The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - March 11th-17th 2024

From the house of @whydontyoutube

March 11th

60 YEARS AGO TODAY: the "top entertainer in the Channel Islands" Shane Richie is born.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: It'll Be Alright On The Night 4, the one with the cigarette behind the ear, pissed off Colin Baker, Bullseye JFK, "Avon's ambulance men" and "the first time in years I've been able to cross my legs". Look upon Norden's work, Walliams, and despair; Shirley Bassey is welcomed to Live From Her Majesty’s for a set that includes her supercharging her way through Arthur's Theme.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tomorrow's World investigates 3D, back projection, plastic car parts, fish populations, aircraft checks, the Masai's war on the tse-tse fly and "some original thinking in the world of the ice lolly"; Norris Cole turns up at Derek Wilton's house, remembering that he gave him a lift home once, took his unsolicited advice and so has come to stay, which he will on and off until Malcolm Hebden's retirement in 2020.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Black Books' third and final series starts with Bernard broken down and Manny working at next door's bookshop under manager Simon Pegg.

March 12th

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: NKOTB, as New Kids On The Block restyled themselves for a harder image, follow a busy night out with Live & Kicking, Jon disappearing even before the interview while Joey, Danny and Andi Peters have to freestyle their way through some competition draws. Peters still calls this his worst experience in television; John McCririck gets Gotcha'd on Noel's House Party, before Robin Cousins grabs a grand and an unwelcome return.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Worst Week of My Life, starring Ben Miller and Sarah Alexander, updates escalating farce for a prime-time BBC1 audience.

ALSO...

Finders Keepers from today in 1982. Yes, the Stilgoe kids' game show. No, he doesn't sing the theme live, nor is it the one that sounds like Neil Tennant on vocals but a stranger earlier version. That presenters' desk is a bit overlarge, surely?

March 13th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Crown Court judges a man who now claims his confession was forced out of him by a vindictive sergeant, and despite QC Richard Wilson's questioning we'd believe him as he played by Peter Duncan. Unusually one character is deaf and requires BSL-fluent Richard Griffiths to interpret.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: we tend to think of Local Hero as Peter Capaldi's big break but a year later he was playing a comedy punk for four minutes of Crown Court, while Alex Norton conducts his own defence; Desert Of Lies was acclaimed playwright Howard Brenton's sole Play For Today, following an expedition to a CSO Kalahari to find out what happened to a set of missionaries who went missing there a century earlier. Sarcastic "tribesmen" subtitles abound.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Alan Partridge's first TV appearance after becoming established on the The Day Today Sports Desk was on the Bafta Production Awards, with Patrick Marber and, less willingly, Kenneth Branagh and Amanda Donohoe as foils a crime fighting... restaurateur? You interest us strangely. The first of forty episodes of Richard Griffiths vehicle Pie In The Sky lays out how he ended up being blackmailed into not retiring to the restaurant trade.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the best part of Saturday Night Takeaway was always What's Next?, actual spontaneity swimming in semi-chaos. For the first of series 3 there's hands across the ITV divide to interact with Stars In Their Eyes ahead of its live grand final and Matthew Kelly's last show, producing one of its most remarkable winners and messages from Coronation Street and Dolly Parton;

March 14th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: John Noakes goes across the road from Television Centre to QPR's Loftus Road to change a floodlight. Being John Noakes, this means casually scaling an eighty foot ladder in the freezing cold with no safety gear.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: a forthright Nina Simone on Afternoon Plus, playing three songs and talking to Mavis Nicholson at Ronnie Scott's; Open Space gives airtime to the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Club, showcasing the range of regulars at White Hart Lane in the face of hooliganism reportage.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Written by Daniel Peacock under the influence of The Likely Lads, Men Of The World stars David Threlfall as a divorcee attempting to make a man of his lodger and travel agency co-worker John Simm, from whence the humour arises. It was actually relatively successful and helped establish both Simm and Threlfall (who also sing the theme) but then Men Behaving Badly took off further than anyone imagined and one had to fall. Both series are fortunately archived.

ALSO...

Face Your Image, a series in which David Dimbleby invites a famous figure to respond to what friends, family and public think of them, challenges Spike Milligan today in 1975. Peter Sellers is among the witnesses called.

March 15th

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: just under an hour of Breakfast Time on the fourth official day of the miner's strike. Merlyn Rees commenting on Gerry Adams being shot sits awkwardly alongside John Nettles, caravan maintenance, a quick shortbread recipe and later visiting the Radiophonic Workshop; a day after meeting Nina Simone Mavis Nicholson on Afternoon Plus talks to another headstrong woman, Germaine Greer; Fall Of Eagles covered seventy years of history in the fall of three European empires with eagles in their heraldry. Did the concept or the signifier come first? Regardless, it's a classic BBC 70s epic so you'll need the whole series.

March 16th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the second series of That's Life! has had a complete rework, bringing in Kieran Prendiville and Glyn Worsnip, a desk to put them behind, Cyril Fletcher and his odes, and Rod Jordan's credits cartoon. Stephanie de Sykes is still there, mind.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Tube knew entertainment. Here, then, is a man called Thor blowing up a hot water bottle. Not going near any such warmth were the Smiths, Howard Jones with Jed, who has a mask now, and Madness, with Paul Carrack replacing Barso; the Doctor is exposed to the toxicity of spectrox on Androzani and, having first saved Peri with his final antidote, regenerates; the ultra-raw The Treatment is adapted from a play by and stars Jonathan Moore, now a hugely successful theatre and opera director, as a football hooligan who tries to turn things around after meeting priest Gabriel Byrne.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: notable Anglophile Tori Amos gets the ultimate test of the culture, Zig & Zag.

March 17th

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the day after becoming the Sixth Doctor a costumed Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant appear on Saturday Superstore with Mike sporting his Yes jumper. The second caller wants something quite different and certainly not Baker’s autograph, or come to it that of Madness, who despite previous Saturday morning behaviour and having been in Newcastle the previous evening are brought in to do some competition winner picking and parrot sitting; LWT are fairly piling through the big shiny floor faux-Q&As with big overseas visitors pretending to recognise our TV stars, this time An Audience With Joan Rivers.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: to mark the end of Minder George Cole is asked to introduce his favourite episode and chickens out.

ALSO...

Grand Slam, a comedy about a rugby fans' away weekend to France with a local talent pool led by Hugh Griffith and Windsor Davies, first aired today in 1978 and has since been labelled the greatest Welsh film of all time.

Barry Norman reviews and wants explanations about the Star Wars Special Edition on Film '97 on this day in... well, guess.

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