Shot Of A Lifetime!

Harry Goodwin’s still photography for Top Of The Pops is still No 1, as Spencer Leigh discovers

In 1970, The Kinks recorded Top Of The Pops, a cynical song about the show, which was full of typically pithy comments. During the instrumental break, a voice can be heard saying, ‘Shot of a lifetime! It’s a Rembrandt!’ As in-jokes go, this one was pretty ‘in’. Few listeners would know that these were the trademark phrases of Harry Goodwin, as he took his celebrity photographs for the show.

Now 82, Harry Goodwin remembers his time on the programme with fondness. “It taught me the importance of quick reactions,” he says. “That’s what you need as a photographer.”

The son of a Manchester bookmaker, Goodwin’s first job was as an assistant to his father – effectively as a tic-tac man. He learnt his trade during national service in Calcutta.

“I was the UT photographer – that is, untrained, washing prints and things like that. I was ordered to go to Malaya for an invasion, given a Sten gun, got on a boat at Bombay and travelled to Malaya.

“We had to get off at midnight and the Japanese were waiting for us. I was coming down the side of the boat and thought I had no chance, as I couldn’t swim. Suddenly, the sky lit up and we were ordered back on the boat. I came back quicker than a greyhound at Belle Vue. The atom bomb had exploded and everyone …

by Spencer Leigh
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