Aidan Smith's TV week: Secrets of the Bay City Rollers (ITV1), Popmaster TV (More4), The Trouble With KanYe (BBC2), Riches (ITV1)

Before the Proclaimers’ gig at Leith Links this month, a selection of singalong records by other bands boomed out of the speakers to whip up the crowd.

The Bay City Rollers' dark tale is explored by Nicky Campbell.

I wondered if this was brave or foolish of the Reid twins - many wouldn’t risk being upstaged by such a raucous playlist - but then decided, particularly in the case of the Bay City Rollers’ “Shang-A-Lang”, that it was more likely an act of generosity. A tribute to a bunch of working-class Scottish lads like them, who’d risen higher but fallen lower, deep into pop’s murkiest depths.

And the punters gave it laldy that night, disregarding that brief historical moment of snobbishness when the Rollers were deemed naff and something approaching cultural cringe, to commemorate the Creamola Foam fizz of a song which reached No 2 in 1974 - every “do-wop-be-dooby-do-ay”of it.

Perhaps some at the show were unaware of the Rollers’ fate, though this seems unlikely. Everyone in Edinburgh must know about Tam Paton, their monster of a manager. For the truly innocent, however, there’s Secrets of the Bay City Rollers (ITV1), which doesn’t spare the grisly detail.

Ken Bruce has taken his Popmaster quiz from radio onto TV. Picture: Jamie Simpson/Channel 4

The documentary is made all the more sad by Nicky Campbell taking on the story, with the presenter having suffered his own sexual abuse in the capital, at the hands of a teacher. Whether “little boys at a posh school or lads from the housing schemes who desperately wanted to be pop stars”, the exploitation by those placed in positions of trust to look after them was “the same”.

At first I’m not sure Campbell is going to get very far. Stuart “Woody” Wood, who’d gouged “Tollcross Rebels” in an arm to save himself a beating from the local street-gang, doesn’t want to open up about life in the band he joined at 16 as a means of escape. Regarding memories, he says, “if it’s something I don’t like I put it in a room, lock it, seal it up and then throw the key away.”

An old clip of Paton, a potato merchant to trade, had him admitting he’d got into pop management because he was “secretly an egotistical person”. The secret was much darker. His charges were forbidden girlfriends and their movements strictly controlled. Press releases stressed they only drank milk.

Nobby Clark, the original lead singer, recalls Paton telling the band that a sure way to get ahead was for one of them to sleep with Chris Denning, the Radio 1 DJ who was convicted of sexual offences. Gert Magnus, talking for the first time having been recruited from Denmark at the age of 15, remembers parties at Paton’s Ratho mansion where Jimmy Savile was present. “Famous people would disappear into rooms with boys. I thought that was normal in this business.”

Riches charts the family power struggle in a cosmetics empire

Magnus was able to repel Paton’s advances. Pat McGlynn, another who fled gang culture to join the Rollers, wasn’t so fortunate. Handed a pill to help him sleep in readiness for the next day’s photo-shoot, he woke up with Paton raping him. Similar befell Les McKeown, the third from the band to die two years ago, and his son Jubei says: “My dad was broken, he never found peace.”

The Rollers were tartan-swathed teenybopper terrors. Fainting girls stopped every gig and once at the Radio 1 Roadshow chased their idols into a lake. Tony Blackburn produces one of the all-time great pop quotes: “I was with a Womble in a speedboat and we were trying to rescue these kids.”

For Campbell, delving further into the sordid saga stirs his bad memories: “Three in the morning, lying in bed, you see shadows on the ceiling. The time in the changing-rooms … he did that.” But he seeks out a cheery ending to his film, reuniting with Woody, still performing “Shang-A-Lang”, who tells him: “S****y things happened but the excitement was genuine, the joy was genuine. You can’t take all of that away.”

There’s a lot of music around this week and here’s more: Popmaster TV (More4), the small-screen version of the popular Ken Bruce radio quiz hosted by … Ken Bruce.

Good face for radio? Hey, that’s mean. So why’s he trapped in what looks like the spool of a giant cotton reel or a steroid-pumped Fruit Polo? A fair question. But I like the set. It’s a quaint reminder of how all quizzes were, before the networks started chucking money at Michael McIntyre and Gordon Ramsay, telling them: “Build what you want, as big as you want.”

Stuck in his Fruit Polo - lemon flavour - does he resemble Holly from Red Dwarf? Or Toy Story’s Mr Potato-Head? Actually, squinting sleepily at the studio lights, he’s one of the Flower Pot Men. Is it Bill or is it Ben? It’s Ken! Right away he declares: “The UK’s best-loved radio music quiz is now on the telly. You don’t just get to hear us, you get to see us, too. Oh, we are spoiling you!” Silly old BBC for allowing him to move from Radio 2 to Greatest Hits, and passing on the chance to trademark Popmaster.

Mind you, the Beeb never trademarked Dave Lee Travis’ Radio Snooker either and now, seeing this, DLT might well be raging. (“You b******s! I wanted to make that switch to the goggle-box. Didn’t you get my weekly memos?” “But Dave, Radio Snooker on TV would have had to have been … Snooker. The, um, essential mystery would have been lost.”).

Anyway, Popmaster TV is a cosy little show under Bruce’s command. It’s the polar opposite of Never Mind the Buzzcocks which could provoke storm-offs. The host indulges in time-honoured cheery banter with the contestants, including Davie from Stirling who sings in an Ocean Colour Scene tribute band called - winningly - Ocean Colour Scheme. But be warned: there are some alarming moments. For years we’ve heard Bruce recite sexy song titles and been glad it was radio. Now we have to see him: “Of course, two points, it’s ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ … ”

Here’s a prediction: Ye - the artist formerly known as Kanye West - will never appear on Popmaster TV. I don’t think rap is how Ken rolls (though West once sampled King Crimson, which is how I roll). More to the point, he’s exploded his legacy by becoming a Hitler-admiring, Holocaust-denying bam who wears “White Lives Matter” T-shirts and has designs on becoming an apparently more-Trump-than-Trump US President.

In The Trouble with KanYe (BBC2) Mobeen Azhar peers down the West rabbit-hole, confronts a few acolytes with troubles of their own but can’t quite get to the man himself. In a shoe store, West’s branded trainers fly off the shelves. “They’re ugly,” admits the manager, adding that a plain, old Adidas label - this commercial tie-up like others has since been cancelled - wouldn’t have folks trading their cars to afford them. So now for West it’s ugly ideas.

The problem for any drama about succession is having to follow Succession. Featuring a black British cast and centering on a cosmetics empire, Riches (ITV1) may remind you more of Dallas and Dynasty in its soapiness, though it lacks a JR or an Alexis. A fruit bowl is tipped over in the opener but I’ll need more than that to encourage me back.