The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - July 29th-August 4th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
July 29th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Manchester or Liverpool? Channel 4 adverts demand you make the decision, kind of. Good to see even the north-west resorted to still photographs for local adverts; lead RSC director John Barton fronts the self-explanatory Playing Shakespeare, a nine-week workshop featuring Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, Judi Dench, Patrick Stewart, David Suchet, Sinead Cusack, Sheila Hancock, Donald Sinden, Michael Pennington and so forth.
ALSO... TVS' feedback show Airmail ends today in 1985 with Jill Cochrane promising highlights - some sub-Flanders & Swann and a guide dog, apparently - and reaction to Live Aid, which wasn't even ITV's responsibility.
July 30th
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Blue Heaven, Frank Skinner's single series sitcom about a down on their luck pop duo which he described as "a love letter to the Black Country".
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Murray Walker appears on one of the first Mastermind Celebrity Specials. What's his specialist subject? Correct. How well does he do? Incorrect.
July 31st
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Brian Clough becomes Leeds United manager and is welcomed with a Yorkshire special, Clough Comes To Leeds, in which not for the last time he explains his working to Austin Mitchell.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Play For Today, not for the first time, tackles the Troubles with The Cry, in which a young Adrian Dunbar witnesses a beating and comes up against a wall of silence. An uncredited James Nesbitt makes his screen bow as a B Special unit member; TVS last thing at night, including Farming Brief bringing the funk.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: as the car of Jos Verstappen (yes, Max's dad) goes on fire at the German Grand Prix, Murray Walker says perhaps the last thing you'd reasonably expect him to say.
ALSO... It's 'urban games' morning on SMTV Live today in 1999! It was the summer, they weren’t quite in their imperial phase yet, Cat was on holiday, they had to fill the time somehow, including guest co-host and Fully Booked alumni Sarah Vandenbergh. The emergency link to a delayed CD:UK at the end is a triumph of making do.
August 1st
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: something that feels very unlikely on all kinds of levels, Leonard Cohen on the Big Breakfast bed with Paula Yates. Just Cohen being up for 7.43am is unexpected, and judging by his dark glasses and his look once they're removed he would agree.
August 2nd
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Kenneth Williams, given an inch of anecdotal opportunity in the Looks Familiar company of Parky and Ernie, takes a yard; Harty and Wogan finally have their showdown for the chat ages in, of all places, an area outside a winnebago in Los Angeles.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: old school vs alternative comedy punchline panel game Gagtag, Jonathan Ross' first BBC series. Bob Monkhouse and Frank Skinner are joined by Ted Rogers and Tony Hawks; not for the first or last time Jools Holland drags a camera crew to Portmeirion, this time for One Foot In The Past, where he explains how he's trying to copy it for himself.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: recovered from his duck egg trauma, Patrick Moore returns to The Sky At Night to discuss the Cassini probe's approach of Saturn.
August 3rd
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Devil's Advocate, a Channel 4 series for Darcus Howe to pugnaciously challenge people in the public eye, returns with Imran Khan, well before his political career so answering to the debate on cricket ball tampering.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Barry Cryer on full raconteur blast in Countdown Dictionary Corner.
August 4th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Kathy Tayler had only just started in TV when she was put on Olympic Grandstand duty, and you can tell it may have been much too early for her. Why don't we get themed idents like that any more?; just across California meanwhile, Willie Rushton in Disneyland! Shame we don't have the whole of the sixth week of Ultra Quiz but we do get a Mad Hatter's Tea Party and some canoeing.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: with the other half of The Mary Whitehouse Experience having been and gone as a duo, Steve and Hugh made for the safer ground of prime time BBC1 in The Imaginatively Titled Punt & Dennis Show. A Beavis & Butt-head spoof!
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