Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

Dreamscape’s 2012 birthday updates centred around rare footage from Look! Hear! (1981) and Dear Heart (1982)…

A new article on Dear Heart, the BBC2 sketchshow series Toyah appeared in back in 1982.

The TV That Time Forgot – Dear Heart
In the early eighties, BBC2 made a short-lived attempt at filling the notorious scheduling wasteland between 6pm and 7pm with all manner of sophisticated teenager-slanted entertainment. Numerous high-concept dramas, sitcoms and pop music shows came and went in a flurry of cheers from the target audience and jeers from disapproving parents, but concepts never came higher than they did with bizarre comedy sketch show Dear Heart…

In a neat bit of audience-enticing, Super Advice Person was played by post-punk popster Toyah Willcox, then in the middle of a run of massive chart hits but also one of a baffling wave of ‘they can also act a bit’ punk rockers (see also Adam Ant and, erm, Sting) that emerged around that time.

• Continue reading at Tim Worthington’s Newsround. Great to see that, once again, Dreamscape’s Gallery has been of use. View more photos from Dear Heart here.

Toyah appeared in, what was billed as a “younger version of Not The Nine O’Clock News“, Dear Heart in Spring 1982. There was only one series, which aired on BBC2. The best known of the numerous characters Toyah played was probably “Super Advice Person”, who appeared every week. Click below to view a full edition (in five parts). (Thanks to Andi)

Screen caps from Dear Heart. Please click below to view larger versions.