The Why Don't YouTube? Archive - May 20th-26th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
May 20th
1982: Adam Ant, in extending the storytelling brief of Goody Two Shoes, stages a theatrical takeover of the whole Top Of The Pops studio.
1982: fresh from winning the first Perrier award at Edinburgh, the Cambridge Footlights Revue of legend - Fry, Laurie, Thompson, Slattery, Paul Shearer and Penny Dwyer - bring The Cellar Tapes to BBC2.
1983: if you're not going to be actually playing live on your TV appearance make a virtue of it, as the B-52s did on Channel 4's Switch.
1989: something makes us suspect Fuzzbox were miming on Get Fresh.
1993: Eldorado was struggling enough before Ruby Wax turned up in town as part of The Full Wax. Everyone mocks themselves and the show which is game given it was seven weeks ahead of being put out of its misery.
1993: Rik Mayall Presents... was as the non-specific title suggests an anthology of six dark comedies that started with Micky Love, a black farce/tragicomedy written by Peter Morgan and apparently Rik's own favourite, in which he plays the titular ageing cheesy quiz show host who's not pitched a million miles away from Richie Rich and was apparently once Bill Grundy. In his megalomania he gets to hear inaccurate chatter that his show is about to be replaced by one hosted by a much younger man, played by Alan Cumming, which causes his slow breakdown. Stuart Hall being a big part of the denouement, never mind a Cyril Smith cameo, really don't help its cause but Mayall plays it beautifully off against a strong and varied cast - Jennifer Ehle as his conflicted PA, Eleanor Bron as head of programming with deputy Peter Capaldi, Nick Hancock as exposition, Anne Reid, Freddie ‘Parrot Face’ Davies as a cleaner, Sarah Stockbridge as Micky's special friend, Damian Lewis in his TV debut, plus as themselves William Roache, Malcolm McLaren and, obviously not at all influential on the character, Hughie Green right at the start.
May 21st
1981: Paul McDowell's Newsround reports on the future of cycling. Rocket launchers, of course. Not really, it's Norman Fowler wanting answers to cyclist safety concerns. Nobody filmed is wearing a helmet, that might be one answer. Meanwhile Michael Cole is sent to the Cairngorms to see where a set of ski lifts might be built around some roaming reindeer.
1982: Afternoon Plus crosses the streams as it visits the BBC World Service for an insight on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary and in the wake of Falklands coverage criticism. Daytime ITV was like this once.
1988: for years we understandably assumed Gilbert The Alien's suggestion to Drummie from Aswad on Get Fresh was an urban myth but no, here it is overshadowing a Bros feature and nine seconds of Frank Sidebottom.
2003: Blue Peter gets itself in the Eurovision spirit in the only way this era of the show knew how - through song and dance, of course, with the team as both Brotherhood Of Man (Matt Baker looking disconcertingly like Peter Wyngarde) and Bucks Fizz, Konnie as a casting-blind Sandie Shaw, Simon Thomas as a post-Powers Cliff and Liz as Gina G, we suspect with some vocal sweetening going on. Still better than Jemini on the night.
May 22nd
1969: Sportsnight With Coleman reaches the final of its competition to find a new commentator for the following year's World Cup. Coleman's own idea, somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 entrants (including a teenage Clive Tyldesley) were whittled down to a final six of blind auditionees. The winner was a controversial choice internally, supposedly only beating the still active footballer Ian St John because judge Sir Alf Ramsey told the BBC he wouldn’t let them talk to his England team if a Scot won. The other runners-up had more than decent careers too, on ITV, BBC radio and Junior Choice, and the Beeb then hired Barry Davies that summer anyway.
1971: John Cleese and Eric Idle take on ITV's football output for LWT arts series Aquarius.
1982: ABC and their silver suits join Peter Powell on Get Set For Summer for the premiere of The Look Of Love video and a lot of stilted responses. Then they get corralled, possibly without having been informed in advance, into counting balls for the Video Vote which creates a distracting backing for Powell's chat with failed electropop hype Philip Jap.
1986: Spitting Image engineer an in-studio Top Of The Pops appearance to mark The Chicken Song's second week at number one. Note your hosts advertising Sport Aid.
May 23rd
1973: Monty Python's First Farewell Tour was coming to an end in Leeds when Look North caught them and some spare costumes on the Moors entertaining themselves.
1983: with Return Of The Jedi approaching Anthony Daniels, who as we all know and Selina Scott reminds us played "C3P10", talks to Breakfast Time about acting against nothing. Sadly we don't see his turn as newspaper reviewer.
1986: Pebble Mill At One ends, the not really highlight but let's say it is for the awkward nature being Paul Coia discovering the pitfalls of picking the wrong one of the two people (he says) with marker penned T-shirts on live TV, at 22:53. The closedown jamboree also involves a Sport Aid-sponsored helicopter fly-in, Five Star circumnavigating the building in song, Michael Bentine, Su Pollard in a big yellow wig, Jan Leeming and as many clips as you’d hope for.
1988: Horizon enters the BBC News office on 22nd March to see their new newsgathering technology and production of the big daytime news bulletins in action, on a busy news day involving an attack on a tanker in the Gulf, industrial action at P&O, an anti-litter initiative and later added to with a story involving sectarian murders in Belfast that the BBC itself gets dragged into, though as that's not what the crew is strictly there for that part isn't dwelled upon. All of that leaves Tim Sebastian ultimately useless.
1988: the BBC Six O'Clock News was, in Sue Lawley's own words, rather invaded, by a group protesting against Clause 28, which outlawed the promotion of homosexuality in certain areas. The gallery reacted with due calm and assurance, while News At Ten gladly reported the story with an artist's impression of events which suggests Paul Gascoigne was one of the protestors. The following Friday Central Weekend invited one of the women along as part of a related debate.
1993: Les Dawson, Bea Arthur and Jerry Lee Lewis is a mixed (if more piano-based than usual) line-up for Aspel & Company, although given this was a week after the Planet Hollywood farrago he was probably just glad of the wide conversational parameters. Aspel doesn't directly refer to the chat though Dawson makes a passing reference, but that's not the end of his problems with visiting American dignitaries as Jerry Lee, who has Ronnie Wood in his band, assumes the queue for the start of part three is for him and tramples all over Michael's link.
1998: Channel 4 built a theme night around a screening of the film Quiz Show which included some pre-Thing Peter Kay extemporising on the theme in Let’s Get Quizzical.
May 24th
1978: Nationwide lasted for fourteen years and foregrounded sharp, argumentative political debate and deep investigations into the issues of the day, but the only bit that became properly celebrated came when Alan Towers went to Croydon to meet Herbie the duck, a "Jubilee gift" - that bit gets glossed over - turned skateboarding enthusiast. Towers and his producer really make us wait for that pay-off.
1989: Wogan, with Sue Lawley sitting in, has a theme of youthful achievement, so an audience that has clearly come for Jason Donovan are additionally presented with William Hague and sixteen year old author Victoria Coren.
2002: Have I Got News For You should have been a fascinating one by regular rights, with Ken Livingstone returning to the show for the first time since becoming mayor of London and Dave Gorman making his debut. That was before a certain News Of The World kiss and tell broke the previous Sunday and the tone of the whole half hour is irrevocably altered from the norm. Not the whole show's equilibrium yet - there's barely a mention for the last two programmes remaining in this series and Deayton remained in charge of the first two of the autumn run before another expose from the same source thoroughly cooked his bacon - but you can feel tectonic plates shifting nevertheless.
May 25th
1988: Philip Schofield's junior TV criticism show Take Two asks its panel about Roland Rat - The Series II ("a show that's gone through a number of changes" - yeah, you could say that, given it started out in Saturday prime-time) and invites the Chuckle Brothers to explain their work and their pride at 18 year olds singing the Chucklevision theme with their rugby team.
1992: we're sure getting a small child to do the introduction to the Children's Royal Variety Performance was a good idea at the time until they had to deliver a script featuring the words "operations director of Apollo Leisure Group". The actual central star is Matthew Kelly as the linking and exposition device as wizard Sylvester McCoy invents a boy who goes off to have adventures with the stars, including Bernard Cribbins and Barbara Windsor as progenitors of a travelling show, Michaela Strachan as Thumbelina, Linda Robson as a ballet teacher with Pauline Quirke as a dubious pupil - who then turn out to be Sharon and Tracey, which confuses things - and the revelation that the final boss is Andi Peters with assistance from Rosemarie Ford (and Edd, obviously)
1998: Wogan's Web was a lunchtime BBC1 series that was the closest TV got to replicating his Radio 2 show's mix of interaction, illuminating guests and absolute nonsense, complete with Pauly and Deadly. It only lasted sixteen shows - this was the tenth - which seems an opportunity missed.
May 26th
1973: one down, 441 to go as That's Life! begins its reign of campaigns, misprints, Jobsworth Hats, amusing noises made by bodily features, root veg, charity songs, rip-off uncovering, Get Britain Singing and so forth. Esther Rantzen is clearly front and centre but technically co-presenter with Bob Wellings and the extravagantly bow-tied George Layton, with Cheryl Kennedy in the Millicent Martin role augmented by a live jazz band. Whether by knowing awareness of its similarities to Braden’s Week or, we suspect, otherwise the first five minutes are about whether 'NEW' products really are new. Wellings introduces the location of one film, an astonishingly dull piece about planting by a roadside apart from the kind of accent you don't hear any more, and then immediately reintroduces it at the start of the pre-recorded location piece. Layton has a baffling monologue about the value of erotic books. All three collaborate on a feature on various medicines and tablets' claims about vitamin intake that can't decide whether to be offhand funny or deadly serious. For a big finish, the army blow up Colin Crompton's freezer.
1988: London Tonight goes On The Road, which involves Mary Nightingale and Alistair Stewart traipsing out to a very wet Guildford Castle, which clearly isn't about to bring them inside. The first report is about a method of easing traffic congestion which having teased us with a pointless and probably not cheap to licence clip of The Fifth Element reveals the potential answer to be, throw up your hands and raise your voice, a monorail! David Watts, the head boy of the Guildford City Council and the captain of the transport management team, tells us there's nothing on earth like a genuine bonafide electrified six-car monorail for replacing park and ride. They've sold monorails to Chilworth, Shalford and East Horsley, and by gum it's put them on the map! If that weren't enough, the Carlton cosmic ballet goes on as the Leonard Nimoy role, except one with no opinion whatsoever on the story, is new Surrey High Sheriff... Richard Stilgoe! He claims this put him "in charge of crime prevention", which of course means he has a statutory right of entry to your home. This is too easy at times. Vanessa-Mae, who didn't bring a coat with her, Brenda Blethyn, Kenny Jones from The Who, Jane Asher and Michael Williams inside a theatre, and a child in a brass band also pop by.
1996: what do you do with Zig & Zag? They work best in a confined space with a willing human to bounce off, as in not really Zig & Zag's Dirty Deeds, a sitcom in which they operate an agency carrying out undercover activities for celebrities' benefits. In this episode (presumably the original broadcast wasn't opened with a scrolling list of Dennis Potter works, though coincidentally their office cleaner Candyce Jane Brandl appeared in The Singing Detective) they break the format straight away by going to LA at the behest of Ken Morley who wants them to steal some Baywatch costumes, which means aid by some of the male cast. Lemmy makes a cameo and the pair go snowboarding with - and we can only assume this was the puppeteers' request - the Deftones, apparently rushed in as No Doubt pulled out at short notice. Presumably they read the script.
Like what we do? Why not support us? https://ko-fi.com/whydontyoutube