A slightly more detailed account on the goings on at the Undercroft last night where there was a slightly more moderate turn out than expected.
As mentioned yesterday, most of the first year radio lot were around including Matt from Leeds, Rob, Alice B, and Jade. Quite a few of them had only just got back today although I hope it's not too long before I see the other guys including Nicola, Manish, and Matty ID.
Mattie Bennett was looking after the music which included a few weird electro covers including a remix of the 2001 theme which I joked about being Stewart's theme when he came over after he finished pulling the pints that night.
The title of the post came about after I chatted to Jade about one of her favourite current musicians Johnny Flynn and it reminded me of an edition of Buzzcocks from about this time four years ago when Mark Lamarr read out the nursery rhyme in the
Next Lines round and Phill Jupitus thought the name of the boy was "Johnny Flynn" and Mark did a joke about a Crimewatch programme looking for someone with that name but ended up sounding like Johnny Vaughan.
If I manage to get hold of the right software, I may upload it to Youtube although the show itself is on VHS.
Also making an appearance were Charles from the Chas & Dave show and Lottie, and Alice Robertson came over for a short while. It turns out that we now won't be doing a Refreshers Week on Smoke Radio as such which I think is the right thing to do, because whenever we've done one it's been a washout.
The main reason however is because there's hardly anyone around this week, and lectures begin next week so it's business as usual, apart from a few daytime shows changing times due to lecture changes in timetables.
I'm still going on as usual starting off tomorrow with a two hour long covers special which I'm really looking forward to and may slip in a few surprises. No Joss Stone though.
Before heading over last night I watched another old programme I'd brought back from Canterbury, this time an edition of BBC 2's "Fame Set And Match" series from October 2002 looking at Breakfast television and the progress of the careers of five key figures who had forgone their early mornings.
Narrated by Phill Jupitus, the programme took an irreverent look af the careers of
Frank Bough, Selina Scott, Anne Diamond, Jeremy Beadle and Ulrika Jonsson.
None of the above were interviewed themselves although there were interviews with other veterans of breakfast television such as Wincey Willis, Mike "The Walrus" Morris, Nick Owen, and Greg Dyke who at the time was director general of the BBC.
They also showed clips of "Green Goodess" Diana Moran, Mad Lizzie, Roland Rat, and Ross Tilley's dad Russell Grant who used to do the horoscopes on the BBC's Breakfast Time.
We all know about Frank Bough's fall from the top when in 1988 he was caught taking the white stuff and hanging out in brothels which resulted in him being sacked as the presenter of the BBC's Holiday show, joining LWT and Sky News a year later.
They also showed a few clips from his appearance on Shooting Stars where they spelt his surname phonetically and had him uttering John Thomson's catchphrase "Niice!" from the Fast Show at random points of the programme.
His co-presenter Selina Scott was destined for a fall since moving from a high profile job on News At Ten to the BBC's Breakfast Time.
When the early mornings got too much for her she ended up in a position of the BBC paying her lots of money to do nothing, so they put her on the Clothes Show.
I remember her being rather attractive on that show when I was at an earlier age although I had no idea she had been a newsreader and how desperate she really was.
After leaving the programme in 1991, she was still in search of a show so she became Wogan's holiday replacement on his chat show with awkward consequences.
An attempt to get back into the limelight in 1995 was just as disastrous when she interviewed New York entrepeneur Donald Trump in the days before "The Apprentice" and the man himself was interviewed and convinced that her career was kaput.
At the time of making the programme she appeared to be making health and safety videos and was running a sock shop in Scotland.
I would use the phrase "how the mighty fall" but I never thought she was that strong a personality.
Anne Diamond on the other hand got the job at TV-AM through ex ATV/Central News colleague Nick Owen who was already presenting there, and the two became permanent presenters after the (in)"Famous Five" had all been sacked or demoted in the case of Michael Parkinson and David Frost.
An ambitious woman, Anne could annoy many a viewer first thing in the morning and her pregnancy in 1988 became big news as she wasn't married at the time.
Unfortunately her son died in 1991 at just 3 years old which resulted in the presenter forming a succesfull campaign against cot deaths which reduced the rate in the UK from 1000, to just 300 a year.
Shortly after Anne & Nick reunited on BBC 1 as a low rate rival to Richard & Judy although Nick Owen came across really badly in his interview, adamant that he thought the programme was "absolutely brilliant" and had no idea why the show was axed after four years.
Amongst the clips show included an interview with Siamese twins and the moment I saw them on screen, you could probably hear me scream right at the other end of my flat in halls.
That's one of the things visually that I genuinely have a fear of although I won't say any other physical bodily images I would not want to see under any circumstances.
On a funnier note there was this line from the first show which made me laugh;
Anne: "If you've got a picture of your family you would like to see on our mantlepiece, then send it in and we'll literally frame you"
Nick: "Unless you're the Nolan sisters, we haven't got a big enough frame I'm afraid"
After the programme was dropped Anne herself ended up putting on the pounds and television work declined.
I think it was Piers Morgan who said that Anne was one of the best presenters on television but would have to have an affair with Eamonn Holmes to enter the limelight again.
Oddly enough, about a month after this programme was transmitted, Anne was one of the contestants of the second Celebrity Big Brother with Les Dennis, Mark Owen, and Melinda Messenger, and came across pretty well despite getting a lot of stick for her weight issues.
Jeremy Beadle was an odd inclusion as he was already a household name on Game For A Laugh before making appearances on TV-AM in the "Today's The Day" section giving out random facts as you would expect.
I've written about him in previous posts so I won't go into too much detail although there was an interview with one of his Beadle's About victims who had a great big pile of
pig manure dumped into his garden and almost injured one of the actors by
threatening him with a pitchfork.
Ulrika Jonnson came across as the most succesfull of the celebs who started off as a corpsing weathergirl on TV-AM in the late 80s.
There was an amusing outtake which I think was from one of her early appearances as a presenter on the station where she talked to Richard Keys about her Swedish background but also said "not all Swedes are like the Swedish cock, cook, I mean chef..." resulting in Richard Keys saying "It's typical of the Swedes, the can't get it out of their minds".
Progression saw the girl become one of the presenters of ITV' s Gladiators for 7 years and as one of the captains of Shooting Stars. However they concentrated on her reputation as a maneater with relationships with Stan Collymore, Hunter from the Gladiators and Sven Goran Errikson.
After the show was transmitted Ulrika's career more or less went into decline, possibly highlighted by her currently appearing in Celebrity Big Brother herself.
Oddly enough I was surprised Timmy Mallett wasn't one of those appearing although he later appeared on another programme in the series about Saturday Morning presenters such as Noel Edmonds and Chris Tarrant.
I ordered Ian Jones's book on Breakfast Television via Waterstones yesterday but it appears they are currently out of stock so I hope it's not too long before they recieve a few more.
They're also short of copies of Johnny Beerling's book which is a bit of a downer so I hope they sort that out too.
Nowadays, breakfast television is in an even worse state as it was in 2002, especially now that Chris Moyles is streaming his show live on video this week and is a lot more entertaining than anything on the box.
He mentioned on yesterday's show that he doesn't like the team shouting out the phone number as it sounds "too much like The Big Breakfast" which Moyles presented himself once or twice.
I like how there's a little progress bar at the top that show's how much time has past in the show, despite not being able to click on it and go back to an earlier point.
Amongst the highlights today so far have been the team doing a dance to Keith Chegwin's "Chappers Chappers Dave Dave" song which has been very popular as a ringtone, and how Dave asked BBC publicity to find a photo of him and Chappers and the only one they had under "Chappers and Dave" was a photo with Chappers and Spoony, which was funny if you were watching the video streaming although probably not as hilarious if you were just listening on the radio.
Today also saw the return of Rob DeeJay's Pub Quiz in a new timeslot being an hour earlier.
I haven't really heard the feature that much despite repeating a few of the catchphrases such as "When I Say Pub" and so on.
The feature itself was stolen by two of our very own presenters for the equally tedious "Beat The Brain" on Impey and the Brain which also had very identical sounding music.
Magpies.
Then again I could be criticised for ripping off Robbie Vincent on my show by playing the liner that goes "If It Moves, Funk It" although I bet I'm not the only one who's done that.
And it's nothing compared to the many people who rip off features by either
"The Saviour" or Scott Mills on their shows on student radio so it's probably not surprising why they don't get nominated for SRAs and such.
Although once again I'm eating my own words, with regards to indivudual success in the awards, as the marketing and branding entries were always a joint entry with either Tim, or Ross G.
And another reasons why I feel that it's lazy to rip off features by either Moyles or Mills is because most of them aren't even that entertaining first time round.
Anyway the live streaming is definitely a welcome addition not just for the show but BBC Radio overall. If it does go further however, I very much doubt that Steve Wright on Radio 2 will want to broadcast his show in the same way.
Other highlights today have included Chris's impression of Verne Troyer which once again, only really works if you can see him as it involves him ducking below the microphone and talking in a squeaky voice.
Overall, I reckon Carrie the sports reporter is a bit of a looker although producer Rachel isn't as attractive.
Rachel reminds me of Sharon, a learning support assistant I had at secondary school this time ten years ago in terms of her appearance, although she was from East London
and had a voice similar to Wendy Richard.
No disrespect, but she made my life difficult throughout year 9.
And seeing a bunch of people playing an electric shock game seems to be a fun way of spending the early hours of a morning, from a student point of view.
Forget Greg James, this is the real future of radio.
No comments:
Post a Comment