The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - April 1st-7th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
April 1st
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Channel 4 decorate early afternoon with opera and John Hurt readings, then after the ads Anything We Can Do, an educational series on computers in the form of a family drama in which this week they're introduced to Prestel; That's Life via David Bellamy introduced us to London Zoo's new Lirpa Loof in a gag suggested by a member of the zoo’s management themselves - and it was Kenny Baker inside the costume.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the latest in the occasional animated tales of The World Of Peter Rabbit & Friends features Prunella Scales as Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Derek Jacobi as Jeremy Fisher, an eleven year old Rebecca Hall and a live action Niamh Cusack as Beatrix Potter; Jeremy Vine reports for BBC news on the latest in the crackdown on video nasties. Wait, in 1994?!
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: BBC Three's all too irreverent celebrity news show Liquid News ends after four years. Pre-fringe Claudia Winkleman and Paddy O'Connell take the show into oblivion but it's original and late host Christopher Price who deservedly gets the sign-off; Pat And Mo turns the feud between Messrs Evans and Harris, as it was at the time, into a bubble episode laced with a series of flashbacks explaining their enmity; old lags turned unsolved crime squad New Tricks' properly kicks off its twelve series lifespan after the previous year's pilot. Mike Moran wrote the theme, before you say it.
ALSO... Lulu had been the resident singer on The Les Dawson Show so for the end of the series in 1978 they duet and dance to Makin' Whoopee, followed by Les at the piano and Lulu at the knitting.
April 2nd
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thames' first visit to Radio Newtown and Andy Hamilton's first TV series of his own The Kit Curran Radio Show, starring Denis Lawson as the titular low-rent DJ trying not to get fired by Brian Wilde.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: As previously covered, Konnie Huq's first TV work was at 6.10am in GMTV kids' language quiz show Eat Your Words. Are... are those dreadlocks?; the last of The Easter Stories monologue series features Punt and Dennis as gardeners observing goings-on around the garden of Gethsemane; Suzanne Vega appears on BBC2's Words And Music, though the latter turned out to be an optional extra as she introduces and performs the acapella original of Tom's Diner.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Christopher Eccleston, once he's taken the hat off, explains to BBC Breakfast what the Ninth Doctor will be like; Simon Thomas' Blue Peter chocolate rabbit cooking spot is observed at close quarters by Dick and Dom. Some personal issues being let out there, gentlemen?
ALSO... the final original New Faces, er, final in 1978 opens with the orchestra's version of the Star Wars theme so can only go upwards from there. An overmanned judges' desk includes Danny La Rue, Mickie Most, Tony Hatch and a representative of MGM Las Vegas.
April 3rd
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Paul Watson, with the aid of the Wilkins family of Reading, invents the modern social concept of the fly on the wall documentary, with an attendant political and media storm and calls for a ban, in The Family; with Polly James leaving The Liver Birds after four series Beryl is married off to Robert (Jonathan Lynn). There are, of course, complications en route.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: as well as builders and stock car racers young people's business achievement series Sparks exposes what Radio Times calls "Newcastle youth's latest shock-horror", Viz magazine. Jon Glover, the future Mr Choldmondley-Warner, introduces as Roger Mellie; a Windrush arrival who intends to retire to Jamaica takes his daughters for a retirement meal only to find his plans ruined in Lear-riffing Play For Today King, featuring Thomas Baptiste, Josette Simon, Clarke Peters and Pam St Clement.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Richard Horne went on Right To Reply to ask why Channel 4 weren't covering his love, dominoes, so they had him present coverage of the Dominoes World Cup in Jamaica.
ALSO... six days ahead of the real thing Newsround reveals the results of its 1992 mock general election with Peter Snow giving the graphics a trial run and Krishnan Guru-Murthy training for his own future with a panel of politicians including Tony Blair.
April 4th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: All In A Day captures a day (5th September 1973)'s worth of events in Sheffield in the verite style, with a (graphically depicted) birth, a marriage, a woman dancing frantically in a pub and a bread van reversing into someone's living room window.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: A Song For Europe time once again, with Sinitta and, two months before her chart breakthrough, Hazell Dean among the losing candidates, Ken Bruce, Paul Coia and Colin Berry among the regional judges.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: a no holds barred expose by Fab FM's finest, Smashie And Nicey: End Of An Era.
ALSO... the self-explanatory The Parlour Game, invariably devised by Gyles Brandreth, only went out on TVS but got some decent sized guests, this one from 1985 featuring Alfred Marks, Patricia Hayes and Arthur Mullard against Liza Goddard, Tommy Boyd and Patti Boulaye.
April 5th
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the greatest crossover event in etc etc as Richard Whiteley and Carol Vorderman take on Cross Wits; an LA woman moves to Cambridge to become involved with the university in Honey For Tea, and who better to play such a sturdy American lead role as *checks notes* Felicity Kendall? She's no Hugh Laurie; a two months from death Dennis Potter's spellbinding, wide-ranging final interview, with Melvyn Bragg.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: David Jason, Hywel Bennett and Roy Hudd comedy-drama about them as young men trying to get their end away The Quest had been a hit in 2002 - The Second Quest has them recalling an ill-fated similar trip to the Isle of Man.
ALSO... Film '82 was the year Barry Norman decided to do Omnibus instead, actor Maria Aitken being a three week stand-in for usual stand-in Iain Johnstone. Afterwards John Humphrys reads special news headlines three days after the Falklands invasion.
April 6th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: "If all the judges were men, which they're not, I'm sure this group would get a lot of votes. The song is called... oh, it's Napoleon!" Eurovision comes to Brighton, David Vine is beside himself and the rest is literal history.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Mike Smith talks to Culture Club - well, one of them, the others are reduced to sitting around - for Breakfast Time before heading outside the stage door to meet the Georgealikes.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Q.E.D., with John Peel on voiceover, investigates former Liverpool player Craig Johnston's prototype for a new type of football boot, which became the Adidas Predator as later sported by Beckham, Zidane and Gerrard; Dirtysomething is a Screen Two about a love affair between New Age crusties trying to adapt to suburbia, starring Rachel Weisz and the ever reliable Paul Reynolds with Bernard Hill, sporting a Yosser tache, Walter Sparrow and Rufus Sewell.
April 7th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Smiths' "Paul Morressey" - someone must have got him mixed up with the Warhol acolyte film director one of whose films provides the still on their self-titled album - and Johnny Marr talk to the kids on TV-am's Data Run; Channel 4's Ear-Say visits Morecambe so Gary Crowley can drop in on a Northern Soul revival. Richard Searling is featured. So is Ian Levine, cut off before he can say too much; the League Cup final two weeks earlier was Liverpool vs Everton, so Granada sent their cameras to Wembley along with the fans for Home And Away.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Gristle Family from Dizzy Heights were given their/Steve Nallon's own spin-off series as a public access channel of their own, The House Of Gristle; the Pet Shop Boys do Liberation on Top Of The Pops with state of the art graphics, faux-religious garb, and Lucas and Walliams in the front row at 3:04. David seems to be having "a moment"; Michael Aitkens moves very swiftly on from the failure of Honey For Tea by casting Joanna Lumley not as a Russian or something but as a spoilt debased aristocrat whose husband takes the family cash with him in comedy-drama Class Act.
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