The Why Don't YouTube? Archive - April 29th-May 5th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
April 30th
1990: Viz: The Documentary, a hard hitting Channel 4 expose with comment from Michael Palin, Harry Enfield, Auberon Waugh and Keith Chegwin, plus some Bob Godfrey animation if you hang around long enough.
1995: Elvis Costello pops by the Football Italia gantry and James Richardson effortlessly adapts the day's Serie A scores to fit.
May 1st
1979: Tom Baker, direct from the set of The Creature From The Pit, monologues spectacularly on the 400th edition of Animal Magic.
1991: Jonathan Ross, on Tonight With…, gets the Nolans to cover the Smiths' Panic. Johnny Marr liked it, apparently.
1993: TV's Saturday morning surrealist cavalcade in the vague shape of a kids' magazine show What's Up Doc? reaches the end of its first series and absolutely everyone is in. That includes regular whipping boy Frank Sidebottom who gets to sing part of Panic On The Streets Of Timperley, fantastic half shandies and all, which we suspect cast and crew enjoyed a lot more than the kids. Who would bring vultures and baby eagleowls into a studio like this where Yvette visits Billy Box and family's house and then gets Hothouse Flowers nearly as covered in water as her? The only downside is the reminder that this is the end of the run with a reintroduction to the Gimme 5 team including Nobby the sheep, but the order of things is soon restored as Jenny Powell gets covered in ghee. (Stop it.)
1997: there was a General Election that night. You may remember it. BBC2 countered the proper coverage with The Election Night Armistice, featuring a cast of millions, some fairly obvious (Coogan, Eldon), some as oblique as the politics-meets-alternative-entertainment situation warranted. David Aaronovitch and Jenny Powell - together at last!
May 2nd
1977: before becoming BBC LE mainstays Syd and Eddie made one series of The Little & Large Tellyshow for Thames, starting with Syd apparently being treated as a curling stone by Eddie before he launches into a remarkable machine gunning of bad impressions. There's even topicality as Eddie refers to the Ashfield by-election three days earlier, where the Conservatives overhauled a seemingly safe Labour majority, as a lead-in for a political one-liner that gets a sizeable round of applause, and then launches a running gag about Mah Na Mah Na, which entered the top 30 that very week. Just to remind you that this is 1977 Thames LE, the guests are Lyn Paul and Berni Flint, plus the Stylistics who are alone in not indulging in an introductory routine with the pair but do find themselves clapping along to the traditional "Syd sings a country song while Eddie does impressions" ending.
1983: one of those comedic moments that always gets brought up by people moaning about modern Coronation Street "misery" as Fred Gee takes Bet Lynch and Betty Turpin to Lyme Park and on setting off back to Weatherfield has a little issue. Feels like they don't explain what happened to Annie Walker very well.
1988: two days after Scott Fitzgerald finished second behind Celine Dion in the Eurovision Song Contest he evaluated the experience and deflected suggestions of it being an anti-British fix on Open Air. Neil Innes makes a surprise cameo.
1988: uploaded by Jimmy Cricket, highlights of the Children's Royal Variety Performance are numerous, but let's just entice you with Rene Artois introducing Bananarama, Lulu as Peter Pan, Chas & Dave with dancers, Roald Dahl, Imelda Staunton as Dorothy, Nicholas Parsons as Norman Wisdom's decorating sidekick and Derek Griffiths dressed as a jester performing the Emperor's New Clothes. As for the big finish, Ken Dodd on... well, let's not spoil the surprise.
May 3rd
1979: another important general election day/night, and it was left to Richard Stilgoe to sum up the results.
1986: The Saturday Picture Show spent part of its week in Paris, which gave Mark Curry the chance to showcase some children's programming from around the world and meet a top French exponent for sundaes.
1990: Tomorrow's World marks its 25th anniversary by looking forward to the next 25 years. If anything some of them are undervalued.
1993: again, Children's Royal Variety Performance-a-go-go, and this year there's a loose heroic comic strip character theme that's basically a just dissimilar enough to avoid a lawsuit Indiana Jones, played by the natural choice Billy Pearce who at one point is required to introduce the kids to Land Of 1000 Dances in between rescuing a rare ruby stolen by the Two Marks behind Bill Oddie's back. As well as assorted kids' favourites - Jimmy Cricket, Sonia, Ronn Lucas, Little & Large - the adventure involves Gorden Kaye singing, Leslie Grantham as a ship's captain, those blokes who pretended to be Thunderbirds characters and Take That, who the audience appear to recognise from their trousers.
1998: Children's BBC Sunday morning show Fully Booked with Cleopatra, Eurovision hopeful Imaani, Saint Etienne (the performance falls off the end but Gail Porter has a brief chat with Sarah), Natalie Casey and Jeremy Edwards representing Hollyoaks, the musical version of Saturday Night Fever and... John Shuttleworth. Oof indeed.
May 4th
1975: David Purley was awarded the George Medal in 1973 after unsuccessfully attempting to save another Formula 1 driver from an inferno (which features here in unsparing footage) and in 1977 suffered what for the next 26 years would officially be recorded as the highest G-force on instant deceleration ever survived. Halfway between the two he had John Noakes as his mechanic for a Formula 5000 race on Go With Noakes. Of course John gets to drive.
1982: TVS conducts a 3D experiment via glasses given away via the regional TV Times (not included here), their pop-science show The Real World and a feather duster. The whole thing would be taken to a national level towards the end of the year.
May 5th
1977: Joy Sarney's sole hit got her onto Top Of The Pops. If you don't know the song it starts badly and then plummets when... you'll see.
1981: Rik Mayall made his TV debut on the first edition of television’s first alternative comedy showcase Boom Boom Out Go The Lights the previous October; a follow-up meant he could bring his Dangerous Brother along.
1997: despite starting on April 2nd Newsround was celebrating its 25th anniversary into May and its Bank Holiday Monday crowning event was Newsround's Rock 'n' Roll Years.
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