Later Live... with Jools Holland (BBC2, 10pm)

IT’S always enjoyable when one of the nice guys of music has on-going success. After 44 series, Jools Holland has turned Later into one of the BBC's longest running music shows which has a successful formula of featuring the biggest hit-makers alongside performing legends and newcomers.

And if all started for Holland in the North-East. Thanks to The Tube, alongside Paula Yates, for five years from 1982, the show was everything other channels wanted to emulate.

When I once asked Holland about plans to bring back The Tube with the late Peaches Geldof, Paula’s daughter, as host the pianist wasn’t keen on the idea.

“She seems good on television, but I think the trouble is that it's very hard to re-create things. If you're going to do it, then do something that's new and different. The sad thing about the whole thing is that when we made The Tube with Tyne Tees it made Newcastle the centre of the map. The Tyne Tees studios were enormous and there were loads of people and it was fantastic.

"Now the studio has been demolished. It's all been flattened and now Tyne Tees seems to be operating from a portable building or something. The Tube was amazing because the studio was specially built for that show. I love Newcastle and have got a lot of friends there as a result of my time there.

"The show would be very hard to recreate because everyone is trying to save money. The reason The Tube was great was that it was a brand new thing with Newcastle as an important element. The other thing was that, for the first time ever, complete amateurs and hot-heads and loonies were put in front of a camera and made it up as they went along. Since then, it's opened the floodgates and everyone is doing it.

"But we were the first. Before then, everything was very professional, but we were making it up as we went along and it was all live. Rather than people from the outside looking at the world of music it was people from the inside being chucked into it, " he says.

The man who has also made a New Year’s Eve tradition of Hootenanny, still regards his presenting style as shambolic but attracted the likes of Arcade Fire, Damon Albarn, Kasabian, Coldplay, Black Keys, Elbow, Paolo Nutini, St Vincent and Ed Sheeran. As well as debuts from Clean Bandit, Royal Blood, George Ezra and Agnes Obel.

This eight-part series of Later (which has an extended version on Friday at 11.20pm) features Ryan Adams, art rockers Alt-J, Banks from California and West London’s Jungle. Let’s face it, most us have only heard of Adams, who is no relation to Bryan, but I’m always ready to give Holland the benefit of the doubt.

  • Jools Holland plays York Barbican on Friday, November 7; Harrogate International Centre on Saturday November 22 and Newcastle City Hall on Wednesday, December 3 and 4.

Posh Pawn (Channel 4, 8pm)

A DIVORCEE from Newcastle wants to pawn her £185k necklace to pay for her children's private school fees, and we meet the client who turns up with a seven-foot Terminator model. At least a Swarovski crystal-covered drum kit used on a Kylie Minogue tour gets staff member Patrick excited. Let's hope a widowed pensioner will also make a fortune with her precious rings.

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WE follow M6 teams preparing for one of the stormiest winters in more than four decades. If the Highways Agency is to save its reputation, it's a case of all hands on deck. The winter litter-picking patrols add to the 180,000 sacks of rubbish collected on Britain's motorways every year.