When you watch Kazuko's Karaoke Klub you have to wonder exactly what Channel 4 executives were smoking in the late 1980s. Sure, the channel was a much needed beacon for the alternative and the strange and, in a trashy way, this continues with shows such as Naked Attraction. However, whereas Naked Attraction, at the very least, serves up some mild titillation (no, I'm not going to apologise for the pun) that taps into our base instincts, Kazuko's Karaoke Klub is very much the kind of television that leaves you as bewildered as an aging aunt confronted with a new TV remote.
Genre: Chat Show / Music
Channel: Channel 4
Transmission: 25/05/1989 - 13/07/1989
Hosted by Kazuko Hohki of Japanese experimental pop group Frank Chickens, Kazuko's Karaoke Klub was a weekly show which aired on Channel 4 for eight editions on Thursday evenings in the summer of 1989. The series was a bizarre combination of Japanese culture, chat show frivolities and, the section which cements its outrageous curiosity value, karaoke strangeness.
Celebrities appearing are far from the top tier of showbiz and, instead, are more a mixture of B-list (at a push) and C-list celebrities such as Frank Sidebottom, Janice Long, Spike Milligan, John Cooper Clarke, Lynne Perrie and George Wendt. Oh, and there's the Operation Yewtree contingent as well with not just Jonathan King, but also Jimmy Savile appearing on the show.
Now, Kazuko Hohki has a fine command of English (about a million times more linguistic ability than I'll ever have with Japanese), but the depth of questioning here is far from Parkinson or Frost levels. Naturally, the nature of Kazuko's Karaoke Klub hardly demands any sense of intellectual sincerity, but the questions posed here are fairly banal and its left to the celebrities to wax lyrical to fill in the gaps. Frank Sidebottom, as ever, is surreal and brilliant whilst Billy Bragg is on his admirable socialist soapbox, but there's very little to glean from the interviews despite Hohki's cheerful enthusiasm amongst laboured jokes comparing, for example, Manchuria and Manchester.
With the hindsight of everything that's unfolded in British television in the last few years, of course, Jimmy Savile's appearance is perhaps most prescient. His disturbingly blasé boasts of his prowess with women and the accompanying rage of their disgruntled partners truly makes you squirm. He features on an episode with George Wendt and you really find yourself wondering what an American made of this odd, yet cherished national character. In fact, you also wonder what Hohki, with her performance art background, made of Savile who is even more off-kilter than anything Frank Chickens recorded.
Moving back towards the format of Kazuko's Karaoke Klub, the karaoke sections fail to sparkle in any way, shape or form. Spike Milligan 'Spike Milligans' his way through Yesterday, Savile takes on It's a Long Way to the North of England and Janice Long hits the high notes in Leader of the Pack; the chances of anyone ever wanting to see or hear such combinations are zero, absolutely zero. The audience appear to be laughing their behinds off, but they also appear to be completely smashed and that is perhaps the only way that Kazuko's Karaoke Klub could ever be palatable...
Thankfully, Channel 4 only commissioned one series of Kazuko's Karaoke Klub, so I'm hopeful that someone, somewhere thought "We've gone too far this time" before being swiftly sacked but they probably got a promotion such is the unfathomable nature of broadcasting. In conclusion, I'd like to be able to say that Kazuko's Karaoke Klub was the point that Channel 4's 'out there' approach started to outstrip any level of quality, but then I remember that Minipops aired within six months of the channel's birth and perfectly sums up their hit and miss approach to quality.