The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - November 25th-December 1st 2024

From the house of @whydontyoutube

November 25th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Alan Hull of Lindisfarne stars as an unemployed dreamer in, and also wrote the music for, Squire, countercultural poet Tom Pickard's locally shot contribution to Second City Firsts bringing magical and social realisms together under director Barry Hanson, who went on to produce The Naked Civil Servant and The Long Good Friday. That this upload is in a weird sepia tone adds to the aura, maybe literally.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Roland Rat in his TV-am domain. The two major VTs that Errol runs, the Ratmobile's trip to Ireland and the previous year's Operation FOGI, are repeats - almost as if there was cost-cutting going on - but we do get live calls and a surprising spark twixt hamster and Diamond. Roland heckling Errol from off camera is quite an achievement. In between, the forgotten days of Green Cross Code man Bob Carolgees and Elvis Costello selling out to Big Board Game.

- Do They Know It's Christmas? is recorded. The Tube sent a team to capture everything, from Boy George with a toy dog to a lurking Nigel Planer.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Katie Boyle is wiped clear of cobwebs for Children In Need's all-star tribute to Eurovision with Michelle Collins, the Food & Drink team as Brotherhood Of Man and, providing that crucial link to Gonks Go Beat, Derek Thompson. Terry sums it up with a few well chosen words at the end.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Mine All Mine was filmed in Swansea, written by Russell T Davies and stars Griff Rhys Jones, Ruth Madoc, Siwan Morris and Joanna Page. That's right, it's a Tyneside story. *FX: rustling papers* Oh. Anyway, Jones is an eccentric taxi driver who believes he can claim the city as his own inheritance. Here’s the full series.

November 26th

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: don't know about a ghost story for Christmas but the Picture Box theme puts the frighteners or at least unease up anyone and Alan Rothwell has a festive story or two to introduce in animated form. Bit early, isn't it?

- Harty devotes the whole programme to McCartney, and as he's plugging both Give My Regards To Broad Street and We All Stand Together wisely talks about the Beatles for the vast majority of it (part two; 3 is missing, damn their hides; part four; five; six)

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Cheggers returns to Saturday morning on Live & Kicking, Jimmy Nail takes over Don's Dry Cleaners (duvet status unaffected), Andi stalks Eternal and the word 'ramikin' (sic) causes a complete loss of Peters composure. Also, Nobble The Wobbles.

- The Kids From Alright On The Night puts all the family favourites into one compilation, padded out with actual children choosing their favourite animal clips in the Small Talk style.

- opening a survival documentary road thoroughly debased since, Joanna Lumley is stranded with basic survival kit and an occasional basic film crew on an uninhabited island - well, it was then, there's now a hotel there - near Madagascar in Girl Friday. The original plan, which Lumley (who later called it "the toughest thing I've ever done, and the happiest") shot down, was for her to do the whole stint as Patsy. No way would they or her have been able to carry that off.

November 27th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the latest Tommy Cooper Hour features not only Tommy as Jekyll & Hyde, a folk singer, a conductor and a trainee ventriloquist but Kristine Sparkle, who does, Topo Gigio, Ray Alan with Lord Charles and, just casually popping in early, Abba doing Ring Ring.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Ruby Wax brings her husband Ed Bye onto The Full Wax as part of a special episode about families, which is all a ruse to get her to meet former TV evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: you know that recent story about ITV commissioning via AI suggestion? With A Little Help From My Friends is the mid-00s equivalent. See, it's a celebrity, ideally one who'd been on I'm A Celeb - Tara Palmer-Tomkinson this week, perfect - doing interior design and DIY (renovating a house), with the help of their schoolfriends (ITV owned Friends Reunited), presented by Linda Barker as a Costcutter Challenge Anneka type. One series, naturally; apart from making Joe Pasquale into the nation's sweetheart for a while series four of I'm A Celebrity… didn't bring that many interesting moments, apart from through Brian Harvey, who arrives a day late due to his grandmother's death, breaks wind, argues with Janet Street-Porter and promptly leaves on day seven.

November 28th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Granada's Kid Jensen-fronted pop show 45 had its own resident dance troupe, Zigzag, here with a minimalist take on surprise hit Pepper Box. One of them became Brotherhood Of Man's choreographer.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Stan Ogden's death was somewhat telegraphed by that of Bernard Youens three months earlier - in fact he hadn't appeared on screen in eight months. A week after his death Hilda memorably took delivery of his personal belongings, which might by itself have earned Jean Alexander her RTS Best Performance Award in 1985.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Beeb's go at reversioning Fungus The Bogeyman, this time with Mark Haddon adapting in the comedy-drama style and with Shrek-style animated Bogeys along humans such as Martin Clunes, Fay Ripley and Tom Goodman-Hill.

ALSO... the infamy of the Sex Pistols on Today has given rise to the idea that that was household Britain's introduction to punk, but there had been a lot of it around in the preceding weeks, what with the Pistols on Nationwide and just three days before Bill Grundy risked a joke about classical composers Janet Street-Porter putting the scene on the London Weekend Show today in 1976 with the Pistols, Clash and the Bromley Contingent to the fore.

Another Picture Box Christmas story? Didn't we just have one the other day? Yes, but this is from today in 1983, Alan Rothwell completing the story of the Christmas Messenger by way of Good King Wenceslas.

"But I'm only 21!" was Stephen Hendry's not unreasonable reaction to being got for This Is Your Life today in 1990, and indeed there was a flurry of complaints, to which the reaction was that he was one of sport's current hottest properties and also that it had the highest viewership of the series.

November 29th

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: imagine being Shakin' Stevens, at the top of your career yet still having to go into TV-am for 6.30am to be asked by Anne Diamond "have you ever played Trivial Pursuit?"

- the comic book stories of northern boy hero in his mind Stanley Bagshaw are brought to television, narrated by its cartoonist Bob Wilson (not that one), this week intending to get his football heroes' autographs and being diverted.

- Peter Sissons interviews his old schoolfriend Paul McCartney on Channel 4 News and tries to be diplomatic about Give My Regards To Broad Street.

- the video for Do They Know It's Christmas? is granted a world premiere on BBC1 before Top Of The Pops with a David Bowie intro.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Blue Peter's Matt Baker visits the Beano HQ and is taught how to draw Dennis the Menace.

November 30th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: having started with a remarkable visual joke Bruce Forsyth is on form with the Generation Game, and at that point bringing on a succession of dogs with the behaviour that inevitably entails is manna for his command of body language. The final game is a tribute to Petticoat Lane by means of second hand commerce. No wonder Brucie's final words are "customs and excise!"

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Joss Ackland is Julius Caesar in the latest Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, along with Hugh Quarshie, Jim Carter, Frances Tomelty and some classy looking cel animation.

- with just short of a year of her cancer battle left Marti Caine gets her second This Is Your Life big red book, the catch made with the aid of Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and a golf lesson from Tom O'Connor.

ALSO... Bill Forsyth's third directing job after That Sinking Feeling and Gregory's Girl was Andrina, a mystery tale for BBC1 shown once and once only today in 1981 and thus a holy grail until someone did the decent uploading thing almost exactly a year ago. Retired sea captain Cyril Cusack is befriended by a young woman (Wendy Morgan, later of The Jewel In The Crown) who wants to know a love story from his past. Adapted from a short story by celebrated Orkney poet George Mackay Brown, Forsyth admirers can connect the dots to the magic realism by the Scottish sea of his next work Local Hero.

Noel Edmonds continued with Telly Addicts and an annual trek up the Post Office Tower but his first new series after The Late Late Breakfast Show's enforced cancellation was Whatever Next?, a single series light oddity for Monday evenings in which two pairs, one of which today in 1987 includes a woman called Marvin, are challenged to predict the outcomes of street dares, queries and stunts, ending with an observation round for prizes. Interesting sidenote: speciality act Clarence Pickles would go on to be a regular on the first series the following year of Noel's return to weekend LE, Saturday Roadshow. You'd forgotten there was a series between Michael Lush and the great house, hadn't you?

December 1st

60 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monitor profiles leading Pop Artist Joe Tilson.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: like a noble gas, David Copperfield remakes exist permanently in the atmosphere ready to make itself known when people think they've grown overattuned to it. This one for the BBC was very well received at least, future Chariots Of Fire king David Yelland as the titular Dickens self-insert character alongside Arthur Lowe as Micawber, David Troughton, Ian Hogg, Anthony Andrews and Patricia Routledge.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the final stages of comedic Concentration conflagration Punchlines features two very different poles of the art of the one-liner, Barry Cryer and Lynsey de Paul, facing up a three-tiered panel that's far more leaning towards celebrity than comedian. Tessa Sanderson, for instance, who has not only brought a useful prop but gets to show off with it too.

- Wogan challenges Roald Dahl, who's in a very creaky chair, on whether children's stories are the easy way out and the chances of kids reading them anyway, not to mention what he did during the war.

ALSO... and as you'd forgotten, let us immediately remind you. The Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow is a kind of ChatGPT version of House Party where Noel is the MC of a convoluted factional set-up with celebrity guests playing walk-ons amid which Gotchas, gungings and Wait Til It Get You Home happen but it's in a pretend international setting and Noel has to do a lot of acting. Today in 1990 the Roadshow is in a diner allegedly in Minnesota for the prom with Judd Hirsch attempting to help, Gary Davies is privy to the tank of plenty and Emlyn Hughes gets what's still the Gotcha Oscar until the Academy find out.

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