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

From the house of @whydontyoutube

November 11th

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Pebble Mill devotes the whole show to The Shadows doing their TV theme covers and wouldn't you know it, an old friend of theirs just happens along to surprise them; the eighth series of Knightmare ends with a winning team, but just as a new set of kids embark on their adventure it all has to come to a sudden end. In fact this wasn't planned as the series' finale and an appeal for future contestants was made but according to creator Tim Child it fell to a combination of the realisation within that shows for older viewers in the demographic were gaining many more award nominations than viewers, a new department head falling out with Anglia's owners and the failure of Broadsword's new VR-based lead-in series Virtually Impossible. Children's BBC were interested in taking it on but issues including copyright and the falling average age of viewers scuppered it. So back to panto went Hugo Myatt and everything else had to wait twenty years until easy nostalgia caught up and now we have that Knightmare Live thing, which is apparently progress; superannuated but still active vehicle documentary series Perpetual Motion traces the social history of the milk float; Mr You Don't Want To Do It Like That joins Match Of The Day; Clive Anderson Talks Back is mostly easier than expected on Julie Andrews.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: if you think unexpected musicals are a new Hollywood thing, Blackpool (part two; three) was a significant hit at the time injecting big showpiece numbers in the full-on Dennis Potter style into a murder investigation procedural starring David Morrissey, Sarah Parish and David Tennant. Morrissey and Tennant having a face-off while miming to These Boots Are Made For Walkin' might be once seen never forgotten.

November 12th

60 YEARS AGO TODAY: seventeen year old David Jones of Bromley is questioned by Cliff Michelmore on Tonight as creator and president of the Society Of The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long-Haired Men. Bow... Jones is flanked by members of his band The Mannish Boys (including George Underwood, who would design the Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory covers but more famously would deliver the punch that paralysed Bowie's left pupil and caused the appearance of different coloured eyes), which while their music isn't mentioned gives away what this is in aid of - they were due to appear on spectacularly named pop show Gadzooks! It's All Happening when the show's producer refused to allow them to play until they cut their hair to proper manly lengths, leading their manager to stunt another part of the BBC.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: News At Ten ends with dread news that coins are replacing pound notes, then between a round-up of the following night and the evening's Thames News Rustie Lee sings her way through what appears to be a water heating facility advert and an explanation of why British beef is better than a holiday.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the shooting as mistaken identity of Stephen Waldorf in 1993, which caused a public outcry leading to reforms to armed police, is dramatised by Paul Greengrass as Open Fire, with Rupert Graves as the wanted man David Martin, Douglas Hodge as the investigating officer, Samuel West as Waldorf and Eddie Izzard's first acting role; Germaine Greer’s own all-female late night BBC2 discussion round table The Last Word discusses the standard of education with Ann Leslie, Melanie Phillips, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, activist Stella Dadzie and 19 year old Caitlin Moran.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: in a packed Later With Jools Holland: INXS with Michael Hutchence literally on the piano, Percy Sledge, Portishead playing live for the very first time and Edwyn Collins, with the Sex Pistols' Paul Cook on drums.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Max & Paddy's Road To Nowhere, the Kay/McGuinness Phoenix Nights spin-off with the club doormen disappearing on a motorhome escape. Fans of overwrought creator sitcoms will be delighted to find the first person they meet is played by Brendan O'Carroll; Elton John joins Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, talking Furnish, Taupin, meeting his heroes, not drinking and the experience of wearing a costume so huge he has to be transported in a van.

November 13th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the first UK McDonalds opens in Woolwich. Back in January Wish You Were Here?'s Jim Lloyd had boggled at the idea of the computer age hamburger; two months after leaving Leeds a far from downcast Brian Clough takes The Frost Interview. Note he can't even bring himself to name Don Revie.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Just William gets yet another adaptation, the lead played by ten year old Oliver Rokison who barely acted again and, we assume given it's not a common name, is now a teacher in Southampton; similarly Tiffany Griffiths who got the Violet Elizabeth Bott gig is now a children's entertainer. William's first task is to run the white elephant stall at the village fete; Dame Thora Hird gets her own South Bank Show, which of course is a joy.

ALSO... Revid was one of the programmes that accompanied and occasionally bisected the Chart Show on Channel 4, supplying new video film reviews from Londoner Gary Crowley and not-Londoner journalist Jon Stephen Fink within a modish split-screen effect. Today in 1987 the reviews include Running Scared and 84 Charing Cross Road.

"Bob Monkhouse's remark about Feargal Sharkey" leads the brickbats on Points Of View today in 1996. Also up for criticism are Julian Tutt critiquing the women at the Royal Festival of Remembrance, which were clearly perfectly acceptable as he kept doing the commentary for the next two years, a shirt changing in Dangerfield, violent women on Panorama, Robert Kilroy-Silk stealing seats and Anne Robinson herself... standing still?

November 14th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: probably the best of the post-Cleese shows, The Light Entertainment War, some of which suggests Monty Python had something of an issue with the department at the time, features cameos by Douglas Adams (in the 42nd episode!) as a masked doctor, Olympic silver medallist showjumper (and Jennifer Saunders' teenage heroine) Marion Mould and Peter Woods, not to mention a Steptoe & Son spoof taken to the streets and a closing song from Neil Innes; Julia Jones, the first woman to write an original TV drama series (Home And Away for Granada in 1972), pens haunting Play For Today Back Of Beyond, shot on location in the Brecon Beacons/Bannau Brycheiniog where the reclusive Rachel Roberts is befriended by her papergirl who finds herself out of her social depth.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Steven Berkoff's West End theatre hit West, depictions of north London gang low-life in Shakespearian script, is brought kicking onto Channel 4.

ALSO... the Cambridge Footlights team of many of the talents - Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Robert Bathurst and Rory McGrath - had taken over Friday Night... Saturday Morning a year earlier and they were invited back for more today in 1980. Amid some mixed sketches there's time for John Barden, the future Jim Branning then known for his Max Miller impression, Oxford representation from The Hee Bee Gee Bees and presenter (and recent Cambridge graduate himself) Martin Bergman refers to "Ronald Regan" like in (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang and I Wanna Be A Winner. A year later BBC2 would cut out the middleman and commission The Cellar Tapes on its own.

Just Another Day, John Pitman's series taking a crew round the back of everyday life, invigilates itself among the denizens of Walford today in 1986, talking to creators, crew and cast alike.

Noel Edmonds had a yen on House Party for bringing back old stagers and sitcom characters alike, as best shown when he convinced Michael Crawford to don mac and beret in front of dozens of his own for one last time today in 1998. This somehow also involves Tony Curtis and a closing surprise for Michael Crawford himself.

November 15th

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: 40 Minutes goes inside Grendon, the unique psychiatric prison where inmates in some of the most serious categories are made to account for their crimes within therapeutic communities.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Major Voce is getting married in Soldier Soldier and has left the company to sort out the reception. That means Tucker and Garvey exhibiting their close harmony party piece version of Unchained Melody. Public demand for a single release alerted BMG's A&R man Simon Cowell, who pursued the actors for months - Robson Green even threatened legal action against harassment - until they agreed to record the song properly, and the rest was for a short time pop history; it's another late night ITV John Pilger joint, Flying The Flag, Arming The World looking at Britain's clandestine international arms deals.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Dumping Ground spends five daily episodes planning its Children In Need party in Tracy Beaker Parties With Pudsey, complete with CBBC celebrities dropping by and viewers able to vote on cliffhangers (lines are no longer open)

November 16th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: as with every singer showcase of the era, Petula Clark was given plenty of new songs to pad out her variety showcase The Sound Of Petula. Unlike the others, she had to essay a decidedly strange song about fellow Scorpios while singing to oversized photos, one in particular leading to viewers requiring a big gulp of air.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Paula Yates is confused by the big suit when she comes to interview David Byrne on The Tube for the release of Stop Making Sense, and he's not about to help; every time we find something from later life Graham Chapman it's fully worth watching. Channel 4's Opinions gave him half an hour (albeit at 11.20pm) to talk tolerance, peer pressure and homosexuality-driven alienation; Ben Elton investigates "fantasy games" on South Of Watford, a topic which incorporates Dungeons & Dragons, Fighting Fantasy and full-on LARPing.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Doris Speed, Corrie's Annie Walker, died. Two days later the show paid tribute.

ALSO... Crackerjack became infamous in the second half of the 1970s for taking the pop hits of the day and delivering them as gang singalongs for the kids with full LE orchestra reworking. See if you can guess what this end of a typical playlet is leading up to today in 1979 (um, as long as you don't look at the upload title)

November 17th

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Good Morning Britain must have run short as Henry Kelly spends five minutes asking the guests, including Elaine Paige and Nigel Rees, who their dream dinner party guests would be. After five minutes of chat their slumber is rudely broken; most of the Late Late Breakfast Show, with celebrity indoor skiing - Tim Brooke-Taylor, Carol Thatcher and Limahl, together at last! - and the Mr Puniverse final aided by some uncomfortable looking bodybuilders; Cannon & Ball come to the end of their sixth series with Jimmy Tarbuck trying to introduce Bobby in golf incorporating some excellent attempts to hold back the corpsing, Henry Cooper, Gary Olsen and Are You Being Served?'s Candy Davis in a Western film within a film, The Flying Pickets covering Eurythmics and Tommy nearly splitting the act after the sad finale song falls apart, luckily replaced in time by a replacement assertion of OK-togetherness.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Songs Of Praise comes to Dibley, Pam Rhodes in tow, and Geraldine falls for producer Peter Capaldi.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Les Battersby and Cilla have bought a jacuzzi and they're intending on enjoying themselves this evening. Just one minor problem becomes apparent when Schmeichel joins in.

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