The Why Don't YouTube? Newsletter - January 1st 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
Well, here we go into another one…
60 YEARS AGO
The first Top Of The Pops, hosted by Jimmy Savile and Alan Freeman, filmed in a converted church on Dickenson Road in Rusholme, Manchester, supposedly taken up there because the BBC weren't keen on its prospects. These titles are all that is known to exist of the show. By the way, the Radio Times listing makes it clear "(the artists) will mime their songs. This is a departure from normal BBC practice, but the rule is being relaxed because the purpose of the programme is to let you hear the discs exactly as recorded." Have that, Stanley Appel and your Year Zero!
50 YEARS AGO
Apart from the launch of the three day week, the big event of the day was obviously BBC2's Use Your 'Euro' Loaf ("Two mystery teams battle it out for this year's top quiz prize - a 'Euro' loaf") Sadly that appears to be lost to the ether, so we suppose instead we're going to have to write about the start of the second series of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? Bob and Thelma have gone on honeymoon far away from Terry's pernicious influence, except that Terry is minding the house and is busy romancing Thelma's sister Susan - and let’s here take a moment to acknowledge that Thelma and Susan, Brigit Forsyth and Anita Carey, both died in 2023.
40 YEARS AGO
Central turned two years old with a preview of the new season on ITV including Spitting Image, which despite what the voiceover claims actually started at the end of February. Still, it's no Jimmy Young Television Programme.
Disney Time is installed in Paul Nicholas' living room, where he introduces his wayward three year old son Alexander, his dog, his snooker table and his appreciation of the title sequence for That Darn Cat!
Children's BBC's pantomime is Aladdin & The Forty Thieves, rewritten somewhat to include a very Crackerjack-like rendition of This Ole House by Sarah Greene, Johnny Morris and Terry Nutkins, Brian Cant as the emperor of China, Tucker's Luck-era Todd Carty as Ali Baba with the actual Rentaghost Dobbin inhabitants as his horse, Christopher Biggins somehow not as the dame, four minutes set completely aside for Kenneth Williams in full Jackanory mode, Clive Dunn almost knowing what he's doing, a touching duet of love between Greene and Jan Francis, and small roles for such acting giants as Howard Stableford, Barry Took and Mat Irvine.
30 YEARS AGO
Now, first off we do have to say the first returning soundalike star on this Stars In Their Eyes belated Christmas special (as billed) is being Gary Glitter. But consider that a speedbump, as things get really awry around the 11 minute mark as, with no thought as to how their voices or performance styles might mesh, former contestants as Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, a hilarious Cilla Black, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and a remarkable in that company Marc Almond return to do Santa Baby and Zat You, Santa Claus? Once Matthew Kelly has interviewed some children in "Johnny Mathis"' crib, from 29:45 it's another all-star mess with Axl Rose, Billy Idol, Elton John, Bryan Adams and Meat Loaf, followed by that Presley/Crosby team-up you always wanted and then a mass sing-off of White Christmas. We shall never see its like again.
One thing you may have noticed going through Noel's House Party is how much they loved to trail specific Gotchas for weeks and weeks in advance, usually on how the stooge reacted, though of late that had tended towards the increasingly stoic. That's taken to its logical conclusion as how well Jonathon Morris coped with a pregnant woman, Rebecca Front getting a lead role at last and maintaining character when nobody other than the hidden camera can see her, and a series of escalating events leading to a literal police chase is the selling point, and in fairness it is one of the best remembered. It certainly goes down a lot better than the Busby Berkeley dance routine introduction to the full show that the audience couldn't give a first toss about until one of the Roly Polys turns up. The date must have worked for multiple availabilities as not only are the usual rentagang there but so are Tom Conti as an Italian restaurateur, Belinda Lang as a lawyer and an unexpected Susan George, who has a special message for Noel.
The second Gladiators final, and frankly both the male and female winners are foregone conclusions practically from the start. The theme hasn't even finished and John Fashanu has already said "awooga!" twice. At this late stage referee John Anderson is asked to explain his background, beautifully keeping kayfabe by mentioning Judy Simpson rather than Nightshade as one of his coaching charges. He also namechecks Liz McColgan, which is nice given he tried to sue her the previous year.
Having debuted on TV as part of the previous year's Saturday Zoo, Paul Calf's Video Diary fleshes out the character's pisshead philosophy, introducing John Thomson as Fat Bob, co-writer (with Coogan and Henry Normal) Patrick Marber as his ex-student new mate, Gary Olsen, making his third BBC comedy appearance in eight days each in a different context, as his ex's new boyfriend, and John Hannah in passing.
Mike McShane, still hot property without portfolio after the success of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, brought to life Damon Runyon's Broadway Stories shady short stories about Prohibition-era New York low lives, starting with Dancing Dan's Christmas - adapted by the odd on the face of it trio of McShane, Rory McGrath and Kit Hesketh-Harvey - after Mike’s introduction to Runyon's own story.
20 YEARS AGO
Get Your Own Back ends after 190 episodes over just clear of twelve years and a lot of cleaning bills by bowing to the inevitable and putting Dick against Dom. Co-host for the last two years Lisa Brockwell doesn't get invited to Dave Benson Phillips' student cheese nights, we bet.
The soaps are at it again. Emmerdale, almost exactly ten years after the plane crash but that goes unmentioned, has been hit by a major storm that damages the Woolpack, causes a lot of Massive Attack soundtrack use and, in the greatest cliché of all soapland, seriously injures the one person who had been making plans for their future. They died after a week on life support. A more direct death was meanwhile going on in a Scottish moor on Eastenders as Janine spills all to her new husband Barry before condemning Shaun Williamson to a life of celebrity quiz shows and ironic karaoke nights. Great death rattle acting, mind.
Trisha's show would make a grander cameo in Shaun Of The Dead later in the year but it was also rented out for the first of Fat Friends' third series and the slimming group's visit to a debate on dieting which involves David Harewood and turns into a confessional on live TV, which Trisha wasn't.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
1982: welcome the new regions, first time around! Central goes from formalist to ENTERTAINMENT, while TVS burst out of the Portakabin with Bring In The New, in which Khalid Aziz introduces the area via gyrocopter-cam before taking up most of its inaugural 25 minutes with a glimpse of the Coast To Coast newsroom, including the Archbishop of Canterbury on Ian Paisley and special wishes from Cant and Griffiths among others. Their first break includes a date specific dedication from Guinness. Trevor McDonald on ITN Lunchtime News reports further on the new broom including a sticky start for one of them, of which more later, and the only evidence we have of how TSW got properly underway.
Come the evening we enter the realm of Bob Warman with the magnificent first Central News and their in-house cheerleaders. In fact there's a great tonal whiplash in how with a party audibly going on round the back their own first story has to admit that they were meant to be launching two news programmes, one for each half of the region, but the East Midlands version was halted by the electricians' union - in fact that broadcast didn't start until September 1983, by which time presenters Anne Diamond (who appears here discussing TV to come) and Nick Owen had scarpered to London. Party guests include Duran Duran, Jasper Carrott, Don McLean, Nigel Mansell, Hazel O'Connor and her flatmate, and southern interloper Anita Harris.
For their part a more becalmed TSW was opening Coast To Coast properly with reports on charity weight gain, a woman trying to get into a bookies that is clearly closed because it's New Year's Day 1982, the never resting Khalid Aziz meeting a baby born at the same time as the franchise was, and a child chorus of Imagine, which to go out on probably strikes the wrong chord.
Yet more TVS celebrating itself later that evening in Birth Of A Station, explaining in detail how the company came about and prepared for launch. We even get to see the Portakabin of Stilgoe infamy. Meanwhile... "We hope you will come to look upon it as Television Simply Wonderful!" TSW, ever individual, opened the day with the same programmes as the rest of the network and held its otherwise self-explanatory Opening Show at 6.30pm. The whole hour, starring notably non-local Lennie Bennett, sundry dancers and an almost complete lack of sensible production values, has previously circulated and is remarkable; the start and end, including a Spiers/Honeybun walk-on, are here.
1983: One In Five (Vimeo login required) was Channel 4's first true controversy, rentaquote Tory MP John Carlisle telling the IBA to get the channel to "clean up or get out" as a result of a programme which "takes the channel's commitment to minority audiences a stage farther, and too far for some" (Times) and upon which the IBA felt compelled to place a ban on "homosexual publications" (presumably Gay News, whose Savile-adorned cover we see) attempting to buy advertising space within it. The reason was it celebrated the LGBTQ lifestyle without apology in magazine format, from exploring the related news of the year to Weillian cabaret round the piano via Grace Jones.
1993: day one of the last set of new franchises before they all became one largely amorphous lump. Let's start where everybody else starts the TV year, in London at midnight as Thames is swallowed whole by Carlton, for whom a slightly distorted Chris Tarrant makes a Tony Slattery joke ninety second in. A Carlton New Year pretty much carries on from there with its introductory bespoke complex animation that never needed to be used. It's not clear how live all of this is, there's more than a couple of sharp looking edits and Tarrant in his crimson coat and reflective waistcoat darts about between the studio, a fire station, a hospital and the new news HQ, where he just happens to bump into Alistair Stewart, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Roy Castle. Also, he makes a joke about Woody Allen sleeping with children. In between are Take That, Squeeze, whatever blackleg form of Boney M existed then, Bea Arthur doing a stand-up routine for literally two minutes, the Chippendales, Frank Skinner, the Inspirational Choir, Paul McKenna doing his live hypnotism folderol and Paul McCartney in an entirely different venue.
Westcountry wisely stay off going live outside, preferring some fireworks graphics and a Bruce Hammal and Trish Bertram voiceover that almost makes you think they're local. By contrast, Meridian saw itself in with drunk revellers (until barbour jacketed security arrives at 7:05) and the bells of Winchester Cathedral alike trying to drown out Debbie Thrower. Andy Craig drew the long straw as he was based in the absolute quiet of their news operation with what seems more like part of the corporate video while Alison Holloway is in Dover suggesting how we should all get pissed and keen local residents like, er, Mel Brooks and Sean Connery wish them good luck. Like its predecessor it makes a point of celebrating itself in advance with First Night On Meridian, Michael Palin talking to people on a train, accidentally stalking Serena Scott Thomas and introducing a variety of their big names previewing what’s ahead including Tracey Ullman explaining how she'll run it and Neil Buchanan previewing ZZZap!
A few hours later, welcome to the GMTV age! Eamonn Holmes and Anne Davies, sporting a jacket of the family tartan for Hogmanay, are up at 6am and they're keen to tell us right at the start that their cameras tracked down Princess Diana on holiday. That opening news bulletin is really keen to show they have reporters everywhere, with everyone else introduced by way of film package fifteen minutes in. Linda Lusardi cannot have lasted long as keep-fit guru, nor Carol Vorderman as technology expert mispronouncing Sega, and the fashion correspondent claiming she'll be "tailoring my reports to your needs, sometimes your fantasies" is far too on the nose given the clips shown.
2000: here's that nearly eight hour long upload you really wanted, The Biggest Breakfast Ever, Channel 4's just past Millennium midnight marathon that lasted from 12.36am to 9.08am. Presenters and guests (especially Jamie Oliver and Lee Evans) get sloshed throughout, plenty of clippage is deployed so people can get some rest at least, Cheggers is live at a hospital to find the first baby of the century, Liza Tarbuck interviews her co-host Johnny Vaughan, NSFW merrily occurs and it ends in the debut of giant jenga game for big money Wonga which goes on so long Planet 24 has to apply for an overrun.
Like what we do? Why not support us? https://ko-fi.com/whydontyoutube