Still in late October and the news of the untimely death of John Peel from a heart attack whilst on holiday in Peru on the 25th of October 2004.
I can remember being shocked at the news on finding out and whilst I wasn't a regular listener to his Radio 1 show, there was no denying that I hadn't heard it at some point in my life while growing up, as well as his Radio 4 show "Home Truths" which continued for at least 18 months after his passing.
The VHS I have contains both the BBC and ITV reports from the day itself, where the BBC had a live interview with colleague Andy Kershaw who would later appear as a guest on that night's "Front Row" on Radio 4.
Andy mentioned that when he arrived at Radio 1 in 1985 there was speculation that he was brought in as a fresh faced fella passionate about music in a similar manner to Peel, eventually going on to replace him.
That turned out not to be the case as both of them went on to become really good friends in the long term and I've more or less associated them as a pair, not on-air of course but because their programmes were so closely linked together in terms of being eclectic and bizarre.
I knew that they were big fans of Ivor Cutler for example.
ITV on the other hand had an interview with Mike Read and it's probably not worth even recounting.
The same night saw the 10th National Television Awards from the Albert Hall where host Sir Trevor McDonald came on stage with a load of loosely dressed women accompanied by the song "It's Not Unusual" but when it looked like he was about to start singing, Simon Cowell came on stage and said that "he did not have the X-Factor".
As it was the 10th awards, they showed a highlights package looking back at some of the memorable moments from the last 10 years, obviously including
Judy Finnigan's bra at the 2000 awards.
The first awards in 1995 were actually held at the Wembley Arena and presented by Eammon Holmes before Sir Trevor took over in 1996 from the Royal Albert Hall where it has remained since.
Other moments shown included when Chris Tarrant won the Lifetime Recognition Award in 2000 as presented by his dad dressed up as the Phantom Flan Flinger.
As well as Trevor winning the same award in 2003, as presented by Tony Blair.
2004 wasn't without it's unexpected incidents as a streaker made it's way onto the stage during an apperance by Ozzie and Sharon Osbourne, Sharon getting particuarly enthusiastic becuase "he had a rather large willy!"
The recipient of the Oustanding Contribution was a bit of an anti-climax as it went to Caroline Quentin, who in my opinion hasn't really done anything in her career that has warranted an award of that sort of achievement.
Then again a lot of people thought the same about Ant & Dec two years earlier.
Now it seems that the NTAs are more or less numbered as ITV have delayed this years awards as a result of them losing money and it may mean they'll disapear all together.
Following from this was yet another Have I Got News For You hosted by former Labour MP Robin Cook.
The stories this week included the run up to the US elections between George Bush and John Kerry, whilst the fortunes of UKIP and Robert Kilroy-Silk fell down the toilet after Kilroy resigned after the party wouldn't allow him to be the leader.
This allowed another showing of the clip of Kilroy offering the choice of "whether to share, or to shaft" to which Robin responded;
"Unfortunately Robert, when you asked your party to share, they decided to shaft"
Robin wasn't one of the best hosts of the programme and sadly it was to be his only apperance in the presenters chair as he died of a heart attack in August the following year.
Next up was ITV1's inferior answer to Test The Nation, that being
"The Great British Pop Test" from November 2004. which was the music equivalent of their poor attempt to emulate the BBC's otherwise superior effort.
Presented by Neil Fox and Gabby Logan, this was more of a battle of the sexes as opposed to an IQ test and ensured plenty of forced chemistry and contrived rivalry between the hosts.
In addition to the questions themselves there were VT pacakges of various soap stars and pop stars saying what there first, favourite and worst records were.
The Scissor Sisters appeared where I think it was Jake, said his first record was "Keep Feeling (Fascination)" by The Human League back in 1983 which wasn't too bad.
However Daniel Bedingfield had the nerve to say that his worst was Lisa Stansfield's "All Around The World" which was number 1 almost 15 years to the day of transmission.
But what's worse, a young woman from Rochdale repeating the letter "I" constantly, or an male soloist who to quote Stephen K Amos was "a jack of all trades, but a master of fuck all".
To be fair Lisa had released a new album that same year which was produced by Trevor Horn and was inferior to her previous albums. Unsurprisingly we haven't heard from her since and Daniel Bedingfield has ended up living in the shadow of his sister.
The only good bit of the programme was a live performance from Status Quo, a band who I've been meaning to see live for many years.
Immediately after the programme was that evening's ITV News with the report on Boris Johnson getting sacked from the Conservative front bench after having an affair and denying it in front of Michael Howard.
That front cover of the News Of The World from that day still has me laughing with the headline quoting the woman about "Bonking Boris" and the photo of him in his dressing gown.
The HIGNFY team didn't get to comment on it for two weeks however due to Children In Need being shown the week after Boris's sacking.
However a year later Boris was put back on the front bench after David Cameron became the Tory leader although many thought that Boris should have became the leader himself.
Right now I'm taking a break from the visual stuff and listening to PY on Jazz FM, and because Fearne's on her own this week, I may listen to her on Radio 1's Request Show before spending the rest of the night rummaging.
It may be an all nighter as well as I would prefer to have a lie down tomorrow afternoon, after Robbie Vincent, in order to avoid falling asleep during Wrestlemania tomorrow early morning.
Well, early on Monday actually.
Then all the tough stuff begins with returning to Canterbury and working on the dissertation.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Get The (Political) Party Started
I should give a plug for a newly set up radio discussion forum introduced by Chilvers where I've apparently been made a moderator.
Chris seems keen for it to take off although I'm trying to be relaxed about it as for it to succeed completely it really needs an original design for it to stand out as there are currently no dedicated forums on the internet that I know of solely based around UK Radio.
With all due respect myself and Chris will admit that we're not great at designing web pages, although there are certain individuals here who think they know about web design but are either too lazy or just utterly useless.
If the Smoke Radio website is anything to go buy throughout the years, no one was as dedicated as Tim Pryor was, who could update the site when needed whilst at the same time working on the station sound, presenting a sports show, and completing his degree.
That's commitment for you.
Overall however I hope the forum progresses.
The rest of the morning so far has consisted of more laughs starting off with another edition of HIGNFY this time from the 22nd of October 2004 with Andrew Marr as the host.
Although this was his only apperance in the presenters chair I thought he did pretty well and didn't mess up at all, whilst the guests that week were Ross Noble and Shobna Gulati who used to be in Victoria Wood's "dinnerladies" and around this time was in Coronation Street as Maya.
The big story this week was Boris Johnson's visit to Liverpool where on the orders of Tory Leader Michael Howard, he had to make a public apology to the residents of the town he offended in a recent article in The Spectator.
The illustrated this with a clip of a newsreader reporting on location with Boris coming into shot and correcting what he said in his piece to camera, which the MP had a habit of doing.
There was also an amusing bit in the Odd One Out Round where there were four bits of music as part of the question. They were "Born In The USA" by Bruce Springsteen, "Rock And Roll Pt 2" by Gary Glitter, "Get The Party Started" by Pink, and "Right Here Right Now" by Fatboy Slim.
The answer was that all of the songs apart from Gary Glitter had been used in political campaings against the performers consent, whereas Gary Glitter's was to be dropped by George Bush's campaign team.
Fatboy Slim wasn't happy when Tony Blair used his song for a campaign, Bruce Springsteen wasn't impressed by President Reagan using his song for his election rally in 1988, and Pink was furious when one of her songs was used by a far right Austrian politican.
The dropping of Gary Glitter's song was ilustrated by this quote;
"It's distaseful to be associated with such an unsavoury individual'
said Gary Glitter"
The highlight of the show had to be what would go on to be the much playd clip of Robert Kilroy-Silk on his disatrous gameshow "Shafted" from 2001 with the catchphrase "Share Or Shaft" with appropriate hand gestures.
The premise now used on the strung out daytime quiz show "Golden Balls"
where contestants are given the chance to "split or steal".
The tape also had report from Channel 4 News in November 2004 about the uncalled for monkey chanting at England's friendly against Spain whenever
Shaun Wright-Phillips or Ashley Cole got hold of the ball.
I may not be a fan of Ashley Cole, but to subject him and Phillips to
that sort of abuse was absolutely unnecessary.
I can remember talking about it at college on the Thursday after it happened and it was a pretty grim time despite things overall looking up.
That part that made me laugh however was when it referred back to the Ron Atkinson incident from 6 months earlier and had the line read out in a rather deadpan voice. The f-word was bleeped but the offending word wasn't.
It may be a bit crass for me to laugh at that and moan about Emily Maitlis reciting one of Frankie Boyle's jokes on Newsnight, but in Ron's case it was a line that more or less mesed up his career.
Another thing that was interesting to see was the first edition of "The Friday Night Project" from February 2005 with Vinnie Jones as the first host.
Back then the show was slightly different as there was no sign of Alan and Justin, whilst in their place were Jimmy Carr, Rob Rouse, and Lucy Montgomery. I persnally though that Jimmy was rather uncomfortable compared to his stand up and panel shows, whilst the rest of the team wer smug gits who thought they were funny.
The opening theme tune was still the same, that being "Light In The Sky" by Steve Hillage and the guest band that week were Fightstar lead by Busted's recently departed lead singer Charlie Simpson, who clearly had ideas above his station around then.
I heard an interview with them on Richard Walters' Rock Show on KMFM just over a year ago and they came across pretty well, despite their records not being too good.
Anyway I'm in the mood for some more stuff of a similar nature.
Chris seems keen for it to take off although I'm trying to be relaxed about it as for it to succeed completely it really needs an original design for it to stand out as there are currently no dedicated forums on the internet that I know of solely based around UK Radio.
With all due respect myself and Chris will admit that we're not great at designing web pages, although there are certain individuals here who think they know about web design but are either too lazy or just utterly useless.
If the Smoke Radio website is anything to go buy throughout the years, no one was as dedicated as Tim Pryor was, who could update the site when needed whilst at the same time working on the station sound, presenting a sports show, and completing his degree.
That's commitment for you.
Overall however I hope the forum progresses.
The rest of the morning so far has consisted of more laughs starting off with another edition of HIGNFY this time from the 22nd of October 2004 with Andrew Marr as the host.
Although this was his only apperance in the presenters chair I thought he did pretty well and didn't mess up at all, whilst the guests that week were Ross Noble and Shobna Gulati who used to be in Victoria Wood's "dinnerladies" and around this time was in Coronation Street as Maya.
The big story this week was Boris Johnson's visit to Liverpool where on the orders of Tory Leader Michael Howard, he had to make a public apology to the residents of the town he offended in a recent article in The Spectator.
The illustrated this with a clip of a newsreader reporting on location with Boris coming into shot and correcting what he said in his piece to camera, which the MP had a habit of doing.
There was also an amusing bit in the Odd One Out Round where there were four bits of music as part of the question. They were "Born In The USA" by Bruce Springsteen, "Rock And Roll Pt 2" by Gary Glitter, "Get The Party Started" by Pink, and "Right Here Right Now" by Fatboy Slim.
The answer was that all of the songs apart from Gary Glitter had been used in political campaings against the performers consent, whereas Gary Glitter's was to be dropped by George Bush's campaign team.
Fatboy Slim wasn't happy when Tony Blair used his song for a campaign, Bruce Springsteen wasn't impressed by President Reagan using his song for his election rally in 1988, and Pink was furious when one of her songs was used by a far right Austrian politican.
The dropping of Gary Glitter's song was ilustrated by this quote;
"It's distaseful to be associated with such an unsavoury individual'
said Gary Glitter"
The highlight of the show had to be what would go on to be the much playd clip of Robert Kilroy-Silk on his disatrous gameshow "Shafted" from 2001 with the catchphrase "Share Or Shaft" with appropriate hand gestures.
The premise now used on the strung out daytime quiz show "Golden Balls"
where contestants are given the chance to "split or steal".
The tape also had report from Channel 4 News in November 2004 about the uncalled for monkey chanting at England's friendly against Spain whenever
Shaun Wright-Phillips or Ashley Cole got hold of the ball.
I may not be a fan of Ashley Cole, but to subject him and Phillips to
that sort of abuse was absolutely unnecessary.
I can remember talking about it at college on the Thursday after it happened and it was a pretty grim time despite things overall looking up.
That part that made me laugh however was when it referred back to the Ron Atkinson incident from 6 months earlier and had the line read out in a rather deadpan voice. The f-word was bleeped but the offending word wasn't.
It may be a bit crass for me to laugh at that and moan about Emily Maitlis reciting one of Frankie Boyle's jokes on Newsnight, but in Ron's case it was a line that more or less mesed up his career.
Another thing that was interesting to see was the first edition of "The Friday Night Project" from February 2005 with Vinnie Jones as the first host.
Back then the show was slightly different as there was no sign of Alan and Justin, whilst in their place were Jimmy Carr, Rob Rouse, and Lucy Montgomery. I persnally though that Jimmy was rather uncomfortable compared to his stand up and panel shows, whilst the rest of the team wer smug gits who thought they were funny.
The opening theme tune was still the same, that being "Light In The Sky" by Steve Hillage and the guest band that week were Fightstar lead by Busted's recently departed lead singer Charlie Simpson, who clearly had ideas above his station around then.
I heard an interview with them on Richard Walters' Rock Show on KMFM just over a year ago and they came across pretty well, despite their records not being too good.
Anyway I'm in the mood for some more stuff of a similar nature.
Radio Revoked
Morning.
The last few days have seen closures of three local radio stations. A couple of days saw the shutting down of Mersey 106.7 formerly known as KCR FM which made it's debut 7 years ago.
Radio Today Article
The station had been in trouble with OFCOM for it's lack of local news content and it's overuse on computer automation. After being given the yellow card last year and several subsequent warnings, they were told on Wednesday to cease transmission before midnight and this was certainly no April Fools joke.
The last record was "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" by Neil Sedaka and then it disapeared for good.
Two more stations further south shut down last night, them being Time 106.8 in Greenwich and South 107.3 in Lewisham.
Their closing down was more a result of the current economic state of affairs as they were both put up for sale but no suitable buyer could be found.
Radio Today Article
Time 106.8 launched back in 1990 as RTM, a community station for the Thamesmead area where the first record was the rather ironic choice of "The Only Way Is Up".
One of their presenters happened to be Simon Beale who later joined Invicta FM and currently presents "Heartbreakers" on the Heart Network.
By the end of the decade they were known as "Millennium Radio" and then became Time around 5 years ago.
South 107.3 previous had life as FLR (First Love Radio) with a resing of JAM's Z Plus package in the late 90s before reformatting as Fusion Radio a couple of years later.
I'm pretty certain they won't be the last to disapear.
The rest of my time and possibly this weekend (due to the fact there's a load of rubbish on the box) will be spent rummaging where I'm now up to Series 4 of Saturday Night Takeaway transmitted in October 2004.
This for me was then the show very slowly started to decline but there were some stand out points with various surprises.
The first show had guest apperances from Kelly Holmes playing the Grab The Ads game, Big Brother 4 winner Nadia Almada was the Undercover victim on a "Most Haunted" style show where Dec's rubber masked disguise as the presenter made him look like Shaw Taylor.
And the musical guest was Robbie Williams performing the travesty that was "Radio".
A new feature was introduced although it only lasted for a couple of shows and span off from the "Home Run" item as Ant & Dec had realised that pubs across the country actually had the show switched on, so they decided to reward the customers with free drinks but only if they succeeded in the Pub Olympics.
This involved three regular punters competing in three individual challenges against either Fatima Whitbread, Duncan Goodhew and Kriss Akabusi.
No one in my family's met Fatima Whitbread, but myself and Kate met Kriss at a primary school sports fundraising event 15 years ago and he mentioned our primary school on Live And Kicking the next day where he was a guest.
Dad once met Duncan Goodhew many years before that, although I think they're going a bit too far with regards to his funeral this morning,
treating it like some sort of important event.
Hang on, that's not him at all actually...
Anyway, the item also brought back someone who hadn't been on television for possibly 15 years, that being Dickie Davies who was the commentator the games themselves such as a table football penalty shoot out, and a tug of war.
After Dickie retired from television in the late 80s he was briefly the sports reporter at Classic FM when it launched in 1992.
On a similar note, the man responsible for the stations theme and idents made an appearance of the second show as part of the Undercover stunt.
Yes, David Arnold and the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra were on hand to accompany Ant & Dec playing the Proms favourite "Sailor's Hornpipe", although Ant & Dec were given silly instruments such as a bicycle horn with a bulb which squirted out water instead of honking, and a timpani that had white liquid inside it like in a Two Ronnies sketch.
It's also worth mentioning one of the opening links where Ant said he was into conkers and so Dec challenged him to a game, only for Ant to be knocked over by a giant conker.
However it was nowhere near as violent as the one that knocked out Phillip Schofield on Going Live! 13 years earlier.
Little Ant & Dec were still on good form where in the first show they interviewed the stars of Shark Tale including Will Smith on location at the Venice Film Festival.
That was the year I didn't go and watching that back made me feel a bit gutted about that, and also because it was the year they showed "Dead Man's Shoes".
That could have easily made it as the best film I saw at Venice, period, as the majority of the ones I've seen have been dull and rubbish.
The second show saw them interviewing Michael Parkinson who when asked if they were nervous just replied
"No because we don't even know him as he's on after our bedtime".
On a rather sad note Maurice Jarre who composed the tune adapted by Parky as his theme tune, died earlier this week with his son Jean Michel-Jarre leading the tributes.
Nowadays Jean is probably infamous for having his "Oxygene" tune being played on several arcade machines on seaside promenades.
I'm hoping to come across some of those machines after the dissertation's done.
The last few days have seen closures of three local radio stations. A couple of days saw the shutting down of Mersey 106.7 formerly known as KCR FM which made it's debut 7 years ago.
Radio Today Article
The station had been in trouble with OFCOM for it's lack of local news content and it's overuse on computer automation. After being given the yellow card last year and several subsequent warnings, they were told on Wednesday to cease transmission before midnight and this was certainly no April Fools joke.
The last record was "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" by Neil Sedaka and then it disapeared for good.
Two more stations further south shut down last night, them being Time 106.8 in Greenwich and South 107.3 in Lewisham.
Their closing down was more a result of the current economic state of affairs as they were both put up for sale but no suitable buyer could be found.
Radio Today Article
Time 106.8 launched back in 1990 as RTM, a community station for the Thamesmead area where the first record was the rather ironic choice of "The Only Way Is Up".
One of their presenters happened to be Simon Beale who later joined Invicta FM and currently presents "Heartbreakers" on the Heart Network.
By the end of the decade they were known as "Millennium Radio" and then became Time around 5 years ago.
South 107.3 previous had life as FLR (First Love Radio) with a resing of JAM's Z Plus package in the late 90s before reformatting as Fusion Radio a couple of years later.
I'm pretty certain they won't be the last to disapear.
The rest of my time and possibly this weekend (due to the fact there's a load of rubbish on the box) will be spent rummaging where I'm now up to Series 4 of Saturday Night Takeaway transmitted in October 2004.
This for me was then the show very slowly started to decline but there were some stand out points with various surprises.
The first show had guest apperances from Kelly Holmes playing the Grab The Ads game, Big Brother 4 winner Nadia Almada was the Undercover victim on a "Most Haunted" style show where Dec's rubber masked disguise as the presenter made him look like Shaw Taylor.
And the musical guest was Robbie Williams performing the travesty that was "Radio".
A new feature was introduced although it only lasted for a couple of shows and span off from the "Home Run" item as Ant & Dec had realised that pubs across the country actually had the show switched on, so they decided to reward the customers with free drinks but only if they succeeded in the Pub Olympics.
This involved three regular punters competing in three individual challenges against either Fatima Whitbread, Duncan Goodhew and Kriss Akabusi.
No one in my family's met Fatima Whitbread, but myself and Kate met Kriss at a primary school sports fundraising event 15 years ago and he mentioned our primary school on Live And Kicking the next day where he was a guest.
Dad once met Duncan Goodhew many years before that, although I think they're going a bit too far with regards to his funeral this morning,
treating it like some sort of important event.
Hang on, that's not him at all actually...
Anyway, the item also brought back someone who hadn't been on television for possibly 15 years, that being Dickie Davies who was the commentator the games themselves such as a table football penalty shoot out, and a tug of war.
After Dickie retired from television in the late 80s he was briefly the sports reporter at Classic FM when it launched in 1992.
On a similar note, the man responsible for the stations theme and idents made an appearance of the second show as part of the Undercover stunt.
Yes, David Arnold and the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra were on hand to accompany Ant & Dec playing the Proms favourite "Sailor's Hornpipe", although Ant & Dec were given silly instruments such as a bicycle horn with a bulb which squirted out water instead of honking, and a timpani that had white liquid inside it like in a Two Ronnies sketch.
It's also worth mentioning one of the opening links where Ant said he was into conkers and so Dec challenged him to a game, only for Ant to be knocked over by a giant conker.
However it was nowhere near as violent as the one that knocked out Phillip Schofield on Going Live! 13 years earlier.
Little Ant & Dec were still on good form where in the first show they interviewed the stars of Shark Tale including Will Smith on location at the Venice Film Festival.
That was the year I didn't go and watching that back made me feel a bit gutted about that, and also because it was the year they showed "Dead Man's Shoes".
That could have easily made it as the best film I saw at Venice, period, as the majority of the ones I've seen have been dull and rubbish.
The second show saw them interviewing Michael Parkinson who when asked if they were nervous just replied
"No because we don't even know him as he's on after our bedtime".
On a rather sad note Maurice Jarre who composed the tune adapted by Parky as his theme tune, died earlier this week with his son Jean Michel-Jarre leading the tributes.
Nowadays Jean is probably infamous for having his "Oxygene" tune being played on several arcade machines on seaside promenades.
I'm hoping to come across some of those machines after the dissertation's done.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Hitting The Wrong Notes
With the news that Same Difference have been dropped by their record label, weeks after X Factor 07 winner Leon suffered a similar fate, I stumbled across the 2004 show "It Shouldn't Happen To A Pop Star" which looked mainly at what not to do after hitting the musical heights.
Those interviewed included Sonia, Toyah, Sinitta, Shane Lynch, and industry insiders such as Louis Walsh, Simon Napier-Bell, and even LBC's Nick Ferrari.
As you'd expect the programme contained several embarassing moments from music such as Daphne and Celeste being bottled at Reading in 2000 as a result of an ill advised move to put them on the bill.
Even funnier was Owen Paul on Pebble Mill At One fourteen years earlier who was meant to be performing "My Favourite Waste Of Time" but couldn't hear the what those at home were hearing on their television sets, so just stood towards the right of the screen looking bored.
Unsurprisingly the show was axed later in the year when BBC 1's new daytime schedule was introduced.
Also included were examples of stars getting too big for their boots such as Britney Spears balls up at the London premier of her 2002 film "Cross Roads" where she was late arriving and just walked past the crowd refusing to acknowledge them at all.
Not really surpising that the movie flopped as a result.
Around this time in Autumn 2004, Michael Parkinson and his chat show had made the switch to ITV after he was unhappy about the BBC putting Match Of The Day in his timeslot.
The tape I was viewing had an interview with Ant & Dec ahead of the Autumn 2004 series of Saturday Night Takeway, which will probably make up the next few posts over the weekend.
As expected, Michael decided to dig out the video of the boys performing "Let's Get Ready To Rhumble".
Also included was another episode of Buzzocks with the second appearance of Har Mar Superstar, this time with a t-shirt on. One of the intros that him and Bill Bailey had to do was "You Were Right" by Badly Drawn Boy although there version sounded nothing like the song itself.
Mark responded by saying "You two should go on the road. A busy one"
There's quite a few bits from Newsnight as well although that's because we had to plan our own 10 minute report as part of the "Factual Project" assignment at college and only two would be chosen to actually shoot.
Luckily it wasn't mine.
In preparation we were asked to analyse a genuine Newsnight report in addition to being hassled to watch it along the lines of "You must watch Newsnight every night"
Around this time I was starting to realise that this was not what I was wanting to study or make a career out of.
Undeterred I decided to analyse a report made on the night before Tony Blair went into hospital to be checked up on his heart as the year before he was admitted to hospital with an irregular heartbeat.
The report itself looked back on what happened with a rather amusing incident at the monthly press conference where a reporter asked about how in America the president goes through a health check each month and whether we should take a similar measure.
Blair responded by saying that he wouldn't as the UK has it's own health practises and he "wouldn't want to follow the US leaders in a slaverish manner"
to which the audience started laughing at.
I can remember Jonathan Ross on his chat show the week after it happened in October 2003 where he started the show of by saying;
"And to Tony Blair if you're watching: BANG!"
That certainly gave me an opportunity to laugh despite my struggles with the course at the time.
I'm sure they'll be more to come of a similar nature before the end of tonight.
Those interviewed included Sonia, Toyah, Sinitta, Shane Lynch, and industry insiders such as Louis Walsh, Simon Napier-Bell, and even LBC's Nick Ferrari.
As you'd expect the programme contained several embarassing moments from music such as Daphne and Celeste being bottled at Reading in 2000 as a result of an ill advised move to put them on the bill.
Even funnier was Owen Paul on Pebble Mill At One fourteen years earlier who was meant to be performing "My Favourite Waste Of Time" but couldn't hear the what those at home were hearing on their television sets, so just stood towards the right of the screen looking bored.
Unsurprisingly the show was axed later in the year when BBC 1's new daytime schedule was introduced.
Also included were examples of stars getting too big for their boots such as Britney Spears balls up at the London premier of her 2002 film "Cross Roads" where she was late arriving and just walked past the crowd refusing to acknowledge them at all.
Not really surpising that the movie flopped as a result.
Around this time in Autumn 2004, Michael Parkinson and his chat show had made the switch to ITV after he was unhappy about the BBC putting Match Of The Day in his timeslot.
The tape I was viewing had an interview with Ant & Dec ahead of the Autumn 2004 series of Saturday Night Takeway, which will probably make up the next few posts over the weekend.
As expected, Michael decided to dig out the video of the boys performing "Let's Get Ready To Rhumble".
Also included was another episode of Buzzocks with the second appearance of Har Mar Superstar, this time with a t-shirt on. One of the intros that him and Bill Bailey had to do was "You Were Right" by Badly Drawn Boy although there version sounded nothing like the song itself.
Mark responded by saying "You two should go on the road. A busy one"
There's quite a few bits from Newsnight as well although that's because we had to plan our own 10 minute report as part of the "Factual Project" assignment at college and only two would be chosen to actually shoot.
Luckily it wasn't mine.
In preparation we were asked to analyse a genuine Newsnight report in addition to being hassled to watch it along the lines of "You must watch Newsnight every night"
Around this time I was starting to realise that this was not what I was wanting to study or make a career out of.
Undeterred I decided to analyse a report made on the night before Tony Blair went into hospital to be checked up on his heart as the year before he was admitted to hospital with an irregular heartbeat.
The report itself looked back on what happened with a rather amusing incident at the monthly press conference where a reporter asked about how in America the president goes through a health check each month and whether we should take a similar measure.
Blair responded by saying that he wouldn't as the UK has it's own health practises and he "wouldn't want to follow the US leaders in a slaverish manner"
to which the audience started laughing at.
I can remember Jonathan Ross on his chat show the week after it happened in October 2003 where he started the show of by saying;
"And to Tony Blair if you're watching: BANG!"
That certainly gave me an opportunity to laugh despite my struggles with the course at the time.
I'm sure they'll be more to come of a similar nature before the end of tonight.
Forever Autumn
Well into Autumn 2004 and around this time, the idea of University was close to becoming a reality. Most of the tapes I own from this period bring back the anticipation and I did make quite a lot of visits to London during this time anyway, whether it was record shopping or meeting up for Jingle dos in some of Central London's finest pubs.
The first one I had a look at was some CBBC stuff from early September where in the run up to the new series that Saturday, Dick And Dom were presenting the links that week with regular presenter Andrew Hayden-Smith locked up in a cage.
Rich and Dominic were a far cry from how they were on CBBC 5 years earlier as by 2004 they were a lot more anarchic and would take the mickey out of those calling on the phone in their inimitable style.
In between their links was the first edition of the 2004/2005 series of Blue Peter with a brand new arrangement of the theme tune and a change of set after 5 years.
The hosts around this time were the long serving team of Konnie, Simon, Matt and Liz who unlike their recent predecessors were there for the enjoyment of the show and didn't see it into a stepping stone into bigger things.
In fact the sort of shows they've gone onto since leaving Blue Peter have been more related to their own interests as Simon's now on Sky Sports and Matt's one of the new team on Countryfile with John Craven.
The previous more orchestral sounding theme had been done by David Arnold (again, not the film composer but I'm sure you all know that by now) whereas this uptempo more guitar lead tune was arranged by Niall Brown and recorded at Abbey Road Studios where Liz contributed by playing tambourine.
And whereas the David Arnold theme lasted for 5 years (as did the entirely percussion lead theme by the Yes/No Men) there have been at least 3 rearrangements since this one with the latest sounding rather like a Fratellis record, as I've mentioned before.
Also appearing on the show was recent Olympic Gold Medallist Kelly Holmes (before she became a dame if my memory serves right) where she was presented with a gold badge.
This series saw the departure of Simon Thomas after 6 years in April 2005 where he was replaced by Gethin Jones, and December 2004 saw the arrival of Zoe "Stunner" Salmon who was brought on to fill in for Liz whilst she had her baby Dexter.
The show also started running over 5 days a week, still on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays on BBC 1 but also broadcast on Tuesdays and Thursdays on the CBBC Channel. I'm not sure how long that lasted but nowadays they've stripped it down to just twice a week.
Moving on to later in the month and another compilation of Hidden Camera Stunts as hosted by the Schofe. Amongst those included were two Gotchas including one with Nicholas Parsons from series 1 of the House Party in 1992.
It was probably the first time I saw Nicholas Parsons on television as before then I only knew him as the presenter of Just A Minute on Radio 4 as Sale Of The Century finished quite a while before I was born.
Anyway, his Gotcha involved him being driven to an interview and the driver legging it out of the car leaving him on his own. The driver happened to be one of Edmonds stooges who was the same fella who played one of the pub spokesmen in the DLT gotcha later in the series.
A policeman AKA Edmonds arrived and arrested Nicholas which resulted in language coming out of Parsons mouth like you wouldn't believe but the funniest part was when he gave Edmonds his mobile phone and Noel looked like an idiot as he was trying to speak to the person on the other end of the line but had his helmet on at the same time.
Also included was one of my favourite Beadle's About pranks involving housewife Jean Mitchell filling up with rage after finding builders in her house knocking the windows down and treating themselves to a fry up in her kitchen.
The reason being was because her house was becoming owned by France as part of the Council's EU initiative and she wouldn't have none of it.
The reason she may have been furious wasn't because of the incident itself but possibly because she was really pissed off with the council overall and said that "the only thing they could get right was paying the rent" which resulted in a cheer from the studio audience.
But overall her reaction was brilliant and she was even interviewed on the compilation itself and was able to laugh about it.
Others interviewed included Richard Whiteley who's Gotcha was shown, Tony Blackburn, and the protaganists themselves i.e. Beadle, Edmonds etc.
A more recent example came in the form of the Five show "Swag" which has to be one of my favourites as it was a funny yet original concept. Produced by Will McDonald, this involved the best victims getting what they deserved as they were real criminals committing crimes.
One such example included a couple of yobs breaking into a car which exploded as soon as they hotwired it, and another included a built in Millionaire style game which really wound up the thieves.
And last of all was John Fashanu's Undercover stunt from Ant & Dec where producer James Sutherland explained that they did it because he was rubbish on a celebrity Stars In Their Eyes where he impersonated Otis Redding.
It's also interesting to see some of the trails in between the shows as one of them was for possibly one of ITV's worst shows around the time.
"The Celebrity Awards", which elaborates with ITV's then obsession with the "C-Word" which by the end of 2005 really did become a no-go word following the disaster of "Celebrity Wrestling" and "Celebrity Love Island".
As for tonight I plan to watch Wossy as always who despite getting the BBC 150 grand lesser off, should be on good form with Whoopi Goldberg as one of the guests.
It's also the last show for a couple of weeks as next Friday they'll be showing the golf in it's place like they normally do at this time of the year.
Anyway, before that I'll continue rummaging through various things including a programme showing the dos and dont's of being a popular recording artist.
The first one I had a look at was some CBBC stuff from early September where in the run up to the new series that Saturday, Dick And Dom were presenting the links that week with regular presenter Andrew Hayden-Smith locked up in a cage.
Rich and Dominic were a far cry from how they were on CBBC 5 years earlier as by 2004 they were a lot more anarchic and would take the mickey out of those calling on the phone in their inimitable style.
In between their links was the first edition of the 2004/2005 series of Blue Peter with a brand new arrangement of the theme tune and a change of set after 5 years.
The hosts around this time were the long serving team of Konnie, Simon, Matt and Liz who unlike their recent predecessors were there for the enjoyment of the show and didn't see it into a stepping stone into bigger things.
In fact the sort of shows they've gone onto since leaving Blue Peter have been more related to their own interests as Simon's now on Sky Sports and Matt's one of the new team on Countryfile with John Craven.
The previous more orchestral sounding theme had been done by David Arnold (again, not the film composer but I'm sure you all know that by now) whereas this uptempo more guitar lead tune was arranged by Niall Brown and recorded at Abbey Road Studios where Liz contributed by playing tambourine.
And whereas the David Arnold theme lasted for 5 years (as did the entirely percussion lead theme by the Yes/No Men) there have been at least 3 rearrangements since this one with the latest sounding rather like a Fratellis record, as I've mentioned before.
Also appearing on the show was recent Olympic Gold Medallist Kelly Holmes (before she became a dame if my memory serves right) where she was presented with a gold badge.
This series saw the departure of Simon Thomas after 6 years in April 2005 where he was replaced by Gethin Jones, and December 2004 saw the arrival of Zoe "Stunner" Salmon who was brought on to fill in for Liz whilst she had her baby Dexter.
The show also started running over 5 days a week, still on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays on BBC 1 but also broadcast on Tuesdays and Thursdays on the CBBC Channel. I'm not sure how long that lasted but nowadays they've stripped it down to just twice a week.
Moving on to later in the month and another compilation of Hidden Camera Stunts as hosted by the Schofe. Amongst those included were two Gotchas including one with Nicholas Parsons from series 1 of the House Party in 1992.
It was probably the first time I saw Nicholas Parsons on television as before then I only knew him as the presenter of Just A Minute on Radio 4 as Sale Of The Century finished quite a while before I was born.
Anyway, his Gotcha involved him being driven to an interview and the driver legging it out of the car leaving him on his own. The driver happened to be one of Edmonds stooges who was the same fella who played one of the pub spokesmen in the DLT gotcha later in the series.
A policeman AKA Edmonds arrived and arrested Nicholas which resulted in language coming out of Parsons mouth like you wouldn't believe but the funniest part was when he gave Edmonds his mobile phone and Noel looked like an idiot as he was trying to speak to the person on the other end of the line but had his helmet on at the same time.
Also included was one of my favourite Beadle's About pranks involving housewife Jean Mitchell filling up with rage after finding builders in her house knocking the windows down and treating themselves to a fry up in her kitchen.
The reason being was because her house was becoming owned by France as part of the Council's EU initiative and she wouldn't have none of it.
The reason she may have been furious wasn't because of the incident itself but possibly because she was really pissed off with the council overall and said that "the only thing they could get right was paying the rent" which resulted in a cheer from the studio audience.
But overall her reaction was brilliant and she was even interviewed on the compilation itself and was able to laugh about it.
Others interviewed included Richard Whiteley who's Gotcha was shown, Tony Blackburn, and the protaganists themselves i.e. Beadle, Edmonds etc.
A more recent example came in the form of the Five show "Swag" which has to be one of my favourites as it was a funny yet original concept. Produced by Will McDonald, this involved the best victims getting what they deserved as they were real criminals committing crimes.
One such example included a couple of yobs breaking into a car which exploded as soon as they hotwired it, and another included a built in Millionaire style game which really wound up the thieves.
And last of all was John Fashanu's Undercover stunt from Ant & Dec where producer James Sutherland explained that they did it because he was rubbish on a celebrity Stars In Their Eyes where he impersonated Otis Redding.
It's also interesting to see some of the trails in between the shows as one of them was for possibly one of ITV's worst shows around the time.
"The Celebrity Awards", which elaborates with ITV's then obsession with the "C-Word" which by the end of 2005 really did become a no-go word following the disaster of "Celebrity Wrestling" and "Celebrity Love Island".
As for tonight I plan to watch Wossy as always who despite getting the BBC 150 grand lesser off, should be on good form with Whoopi Goldberg as one of the guests.
It's also the last show for a couple of weeks as next Friday they'll be showing the golf in it's place like they normally do at this time of the year.
Anyway, before that I'll continue rummaging through various things including a programme showing the dos and dont's of being a popular recording artist.
Refusing To Let It Go
Today's rummaging so far has consisted of a film which I haven't seen for a while, since we studied it as part of a Film assignment on my HND Media course 4 years ago.
The film itself was "The Dead Zone" based on a Stephen King novel and directed by David Cronenburg in 1983.
The task itself was to do either a micro or macro analysis on the film, a macro analysis being about the whole film itself and a micro analysis looking at a specific scene. I chose to go with the micro analysis.
Anyway the film itself stars Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith, a high school teacher who ends up in a coma for five years after a car accident.
In the scenes before the accident, Walken bares a rather scary resemblance to Mr Slugworth from Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.
After waking up and recovering he has lost his job and his girlfriend Sarah, who has married and had a child, but he has gained the ability to see into people's future through physical contact, and change it to avoid disastrous consequences.
Before seeing the film, I only really knew Christopher Walken for his guest appearance in the the video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon Of Choice" in 2001 but the film proved that he was one of the finest actors of that type.
Johnny ends up becoming a home tutor and one of his pupils happens to me a shy but very bright child who's father is an ally of political senator candidate Greg Stillson played by Martin Sheen, who Johnny becomes suspicious about.
The child itself is aged about 8 or 10 years old but has a slightly deeper voice than you'd expect, similar to Michael Jackson. The actor who played the child was called Simon Craig although at the time I kept getting him confused with Daniel Craig who had only just won the role as James Bond.
It was also interesting that the name of the said character was Chris Stuart which was also the name of a Welsh Radio 2 presenter in the late 80s who took over from Ray Moore after his death in 1989.
During a reading lesson someone rings at the door and it turns out to be a campaigner for Stillson. He asks his wife to give Johnny some flyers and it turns out to be Sarah much to Johnny's surprise.
Chris attempts to comfort him but when doing so Johnny then gets a flash forward of him drowing in a broken ice rink at a hockey game due to take place later that day.
Johnny manages to convince him not to go, much to the fury of his father but the other children there end up drowing as predicted.
The scene I chose to analyse for my essay was one at a campaign rally for Stillson where at the beginning you hear a brass band playing tunes such as "A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight" and "Camptown Races".
We all know the last one for many reasons, one of them in my case being the tune sung with the words "#Two World Wars And One World Cup! Doo Dah, Doo Dah!".
The former on the other hand used to be the original Looney Tunes theme in 1930, many years before the more familiar "The Merry Go Round Broke Down".
Anyway, it's in this scene where Johnny grabs hold of Stillson's hand and it reveals that Greg will eventually end up as president and orders a nuclear strike against Russia.
This prompts Johnny to attempt to assasinate Stillson at a rally in a church but when he gets caught out, Stillson holds up Sarah's baby as a shield and this destroys his campaign, but not without Johnny getting shot and falling from the church balcony.
Looking at the film overall it looks more like a US TV Movie from the 80s, rather than a proper film and I later found out through the DVD commentary that the producer was Dino Di Laurentis who used to work for Lorimar who produced Dallas and Knots Landing.
Lorimar had shut down their film unit by the time the Dead Zone was made to concentrate solely on TV series, but shades of their production techniques are evident from the rather scenic settings of Castle Rock to the big houses made out of wood with balconys etc.
Oddly enough the Dead Zone became a TV series itself 20 years later and starred Anthony Michael Hall in the lead role.
I'd say it was one of the best films that Simon our lecturer for the module had chosen for us as most of the films and documentaries he had shown in the past had been rather dull and disapointing.
However about a month later Simon was also partly responsible for bringing what has to be my favourite film ever to my attention, which was "Dead Man's Shoes".
Moving onwards, I re-viewed a documentary from September 2004 presented by Greg Dyke called "Betrayed By New Labour".
This gave his side of the story of the events that lead to his dismissal has the BBC's director general earlier in the year which began in March 2003 when Tony Blair wasn't happy that the BBC weren't giving fair enough coverage from both sides of the story for and against the war in Iraq.
That's easy for Blair to say when he used fuck all to show the case against the war in Iraq which could have been done alongside the reasons for doing so, as opposed to just going all out to convince us that we should go to war.
I can remember the lecturers on our HND course telling us to the point of hassling us "you're Media students so you should all be following this story".
The way they said it to us felt rather demeaning, but thankfully this documentary helped to make it all a bit clearer.
Greg had actually been a long-term Labour supporter in the past and had funded money for Tony Blair when he campaigned to be the Labour leader after John Smith died in 1994. It was actions like this that almost prevented him from getting the role as DG but Greg resigned from the Labour Party in 1999 before taking the job.
During the war itself, letter after letter from Alistair Campbell kept on pouring into Greg, Chairman Gavyn Davies, and News Director Richard Sambrook about the BBC's "unfair" coverage, which came to a head on the 29th of May 2003 when on the Today programme, a report from Andrew Gilligan suggested that the dossier stating the case to go to war had been "sexed up" pointing all fingers to Alistair Cambell.
I really hate the phrase "sexed up" to be honest, and it probably showed how lazy journalists were becoming when it came to describing the changes made to the dossier.
Even more pathetic was when Campbell sent out a letter to the BBC News team having a go at them as he would, and then sending one to Dyke speaking very highly of him to the point of licking his arse.
As Greg said in the documentary itself "What bullshit".
Weapons expert Dr. David Kelly was later named as Gilligan's source, and when the pressure got too much to handle he ended up taking his own life.
This lead to the Hutton enquiry, the verdict of which in January 2004 was in favour of the government and 100% critical of the BBC which lead to resignations of Gilligan, Sambrook, Davies and the dismissal of Dyke.
I can remember the day it happened which was rather depressing and whilst Mum and Dad don't really comment on the news to the extent of ranting about it, when I asked Dad about it he said that he thought that Blair was a bully.
However it turned out that the said dossier was indeed wrong when the Butler Report came out in July 2004 which more or less proved that we went to war for the wrong reasons.
Alistair Campbell refused to be interviewed in the programme, as did any current BBC employees who "wanted to put the whole thing behind them".
Those who were interviewed included Gavyn Davies, Jon Snow who conducted that infamous interview with Campbell who stormed into Channel 4 News in June 2003 to rant about the BBC's inconsistency, and Robin Cook who resigned as Home Secretary before the war broke out.
As for the programme itself, I can remember an article in the Guardian comparing the parts where Greg walked back into Broadcasting House, to that of David Brent returning to Wernham Hogg in The Office Christmas Specials.
The majority of people's reactions was that it came across that Greg was still pissed off about the issue and wouldn't let it go, whilst everyone else had.
However it was still an interesting insight into the whole issue and made things a bit clearer for me about how it all happened.
The film itself was "The Dead Zone" based on a Stephen King novel and directed by David Cronenburg in 1983.
The task itself was to do either a micro or macro analysis on the film, a macro analysis being about the whole film itself and a micro analysis looking at a specific scene. I chose to go with the micro analysis.
Anyway the film itself stars Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith, a high school teacher who ends up in a coma for five years after a car accident.
In the scenes before the accident, Walken bares a rather scary resemblance to Mr Slugworth from Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.
After waking up and recovering he has lost his job and his girlfriend Sarah, who has married and had a child, but he has gained the ability to see into people's future through physical contact, and change it to avoid disastrous consequences.
Before seeing the film, I only really knew Christopher Walken for his guest appearance in the the video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon Of Choice" in 2001 but the film proved that he was one of the finest actors of that type.
Johnny ends up becoming a home tutor and one of his pupils happens to me a shy but very bright child who's father is an ally of political senator candidate Greg Stillson played by Martin Sheen, who Johnny becomes suspicious about.
The child itself is aged about 8 or 10 years old but has a slightly deeper voice than you'd expect, similar to Michael Jackson. The actor who played the child was called Simon Craig although at the time I kept getting him confused with Daniel Craig who had only just won the role as James Bond.
It was also interesting that the name of the said character was Chris Stuart which was also the name of a Welsh Radio 2 presenter in the late 80s who took over from Ray Moore after his death in 1989.
During a reading lesson someone rings at the door and it turns out to be a campaigner for Stillson. He asks his wife to give Johnny some flyers and it turns out to be Sarah much to Johnny's surprise.
Chris attempts to comfort him but when doing so Johnny then gets a flash forward of him drowing in a broken ice rink at a hockey game due to take place later that day.
Johnny manages to convince him not to go, much to the fury of his father but the other children there end up drowing as predicted.
The scene I chose to analyse for my essay was one at a campaign rally for Stillson where at the beginning you hear a brass band playing tunes such as "A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight" and "Camptown Races".
We all know the last one for many reasons, one of them in my case being the tune sung with the words "#Two World Wars And One World Cup! Doo Dah, Doo Dah!".
The former on the other hand used to be the original Looney Tunes theme in 1930, many years before the more familiar "The Merry Go Round Broke Down".
Anyway, it's in this scene where Johnny grabs hold of Stillson's hand and it reveals that Greg will eventually end up as president and orders a nuclear strike against Russia.
This prompts Johnny to attempt to assasinate Stillson at a rally in a church but when he gets caught out, Stillson holds up Sarah's baby as a shield and this destroys his campaign, but not without Johnny getting shot and falling from the church balcony.
Looking at the film overall it looks more like a US TV Movie from the 80s, rather than a proper film and I later found out through the DVD commentary that the producer was Dino Di Laurentis who used to work for Lorimar who produced Dallas and Knots Landing.
Lorimar had shut down their film unit by the time the Dead Zone was made to concentrate solely on TV series, but shades of their production techniques are evident from the rather scenic settings of Castle Rock to the big houses made out of wood with balconys etc.
Oddly enough the Dead Zone became a TV series itself 20 years later and starred Anthony Michael Hall in the lead role.
I'd say it was one of the best films that Simon our lecturer for the module had chosen for us as most of the films and documentaries he had shown in the past had been rather dull and disapointing.
However about a month later Simon was also partly responsible for bringing what has to be my favourite film ever to my attention, which was "Dead Man's Shoes".
Moving onwards, I re-viewed a documentary from September 2004 presented by Greg Dyke called "Betrayed By New Labour".
This gave his side of the story of the events that lead to his dismissal has the BBC's director general earlier in the year which began in March 2003 when Tony Blair wasn't happy that the BBC weren't giving fair enough coverage from both sides of the story for and against the war in Iraq.
That's easy for Blair to say when he used fuck all to show the case against the war in Iraq which could have been done alongside the reasons for doing so, as opposed to just going all out to convince us that we should go to war.
I can remember the lecturers on our HND course telling us to the point of hassling us "you're Media students so you should all be following this story".
The way they said it to us felt rather demeaning, but thankfully this documentary helped to make it all a bit clearer.
Greg had actually been a long-term Labour supporter in the past and had funded money for Tony Blair when he campaigned to be the Labour leader after John Smith died in 1994. It was actions like this that almost prevented him from getting the role as DG but Greg resigned from the Labour Party in 1999 before taking the job.
During the war itself, letter after letter from Alistair Campbell kept on pouring into Greg, Chairman Gavyn Davies, and News Director Richard Sambrook about the BBC's "unfair" coverage, which came to a head on the 29th of May 2003 when on the Today programme, a report from Andrew Gilligan suggested that the dossier stating the case to go to war had been "sexed up" pointing all fingers to Alistair Cambell.
I really hate the phrase "sexed up" to be honest, and it probably showed how lazy journalists were becoming when it came to describing the changes made to the dossier.
Even more pathetic was when Campbell sent out a letter to the BBC News team having a go at them as he would, and then sending one to Dyke speaking very highly of him to the point of licking his arse.
As Greg said in the documentary itself "What bullshit".
Weapons expert Dr. David Kelly was later named as Gilligan's source, and when the pressure got too much to handle he ended up taking his own life.
This lead to the Hutton enquiry, the verdict of which in January 2004 was in favour of the government and 100% critical of the BBC which lead to resignations of Gilligan, Sambrook, Davies and the dismissal of Dyke.
I can remember the day it happened which was rather depressing and whilst Mum and Dad don't really comment on the news to the extent of ranting about it, when I asked Dad about it he said that he thought that Blair was a bully.
However it turned out that the said dossier was indeed wrong when the Butler Report came out in July 2004 which more or less proved that we went to war for the wrong reasons.
Alistair Campbell refused to be interviewed in the programme, as did any current BBC employees who "wanted to put the whole thing behind them".
Those who were interviewed included Gavyn Davies, Jon Snow who conducted that infamous interview with Campbell who stormed into Channel 4 News in June 2003 to rant about the BBC's inconsistency, and Robin Cook who resigned as Home Secretary before the war broke out.
As for the programme itself, I can remember an article in the Guardian comparing the parts where Greg walked back into Broadcasting House, to that of David Brent returning to Wernham Hogg in The Office Christmas Specials.
The majority of people's reactions was that it came across that Greg was still pissed off about the issue and wouldn't let it go, whilst everyone else had.
However it was still an interesting insight into the whole issue and made things a bit clearer for me about how it all happened.
"Whoopiiii!, BBC!"
Morning.
A bit later than usual but that's possibly because there hasn't really been anything that interesting happening so far today.
I suppose there's been this morning's Chris Moyles show where they finally got Whoopi Goldberg as a guest and she was also on Trevor Nelson's breakfast show on 1Xtra shortly after.
She's also appearing with Jonathan Ross later tonight although they recorded it yesterday.
Really lovely woman and she seemed to enjoy hearing Sima Kotecha's screams with her name.
My favourite bit of the show had to be yet another of Comedy Dave's "useless ideas" which involved some sort of betting game for the Grand National this weekend.
This resulted in someone texting in suggesting "why don't they do it in their own time".
Something that could be said about several other one off items on the show that don't work out as planned.
Anyway enough writing, and time for more trawling.
A bit later than usual but that's possibly because there hasn't really been anything that interesting happening so far today.
I suppose there's been this morning's Chris Moyles show where they finally got Whoopi Goldberg as a guest and she was also on Trevor Nelson's breakfast show on 1Xtra shortly after.
She's also appearing with Jonathan Ross later tonight although they recorded it yesterday.
Really lovely woman and she seemed to enjoy hearing Sima Kotecha's screams with her name.
My favourite bit of the show had to be yet another of Comedy Dave's "useless ideas" which involved some sort of betting game for the Grand National this weekend.
This resulted in someone texting in suggesting "why don't they do it in their own time".
Something that could be said about several other one off items on the show that don't work out as planned.
Anyway enough writing, and time for more trawling.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
"Everybody's Dead Dave"
A notice letter for the third semster's rent arrived under my door, and the greedy bastards want it to be paid before the 18th of April and in cash.
I'm sorry, but that's not going to happen as the loan arrives on the 20th and there's no way they can throw me out for just being two days late.
Possibly more if my loan doesn't arrive on time.
I know I'm not the only one who won't be handing it in before then.
Seriously this University has definitely put the "fucked" into "fucked up".
I know they've gone out of my way to help me out at times during severe circumstances, and that I'm grateful for, but I will not have my fellow students having the piss being taken out of them for several reasons. There was the Marantz issue last week, essays not being handed back on time in the past and all sorts of other reasons that has resulted in me using the C-word to describe the University.
Corrupted.
Anyway, asides that it's been another night in front of the box, first of all with Peggy's wedding to Archie in Eastenders. I ended up switching off before the end due to the nonsense of it all, the sister actually being the mother of her other sister and the daft bat standing in the middle of the road waiting to be hit by a car.
In the words of the Lightning Seeds "We've seen it all before".
I then decided to re-view the Red Dwarf episode of "Comedy Connections" in quite good timing due to the special that's on Dave in a few weeks.
I won't actually be able to see it of course, but I'm sure it will pop up on UK Nova or somewhere similar.
Rob Grant and Doug Naylor came up with the idea whilst working on shows such as "Three Of A Kind" with Lenny Henry and Tracy Ullman, and "Carrott's Lib", but when they suggested their idea to producer Paul Jackson, he mentioned that the big television executives hated Sci-Fi.
The most obvious example being Michael Grade.
However Paul moved to the BBC's Manchester studios in Oxford Road and gave them the green light to make the series in 1988. Impressionist Chris Barrie was enlisted to play Rimmer, whilst the actor to play Lister would be Liverpudlian poet Craig Charles.
Grant and Naylor were originally unsure about Charles playing Rimmer, as they were from Manchester and Mancunians had always had rivalry with Scousers. Craig wasn't really a comedian but more of a contemporary political poet along the lines of John Cooper-Clarke who Mum and Dad owned quite a few LPs of.
My favourite character in the series had to be the original Holly played by Norman Lovett just because of his deadpan humour and telling it straight, despite coming across as a bit dim which made it even more funny.
I loved it when he delivered really random lines such as this;
"I am Holly the ship's computer, with an IQ of 6000. The same IQ as 6000 PE teachers"
Series 2 saw an appearance of an android character called Kryten and due to it's popularity they made him a permanent cast member from Series 3 in Autumn 1989.
However the original actor David Ross was unavailable at the time so they brought in Robert Llewllyn who many would agree was a lot funnier.
By this time the show had established itself and changed the opening theme to a slightly rockier instrumental version of the closing theme which was more fun in comparison to the rather slow orchestral opening from series 1 and 2.
Holly had also been changed into a woman, played by Hattie Hayridge who appeared as Holly's female double "Hilly" in series 2.
I only really started watching the show from series 7 onwards which many long term fans weren't too keen on.
I can fully understand as it was shot on film and Chris Barrie made a departure halfway through the series, in order to film his rather disapointing sitcom
"A Prince Among Men".
There were a few episodes such as the one where Kryten blew up a period drama set with a tank, and when Lister contracted an epideme virus.
Series 8 in 1999 saw a return to form with all cast members back and the original Holly who along with the rest of the original Red Dwarf ship had been resurrected by Nanobots.
The programme also looked at what the cast members had got up to since the series finished with Craig Charles presenting Robot Wars, where at the beginning he thought he had destroyed his career but halfway through the first series, both Robot Wars and Red Dwarf were the top 2 most watched shows on BBC 2.
Robert Llewellyn had also gone on to do a similar series "Scrapheap Challenge" which proved to be equally popular.
As for Danny John Jules who played the cat, he ended up presenting "The Story Makers" on CBeebies.
Immediately after the programme I had another gander at Peter Kay's "Bolton Albert Halls" DVD, the routine of which has probably been re-released at least 10 times.
It was still a good laugh and I liked it in the filmed sequence before the act itself where Peter was in a taxi and it had the "BS Taxis" logo on it from the fictional taxi company in the Mark Park episode of "That Peter Kay Thing".
Like the last stand up DVD it starts off with a few normal jokes before going on to the funny observational stuff with my favourite possibly being those who run after buses and when they disapear pretend that they didn't want to get on in the first place.
The funniest parts have to be towards the end such as the Bullseye routine which is done spot on almost to looking like a real episode of the show. Apart from Tony Green getting hit in the eye with a dart but even that's rather amusing too.
And I can fully identify with the wedding discos as to this day I still do the actions he does on stage for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and have been seen once or twice doing the "Walking To The Dancefloor Dance".
Bizarrely enough I've only ever been to one Wedding Reception similar to the one Peter does in his routine, which was for my cousin Angela's wedding 10 years ago. (That's really shot by)
And yes our Grandma and Grandad did end up leaving early.
We didn't have any "Uncle Nobheads" in our family thank goodness and I don't think we do on Mum's half either. Then again it's sometimes my own Dad who fits the bill after a few drinks but in no way does he act as idiotic to the point of accidentally injuring relatives.
Tomorrow, and possibly Saturday and Sunday will see more of the same, although on Sunday I aim to have a lie down for quite a while during the day in order to stay awake for Wrestlemania and avoiding a repeat of what happened at No Way Out.
Good Night.
I'm sorry, but that's not going to happen as the loan arrives on the 20th and there's no way they can throw me out for just being two days late.
Possibly more if my loan doesn't arrive on time.
I know I'm not the only one who won't be handing it in before then.
Seriously this University has definitely put the "fucked" into "fucked up".
I know they've gone out of my way to help me out at times during severe circumstances, and that I'm grateful for, but I will not have my fellow students having the piss being taken out of them for several reasons. There was the Marantz issue last week, essays not being handed back on time in the past and all sorts of other reasons that has resulted in me using the C-word to describe the University.
Corrupted.
Anyway, asides that it's been another night in front of the box, first of all with Peggy's wedding to Archie in Eastenders. I ended up switching off before the end due to the nonsense of it all, the sister actually being the mother of her other sister and the daft bat standing in the middle of the road waiting to be hit by a car.
In the words of the Lightning Seeds "We've seen it all before".
I then decided to re-view the Red Dwarf episode of "Comedy Connections" in quite good timing due to the special that's on Dave in a few weeks.
I won't actually be able to see it of course, but I'm sure it will pop up on UK Nova or somewhere similar.
Rob Grant and Doug Naylor came up with the idea whilst working on shows such as "Three Of A Kind" with Lenny Henry and Tracy Ullman, and "Carrott's Lib", but when they suggested their idea to producer Paul Jackson, he mentioned that the big television executives hated Sci-Fi.
The most obvious example being Michael Grade.
However Paul moved to the BBC's Manchester studios in Oxford Road and gave them the green light to make the series in 1988. Impressionist Chris Barrie was enlisted to play Rimmer, whilst the actor to play Lister would be Liverpudlian poet Craig Charles.
Grant and Naylor were originally unsure about Charles playing Rimmer, as they were from Manchester and Mancunians had always had rivalry with Scousers. Craig wasn't really a comedian but more of a contemporary political poet along the lines of John Cooper-Clarke who Mum and Dad owned quite a few LPs of.
My favourite character in the series had to be the original Holly played by Norman Lovett just because of his deadpan humour and telling it straight, despite coming across as a bit dim which made it even more funny.
I loved it when he delivered really random lines such as this;
"I am Holly the ship's computer, with an IQ of 6000. The same IQ as 6000 PE teachers"
Series 2 saw an appearance of an android character called Kryten and due to it's popularity they made him a permanent cast member from Series 3 in Autumn 1989.
However the original actor David Ross was unavailable at the time so they brought in Robert Llewllyn who many would agree was a lot funnier.
By this time the show had established itself and changed the opening theme to a slightly rockier instrumental version of the closing theme which was more fun in comparison to the rather slow orchestral opening from series 1 and 2.
Holly had also been changed into a woman, played by Hattie Hayridge who appeared as Holly's female double "Hilly" in series 2.
I only really started watching the show from series 7 onwards which many long term fans weren't too keen on.
I can fully understand as it was shot on film and Chris Barrie made a departure halfway through the series, in order to film his rather disapointing sitcom
"A Prince Among Men".
There were a few episodes such as the one where Kryten blew up a period drama set with a tank, and when Lister contracted an epideme virus.
Series 8 in 1999 saw a return to form with all cast members back and the original Holly who along with the rest of the original Red Dwarf ship had been resurrected by Nanobots.
The programme also looked at what the cast members had got up to since the series finished with Craig Charles presenting Robot Wars, where at the beginning he thought he had destroyed his career but halfway through the first series, both Robot Wars and Red Dwarf were the top 2 most watched shows on BBC 2.
Robert Llewellyn had also gone on to do a similar series "Scrapheap Challenge" which proved to be equally popular.
As for Danny John Jules who played the cat, he ended up presenting "The Story Makers" on CBeebies.
Immediately after the programme I had another gander at Peter Kay's "Bolton Albert Halls" DVD, the routine of which has probably been re-released at least 10 times.
It was still a good laugh and I liked it in the filmed sequence before the act itself where Peter was in a taxi and it had the "BS Taxis" logo on it from the fictional taxi company in the Mark Park episode of "That Peter Kay Thing".
Like the last stand up DVD it starts off with a few normal jokes before going on to the funny observational stuff with my favourite possibly being those who run after buses and when they disapear pretend that they didn't want to get on in the first place.
The funniest parts have to be towards the end such as the Bullseye routine which is done spot on almost to looking like a real episode of the show. Apart from Tony Green getting hit in the eye with a dart but even that's rather amusing too.
And I can fully identify with the wedding discos as to this day I still do the actions he does on stage for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and have been seen once or twice doing the "Walking To The Dancefloor Dance".
Bizarrely enough I've only ever been to one Wedding Reception similar to the one Peter does in his routine, which was for my cousin Angela's wedding 10 years ago. (That's really shot by)
And yes our Grandma and Grandad did end up leaving early.
We didn't have any "Uncle Nobheads" in our family thank goodness and I don't think we do on Mum's half either. Then again it's sometimes my own Dad who fits the bill after a few drinks but in no way does he act as idiotic to the point of accidentally injuring relatives.
Tomorrow, and possibly Saturday and Sunday will see more of the same, although on Sunday I aim to have a lie down for quite a while during the day in order to stay awake for Wrestlemania and avoiding a repeat of what happened at No Way Out.
Good Night.
"There They Are, And Here We Go"
I've just woken up from another lie down where I ended up dreaming that things could be worse than they are now, to the point of actually physically hurting people as a result of a mental condition.
I'm still a bit tired now but I'll try and soldier on for the rest of today.
Earlier on I stumbled over a tape that had another edition of TOTP, this time from late August 2004 with Fearne, Reggie, and Tim Kash. It was actually Tim's final show but no one really felt sorry about seeing him go.
Amongst the bands performing were Franz Ferdinand with "Michael" which wasn't the best single from their debut album, an "exclusive" appearance by Rooster, coincidentally enough, and an equally forgettable performance by Kristian Leontiou (however you spell his name) and a VT package going behind the scenes of a tour with the even more wooden Maroon 5.
Give me Ian Levine over Adam Levine any day, he may not be that good looking but at least he knew how to write a decent pop song.
There was also a performance by Stonebridge and "Put 'Em High" which was one of the memorable dance records of the year and put Hed Kandi on the mainstream map.
The only problem was that I was starting to go off their compilations as they were starting to lean more towards melodic dance than soulful house.
And this week's number 1 was the rather impressive Natasha Bedingfield and "These Words" which managed to knock down the ever dreadful Three Of A Kind and "Babycakes" to Number 2.
Thankfully there wasn't a performance of that on the show.
Possibly the most toe curling part was a "high impact" promo for the brand new Robbie Williams single "Radio" on the following week's show. I can remember hearing it on Chris Moyles that morning and it was more than evident that him and Comedy Dave thought that without Guy Chambers, he was shite.
The song itself was co-composed by Stephen Tin Tin Duffy who was actually the last ever artist to be played on Radio 1's AM frequencies in 1994 with the song "Kiss Me" from the mid 80s. It proved that even back then, the station wasn't exactly in touch with it's younger audience it was aiming for.
Moving onwards, the tape also had a documentary celebrating 25 years of what has to be one of the most original, and simplest (in terms of it's format) television programmes, that being Question Time.
Originally scheduled just for one series, it was first broadcast from the Greenwood Theatre, London in 1979 and viewers caught onto the premise of a team of politicians quizzed by ordinary members of the public which ensured it's status as one of the BBC's longest running series.
It featured clips from all three presenters including original host Sir Robin Day who presented for 10 years from 1979 until he decided to move to BSB at the end of the 80s. He was replaced by Peter Sissons for 5 years, before current host David Dimbleby took over.
I can't remember who it was, but one of the politicians interviewed in the documentary comapred all the hosts to different James Bonds, with Dimbleby being Pierce Brosnan, Peter Sissons being Roger Moore, and Sir Robin being Sean Connery. He described stand in Ludovic Kennedy as "the George Lazenby".
He wasn't the only stand in as Sue Lawley had a few goes at it, as well as being the main stand in on Terry Wogan's chat show.
Other interviewees included Diane Abbot MP, Michael Heseltine, Roy Hattersley and Ian Hislop.
Ian provided one of the shows many confrontations between two opposing panellists where in 2002 he vented his spleen towards Mary Archer who was on the same show.
There were also other similar duels, two of which involved John Prescott who had argued with both Cecil Parkinson, and two years later Michael Heseltine.
Even the host ended up on the wrong side of an argument where in 2004 Ann Widdecombe wouldn't let David Dimbleby get a word in edgeways.
It's worth mentioning the programme's theme tune which has more or less remained the same since the beginning although they re-arranged it in the late 90s to the one that's used now which instead of being played on guitars and strings is now slightly faster and played on a synthetic sounding piano.
I preferred the original one as it had that slightly nostalgic and possibly sinister edge.
The sort of music that in the same way as the old News At Ten theme is threatening to send you to bed if you happen to be still up as a child, and can hear it in the hallway.
Anyway, my favourite part of the programme involved a selection of clips involving politicians making bullshit statements, or comments that would come back to haunt them later in their career. Sometimes to the point of putting their political career kaput.
Examples included future Tory Leader Michael Howard and future Lib Dem Leader Ming Campbell condeming the minimum wage in 1992, and 12 years later they both ended up accepting it.
On a more humourous level there was a clip of Edwina Currie on Peter Sissons first series as chairman in Autumn 1989, where she was speaking very highly of John Major being the next leader of the Conservative Party.
And of course it turned out 13 years later that the reason was because she was in the middle of a 4 year affair with him at the time.
Even Tony Blair was included from 1994 where at the time he was the Labour Party Shadow Home Secretary where he said that the power and actions of the UN should never be subverted to that of just two countries.
And we all know what happened in 2003 when that statement took a 180 degree turn.
But my favourite example of a ill challenged slip of the tounge came from Jonathan Aitken in 1995 where he said he wouldn't resign as a Tory MP after getting an Arab business man to pay for him to stay in the Paris Ritz.
A month after his appearance he did resign, and 4 years later he was jailed for perjury, following a court case where he got his now ex wife to lie about paying his hotel bill whilst in Paris.
I seem to remember one of the presenters on TLR in Thanet (now KMFM) referring to Aitken as a liar whilst the trial was still pending.
Of course it turned out to be right in the end but the said presenter had moved to Invicta FM by the end of the year as a presenter and Flying Eye pilot for a couple of years.
I won't mention the name of course but he's a very lovely fella and was one of the better jocks in the area.
Back to Question Time and the programme ended with a selection of some of the slip ups from over the years including David Dimbleby accidentally referring to the recently resigned Home Secretary as "Robin Cock" in 2003, and Hariet Harman's slip of the tounge from the following year;
"Since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister...".
Three years later she ended up being deputy Labour leader when Gordon in fact did take on the role.
Overall it's a great documentary that gives a good insight into a programme which I presume is one of those on television that allows a wider audience, especially University students to have a active interest in politics, even if they don't base their whole lives around it.
I'm still a bit tired now but I'll try and soldier on for the rest of today.
Earlier on I stumbled over a tape that had another edition of TOTP, this time from late August 2004 with Fearne, Reggie, and Tim Kash. It was actually Tim's final show but no one really felt sorry about seeing him go.
Amongst the bands performing were Franz Ferdinand with "Michael" which wasn't the best single from their debut album, an "exclusive" appearance by Rooster, coincidentally enough, and an equally forgettable performance by Kristian Leontiou (however you spell his name) and a VT package going behind the scenes of a tour with the even more wooden Maroon 5.
Give me Ian Levine over Adam Levine any day, he may not be that good looking but at least he knew how to write a decent pop song.
There was also a performance by Stonebridge and "Put 'Em High" which was one of the memorable dance records of the year and put Hed Kandi on the mainstream map.
The only problem was that I was starting to go off their compilations as they were starting to lean more towards melodic dance than soulful house.
And this week's number 1 was the rather impressive Natasha Bedingfield and "These Words" which managed to knock down the ever dreadful Three Of A Kind and "Babycakes" to Number 2.
Thankfully there wasn't a performance of that on the show.
Possibly the most toe curling part was a "high impact" promo for the brand new Robbie Williams single "Radio" on the following week's show. I can remember hearing it on Chris Moyles that morning and it was more than evident that him and Comedy Dave thought that without Guy Chambers, he was shite.
The song itself was co-composed by Stephen Tin Tin Duffy who was actually the last ever artist to be played on Radio 1's AM frequencies in 1994 with the song "Kiss Me" from the mid 80s. It proved that even back then, the station wasn't exactly in touch with it's younger audience it was aiming for.
Moving onwards, the tape also had a documentary celebrating 25 years of what has to be one of the most original, and simplest (in terms of it's format) television programmes, that being Question Time.
Originally scheduled just for one series, it was first broadcast from the Greenwood Theatre, London in 1979 and viewers caught onto the premise of a team of politicians quizzed by ordinary members of the public which ensured it's status as one of the BBC's longest running series.
It featured clips from all three presenters including original host Sir Robin Day who presented for 10 years from 1979 until he decided to move to BSB at the end of the 80s. He was replaced by Peter Sissons for 5 years, before current host David Dimbleby took over.
I can't remember who it was, but one of the politicians interviewed in the documentary comapred all the hosts to different James Bonds, with Dimbleby being Pierce Brosnan, Peter Sissons being Roger Moore, and Sir Robin being Sean Connery. He described stand in Ludovic Kennedy as "the George Lazenby".
He wasn't the only stand in as Sue Lawley had a few goes at it, as well as being the main stand in on Terry Wogan's chat show.
Other interviewees included Diane Abbot MP, Michael Heseltine, Roy Hattersley and Ian Hislop.
Ian provided one of the shows many confrontations between two opposing panellists where in 2002 he vented his spleen towards Mary Archer who was on the same show.
There were also other similar duels, two of which involved John Prescott who had argued with both Cecil Parkinson, and two years later Michael Heseltine.
Even the host ended up on the wrong side of an argument where in 2004 Ann Widdecombe wouldn't let David Dimbleby get a word in edgeways.
It's worth mentioning the programme's theme tune which has more or less remained the same since the beginning although they re-arranged it in the late 90s to the one that's used now which instead of being played on guitars and strings is now slightly faster and played on a synthetic sounding piano.
I preferred the original one as it had that slightly nostalgic and possibly sinister edge.
The sort of music that in the same way as the old News At Ten theme is threatening to send you to bed if you happen to be still up as a child, and can hear it in the hallway.
Anyway, my favourite part of the programme involved a selection of clips involving politicians making bullshit statements, or comments that would come back to haunt them later in their career. Sometimes to the point of putting their political career kaput.
Examples included future Tory Leader Michael Howard and future Lib Dem Leader Ming Campbell condeming the minimum wage in 1992, and 12 years later they both ended up accepting it.
On a more humourous level there was a clip of Edwina Currie on Peter Sissons first series as chairman in Autumn 1989, where she was speaking very highly of John Major being the next leader of the Conservative Party.
And of course it turned out 13 years later that the reason was because she was in the middle of a 4 year affair with him at the time.
Even Tony Blair was included from 1994 where at the time he was the Labour Party Shadow Home Secretary where he said that the power and actions of the UN should never be subverted to that of just two countries.
And we all know what happened in 2003 when that statement took a 180 degree turn.
But my favourite example of a ill challenged slip of the tounge came from Jonathan Aitken in 1995 where he said he wouldn't resign as a Tory MP after getting an Arab business man to pay for him to stay in the Paris Ritz.
A month after his appearance he did resign, and 4 years later he was jailed for perjury, following a court case where he got his now ex wife to lie about paying his hotel bill whilst in Paris.
I seem to remember one of the presenters on TLR in Thanet (now KMFM) referring to Aitken as a liar whilst the trial was still pending.
Of course it turned out to be right in the end but the said presenter had moved to Invicta FM by the end of the year as a presenter and Flying Eye pilot for a couple of years.
I won't mention the name of course but he's a very lovely fella and was one of the better jocks in the area.
Back to Question Time and the programme ended with a selection of some of the slip ups from over the years including David Dimbleby accidentally referring to the recently resigned Home Secretary as "Robin Cock" in 2003, and Hariet Harman's slip of the tounge from the following year;
"Since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister...".
Three years later she ended up being deputy Labour leader when Gordon in fact did take on the role.
Overall it's a great documentary that gives a good insight into a programme which I presume is one of those on television that allows a wider audience, especially University students to have a active interest in politics, even if they don't base their whole lives around it.
"#Boybands, And Another One, And Another One..."
This morning I had a gander at another documentary about boy bands this time from the BBC which was called "Teenage Kicks: The Story Of The Boy Band" which was a more chronological look into the development of them, but still tounge in cheek where necessary.
The programme was narrated by Mel Geidroyc and written by Stuart Maconie, whilst those being interviewed included Lulu, Sarah Cawood, David Grant, and the usual culprits representing the bands featured.
The programme started off looking at the Monkees who were the oldest manufactured band recorded in music history and as well as the obvious hits, it was good to hear some of their other songs such as "Stepping Stone" which was covered 30 years later by PJ And Duncan.
However they messed up when they took the route that has fucked up many boy bands over time, which involved wanting to write their own material, where they refused to record the song "Sugar Sugar" and recorded an album called "Headquarters" which had a lot of bland country influenced songs and saw that the band's days were numbered.
"Sugar Sugar" on the other hand went onto become a worldwide hit for cartoon band The Archies.
In the 1970s the US saw bands such as The Jackson 5 and The Osmonds causing worldwide histeria whilst over on our shores were The Bay City Rollers who's visit to America wasn't so succesfull.
Along with a series of unsucessfull record releases, the ended up with their own TV show which featured puppets and people dressed out in novelty fairy tale costumes which put pressure on lead singer Les McKeown who ended up leaving the band for a solo career.
Things weren't too good in the years following the bands split as more recently Derek Longmuir was arrested and sentenced to community service for owning child pornography, whilst Les McKeown was arrested for drug abuse.
The programme also looked at the rivalry between Take That and East 17 which I spoke about in detail on an earlier post although I had no idea that the remaining members of East 17 were jealous of songwriter Tony Mortimer earning more money than them.
That may have been what lead to his departure which happened not long after Brian was sacked for admitting he took ecstasy in a radio interview for IRN.
Brian who was interviewed in the programme said that as a result of E-17 splitting up he was now unemployable, although by the end of 2004 he had a brief resurgance on the fourth series of "Celebrity" but left the jungle after a row with Janet Street-Porter about him breaking wind.
Around this time Boyzone were in full flow where after that apperance on the Late Late Show, Louis Walsh got them to record their first single which was a cover of "Working My Way Back To You" produced by Ian Levine who had recently been sacked by Take That as one of their songwriters.
His time with Boyzone didn't last long as despite the record reaching number 3 in Ireland, Louis wasn't impressed with his dismissal of the bands vocal talents which saw Mikey Graham singing the lead.
For the second single "Love Me For A Reason" which was the bands first hit in the UK, the decision was made to put Ronan Keating on lead and the rest was history.
The bands success carried on until around 1999 where Ronan got his first solo number 1 and there were rumours of the band splitting up.
A drunken Shane Lynch at the 1999 MTV Europe Awards in November that year responded with this rather lary statement;
"In the press recently there's been a whole load of FUCKING SHITE, about Boyzone in the year 2000 about breaking up! I'll tell you what, we're Dubliners, we're Irish, and we'll be here for a long time!"
Solo sucesses for the rest of the band weren't too good with Stephen and Mikey becoming the band's answers to Gary Barlow (at the time), whilst Keith took the TV presenting route by presenting the BBC's Saturday morning flop FBi, before finding his feet with acting and getting a part in Coronation Street.
Ronan's solo career knew no bounds and he even went as far as sacking Louis Walsh.
Nowadays the band are back together and have had a few good singles since their reformation although Ronan's still doing well as a solo artist with his latest album currently at the top spot.
Towards the end of the programme it looked at how the boyband in this current decade had been re-defined by bands such as Busted and McFly who wrote and performed (and in some cases still do) some great pop songs.
We'll try and forget some of the unsuccesful clones that followed however, such as "Rooster" and "The Noise Next Door".
The VHS also had an episode of Eurotrash from around the same time.
The prime example of a programme who's days were numbered at the turn of the Millennium, but Channel 4 still insisted on flogging as many series as possible.
It may have been the death of Lolo Ferrari in 2000 which was partly responsible for it's decline.
The programme was actually one of the shows broadcast on Channel 4's Millennium night schedule before Graham Norton's "FY2K Live", and was actually the 100th show featuring guest apperances from old faces including Jean-Paul Gautier.
The funniest part was when Antoine had brought someone on to sing "Happy Birthday" and mentioned that with President Kennedy it was Marylin Munroe, with Prince Charles it was Geri Halliwell, and for him they had got
the Paris Gay Men's Choir.
Personally it would have been better if they had got Mr Methane on to fart it out, or failing that, possibly Brian Harvey who would be more than capable of giving a similar performance.
From an overall point of view boybands tend to result in me cracking up with laughter, than screaming like an idiot.
The programme was narrated by Mel Geidroyc and written by Stuart Maconie, whilst those being interviewed included Lulu, Sarah Cawood, David Grant, and the usual culprits representing the bands featured.
The programme started off looking at the Monkees who were the oldest manufactured band recorded in music history and as well as the obvious hits, it was good to hear some of their other songs such as "Stepping Stone" which was covered 30 years later by PJ And Duncan.
However they messed up when they took the route that has fucked up many boy bands over time, which involved wanting to write their own material, where they refused to record the song "Sugar Sugar" and recorded an album called "Headquarters" which had a lot of bland country influenced songs and saw that the band's days were numbered.
"Sugar Sugar" on the other hand went onto become a worldwide hit for cartoon band The Archies.
In the 1970s the US saw bands such as The Jackson 5 and The Osmonds causing worldwide histeria whilst over on our shores were The Bay City Rollers who's visit to America wasn't so succesfull.
Along with a series of unsucessfull record releases, the ended up with their own TV show which featured puppets and people dressed out in novelty fairy tale costumes which put pressure on lead singer Les McKeown who ended up leaving the band for a solo career.
Things weren't too good in the years following the bands split as more recently Derek Longmuir was arrested and sentenced to community service for owning child pornography, whilst Les McKeown was arrested for drug abuse.
The programme also looked at the rivalry between Take That and East 17 which I spoke about in detail on an earlier post although I had no idea that the remaining members of East 17 were jealous of songwriter Tony Mortimer earning more money than them.
That may have been what lead to his departure which happened not long after Brian was sacked for admitting he took ecstasy in a radio interview for IRN.
Brian who was interviewed in the programme said that as a result of E-17 splitting up he was now unemployable, although by the end of 2004 he had a brief resurgance on the fourth series of "Celebrity" but left the jungle after a row with Janet Street-Porter about him breaking wind.
Around this time Boyzone were in full flow where after that apperance on the Late Late Show, Louis Walsh got them to record their first single which was a cover of "Working My Way Back To You" produced by Ian Levine who had recently been sacked by Take That as one of their songwriters.
His time with Boyzone didn't last long as despite the record reaching number 3 in Ireland, Louis wasn't impressed with his dismissal of the bands vocal talents which saw Mikey Graham singing the lead.
For the second single "Love Me For A Reason" which was the bands first hit in the UK, the decision was made to put Ronan Keating on lead and the rest was history.
The bands success carried on until around 1999 where Ronan got his first solo number 1 and there were rumours of the band splitting up.
A drunken Shane Lynch at the 1999 MTV Europe Awards in November that year responded with this rather lary statement;
"In the press recently there's been a whole load of FUCKING SHITE, about Boyzone in the year 2000 about breaking up! I'll tell you what, we're Dubliners, we're Irish, and we'll be here for a long time!"
Solo sucesses for the rest of the band weren't too good with Stephen and Mikey becoming the band's answers to Gary Barlow (at the time), whilst Keith took the TV presenting route by presenting the BBC's Saturday morning flop FBi, before finding his feet with acting and getting a part in Coronation Street.
Ronan's solo career knew no bounds and he even went as far as sacking Louis Walsh.
Nowadays the band are back together and have had a few good singles since their reformation although Ronan's still doing well as a solo artist with his latest album currently at the top spot.
Towards the end of the programme it looked at how the boyband in this current decade had been re-defined by bands such as Busted and McFly who wrote and performed (and in some cases still do) some great pop songs.
We'll try and forget some of the unsuccesful clones that followed however, such as "Rooster" and "The Noise Next Door".
The VHS also had an episode of Eurotrash from around the same time.
The prime example of a programme who's days were numbered at the turn of the Millennium, but Channel 4 still insisted on flogging as many series as possible.
It may have been the death of Lolo Ferrari in 2000 which was partly responsible for it's decline.
The programme was actually one of the shows broadcast on Channel 4's Millennium night schedule before Graham Norton's "FY2K Live", and was actually the 100th show featuring guest apperances from old faces including Jean-Paul Gautier.
The funniest part was when Antoine had brought someone on to sing "Happy Birthday" and mentioned that with President Kennedy it was Marylin Munroe, with Prince Charles it was Geri Halliwell, and for him they had got
the Paris Gay Men's Choir.
Personally it would have been better if they had got Mr Methane on to fart it out, or failing that, possibly Brian Harvey who would be more than capable of giving a similar performance.
From an overall point of view boybands tend to result in me cracking up with laughter, than screaming like an idiot.
"Formidable 1 FM"
Morning.
I'm not sure what's lined up for today as it seems the plan for the focus groups this week has more or less gone kaput. I just hope they don't make a last minute decision to call it on because I will end up having to walk all the way through Kenton carrying my television.
However whilst the focus group over here in Kenton looks set to go balls up, the one in Stowmarket looks promising as various aunties and uncles are very enthusiastic to take part which is good news.
As for today, it looks set to be pretty lazy as always, save for a visit into Tescos to get some meaty stuff in order to make some delicious stews over the weekend.
I'm pretty well stacked for rice and pasta so that will save me a bit of money.
I may also watch tonight's Eastenders which I don't do too often but they've been going on about Peggy's wedding to Archie for quite a while so I may as well see how exactly it all falls through.
I've managed to find a superb montage on Jinglemad courtesy of Paul Bland containing a selection of Radio 1 jingles recorded off air around 1992 and really gives you an idea of how good the station sounded back then.
The only problem was that several commercial stations at the time had a similar style in terms of production and sweepers, some of them even using the same voice, that being John Wells.
Asides that is a great montage with standout points for me including at 2:02 with Simon Mayo's "Good Morning From All Of The Crew" jingle from the Cruisin' series, where the ending has his name jingle with the orchestra hits.
I haven't heard a version with that for ages as all the others uploaded to the site have his sung cut from the 1987 package.
Also notice at 5:38 and Steve Wright's out of news jingle which happens to be an instrumental track from David Arnold's Southern Sound package from 1987.
It had become a library track by then and it did fit into the style of the show in terms of presentation.
There's also a few special cuts that are pretty rare such as the ones for Diana Ross, and Def Leppard's Joe Elliot when they "stood in" for Simon Bates on the Golden Hour.
And it's good to hear the old themes to Newsbeat and News 92 although for some reason we don't hear the actual news jingle itself used from around that time which has to be one of my favourites used by Radio 1.
The only thing that I would have liked would be if it didn't fade out the clips of either Bruno or Mark counting down over the UK Top 40 countdown bed but asides that it's a lot of time well spent and a great reminder of what Radio 1 sounded like in the early 90s.
On the site itself it has the file listed as #1 which probably suggests that there's more to come which is great news.
Let's face it, I may not exactly be making good use of my time, but by next week I really will be fully focused with the diss. It's going to be tough but I'm sure it can't be too much of struggle.
I'm not sure what's lined up for today as it seems the plan for the focus groups this week has more or less gone kaput. I just hope they don't make a last minute decision to call it on because I will end up having to walk all the way through Kenton carrying my television.
However whilst the focus group over here in Kenton looks set to go balls up, the one in Stowmarket looks promising as various aunties and uncles are very enthusiastic to take part which is good news.
As for today, it looks set to be pretty lazy as always, save for a visit into Tescos to get some meaty stuff in order to make some delicious stews over the weekend.
I'm pretty well stacked for rice and pasta so that will save me a bit of money.
I may also watch tonight's Eastenders which I don't do too often but they've been going on about Peggy's wedding to Archie for quite a while so I may as well see how exactly it all falls through.
I've managed to find a superb montage on Jinglemad courtesy of Paul Bland containing a selection of Radio 1 jingles recorded off air around 1992 and really gives you an idea of how good the station sounded back then.
The only problem was that several commercial stations at the time had a similar style in terms of production and sweepers, some of them even using the same voice, that being John Wells.
Asides that is a great montage with standout points for me including at 2:02 with Simon Mayo's "Good Morning From All Of The Crew" jingle from the Cruisin' series, where the ending has his name jingle with the orchestra hits.
I haven't heard a version with that for ages as all the others uploaded to the site have his sung cut from the 1987 package.
Also notice at 5:38 and Steve Wright's out of news jingle which happens to be an instrumental track from David Arnold's Southern Sound package from 1987.
It had become a library track by then and it did fit into the style of the show in terms of presentation.
There's also a few special cuts that are pretty rare such as the ones for Diana Ross, and Def Leppard's Joe Elliot when they "stood in" for Simon Bates on the Golden Hour.
And it's good to hear the old themes to Newsbeat and News 92 although for some reason we don't hear the actual news jingle itself used from around that time which has to be one of my favourites used by Radio 1.
The only thing that I would have liked would be if it didn't fade out the clips of either Bruno or Mark counting down over the UK Top 40 countdown bed but asides that it's a lot of time well spent and a great reminder of what Radio 1 sounded like in the early 90s.
On the site itself it has the file listed as #1 which probably suggests that there's more to come which is great news.
Let's face it, I may not exactly be making good use of my time, but by next week I really will be fully focused with the diss. It's going to be tough but I'm sure it can't be too much of struggle.
Newswipe And Baby Wipes
More rummaging, where I stumbled over the final episode of "Bo Selecta Volume 3" which to call "the difficult third series" would be an understatement.
Basically Leigh Francis, or Avid Merrion had obviously got a bit too big for his boots and turned the premise of the programme into a chat show. However the jokes got even worse than they had been already and had fallen into the category of extremely self indulgent with references to old TV series being thrown in at any opportunity for the sake of it.
Who would get jokes about "Home Improvement" or "Mork And Mindy" on that sort of level?
Francis would often get his own back on those that bemoaned the programme on internet forums by taking the piss out of him being "self-indulgent" and playing along the fact that everyone thought the bits with Avid were the worst parts of the show.
It was kind of the equivalent of Chris Moyles' Quiz Night as it was basically an unfunny twat showing off the fact that he knew a lot of famous people.
The worst sketch being one with the Mel B caricature living with Patsy Kensit and wanting to start a female relationship with her.
This had spun off from a sketch in the 2003 Xmas special that was pretty funny, but being strung out over a whole series didn't work at all.
Anyway the final episode was broadcast around late August 2004 and I remember it well as it was shown the weekend before my two week holiday from ASDA which took place around the August bank holiday up to early September.
As mentioned before it really did feel like a holiday despite only working there on Thursdays and Saturdays at the time. Although that's partly because the rest of my family were on holiday in Spain at the time. (Or was it Greece? I can never remember)
Anyway, the show itself started off with another "self indulgent spoof" which was of the movie "Teen Wolf" which Leigh had wanted to do since the series started. However this was actually funny, not because of Avid but Craig Phillips, the winner of Big Brother series 1 who was a regular on the show and really know how to use the F-word perfectly;
"You shut the fuck up Ozzie, I don't know what the fuck you are"
There was another sketch I liked involving the Bear with Charlie Simpson from Busted and has me laughing mainly because of the Bear getting into an angry fit which I think was adlibbed due to the fact that Charlie is laughing uncontrollably.
The sketch can be seen here and the fact that the C-word is bleeped probably makes it even more funnier.
I'd say it was the saving grace of the series.
Luckily this was to be the last proper series of Bo Selecta, but unfortunately it wasn't the end completely as following a Christmas special the Bear got his own series which was a spoof of "Harry And The Hendersons" which starred Patsy Kensit and Sean Pertwee.
Why they agreed to take part in such crap I've no idea, and they really should have known better.
According to Dom Joly, Leigh can't even write a script having worked with him before his fame and the words of the Trigger Happy TV star definitely ring true if you've ever seen what has to be the television equivalent of faeces.
Fast forward five years, and tonight's edition of Charlie Brooker's Newswipe.
This week's edition definitely put a few things into my head that I already knew but as in all cases would be too thick to actually get round my head.
Amongst the items included a look at how they covered the snowfalls in Feburary and whether photos sent in by viewers of them pissing about in snow consituted news.
There was also a look into how Jade Goody's dying days were covered and how she ended up making more appearances on the tabloid front pages than she'd ever been on television.
I would have preferred it if they didn't show what appeared to be David Van Day deffacating on the floor. A bit too near the knuckle.
Then again if it was his face being shat on I wouldn't have minded to be honest.
Anyway rather than saying Good Night, I'll use the words of Charlie himself;
That's all I've got time for tonight. Go away.
Basically Leigh Francis, or Avid Merrion had obviously got a bit too big for his boots and turned the premise of the programme into a chat show. However the jokes got even worse than they had been already and had fallen into the category of extremely self indulgent with references to old TV series being thrown in at any opportunity for the sake of it.
Who would get jokes about "Home Improvement" or "Mork And Mindy" on that sort of level?
Francis would often get his own back on those that bemoaned the programme on internet forums by taking the piss out of him being "self-indulgent" and playing along the fact that everyone thought the bits with Avid were the worst parts of the show.
It was kind of the equivalent of Chris Moyles' Quiz Night as it was basically an unfunny twat showing off the fact that he knew a lot of famous people.
The worst sketch being one with the Mel B caricature living with Patsy Kensit and wanting to start a female relationship with her.
This had spun off from a sketch in the 2003 Xmas special that was pretty funny, but being strung out over a whole series didn't work at all.
Anyway the final episode was broadcast around late August 2004 and I remember it well as it was shown the weekend before my two week holiday from ASDA which took place around the August bank holiday up to early September.
As mentioned before it really did feel like a holiday despite only working there on Thursdays and Saturdays at the time. Although that's partly because the rest of my family were on holiday in Spain at the time. (Or was it Greece? I can never remember)
Anyway, the show itself started off with another "self indulgent spoof" which was of the movie "Teen Wolf" which Leigh had wanted to do since the series started. However this was actually funny, not because of Avid but Craig Phillips, the winner of Big Brother series 1 who was a regular on the show and really know how to use the F-word perfectly;
"You shut the fuck up Ozzie, I don't know what the fuck you are"
There was another sketch I liked involving the Bear with Charlie Simpson from Busted and has me laughing mainly because of the Bear getting into an angry fit which I think was adlibbed due to the fact that Charlie is laughing uncontrollably.
The sketch can be seen here and the fact that the C-word is bleeped probably makes it even more funnier.
I'd say it was the saving grace of the series.
Luckily this was to be the last proper series of Bo Selecta, but unfortunately it wasn't the end completely as following a Christmas special the Bear got his own series which was a spoof of "Harry And The Hendersons" which starred Patsy Kensit and Sean Pertwee.
Why they agreed to take part in such crap I've no idea, and they really should have known better.
According to Dom Joly, Leigh can't even write a script having worked with him before his fame and the words of the Trigger Happy TV star definitely ring true if you've ever seen what has to be the television equivalent of faeces.
Fast forward five years, and tonight's edition of Charlie Brooker's Newswipe.
This week's edition definitely put a few things into my head that I already knew but as in all cases would be too thick to actually get round my head.
Amongst the items included a look at how they covered the snowfalls in Feburary and whether photos sent in by viewers of them pissing about in snow consituted news.
There was also a look into how Jade Goody's dying days were covered and how she ended up making more appearances on the tabloid front pages than she'd ever been on television.
I would have preferred it if they didn't show what appeared to be David Van Day deffacating on the floor. A bit too near the knuckle.
Then again if it was his face being shat on I wouldn't have minded to be honest.
Anyway rather than saying Good Night, I'll use the words of Charlie himself;
That's all I've got time for tonight. Go away.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
"40 Years Of Hurt"
I shouldn't have gone out earlier tonight. Not only was there bugger all I knew at the Junction but it took me 20 minutes to get served and I really wasn't in the mood for that WKD I had.
I headed back to the flat and missed Peter Crouch's goal whilst doing so, but the rest of the match was pretty good, save for David Beckham being an idiot as always, especially when England were about to take a free kick.
I was partly annoyed because he went on as a substitute for Aaron Lennon, one of England's better players even if he plays for Spurs.
Anyway a good result in the end with John Terry proving why he's the Captain of England.
Even funnier was Wales's misfortune losing 2-0 to Germany including and own goal from Ashley Williams.
After the match I continued my trawl where I'm up to August 2004 with one of the programmes being the final episode of the disastrous "Passport To Paradise" hosted by Johnny and Denise.
Barely anything had changed since the first show with uninspiring hidden camera stunts, and the awful lookalikes contest "Face Fits".
Denise later went onto Saturday night success as one of the judges on the Lloyd Nobber music audtion shows, but this was to be one of Johnny's last television apperances after many unsuccesful flops, proving that he was better off in the early mornings.
862,000 Londoners can't be wrong eh?
After that there was a brilliant documentary looking back over 40 Years of Match Of The Day, and the timing couldn't have been better as the BBC had gained back the rights to show Premiership highlights from that season onwards.
Amongst those interviewed were Jimmy Hill of course, Des Lynam, Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen, Roy Keane, Ian Wright, Fulham supporter Janet Street-Porter, Delia Smith, Paul Whitehouse and Noel Gallagher.
There were also apperances from the departed George Best and Brian Clough.
The first thing they talked about is what has to be the stand out part of the show, the theme tune.
It wasn't the original one of course as until 1970, they used a tune called "Drum Majorette" by Major Leslie Statham which I have on one of my library CDs on my hard drive.
However the one that we all know was composed by Rhet Stoller and the one you find on compilation CDs is a really dodgy rhythm band rendition with dodgy percussion, but the one that's used on the telly can be found here.
I'm not sure if that's ever been the full length version due to the sudden key change right towards the very end, but I've always liked that from an early age.
Gary Lineker mentioned that the tune isn't just synonymous with Match Of The Day, but with football overall and he's not wrong.
I'd go as far as saying that it's not just one of the best sports themes, but one of the best bits of music ever written.
I'd even say it's better than "Everyday" by Incognito although both tunes have very catchy riffs.
Noel Gallagher said that "as a piece of music it's dog piss, but there's no words to it so you can't get it wrong"
It's more or less remained the same since 1970, save for when they changed it to a dodgy marching band version around the late 70s that got several complaints by viewers, even by those who didn't watch MOTD.
It wasn't the worst one ever though, as the programme also used a version played on a Wurlitzer which was even worse, to accompany some short items about indivduals who loved the show more than football itself, to obsessional levels.
The programme looked at how the show itself started on the new BBC 2 in 1964 with Kenneth Woolstenholme and the first ever game was Liverpool Vs Arsenal.
After England's World Cup Victory a couple of years later the programme was promoted to BBC 1 and has more or less stayed there since. John Motson made a valid point about the fact that Match Of The Day has never disapeared as a brand on the BBC depsite the BBC losing the rights to football highlights over the years.
I'll go onto that in detail later.
One of the parts I found interesting was an interview with Jonathan Slattery who at just 11 years old, won not just the Goal Of The Month but Goal Of The Season.
There was also quite a lot of focus on Jimmy Hill who many regard as one of the best presenters of the programme although his days as a TV football pundit started on ITV's "The Big Match" in the early 70s.
The programme even showed the London Weekend ident from around that time although it was in black and white.
I actually used the theme from the Big Match as a bed on my soul show earlier this year, in the week where there were matches for both Chelsea and West Ham taking place during the programme.
The reason I used that as opposed to MOTD was because I didn't really want to take the predictable route and the theme to the Big Match has to be one of the finest instrumental library pieces recorded that's still well known today, due to a resurgance in the mid 90s.
In 1973, Jimmy signed with the BBC and became their long standing anchor for Match Of The Day lasting the best part of 15 years.
One particular moment I can remember ended up on Auntie's Bloomers where Jimmy was seen linking into a highlights package with the fire alarm going off in the background and him apologising for the noise.
The programme was recorded at Lime Grove as their fire alarm made a really horrible wailing noise and was once heard on Breakfast Time around 1983 during one of their live links.
Probably just as well the studios shut down in 1991.
The late 70s saw problems for the show as ITV paid a 5 million pound deal to broadcast league highlights and live matches.
The BBC were obviously very pissed off about it and through the Office Of Fair Trading settled a deal to share the coverage which saw them alternating days each season.
It couldn't happen now.
This meant that sometimes Match Of The Day would be shown on Sunday afternoons with ITV showing the highlights of the Saturday games.
10 years later however, the BBC lost the rights to all live games and highlights for league football as ITV began broadcasting them under the title "The Match" from the 1988-89 season. The BBC has never broadcast a live league match ever since.
ITV's inferior coverage to the BBC's didn't go down well with the clubs or fans, but the BBC still had the coverage of the FA Cup games.
However it wasn't the best time as in April 1989 there was the Hillsborough disaster but I'll save that for another post in a couple of weeks when it will be 20 years since the incident.
When the Premiership was inaugarated in 1992 BSkyB got the rights for live matches whilst the BBC gained the rights to show highlights bringing Match Of The Day back to a regular slot on Saturdays with Des Lynam as the host with Jimmy Hill now as one of the pundits.
One area the programme didn't look at was when they lost the rights to in 2000 and from the 2001-2002 season ITV introduced "The Premiership" which as mentioned before didn't go down well with the fans due to it's gimmicks and attempts to be as different to MOTD as far as possible.
Scheduling it in a 7pm timeslot didn't help, much to the disapointment of host Des Lynam but at least it provided comedians with lots of material.
One of my favourites was on Radio 4's Dead Ringers in December 2001;
(U2 - Beautful Day)
Des Lynam: "Hi, Premiership here, Me Smooth Des, Critics say show no work. Andy?"
Andy Townsend: "Well.."
Des: "Ally?"
Ally McCoist: "Well..."
Des: "Gotta stop you there. Back after the ads"
The Premiership made it's bow from our screens on my 19th birthday which was also the same day when Strictly Come Dancing began on BBC 1.
I was too busy immersed in my record purchases I'd brought in London that day to pay attention to Lynam's departure.
Overall though the documentary was done brilliantly and despite not being a regular viewer of the show, it's a great insight into one of the most established shows on television.
I headed back to the flat and missed Peter Crouch's goal whilst doing so, but the rest of the match was pretty good, save for David Beckham being an idiot as always, especially when England were about to take a free kick.
I was partly annoyed because he went on as a substitute for Aaron Lennon, one of England's better players even if he plays for Spurs.
Anyway a good result in the end with John Terry proving why he's the Captain of England.
Even funnier was Wales's misfortune losing 2-0 to Germany including and own goal from Ashley Williams.
After the match I continued my trawl where I'm up to August 2004 with one of the programmes being the final episode of the disastrous "Passport To Paradise" hosted by Johnny and Denise.
Barely anything had changed since the first show with uninspiring hidden camera stunts, and the awful lookalikes contest "Face Fits".
Denise later went onto Saturday night success as one of the judges on the Lloyd Nobber music audtion shows, but this was to be one of Johnny's last television apperances after many unsuccesful flops, proving that he was better off in the early mornings.
862,000 Londoners can't be wrong eh?
After that there was a brilliant documentary looking back over 40 Years of Match Of The Day, and the timing couldn't have been better as the BBC had gained back the rights to show Premiership highlights from that season onwards.
Amongst those interviewed were Jimmy Hill of course, Des Lynam, Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen, Roy Keane, Ian Wright, Fulham supporter Janet Street-Porter, Delia Smith, Paul Whitehouse and Noel Gallagher.
There were also apperances from the departed George Best and Brian Clough.
The first thing they talked about is what has to be the stand out part of the show, the theme tune.
It wasn't the original one of course as until 1970, they used a tune called "Drum Majorette" by Major Leslie Statham which I have on one of my library CDs on my hard drive.
However the one that we all know was composed by Rhet Stoller and the one you find on compilation CDs is a really dodgy rhythm band rendition with dodgy percussion, but the one that's used on the telly can be found here.
I'm not sure if that's ever been the full length version due to the sudden key change right towards the very end, but I've always liked that from an early age.
Gary Lineker mentioned that the tune isn't just synonymous with Match Of The Day, but with football overall and he's not wrong.
I'd go as far as saying that it's not just one of the best sports themes, but one of the best bits of music ever written.
I'd even say it's better than "Everyday" by Incognito although both tunes have very catchy riffs.
Noel Gallagher said that "as a piece of music it's dog piss, but there's no words to it so you can't get it wrong"
It's more or less remained the same since 1970, save for when they changed it to a dodgy marching band version around the late 70s that got several complaints by viewers, even by those who didn't watch MOTD.
It wasn't the worst one ever though, as the programme also used a version played on a Wurlitzer which was even worse, to accompany some short items about indivduals who loved the show more than football itself, to obsessional levels.
The programme looked at how the show itself started on the new BBC 2 in 1964 with Kenneth Woolstenholme and the first ever game was Liverpool Vs Arsenal.
After England's World Cup Victory a couple of years later the programme was promoted to BBC 1 and has more or less stayed there since. John Motson made a valid point about the fact that Match Of The Day has never disapeared as a brand on the BBC depsite the BBC losing the rights to football highlights over the years.
I'll go onto that in detail later.
One of the parts I found interesting was an interview with Jonathan Slattery who at just 11 years old, won not just the Goal Of The Month but Goal Of The Season.
There was also quite a lot of focus on Jimmy Hill who many regard as one of the best presenters of the programme although his days as a TV football pundit started on ITV's "The Big Match" in the early 70s.
The programme even showed the London Weekend ident from around that time although it was in black and white.
I actually used the theme from the Big Match as a bed on my soul show earlier this year, in the week where there were matches for both Chelsea and West Ham taking place during the programme.
The reason I used that as opposed to MOTD was because I didn't really want to take the predictable route and the theme to the Big Match has to be one of the finest instrumental library pieces recorded that's still well known today, due to a resurgance in the mid 90s.
In 1973, Jimmy signed with the BBC and became their long standing anchor for Match Of The Day lasting the best part of 15 years.
One particular moment I can remember ended up on Auntie's Bloomers where Jimmy was seen linking into a highlights package with the fire alarm going off in the background and him apologising for the noise.
The programme was recorded at Lime Grove as their fire alarm made a really horrible wailing noise and was once heard on Breakfast Time around 1983 during one of their live links.
Probably just as well the studios shut down in 1991.
The late 70s saw problems for the show as ITV paid a 5 million pound deal to broadcast league highlights and live matches.
The BBC were obviously very pissed off about it and through the Office Of Fair Trading settled a deal to share the coverage which saw them alternating days each season.
It couldn't happen now.
This meant that sometimes Match Of The Day would be shown on Sunday afternoons with ITV showing the highlights of the Saturday games.
10 years later however, the BBC lost the rights to all live games and highlights for league football as ITV began broadcasting them under the title "The Match" from the 1988-89 season. The BBC has never broadcast a live league match ever since.
ITV's inferior coverage to the BBC's didn't go down well with the clubs or fans, but the BBC still had the coverage of the FA Cup games.
However it wasn't the best time as in April 1989 there was the Hillsborough disaster but I'll save that for another post in a couple of weeks when it will be 20 years since the incident.
When the Premiership was inaugarated in 1992 BSkyB got the rights for live matches whilst the BBC gained the rights to show highlights bringing Match Of The Day back to a regular slot on Saturdays with Des Lynam as the host with Jimmy Hill now as one of the pundits.
One area the programme didn't look at was when they lost the rights to in 2000 and from the 2001-2002 season ITV introduced "The Premiership" which as mentioned before didn't go down well with the fans due to it's gimmicks and attempts to be as different to MOTD as far as possible.
Scheduling it in a 7pm timeslot didn't help, much to the disapointment of host Des Lynam but at least it provided comedians with lots of material.
One of my favourites was on Radio 4's Dead Ringers in December 2001;
(U2 - Beautful Day)
Des Lynam: "Hi, Premiership here, Me Smooth Des, Critics say show no work. Andy?"
Andy Townsend: "Well.."
Des: "Ally?"
Ally McCoist: "Well..."
Des: "Gotta stop you there. Back after the ads"
The Premiership made it's bow from our screens on my 19th birthday which was also the same day when Strictly Come Dancing began on BBC 1.
I was too busy immersed in my record purchases I'd brought in London that day to pay attention to Lynam's departure.
Overall though the documentary was done brilliantly and despite not being a regular viewer of the show, it's a great insight into one of the most established shows on television.
More Birthdays Than Sense
I spent part of the afternoon up in the radio rooms where the only others present were Stewart who was transcribing an interview, and Sami who was waiting to get one recorded for her's.
Things were made a bit awkward however when the person being interviewed e-mailed and asked to do it via Skype which made things a bit harder.
The amount of progress I'll get between now and next Monday seems pretty sparse, so as soon as I'd finished grabbing stuff off the iPlayer I headed back to the flat in time for episode 1000 of Deal Or No Deal.
The banker had replaced one of the boxes for another one valued at £250,000 which gave the lucky contestant two chances to win the big prize.
She came very close until the very end where she dealt on the Banker's offer at 50 grand and ended up swapping the box she had for the remaining contestant's which had the big prize inside it.
I then ended up having a lie down and have just woken up and unsure about tonight's plans.
It happens to be first year student Charles' 21st birthday and he's asked me if I want to go for a night out in Central to celebrate. Although it seems like a good laugh I'll stick around here to save some cash although they'll be heading out rather late because of tonight's England match which they'll be watching at the Junction, so I may pop over if I'm well enough.
Otherwise, it will probably be a night of more rummaging which proves that you don't need money to reminisce.
I may take that option as I need to spend the money I've got on eating expenses. But if Charles happens to be reading this (as I know he's one of many) I'm hoping it was an enjoyable night and you're more than welcome to attend the many Undercroft do's we'll be holding at the end of the month.
Then we'll all be able to laugh and have more money in order to do so as well.
Having thought about it though, I may actually come over tonight for the football as it's the only opportunity on a Wednesday I'll get as the Soul Show's taking a break.
Things were made a bit awkward however when the person being interviewed e-mailed and asked to do it via Skype which made things a bit harder.
The amount of progress I'll get between now and next Monday seems pretty sparse, so as soon as I'd finished grabbing stuff off the iPlayer I headed back to the flat in time for episode 1000 of Deal Or No Deal.
The banker had replaced one of the boxes for another one valued at £250,000 which gave the lucky contestant two chances to win the big prize.
She came very close until the very end where she dealt on the Banker's offer at 50 grand and ended up swapping the box she had for the remaining contestant's which had the big prize inside it.
I then ended up having a lie down and have just woken up and unsure about tonight's plans.
It happens to be first year student Charles' 21st birthday and he's asked me if I want to go for a night out in Central to celebrate. Although it seems like a good laugh I'll stick around here to save some cash although they'll be heading out rather late because of tonight's England match which they'll be watching at the Junction, so I may pop over if I'm well enough.
Otherwise, it will probably be a night of more rummaging which proves that you don't need money to reminisce.
I may take that option as I need to spend the money I've got on eating expenses. But if Charles happens to be reading this (as I know he's one of many) I'm hoping it was an enjoyable night and you're more than welcome to attend the many Undercroft do's we'll be holding at the end of the month.
Then we'll all be able to laugh and have more money in order to do so as well.
Having thought about it though, I may actually come over tonight for the football as it's the only opportunity on a Wednesday I'll get as the Soul Show's taking a break.
More Uncertainty
The train journey back to London wasn't too much hassle. There certainly weren't any irritating passengers, although I probably fell into that category as at certain times I ended up laughing whilst re-reading Peter Kay's autobiography.
Some of the parts that made me laugh included him recounting his first job at Franny Lee's toliet roll factory back in 1989 where the boss had a stutter and was nicknamed "Morris Minor" after the Tony Hawks character that had a song in the charts called "Stutter Rap"
This resulted in a TV sitcom around the time called "Morris Minor's Marvellous Motors" which I only really remember as it was one of the programmes shown on BBC 1 on the same day as the Hillsborough disaster.
The programme also starred Camille Coduri who then went onto star in Nuns On The Run and later in Doctor Who.
Some of his real life jobs ended up in the TV series such as his job at the Topranko bingo hall, and there really was a Leonard De Tompkinson who was similar to the one played by Peter.
I've just finished transcribing last night's focus group although whether we'll have a focus group at all is another thing. Chris and Denis haven't been too succesfull at getting hold of people and the definite last resort would be to do it on the Monday or Tuesday at the very latest.
Only that's going to be a bit tricky as a lot of people especially in second year radio will be away in Leeds at the SRA Conference on those days so that more or less puts the bullet in the dissertation.
The only other resort would possibly be to do it before Wrestlemania on the Sunday but everyone will just want a break from it all and to just have a good time.
It looks as if my visit to Stowmarket will be the only chance of getting a good response for the third focus group and I'm sure three will be sufficient as Ana didn't seem that fussed about it although she really wanted me to do four.
I'd best get those e-mails sent.
On the subject of the conference I'm slightly more gutted that I won't be there as James Whale will be another of the guests and I would make him the main priority if he was there, even if none of the others wanted to go to his talk.
I'm guessing the reason James will be present is because he made a big name for himself in Leeds at Radio Aire during the 80s which lead to the TV series.
I really don't know what I'm going to be doing here in the next few days but whatever happens, from next Monday onwards I will start analysing the focus groups and survey results over the next two weeks.
Each analysis should be 1000 words so that will probably bring it up to 4000 in the end so that would bring me halfway through.
It may be worth having another look at some of the ones in the library just to make sure I'm doing it right.
If I'd have known 3 months ago that this wasn't as tough as I'd thought it would be then all the focus groups would be done by now.
They always try to make the task seem like a nightmare don't they?
Some of the parts that made me laugh included him recounting his first job at Franny Lee's toliet roll factory back in 1989 where the boss had a stutter and was nicknamed "Morris Minor" after the Tony Hawks character that had a song in the charts called "Stutter Rap"
This resulted in a TV sitcom around the time called "Morris Minor's Marvellous Motors" which I only really remember as it was one of the programmes shown on BBC 1 on the same day as the Hillsborough disaster.
The programme also starred Camille Coduri who then went onto star in Nuns On The Run and later in Doctor Who.
Some of his real life jobs ended up in the TV series such as his job at the Topranko bingo hall, and there really was a Leonard De Tompkinson who was similar to the one played by Peter.
I've just finished transcribing last night's focus group although whether we'll have a focus group at all is another thing. Chris and Denis haven't been too succesfull at getting hold of people and the definite last resort would be to do it on the Monday or Tuesday at the very latest.
Only that's going to be a bit tricky as a lot of people especially in second year radio will be away in Leeds at the SRA Conference on those days so that more or less puts the bullet in the dissertation.
The only other resort would possibly be to do it before Wrestlemania on the Sunday but everyone will just want a break from it all and to just have a good time.
It looks as if my visit to Stowmarket will be the only chance of getting a good response for the third focus group and I'm sure three will be sufficient as Ana didn't seem that fussed about it although she really wanted me to do four.
I'd best get those e-mails sent.
On the subject of the conference I'm slightly more gutted that I won't be there as James Whale will be another of the guests and I would make him the main priority if he was there, even if none of the others wanted to go to his talk.
I'm guessing the reason James will be present is because he made a big name for himself in Leeds at Radio Aire during the 80s which lead to the TV series.
I really don't know what I'm going to be doing here in the next few days but whatever happens, from next Monday onwards I will start analysing the focus groups and survey results over the next two weeks.
Each analysis should be 1000 words so that will probably bring it up to 4000 in the end so that would bring me halfway through.
It may be worth having another look at some of the ones in the library just to make sure I'm doing it right.
If I'd have known 3 months ago that this wasn't as tough as I'd thought it would be then all the focus groups would be done by now.
They always try to make the task seem like a nightmare don't they?
The "Real" Difference
Morning.
I've rather reluctantly got up and am about to leave in around 20 minutes in order to get the train back to London so I can crack on with the transcribing as soon as I can.
I also need to lend Chris the Marantz this afternoon although I'm hoping that this isn't some form of April Fools joke. In fact that won't be the case as I've been asked to come over at 1pm and if any jokes are played after 12 midday then the jokes on them.
I've never understood why that is but I'm sure I'll be got in one way or other.
I just hope the train I'm on doesn't have some dickhead listening to the same N*Dubz track at full blast on repeat. It's not clever and certainly not big.
The Century stations in the North West re-branded to Real Radio on Monday and with that came a new jingle package from Music 4 replacing the Bespoke jingles that have been ever present on the station in one form or other for 8 years.
Personally I don't think they're great myself, and are rather too aggressive and trying to be cool, sounding rather out of place.
There happens to be a thread on Jinglemad where the usual suspects start moaning about it and on page 2 I had to make a statement.
It's just coincidental that the older posters happen to always moan about the current jingles and whilst I'm not a fan of the jingles myself, I've more or less got the message that radio in the UK is crap.
What the men in suits at GMG know about radio can be written on a postage stamp but I'd rather just enjoy light hearted conversation of how good jingles past or present are, instead of moaning about the less than impressive ones all the time.
But the posters are right in saying that if the younger listeners who will possibly end up working in radio in the next few years continue to be brought up on no memorable sounding jingles, then radio shows no signs of evolving.
Anyway, time to get moving.
I've rather reluctantly got up and am about to leave in around 20 minutes in order to get the train back to London so I can crack on with the transcribing as soon as I can.
I also need to lend Chris the Marantz this afternoon although I'm hoping that this isn't some form of April Fools joke. In fact that won't be the case as I've been asked to come over at 1pm and if any jokes are played after 12 midday then the jokes on them.
I've never understood why that is but I'm sure I'll be got in one way or other.
I just hope the train I'm on doesn't have some dickhead listening to the same N*Dubz track at full blast on repeat. It's not clever and certainly not big.
The Century stations in the North West re-branded to Real Radio on Monday and with that came a new jingle package from Music 4 replacing the Bespoke jingles that have been ever present on the station in one form or other for 8 years.
Personally I don't think they're great myself, and are rather too aggressive and trying to be cool, sounding rather out of place.
There happens to be a thread on Jinglemad where the usual suspects start moaning about it and on page 2 I had to make a statement.
It's just coincidental that the older posters happen to always moan about the current jingles and whilst I'm not a fan of the jingles myself, I've more or less got the message that radio in the UK is crap.
What the men in suits at GMG know about radio can be written on a postage stamp but I'd rather just enjoy light hearted conversation of how good jingles past or present are, instead of moaning about the less than impressive ones all the time.
But the posters are right in saying that if the younger listeners who will possibly end up working in radio in the next few years continue to be brought up on no memorable sounding jingles, then radio shows no signs of evolving.
Anyway, time to get moving.
"You'll Know What A Brown Suit Is By Then!"
At least once a year, I will have a gander at what has to be one of my favourite DVDs, "The Very Best Of Have I Got News For You" released for Christmas 2002.
And every time I watch it, I always happen to have the commentary from Paul Merton and Ian Hislop as they tend to stop talking whenever a particularly funny bit comes on and it's evident that there was never really any animosity between them.
What I like about the DVD is that it contains all the opening title sequences throughout the compilation including the first ever theme tune which was a more synthy version of the theme designed to match the animated images.
The closing theme was more or less the same as the one that's been used since.
Angus Deayton was only chosen as host about a week before transmission started with his close competitor being Sandi Toksvig. The woman who's now the host of the Radio 4 programme that the show originated from.
Sandi was on Ian Hislop's team for the first show and was already known for her appearances on another Hat Trick show "Whose Line Is It Anyway" along with Paul Merton.
Although younger viewers possibly in their late teens would recognise her better as Ethel from Number 73 although she had left the show before it ended and turned into the ill fated 7T3.
Just over a year before HIGNFY began however, Sandi could be seen doing a kids version of "Whose Line" as an insert on the first series of the ITV Saturday morning show "Ghost Train".
Anyway some of the early highlights included when Roy Hattersley failed to turn up for the show first time round and his replacement was Robert Harris, of whom they showed the 1983 clip of him making a report following Mrs Thatcher on her campaign trail when it turned out to be the then Prime Minister following him!
The first revenge for Roy Hattersley's absence was a clip of him seen jogging on an edition of Panorama in 1978 which was only the beginning of many jokes sending him up.
It's worth pointing out that the shows in the first series had up to 8 rounds including one where contestants had to guess a newspaper story through a list of words that were sub headings, and there was even a props round which didn't last too long.
The show became established pretty quickly and in 1992 they started recording two series per year and even established figures such as Trevor McDonald and former Labour leader Neil Kinnock made appearances.
Both of them ended up hosting the show just over a decade later although results were rather mixed with Lord Kinnock as he's now known, blundering through the show.
He was brilliant on his first apperance as a guest however even joining in on the jokes about Angus's "brown suit".
It's also worth mentioning the 1992 Election Special where in place of the newspaper cuttings were pictures of party leaders and MPs on the studio set.
One of them being the unlucky positioning of John Major next to Edwina Currie, who had appeared on what Paul and Ian agreed was the worst ever show which was a Thatcher special in 1993 where Edwina and fellow guest Derek Hatton just spat insults at each other.
This post is obviously an opportunity for me to reccount some of my favourite jokes although for me the funniest parts are the video clips and photos shown at the beginning and the end of the show. Harry Hill could learn an awful lot from them as the ones on HIGNFY are actually funny.
Examples included one from 1991 about David Mellor being on a youth training scheme, which was actually a clip of the Tory MP singing a duet of "I'd Do Anything" with a young boy as part of that year's Children In Need.
Another one that made me laugh especially was one involving an early target Robert Maxwell and about him investing a lot of money in a maze made up of unsold copies of The European.
As mentioned by Ian Hislop, the newspaper ended up sinking with him.
Although the actual clip used was part of the title sequence to "What The Papers Say" which had just been revived on BBC 2.
Also worth mentioning is an Odd One Out round from series 2 where Mother Teresa was one of those who had won the Turner Prize to which Angus said was for "the Calcutta shrivelled walnut lookalike competition"
Ian was particularly disgruntled by that remark and retorted with
"Who's next Albert Schweitzer? Bastard! Yeah!"
And there was also a missing words round where the question was "Small ____ For Maggie" to which guest Nick Hancock responded "Git as a son".
Nick: "You know about libel don't you Ian?"
Ian: "No, that's fair comment!"
By 1993 the show saw the first of many highlights including when Paul Merton appeared alongside a tub of lard in place of Roy Hattersley who had failed to show up for a third time.
Paul's team surprisingly ended up winning to which Ian compared himself to Graham Taylor, in one of his very rare football references.
Other significant moments included in 1994 where Tory MP Teddy Taylor appeared as a guest and having never seen the show before just went off in tangents thinking it was an excuse to get his statements across. This resulted in Paul Merton pretending to fall asleep and make gestures of him hanging himself.
1994 was also the year the show got into big trouble for a joke about Kevin and Ian Maxwell being "heartless scheming bastards" which got Angus into trouble for contempt of court and Hat Trick and the BBC a 20 grand fine.
Especially as the BBC had been told to keep references to a minimum to avoid them being biased.
The show has however been on the right side of a court case where in 1998 Rupert Allason lost a High Court libel action against a comment in the book "Have I Got 1997 For You" which suggested he was "a conniving little shit".
Having represented himself without a lawyer, he was never going to win.
The DVD also contains many run ins with guests including Ian Hislop Vs Paula Yates in 1995.
Most of the jokes made were about her breast implants but Ian was more peeved by the fact she was using the show to promote her autobiography.
Whether that's true or not it doesn't matter as she's dead now.
That show was notable for the set being changed to a green colour although it changed back to red after a week due to viewers finding it "nauseating".
The other great thing about the DVD is that it contains clips from the news that are unlikely to be found to buy anywhere else. One of them being Jeremy Paxman's one question interview with Michael Howard from May 1997 which still makes me laugh on every viewing.
The same series that year saw the infamous apperance of Neil and Christine Hamilton on the show that possibly launched their new "career". They even went as far as giving them "their fees" in paper bags although Neil was disapointed to find there wasn't actually any real money inside.
1998 saw the show switch to widescreen in the Autumn series and saw probably the first appearance of the BBC's Widescreen Test Card as part of a joke about the stupid memo telling BBC programmes not to refer to Peter Mandelson's sexuality.
Earlier that year saw the first of many apperances by Boris Johnson who started as he more or less meant to go on. After his appearance in April 1998, he wrote in a column in The Spectator complaining about the show being scripted, but he took it all back and became one of, if not the most popular guest on the show.
Ian mentioned in the commentary that many guests aren't as good on subsequent appearances, but with Boris it just got even better. At the time they had no idea that Boris would actually end up hosting the show.
Boris's second appearance on the show happened 18 months later in December 1999 where by a bizarre coincidence Janet Street Porter was on there as well having appeared with him first time round.
I didn't see the programme however as it was the same night I went to see Mamma Mia on a school visit and where things changed significantly as a result of a crush and a tape of old disco tracks I was listening to attached itself to the whole thing.
However I did get back in time to see the very end of the season finale of Friends where Ross and Rachel got married in a very cheap wedding.
Did it last? Did it hell.
Anyway the week before saw a long term target of the show finally found guilty of lying, that being Jeffrey Archer who's campaign to be Conservative Mayor for London fell apart as a result.
A few weeks earlier Labour candidate Glenda Jackson was a guest where they referred to a story about Archers rival candidate in the Tory party Stephen Norris who was alleged to have said "I will never, ever support Archer, alive or dead".
When Norris was asked about it on BBC Radio 4, he said "I don't recognise those words at all, I don't remember using them in any circumstances"
This was then followed by a clip of him saying "As I will never, ever support Archer, alive or dead..."
Of course Norris ended up losing to Ken Livingstone in the end.
The Spring 1999 series saw one of the show's most memorable moments where during the odd one out round Paul drifted off and it faded into a sequence where him and Ian were swaying in a field accompanied by Satie's "Gymnopedie".
This was only the beginning of a load of novelty to the point of stupid gimmicks that were present on the show, the worst one being when it moved to BBC 1 in October 2000 to coincide with the BBC moving it's main news bulletin to 10:00pm where Angus said that the move to BBC 1 didn't mean that it would affect the show's content.
This was immediately followed by a load of barely dressed dancing girls making their way into the studio but thankfully this was the worst that the show got in terms of those sort of gags.
2001 in spite of the summer and autumn that year being a struggle on a personal level, saw one of the best news stories of the year, that being Jefferey Archer finally getting banged up for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
We all know where we were in July 2001 when the verdict was announced.
The only person it seemed, who felt sorry for him was Jonathan Aitken, another man who fits into the category of a "right wing lying bastard".
Appropriatley enough one of the guests on the first show of the Autumn 2001 was Archer's biographer Michael Crick and this lead to that great clip of Archer ranting about how he didn't like the way the BBC made programmes about him;
"You wait 'til I'm Mayor! You'll find out how tough I am!"
Boris Johnson made his third and possibly funniest appearance as a panellist later on that series where he was subjected to a Mastermind spoof prompting him to say "I've never seen this on the show before".
As mentioned earlier, Boris went on to host the show after Angus's sacking the following year and continued to be popular to the point that he was probably the most well known Conservative MP in the country at the time.
The last time I saw Boris as a host on the show was in December 2006 and possibly the only show I saw in that series due to Uni life being more dominant.
I even remember having to hot foot it back to the radio rooms at 9:30pm as I'd left my hard drive up there, and there were still people present as a result of third years using all the time they could to edit their features.
It's probably safe to say that 2006 was most definitely the only year in my life where I've watched the least amount of television.
Appearances for Boris have been fewer recently with his duties as London Mayor taking priority, although it didn't stop Ken Livingstone appearing on the show during his reign, including an appearance as a guest on the legendary show on the 24th of May 2002. The highlights of which took up the last 10 minutes of the DVD.
When I first heard about it, not many people I spoke to cared about the story, but I knew that it was going to provide great telly and everyone else thought the same when it finally happened that Friday after it all broke out.
During the commentary itself Paul and Ian crack up when Angus can be seen from over the years making jokes about other public figures who took cocaine, including a rather amusing photo of John Major allegedly preparing for a speech on drug abuse.
It was more than evident in the last 5 or so years that Paul didn't get on with Angus and this was the ultimate excuse to really lay into him.
My favourite line from the show has to be around halfway through where Paul mentions he was surpised Angus had the nerve to turn up that week;
Angus: "Well I did. Because of you two"
Paul: "Yes, in a way it's our fault isn't it!"
I had no knowledge of him taking cocaine at all at the time, until Paul Merton made a joke about it on Just A Minute when they came to Canterbury later that year where he had to talk about "The Gutter Press";
"The gutter press, yesterday’s trees, tomorrow’s fish and chips. Not many people take much notice of what they read in the gutter news apart of course from the individuals that are featured.
Imagine your embarrassment if you were caught consorting with prostitutes and taking cocaine?
What an enormous, terrible thing that would be if you had to appear on television while people pointed fingers at you and general laughter. It’s an incredible thing that this should happen in this day and age.
Here we are in the 21st century, why can’t show business stars spend the BBC licence-payer’s money as they see fit? If they find a strumpet in a hotel, give her 50 quid, she’s probably worth it!"
That was definitely the highlight of the recording and it even made it on to the Arena documentary about Just A Minute shown at Christmas that year.
The DVD also contains some brillaint extras including the many trailers for the show from around 1999-2001 including the Millionaire spoofs from April 1999, the Big Brother send up from October 2000, and the "I Love 2001" trails from April 2001.
There's also a clip of Terry Wogan on Room 101 in 1997 wanting to put the show onto the conveyor belt, but the real reason being was that Angus Deayton wanted to dispose of Radio 2 in the previous series.
Presenter Nick Hancock showed two clips from both his appearances on the show where coincidentally, Arsenal player, now Portsmouth manager Tony Adams was one of those in the Odd One Out round.
One both occasions Nick suggested that Tony was the odd one out "because everyone else understood the offside rule".
Nick defended the fact that he repeated the joke because the Offside rule changed between 1991 and 1994.
The most interesting item however was a piece from Newsnight transmitted after the show where Neil and Christine Hamilton appeared as guests in May 1997.
This involved a report asking why politicians went on the show in order to build their "celebrity profile", followed by a studio debate with Derek Hatton and the late John Diamond.
John's points were spot on as Neil Hamilton thought he could use the show as an excuse to try and prove he was a general funnyman, and failing miserably.
Which he's probably now more famous for than his time as a Tory MP.
John had appeared on the programme himself, as did his then wife Nigella Lawson a few years later.
Her father Nigel had also been on the programme but relevance to the programme for me will be best remembered in a joke by Paul Merton made on the show hosted by Nicholas Parsons in May 2005 which I will probably refer to in a later post.
The Newsnight report itself by Krishnan Guru-Murthy included an interview with Roy Hattersley who mentioned that his reason for not turning up in 1993 was because at the last minute he decided to accept an offer to write an article for the Sunday Times about who Black and Asian people had made great contributions to British society.
At the end of the report Krishnan mentioned that the Hamiltons could do a lot worse things than appear on Have I Got News For You, which was illustrated by the opening titles to "It's A Knockout".
Sadly the Hamiltons were now involved in even more embarassing TV appearances than that, by the time the DVD had been released.
Despite it being really late, it's an early start tomorrow as I aim to get back to London as soon as I can to get my transcribing from last night completed. Shouldn't be too much of a demand.
Once again, a very late Good Night.
And every time I watch it, I always happen to have the commentary from Paul Merton and Ian Hislop as they tend to stop talking whenever a particularly funny bit comes on and it's evident that there was never really any animosity between them.
What I like about the DVD is that it contains all the opening title sequences throughout the compilation including the first ever theme tune which was a more synthy version of the theme designed to match the animated images.
The closing theme was more or less the same as the one that's been used since.
Angus Deayton was only chosen as host about a week before transmission started with his close competitor being Sandi Toksvig. The woman who's now the host of the Radio 4 programme that the show originated from.
Sandi was on Ian Hislop's team for the first show and was already known for her appearances on another Hat Trick show "Whose Line Is It Anyway" along with Paul Merton.
Although younger viewers possibly in their late teens would recognise her better as Ethel from Number 73 although she had left the show before it ended and turned into the ill fated 7T3.
Just over a year before HIGNFY began however, Sandi could be seen doing a kids version of "Whose Line" as an insert on the first series of the ITV Saturday morning show "Ghost Train".
Anyway some of the early highlights included when Roy Hattersley failed to turn up for the show first time round and his replacement was Robert Harris, of whom they showed the 1983 clip of him making a report following Mrs Thatcher on her campaign trail when it turned out to be the then Prime Minister following him!
The first revenge for Roy Hattersley's absence was a clip of him seen jogging on an edition of Panorama in 1978 which was only the beginning of many jokes sending him up.
It's worth pointing out that the shows in the first series had up to 8 rounds including one where contestants had to guess a newspaper story through a list of words that were sub headings, and there was even a props round which didn't last too long.
The show became established pretty quickly and in 1992 they started recording two series per year and even established figures such as Trevor McDonald and former Labour leader Neil Kinnock made appearances.
Both of them ended up hosting the show just over a decade later although results were rather mixed with Lord Kinnock as he's now known, blundering through the show.
He was brilliant on his first apperance as a guest however even joining in on the jokes about Angus's "brown suit".
It's also worth mentioning the 1992 Election Special where in place of the newspaper cuttings were pictures of party leaders and MPs on the studio set.
One of them being the unlucky positioning of John Major next to Edwina Currie, who had appeared on what Paul and Ian agreed was the worst ever show which was a Thatcher special in 1993 where Edwina and fellow guest Derek Hatton just spat insults at each other.
This post is obviously an opportunity for me to reccount some of my favourite jokes although for me the funniest parts are the video clips and photos shown at the beginning and the end of the show. Harry Hill could learn an awful lot from them as the ones on HIGNFY are actually funny.
Examples included one from 1991 about David Mellor being on a youth training scheme, which was actually a clip of the Tory MP singing a duet of "I'd Do Anything" with a young boy as part of that year's Children In Need.
Another one that made me laugh especially was one involving an early target Robert Maxwell and about him investing a lot of money in a maze made up of unsold copies of The European.
As mentioned by Ian Hislop, the newspaper ended up sinking with him.
Although the actual clip used was part of the title sequence to "What The Papers Say" which had just been revived on BBC 2.
Also worth mentioning is an Odd One Out round from series 2 where Mother Teresa was one of those who had won the Turner Prize to which Angus said was for "the Calcutta shrivelled walnut lookalike competition"
Ian was particularly disgruntled by that remark and retorted with
"Who's next Albert Schweitzer? Bastard! Yeah!"
And there was also a missing words round where the question was "Small ____ For Maggie" to which guest Nick Hancock responded "Git as a son".
Nick: "You know about libel don't you Ian?"
Ian: "No, that's fair comment!"
By 1993 the show saw the first of many highlights including when Paul Merton appeared alongside a tub of lard in place of Roy Hattersley who had failed to show up for a third time.
Paul's team surprisingly ended up winning to which Ian compared himself to Graham Taylor, in one of his very rare football references.
Other significant moments included in 1994 where Tory MP Teddy Taylor appeared as a guest and having never seen the show before just went off in tangents thinking it was an excuse to get his statements across. This resulted in Paul Merton pretending to fall asleep and make gestures of him hanging himself.
1994 was also the year the show got into big trouble for a joke about Kevin and Ian Maxwell being "heartless scheming bastards" which got Angus into trouble for contempt of court and Hat Trick and the BBC a 20 grand fine.
Especially as the BBC had been told to keep references to a minimum to avoid them being biased.
The show has however been on the right side of a court case where in 1998 Rupert Allason lost a High Court libel action against a comment in the book "Have I Got 1997 For You" which suggested he was "a conniving little shit".
Having represented himself without a lawyer, he was never going to win.
The DVD also contains many run ins with guests including Ian Hislop Vs Paula Yates in 1995.
Most of the jokes made were about her breast implants but Ian was more peeved by the fact she was using the show to promote her autobiography.
Whether that's true or not it doesn't matter as she's dead now.
That show was notable for the set being changed to a green colour although it changed back to red after a week due to viewers finding it "nauseating".
The other great thing about the DVD is that it contains clips from the news that are unlikely to be found to buy anywhere else. One of them being Jeremy Paxman's one question interview with Michael Howard from May 1997 which still makes me laugh on every viewing.
The same series that year saw the infamous apperance of Neil and Christine Hamilton on the show that possibly launched their new "career". They even went as far as giving them "their fees" in paper bags although Neil was disapointed to find there wasn't actually any real money inside.
1998 saw the show switch to widescreen in the Autumn series and saw probably the first appearance of the BBC's Widescreen Test Card as part of a joke about the stupid memo telling BBC programmes not to refer to Peter Mandelson's sexuality.
Earlier that year saw the first of many apperances by Boris Johnson who started as he more or less meant to go on. After his appearance in April 1998, he wrote in a column in The Spectator complaining about the show being scripted, but he took it all back and became one of, if not the most popular guest on the show.
Ian mentioned in the commentary that many guests aren't as good on subsequent appearances, but with Boris it just got even better. At the time they had no idea that Boris would actually end up hosting the show.
Boris's second appearance on the show happened 18 months later in December 1999 where by a bizarre coincidence Janet Street Porter was on there as well having appeared with him first time round.
I didn't see the programme however as it was the same night I went to see Mamma Mia on a school visit and where things changed significantly as a result of a crush and a tape of old disco tracks I was listening to attached itself to the whole thing.
However I did get back in time to see the very end of the season finale of Friends where Ross and Rachel got married in a very cheap wedding.
Did it last? Did it hell.
Anyway the week before saw a long term target of the show finally found guilty of lying, that being Jeffrey Archer who's campaign to be Conservative Mayor for London fell apart as a result.
A few weeks earlier Labour candidate Glenda Jackson was a guest where they referred to a story about Archers rival candidate in the Tory party Stephen Norris who was alleged to have said "I will never, ever support Archer, alive or dead".
When Norris was asked about it on BBC Radio 4, he said "I don't recognise those words at all, I don't remember using them in any circumstances"
This was then followed by a clip of him saying "As I will never, ever support Archer, alive or dead..."
Of course Norris ended up losing to Ken Livingstone in the end.
The Spring 1999 series saw one of the show's most memorable moments where during the odd one out round Paul drifted off and it faded into a sequence where him and Ian were swaying in a field accompanied by Satie's "Gymnopedie".
This was only the beginning of a load of novelty to the point of stupid gimmicks that were present on the show, the worst one being when it moved to BBC 1 in October 2000 to coincide with the BBC moving it's main news bulletin to 10:00pm where Angus said that the move to BBC 1 didn't mean that it would affect the show's content.
This was immediately followed by a load of barely dressed dancing girls making their way into the studio but thankfully this was the worst that the show got in terms of those sort of gags.
2001 in spite of the summer and autumn that year being a struggle on a personal level, saw one of the best news stories of the year, that being Jefferey Archer finally getting banged up for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
We all know where we were in July 2001 when the verdict was announced.
The only person it seemed, who felt sorry for him was Jonathan Aitken, another man who fits into the category of a "right wing lying bastard".
Appropriatley enough one of the guests on the first show of the Autumn 2001 was Archer's biographer Michael Crick and this lead to that great clip of Archer ranting about how he didn't like the way the BBC made programmes about him;
"You wait 'til I'm Mayor! You'll find out how tough I am!"
Boris Johnson made his third and possibly funniest appearance as a panellist later on that series where he was subjected to a Mastermind spoof prompting him to say "I've never seen this on the show before".
As mentioned earlier, Boris went on to host the show after Angus's sacking the following year and continued to be popular to the point that he was probably the most well known Conservative MP in the country at the time.
The last time I saw Boris as a host on the show was in December 2006 and possibly the only show I saw in that series due to Uni life being more dominant.
I even remember having to hot foot it back to the radio rooms at 9:30pm as I'd left my hard drive up there, and there were still people present as a result of third years using all the time they could to edit their features.
It's probably safe to say that 2006 was most definitely the only year in my life where I've watched the least amount of television.
Appearances for Boris have been fewer recently with his duties as London Mayor taking priority, although it didn't stop Ken Livingstone appearing on the show during his reign, including an appearance as a guest on the legendary show on the 24th of May 2002. The highlights of which took up the last 10 minutes of the DVD.
When I first heard about it, not many people I spoke to cared about the story, but I knew that it was going to provide great telly and everyone else thought the same when it finally happened that Friday after it all broke out.
During the commentary itself Paul and Ian crack up when Angus can be seen from over the years making jokes about other public figures who took cocaine, including a rather amusing photo of John Major allegedly preparing for a speech on drug abuse.
It was more than evident in the last 5 or so years that Paul didn't get on with Angus and this was the ultimate excuse to really lay into him.
My favourite line from the show has to be around halfway through where Paul mentions he was surpised Angus had the nerve to turn up that week;
Angus: "Well I did. Because of you two"
Paul: "Yes, in a way it's our fault isn't it!"
I had no knowledge of him taking cocaine at all at the time, until Paul Merton made a joke about it on Just A Minute when they came to Canterbury later that year where he had to talk about "The Gutter Press";
"The gutter press, yesterday’s trees, tomorrow’s fish and chips. Not many people take much notice of what they read in the gutter news apart of course from the individuals that are featured.
Imagine your embarrassment if you were caught consorting with prostitutes and taking cocaine?
What an enormous, terrible thing that would be if you had to appear on television while people pointed fingers at you and general laughter. It’s an incredible thing that this should happen in this day and age.
Here we are in the 21st century, why can’t show business stars spend the BBC licence-payer’s money as they see fit? If they find a strumpet in a hotel, give her 50 quid, she’s probably worth it!"
That was definitely the highlight of the recording and it even made it on to the Arena documentary about Just A Minute shown at Christmas that year.
The DVD also contains some brillaint extras including the many trailers for the show from around 1999-2001 including the Millionaire spoofs from April 1999, the Big Brother send up from October 2000, and the "I Love 2001" trails from April 2001.
There's also a clip of Terry Wogan on Room 101 in 1997 wanting to put the show onto the conveyor belt, but the real reason being was that Angus Deayton wanted to dispose of Radio 2 in the previous series.
Presenter Nick Hancock showed two clips from both his appearances on the show where coincidentally, Arsenal player, now Portsmouth manager Tony Adams was one of those in the Odd One Out round.
One both occasions Nick suggested that Tony was the odd one out "because everyone else understood the offside rule".
Nick defended the fact that he repeated the joke because the Offside rule changed between 1991 and 1994.
The most interesting item however was a piece from Newsnight transmitted after the show where Neil and Christine Hamilton appeared as guests in May 1997.
This involved a report asking why politicians went on the show in order to build their "celebrity profile", followed by a studio debate with Derek Hatton and the late John Diamond.
John's points were spot on as Neil Hamilton thought he could use the show as an excuse to try and prove he was a general funnyman, and failing miserably.
Which he's probably now more famous for than his time as a Tory MP.
John had appeared on the programme himself, as did his then wife Nigella Lawson a few years later.
Her father Nigel had also been on the programme but relevance to the programme for me will be best remembered in a joke by Paul Merton made on the show hosted by Nicholas Parsons in May 2005 which I will probably refer to in a later post.
The Newsnight report itself by Krishnan Guru-Murthy included an interview with Roy Hattersley who mentioned that his reason for not turning up in 1993 was because at the last minute he decided to accept an offer to write an article for the Sunday Times about who Black and Asian people had made great contributions to British society.
At the end of the report Krishnan mentioned that the Hamiltons could do a lot worse things than appear on Have I Got News For You, which was illustrated by the opening titles to "It's A Knockout".
Sadly the Hamiltons were now involved in even more embarassing TV appearances than that, by the time the DVD had been released.
Despite it being really late, it's an early start tomorrow as I aim to get back to London as soon as I can to get my transcribing from last night completed. Shouldn't be too much of a demand.
Once again, a very late Good Night.
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