I continued my nostalgic trawl with the best of 1983 as hosted by television's most famous rodent.
During the section about the rat himself it featured a few vintage clips of Roland presenting in the TV-AM sewer, one of which made it into the very beginning of Shane Meadow's "This Is England".
I still find the clip of Nicholas Witchell on the BBC's 6 O'Clock News hilarious where he announces Roland's move to the BBC in a very serious, stern manner.
Roland made the switch in October 1985 and got his own show the following year
"Roland Rat The Series" which included a theme tune by Stock Aitken and Watermen.
Pete himself mentioned that a few of the songs performed by Roland on the show later went onto become hits for artists such as Mel & Kim and the theme tune itself did sound very similar to their song "Get Fresh At The Weekend".
On the subject of Breakfast Television, there was an item on work out girls such as "Green Goddess" Diana Moran, and over on TV-AM Mad Lizzie Webb who both appeared talking about what it was like to broadcast at that time of the morning.
It looks like there's a bit of a revival at the moment what with Mr Motivator's recent return to our screens.
Also included was a feature on Wham! which had contributions from radio DJ Gary Crowley who's now at BBC London and has said quite a few good words about a certain Dan Roberts.
Stewart Maconie also mentioned that he thought George Michael was better in Wham! than as a solo artist.
Another item was about He-Man the animated series/30 minute toy commercials which gripped many of the younger viewers around the mid 80s. And I reckon I can do Skeletor's voice perfectly.
Other contributors included Peter Kay, Kate Thornton, Robert Elms and even Peter York, the well spoken journalist and contributor to BBC 2's "The Late Show" in the early 90s.
Peter can be seen here in what must have been a treat for television fans back in 1989, a history of television identity symbols, courtesy of Mark Prosser.
You have to remember that very few people were that nostalgic in 1989 and not many of those outside of television knew what idents were until they saw this.
It was an interesting time however as with the 1990 Broadcasting Bill approaching,
ITV had to up it's game and had recently introduced a corporate image across the network.
Not all companies wanted to take part, including Central who's variant can be seen in the above video, as well as TVS, Anglia, and TSW in the South West.
Actually, Central did use the ident but used their own and in my opinion inferior sig tune instead of David Dundas's music as seen above.
After the 1983 programme I found another VHS looking from March 2001 of Channel 4's Top 10 Duets hosted by Richard and Judy.
This was just two months before the pair signed to join Channel 4 permantley in what was a shaky start at first.
Amongst the duets featured were Peters and Lee who were one of the few success stories from Opportunity Knocks. Although for me, the song "Welcome Home" always reminds me of 1995 for two reasons, the first being it's use in an ad for Walkers Crisps which saw Gary Lineker return to his hometown of Leicester and prove that there was "No More Mr Nice Guy".
The second was Chris Evans on Radio 1 when he'd just taken over the breakfast show and that was the first record he played in order to tell listeners it was "safe to listen to Radio 1 again".
Although from my perspective it was the beginning of the end for the station overall, even if they've now got Moyles as a saving grace.
Back to the duets and another one they had was Dollar with interviews with both
David Van Day and Therese Bazarr.
This was two years before they reformed for "Reborn In The USA"
and David as you would expect came across as rather pompous.
Around the time the show was transmitted he was appearing in an ad for Virgin Money which I'm sure I've mentioned on the site before showing the consequences of not investing your money with him working on a burger van.
Whether his time in the jungle has done him any favours, no one will know.
Or possibly give a toss.
The narrator for the segements themselves on the programme was 80s housewives hero Simon Bates and during a snippet of an unsuccesful duet with Corrie's Johnny Briggs and Amanda Barrie performing "Something Stupid", Simon commented
"Come on Alma, twat him!".
Possibly a rare experience of hearing Simon Bates utter the word "twat" rather than having it aimed at him.
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