Band of hope

THIRTY years ago, there were more than 35,000 registered brass bands playing in all four corners of the UK. Today, only 700 remain.

This alarming decline shows no sign of abating, but help comes in the shape of Sue Perkins, who hopes she can save The Dinnington Colliery Band, in A Band for Britain.

The Dinnington Colliery Band has been in existence in South Yorkshire for more than 100 years and has survived the Depression, strikes and pit closures.

But now, the group faces its greatest threat – extinction – because it is down to six members, and most of them are more than 70 years old.

Perkins and die-hard band members Joan Hardman and her sister Kay hope to recruit players and get the band competing again, but a recent recruitment drive failed to bring in any new members.

According to Perkins, this trend won’t change until brass band music undergoes a major image makeover, as she thinks the tradition is in decline in part due to negative perceptions about the music.

She says: “Brass bands are seen, incorrectly, as nostalgic and for another generation.

One of the main reasons why the bands are in trouble is because the training bands aren’t attracting as many members as they need for the future.”

Perkins might seem like an odd choice to help the group, but rest assured, the Supersizers Go... presenter has musical experience to match her irrepressible enthusiasm.

In 2008, she won the inaugural series of Maestro, a show in which celebrities learned how to conduct an orchestra.

She beat the likes of Goldie, Jane Asher, Katie Derham, Alex James, Bradley Walsh, David Soul and Peter Snow to take home the title. Her improvement as the series wore on was plain for all to see and she was regularly praised by the judging panel, including legendary composer Sir Roger Norrington.

Her prize for winning the battle of the batons was to conduct the BBC Concert Orchestra at the BBC Proms in the Park.

She’ll have to draw on every piece of advice offered to her during her Maestro experience if she is to save the Dinnington band from death.

She hopes the programme does for local brass bands what Strictly Come Dancing has done for ballroom dancing, but it remains to be seen whether this three-part series will capture the imagination of the public.

After all, Mark Herman’s 1996 drama Brassed Off encapsulated everything that was good about British cinema, but even it failed to reignite the nation’s love affair with brass bands.

Can Perkins help the Dinnington band revive its fortunes and those of the entire brass band movement in Britain? You’ll have to tune in to find out whether her recruitment drive is a success.

IT’S very much open to debate whether we still live in a sexist society, but few people could argue that women have a long history of being oppressed.

In the new series Women, film-maker Vanessa Engle sets out to chart the rise of the feminist movement and examine its impact on modern Britain.

She begins with a look at the first wave of women’s libbers, who made their voices heard in the Seventies.

The programme explores how women of the time were still being discriminated against in law and hears from the ideologues who tried to change the situation.

Many feminists focused their anger on beauty pageants and magazines, but their beliefs also impacted on their sex lives.

Key figures talking about their experiences include Ann Oakley, Susan Brownmiller, Germaine Greer and, in her final interview before her death in May 2009, novelist Marilyn French.