Cackles And Canterbury

Morning.

Just before going to bed last night I watched the first episode of the 2007 series of Apollo on the iPlayer where Jack Dee was the compere.

Originally transmitted in November of that year, this series provided much needed laughs and helped to bring back my sense of humour after the rather traumatic period in October, and Jack Dee was on top form with jokes taking the mickey out of the X Factor and about the various TV phone in scandals.

One of those in the audience happened to be GMTV's Penny Smith who Jack said that her job was to "burn the phone bills".

Others in the audience included Coronation Street's Wendi Peters who plays Cilla, Duncan James who earlier that year had taken part in Dancing On Ice, and newsreader Michael Buerk.

Jack Dee had been the compere of Apollo for the first two series in 2004 and 2005 and this was the ideal introduction to the third series as they would be having different hosts throughout the series which I thought made it better and made the show even more popular than it was, with some of my favourites in that series being Jimmy Carr and Dara O'Briain.

At the bit of the show at the end where he reads jokes sent to his mobile, one of them was actually one of Bernard Manning's old jokes about when the police found a man who was found in the River Thames with a plastic penis in his mouth, wearing ladies clothing, and also wore a Chelsea strip. However the policemen kept the last thing quiet as they didn't want to give his family any embrassment.

Of course Bernard's joke involved a Manchester City strip, as he was always prepared to make jokes about the team he supported throughout his life.

In about half an hour I'm heading back to Canterbury on what's quite a significant day as it's 18 years since we moved there from East London.

From a television point of view however, it's 20 years since the BBC introduced Newsroom South East as the replacement for London Plus in the South East area for regional news. Guy Michelmore was the main presenter and he even composed the theme tune to the programme!

It was launched on a Tuesday as it was after the Easter weekend although on Easter Monday in 1989 Invicta Radio split frequencies to become Coast AM on medium wave and Invicta FM on their stereo frequencies.

Back then they were still based in Canterbury in the building now occupied by Bar Bars.

Expect me to add some of the old jingles by the time they get changed to Heart although they're probably a few vintage Invicta FM jingles already on my blog.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing when I get back to Canterbury although I may watch tonight's first episode of the third series of Robin Hood although I've never really been able to watch a whole series.

It's not a great line up tonight anyway as the programmes preceeded by a repeat of Total Wipeout. Have they punished us enough?

Probably not so as they plan to do a Champion of Champions show later in the year and what I'd prefer to all an "all-star" version of the show which I reckon will be quite a struggle to achieve judging by the fact that the BBC were finding it difficult for celebrities to take part in "Hole In The Wall".

And yes, they will be doing a second series.

But overall if people are enjoying the series then it must be doing something right although as mentioned before, some people don't like Jonathan Ross.

Let's hope the journey back to Canterbury contains any similar obstacles, especially ones involving water.