The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - April 22nd-28th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
April 22nd
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Play School celebrates its tenth birthday with a party, a redesign, Derek Griffiths' wibbly wobbly legs and a full complement of presenters.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Clive James Screen Test invents the Before They Were Famous concept, with a few diversions as you'd imagine from something that spun off from Clive James On Television.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Eddie Izzard, who didn't do television, does television, the first of six appearances on Have I Got News For You coming in the first in a new series opposite Jonathan Ross; Fantasy Football League starts with Frank Skinner's Brucie impression, so can only go up from there. John Motson reveals whether he finds footballers sexy, Mandy Smith revisits her pop career and Skinner gets kicked up the arse; "Convenient sticks!" Between Gary Numan and that bloke who fell through the corrugated football stand roof, In Bed With MeDinner reaches the football/muggy bonehead divide.
April 23rd
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Peter Capaldi, Alex Norton, Arnold Brown and Elaine C Smith are among the cast in radical, and uneven, evangelism/free-market capitalism themed theatre to very late night Channel 4 transfer sketch and satirical song show Bless My Soul.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Parallel 9 reaches its third phase with another new Mercator and the addition of Kate Lonergan. Guests include Eternal and PJ & Duncan, who were on Live & Kicking a week earlier, and Little & Large, who weren't. Hell of a missed cue at 34:33 (Timely enough, the final part of Jonathan Bufton's remarkable history of Parallel 9 has been published, covering this series in full); a memorable Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, not just for guest Barry White or the traditional Evans-hastened implied nudity item but it's the one where the entire audience finds out they're up for the holiday.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Greg Dyke couldn't keep away from the BBC, hosting Have I Got News For You with plenty of spice, not least from guests debutant Armando Iannucci and his former LWT employee Danny Baker; what was the difference between Mind Control and Trick Of The Mind? Same channel, same production team, everything. Anyway, Derren Brown had a new series.
April 24th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: a couple of weeks ago we spotlighted Jeremy Brett's last outing in his landmark take on Sherlock Holmes; now we come across his first, A Scandal In Bohemia. Gayle Hunnicutt from the later years of original Dallas is Irene Adler.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Children's BBC game show Incredible Games, co-created by Andrew O'Connor, is a kind of tower block based kids' Adventure Game port but is almost entirely recalled now for David Walliams inventing the Scratchy & Co look as linkbeing; Clive James and Carrie Fisher together is always gold, even when the climax of their chat is a taste test. Whatever did happen to Sainsbury’s Classic Coke?
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes goes as literally big as it can with Brian Blessed as Pavarotti. His competition is Nikki Sanderson, Alison Hammond, Patrick Mower with Emmerdale colleague Liam O'Brien and Mike Read. He's being Cliff, obviously; Pat Gibson becomes the fourth big prize winner on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and does it whilst using one lifeline on the first fourteen questions.
ALSO... Highway visits Bognor Regis Butlin's in 1998, where Harry Secombe combines his singing around town with not just Gemma Craven but an international clown convention. If you've never seen clowns in full greasepaint reciting the Lord's Prayer, stand by.
April 25th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Austin Montego is launched.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: filmed in Southsea, the tenth Mr Bean episode, Mind The Baby Mr Bean, was delayed for more than a year due to the James Bulger case not really chiming with Bean accidentally kidnapping a baby.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Alan Davies goes fully serious as a defence barrister, who you'll be shocked to learn has a complicated personal life, in The Brief.
April 26th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Sandie Shaw returns to Top Of The Pops backed by an obligingly barefoot Smiths on her cover of Hand In Glove. I wouldn't roll around on that, Sandie, you don't know who else has been there.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Omnibus reflects on Sir John Betjeman with family, friends and fans as his letters are published.
ALSO... Right To Reply in 1985 tackles an avant-garde dance version of Bluebeard, a chief constable complains about Ken Loach's miner's strike documentary and the head of LWT current affairs calls the Broadcasting Complaints Commission a bunch of arseholes (paraphrased)
April 27th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: it's really interesting watching early Wheeltappers & Shunters' Social Clubs, this being the third visit, what level of performer it can attract. You wouldn't think of Stephane Grappelli as on the same level as Little & Large or Lonnie Donegan but...
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: after the film at the end of 1983 Cosgrove Hall's stop-motion version of The Wind In The Willows (part two) fully begins, with its remarkable collection of voice talent (and pre-Stone Roses John Squire designing sets); Jools Holland, Bill Wyman and Blancmange's Neil Arthur discuss two new David Bowie VHSes on review show Eight Days A Week; Gerry and Sylvia Anderson bring Thunderbirds puppets and props to Noel Edmonds' nostalgia show Time Of Your Life.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the first helping of bad food, poor service and even worse shouting that is Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares begins almost comically on-brand with inadvertent food poisoning.
ALSO... we've had a few clips of Looking Good Feeling Fit in recent years but never a full episode, but finally from 1982 we can luxuriate in Richard Stilgoe's theme tune and an edition featuring Roger Daltrey's workout routine, Erika Roe's bras and smiling in Scarborough.
April 28th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: No. 73 reopens its door for a fourth series, for which the cellar has been converted into a performance space for Nik Kershaw, one of a phalanx of guests including maze designers, a baby orang-utan and Alvin Stardust with his book about horses. (Yep.); Robin Of Sherwood may still be the definitive Hood-telling on TV, at least in these days of Michael Praed. The opening two episodes formed a double bill; Fry, Laurie, Thompson, Elton, Coltrane and Redmond reconvene, and convene in the pretend pub for the first time, for series two of Alfresco.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: True Brits, a series of observations from within the Foreign Office, begins with minister for Europe (and partial inspiration for Francis Urquhart) Tristan Garel-Jones.
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