Later ... With Jools Holland: 30 Years of Music, Magic and Mayhem

Product Information

Completing the line-up, Jools chats to Madness frontman Suggs about the band’s first new album in seven years called Theatre of the Absurd presents C’est La Vie. It sees Madness reunited, re-energised and reinvigorated, resulting in their most harmonious recording experience to date. In October 1992, a music programme debuted on BBC Two entitled Later…. It was presented by the musician and raconteur Jools Holland and featured an unprecedented range of musical talent. Thirty years on, the 60th season is unfolding on Saturday nights. This impressive book details what amounts to 30 years of musical history. It is written by Mark Cooper, who cocreated the show in 1992 and was its producer for 26 years. His unique perspective shows how many of the key contributors were chosen. The result is engrossing, elegantly written and cleverly constructed.

Cooper co-created Later… with director Janet Fraser Crook, whose idea it was to film the show in the round, itself something of a revolution in studio craft. “Ultimately, TV is what you do with it. It’s a tool – the studio, the cameras, the lights. What really matters is what you want to say with them…

Viewers can watch episode one of Later…with Jools Holland on BBC iPlayer, which featured performances from The 1975, Self Esteem, Victoria Canal and Ural Thomas.

In some ways, it’s more BBC than the BBC. As Jools says in the forward to the book, Later… informs, educates and entertains. Those values are at the heart of Later…. The show brings out the best in musicians, where they feel they’ve escaped… the genre they started in. American musicians feel this particularly. To what, then, does Cooper ascribe Later’s longevity? “The secret of the show is its aesthetic. It found – and finds – a way to bring out the best in musicians on TV. I’m a sad bastard,” he reflects. “There’s a point you get to when you’ve done so many that the idea of missing one would be heartbreaking and numerically sad.” If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us Of course, this eclecticism is what has made Later… what it is, less a TV show than a BBC institution, a place where music legends such as Van Morrison can hang out in the same studio as a new artist who has still to make their first recording. Icon or newbie, the performer is likely to receive the same welcoming patter from Jools Holland, whose mix of nonchalance and enthusiasm puts even the biggest egos at ease.

Customer reviews

Lastly three-piece PVA whose sound is described as being “made from a formula of acid, disco, blistering synths, the release of the dancefloor and queer-coded sprechgesang post-punk”. On a Friday evening in the UK, old Jools Holland shows creep onto terrestrial TV like the ghost of Christmas past and grace your evening in with a nostalgic boon. Sometimes the gift is a blast from the past that calls for the wine to be topped up and the feet to shuffle, and sometimes a silence and calm descends as a snippet of astonishing beauty render time still and distractions nullified as the music takes over the here and now like a swell of conscious sleep.