GMHTV - Television Nostalgia

TELEVISION NOSTALGIA - THE "NAUGHTIES" - 2000-

2000
The first year of the new millennium brought in quite a few surprises. Firstly the millennium bug failed to strike, so that was a relief to everyone who had computers – and secondly the millennium dome for one year only. Let’s see what was cooking on television in the year 2000:

BBC 1 had the CASUALTY spin off HOLBY CITY that had been running for about a year now. The January 20th episode was one of the best that the Holby team had ever done. Ged Hunter played in this excellent episode Mark Briggs, a young man with Asperger Syndrome (yes, it was mentioned in dialogue) who also needs a hole in the heart operation desperately otherwise it could end his life. The trouble is that because of Mark’s mental disability, could he trust his own judgement into having the operation? As he is an avid chess player, he plays the head surgeon into a game to see if he will have the operation after all and even after the surgeon wins, he still isn’t confident into having the operation. His “comforts” are some apples, which he eats at the end of the episode and despite only appearing in one episode, his catchphrase was “it’s make your mind up time”. One character definitely set for a spin off programme. Meanwhile, Nick “Crimewatch” Ross presented this summer Monday evening quiz, called THE SYNDICATE, with syndicates, hence the title. Groups from all of the country were known by regional nicknames and were allowed to have power over the other team. Ross’s catchphrase changed from “don’t have nightmares”, as on CRIMEWATCH, but to “you are eliminated” and “understand?”

BBC 2 had Anne Robinson, fresh from POINTS OF VIEW and WATCHDOG hosted this strict game show called THE WEAKEST LINK. Robinson treated the adult contestants like kids and ridiculed them between rounds, just the way it should be. “Out of the Ł1000 target that you were meant to bank, you only banked a pathetic Ł990. Who is ready for the high jump? Who can’t take the pressure? It’s time to vote off the weakest link”. Contestants write opposing contestant’s names on their cards and then they show the name written on these cards to the camera and then Anne. When the weakest link is voted off, (you are the weakest link. Goodbye), they do the walk of shame and say their observations of the game off stage and who might go next. This carries on for seven rounds until there is a winner. “You are today’s strongest link and you go away with Ł1960, while you leave with nothing”. Scheduled against programmes like GRANGE HILL on BBC 1, which possible explains about Robinson’s strictness a little bit like Mrs McClusky?

ITV created the first million pound winner on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? Despite being a male dominated show (well, male contestants do better on this programme as they are the breadwinners and have better knowledge) the first million pound win was won by a woman. Judith Keppel was a distant relative to Camilla Parker Bowles was the first person to get all fifteen questions correct and thus win the big prize. The privacy infringing tabloids got to the story straight away after someone from the audience leaked it out of the studio. (One lifeline that the newshounds can rely on is ask the audience, it seems) and that person got a big cheque for it, probably not as large a value as a million pounds. Newspapers like The Sun came up with headlines the following day like Who Wants to be a Camillionaire? Keppel was also on the following day’s ITN News, GMTV and This Morning with Richard and Judy, accompanied with the game show host Chris Tarrant with many interviews. There were also uproar that the money was given to a middle class person, but he or she who wins the money deserves it. And Victor Meldrew, who was killed of in the final episode of One Foot in the Grave was transmitted at the same time opposite the game show. On the night that sitcom Victor Meldrew expired, Millionaire was accused of dumbing down and setting easy questions so that the win coincided with Meldrew’s death. But it worked, didn’t it?

CHANNEL 4 had the first controversial Norfolk farmer on television since Bernard Matthews. In A VERY BRITISH MURDER – THE CASE OF TONY MARTIN, Norfolk farmer Tony Martin appeared in this documentary, which was about his killing of the teenager who tried to burgle his allotment, and of course, Mr Martin took the law into his own hands, shot him dead in self defence and thus, was given a prison sentence for defending his own property. Public outcry swept all over the United Kingdom with people saying that they would do exactly the same thing if they were in the same situation. Mind you, the bastard got what was coming to him, (that’s the teenage burglar of course, not Tony Martin). This also became a government thing about what can be done to protect one’s property and what is reasonable force if you are being threatened. Mr Martin should not even be in prison; it should have been someone who deserved to go to prison like all the rapists and paedophiles that are about. BIG BROTHER was also on Channel 4, but I am not going to add a single word about it, so there!

CHANNEL 5 had OPEN HOUSE WITH GLORIA HUNNIFORD with many guests throughout the year, dropping in for a chat, while the BIG BROTHER rival, JAILBREAK was on television with a prize for escaping unnoticed or something like that.

2001
This was the year that ITV became ITV1 and the number of people shows increased. It was also the year that I went digital thanks to ntl and was given a big choice of television channels, including ITV regional variation Yorkshire Television where I could only get “Carlton” Central before. During a commercial break, Declan Swann’s parents called Claims Direct when all Declan needed was a trip to Specsavers; a NAKED CHEF was doing all his shopping at Sainsbury’s and Mrs Doyle out of FATHER TED reminded us on behalf of the Inland Revenue to fill in your tax return forms and send them off immediately. Mrs Doyle, played by Pauline McLynn was wearing Benny’s old green woollen hat in the original incarnation of CROSSROADS (more about the new incarnation below), while sitting at a desk in what appears to be a 1976 Bill Grundy type television studio. Her irritating catchphrase was, “go on, go on, go on…”, while a version of the Internet commercial included, “go online, go online, go online”. Not surprisingly this was voted worst commercial of the year – was it because those who voted it so were tax dodgers themselves? Of course, Doyle, being Irish doesn’t have to pay her taxes in the UK, so she’s getting the lighter side of the bargain, but sadly we were straddled with her as the artist who drawn Hector the Tax Inspector for the ‘Revenue’s previous campaign had recently retired. Better move on to what the programmes were like:

BBC 1 promoted the soap EASTENDERS to four times a week, so non soap watchers like myself had less of a choice of what to watch, the bloody bastards! GRANGE HILL had an autistic pupil for the first time in their 23-year history, which is odd as the statistics say, at least one in 200 children have traits of autism, so there would be at least one pupil at school with it at any time. Estonia won the EUROVISION SONG CONTEST, held this year in Copenhagen. In April, the channel also gave a tribute to former Goon and highwayman Sir Harry Seacombe, who died after a long battle against cancer with tributes from people like Spike Milligan and Ronnie Corbett. Milligan made an offensive comment about Sir Harry’s singing when paying tribute to him on learning of his death: “I am glad that I have outlived him – I wouldn’t want him singing at my funeral”. BBC News saw Labour’s right wing side when John Prescott threw a tantrum after Craig Evans threw an egg at him while going on the pre-Election visit in Wales. Conservative ministers ordered Prescott to be sacked from the Labour party, but Tony Blair said that John was protecting himself. It was enough for Labour to win a second term in office – and for William Hague to step down as Conservative party leader.

BBC 2 saw racism against the Welsh as WEAKEST LINK star Anne Robinson appeared on ROOM 101 in March with offensive comments about them. “What are they for?” said Robinson to host Paul Merton on the popular celebrity hate show. Welsh MPs wanted the Sunday evening repeat not to be transmitted but the BBC insisted of repeating the programme six days later. Even Welsh born Americans were threatening to make Robinson’s life a misery when she arrived in America for her new game show. They wanted revenge over Robinson as the news had spread there as well. Robinson even asked for trouble even more by doing a Welsh special of THE WEAKEST LINK. NEWSNIGHT did endless reports of angry farmers losing money and their livelihood, when their cattle went up in smoke following the year’s Foot-and-Mouth out break. Over 2000 cases were reported throughout the United Kingdom and it was believed to have started in Northumberland. People disinfecting their shoes before going onto a farm was not an unusual thing to see in a news report and even Prince Charles did so when he visited a farm.

ITV 1 had a Popeye Doll. Sorry, that should read POP IDOL, where some people of my own age group were trying to become the next Robbie Williams or Ronan Keating. POPSTARS conceived the group Hear’Say out of thousands of hopefuls, who skived off school just to be there. Soapstars were a publicity stunt to get a new soap family in the ‘DALE, which is running now five days a week and Why TV were desperate to introduce more characters into it. David “Quercus Robur” Edwards and Robert “Kempe” Brydges became two more millionaires on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? But for Major Charles Ingram, it was a million pound win that never was. He correctly answered a Googol to a number that was made up of 100 zeros, but as the producers heard a coded cough that sounded like someone was helping the Major cheat, the two parts of the programme that appeared on got withdrawn from transmission and the police were called in. Celedor issued a statement. A week later was Robert Brydges’ win, and that was a refreshing substute for Major Ingram’s untransmitted win, but the problem was that Mr Brydges was already a millionaire and viewers were not happy about that! Never mind, we got a good episode of MILLIONAIRE to watch, didn’t we? Oh, and I forgot, CROSSROADS, that bloody soap with wobbly walls made a return in March, 13 years after it was left for dead without Benny or his woollen hat. And yet another soap, NIGHT AND DAY was launched. Why do we have to have soaps on the television all the time, for Christ’s sake? Of course by 2002 all these soaps will be on television at least ten times a week.

CHANNEL 4 had Byram and Bacon eventually presenting the BIG BREAKFAST, with the latter making a joke about people with Alzheimer’s, that ITC upheld viewer’s complaints over the incident. COUNTDOWN celebrated its 3000th edition on April 27th, with a special on how the programme was made about an hour after the programme went out.

CHANNEL 5 and Gloria Hunniford celebrated 500 editions of OPEN HOUSE in March; while the viewing figures were gradually go up from before for sports programmes like the football.

2002
The first palindromic year for eleven years, and our last for 110 years. This particular year has taught us how the Royal family and television have made a striking contact with the changes that it had to offer in this year, more about that below. An average commercial break would feature the Domestos one with the young man squirting the aforementioned liquid into a toilet rim and missing the bowl, although from the camera angle it looked rather like blue coloured urine. No need for the doctor this time, though! The advertising of teabags was facing a big shake up in this year when both PG Tips and Tetley decided to drop their chimp and teafolk campaigns respectively, and while the hairy animals from PG were taken over by some animated creatures, made by Nick Park’s Aardman Animations where his creations and they had made their first appearance in a television commercial since the Electricity Board’s successful Creature Comforts campaign of 1990. The animated characters had just moved into a new flat, and after all that it was time to put the kettle on of course. Tetley just opted for the new way of life approach to advertising. McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes had a French teacher explaining the concept of a ”full moon”, “half moon” and a “total eclipse”, while taking a bite of the biscuit, sorry cake. The clock in the ad seemed to go backwards by about three minutes as someone pointed out. Celebrity citizen’s arrester Chris Eubank even did the voiceover at the end of the ad. This was what was on television in 2002:

BBC 1 was the forefront of the changed to the Royal family throughout the year. The Queen’s Golden Jubilee had been planned to take place this year and it did so successfully, but even though the British public got their spirits up by the first weeks of June to get the Union Jack flags out and bunting, it was rather regarded that such celebrations were not as straight forward as they were in 1977. Besides this, the Royal family had two bereavements in February and March. Firstly Princess Margaret Rose, who died following complications owning to a stroke she had the previous year, aged 71. Although not an official Royal like the Queen, her funeral was seen in snippets on February 15th, on BBC 2 exactly fifty years to the day since King George VI was buried after dying of lung cancer. The Queen Mother, who only had weeks to live herself, fought her strength to attend her daughter’s funeral. Then on March 30th the Queen Mother herself passed away. She lived for 37,128 days or just 101 years. There followed a week of mourning with tributes from politics and also from Prince Charles. Peter Sissons, who was also going to retire from BBC News this year, was in hot water, as he didn’t wear a black tie when he had announced the sad news on that Saturday evening. On Monday 8th April, the day before the funeral, just before the Six O’clock News the Queen recorded a television message saying that she was touched that so many people had queued for up to seven hours just to visit Westminster Hall to pay their final respects for her mother. The people had waited night and day over a three-day period and some even met Princess Anne and Prince Edward while queuing. Although not all public places were closed as a mark of respect the funeral took place on Tuesday, 9th April and I can say that it was a tribute and a half. Two months down the line a more positive occasion dawned. The Jubilee got underway with the Queen setting a metronome in Slough and various cities around the country joined in for the Beatles’ timeless classic All You Need is Love. When I went to a Jubilee party on Monday 3rd June I remarked to someone there a rather punning joke as the bad weather on the day had allowed me to do such a thing. I said that although it may be raining now, the Queen has been reigning for fifty years. I found out that Matt Baker had made exactly the same joke on the Blue Peter Jubilee special the same day, but my version was at least an hour before his. The Jubilee Concert was a success with acts like S Club 7, Phil Collins, Shirley Bassey, Queen (the pop group of course) performing, with links from Lenny Henry and Ben Elton. At the end the climax was met with tons of fireworks being let off above Buckingham Palace and the Queen and Prince Philip out in their car on the Bank Holiday Monday night. The following morning was the Jubilee pageant and one more day of celebration where at the end the Queen appeared on the balcony with her family at about 6.00 pm before disappearing inside for a well earned rest before continuing with her Jubilee tour a few days later. Let’s face it, Her Majesty had had some escapades during her tour of Britain: in Gateshead a streaker was arrested just yards from her and two youths were arrested after they threw eggs at the Royal car when she visited Nottingham to meet the city’s most famous ice skaters Torvill and Dean. I felt personally disgusted and ashamed at that as I was born in Nottingham myself. The Queen’s tour of Britain ended in August, although she was about to travel to Canada later on in the year…

BBC 2’s hit children’s series CLIFFORD got a summer holiday morning’s outing, which was about a young girl and her pet dog that grew to ten times its size. UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE REVISITED took a trip down memory lane at old university teams playing each other after many years. This was the fortieth year of the programme and one-time contestant Stephen Fry was at hand to present the trophy to the winning team. On August 30th, instead of the advertised WEAKEST LINK, a memorial service was transmitted for the two girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman who had been found murdered earlier on in the month. Our hearts go out to them and their families.

ITV’s most convincing news of the year was the collapse of ITV Digital when the Premiership football clubs demanded a high fee for their games to be transmitted. After ON Digital its predecessor, ITV Digital was made famous by the grey knitted Monkey in the ads, alongside comedian Johnny Vegas. After the news in March all this ended and even Monkey was popular with people wanting to buy replicas of the stuffed toy. Coincidently while ITV Digital were having problems, ntl were in the same boat when they were in a cash crisis, as they were dishing their services out for almost nothing. ITV Digital had become Freeview in August. ITV 1 however dished out BRITAIN’S SEXIEST, which probably proves why Kate Moss should have been a builder instead of her present job. FAMILY FORTUNES was dumbed-down especially for a daytime audience, with canned laughter, a lower jackpot and a change of presenter after Les Dennis decided to quit after all the foray and was replaced by Z-list celebrity Andy “I’ve never heard of him” Collins. CATCHPHRASE had the same treatment with the slightly more famous Mark Curry at the helm and what was positive for the winning contestant about the final was that they could actually sit down and do the super Catchphrase for a chair was provided just for them. TRISHA Goddard had more of the BLIND DATE type couples in the Anglia Television studio on cue at 9.25 am to talk about why he had betrayed her and why she insists appearing on the programme in a miniskirt, but what do you expect from a centre-right tabloid type confession show anyway? John Leslie and Fern Britton straddled on regardless in THIS MORNING. ANT AND DEC’S SATURDAY NIGHT TAKEAWAY was presented by the Geordie twosome themselves, where you could win the ads as well as watch them. What got me was that ITV1’s ads are regionalised, so that different ads were seen in different regions, so I assumed that they were referring to London ITV when you could win a toilet roll by just watching an Andrex ad, or a new car by watching a Peugeot ad. Here we saw a lot of the CANDID CAMERA and NOEL’S HOUSE PARTY tricks here, as well as BEADLE’S ABOUT. The bearded one, who hasn’t had a series of his own in three years (and that’s probably a relief to the British public out there) had his own slot, as well as a spin off show on ITV2 as soon as the ITV1 show ended. The punters were invited to spend a week with Beadle, BIG BROTHER style, while a task was to do the Croatian national anthem with milk bottles and a wooden spoon. On the first edition was a newsflash, which was all done in good humour with Carol Barnes, now left ITN, reading the spoof news item about Beadle being kidnapped, but perhaps such an item in a Saturday evening comedy programme is maybe a bit too much after the death of the Queen Mother, (which was also reported on Saturday evening by a bad coincidence) and 2001’s September 11th attacks. If television taste boundaries are like the Scottish border, than this one must be Berwick Upon Tweed.

CHANNEL 4’S BIG BREAKFAST ended in March and was replaced three weeks later by a new breakfast television show called RI:SE. In the driving seat was Mark Durden-Smith, whose name does sound like the Conservative Party Leader for the day if you think about it. The yellow strip of moving news stories added nauseam to those who were just getting up. Although this low key show got off to an ordinary start, it was Durden-Smith who ran across the studio saying that all the excitement had got to him and he needed a wee. Other RI:SERS include Edith Bowman (a young girl with an old person’s name), Kirsty Gallacher, poached fresh from SKY SPORTS, Colin Murray, who can easily play Sooty to Durden-Smith’s Harry Corbett and the hardly seen Henry Bonsu, who often skived off the show feature on THE WRIGHT STUFF (see below), or the reports on BBC 1’s LDN NEWS. A report about dog dirt on the programme nearly made me vomit over my breakfast cereal. RI:SE’s viewing figures were in decline as people were switching off. Even kid’s programmes like BEAR IN THE BIG BLUE HOUSE on Channel 5 (or Five) were getting better viewing figures. A second showing about the BRASS EYE special on paedophiles got more complaints, but the ITC didn’t upheld them this time as a stronger warning was given.

CHANNEL 5 OR FIVE were going through a name change. New faces like Carol Smilie prompted a relaunch for the channel now they can leave the old stuff about TV retuners and Jack Docherty behind. Channel 5 was now known as Five, which is confusing as they sound exactly the same to me. THE WRIGHT STUFF had a relaunch, which I do not like. The opening credits look rather like red spots that resemble blood appearing in circles. One can remember the last show of 2001 when people in donkey jackets started to dismantle the set while the show was still on the air! I refused to watch TOPRANKO! because I thought the host was that right-wing chat show host from the States.

2003
After last year, where we had coverage of a number of Royal occasions, mostly funerals and of course the Jubilee celebrations, this year was to be altogether different. In the world of commercials, 192.com was giving its way to 118 and a whole new range of different numbers from Virgin to BT giving their own number for Directory Enquiries with their number as 118 XXX. The one for Double-one Double-eight, Double-eight was played on mostly ITV1 far too many times, almost getting on my nerves. The one with the bearded runners and an elderly one being put out of action with the number “192” on his front was regarded as many people as ageist, giving the impression that the elderly gentleman was being mistreated. Obviously I saw the point of the commercial that was meant to be a representation of “out with the old and in with the new” – the old person represented the old number, while the two faster people represented the new Directory Enquiries service. There were rumours that the ITC had some complaints, but of course not upheld. There was also one for Nissan Micra with a woman speaking with blue lips! Very tasteful indeed. And of course those bloody loan commercials on daytime television (yes, Ocean Finance and Debtbuster Loans, we mean you), like that green and yellow one for Yes Car Credit, No car credit is the answer, I should think! I spent a week in the Lake District this year and I was amazed at the regional programmes that I saw on television up there. Rumours of regionalism in ITV being dead still remain premature, as I was interested in the regional commercials, for example a BMW dealer that was based in Carlisle or Cockermouth. And of course there was Border Television’s regional news programme LOOKAROUND, now presented by none other then ex-ITN newsreader Fiona Armstrong. (I’m sure that Kevin Halstead can back me up with this!) In about five days I did manage to have a full videotape of regional programmes, commercials and all that from both ITV1 and BBC 1, although had I owned a video recorder in the 1970s or 1980s I would have filled up a single videotape in half a day, especially in the summer holidays! Anyway, from a national point of view, what was 2003 all about, regarding television?

BBC ONE paid tribute to the fiftieth anniversaries of Edmund Hillary climbing Mount Everest, the Queen’s Coronation, which was on almost exactly a year to the day since the Jubilee celebrations the year before. Bob Hope, who the Americans love to claim as theirs, but I would like to disappoint them a little bit by telling them that he was British by birth. Two kinds of tributes were made here – firstly his 100th birthday in May and then sadly his death from pneumonia three months later. The problem was that as his death was not too long after his birthday celebrations that it would have meant a reputation of films being seen as tributes. However a tribute programme presented by one of Hope’s biggest fans, Bob Monkhouse did get seen on the Saturday before Hope’s birthday and repeated again after his death. Billy Connolly got on with his tour of ENGLAND, IRELAND AND WALES; supposedly leaving Scotland out as he’s obviously toured every millimetre of his home nation many times over his life. INSIDE OUT was a new regional programme with various presenters. The East Midlands and North had a low-key choice of presenters, mostly choosing local news reporters instead. But someone must have had a Paul Ross clone at the BBC as Jonathan’s younger brother has seemed to been given the job as the southeast presenter of the show. As I have ntl digital television, my BBC 2 isn’t regionalized, so I get London News (or BBC LDN) instead of local news and I don’t live in London either. One week when the WIMBLEDON went into overtime the BBC 1 programmes went over to BBC 2 and that meant watching the main LDN News at 6.30, but also watching the London edition of the programme, presented by Sumit Bose. My theories of there being a Paul Ross clone were correct as he showed up on the London edition as well, even though his report was about a drugs bust in Kent, in the southeast region of course. They shown the EUROVISION SONG CONTEST this year like they did every year, unlike any other year we got the big zero. Wogan (also famous for his new Five chat show with his CHILDREN IN NEED partner Gaby Roslin – see Five’s entry), blamed the low points on the Iraq war (see ITV 1) and all that as nowadays voting in the contest now seem to be based on political tendencies rather than how good their song was. Many others blamed the fact that the speakers weren’t plugged in properly, so that the song sounded terrible or just that the song was terrible. It just makes me think who are the CRY BABIES are in this situation? Bring back Buck’s Fizz or even Brotherhood of Man, please! We deserve not to be in the 2004 contest if we can’t have better results, although as we, the British is too lucrative a country for the contest and they would really miss us if we pulled out. This year it was Turkey who won the contest and only the incumbents, Latvia were second from bottom above the United Kingdom regarding points, something that they were not bothered about, because unlike Ireland they could not afford to host it two years in a row. Now, that is what I definitely call a load of Istanbull* * * *.

BBC TWO’s pick of the year was the documentary seen in either July or August that featured Luke Jackson, a 14-year old boy with Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism (see HOME AND AWAY on Five). He had just written a book on his disability in Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome when his family from Blackpool appeared in this programme. Luke explained about his love of Martial Arts – and the reason why his brothers also either had autism or Asperger Syndrome, yet his older sisters not surprisingly had escaped the conditions. A great documentary that was truthful and fun to watch. For the sub-socialist Grauniad readers who enjoy concentrating and stimulating their minds (and believe me, I have definitely met a few of them recently), an hour of intellectual stimulation was given on Monday evenings with UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE, which celebrated its fortieth anniversary last year, but with now the big face of BBC 2 Jeremy Paxman in the host’s chair. Rumour has it that in a television listings magazine a few years ago a mistake was made and Jeremy Clarkson’s name was printed in Paxman’s place. Well, it’s only human error, isn’t it? And Radio 4’s own John Humphrys filled the other half hour in a revamped edition of MASTERMIND. Of course it was Magnus Magnusson who officially patented the catchphrase “I’ve started so I finish”, and also the black leather swivel chair, very similar to one that I had in my own home, which was made by the Malung brand for Swedish furniture store giant Ikea. (You also got a footstool of the same brand with it as well!) Anyway MASTERMIND came back, probably for this time only after Magnusson famously presented it for a quarter of a century and also a few unsuccessful attempts of revival, for example a Radio 4 version, post-World at One with Peter Snow and also a Discovery version presented by Clive Anderson. But this was the first time in six years that the ‘MIND had come back to terra firma. I suppose that as Humphrys was a Radio 4 presenter and Snow was a BBC 2 presenter as he presented NEWSNIGHT for donkey’s years, that the versions should have been the other way round, Snow on BBC 2 and Humphrys on Radio 4, but it wasn’t to be.

ITV 1 had the return of the excellent TODAY WITH DES AND MEL, which is fit for peak-time viewing, but a bonus for afternoon viewing. After all, shift-workers, the disabled, young mothers etc need something as an alternative from NEIGHBOURS in the afternoon. This was the best afternoon programming for years, and I am going back to the days of CROWN COURT and FARMHOUSE KITCHEN well over twenty years ago. The WAR ON SADDAM got the ITN News team excited in March where a month’s overnight reporting got underway, although the event claimed the lives of various reporters including Terry Lloyd, brother of the late BILL actor Kevin Lloyd. (THE BILL, by the way had a new look with the decorators being allowed into Sun Hill and giving the police station a new artistic, paste colours look to the décor, but that is totally a different story). Terry Lloyd’s cameraman and translator, also called Hussein had not been found. Mind you, there seemed not only a reporter crisis but also a presenter crisis as in the studio there didn’t seem to be enough ITV News presenters to go around, so they had people like Alistair Stewart, a welcome return to ITN after ten years and even Angela Rippon doing the late night shift for the news channel. Stewart had had a spot of bother this year as well. TV Cream had described him somewhere on their website as being a “celebrity drink-driver”. They must be psychic as Stewart, (who always seem to remind you about your old deputy head from your school days, let’s face it) had been charged with drink driving by Winchester Crown Court and banned for an amount of time. Quite ironic it seems for a man to drink drive, which presented POLICE CAMERA ACTION, a programme about the dangers of driving on roads and motorways. Talk about ignoring your own rules! WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? got a repeat showing of classic episodes at teatime between June and August. I actually thought that they would just select past episodes from random but they did aim to show them in chronological order, starting with the very first one with contestant Graham Elwell, a 28-year old drama student from London first getting into the hotseat. The very first Ł100 question was about a woodpecker, so I remember. What was also interesting looking back to the very first episode five years before was the quality of the audience applause. When the first contestant got to Ł64,000 the audience response was so wild that one would usually associate applause of that volume in recent series with a Ł500,000 question answered correctly or something like that. I also seemed to remember that he also took the money without playing his Ask the Audience at Ł64,000, setting the standard for the next few months, and for some reason for his Phone-a-Friend, he was given a white cordless phone to speak to his grandfather with on air, something that was probably only used on the very first edition, or the first series at the most. The transparent briefcase, allegedly containing Ł1 million in banknotes was displayed between Chris Tarrant and the contestant and I believe that it stayed there for at least the first two series. I actually thought that showing a briefcase of cash on display was slightly misleading, not because that I didn’t think that there wasn’t Ł1 million in the case, but because of the fact that contestants were paid by cheque, rather than cash, to be cashed into their bank the following morning, so there was really no need for the amount to be shown in cash anyway. Anyway, I enjoyed the series and seeing some of the old and remembered shows of the past few years after the recent series took a break for the summer, but not it is coming back again in the autumn. And ITV NEWS went more and more tabloid (or even dumbed down). What do you expect from Nicholas Owen and John Suchet anyway? TONIGHT – WITH TREVOR McDONALD lead the current affairs field once more, CORONATION STREET with its two episodes on Monday evening was officially promoted to just that in September, although I would have accepted an hour long edition on Mondays would have been better than two half hour long editions instead, giving TONIGHT as the meat (or jam) in the CORONATION STREET sandwich, rivalling East Bloody Enders on BBC 1. Even fans of the soap complained of failed quality if it went like that, so it did as ITV rarely listen to their viewers anymore. I suppose that the reason why it’s two half hour episodes instead of one hour long episode is so that it doesn’t clash with that East End soap on the other side, but who gives a damn, anyway? EMMERDALE is just as bad; they were given five days a week at 7.00 pm back in 2000 and Yorkshire Television are not even satisfied with that! They tried to shell out a sixth episode and this went out at the same time on Sunday evenings, not surprisingly a time for most Yorkshire-made programmes as in LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE, HEARTBEAT, ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL, to name but a few. There is a danger that the DALE will also occupy a permanent place on Sunday evenings as well if we are unlucky. We must try and do something to stop this soap domination that is overcrowding the ITV schedules. Can someone tell them please that it isn’t auction – bidding against each other to see how many episodes they can cram into a week.

CHANNEL FOUR aired ROD HULL – A BIRD IN THE HAND, which documented the life and times of the madman made famous for his Rastafarian glove puppet that should have had somewhere instructions on how to wash it as you do with most cloth materials. I just couldn’t help smiling to think about the man who rubbed shoulders with A-list stars like Burt Reynolds (via his well protected right hand), had been a victim of the early 1990s recession and nearly lost everything, including his sub-Buckingham Palace mansion laughingly called Restoration House. It was spookily and ironic that the show had clips of Hull’s final performance (for a 1970s Emu fan who was celebrating his 30th birthday – why couldn’t they get Geoffrey Hayes and the cast of Rainbow to appear instead? At least they can speak for themselves!) And also a clip, only fit for lard-faced Lisa Riley to take the Michael out of on You’ve Been Framed – one that shown Hull actually adjusting the actual television aerial. I don’t know why he was trying to pick up Granada as he lived in the Meridian region! There was a clip from Thames TV that was supposedly made in 1977 that seemed to be on badly made film of Rod with his Emu telling a story from a big book and despite it being made in 1977 it was still in monochrome. Surely every programme made by then was made in colour? And I thought that Thames was the first ITV company to broadcast in colour in 1968. Carol Lee Scott, aka Grotbags, but this time without the green sub-INCREDIBLE HULK make up was there with her observations on Hull’s stint on the PINK WINDMILL SHOW and how ITV cancelled the show in 1988 when his expenditures were at an all time high. The actor whose name escaped me, who played Grotbag’s sidekick robot Redford (as in Robert Redford, do you see?) described Hull as being “self centred”. Roy Hudd, whose name can easily become Rod Hull if you change a couple of letters, compared him with some of the better comedians such as Eric Morecambe, Tommy Cooper or Benny Hill – he was neither of those. Of course Rod Hull also presented EMU’S BROADCASTING COMPANY – EBC-1 in the 1970s where parodies of then television programmes were made in an END OF PART ONE kind of way. Wouldn’t it have been great if one episode was about transmitter information and which position one should place one’s television aerial to get a good reception for programmes? No, that’s stretching it to the limits. Oh yes, and RI:SE ditched Duncan-Smith, sorry that should read Durden-Smith and company and replaced them with Iain Lee (cf THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK SHOW) and Channel Four stalwarts Mel Gladroyc and Sue Perkins (cf LIGHT LUNCH and LATE LUNCH), not seen on television since those doing bread commercials. Even the defunct Reach 4 forum had a post on it saying that they were wasted on those ads! And you thought that their television careers were washed up, then? Ever thought you have the sense of déjŕ vu? (Think TV-am).

FIVE, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation started its daily morning chat show, THE TERRY AND GABY SHOW, presented by Wogan and Roslin of course. Straight after THE RIGHT STUFF, it was an hour of different things similar to the BBC’s ill-fated WOGAN’S WEB circa May 1998, a lunchtime chat show thingy. It replaced the twenty-year-old imported repeats of CHARLIE’S ANGELS, TJ HOOKER and MAGNUM (PI), which were seen on ITV regionally in the 1980s. As far as I can remember this is Wogan’s first non-BBC programme for about twenty years, even though he has since did the odd voiceover for commercials and back in 1972 he had a post FIRST REPORT chat show for ATV that maybe echoes in this programme and also TODAY WITH DES AND MEL (see ITV1). Johnny Ball was enlisted for the Vorderman part, solving number problems and all that. At the end of 2002 Gloria Hunniford bid farewell to her afternoon show, a spot that she has held for at least five (no pun intended) years, to be replaced with films and 1970s drama series, so Wogan was probably meant to be a replacement for Hunniford, after all, it must be the Irish in them both. HOME AND AWAY got its first (and probably Australian soap’s first ever) autistic character attending Summer Bay High. His literal interpretation was explored with phrases like “show him the ropes” and “take a seat”. But what was strange about him, called Mikey if I can remember correctly, that he thought that his school desk was a set of drums. It doesn’t take Einstein to realise that that he interrupted the class by his banging of his hands on his desk, encouraging the whole class to join in with his musical foray. And he even tried to interrupt the class by breaking wind, or as the Teletext subtitles read, farting (I kid you not). Despite the unusual exploration of the character, I hope that they will not take the Mickey (or even the Mikey) of the seriousness of what autism really is – stick to the script! Five had two separate evening news bulletins, one at 5.30 pm and one at 7.30 pm, which to me is definitely like having two evening news programmes, a lot of the news stories are repeated in both anyway.