The Why Don't YouTube? Archive - March 18th-24th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
March 18th
1983: Oxford Road Show gave Tona De Brett, singing teacher to the stars, temporary new clients Alison Moyet, Curt Smith of Tears For Fears and Jenni Bellestar.
1989: John Craven returns to territory he knows well, interpreting the news for a Saturday morning audience, as he shows us around the BBC newsroom on Going Live!, walking in on Moira Stewart in situ at the news desk with her handy book of "every British name in the country". Later, in taking the Press Conference and before getting to comment on a clip from All Star Record Breakers, he breaks the news that he's going to leave Newsround, seemingly to everyone's surprise. Someone really is going to edit down and repost the Trevor & Simon routine from 12:43.
1992: rare to see the broom cupboard side on as Andi Peters has to hire Philippa Forrester and her birthdays studio for room as the viewers capitalise on Bucky O'Haremania.
March 19th
1985: Film only sent crews for location reports to the most vital films of the moment, which is why Film 85 visited the set of Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones' Morons From Outer Space, directed by Mike Hodges, who presumably doesn't put this alongside Get Carter or Flash Gordon.
March 20th
1987: a... memorable appearance on The Tube by performance poet Edward Barton (who wrote It's A Fine Day, which Opus III later had a hit with)
1992: a coup de théâtre act on the part of continuity leads into Children's BBC, which has decamped to Crinkley Bottom for the afternoon. Bear in mind this is still during the first series of Noel's House Party, in fact ending a week later, so this was clearly a big family deal already. Andi, Edd and Wilson, who comes the closest he would to showing his face, appear mob handed with Noel before Jonathon Morris turns up at the door with letters from competition winners, one of whom gets their full address read out.
1993: Chris Evans, eventually, is the main guest on Saturday Zoo, gladly mocking the failing GMTV. As you may remember Evans had been caught out on NTV the previous week and in discussing it he accidentally starts that urban myth.
March 21st
1975: Don McLean, the Fourth Doctor you never knew we needed, on Crackerjack. Not to get too over-technical about a throwaway sketch on a kids' show... well, that's exactly what we do, but Brigadier Glaze seems to imply the Time Lords are the Doctor's enemy, almost as if they didn't consult with either Ian Levine or John Nathan-Turner in advance.
1980: Terry Wogan made his BBC TV chat debut hosting Friday Night... Saturday Morning and finally got to meet Larry Hagman, on the same day CBS viewers saw JR being shot.
1991: Tomorrow's World link up live with Mark Goodier at Radio 1 for an exercise in 3D stereo. Also, "who or what is keeping an eye on your chocolates?"
1992: a big Noel's House Party as here comes the Dave Lee Travis Gotcha of legend, DLT getting his live revenge by… bringing a camera with him.
March 22nd
1973: Thames' This Week went to see what it was about David Cassidy that was causing such mayhem as he came over for six gigs in two days at Wembley Arena, when teen girls expressed their love for their idol with a song based on Nice One Cyril and said hero casually wore a Keep Britain Tidy T-shirt.
1976: Otto Frank visits Lesley Judd at Blue Peter with his daughter's actual diary.
1986: Wide Awake Club promotes the Young Ones version of Living Doll, which sounds risky so they play relatively safe with Hank Marvin and, in a rare solo promotional appearance, Christopher Ryan. As if that didn't seem odd enough for that children’s show and that time of morning Tim Healy joins in with the cooking spot.
March 23rd
1979: Kate Bush visits LWT's Saturday Morning Show to promote her first and only tour, where Steve Jones (the Pyramid Game one) seems especially keen to show and get her to comment on Faith Brown's parody.
1983: "something rather more important than the opening of Parliament", A Song For Europe is previewed on Breakfast Time by Terry Wogan, deadpanning all of the increasingly banal questions from voiceover emperor Bruce Hammal. And yes, Tel does bring up the clash between his Radio 2 show and the television exposure.
March 24th
1986: a decent amount of an episode of Rory Bremner's breakthrough series Now - Something Else. Actually the most interesting part of this is Steve Steen and Jim Sweeney doing an improvised sketch with audience suggestions, two years before even the radio version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? made the concept widely understood. One of the first jokes in that programme is about the show that followed it on BBC2 that night, Joan Rivers' chat show Can We Talk? Peter Cook was famously its largely mute second banana and reputedly hated every moment but Dudley Moore guesting allowed them to revive the old act. Kenneth Williams arrived later, as you’ll see alongside Phil Collins and Samantha Fox, which is a fascinating prospect of sorts.
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