The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - August 19th-25th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
August 19th
60 YEARS AGO TODAY: Granada turn an abandoned station in Whalley Range into the deep south disembarkment point of the Blues And Gospel Train. Amid legendary figures such as Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Rev. Gary Davis, the Manchester weather attempted to intervene; Sister Rosetta Tharpe responded in kind with a quick setlist change.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Deirdre introduces Billy Walker, and us, to her mother Blanche Hunt, played by Patricia Cutts in this one-off appearance with the more familiar Maggie Jones taking over for her first stint a month later.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: with the original packed to overflow Sky Sports 2 launches; David Croft's fourth wartime sitcom, written with Jeremy Lloyd, was by some distance his least successful, Which Way To The War following a set of Desert Rats and Australians (it was a Reg Grundy co-production with, again unusually, Yorkshire), the latter including Simon Baker later of The Mentalist, holed up together in Libya in 1942 for one episode alone.
August 20th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thames News leads with a fatal collision between Tube trains outside Leyton station.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Gordon Burns' communication game A Word In Your Ear, despite being an obvious mid-morning format, was tried out on Saturday early evening for a bit to expected results. Lynsey de Paul and Nick Owen take on the Express' Philippa Kennedy and Bob Holness.
ALSO... Summertime Special docked in Bournemouth throughout the summer of 1988 and brought Engelbert Humperdinck as headliner over the very prime of LE - Frank Carson as compere, Lulu, Ruby Turner, Billy Pearce, George Marshall, Stutz Bear Cats and the show's own dancers in a garden to a similar re-recording of a recent hit.
August 21st
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: New Order, offered the Play At Home hour, fill it with not only live footage bust post-modern comment, steered by Peter Saville, on the parlous state of Factory Records and offshoots. Features a cameo from Tony Wilson's penis.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Attenborough Meets Thessiger, in which Attenborough meets Thessiger. Oh. Right. That’s David, obviously, chatting to one of his heroes, explorer and pioneering travel writer Wilfred Thesiger.
ALSO... 6 O'Clock Live, the never as loved Frank Bough-led LWT successor to the Six O'Clock Show, breathes its last today in 1992 on the shores of the South Bank with a cast of celebrities, Tony Blackburn attending a wedding, Take That escaping from a van and the enduring last image of Timmy Mallett leading a conga line.
August 22nd
60 YEARS AGO TODAY: originally intended to launch at 6.30pm but pushed back to 10pm due to concerns by the Football League Management Committee (a compromise of 7.05pm was later reached), BBC2's new football match (singular) highlights package Match Of The Day, and "as you can hear we're in Beatleville". Further viewing: a 25th anniversary tribute; the Beeb’s own 60th anniversary special minisite
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Our Backyard begins informing pre-schoolers about work and play at home by means of activities, handy hints and songs from the band who've moved in next door; Channel 4 News hosts a lively live debate, possibly facilitated by neither being in the studio with Peter Sissons, between Arthur Scargill and Coal Board chairman Ian MacGregor.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Vision Thing saw Sheena McDonald interview at length people with particular sets of beliefs, in this case an unusually long haired David Byrne; Danny Baker closes Room 101's first series with attempts to interest Nick Hancock in QVC, Euro Disney, pub food, Casualty, his own failed consumer show The Bottom Line and a supposed Robert Redford lookalike he saw on The Time The Place.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: The South Bank Show investigates the world of the busker, apparently because Melvyn Bragg was impressed by some he passed. Though given they include an opera singer and harpist, maybe that's not even the right word.
ALSO... Children's BBC's summer morning umbrella But First This goes round the back end of Top Of The Pops today in 1989, including how Simon Parkin and Mark Goodier recorded the chart rundown - on the floor, there and then! - and a passing Paul McCartney.
August 23rd
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Miami Sound Machine certainly took the title of their hit to thematic heart on Top Of The Pops.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Floyd On Italy heads to Sicily, where he samples the local wine because OF COURSE HE DOES. His closing cook-out primarily involves peas, which to anyone else might be a challenge; Ian Wright walks in on The Real McCoy (at 13:26) and gets an incredible audience reaction. About five minutes later Felix Dexter does some crowd work as his great forgotten character, street seller Lloydy.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: "1.56... whatever, something, I don't care" Steve Cram nearly loses his composure as Kelly Holmes takes Olympic gold.
August 24th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the last in the first series of Emu's All Live Pink Windmill Show is a bit underwhelming, possibly because of having to uproot everything after the recent strike and parts hanging on even more than usual. Rod for his part indulges in some overt product placement.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: another episode of gag completion exercise/panel show in embryo Gag Tag, in which Bob Monkhouse and Frank Skinner are joined by Jeff Green and Frank Carson.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Channel 4 loved them a wipe-clean stylish drama about the trials of modern life back then so put all their efforts - split screens, like 24! - into NY-LON, a transatlantic romance starring Rashida Jones.
ALSO... trade test colour films had been the dominant part of daytime BBC2 since, well, colour began on the station until today in 1973, where amid the short films, infomercials and Test Card F's time was found just over half an hour in for a service information update.
August 25th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: so finally we reach the climax of Ultra Quiz '84, and disappointingly after so much globehopping the final three, Frost and Rushton are at Arundel Castle, involving building rainbows, Edwardian upkeep and Gareth Hunt. Next stop: Stu Francis; a good old fashioned BBC2 theme night, fifteen hours of Rock Around The Clock with the Whistle Test team introducing sundry live clips, documentaries, videos, the Rockalikes contest and assorted pop stars pretending to take calls, like Meat Loaf, Fish and Morrissey. Meanwhile, with the fidelity and professionalism TOTP viewers will know them for, New Order played live into the show from the Radio 1 studio.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: towards the last month of Chris'n'Gaby Big Breakfast with Angela Rippon as newsreading stand-in, Ben the Boffin, Cheggers at Reading Festival, Zig's new talent and the realisation too late that they should have rehearsed the bit with a naked man; Top Of The Pops invites Malcolm McLaren to present, and he's had an idea. Apparently his few links took ages to record. Speaking of things that evidently took ages, Kylie's hair; it's another one series sitcom wonder! The penultimate episode, in fact, of downsized career man involved in mismatched families shenanigans affair Downwardly Mobile, by a pair of Spitting Image writers and featuring Frances de la Tour, Stephen Tompkinson and Josie Lawrence.
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