The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - February 19th-25th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
February 19th
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: doing her first TV work well out of sight at 6.10am, Konnie Huq hosts GMTV's Clive Doig-devised word game/food challenge kids' quiz Eat Your Words, with Mark Speight as needlessly renamed assistant 'OJ'; it's only with time that you realise how odd Michael Barrymore's show was and how completely disjointed it would be with anyone else. If you just want to see him go into the audience and deal with wisecracking OAPs head to 34:30.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: created by Richard Osman, who later thoroughly disowned it, 24 Hour Quiz was a quickfire quiz encased in a reality show, contestants sharing a living pod, shown three times a day. It was pulled two weeks early.
February 20th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Marty Feldman returned to BBC sketch comedy with the Johnny Speight-penned Marty Back Together Again. Every week he and Derek Griffiths would deliver a comedy song, starting with one that apart from delivery is really quite topical now.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: worst girl in the world Marmalade Atkins has grown up, worryingly, and sets off on Danger: Marmalade At Work. Her first work experience is in social care, where she meets a potential criminal played by Callan's Russell Hunter, who might be putting it on a bit.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Ratz off Live & Kicking gets his/its own Children's BBC letters spot, followed by a few minutes of consumer advice magazine Small Change, one of many, many shows Zoe Ball did on her way through the CBBC ranks, goes on the buses.
MEANWHILE… the morning after the first EastEnders, today in 1985, Breakfast Time surveyed the actual East End. Ers.
February 21st
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Queen make their Top Of The Pops debut. The recording is very second hand which is presumably why the studio track has been dubbed over it. At least we hope that's their excuse.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: safari so goody, as Christopher Biggins insisted. On Safari with Ann 'Ethel Meaker' Emery, Duncan Goodhew and some rubber rings.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: it's *this* Torvill & Dean Olympic free dance that attracted 23.95 million viewers to BBC1, when they returned to the Winter Olympics after a decade and won, er, bronze. Not that we have the Beeb coverage...; Cutting Edge goes round the back of what continuity calls an "unofficial city", Gatwick dealing with fires, possible smugglers, spotters, Punch & Judy, royals and a man dressed as a chicken.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: an engaging Sir Ian McKellen makes a grand showbiz entrance onto Parkinson and discusses award ceremonies, playing King Kong and the unease of coming out with fellow guest Rhona Cameron.
MEANWHILE… Bill Bailey's original double act The Rubber Bishops are the cabaret turn on Children's BBC show Hangar 17 today in 1992, after a surprise run-in by the kids' favourite Alan Parker Urban Warrior.
February 22nd
60 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Beatles return from conquering America and are granted a live TV audience on, of course, Grandstand with David Coleman.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the first same-sex female kiss on TV, between Alison Steadman and Myra Frances in Second City Firsts play Girl.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: A Plus' Mavis Nicholson is charmed by, and charms, Mel Brooks, who demonstrates his vaudeville theme song, explains his relationship process, talks about his pancreas and considers the humour of failure; Mike Holoway of Flintlock is now calling himself Zac Zolar, and is also assumed dead. Somehow Arthur Daley has his final recordings, to the chagrin of manager Mel Smith and his own minder Tim Healy, who is now a cockney.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Hangar 17 appears by now to be an attempt to revive the classic variety show for a young audience with Paul Daniels, Capella, Gladiators' "hidden talents" and a game that can't work out whether it wants to be Double Dare or Crackerjack.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Movie Of Me, a feature-length episode of The Story Of Tracy Beaker in which she runs away to London and gets a film job, aired three quarters through its third series but with actual continuity all over the place.
MEANWHILE… the famous Blue Peter girl guide Happy And You Know It chorus around an increasingly blazing campfire was today in 1971. John, Peter and Val's mix of confusion and bafflement at 1:30 should be in the National Gallery.
BBC1's current affairs magazine 24 Hours examines what's happening with LWT, perennially crisis struck and newly Murdoch-owned (and chaired before the ITA forced him out), today in 1971. Jimmy Hill and producer turned MP Phillip Whitehead face off in the studio.
Philip Schofield hosts Children’s BBC's feedback show Take Two today in 1991 with Terry Nutkins and a feature on something he knew about very well, Saturday morning TV, though for balance most of the interviews are with Motormouth personnel.
February 23rd
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: part one of Death To The Daleks, the onw with the trouble with Exxilons; Bryan Ferry duetting It's My Party on Cilla seems odd given there's no way their voices go together, and that's before you're aware that they try to harmonise or consider that Ferry is hardly a showbiz veteran here.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: another Doctor Who story begins, Planet Of Fire, wherein Turlough leaves, Peri arrives and almost instantly gets into a bikini, Peter Wyngarde is a religious mage and the Master has shrunk himself; a rather more exalted Afternoon Plus guest than usual, though for much the same reasons as usual as HRH the Duke of Edinburgh is plugging his new book.
February 24th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the last 25 minutes of TV-am, starting with Christopher Reeve sporting an awkward moustache but soon taken over by Roland Live, offering a chat with Christopher Biggins and invaluable after-dinner speaking advice for Nick Owen; Burt Kwouk, who still thinks he's Kato, demonstrates his big cheque method on The Tube, which is no more odd than the fact Jools then immediately turns to talk music with Neil Kinnock; The Joeys, the variety comic quartet including Robert Llewellyn whose patriarchy and sexual roles dissecting routines were the toast of the stage press for a short while, appear on Newsnight.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: a hyped up Beck takes Top Of The Pops with what may not be his actual live band.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: while developed by EastEnders' father Tony Jordan, Hustle drew from the production team of Spooks and went in a less regimented direction of Robert Vaughan getting the gang back together for long cons on the side of good.
February 25th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Data Run was one of TV-am's many Saturday morning vehicles, hosted by Lulu's sister Edwina Laurie. Slade are guests but the adverts are more interesting, including a knowing one for Relax and Captain Sensible shilling Weetabix Breakfast Box; Roger Daltrey is at the Saturday Superstore OB in Falmout but we don't see a lot of him other than his failure to operate an airhorn, unlike the one-man band with bin liner percussion. Back in the studio are Kajagoogoo, Martin P Daniels, David Grant and John Nathan-Turner; Terry Wogan's grilling of Victoria Principal was controversial at the time but he thought he should have been harder on her and she would go on to appear on his weekday show twice.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: there was an attempt to make Steve Wright a prime-time star around the time he wasn't with BBC radio at all, weirdly, with the People Show later in the year and firstly questions-about-each-other panel show Home Truths, with guests are Bob Holness, the indefatigable Liz Smith and, newly discovered as a mine of anecdotage, Rick Wakeman; oh, is Britpop on the way? Blur do Girls And Boys on The Word and Damon drops in the odd swear.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: My Week In The Real World took MPs into actual people's jobs to see how they got on, with Alan Duncan as a youth worker, Peter Kilfoyle on a country estate and in this first instalment inner city comprehensive geography teacher Clare Short.
MEANWHILE… connect the bureaus, open the fashionable blinds and make sure nothing lasts longer than four minutes, it's the Channel 4 Daily from today in 1992.
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