids now days only having Games consoles for mental stimulation. Growing up in 1970s & 80s London I had camps, outdoor games, and I even had my own abandoned train once near Alexandra Palace that I would sit and reflect in. The world is now discussing in so many ways to grow up in. ✨🌏✨

Just now, watching this was the most interesting, rewarding thing to do I could think of. Interesting.

His voice was the background to my childhood it’s still soothing now.

The magnificent Benny Green.

This reminds me of the Summer children's programme "Why Don't You"!

He'd be horrified if he were able to look around today

Not particularly old myself But I fondly remember leyton high road on a Sunday when a rare car would pass by unlike today

That's a good video mate thanks

London looks more like Cairo nowadays.

The demographic of those inner city London schools sure looks a hell of a lot different now!

The scene with the rooftop playground is a school that I attended during summer holidays “Playcentre”. Falconbrooke school Wye Street

1975 - We've become a nation of solitary spectators ( Because of the television ) 2024 - Strange that a decades old iconic doll, incredibly popular in the 1970s, brought people back together again.

This is how feel about the internet & cell phones. Sadly they still work on the roof...

I don't know if this YT channel has footage of Canning Town and/or Rathbone Market in the 70s or 80s.

Wow, I remember the ITV Thames colour production skit before a programme started in the daytime in the early 80's when we only had 3 channels, I was really young but remember my childhood well even as I approach my mid 40's. It is so nostalgic my heart almost aches for the way of life that has changed so,so much for the worse, I used to travel all over London with a one day travelcard which was about 40p for a child, maybe 70p at the very most but still very cheap, and friends would save up for it through the week until the weekend, and then we would spend the day going anywhere we wanted. We was always doing something, whether playing football in a alley, going to the swimming bars or cinema since it was a golden age for cinema, kids think they have it better now but they really don't which is really sad and when you got to your teenage years, you would want a job because there was so much to do and not having money kept you bored. And it's programme's like this that make me think back (even though I wasn't born when this aired, it still reminds me of my earliest memories of tv). Great upload, thank you!💯👍🙏

Very calm voice..

What have we done.... What have we done 😰

"why have people become disassociated with one another" My god they had no idea how much this would take hold. Look at us now, just look at us.

Very fascinating. That's pretty much what my dad (born 1951) used to tell me about his youth. Looking back for me (born 1986) it's like the time before and after broadband internet. We had a PC, dial up internet and satellite TV before. Which were used mostly on the evening, while it was raining or friends were on vacation.. But only as we got DSL in 2002 I realised the potential of the internet and started to use it daily. I can't remember the last day when I wasn't at least once on the internet while I stop watching TV daily years ago. How fitting that we watch this on YT over the internet now instead on the TV. Btw. 5:10 I can't belive that pit would stay like this for another 40 years. The UCLH building which stands there now was started in 2015 and finished in 2022. But it reminds me some what on that famous theatre in Detroit they converted to a parking garage.

thanks for know the histories of Great London

*PROOF THAT THE WORLD* has been going downhill steadily for 2,000 years...

0:21 Doing PE in your pants because you forgot your PE uniform omg the good old days of School lol. 😂

As an Austin Maxi in the mid-1970s, I agree with Benny Green as he was always my favourite in Grange Hill.

Sentimentally beautiful, though ironic that I am commenting on a video that I have just watched on my laptop, wearing headphones

Was this school All soul’s primary school in foley street London W1 7JJ? This primary school has play ground on top of the building.I was there in 1985.

Not only Londoners, the whole world became nothing but spectators. They play, we watch!

I used to love listening to Benny Green's Sunday afternoon radio show about the Great American Songbook and learn all about the likes of Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. He was a joy to listen to because he was so erudite and witty.

It would be nice to see the broadcast edit and original rushes too.

God do I miss the old London! When the city was still owned by white, original, Londoners with the occassional though very welcome and very well integrated immigrants who gave the city it’s “flavour and color”!

Benny Green….diamond geezer and as sharp as they come.

I always remember Tesco’s and sainsburys selling flat screen tv cheap and at the same time the pint in the pub was getting expensive as petrol

1975!now that was absolutely mind blowing!what a memory that that is!when it all felt so far away and magical.everything seemed monumental and unattainable!

He sounds so much like Alan Ford it’s uncanny

Imagine no smart phone also I would needs a hair peace tut tut back then but good old days when we all spoke to each other without everyone in there devices 😊

To die in the year 1998 as Benny did seems like a blessing. So much he never saw that ruined London much more than the TV.

Sundays long ago. Benny Green with That's Entertainment and Alan Dell with Sounds Easy.

Lovely video. Something nice about the slow and contemplative pace of these. It's funny how Benny Green recalls his own community of immigrant Londoners struggling to pronounce names of Hollywood actors, only to then see a bunch of commenters below complaining about immigrants in London today as if its a new thing. Change is the only constant blah blah.

The title is somewhat misleading: there WAS television in the 1970's.

That is All souls School. I was there then. The boys playground was on the roof. We played rounders there and sometimes someone would hit the ball over the fence that was over the 6’ wall. One boy would be stationed in Foley/Cleveland/riding house street to get the ball and bring it back up! Used to go to Tolmers when it was a cinema.

The great Benny Green so knowledgeable about great American song book his Sunday radio programme was a pleasure

He would be shocked with goggle box

Money was indeed very tight even in london in the seventies!!

Im in my 40s from Glasgow Scotland I played football every single day from age of 5 to 16 That's how you become good at something. It's a real crime how kids don't get allowed space to mess around in the environment Sure some things we did looking back were crazy but im still here, it was a better childhood than is allowed now😊

50 years from now someone will film a piece lamenting the changes in London from their youth. Things always change and older people always miss the old days.