June 3rd
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Murray Walker and James Hunt try to make sense of the sopping wet Monaco Grand Prix in which a near newcomer nearly pulls off a surprise win, about whom Hunt calls it early and right; Spitting Image has constructed a Boy George puppet! And they have no idea what voice to give him! Or Ron Atkinson. They have one for Tracey Ullman, but it's Janet Street-Porter's.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Neil Kinnock returns to Have I Got News For You for the first time since being deposed as leader. Mariella Frostrup partners Ian, who is trying to look unperturbed despite having been in, checked himself out of and then returned to hospital with appendicitis.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Who Wants To Be A London Mayor? is precisely the title you'd have thought Carlton would give a roundtable debate show. The theme music being by The Fall, less so.
ALSO... Graham Norton famously won a Comedy Award for sitting in on The Jack Docherty Show but plenty wanted a go, Docherty's old sketch partner Gordon Kennedy having a go today in 1997 with Leslie Phillips, Amanda Holden, Jean-Michel Jarre and some horrible monologue gags.
June 4th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Armchair Cinema one-offs strand pilots The Sweeney, then known as Regan with John Thaw (who we saw in sitcom form three days ago) and bit-part drama and stage actor Dennis Waterman in place. Maureen Lipman as Regan's bit on the side doesn't last.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: John Sachs' employment by both The Brian Conley Show and Gladiators is brought to bear. Isn't Dangerous Brian just a light entertainment, less deadly Super Dave Osbourne?; to tie in with their single of the same title, Pulp present Do You Remember The First Time?, drawing loss of virginity stories from a range of celebrities from Justine Frischmann to Vivian Stanshall via Andrea Oliver and Alison Steadman.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Patrick Stewart tells Friday Night With Jonathan Ross about Star Trek aliens, X-Men and having his hair cut off by force.
ALSO... Footlights! traces the Cambridge, er, Footlights today in 1983 with various alumni - not just sundry Beyonds, Goodies and Pythons but Frost, Stilgoe, Margolyes, Jimmy Edwards, Richard Baker and Germaine Greer singing - and that year's intake, including youthful Punt & Dennis, Nick Hancock and Neil Mullarkey.
June 5th
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: on the eve of the D-Day commemorations Sue Lawley delivers the very late headlines in News '44; Nina Myskow, Chris Tarrant and former waterskiing champion Liz Hobbs get both homeowners correct on Through The Keyhole; Hugh Bonneville, Toby Jones, Steven Mackintosh, Roy Barraclough, Natascha McElhone and Emmerdale's Mark Charnock walk into a monastery in the second episode of Cadfael.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: To begin a BBC Four period season Mark Lawson finds out not every programme was Civilisation and Cathy Come Home in The Truth About Sixties TV.
June 6th
70 YEARS AGO TODAY: televisual history as a film of the Fête des Narcisses floral festival of Montreux is the first broadcast to be transmitted via the continental Eurovision network.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the most famous Sparks Top Of The Pops performance of This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us, starting playground talk about Ron Mael that would never really fade, was actually its second performance on the show, the Beeb having lost both the first and the end of this one since then; fourth wall scraping Play For Today The Cheviot, The Stag And The Black, Black Oil mixes live on stage sketches and songs with interviews and on location reconstructions to explore Highlands history from the Clearances to the ongoing oil boom.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: BBC1 panics as We'll Meet Again, a live musical event on board the QE2 intended as a centrepiece of D-Day fiftieth anniversary commemorations, is lost to either weather conditions or the production company not setting up the link in time. (It was recorded and shown three days later); safely pre-recorded, Sue Lawley breaks the news fifty years on in News '44; Michael Palin nips over to Channel 4 for Palin's Column, only to find they can only afford to send him to the Isle of Wight as he takes a turn as their new columnist at large.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Top Gear inaugurates another of its building blocks, the categorised new car challenge, as the trio take the BMW 645i, Porsche 911 Carrera and Jaguar XKR to Pendine Sands.
ALSO... Ruby Wax had an almost straight chat show - note "almost" - in her first series Don't Miss Wax. Today in 1987 she investigates the meaning of money with guests including Malcolm McLaren, Simon Napier-Bell and regular faux floor manager Norman Lovett.
June 7th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thames' turn to introduce viewers to the world of technology in Database, explaining how to send electronic mail across Micronet and ending with software transmitted via recordable noises. Wonder if it still works with YouTube compression; Crimewatch UK begins, and Nick Ross had the catchphrase from the start. The lead case's reconstruction was directed by future head of BBC1 Peter Salmon; Annette Badland stars as the new resident of a mansion turned hippie commune in Channel 4's Last Day Of Summer, by future Booker winner Ian McEwan and also featuring Saskia Reeves' first screen role.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: News At Ten reports on the death of Dennis Potter; Channel 4's *other* early 90s cynical comedy-drama about political tensions mostly within the left wing, Little Napoleons stars Saeed Jaffrey, Norman Beaton, Simon Callow and Lesley Manville.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the self-explanatory The Gadget Show starts as one of Channel 5's factual tentpoles and only ended last year after 474 episodes. Suzi Perry, Jason Bradbury and Jon Bentley were there from the off, reporting on camcorders, flat screens and DIY very early sat nav.
June 8th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Doctor, having been hit by a deadly wave of radiation at the end of Planet Of The Spiders, regenerates in front of Sarah-Jane and the Brigadier.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Ben Elton, while keeping critical distance, integrates himself into the roleplaying, RPG and re-enactment communities on behalf of LWT's South Of Watford.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Johnny Vaughan and Caitlin Moran's late night Channel 4 music show Naked City welcomes the Charlatans, the Boo Radleys, Milla Jovovich and Lena Fiagbe, plus Moran meets Leigh Bowery and Michael Smiley and Collins & Maconie do some cultural commentary.
June 9th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: half of Status Quo, and not the half you might guess, talk about their final tour *cough* and Prince Charles' patronage on The Saturday Picture Show. Mark Curry quotes Cannon & Ball at them in response; in what even then was a rare TV interview, but maybe the least guarded of them all, Madonna shows Ear-Say around her bit of New York; Michael Aspel's chat Company opens for business with Paul McCartney recalls the early days of his songwriting, and to end Aspel, McCartney and Tracey Ullman become a fulsome - we hesitate on "harmony" - vocal trio for a version of That'll Be The Day.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Manic Street Preachers' Top Of The Pops performance of Faster breaks the complaints record, reportedly over 25,000 callers upset at James Dean Bradfield's balaclava and military fatigues. Note the director getting so excited they accidentally cut to guest hosts Vic & Bob too early.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: think as a reasonable society we're all agreed by now that Baker/Barker/Thomas/Huq is the greatest of all Blue Peter line-ups, and their bloopers prove it. You'd have to have the patience of Job not to react as Matt Baker does to the line "you'd wipe your bum with a sponge on the end of a stick"
ALSO... the man who excels/exhales does so for the first time on the Paul Daniels Magic Show today in 1979, where he has dancers and marionettes amidst the inauguration of the Bunco Booth and the first sighting of Hans Moretti and his crossbows.
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