Just noticed that a British holy grail has finally turned up on YouTube: the full episode of The Hitman & Her broadcast from Manchester’s infamous Hacienda club in 1989. For doz that literally slept, The Hitman & Her was a British late-night TV show hosted by Stock Aitken Waterman supremo Pete Waterman & then-kids TV presenter Michaela Strachan. Beginning in 1988 the show’s M.O was visiting various British nightclubs which were to be provincial meat-markets where Sharons & Tracys and Kevins & Garys would politely dance to current Top 40 pop music and indulge in wacky japes at the behest of Waterman & Strachan.
So far, so standard night out Ritzy’s Wine Bar. Until, that is, Waterman & Strachan took a trip to the Hacienda during the peak of Britain’s Acid House explosion in 1989 and came across a bacchanal of Mancunian 24 hour party people dancing to rave classics by L.U.S.T, Rhythm Is Rhythm, West Bam, Big Fun, Maurice etc. Well, sorta – the club had announced The Hitman & Her would be filming that night so a buncha Sharons & Tracys and Kevins & Garys also turned up to get their mugs on the telly. Thing is, though, it’s this combination of folks which make the episode such a period-piece classic; seriously, there is no better documentation of British yoof culture in 1989 than the juxtaposition of Waterman & Strachan coaxing a group of hairdresser lasses into singing Beatles karaoke before the cameras cut back to a dancefloor full of Mancunian ravers locked into the plinkity-plonkity hypnotic 303 tweak of A Guy Called Gerald’s Voodoo Ray.
Petition to get the aforementioned Voodoo Ray footage (32:35 in the second video) recognised and realised as the song’s official video. Note the lad dancing on the stage who looks like a Pakistani Shaun Ryder and another lad who looks like a chunkier Kermit from the Ruthless Rap Assassins. Together they coulda been the Bizarro World Black Grape.
