June 24th
1982: with the other members of Shalamar unavailable Jeffrey Daniel gets a Top Of The Pops showcase for his bodypopping, worked out a routine in his hotel room and incorporated a backslide someone else would take on with his help for his own TV performance the following March and make world famous.
1983: A Midsummer Night's Tube takes up all of five hours of Channel 4. Within the first five minutes Jools has disappeared in a limo - he reappears at a fair an hour later where they can't get a cameraman on the ground - and Paula quickly realises she can't present the show, interview Sir Les Patterson *and* hold three month old Fifi but has typically given it a good shot. Other highlights include Jools being helicoptered across the south of France to meet Duran Duran and make them look a bit up themselves, Malcolm McLaren explaining how he invented skipping, Robert Palmer helping introduce the concept of African music, Nick Heyward claiming Clare Grogan ripped off Natassja Kinski's look while sitting next to her, Paula falling over Steve Lillywhite and lots of Mark Miwurdz. The on-screen closedown continuity features no studio sound for a long time but lots of gallery talkback.
1987: Alert, UTENSILS - Philip Schofield sings Ulysses 31.
1995: World Of Wonder's public access venture Takeover TV was an early sounding board for a whole host of future cult stars. This is the most prime of examples, not least as it's one of two episodes from that first series in which the links are voiced by Adam Buxton, who also supplies his own sketch starring Joe Cornish. Among others getting airtime include Graham Norton in a lemon jacket investigating council flat lifts and Armstrong and Miller as their Swedish hair metal gods Strijka, alongside infamous Druid campaigner Arthur Uther Pendragon and a woman with bats.
1995: for a couple of years Glastonbury belonged to Channel 4, where a dangerously overstaffed line-up of presenters seemed to be fitting the music around their sketches and features, which is a good part of why the rights got taken off them after this. Somewhere in the midst of it all Noel Gallagher played Wonderwall to an audience including a nonplussed (and still in Take That, but for barely days more) Robbie Williams, before anyone outside the band (and presumably associates) had heard it.
June 25th
1975: You Must Be Joking put the cream of the Anna Scher Children's Theatre's early teen comedy talent into their own uniquely irreverent for the time slapstick-enabled sketch show under the watchful eye of Roger Price, who would invent The Tomorrow People and then move to Canada and do much the same thing as this show but with more gunge, with the hugely influential You Can't Do That On Television. Written and performed by Ray Burdis and John Blundell, who two years later were making Scum, the breakout star was Pauline Quirke, eighteen months later to be seen in her own Coren-angering series with fellow graduates Flintlock and fortunately without resident adult foil Jim Bowen. For some reason not in that version is another musical interlude featuring two future hitmakers, Gary Kemp and the surprisingly tuneful Phil Daniels.
1983: a surfeit of Toksvigs, courtesy of Les Dennis and Dustin Gee and seemingly much to everyone else's surprise - Alec walking across the screen grinning, for one - play the Sandwich Quiz on No. 73.
1987: Larry Grayson's last TV work was the one and only series of Anglia game show for couples Sweethearts, which ended thus.
June 26th
1978: late June is the time Blue Peter generally went away for the summer expedition so there were a lot of departures around now down the years. John Noakes took his leave, in some bitterness over his personal relationship with Biddy Baxter, after twelve and a quarter years so got a gift befitting his... er... well, he possibly never slept again.
1989: meanwhile Mark Curry exited with a farewell montage of all his cock-ups. Caron Keating's outfit cannot be allowed to pass without comment, and on the second video nor can the wonderfully comic timed reveal of one of his surprise "guests".
June 27th
1983: having trouble with the cat there, Peter? Sarah Greene, once the year's book has been introduced, leaves Blue Peter and a whole host of friends, colleagues, former report subjects, scouts and a pony show up to say farewell. "He's seen more of Sarah underwater than anyone else!"
1988: this Blue Peter farewell was even bigger as Biddy Baxter retired from the programme and was given its highest honour in the days before it was granted to any famous person they met.
1992: Saint & Greavsie ends in that time honoured rickshaw/Rolling Stones fashion. The first links outdoors have obviously been recorded before the previous day’s final by the fact they don't talk about the result until they're back in the studio but do introduce highlights of the semi-finals, interspersed with Chris Eubank in Portugal and Saint bungee jumping.
June 28th
1980: David Prowse's appearance on Saturday Night At The Mill is partially accompanied by striking members of the Musicians Union attempting a fitting form of direct protest.
1986: the third of the Clive James On Television specials - it had three series between 1982 and 1984, then a series of one-offs until 1988 when he buggered off to do his solemn BBC New Year's Eve duties - covers the development of advertising for women, car commercials, old people, female weight and shape, and ending as you'd expect with Japanese game shows. But not that one.
1990: Up Yer News was BSB's nightly satire show and accidental breeding ground for a great number of future stars, on this day featuring routines from Jo Brand and some very early Armando Iannucci character work.
2002: BBC Choice put Adam & Joe on live Glastonbury duty all weekend, where they were joined by John Peel and John Peel. Later Lauren Laverne provides a dramatic reading from Will Young's first book.
June 29th
1980: the first edition of 20th Century Box, a Janet Street-Porter LWT pop culture concept fronted by then-NME journalist Danny Baker, attempts an overview of the whole history of rock'n'roll, with the aid of John Lydon, Phil Oakey and The Police's Andy Summers.
1985: an all star guest list, and a horse, for Ethel's wedding at the end of that series of No. 73. The wedding band are, naturally, anarcho soul-punks the Redskins.
1985: Russ Abbot's Madhouse closes, a summer special marking the end of his LWT stint and Russ getting to sing us out with his difficult second single.
1986: Des Lynam followed the World Cup final by trying to directly sell off studio pundit Gary Lineker to the man sitting next to him, Barcelona coach Terry Venables, receiving a telling-off from third wheel Lawrie McMenemy for his troubles. In fact Lineker later revealed his visible embarrassment was because he and Barca had already secretly come to an agreement.
1992: thirty-plus years and counting of Dentistry begins in Dictionary Corner. It takes a lot to distract from the start of a new Countdown series pitting Batman against Wayne, which Richard Whiteley is absolutely all over.
1996: mention Beadle's About now and the majority of people will, we suspect, think of the alien crash landing in the Dorset garden of one Janet Elford. What's interesting about it being such a well known clip, which was from the first in a new series, was that that was the final series, being watched by an appalling for the time approximately 1.5 million viewers. Obviously we would have twigged the moment Rob Curling turned up as a reporter. He never worked for Meridian!
June 30th
1979: an infamous edition, maybe the only such, of the Noel-fronted first Juke Box Jury revival featuring an eclectic panel of Joan Collins, Alan Freeman, Elaine Paige and (as introduced) Johnny Rotten. Incidentally, this was a few months into the period for which Lydon has repeatedly claimed to have been banned by the BBC due to comments about Jimmy Savile, a period which also included appearing on Top Of The Pops with a single - the first since that interview, in fact - not yet inside the top 40.
1993: yet another of Danny Baker's key TV Heroes, this time Peter Glaze and his role as Crackerjack's stage ham firecracker. Sadly the clip with Tony Hancock is from one of his own shows rather than joining the fun, but stand by for soupcons of the infamous shots at Golden Years and Something For The Girl With Everything.
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