The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - July 22nd-28th 2024

From the house of @whydontyoutube

July 22nd

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: BBC3's pop culture entirely in quotation marks quiz Headjam utilised the old Punchlines format of member of public with celebrity, in this case Claudia Winkelman and Lauren Laverne both proving what a different haircut does to a person.

ALSO... the closest Steve Wright came to his radio format on television was the People Show, a mix of interviews, side characters and "stuff". The final episode today in 1995 features a newly de-Robbied Take That, Terry Wogan, an out of place Eddie Izzard and a Bob Warans cameo.

July 23rd

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: quite a few future big names got a leg up from Children's ITV anthology Dramarama. 26 year old Gary Oldman's third acting credit was him as a spoiled 18 year old learning some home truths in On Your Tod.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: one of the most notorious game show flops of all began. Scavengers, hosted by a post-apocalyptic John Leslie, was moved from a peak ITV Saturday evening slot to first thing on Monday mornings. Herein, remarkably, are six full episodes.

ALSO... BBC Breakfast Time on the morning of Andrew and Fergie's wedding today in 1986, which means a whole host of experts, connected people, a handwriting expert because at that stage why not, and Valerie Singleton and John Stapleton in Sarah's home village. Yes, that's Louise Redknapp in the for some reason muted children’s choir.

The wonderful world of technological breakdown takes down The O Zone, while it was still part of summer morning catalogue But First This, today in 1990. That said Simon Parkin, Philippa Forrester and Claudia Simon, and their crosstalk, appear to be suspiciously ready for it.

July 24th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Nationwide crosses to Southampton to admire a beer-supping snail called Boozy. The ending is a wonder of comic timing.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Play For Today The Groundling And The Kite depicts the relationship between a piano ballad songwriter his A&R man partner. The former wrote the play and the songs. Karl Howman is a tetchy label boss, Caroline Quentin a receptionist.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: proving there's nothing like forced nominative determinism, Ronnie Corbett hosts Small Talk, a game show of the "kids say the funniest things" flavour that lasted four series; the first proper episode of Wycliffe, yet another murder whodunnit but this time it's... in... Cornwall? Anyway, a young woman is found dead in a cottage author who fears for his own life Bill Nighy owns, with Roger Sloman among the suspects; Alex Cox is back along to introduce his Moviedrome followers to Girl on a Motorcycle. He's not overly keen.

July 25th

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Hold Tight! first sets up its complicated sets in Alton Towers and introduces Ultravox to its sprung platforms.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Peter Cook takes on Room 101, has an existential crisis with some packaging.

July 26th

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: something really was in the air, Starstrider wasn't even the first children's quiz show with a sci-fi setting. Roger Sloman dresses as Ming The Merciless, Sylvester McCoy dons a tin hat, lighting and for one round a rodeo machine does the rest; Neil, despite being killed in the bus crash more than a month earlier, returns to Top Of The Pops and this time he's got a band with him.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Billy Connolly begins his World Tour Of Scotland, visiting a Highlands loch.

July 27th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: an On The Buses spinoff set in Spain with Blakey? Unnecessary, unless you're Chesney and Wolfe and/or LWT. Don't Drink The Water co-stars Pat Coombs and Derek Griffiths, and you're right to flinch at Derek Griffiths being involved in a 1970s sitcom set in Spain.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: for some reason Rainbow starts with a completely unrelated sketch involving a knockoff RD2D and C3PO. Geoffrey later dressing as a "robot" in cardboard boxes barely helps; Look East goes pop as the Radio 1 Roadshow is in town, bringing Frankie Goes To Hollywood, the Thompson Twins, Mike Read and Peter Powell with them; unpopular Nationwide replacement Sixty Minutes is ended after just nine months, to be replaced by the straight up Six O'Clock News, going out with viewers' drawings and a bespoke song from Sammy Cahn.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Desmond Morris' latest series The Human Animal, "a study of human behaviour from a zoological perspective", starts by examining body language. It also starts with bodies, so NSFW.

ALSO... reverse beauty pageant Man O Man is the kind of show that 1990s TV executives would have thought of as feminist empowerment because the men are himbos and the girls are in control, right, ladies? RIGHT, LADIES? Today in 1996 Chris Tarrant thinks of where the cheques are going.

July 28th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: ATV splash out on an epic two hour 40 minute version of Antony & Cleopatra, starring RSC great Richard Johnson and Janet Suzman as leads, Corin Redgrave, Patrick Stewart, and Ben Kingsley, Tim Pigott-Smith, John Bardon and Lennard Pearce down the cast list.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Los Angeles Olympics start. Fortunately TwiX’s estimable Irish E180 maven KillianM2 uploaded two hours of the opening ceremony a while back; more importantly LA also welcomes Ultra Quiz, where Patrick Macnee looks on as the last eleven get stuck in a lift with Willie Rushton ahead of a series of memory games, one of which seems to allude to Proust's madeleines. It's Frost and TVS, don't discount it; a very early BBC2 theme night - actually, pretty much a theme weekend - Jazz On A Summer's Day, linked by Humphrey Lyttelton and Russell Davies.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: BBC news, with Jeffrey Archer and Lester Piggott both escaping the worst.

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