Flick Colby, Pan's People co-founder, dies

Flick Colby, Pan's People co-founder, dies

Driving force behind Top of the Pops' fondly-remembered dance troupe has died of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 65

Press Association

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 May 2011 17.26 BST


Flick Colby, has died of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 65. Photograph: Philip Day Publicity/PA

The driving force behind Top of the Pops' fondly-remembered dance troupe Pan's People has died of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 65.

Flick Colby was the dancer and choreographer credited with co-founding the group that went on to become an iconic part of British pop culture.

Before the age of the music video, which dawned with the arrival of MTV, the dance troupe provided the visual entertainment when an artist could not appear on the BBC show.

They were not the first such group to appear on the pop programme - they were preceded by the Go-Jos - but they were TOTP's first exclusive set of dancers.

And they came to be as synonymous with the much-loved chart show as cigar-chomping Jimmy Savile and the pounding Led Zeppelin theme tune.

Although Colby was an American who grew up in Clinton, New York, it was on British television that she found fame.

She joined dancers Babs Lord, Ruth Pearson and Dee Dee Wilde and recruited Louise Clarke and Andi Rutherford to form Pan's People in 1966.

At the time, their outfits were seen as somewhat skimpy and their dance routines considered daring. It was, after all, a while before audiences grew accustomed to semi-naked women shimmying provocatively in every other hip hop and dance music video.

As well as being a staple of 1960s and 1970s TOTP, Pan's People featured on a number of other TV shows, including The Two Ronnies.

Although at first Colby was both choreographing the routines and dancing with the group, she later retreated to a behind-the-scenes role only.

She would often have just a few hours to come up with a sequence for a song on TOTP, which may explain the comically literal moves the group sometimes pulled.

They last appeared on the show in April 1976, dancing to Silver Star by The Four Seasons.

When the group split after this final performance, the women were said to have remained close friends.

But Colby eventually moved back to the US, where she married and settled down in Clinton with her husband George and opened a gift shop.

When her husband died earlier this year, Colby was already seriously ill with cancer herself and she never fully recovered from her bereavement, her publicist said.

Her condition deteriorated before finally leading to the bronchial pneumonia she died of at her home in Clinton on Thursday.

Philip Day, who has been Pan's People's publicist for more than 40 years, said: "Challenging as the task was, the ladies, spearheaded by Flick, made it a pleasure.

"Never a moan, always on time and true professionals at all times. I will never see their like again."

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+pan's+people+top+of+the+pops&qpvt=youtube+pan's+people+top+of+the+pops&mid=F75E141161C7D87AD98AF75E141161C7D87AD98A&FORM=LKVR39#
Pan's People dance to Carly Simon's You're So Vain.

^

I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, but in truth the Pan's People dance routines on Top of the Pops were absolutely dreadful. Everything was so LITERAL. ^ The above is a good example of what I mean.

Still, it was the flavour of the time- and I suppose the pressures of devising new choreography for a new song for a weekly TV show must have been immense.

Carly Simon's You're So Vain still sounds great.

The attentive ear will spot Mick Jagger on backing vocals. Mick is said to be one of several candidates for the subject of the song: enjoying his own funeral, as it were.

My Dad liked them, I can't imagine why

Shame about Flick, first I have heard that she had died.