The Why Don't YouTube? Archive - November 18th-24th 2024

From the house of @whydontyoutube

November 18th

1978: some of Legs & Co along with some men (including Floyd from Ruby Flipper), doubling as Grayson’s Groovers, demonstrate disco dancing on the Generation Game before Larry and Isla have a go. Flick Colby, making a rare on-screen appearance, tries to keep a straight face.

1980: "I was lashing out because I felt he was not being proper... I behaved like a very tired child trying to get his attention." Grace Jones' slapping of Russell Harty was later put down by her to a combination of infected sinuses, lack of sleep, cocaine, feeling like she was being openly mocked and a set design that meant Harty having to turn her back on her to talk to the other guests. Patrick Lichfield and perfumer/mountain photographer (that classic combination) Walter Poucher are Grace and Russell's unwilling audience.

1982: Roger McGough, a rep company including Sylvester McCoy in white facepaint, and Spitting Image/Lenny Henry/entire Mel Smith oeuvre songsmith Peter Brewis - some of whose closing music to this was later reused in his theme to Filthy, Rich And Catflap - find new ways of getting across the importance of punctuation in ITV Schools' Middle English.

1983: years before product placement was allowed Geoffrey has left his housemates hungry so he can take two kids to McDonalds. Don't worry, he's taken some burgers back to the Rainbow house, as well as one medium fries between three of them. Rod, Jane and Freddy have meanwhile opened their own hybrid diner/performance space - attended by the puppeteers doing some rare on-camera work - an idea Bungle, Zippy and George outright steal. We have no idea who that is reading the story, by the way.

1986: another part of the BBC's TV50 celebrations, Robert Robinson presents The Magic Rectangle - An Anatomy Of The TV Personality, asking a whole bunch of them (a lot of Savile inclusive) what being on the idiot box means and what being a telly star actually is. Would love to know what happened to Juliet Parry, the news auditionee who talks about craving recognition.

1988: Blackadder and Baldrick meet Wogan for Children In Need.

November 19th

1993: The Word begins its fourth series by introducing a "fourth musketeer", as referred to twice in the intro… Huffty! The Northumbria-born cabaret actor shaven headed lesbian, at a time when any one of those would have given her a fast track onto a Planet 24 show, was within weeks as one of the most famous-notorious people in Britain as a byword for the amateurishness and novelty straining of the programme just when the press wanted one. Actually this might be the passage of broadcasting time passing but she's not that bad on her outside broadcast. Shouty, but of course she was, she was crashing a party and it's The Word, but even so she only lasted one series before returning to Newcastle to run a women’s youth community centre. The one long-lastingly memorable feature that debuts in this week is almost apologetically thrown in just over halfway through, The Hopefuls opening with the granny-snogging one. As if things weren't odd enough already the first guest is a nineteen year old Dave Chappelle, over to promote Robin Hood: Men In Tights and understandably baffled by Reeves and Mortimer.

November 20th

1970: this was the year Miss World was subject to both Women's Lib flour bombs and the Angry Brigade blowing up an OB truck. It was also the year of some eccentric choices as judges. Elsewhere that evening Lionel Blair and his men expressed the ideal of beauty through dance.

1971: the very first Play Away starts with Brian Cant not in the studio exchanging old gags but in a park helping some kids in a park, while Derek Griffiths with guitar and neckerchief leads the Jonathan Cohen Experience in song, including the closing song. At this stage the idea seems to be of a slightly older cousin to Play School than what it soon became, with Chloe Ashcroft playing with string and Cant playing with a pantomime donkey.

1982: Two adverts from the pre-Equity agreement days of early Channel 4. If that seems not much to go on, it's because they're indescribable.

1991: Tonight With Jonathan Ross has a pointedly awkward face-off with Mayall and Edmondson, talking about "sticking two fingers up to Alan Yentob" and their West End run of Waiting For Godot.

November 21st

1980: the reveal of who shot JR was made on this evening in America, only a day before we got to see it. Just the tape of the episode arriving in the country was big enough to get BBC news coverage with grey suited reporter Martin Bell. That night the Beeb started the new series of Dallas - the big reveal was in the second episode, which was shown the following evening - and only one man, or technically two, could do the honours.

1981: an hour of Swap Shop with a soft spoken Billy Connolly ("you've been on Parkinson before!") as main guest discussing his live process, probably not something he should be telling kids to check out, reading the Top Ten Swaps and calling Jimmy Tarbuck "one of the funniest men in the world". John Craven is on Children In Need watch which somehow involves showing the scouts eating on the rollercoaster clip (host not included) After 35 minutes it moves forward two weeks to the 5th December show for a special 25 minute film behind the scenes of their own Roadshow from two weeks before that first programme. Got that?

1981: with ITN on strike Yorkshire replace the news with something of equal value. Before it, Lenny Henry's Smiths Square Crisps advert, written for Roy Jay with the script unchanged after he was fired.

1983: "Cybermen... a dog..." the First and Fifth Doctors arrive in the Blue Peter studio in the *checks notes* Doctor Who minibus. A Variety Club Sunshine coach being sent to a school, in fact, and it's not even the actual First Doctor due to William Hartnell's unavoidable expiration, Richard Hurndall previewing his version of the character. That and the accompanying monster parade provided some levity after the infamous turning over of the Blue Peter garden.

1986: Children In Need's big idea was Tap Around The Map, and you already know from that title who led the world record attempt in the studio. Always fun when CIN went around the country and let the local news stars have a national moment. Elsewhere that night Christopher Reeve comes by and Tel tries to get him to admit he returned to the then currently shooting Superman IV for the money.

2003: Yorkshire pay tribute to Calendar's multitudinous, avuncular prodigal son just before his 70th birthday in Richard Whiteley - Television Man (repeated on Channel 4 after his death)

November 22nd

1976: Blue Peter sends Lesley Judd down the corridor to become a Multi-Coloured Swap Shop phone operative. We dread to think why Land Of Hope And Glory is playing via a monitor at one point.

1983: Debbie Harry was single-handedly cheapening the moral standards of Britain, according to Harty's introduction, when she came by to promote Videodrome. As if to precede its awkwardness we're pretty sure someone tries to heckle her when they leave a gap early on. The ice only really gets broken at the end with a handy round of arm wrestling.

1985: we're into mid-November so prime Children In Need season. This is an interesting one with David Jason and Ronnie Barker pretending to take phone calls, Peter Powell going A over T on the Blankety Blank set, Terry being shown the wonders of VT as a prelude to a clip of him when he looked slightly different, Patrick Moore helping to introduce a phalanx of Doctor Whos and assistants with their overlarge advertising hoarding of a cheque, Jason being asked ungallantly about his play that "got all the bad reviews" (Look No Hans!, a modern farce with Lynda Bellingham which according to its official blurb "earned rave reviews") and answering in the time honoured "the PEOPLE liked it!" style, then later an unintroduced Dennis Quilley singing and Telejournal's Chantal Cuer doing the can-can because she's French and that's just what they do, at all times, forever.

1989: the Stone Roses’ trip the BBC studio noise limiter live on The Late Show, much to Ian Brown's disgust even though the cause was later identified as the band having turned their amps up too loud.

1990: a huge news story breaks this morning, though evidently not major enough to interrupt Keynotes. Here's three hours of rolling BBC coverage, unusual pre-News Channel, including PMQs, while later Channel 4 News tried to catch up.

1992: beginning a series on the art of comedy entitled Funny Business, no matter what these titles say, Rowan Atkinson acts as guide to the craft of visual comedy, with the assistance of Robin Driscoll and Felicity Montagu.

November 23rd

1973: The Dimbleby Talk-In, an exceptional name for a debate programme, is chiefly remembered for bringing Uri Geller and the notion of bent cutlery to the nation's attention, though David is more interested in his work with keys. Top quality crash zoom at the end of the theme.

1977: Richard Beckinsale was only thirty when he appeared on This Is Your Life, and he died sixteen months later. Ronnie Barker's letter from Fletch, the wording of Fulton Mackay's tribute and the appearance by his four year old daughter Kate are all lump-in-throat moments given that knowledge.

1980: the day after the revelation of who shot JR Larry Hagman appears at the Royal Variety Performance. To sing. Eventually. Hesitantly. In the end he gets help from his mum, who luckily was Broadway star and Rodgers & Hammerstein muse Mary Martin.

November 24th

1977: some critiqued Flick Colby's choreography for the Top Of The Pops dance troupes as overliteral. See what you think as Legs & Co interpret Jonathan Richman's surprise instrumental hit Egyptian Reggae.

1979: a lot is said about the grandmas-with-handbags nature of World Of Sport era British wrestling but this match undermines all that. Greek import Spiros Arion, who was a big star for the pre-Vince McMahon WWF and had been stabbed by a spectator in Pennsylvania a year earlier, decides he's going to make the good middle aged burghers of Leicester hate him whilst battling with Colin Joynson, Kent Walton can barely contain himself, the suited ringside officials can barely contain members of the crowd - Arion throws a shoe back at somebody with interest at 6:30 - Joynson has to break kayfabe and punch one attempted ring invader, and Big Daddy is sent out to get them to calm down.

1989: Daddy Freddy had already set a world record for speed rapping earlier that year when he took to Record Breakers to develop further. Wee Papa Girl Rappers offer moral support while Vas Blackwood, at the time most famous as Delbert Wilkins' sidekick, is on duty counting the syllables manually. Cheryl Baker sways meaningfully. Pro tip: put on the automated subtitles.

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