The Why Don't YouTube? Archive - November 25th-December 1st 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
November 25th
1978: to the house of Cant! Play Away begins a new series with a TV debuting Anita Dobson joining the gang alongside Julie Stevens and much lesser used and looking far out of place but trombone wielding George Chisholm. Meanwhile Tony Robinson is out and about but keeps being haunted by someone who looks familiar. No P-L-A-Y closing song, barely a theme to speak of and a post-credits gag are all unusual; as for those credits, note the writers include not just Cant and Robinson but Johnny Ball, fellow children's regular Christopher Lillicrap and Clive James collaborator Pete Atkin.
1978: Saturday Night People was an LWT venture with a "journalism with laughs" brief, led by Russell Harty with Clive James and Janet Street-Porter. This week "colourful" journalist Peter McKay looks on as James goes to Minehead for the Jeremy Thorpe case, Street-Porter examines gymnastics, there's a fearless investigation into Private Eye, and Clive lays into the radio frequency changes and the Irwin Allen disaster film The Swarm, which has led to correspondence from some very interesting names and surnames. Stay to the end for Janet having to issue an official apology to Thames' weatherman, who we're not sure but may have been Francis Wilson.
1980: a week after Russell Harty turned his back on Grace Jones with dire consequences he came prepared for Kate Bush. It turned out she was more the type to discuss Delius.
1982: inventions educational series for all the family Eureka, in its initial Jeremy Beadle version but still with Madeline Smith leading the rep company, examines the history of puzzles and games. Wilf Lunn's intervention at the end is welcome for everyone not in the studio.
1983: after the Five Doctors premiere, the Fifth Doctor pops into a weirdly featureless area of the Children In Need studio as Peter Davison was on his way to a convention, the pre-recorded nature being neatly lampshaded by he and Tel, who seems stunned that Who has American fans. Back in the populated section, despite a sleeping Ronnie Barker, a speechless Judi Dench and Simon Cadell, a useless Russell Grant and David Copperfield as Medallion Man's best efforts, Joanna Lumley upstages the whole thing.
2000: SMTV Live launches the Wonkey Donkey that caused a thousand future Dec strokes. In mitigation, nervous ten year olds are not going to know the word "twee" and the indistinct year old typing these words has never heard it in this specific context. However, just because we all know it's inevitable doesn't make the reaction less entertaining, which is the point at the end of the day. This is how it came to an abbreviated end two weeks later.
November 26th
1979: Groom/Heath/Wenner version Blue Peter returns from, but of course given it’s the late 70s, a strike with big news on the appeal for Cambodia, not to know that they'd far more than double that amount - if not the size of the donated rubber plant - in the end, and Simon rings in from Singapore in traditional trimphone/photo still fashion as he's gone to see where all the money is going to go. Back in the studio Tina makes bath salts, Christopher extemporises over a fibreglass statue of a cat and a whole guide unit with acoustics sing about trains.
1993: a frankly mad Children In Need in which Jeremy Beadle nearly has knives thrown at him, third wheel Simon Mayo calls some charity knicker flashers "very ITV", the Pet Shop Boys make better use of the evening’s 3D gimmick than Dimensions In Time did, the Birds Of A Feather cast are ABBA, Grotbags is in Swansea, Mr Entertainment John Birt takes part in a remarkable sketch based on 999, and of all things there's a Hee Bee Gee Bees reunion that comes to an appropriate end. In the south-east opt-out Vic, Bob and Rob Curling come together at last until the pair get distracted by Scrabble.
November 27th
1982: ITV were about to embark on their own experiment in 3D broadcasting and The Saturday Show found just the spokesduck for it.
1991: never one to take the easiest route, Vivian Stanshall was invited to talk about his life for The Late Show and instead produced a soul-baring fifteen minute autobiographical musical, Crank.
1992: Lynda La Plante four-parter Framed stars David Morrissey as a police officer driven to distraction from everything else, wife included, by the trail of suave career criminal and Costa Del Crime playboy Timothy Dalton, shacked up out west with his moll - and here comes a name you weren't expecting in a 1992 Lynda La Plante drama made by Anglia - Penelope Cruz, the eighteen year old’s third credit. To her credit she plays the "attractive young Spaniard" role very well.
1993: Noel's House Party indulges in its habit of reviving old characters for one-off appearances, because if it's your show you may as well, with the last stand of Lance Corporal Jones.
November 28th
1978: in a hands across the children's networks moment, as hinted at in the outro, Get It Together's Roy North introduces Keith Chegwin, who is performing his fourth failed single in eighteen months.
1980: for Friday Night Saturday Morning Toyah Wilcox, Steve Strange, Vivian Stanshall, Derek Jarman and Christopher Biggins battle a Space Invaders machine.
1983: the full rep company of inventions explanation series Eureka, including Sarah Greene, Paul McDowell, Madeline Smith and writer Clive Doig's fellow Jigsaw graduates Sylvester McCoy and the additions to the sum total of human development of Wilf Lunn, details the innovation of vacuum cleaners, toilets and aerosols.
1991: plenty of stories surround Nirvana's sole Top Of The Pops appearance, about how they didn't know about the backing track miming until they got there and how Kurt's octave drop was, he claimed, to impress Morrissey. Our favourite parts have always been the two bemused girls walking away towards the end and then how Tony Dortie ploughs on with his following link regardless of what's just happened and is continuing to happen right behind him.
1992: Kylie gamely joins Trevor and Simon for their low budget celebrity quiz show It's A Shame, during which they heroically undermine the concept of their own gag.
1992: a Norden special is a beautifully researched and linked thing, and so Denis Norden's Trailer Cinema proves even with something as well thumbed as affectionate compilations of overwrought, partly schlocky 1950s and 1960s B-movie trailers.
November 29th
1982: THWEE DEE THWILLS! TVS' pop-science series The Real World became the first national programme (there was a localised test broadcast in May) to be broadcast in 3D, if you had the glasses from TV Times or various shops. Michael Rodd and Sue Jay do a lot of holding things up, introducing unnatural movement towards the lens and generally demonstrating technology.
1986: with Labyrinth freshly released fifteen year old Jennifer Connelly visited Saturday Superstore and found an old friend had stowed away on the flight. Both then join a remarkable Pop Panel line-up in which Colin Baker is somehow the grounding element.
1988: television was about to open up to Europe via satellite and Open Air had a look at what that might mean. Strip game shows are mentioned prominently, as they always were in such discussions as TV's guardians seemed to be under the impression there would be nothing but those beamed over come the broadcast revolution.
November 30th
1972: over in the Rainbow house Original Bungle doesn't just look evil, he throws a wet sponge at Zippy, whose own throw is misdirected and lands square on David Cook's cheek. Cook can't work out who of the two threw it at him even though they're on opposing sides from him. This somehow leads to the necessity to explain to Bungle what a mass of water is like.
1983: Magic Micro Mission, Central's Adrian Hedley helmed attempt to make home computing fun and reasonable, and if you're not convinced by the sentence "Julia is playing Manic Miner and with her is games maniac Willie Rushton", then a) get out and stay out, but also b) maybe you'd prefer the appearance by pre-Sidebottom Chris Sievey demonstrating his adventures in ZX81 or Francis Monkman, who is cheered by the kids on introduction like a pop hero, with his MIDI keyboards and in his Apple T-shirt.
1991: something must have changed between the preparatory production meetings for Going Live! and Rowan Atkinson actually turning up that morning because even though the Factfile video is of Atkinson's career it's as Mr Bean that he's taking part, meaning he has to do a lot more talking than the character is set up for when he takes the Press Conference.
1996: "Drawmaster John Willan, please explain exactly what we're going to do about this week's draw!"
December 1st
1976: after Queen pull out at short notice due to Freddie requiring emergency dentistry the Sex Pistols are booked for Thames' Today with hilarious consequences. Oddly enough, roughly an hour after fucking rotters had been declaimed, another famous image of the British televisual Seventies aired as Kevin Keegan falls off his bike on Superstars. What’s not often mentioned is despite all the lacerations he insisted on a re-run, finished second overall, went on to win the heat, then on his way home fell ill due to a viral stomach infection that necessitated two nights in hospital - it was that which was reported in the newspapers at the time, with the crash mentioned as a footnote at best.
1977: great joy, as much from performer as spectator, and grand waywardness of John Otway on Top Of The Pops, letting Wild Willy Barrett do the difficult bits. You wonder what people are thinking, especially when he misses the chord Father Ted-style before his grand climax. Otway holds the record for the longest gap between Pops appearances due to his fan-propelled 2002 return.
1979: nothing looks and feels as "of its time" more than mainstream sketch comedy in the years between Python and Not The Nine. Freddie Starr's Variety Madhouse is little exception, a sidenote now after Starr walked out after one series and lead support Russ Abbot took over the franchise. Yes, he does Hitler. Yes, he does Elvis. Mike Newman, Norman Collier (go on, guess which routine he works in), Toni Palmer "and introducing Bella Emberg" - she'd already been a TV actor for more than a decade - are his other supports, as seen in the borderline inexplicable YMCA "parody" with which it opens.
1981: Russell Harty takes his show to favourite guest Diana Dors' house party, which by then had very different connotations to all those stories Bob Monkhouse used to tell, especially with a guest list comprising Adam Ant (post-Prince Charming) and Tom O'Connor. I mean, we assume the throne by the swimming pool is a televisual affectation. Her singing, less so. All concerned are later joined by Duncan Goodhew and a penguin.
1986: Morten Harket and Bonnie seem to have got along well. It may be due to jet lag but the A-ha singer is less sure about the contribution of the humans, given his evident confusion when he earns himself a Blue Peter badge in anticipation of Cry Wolf reaching number one, which it didn't.
1993: yes. Oh yes. It's that Christmas on BBC1, which means some time this month saw the premiere of *that* promo. How many fings are on? A lotta fings.
1997: Barry Norman, initially under protest, visits the set of Spice World.
2001: Ant & Dec's final SMTV Live, brought about ostensibly by the following week's launch of the live Pop Idol shows, essentially becomes a proxy celebration of the final imperial phase of Saturday morning telly, so everybody upon everybody turns up. That leads to the sort-of-but-not-actually-climactic Chums, Dec and Cat's wedding, not only giving an airing to Amanda Holden's catastrophic attempt at a Geordie accent but for ensuring TV real estate has been shared by Mark Lamarr and Mariah Carey, the latter so game that she not only hired her own bridesmaid's dress but rang the production office for advice on what colour would work best, and then helped out with Cat's hair and make-up. The pair’s last SMTV was necessarily followed by the pair's last CD:UK, the final part given over to the big montage covering both shows and a range of farewell messages, undercut by Cat's suggestion of how they might react to one of them.
Like what we do? Why not support us? https://ko-fi.com/whydontyoutube