Johnnie Hamp is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television producer

Television producer

The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...

, now retired. He is responsible for the early British television appearances of such acts as The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

, singer Cilla Black

Cilla Black

Cilla Black OBE is an English singer, actress, entertainer and media personality, who has been consistently popular as a light entertainment figure since 1963. She is most famous for her singles Anyone Who Had A Heart, You're My World, and Alfie...

, comedian Woody Allen

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

, and singer Lisa Stansfield

Lisa Stansfield

Lisa Stansfield is an English singer and songwriter.-Early years:Stansfield was born to Marion and Keith Stansfield in Heywood, Lancashire, in England, where she attended Redbrook School, Rochdale. Her first television appearance was on a talent programme in the Granada TV area in 1982...

 as Head of Light Entertainment with Granada Television

Granada Television

Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....

.

Early life and 1960s television

As a small boy he toured variety

Variety show

A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...

 theatres as a stooge to his grandfather, a magician known as the Great Hampo.

During the 1950s he trained as a Granada cinema manager in Kingston

Kingston upon Thames

Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...

, moving to the group's flagship venue at Tooting

Tooting

Tooting is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...

 to handle a 1953 Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

 concert. He presented many more, firstly with Johnnie Ray

Johnnie Ray

Johnnie Ray was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor of what would become rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music and his animated stage personality.-Early life:John Alvin Ray was born in...

, Guy Mitchell

Guy Mitchell

Guy Mitchell, born Albert George Cernik, was an American pop singer, successful in his homeland, the U.K. and Australia...

 and Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...

, and later with Tommy Steele

Tommy Steele

Tommy Steele OBE , is an English entertainer. Steele is widely regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.-Singer:...

, Cliff Richard

Cliff Richard

Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

 and Gene Vincent

Gene Vincent

Vincent Eugene Craddock , known as Gene Vincent, was an American musician who pioneered the styles of rock and roll and rockabilly. His 1956 top ten hit with his Blue Caps, "Be-Bop-A-Lula", is considered a significant early example of rockabilly...

.

In 1956 Hamp joined Granada's television division

Granada Television

Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....

, retaining his responsibilities for stage show management, and booking acts for television productions such as Chelsea at Nine. Granada boss Sidney Bernstein

Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein

Sidney Lewis Bernstein, Baron Bernstein was a British media baron who was known as the founding chairman of the London-based Granada Group and the founder of the Manchester-based Granada Television in 1954....

 soon noticed Hamp's potential as a producer, and put him in charge of several television quiz shows.

By the early 1960s Hamp was based at the new company headquarters in Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

, where he was making the regional news magazine programme Scene at 6.30. This was followed by a successful series of television specials featuring blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 based American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 artists. The shows included; Sarah Sings and Basie Swings (1963), with Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...

 and Count Basie

Count Basie

William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...

; I Hear the Blues (1963), featuring Memphis Slim

Memphis Slim

Memphis Slim was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other...

, Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters

McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...

, Sonny Boy Williamson

Sonny Boy Williamson II

Willie "Sonny Boy" Williamson was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, from Mississippi. He is acknowledged as one of the most charismatic and influential blues musicians, with considerable prowess on the harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills...

, and Willie Dixon

Willie Dixon

William James "Willie" Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. A Grammy Award winner who was proficient on both the Upright bass and the guitar, as well as his own singing voice, Dixon is arguably best known as one of the most prolific songwriters...

; and It's Little Richard (1964).

Hamp made three notable television specials during 1965; Woody Allen, The Bacharach Sound, and The Music of Lennon and McCartney.

In 1969 he took over as producer of the film programme Cinema, fronted by the young Michael Parkinson

Michael Parkinson

Sir Michael Parkinson, CBE is an English broadcaster, journalist and author. He presented his interview programme, Parkinson, from 1971 to 1982 and from 1998 to 2007.- Early life :...

.

The Comedians

1971 saw Hamp's peak of success with the series The Comedians (intermittently 1971-1985) which introduced innumerable new faces to the British public and kickstarted a number of solo comedy careers. These included Mike Reid

Mike Reid (entertainer)

Michael Reid was an English comedian, actor, author and occasional television presenter from Hackney in east London, who is best remembered for playing the role of Frank Butcher in EastEnders and hosting the popular children's TV show Runaround...

, Charlie Williams

Charlie Williams (comedian)

Charles Adolphus Williams MBE was a mixed-race English professional footballer , and later became Britain's first well-known black stand-up comedian.He became famous from his appearances on Granada Television's The Comedians and ATV's The Golden Shot, delivering...

, Colin Crompton

Colin Crompton

Colin Crompton was an English stand-up comedian. He found fame on the Granada Television programme The Comedians in the early 1970s....

, Mick Miller, George Roper

George Roper

This is an article about the British comedian. For information on the British sitcom character, see Man About the House.George Roper was an English stand-up comedian, best known for his appearances in the long-running UK television series The Comedians.- Early history :He was born George Francis...

, Stan Boardman

Stan Boardman

Stan Boardman is an English comedian.- Early life :Boardman was evacuated with his family to Wrexham during World War II, and after the family returned to their Merseyside home mistakenly thinking the area had escaped the German bombs, his elder brother Tommy was killed in a bombing raid.He had...

, and Bernard Manning

Bernard Manning

Bernard John Manning was an English comedian and nightclub owner. He was born and raised in Manchester in northwest England....

. The series featured mainly Northern stand-up comedians drawn from the club circuit. It was a ratings success for Granada.

Continuing in the Northern club tradition, The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club

The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club

The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club was a British television variety show produced by Granada Television from 1974 to 1977. It was set in a fictional working men's club in the North of England and was hosted by comedian Colin Crompton. Also regularly featured was comedian Bernard Manning...

(1974–1976), a variety series set in a makeshift working men's club

Working men's club

Working men's clubs are a type of private social club founded in the 19th century in industrial areas of the United Kingdom, particularly the North of England, the Midlands and many parts of the South Wales Valleys, to provide recreation and education for working class men and their families.-...

 was another success, often featuring many cast members of The Comedians.

Retirement

Hamp left Granada Television in 1987, to form his own independent production company, John Hamp Enterprises. On 10 February 1993 he became the subject of This Is Your Life

This Is Your Life

This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...

. Now retired and still living in Manchester, Hamp concentrates on his love of oil painting.

External links

• http://www.johnniehamp.com Personal site with biographical details, photographs, anecdotes.