The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - September 30th-October 6th 2024

From the house of @whydontyoutube

September 30th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the British public wouldn't quite experience the magic just yet as this was only the pilot of Oh No It's Selwyn Froggitt, the only episode written by creator Roy Clarke. Well, he was a busy man, and also by his own admission had no knowledge of working men's clubs so Maynard brought in Alan Plater to dress up his burly, well-meaning but ultimately incompetent title character.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the very first programme to be made under the auspices of Sky was The Sky-Fi Music Show, a video and interview show with a selection of guest hosts. Andy Partridge of XTC takes the mantle this week, talking variously to Jerry Dammers, Thomas Dolby, the remnants of Blue Rondo a la Turk and his own ex-bandmate Barry Andrews; Bristolians will now know it as the Thekla but it was the Old Profanity Showboat when Vivian Stanshall moored and converted it into a floating theatre, as Omnibus document in The Bristol Showboat Saga.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the start and last fifteen minutes or so of the first Record Breakers after Roy Castle's death, followed by Toby Anstis with some basketball players; John Prescott gives as good as he gets from Clive Anderson Talks Back.

ALSO... Kermit and Fozzie turn LWT on-screen continuity announcers to preview the weekend today in 1977. Shame we didn't get to see them interact directly with Pam Ayres.

Frocks On The Box was launched around the same time as The Clothes Show but TVS chose weekday afternoons as opposed to Sundays. Today in 1987 Muriel Gray's magic bag transports her and Marie Helvin, not a TV natural, to Glasgow, and this must be the mid-80s as Gray visits Cynthia Payne. That doyenne of the fashionista set Harry Enfield provided a weekly news section, and just wait until his serious voiceover tone.

October 1st

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Who Needs A Chimney In The Head? is the title of this edition of ITV Schools' Good Health, and somewhere The Tamperer makes a note for future reference. It's actually a playlet about smoking, one with no credits whatsoever.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: BBC Schools' General Studies module is entitled The Video Boom?, somewhat misleadingly as it's about the rise and possibilities of cable TV, running to Alasdair Milne, Paul Fox, Leon Brittain and a Play For Today starring Tim Curry for reassurance; James Mason in his final role and Alan Bates are the starry top line, supported by Greta Scacchi and a small but memorable appearance by Barry Humphries, in an adaptation of Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva, in which a wealthy businessman makes sport out of upper class greed; how much money were Yorkshire swimming in to afford Anthony Perkins and Rod Steiger? Probably not enough given they grew to detest each other and Perkins affects an English accent that he might well have learnt in the make-up room. The Glory Boys is a mini-series, also featuring Joanna Lumley and Alfred Burke, of the standard for the time international terrorist action thriller type.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: if anyone (with the possible exception of Last Resort-era Jonathan Ross) was going to purposefully invite a guest who doesn't speak onto a chat show it would be Danny Baker. Kendo Nagasaki fortunately had Lloyd Ryan and a drumkit with him.

October 2nd

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the latest Tommy Cooper Hour with guests including Vince Hill, who mouths his own name on being introduced at the start, Georgie Fame, Jenny Lee Wright in full hoofer mode, a dramatic reading of the lyrics to Delilah and lots of dogs. As was the case with many of these shows, the magic is all dealt with in the first ten minutes.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Rik Mayall was a surprisingly common guest on other people's sketch shows that decade, making his BBC1 debut on The Lenny Henry Show crashing a Trevor McDoughnut sketch; the natural face of heavy metal, Caroline Quentin, who had only had TV bit parts up to this point, presents the latest Channel 4 Play At Home on Girlschool.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: we once had a proper country and a proper Junior MasterChef, ie one with Loyd Grossman. The north-western heat includes someone already known for "playing Indian music on her squeezebox", the guest judges being Antony Worrall Thompson and, of course, West Ham's Lee Chapman opining "people used to be put off drinking wine". Lee, they're fifteen year olds!

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: It'll Be Alright On The Night 18 - for reasons beyond understanding there was never a 17 - and even though the once leisurely compilation window has sped up quite a bit at least it's a decent late-Norden effort (note: contains Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall)

October 3rd

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: BBC Schools' Scene tackles the class issue by way of A First Class Friend, in which an ex-public school boy gets a job in Horrible Ives' greengrocers; Man Alive reporter Jack Pizzey goes down to Margate to celebrate the traditional British seaside day trip, barely a cliché left uncovered.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: when the Beastie Boys are finding Zig & Zag too chaotic...; in the Astra satellite days channels would have to share transponder space, so Sky Soap closes on its first day so that Sky Travel can launch its own; on the eve of his first conference speech as Labour leader Panorama asks what Tony Blair's vision for the future is by having him talk to six potential voters.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Michael Palin goes round the Himalayas in, er, Himalaya with Michael Palin, starting off round the Khyber Pass and ending adjacent to K2 via cricket, polo and the Kalash.

ALSO… we’ve featured the first edition of This Morning from 1988 before but the programme has uploaded an edited version (mostly to rid it of Fred Talbot) itself to mark its, um, 36th anniversary. We all know how Richard Madeley, who has massive bags under his eyes, introduced it but you may be surprised at how it hardly hit the ground running. Parenting is dominant, with the pair referring to their own family situation many times for familiarity and Dr Chris Steele making an early bow. Several links aren't from the famous studio at all, as first Judy stands outside the Albert Dock's lingerie shop only to introduce a roving reporter, the long forgotten Dilly Braimoh, to do the actual interviewing. Later on Richard is outside because they've set up a market stall for Susan Brooks to stand beside even though most of her actual report is from a supermarket, and then from next to a flower stall to introduce a film of Toni Arthur on gardening ("Judy and I hit upon the perfect solution...") Paul Nicholas briefly pops by.

October 4th

60 YEARS AGO TODAY: standing by for action and all that, Stingray was the third in the Supermarionation series (after Supercar and Fireball XL5), set amongst the combat submarines of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol of the 2060s, costing a full million quid and claiming to be the first British series filmed entirely in colour. In the first, eponymous adventure the thing that happens in the next half hour is Troy Tempest and Phones being captured and sentenced to death. Feels like a lack of actual jeopardy for the first of a 39 episode series if you ask us.

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: actual (and still) married couple John Alderton and Pauline Collins are non-actual married couple CD and Clara in No, Honestly, also written by a married couple. With a storyline entirely presented in flashback, uniquely each programme is topped and tailed by the stars addressing the studio audience in front of a black curtain. Lynsey De Paul provides the theme music, which going by the ending the stars seem to enjoy.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the second The Fast Show introduces Bob Fleming, but most importantly an appearance by Jennifer Calvert from Spatz.

ALSO... Five Star taking calls on Saturday morning BBC1? No, this is Saturday Superstore today in 1986, where the other main guest is Roland Rat, whom Mike Read does not take a shine to. But then Roland's not the one who thinks Birmingham is the capital is he? The Pop Panel does its usual bringing together of disparate people - Rat, Roger McGough, Wayne Sleep, Lynn Faulds Wood, Melissa Wilkes (Jackie from Grange Hill) with an unexpected haircut, while Sarah Greene launches Bugwatch and sports a proper ball of wool haircut, and Roger Finn takes calls on the spectre of advertising on exercise books.

October 5th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: as a precursor to an airing of The Who's recent huge Charlton gig, Melvyn Bragg talks at length to Pete Townshend for BBC2 arts show 2nd House.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Elspeth and Angus MacToot receive their thistle whistles and discover Loch Ness is inhabited in the process for the first of 25 times (yes, it felt like a lot more) in The Family-Ness. Yes, it had a hyphen all along; after the two specials Micro Live becomes a proper monthly programme, owl mascot and all. Ian McNaught-Davis, when he's not being interrupted by Micro Mart's man, trusts a bulletin board maybe too much especially given previous live TV experience, Lesley Judd phones a modem, Brian Jacks is looking for a new computer, singular named American reporter Freff is at the the Universal Studios tour, and one hundred copies of Daley Thompson's Decathlon are given to Oxfam doubtless closely followed by a hundred broken joysticks; Around Midnight, a LWT discussion programme fronted by the dream pairing of Janet Street-Porter and Auberon Waugh, pokes and prods US trans punk icon Jayne County as a bemused Spike Milligan watches before John Sessions delivers a Bond-ish monologue.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the latest version of the junior artistic showcase, SMart begins with Zoe Ball as the first of what might have been hundreds of co-presenters for Mark Speight and co-host for the first nine years Jay Burridge. Morph and Chas provide a direct link to the Children's BBC art room OG.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Rebecca Loos wanks off a pig. There it is. There's the thing you know about. Actually, for Channel 5 celebrities-do-a-thing reality show The Farm, she's helping a resident pig farmer stimulate a boar so as to extract semen for some kind of porcine IVF. They'd do it anyway!

ALSO… John Lloyd wanders around the Edinburgh Fringe with his usual urbanity for Channel 4 expose/examination The 39,000 Steps today in 1988, featuring early footage of Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson as Victor & Barry and the Doug Anthony Allstars, and Lloyd's passing acquaintances Fry and Laurie, Jeremy Hardy, Arthur Smith, Craig Ferguson, Pete McCarthy, Lee Evans at his first Fringe, a moustachioed Mark Steel and, of course, George Takei.

October 6th

50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Open Door was an BBC Community Programme Unit initiative to hand BBC2 airtime to 'the people', which for this edition was taken mostly by a North London sex education project, but then undermined itself with an infamous additional offering from the Albion Free State. The whole unedited programme used to be on YouTube – via one of its most valuable channels for old British TV stuff, in fact – but that's long gone so we'll have to make do with TV Hell's version.

40 YEARS AGO TODAY: in a touching display of forgiveness for the kids' sake Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford of Frankie Goes To Hollywood accompany Mike Read on a Radio Lollipop hospital visit for Saturday Superstore; Wogan welcomes Joanna Lumley, slipping in a superb Sloane accent impression and suggesting she'd like to do comedy, Wham! with Andrew hoping to retire with grace, George musing on the underhandedness of the music industry and being "unashamed of being screamed at", and David Owen. Afterwards Jan Leeming and the news marks Leonard Rossiter's death the night before.

30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Channel 4 strand Critical Eye paints a sympathetic picture of new age travellers in Angleterre Underground. More sympathetic at any rate than the director's own crew's opinion of him as they take charge and revolt against his methods; Revelations is Granada's black sheep of soap operas, an experimental family drama based around the Anglian Church that critiques more than celebrates and lasted 37 episodes. It's maybe more famous for the team behind it, being co-created by Russell T Davies and future Corrie/TOWIE/Geordie Shore producer Tony Wood, with Yvon Grace moving over from Eastenders to script edit alongside Paul Marquess who would create Footballers' Wives. Oh, and the first episode was written by a tyro Sally Wainwright.

20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Michael Fish retires and is summarily reminded of *that* moment; BBC Three brings culture to the nation the only way it can envisage how, with Flashmob: The Opera, presented by Patrick O'Connell from Paddington Station with roles for David Grant and Barry Davies.

ALSO... Channel 4's late night showcase The Entertainers gives French & Saunders almost their first TV exposure as themselves today in 1983.

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