The Big 22

This is pretty impressive, blog post number 2200 and I'm nearing my 1000th Tweet.

If I carry on writing this rubbish, I'll hopefully reach 2500 posts by the end of my time at Uni.

I spent the morning going through some of my old Alfasound Collector Tapes that are now in digital form on my hard drive.

These included a few ones I haven't heard before including resings for Pirate stations and overseas stations in Europe, Ireland and even America with UK package resung with US singers.

Some of the notable ones included packages for what was then known as RTE Radio 2, which by the end of the 80s was 2FM and used jingles by Century 21 which were a lot more punchier and less corny than the Alfasound ones.

I also had a listen to Volume 27 from 1996 which contained a lot of stuff I'd never heard before including the 1992 package for BBC Radio Leicester which were resings of JAM packages for WLS in Chicago, some of which had been on both Radio 1 and Radio 2 15 years earlier.

My favourite had to be one for The Breeze in Essex which was the AM station for Essex FM and had a resing of the whole "Beat 92" package.

These included the cuts I had done for me a few years ago including that superb promo bed which I use at the end of the show.

I have't actually said Bruno Brookes' line at all in the last semester, instead going for lines such as "Be Nice To Each Other" and "Don't do anything stupid, unless you're being framed!"

There's still a few more I plan to use towards the end although I'll possibly do Bruno's one on the last show. Although the man himself once did an adlib for the 2006 North West Radio Night, which was designed as a light dig for then Hit 40 UK host Simon Hirst.

I've been up to more rummaging as well, still in July 2004 and another vintage episode of OFAH, that being "The Yellow Peril" from series 2 where they end up painting a chinese restaurant only to find it's luminous paint.

My favourite bit is when the phone rings, and Del fearing that it's the owner of the restaurant asks Grandad to tell him that he's not around.

Of course Grandad being the dim one he is, isn't so succesfull;

"Ello!

Oh hello Mr Chin.

No, no Del's gone out.

I'm not sure, where've you gone to Del?"

I loved Lennard Pearce's character in the series but Buster Merryfield was just as good as Uncle Albert and is more or less established for me as one of the main characters from when I can remember the series first time round.

Although at the time I thought it was weird seeing Nicholas Lyndhurst in a BBC sitcom as my earliest memory of him was as Ashley in the LWT late 80s sitcom "The Two Of Us" which he did when Only Fools took a break for three years, after the episode where Del eventually turns down an offer to take his business overseas.

Nowadays, Nicholas Lyndhurst will always be recognised as "that plonker".

Towards the end of the tape are the opening and closing titles from what had to be one of ITV1's worst Saturday night line ups ever.

First of all was "Celebrities Under Pressure" which had ran for two series already hosted by Melanie Sykes, but this time with Mel having her second child, Vernon Kay took over but it didn't mean the show improved.

Around the time Vernon had just started his weekend morning show on Radio 1 and was still doing T4 and you got the idea he really wanted to be an all round entertainer.

Not for me.

The theme tune to the programme wanted to be intense, sounding like a cross between the Mission Impossible theme, and "Take Me I'm Yours" by Squeeze.

The other show was even worse, which I've probably referred to quite a few times, that being "Simply The Best" what you could call "It's A Knockout" for the noughties.

This was an incredibly strung out show done from an outdoor stadium in St Helier, Jersey and was presented by Phil Tufnell and Kirsty Gallacher.

A presenting duo who go together about as well as a curry with an orange inside it.

This particular edition had a team from Manchester competing against a team from London, each lead by two celebrities who weren't exactly A-list and a long way from C-list.

Representing Manchester was Paul Tonkinson, and Sarah Cawood who is actually from London. And representing Sarah's true hometown were Jeff Brazier and former Eastender Lucy Speed.

The opening titles were very similar to that of Hole In The Wall, featuring computer generated stick people falling into water.

However the viewing public at the time were not ready for such splashing and messing about, and it has to be said that the show makes Hole In The Wall, and Total Wipeout look credible.

One of the dreadful gimmicks was the hastily contrived "evil referee" Paul Derkins and guess which music he came out to? That's right "O Fortuna".

If you really need any music guaranteed to put the fear of god into people, then for me it has to be that really bad brass band version of "Sprach Zarathustra" as played by Chris Moyles in the last couple of days.

It was a shambles overall and sadly it had cost producers Channel Television a lot of money meaning that a planned drama for the ITV network had to be abandoned.

Definitely a show that will make a reappearance in my revised Saturday Night tangent later this year, for all the wrong reasons.