Although I don't have all the editions with me in London, I made a start at having a gander at the first of the guest hosted editions of Channel 4's
Big Breakfast from the third week of 2001.
The first of these was Natalie Casey who had just left Hollyoaks and was about to star in the first of many series of "Two Pints" who co-presented the show with Richard Bacon who was present throughout the whole week.
The major difference was that the entire show apart from the outdoor bits were presented from the upstairs part of the house as the downstairs area was being converted and transformed ready for the relaunch the following Monday.
However a few items and strands that were to be part of the new show made their entrance that week including an analysis of the weekends football from
Neil 'Razor' Ruddock who at the time was still playing for Crystal Palace.
Three years later Neil went on to appear in the jungle on series 3 of "Celebrity" and we even got an interview with him on Smoke as part of the sports show a few years later.
Well, presenter Steve Jones actually got to meet him.
Other items that were introduced included "spiritual medical advice" from the "Barefoot Doctor" and newsreader Jasmine Lowson made appearances every 15 minutes with the headlines on the half hour, and entertainment and sports news on the quarter.
They had experimented with brief headlines on the quarter hour with Phil Gayle the previous summer but they quietly dropped the idea shortly afterwards.
To bring it back was the wrong thing to do as it made things too disruptive to the flow of the show.
Jazza was also given the weather back in her bulletin leaving weatherman Simon Feilder as the stoodge and was involved in an item from the roof of Bow Locks cleverly titled "Feilder On The Roof".
One of the key moments of Natalie's appearance was the much anticipated showing of her rendtition of "Chick Chick Chicken" on the Russell Harty show when she was just 3 years old.
It was later revealed that the man who produced the record was Peter Gosling who composed one of the best theme tunes to a Saturday Morning show, that being Going Live!.
A far cry from the record by the future Hollyoaks star that only got to number 75 in the charts.
There were two competitions on the show that week, one of them being
"Oh, What A Lovely Pair" which has made more reappearances than Peter Mandelson, and a Mastermind spoof with the title "Host With The Most" where the guest host each day would be questioned about their life and three callers had to guess how many they would answer correctly in 90 seconds.
Which moves nicely onto the other hosts who on Tuesday was Patsy Kensit which wasn't too memorable, and Wednesday was Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee.
This included a VT insert where in an attempt to outdo David Blaine, Paul went into East London to try out his own take on "Street Magic" to amusing results.
Thursday's hosts were Lisa and Faye from Steps who again were pretty forgettable and finishing it off on Friday were Lisa Snowdown and the late Richard Whiteley.
It was quite a fitting finish to the Big Breakfast as I knew it from then although there was quite a bit of anticipation ahead of the new look as shown by a rather high impact trailer of the new team accompanied by Fatboy Slim's
"Ya Mama".
The final show on the Friday was also the last show for producer Mike Cunliffe who left at arguably the right time, as far as the show was concerned.
I don't think he made any appearances on screen like the rest of the crew but Richard acknowledged him in the final link.
The following Monday was more or less the beginning of the end for the show with the new team of Paul Tonkinson, Amanda Byram etc.
I don't actually have that on tape, but I probably wouldn't want to see it again as it will make me feel even more depressed than I am now.
Not that I am depressed of course but times are pretty tight.
I imagine tomorrow I'll have a gander at the final ever show which I do have on tape, although it's also online for viewing on Youtube here, so you can make your own mind up rather than wait for me to write a load of rubbish about it.
It's worth mentioning that to my knowledge the show has never had a sponsor which is quite impressive considering the amount of time it was on air.
Planet 24's sister show the Word was sponsored by Swatch for quite a while and they even showed the sponsor ident during a repeat of the show for Channel 4's 25th anniversary.
With a repeat of that scale, it makes you wonder why the Vault put all the effort into removing sponsors and certain logos from repeats of the Chart Show.
Anyway, whilst the dissertation is the main priority I don't want to carry on working on it only to be told by my supervisor that I'm doing it wrong.
I know I shouldn't rely on my supervisor to write it for me which isn't what I'm aiming for at all, but as mentioned before I've heard stories about lesser than consistent supervisors compared to Ana who never even batted an eyelid until the very end and poo pooed what had been written.
I just like to be assured that what I'm doing in terms of structure is correct. What I'm writing in terms of perspective or opinion is entirely my control.
Next week should be more coherent with lesser distractions up in radio, especially as there are no live studio modules, well...,
forever whilst I'm still here.
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