The Don Lane Show

Filmed: Monday morning (Swedish time zone), 21 February 1977

Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Broadcast: Monday 21 February 1977, LIVE, Channel 9, Australia

Release status: See below

Duration: approx. 30 minutes

Shown in: Australia

Additional information

Don Lane was an American-born talk show host and singer. He became best-known for his television career in Australia, especially for hosting The Don Lane Show which aired on the Nine Network from 1975 to 1983.

In this episode, he interviewed ABBA live by satellite and they mainly talked about their imminent tour of Australia. The video of Knowing Me Knowing You was shown.

This is the interview when Agnetha and Björn were asked if their daughter Linda had realised who they were and Björn replies, "She called me Father this morning!".

The full segment was originally on a Umatic tape until the time that the 1976 show was transferred in July 2006. The tape had been unspooled so it had to be re-spooled and the end had come off the spool and had eaten into the tape itself either cutting or chemically affecting it so that when it was played it went into bits as it disintegrated inside the machine. After many attempts, only 3 minutes were saved. However, the likelihood is that it was gone 20 or more years ago. We can perhaps just hope that SVT (if it was them who arranged the satellite broadcast to Australia) may have a copy in their archives.

Don Lane died 21 October 2009.

In the VIDEO section, you can see the salvaged 20 seconds of the actual interview.  The audio clips of the whole interview are constantly blocked by YouTube due to copyright (even thought it's only talking and no music).

Click here for a newspaper advert in The Herald from 21 February 1977 promoting the show.  It says, "Abba - on the Don Lane Show tonight!  (Direct by satellite from Sweden).  Don Lane interviews Abba!  By satellite from Sweden. With a film of their fantastic hit 'Knowing me, knowing you'.  Never seen before in Australia!"

The interview was repeated the following afternoon (unadvertised) during one of the kid's cartoon shows for those who were not old enough to stay up late enough to watch it live.

The only available snippet in the archives of this programme was been officially released on The Best Of The Don Lane Show on 11 August 2004. Unfortunately only this clip (about 9 seconds) is on the DVD, not any other ABBA appearance as it would appear that this is the only thing remaining in the archives that hasn't been lost or wiped.

Agnetha - she's wearing the same outfit she wore in the Knowing Me, Knowing You PROMO

Thanks to Philip Muytjens, Ian Cole, David Fyfe, Peter Kennedy and Harold Hanlon c/o ABBAMAIL (no longer online) and ABBA Village.

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