The Why Don't YouTube? Archive - May 13th-19th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
May 13th
1983: Danny Baker got to talk about Millwall on The Six O'Clock Show as they face "the Siberia of soccer", when stadiums were made of routinely corrugated iron and players threw punches at their own team's supporters (at 3:28)
May 14th
1973: Open Door gave BBC2 air time to any group of people with something to say however they (within boundaries) wanted to say it. East End Channel 1 was helmed by film-maker and future playwright Tunde Ikoli as a way of approaching race, culture and social support in east London with a touch equally at home with comedy and blunt realism. Clive James, Marty Feldman and Johnny Speight all pass by this fascinatingly singular hour.
1980: eight years before being put in charge of the big red book Michael Aspel was receiving his own from This Is Your Life. The surprise on the Give Us A Clue set is very clever, and watch to the end for a parade featuring the entirety of 1980 light entertainment, including one bloke who arrives late and Aspel may not actually recognise.
1988: we're not sure being shown a clip of yourself as a child on Record Breakers, as Wimbledon's Dennis Wise is, is the best preparation for playing in an FA Cup final, but this also acts as a reminder that once BBC reporters were allowed on team coaches travelling to Wembley. Meanwhile over on ITV they're more interested in Jimmy Greaves' meeting with Mike Tyson and that classic Rick Wakeman/Tommy Cannon battle in the first half of the pre-game celebrity match.
1996: Paramount's laddish between-shows show Night O'Plenty, presented by Dominik Diamond and, standing in this week, Gladiators winner and future regular Angelina Jolie stunt double Eunice Huthart. The guests are Matt Lucas and David Walliams as their post-modern double act characters Mash & Peas; the night ended with Diamond, who had been in a university comedy act with Walliams (and Simon Pegg), pinning Lucas up against a backstage wall threatening to kill him. Yes, the graphics credit is that same Leigh Francis, and in fact loads of people who worked on the series, including Myfanwy Moore and Simon Lupton, became big TV executive and production figures (in fact Moore produced Rock Profile and Little Britain and had Ruth Jones’ barmaid in the Only Gay In The Village sketches named after her)
May 15th
1980: The Four Bucketeers take on Top Of The Pops.
1983: Match Of The Day's season ended with a famous relegation battle between Manchester City - those were the days - and Luton Town culminating in an even more famous reaction by Luton manager David Pleat. This was the last year an agreement with ITV meant they had to go out on Sunday afternoon, which might have been good news for the disgruntled housewife whose illustrated poem requires Jimmy Hill to say the words "sexy negligee".
May 16th
1977: Kenny Everett had just played Eamonn Andrews' The Shifting Whispering Sands on his World's Worst Record Show so the other rocker brought him into Today for questioning and potential penance.
1986: the final episode of Auf Weidersehen, Pet (until the revival, obviously) was preceded by a tribute from Tim Healy to Gary Holton, who died the previous October during filming. Gary Terzza promises that Central Weekend will investigate black magic, which seems ominous.
1993: one of the most infamous interviews in "what many critics considered to be the most tawdry sixty minutes in British chat shot history" (Guardian, which is something as the programme was 45 minutes long and had other guests before the trio) and a genuine turning point in a long and distinguished career as the Planet Hollywood ownership of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis appear on Aspel & Company for an unpaid advertorial. The ITC censured LWT as the plugging "breached the undue prominence requirements of the programme code"; Aspel, who is audibly and visibly dead inside by the end, announced he was stepping down from the programme a few months later.
May 17th
1985: Heinz Woolf arrives at The Great Egg Race bearing huskies.
1987: Highway visits Ipswich and is greeted by an opening song best described as once seen, never forgotten. Certainly Victoria Wood didn't, as according to regular festive visitor Harriet Thorpe watching a recording of it was part of her annual Christmas ritual. (Yes, we know.)
May 18th
1981: as that time between The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi wouldn't fill itself Anthony Daniels found himself presenting Mind Stretchers, a BBC Schools programme designed to encourage logical thinking in 10 and 11 year olds, including explaining how calendars work.
1985: The 6 O'Clock Show with full scale Roy Hudd, Danny Baker at a post-Cup final Wembley, glamorous grannies and air hostesses. Researcher Ruth Wrigley became Big Brother's first executive producer and created The Only Way Is Essex.
May 19th
1979: William Franklyn and Jenny Lee Wright's espionage game show The Masterspy brings back three of its previous winners to determine whether a man claiming political asylum is a defector or a threat, via phrasebooks, a knowledge of Wimbledon and a remarkable section using puppets that leaves members of the audience just about audibly struggling to hold their reaction in throughout.
1980: Clapperboard, Chris Kelly's Granada children's series on the world of film, devotes itself to The Empire Strikes Back, visiting an exhibition at Selfridges helpfully already closed with Anthony Daniels, David Prowse and visual effects artist Brian Johnson.
1983: half of post-Pops Legs & Co with a couple of newer friends joined Nick Owen on Good Morning Britain in search of a new name for their cabaret show. In case you thought their old name was poor, they chose Smax.
1993: Blockbusters comes to an end on ITV, though not overall as it seems to have been relaunched a few thousand times since then. It's been fully five years since the Dara O Briain Comedy Central version, surely it's overdue another go driven by no market forces other the warm glow of nostalgia. Anyway, the last go-around on weekday teatimes means the last of Holness and one last hand jive.
1993: Danny Baker's scalpel to celebrity TV Heroes discusses Noele Gordon and Crossroads in general.
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