Secrets of the Bay City Rollers revealed

Famous for their bubblegum pop hits including Bye, Bye, Baby, Give a Little Love and Saturday Night, as well as wearing too-short tartan-trimmed trousers, the Bay City Rollers were heralded as the biggest band since The Beatles.

Selling over 300 million albums worldwide, the Scottish group attracted fans of all ages, but particularly adolescent girls, with a phenomenon known as Rollermania sweeping across the globe during the 1970s.

However, behind the scenes of the Rollers, there was a dark side.

This documentary, presented by Nicky Campbell, shows how an endless stream of young groupies, who used to follow the band members around, led to exploitation.

From its early days, the group were managed by the imposing and controversial former big band leader Tam Paton.

He was notorious for his rigid control over all aspects of the Rollers’ career, including the shuffling group members in and out at a very high rate.

In 1982, Paton was convicted of gross indecency with two teenage boys at a time when the legal age of consent for gay male sex was 21.

He was released after serving one year of a three-year jail sentence.

Then, in 2003, he was accused of a string of sex abuse crimes, including having attempted to rape guitarist Pat McGlynn in 1977.

Police decided there was not enough evidence for a prosecution, and Paton died in 2009, but Campbell is hoping this new documentary will shine a fresh light on the facts.

He goes in search of the Rollers – who hailed from his own home town of Edinburgh – and learns the dark secrets of the abusive Svengali who managed them.

He hears painful recollections from people who were around at the time, and interviews former members of the band, learning how, as their fame faded, it became clear Paton was not the champion and protector he appeared.

It’s a subject that clearly resonates with Campbell, who has also been on ITV1 from Monday to Wednesday this week in a new series of Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace, alongside Davina McCall.

In July last year, Nicky revealed he had been the victim of sexual abuse in Edinburgh 50 years ago and described how he is still haunted after witnessing a teacher abuse one of his schoolmates in a changing room at the Edinburgh Academy.

The 62-year-old presenter has also spoke out about the abuse he faced and how he was beaten up by a teacher, claiming his mother’s complaints were “hushed up”.

“What I witnessed was horrific and I realised how much it’s just a part of my psychological furniture – always there,” he says.

The past understandably still affects Campbell, and he can therefore fully sympathise with what some of the Bay City Rollers and their fans went through.

By reassessing the sex crimes that surrounded the band, and the climate that existed at the time to allow the abuse to take place, he will be hoping for some sort of closure to this dark element of the tartan-clad teen sensations’ legacy.