The Why Don't YouTube? Archive - September 30th-October 6th 2024

From the house of @whydontyoutube

September 30th

1985: Peter gets a new haircut that's nothing like those viewers proposed for him, Janet tells us who Lord Shaftesbury was and Simon prepares for Radio 2 early breakfast by meeting "the king of radio himself" Mike Read on Blue Peter.

1985: days after Mail On Sunday journalist Nicola Scicluna fooled Sunday Times interviewer Henry Porter into believing she was Meryl Streep, Terry Wogan invited her onto his show and his then researcher, future Late Show host Tracy MacLeod, played into his trap. This feels very frosty on all sides. For what it’s worth Porter later became British editor of Vanity Fair for 25 years. Scicluna works in corporate training. MacLeod is a talent agency director. Wogan remained broadcasting up to his death in 2016. Streep continues to act professionally.

1990: the Jools Holland Juke Box Jury revival is chiefly remembered for the show where Vic & Bob among others laid into Glenn Medeiros only to find out he was the surprise guest. That said, They Might Be Giants were more divisive.

1992: Barbara Windsor gets got for This Is Your Life and rather bravely she and Michael Aspel are trading jokes about Ronnie Knight. As you'd expect the studio guests span an era of showbusiness from Danny La Rue via Jack Smethurst to Paul Daniels, plus messages from June Whitfield, Lionel Bart and Joan Littlewood. It wasn't often that a Life audience gave its subject a standing ovation.

1999: it takes quite some cojones to attempt to answer every question yourself in the final round of Fifteen To One, especially when you’ve retained all three lives from the first round, but it was attempted... and succeeded! The one and only time it was managed, and it was so dominant the show's rules were bent to allow the other two finalists - one of whom uploaded it - a second go. And after that he didn't even win the grand final.

October 1st

1983: Abba having made their final appearance together on The Late Late Breakfast Show just under a year earlier, Agnetha Fältskog returns to promote her solo debut. It doesn't start well.

October 2nd

1982: Saturday Superstore opens, and one of the first people through the door is Kate Bush. This was days after Dexys Midnight Runners and the Top Of The Pops Jocky Wilson affair, about which Kevin Rowland has always maintained it was a deliberate request on his part as he believed, direct quote, "only an idiot would think" it was a mistake. Just saying.

1983: The home computing revolution fully reaches Television Centre with Making The Most Of The Micro Live, spread across two hours (well, 115 minutes) of live BBC1, apparently to demonstrate "the reality" of what could go wrong when technology is asked to do things without the benefit of pre-recording and editing. And boy does technology deliver, as Ian McNaught-Davis introduces an opportunity to exchange thoughts via BT Gold email - once they can actually access the modem - as "almost an open invitation for hackers to have a go" and soon enough (1:06:48, in fact) has his wish granted, apparently after a guest heard the floor manager tell McNaught-Davis the password and telephoned it through to a friend with a ready and since celebrated Hacker's Song. Excellently, the next scheduled item is about online security and the dangers hacking could pose. McNaught-Davis's passing comment "happily, people get rapidly bored with games" lays out very openly the approach the programme and the series that would follow down the line would take, with questions to a panel of specialists using the classic Saturday morning number, a challenge to three teams of program writers, sound sampler and educational software demonstrations, the BBC's Telesoftware service and subtitling, minister for Information Technology Kenneth Baker discussing the IT growth sector and launching a competition for schools, and self-taught programmer Paul Daniels introducing a text adventure he was working on - actually he (it says here) wrote and designed Paul Daniels' Magic Adventure but someone else programmed it.

1987: Bad News on Wogan around the release of their album and ill thought out Bohemian Rhapsody cover, something that seems to confuse audience and host alike.

1990: Newsnight celebrates the reunification of Germany with what Jeremy Paxman has called the worst outside broadcast in BBC history.

1996: Granada Talk TV opens. One of the bouquet of channels to come out of Granada Sky Broadcasting alongside Plus, Breeze and, yes, Men & Motors, it was intended as a current affairs/celebrity chat and phone-in station but it turned out people didn't want that much chat or to provide too much feedback so it closed, and had the tin lid put upon its legacy by not even broadcasting on its final day, 31st August 1997. These ten minutes would presumably have aired at closedown otherwise, featuring as it does Sasha Baron Cohen having a fight with someone, Natasha Kaplinsky kissing a dog and some disturbing close-ups of Paul Ross.

October 3rd

1981: in a microcosm of the pop year, Den Hegarty fails to put Phil Oakey down. After a quick, no doubt mess insisted change, Sally James welcomes another guest to Tiswas in the substantial shape of Buster Bloodvessel, who's got some pickled onions for company. Flinger and co then pay tribute to Bad Manners' big summer hit which necessitates another James wardrobe change, though the lack of close-up shots of her suggest that even by her standards it may have been a little too much/little.

October 4th

1973: the 500th Top Of The Pops... has been mostly wiped, and for obvious reasons you wouldn't see it now even if it hadn't. What was retained is a rare appearance by The Who doing 5:15, ending in some instrument trashing and Townsend taunting so full-on that audience members are moved to throw their wigs at the band.

October 6th

1982: a month before the Conservative party conference Defence Secretary John Nott announced he would not be standing at the next election, news that clearly emboldened Robin Day when they met there. Twenty years later Nott titled his autobiography Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Recollections of an Errant Politician.

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