Legendary Live Aid and Live 8 promoter Harvey Goldsmith is on a mission to help revive the fortunes of six entertainment businesses in desperate need of a boost, and set them back on the path to the big time. How do the acts react to Harvey’s unique approach to management? And in a world renowned for overblown egos, who will win the battle of the wills?

Tonight Harvey is working with Deighton Working Men’s Club which, with a debt of £120,000, is struggling to attract audiences in and keep the bailiffs out. Harvey’s major task is to galvanise timid concert secretary Jimmy Mullen into improving the club’s entertainment: no easy feat given that the starting point is bingo attended by 15 people. Can Harvey give the club an encore or will it be curtains forever? The accompanying series, Get Your Act Together: The Showdown , goes behind the scenes of the series and reunites Harvey with each act, on E4 directly after this programme.

Channel 4, Tuesday 1 May 2007, 11.05pm

Legendary Live Aid and Live 8 promoter Harvey Goldsmith is on a mission to help revive the fortunes of six entertainment businesses in desperate need of a boost, and set them back on the path to the big time. How do the acts react to Harvey’s unique approach to management? And in a world renowned for overblown egos, who will win the battle of the wills?

In tonight’s fourth programme Harvey locks horns with ex-Radio 1 breakfast show DJ Mike Reid. He’s now working for Big L, an AM station that’s losing its owners a staggering £50,000 a month. Broadcasting from above a building society in the Essex retirement town of Frinton-on-Sea, Big L is like no other radio station in the UK.

The DJs, who also include David ‘Diddy’ Hamilton, play whatever they like, whenever they like, and when they’re not on air they all live together in the Big L House. Harvey thinks they’re running the station like a tea-party, but despite having no audience and no revenue, everyone at Big L seems convinced that everything’s rosy. As one of the founders of Xfm Harvey knows a thing or two about radio, but when he offers his advice he’s met with the collective deaf ear of the Big L team, who are bizarrely reluctant to take it on board. The accompanying series, Get Your Act Together: The Showdown , goes behind the scenes of the series and reunites Harvey with each act, on E4 directly after this programme.

Tuesday 17th April Channel 4 9pm

Tuesday 10 April 2007

Legendary Live Aid and Live 8 promoter Harvey Goldsmith is on a mission: to help revive the fortunes of six entertainment businesses in desperate need of a boost, and set them back on the path to the big time. How do the acts react to Harvey’s unique approach to management? And in a world renowned for overblown egos, who will win the battle of the wills? The subject of tonight’s third programme is Saxon, once one of the country’s all-conquering heavy metal bands, but now a middle-aged time-warp of a group, still in their leathers and long hair but struggling to sustain a stadium audience in the UK.

They’ve had success in Europe and South America but they’re coasting on an ancient reputation and determined not to change a thing. Enter Harvey, who’s got his work cut out to persuade them that with the right overhaul they could recapture their glory days and win a new audience in their home country. But first he’s got to get past Biff Byford, the band’s boss and lead singer. Cue a monumental battle of wills as they lock horns over the band’s future.

Husband-and-wife opera company Opera Anywhere is run by Mike and Vanessa Woodward from their house in rural Oxfordshire. Their aim is to bring obscure opera to the masses and make it as popular as any other entertainment. But after five years they have yet to make a single penny.

With money and audiences dwindling fast, Opera Anywhere is going nowhere, but they are determined to gamble everything on mounting a modern-day Don Giovanni with a filthy libretto and spiralling budget. Enter Harvey Goldsmith – and cue fireworks!

Channel 4 Tuesday 3 April 2007

This new six-part series sees legendary Live Aid and Live 8 promoter Harvey Goldsmith on a mission: to help revive the fortunes of six entertainment businesses in desperate need of a boost, and set them back on the path to the big time. How will the acts react to Harvey’s unique approach to management? And in a world renowned for overblown egos, who will win the battle of the wills?

The subject of tonight’s first programme is Samantha Mumba. Five years ago she was a teenage pop phenomenon with six hit singles, a platinum album and US record sales in excess of one million under her belt before she turned nineteen. Steven Spielberg cast her in the hit movie The Time Machine . She should have had the world at her feet, but instead it all came crashing down around her; she was dropped by her record label, and the film roles dried up. Five years later Harvey is keen to help put LA-based Mumba back on the road to showbiz glory, but it’s not a smooth path.

At their first meeting in her home town of Dublin she keeps him waiting but promises she’s serious about her intentions and arranges to meet him again in LA to perform her new material for him. A month later in America, Samantha won’t perform and when it looks like she’s a no-show at the dinner Harvey is hosting for her, he threatens to quit the project. Finally she turns up, he likes what he hears and they’re back on track but still Samantha won’t commit to the management deals Harvey has put together.

They are now locked in a battle of wills: she won’t focus, and he won’t give up. The programme culminates in a showcase in London with an audience of the industry’s big hitters, with Samantha appearing in the UK for the first time in her career. Can Harvey figure out what’s eating her before she blows her one chance of a comeback, and will Samantha overcome her fear of performing live? In fact, will she even turn up? An accompanying E4 series – Get Your Act Together: The Showdown – goes behind the scenes of the series and reunites Harvey with each act.

This show will air on Channel 4 on 27/03/2007 at 9pm.

This new reality Tv show will begin on Channel 4 later this month. It will see legendary Live Aid and Live 8 promoter Harvey Goldsmith use his wealth of experience and no-nonsense advice to help six entertainment businesses in desperate need of a boost. His challenge is to reverse the decline and place them back on the road to success in the competitive world of showbiz.

There?s very little Harvey Goldsmith doesn’t know about the entertainment industry. In a career spanning 40 years he?s worked with all the top stars from Bono to Bowie, Madonna to Freddie Mercury, from XFM to the Royal Opera House. He has earned a fearful reputation as a single-minded, straight-talking, successful entrepreneur who doesn?t suffer fools.

In Harvey Goldsmith Presents, Harvey’s latest showbiz challenge will see him attempt to transform a pop star who disappeared to Hollywood and hasn?t been seen since, a British heavy metal band with a European following but ignored in the UK, and a husband-and-wife opera business. Harvey will also be working his magic on a northern working men?s club with dwindling membership and big debts, a local radio station with big name DJs but small audiences and a circus that seems stuck in a time-warp. He?ll work with each act over several months advising them on everything from image to invoices and opening his extensive contacts book to help them get back on their feet.

But how will the acts react to Harvey?s unique approach to management? In an entertainment world renowned for its overblown egos, who will win the battle of the wills?