The Why Don't YouTube? Newsletter - December 31st 2023
From the house of @whydontyoutube
50 YEARS AGO
On a night where BBC1 offered the first Superstars, Nimmo in Australia and a Nationwide special ("Tonight, Frank Bough asks: 1973 - Was it really that bad?") and ITV hit back with an Opportunity Knocks Concorde Special - sadly it was only Hughie Green, never a man to turn down a madly ambitious plan, in the supersonic cockpit - Blue Peter looks back at a giant scrapbook containing the best of the year of Val meeting the Pope, Lesley falling off a racehorse, John freefalling from 25,000ft, John and Peter going overboard in the Ivory Coast, Uri Geller, an It's A Knockout crossover and lots of fun with paperchains.
40 YEARS AGO
The previous year Granada put on Pop Goes Christmas, which with its festive standard covers had an obvious hook. Then there was Pop Goes Guy Fawkes at Alton Towers, which gave us visual spectacle and not just Bob Carolgees swapping rhymes with Gary Byrd. Now there was Pop Goes New Year, which had all the signs of an idea being run dry. The wait for Pop Goes Whitsun continues. While the title sequence has the acts involved sharing out the bubbly in a very white space, the theme if there was one seems to have been to do songs they don't usually get to do on TV, so Limahl's Over The Top is illustrated with doors and dancers in matching macs, Eurythmics stand on a pink runway amid lasers and do No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts) with Annie sporting her bin bag strides, Tracey Ullman has to look sincere singing Shattered and Culture Club perform Mister Man, with Boy in boxing gloves, and Victims with full strings.
Little & Large going rock'n'roll, is it? Just like they did once a series until the end, then, by which time the guests were a lot less classy than Roy Wood, even if he has brought his bagpipes. And you know us, by now we cannot overlook a guest appearance by Roy Jay, a month and a half after his Bob Monkhouse Show breakthrough. You'll all be doing it tomorrow? Eddie's doing it now, donning the outfit and doing the walk, inevitably. It doesn't help.
3-2-1's subject on this of all nights is Come Into The Garden, Eve, so who do you think, remembering the scheduling and circumstances, do you think Eve is in this Garden of Eden radical reworking? Absolutely correct, it's Barbara Windsor, mostly covered in a body stocking acting against, and nobody asked for this, Norman Vaughan in a singlet, also featuring Valentine Dyall as the voice of God and Deryck Guyler as, yes, a policeman. Ted makes sure to say everyone involved is in panto and has a PR surprise when a hotel stay comes up among the prizes.
The Scottish year ended with the latest Scotch & Wry special, a series that had ended in 1979 and yet would continue annual specials until 1992. The centrepiece was Rikki Fulton's spoof of STV's closedown religious Message, Last Call with Rev. I.M. Jolly, who this year has a party blower. As always you had your choice of whose traditional song selections to first foot with, BBC Scotland's New Year Party with Moira Anderson and Maggie Moone in place or STV's Hogmanay Show, broadcast nationally and here kept in glorious RecordedOffALaptopOVision with Andy Cameron, who we assure you isn't intentionally being ironic with his patter, Kenneth McKellar and the no longer Oriental Mary Sandeman singing Bridge Over Troubled Water in Gaelic.
BBC1 everywhere else followed A Farewell Celebration Of The Good Old Days, Frankie Vaughan closing shop at the City Varieties after thirty years as its producer for that entire period Barney Colehan was retiring, with Across The Years, with Marian Foster, Eric Robson and at the Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, followed by the splendidly titled At Last - It's 1984!, hosted by Michael Barrymore. Meanwhile for the second year out of two Channel 4 saw out the old and in the new by way of David Frost's End Of The Year Show, featuring Denis Norden, Clive James, Alan Coren, John Wells, Diana Dors, Ken Livingstone and Instant Sunshine.
30 YEARS AGO
LWT, for reasons beyond anyone else's understanding, chose this night to celebrate its history through clip of chat shows on In The Hot Seat (part two, part three), fronted by Michael Aspel cycling through himself, Harty, Frost, Hunniford and all too briefly James.
As mentioned, Scotch & Wry came to an end in 1992 so Fulton span off his laconic minister into a series of one-offs, the first being Tis The Season To Be Jolly in which Jolly struggles to find the tone in his festive doings. Former Supergran Gudrun Ure makes a passing appearance.
So while Scotland go off and do their Gaelic and ceilidh things, BBC1 sees out the year in the recently time honoured tradition of Clive James On 1993, "from" the newly opened to the public Buckingham Palace with glamorous assistant Louise Lombard. Obviously he's still doing the Yasmin Arafat thing. Or you could turn over to BBC2 for the first Jools Holland Hootenanny, with chief guest Sting, if you really wanted.
20 YEARS AGO
Eastenders sees off the year with a marriage, Barry and Janine going off to Scotland, before fate drops the bombshell on both. The denouement will follow a day later.
Meanwhile ex-Ender Michelle Collins is the title character in a Channel 4 adaptation of Jacqueline Wilson's The Illustrated Mum, about the two children of a free-spirited manic depressive mother attempting to deal with the mess of both home and school life. Originally made for schools programming Channel 4 decided it was too good not to show to a general audience, as proved by its International Emmy for best children's programming.
Like its BBC Scotland sketch show predecessor, Chewin' The Fat continued as Hogmanay specials for years to come, if not nearly so many as it finally gave in after 2005.
Hootenanny time! It's all pre-recorded, you know. Oh, you did. So were Clive James' shows, and you cannot imagine a pre-recorded show including the New Year Big Ben bells on BBC1 these days without a subsequent outcry, internal inquiry and the DG resigning. Anyway, this year's singers backed by the Rhythm & Blues Orches-Tra! included Desmond Dekker selling out to every monk and beef head, Candi Station doing Young Hearts Run Free and Stand By Your Man, James Dean Bradfield covering Chris Farlowe's Out Of Time and Shane MacGowan and the Sugababes both doing ones of Jools' own.
And so we finish the year, our year, with the crossover into the new year, followed on BBC News 24 when the uploader decided they couldn't watch any more Sky News at 11.57pm.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
1980: The "Will Kenny Everett Make It To 1980?" Show was the last show of the year, and is most famous for David Bowie performing Space Oddity in the sets director David Mallet would reuse eight months after filming this for his Ashes To Ashes video. As a finale Sex Pistols/Thin Lizzy supergroup the Greedies played the crew party.
1981: meanwhile Cuddly's New Year's Daze Show, starting at 11.50pm, starred Billy Connolly, a live action Captain Kremmen and, right on the chimes of the new year, Bernard Manning being covered in green slime.
1981: regional upheaval, part one. Southern’s mood is set by Houseparty throwing a going-away fancy dress party which starts with one of the women seemingly suggesting she was going to show up in nothing but bouquets. "I've decided I'm going to get really high tonight" says another, which presumably had another meaning then. And things kind of go from there.
So there's the option of saying goodbye to your region with quiet dignity, as ATV's Mike Prince does half an hour past midnight with Shaw Taylor on hand, underplayed so much maybe because Central was basically a rebadging. And then there's Southern. The final Day By Day with Cliff Michelmore, cleverly retitled Day By Yesterday, features an interview with Worzel Gummidge in character, the crew singing a specially penned song with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta backing, and a look through the archive ranging from centurions vox-popping confused shoppers to George Harrison flicking fag ash into John Lennon's hair. Most notably, though, it contains clips from the final staff dinner a month earlier (from 21 minutes in), including a superbly bitter speech from chairman David Wilson and Richard Stilgoe's purpose-written Portakabin TV, a "tribute" to the way TVS was already technically operating the region out of non-permanent buildings in the Southern car park as they were being locked out of the offices and studios for as long as possible. Michelmore introduces this as "looking forward to the new year in a slightly irreverent way", which is one way of putting it. The actual final show on Southern was And It's Goodbye From Us, a near three hour grandiloquent extravaganza mostly made up of song, dance, high level guests and clips of their cultural archive seemingly aiming to make a point about the company's ultimate ambitions. Unfortunately all we can bring you is the first nine and last ten minutes, closing with a slow pan over a murderer's row of employees - Dinenage, Hargreaves and some of the Houseparty included - followed by the hauntological sight of the Southern logo disappearing into the great beyond.
1981: BBC Scotland had already had a good comedy year with A Kick Up The Eighties in the autumn and wanted to get away from White Heather cliche so its creator (and co-deviser of Not The Nine O'Clock News) Sean Hardie was commissioned to produce 81 Take 2, a satirical year in review sketch show with a fresh primary cast of John Bett from Gregory's Girl, A Kick Up the Eighties' Ron Bain, bit-part actress Celia Imrie and young actor Robbie Coltrane, plus brief appearances by Rik Mayall, Chic Murray and the Hee Bee Gee Bees. The main consequence was Coltrane's instant career elevation on his TV comedy debut, being brought in to the second series of Kick; meanwhile among the viewers was an ill Victoria Wood, who made a note of Imrie's talent for future ensemble reference.
1982: Richard Baker, who in 1954 had been BBC Television's first newsreader, retired. Twice, technically. The first was to BBC1 viewers at 9pm with the aid of a surprise newsroom singalong to a rewritten Moon River and a montage that includes at least one contribution to a Christmas tape. The quieter farewell and open bottle ("nice too") came on News At 2 at 10.35pm (or 15:50), featured amid a grab-bag of continuity from that night on BBC2, to the backing of a crew with streamers.
1985: Frank Sidebottom explains Prestel to Little Frank on the new year Whistle Test. You don't need any more. That was one of the show’s annual marathons…
1987: …which a couple of years later had grown to five and a half hours, mostly because that was also packing the programme in for good with a rather unfortunate choice of central live performance. Whispering Bob Harris came back just to wave the show off. BBC1 made the turn of the year part of an episode of Eastenders and missed the start of the bongs.
1987: ITV's final programme of that year was Des O'Connor Tonight Live, billed as "on a boat cruising down the Thames" but he leaves that to Angela Rippon, affecting surprise at chancing across a range of famous faces including "Judy" Chalmers, Ian McKellen "raising money for, er, um, a charity", Barbara Windsor "making a new Carry On film", Carol Drinkwater being badgered into a live proposal, Peter Howitt threatening to take over Masterteam unaware that with Neighbours repeats starting a week later it had just finished for good, Roy Kinnear denying that he had demolished a set and being wished a good 1988 (he wouldn't live to see the end of it), Jan Leeming in a remarkable pantomime fairy dress and Lulu singing Amazing Grace. It's definitely her singing, but the live quotient is questionable. Des stays on terra firm and interacts with Frank Carson, Lonnie Donegan, Roger de Courcey, Kit & the Widow and Cannon & Ball, who are late arriving causing him to climb into the audience to fill and getting on-air messages from the floor manager, then carrying on their chat until it all but crashes the bongs. We don't know if every region did this but the turn of the year is celebrated with an Anglia cut-in. Paul Lavers into '88!
1988: the first Gone Live! As the show that went out on Boxing Day 1987 was under the regular title this was the first time Philip, Sarah and co made no bones about not being there - it's the first thing Sarah points out - so presumably the Christmas Eve show went out live and this was so they could hand out presents, which is the lead-in to everyone travelling around in time in a series of almost half-formed sketches that might explain why from 1989 onwards they favoured the longform Trevor & Simon-penned set-pieces. Also included: a slightly wrong version of the Twelve Days Of Christmas from the Singing Corner, Bristol School of Dancing do a routine to Walking In The Air, Andy Crane and Jenny Powell are the victims of Double Dare, and Then Jericho.
1988-1994: let's round up the entire rest of the Clive James New Year's Eve oeuvre in one go. So: the start of 1988, Clive James On The 80s with Jerry Hall and surprise Kylie, 1990 with Pavarotti, 1991 co-presented by one Alexandra Kazan who has never done any other English language television or anything in Britain - she was Antoine de Caunes' partner at the time so it's possible someone else pulled out at short notice and a producer had to put a call in - 1992 pretending to be in his birth city Sydney on the basis that it wasn't close to anything going on, with Elle Macpherson doing the honours, and 1994 with Lovejoy's Caroline Langrishe and Dame Vera Lynn singing Thank You For The Music with the Band of the Royal Marines.
1992: regional upheaval, part two. TV-am's final day, ironically on the same day David Frost's knighthood is announced, starts with a journalist from The European pointing out the programme's ending is on its front page and kind of progresses from there with seemingly all the contributors and experts signing off in person, Clive James, Rory Bremner, Boy George, Kim Wilde, Bobby Davro's appalling quality Ulrika Jonsson impression, a special song from Craig McLachlan, Paul Gambaccini's ten favourite films of the decade, a Lorraine Kelly tribute which includes the revelation the programme once had her play with toys with The Cure, and among many montages the obligatory valedictory one (first sighted 53 minutes in) seems to feature a lot more Christmas tape material than expected. As a big climax nearly everyone takes part in Lizzie's final workout with all the choreography that implies. "If you'll just forgive the self-indulgence" says Mike Morris rather too late right before the very end.
Thames started by trying to put a brave face on it but as the hours start drawing in on 1992 the ITN early evening news is making a point of spoiling their finale while celebrating TV-am at their party. It almost, pointedly, feels like the BBC report has more respect. The final Thames News bulletin harbours the now traditional for a fading company mass staff goodbye for which they've hired London's town crier, who a few hours later would ring in Carlton, the turncoat. By the Evening News they're positively fatalistic in introduction, reassuring before the clips show last programme Farewell To Thames, the report the same as earlier except with the TVS flag being taken down. (We'll get round to the south coast soon, don't worry) The end came with a special message from chief executive Richard Dunn followed by one last screening for that Tourists-aided reminder of their hard earned Talent For Television, which here is followed by a reminder of 1992, the midnight bongs and... well, we'll pick up on that tomorrow.
The sometime Television Simply Wonderful reminded us at start-up that there was a long way to go, but the thing about time is how often it evaporates when you're not prepared for it to do so. Everything goes eventually, and so it was with Gus Honeybun's Magic Birthdays, though the ending is undignified. Gus' actual last stand/hop, returning from whence he came, was actually left until the final TSW Today, an all-encompassing and slowly filling party of reminiscence, including a clip of Judi Spiers as a one woman band, with star guests Michelle Dotrice and Justin Fashanu. The actual end was a noble extended thanks from Ruth Langsford and Ian Stirling.
Lastly to TVS, whose exit was a lot different to their predecessor's, which we'll come back to many, many words in the future. A lot of the output we have comes from news programming, whether lunchtime, an hour's retrospective from the south-east flavour of Coast To Coast with the Royal Marines band playing its theme, or the great original taste of Dinenage. Their last stand was Goodbye To All That, Dinenage, Britton and guests including Matthew Kelly, Jill Gascoigne, Neil Buchanan, Greg Dyke, Peter Bowles, Roy Walker and George Baker recalling those invaluable shows Disney or someone have since thrown away. And, oh yeah, it was Oracle's last day too, here expressed through the medium of 4-Tel On View and the meta end of The Adventures Of 4-T.
1992: three months into its lifespan Channel 4 were so taken by the immediate success of The Big Breakfast that they gave it the (mostly) live end of year crossover show from 11.30pm to 1am with guest of honour Zsa Zsa Gabor making goulash and playing table tennis against Bob Geldof. Zig and Zag are joined by Antonia de Sancha - now there's a name that meant nothing come 1993 - and Sir Robin Day, Michelle Collins is the phone call runner, the phone-in game involves a very visible uncertain Miss UK chasing pigs, Uri Geller does his clock stopping thing, Denis Norden introduces Superhints out-takes, Mark Lamarr crashes a party fruitlessly looking for someone called Jed and has brought Racey with him, and the search for the first baby of the new year is titled Babewatch, which sounds very slightly less grasping when David Hasselhoff is very, very briefly introducing it. Ending with a message in fireworks that is rendered completely unreadable, we note the research team includes Ed Forsdick, who became the show's executive producer in the Johnny & Denise days and then did the same for Saturday Night Takeaway, and Zoe Ball, whose TV career started the following late summer. Our favourite part, also here, is a splendid coup de theatre reflecting another requirement of the Broadcasting Bill that brought about the franchise alterations, namely that from midnight Channel 4 became responsible for selling its own advertising.
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