The Why Don't YouTube? Archive - May 27th-June 2nd 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
May 27th
1976: Ruby Flipper, introduced earlier in this month, only lasted to October as Top Of The Pops' dance troupe because, so Flick Colby was told, viewers didn't want male dancers. Shame, as their impressionistic performance to David Bowie's TVC15 (introduced by Savile, it can't be helped) is remarkable.
May 28th
1975: Nationwide investigates the cult of Billy Connolly, only three months after his breakthrough Parkinson appearance.
1983: No. 73 was four weeks into its second in total but first networked series. It fortunately turns out Peter Mayhew, Chewbacca from the newly released Return Of The Jedi (and all the other Star Wars films up to The Force Awakens), is an old friend of Dawn's - she's even put her favourite Bowie T-shirt on for the occasion - and 5ft tall Ethel can't wait to do a back to back comparison with the 7'2 Mayhew. That's of no concern to Alec, cousin to the recently vanished Percy, about both of whom the since Oscar nominated film composer Patrick Doyle has taken a vow of deliberate forgetfulness, who is trying to come up with an end to his play which also involves Junior. Both visitors, of course, have a Sandwich Game to take part in.
1983: Samuel Pepys, looking and sounding oddly like Stephen Fry, makes expert comment on the general election on Newsnight: Campaign '83. Yes, they really did run a Newsnight special every night of the week past 11pm.
1987: Fans examined the world of obsessive pop star fan letters, produced by Radio 1's Andy Batten-Foster with input from Bowie, Shaky, Curiosity and Barry Manilow. Imagine doing this with stan armies now, it’d have to go out after the watershed.
1990: "Roll it!" The second ITV Telethon - not the invaded one, that was the third and last two years later - featured Denis Norden with some bespoke bloopers, most notably a mute Nerys Hughes and Arfon Haines-Davies at HTV Wales.
May 29th
1978: Swap Shop throws a live bank holiday Rock Garden Party at Jubilee Gardens on the London South Bank, muscling in on LWT's patch. We say Swap Shop but it appears only Noel was bothered enough to be there, playing lightweight Radio 1 Roadshow type games with some of the kids there and introducing Showaddywaddy, Darts - Den falls over, of course - the Goodies covering the Mickey Mouse Club theme and Patti Boulaye.
1981: ATV Today, with adverts intact. No shortage of notable moments here, whether Gary Newbon joining the Harlem Globetrotters, a Saab equipped for James Bond or local And Finally man John Swallow going at least 0.7 Partridge with a stuntwoman.
1981: Did You See...? goes behind the scenes of BBC presentation, and thus the proto-broom cupboard.
1982: After Bobby has an unscripted braces accident and covered Tommy in paint Adam Ant takes on the Cannon & Ball Show, including being straight man and third wheel as he goes full LE.
1988: "You haven't got another filthy record coming out?" "Yes I have!" That's Life celebrates its fifteenth anniversary by inviting on all of Esther’s previous nancies and then having her sing at/with them.
1988: the highlight of the first ITV Telethon was a late night Tiswas reunion (part three; part four), with Lenny Henry replaced by, obviously, Frank Bruno.
May 30th
1983: Newsnight covers the changing face of election campaigning with a host of grandees and a lot of filming private gatherings, as part of which future historical novelist Robert Harris famously swarmed around the Prime Minister.
1986: we obviously associate the middle of The Chart Show with the Dance, Indie and Rock Charts but in its early years it experimented all over the shop, from reggae, which barely ever had any videos to show, to the US chart to albums and, on this one occasion alone, the Euro Chart, exposing the Germanic clinging on to Smokie's Chris Norman's solo career, a preview of Brother Louie, whatever the hell this is, and the contemporary fascination with Princess Stephanie of Monaco's singing career. Even HUD admits "is this a duff video or what?"
1986: the success of Just Say No earned the Grange Hill cast a trip to visit Nancy Reagan. A week after the trip Newsround Extra showed what they'd been up to.
2003: The Crossroads revival had been feted but doomed arguably from the start when the one major link to the original, Jill Chance, was quickly killed off to similar effect on the viewing figures. Then came the infamous decision to take it off air for four and a half months and relaunch it in January 2003 as glitzy, camp escapism, knowing tackiness an inch away from 'so bad it's good", executive producer Yvon Grace calling it "Dallas for British teatime". It promptly lost half its audience and after 98 episodes of v2.2 was axed entirely, with an ending that while thoroughly salting the King's Oak ground if nothing else matched the Dallas comparison in one key way, except they didn't spend literally half the episode going "do you see?" or still end on a montage to remind everyone what went so wrong. At least Freema Agyeman, whose first TV job it was, eventually landed on her feet.
May 31st
1990: Up Yer News was BSB's nightly attempt at satirical comedy. Ned Sherrin was parachuted in as occasional host for a direct link with TW3 but the more salient feature is some of the first television work of Chris Morris.
1991: ending the month with an early finish, as when live TV musical moments going sideways are discussed this never gets mentioned - Lenny Kravitz on Live At The Dome, briefly.
June 1st
1981: in a move that hurts your head if you think about it too much, Ted Bovis - introduced as Paul Shane but in character alongside Gladys Pugh - sings Holiday Rock on Cheggers Plays Pop. At least it's not You've Lost That Loving Feeling.
1983: the Dominion Theatre in London has a special Star Wars trilogy marathon ending with the general release premiere of Return Of The Jedi. While obviously nowhere near what there would be now, there are cosplayers including a Leia who didn't fancy being vox popped by ITN.
1987: John Craven's Beatles primer on Newsround marks his understanding that the twentieth anniversary of Sgt Pepper was as important as the album's release itself. Back in the broom cupboard, what we'd give to see Peter Duncan sporting a beard of bees.
1988: Take Two asks kids about the first series of Red Dwarf - a post-watershed programme! - and its "heavily disguised message",
1992: what's that, Simon Groom? You want to return to Blue Peter six years after leaving to perform your self-released Europop cover of Can't Help Falling In Love? And you want to sing it live? That's going to go well. Richard Marson, who was around Children's BBC production well before becoming editor of the show, says of the ‘safely’ pre-recorded performance "the buzz that something unmissably awful was happening went round TV Centre and offices were full of people glued to the internal monitor system in fascinated horror".
June 2nd
1975: like watching the balance of power shift in real time, Paul Daniels appeared on The David Nixon Show. "Not a lot" makes what may have been its TV debut.
1980: Tina Heath premieres and explains the next generation of Quantel to Blue Peter viewers.
1987: just short of a year after the 'JUNKIE GEORGE HAS EIGHT WEEKS TO LIVE' headline, Boy George judges a kids' novelty hat competition on Children's ITV's Splash.
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