A Twit of a do

TV Cream is now on Twitter. So far the updates mostly comprise drink-soused dispatches from The Phoenix on Charing Cross Road in London.

Photo clippage #47

It’s July 1966, and ATV decides to throw a lunch for the England football team at its Borehamwood studios.  Bill Ward is your master of ceremonies; seated around the giant trestle table are Bobby Charlton, Mrs Charlton, Bobby Moore, Mrs Moore, Miss Tonia Ramsey daughter of Sir Alf, Sir Alf Ramsey, Mrs Ramsey, Mrs Geoff Hurst and Geoff Hurst.

“Stephen!” “Just coming!”

It’s the couplet that’s sending the most search queries to this blog. It’s the neologism that’s very very very very slowly gaining a bit of a toehold in the national consciousness. Recent aural sightings – if such things are semantically possible – include a Ben Folds gig, a screening of Blade Runner at the IMAX in London, and a New York museum. It’s even being written about in Word magazine, for heaven’s sake.

The thing started almost eight months ago (note how the call-and-responses have already undergone a pith-inspired contraction). It’s high time, i.e. past the point when it could have been genuinely original, to think of how TV Cream can properly join in. We’ve been banging a drum for Adam and Joe’s 6 Music efforts for ages. Might their be a way to take this one step further and stage some kind of Cream-esque STEPHEN! intervention, nay happening?

This isn’t a plea for a kind of joyless Chris Morris/Victor Lewis-Smith hijacking of another TV or radio programme; rather, an imaginative and witty STEPHEN! stunt that could cap the ones essayed to date. Something outside Broadcasting House one Saturday morning? A pre-arranged communal STEPHEN! in one of the nation’s great outdoor spaces? A bit of original video or tunesmithery? Any and all suggestions – and perhaps more importantly participants – welcome.

Anyway, in case you’re still wondering, here’s how it all started.

The seven ages of Frostie

1) SATIRICAL FROST (1962-3)
Rushton, Percival, Martin, Frost and Kernan bring down the establishment with a long-player and cardboard cut-out versions of their heads.

2) SCHMOOZER FROST (1964-7)
If it’s Tuesday it must be “open-mouth” practice and champagne breakfast with Macca.

 

3) SERIOUS FROST (1968-9)
A side-parting, a smile and a trimphone send Enoch Powell sprawling.

 

4) SEVENTIES FROST (1970-4)
Passing through Heathrow with fiancee Diahann Carroll and Duke Ellington; sideburn outlook: fair to changeable.

 

5) SEVENTIES FROST II (1975-9)
Just time for a snifter in the Playboy Club; sideburn outlook: severe.

 

6) SUNRISE FROST (1980-4)
Our hero suddenly ages 30 years. Note Parky and Kee struggling – and failing – to adopt “relaxed man of the people” pose; Frostie can’t be arsed.

 

7) SERVILE FROST (1985-DATE)
Sir David is no longer one of us.

‘Heavens woman, yesterday was 24 hours ago!’

An ex-KGB spy has bought the Evening Standard. If only this were 1969, not 2009…

[AFTERNOON. INTERIOR. A CAVERNOUS OFFICE LINED WITH GIANT PORTRAITS, MURALS AND LANDSCAPES; A CHANDELIER HANGS FROM THE CEILING. AT ONE END, A HUGE MAHOGANY DESK. TO ONE SIDE, A FIREPLACE BLAZES. BAY WINDOWS OVERLOOK LONDON'S SKYLINE. THERE IS FADED CARPET ON THE FLOOR. A GRANDFATHER CLOCK TICKS. A MAN SITS SILENTLY IN A SWIVEL CHAIR BEHIND THE DESK, HIS FACE OBSCURED.]

[THERE IS A KNOCK ON THE DOOR]

PATRICK WYMARK: Enter!

[THE DOOR SWINGS OPEN. AN ENORMOUS MAN IN A FUR COAT AND TALL HAT STEPS INSIDE, WAITS, THEN WALKS VERY SLOWLY INTO THE ROOM. HE STOPS IN THE CENTRE. HE CRACKS HIS KNUCKLES, THEN CLEARS HIS THROAT]

PATRICK: Can I…help you?

PETER USTINOV: That…depends.

[PAUSE]

PATRICK: Yes?

PETER: Excuse me, may I have the pleasure of knowing to whom I am speaking?

PATRICK: For now it is enough that you know I am who you believe I am.

PETER: Then let me extend the same courtesy to you.

PATRICK: [SWINGING ROUND IN HIS CHAIR TO FACE HIS VISITOR] That will…not be necessary.

[PETER SHUFFLES OVER TO THE WINDOW]

PETER: Oi-yoi-yoi. London in January is so beautifully decadent, my Western comrade. Why, I think I can ever see from here the, how do you say, the dolly bird?

PATRICK: Come come, I never put your sort down for coyness. Why start now?

PETER: Things…are different now…

PATRICK: Yes…Yes…

[HE PICKS UP A FRAMED PHOTOGRAPH AND, SIGHING, PLACES IT FACE DOWN ON HIS DESK. HE SHAKES HIS HEAD]

PATRICK: The days of the true imperialist are, I fear, long gone.

PETER: [LIGHTING A CIGAR] But I think you will agree that some imperial habits die hard, comrade? [CHUCKLES]

[PATRICK RISES FROM HIS CHAIR AND WALKS TO THE FIREPLACE, WHERE HE POKES AT THE EMBERS DISCONSOLATELY]

PATRICK: My dear fellow, there comes a point in any man’s life when even the most imperial of habits have to be broken…

PETER: …Yes, yes…

PATRICK: …If only to…

[HE PAUSES]

PETER: See what is left amongst the pieces? [HE SETTLES INTO A HUGE ARMCHAIR AND DRUMS HIS FINGERS ON THE ARMREST]

PATRICK: I believe you have a proposition, and I would be grateful if you would state it, then get out.

[A KNOCK ON THE DOOR. A WOMAN ENTERS]

BARBARA MURRAY: It is customary the world over to stand upon the entrance of a lady.

[PETER RISES, SHEEPISHLY]

PETER: Madam. One hundred apologies.

BARBARA: For your remiss etiquette or for your country’s outdated cultural barbarism?

PETER: What creature is this, that doth have such a barbed tongue?

PATRICK: The one who fixed up this whole damn deal. Now let’s get to business – the Secretary of State is keen to have this settled before the US market opens.

PETER: Ever the kindly thought for our American cousins.

BARBARA: A few more kindly thoughts from your country, sir, and they would be your cousins too.

PATRICK: Steady!

PETER: What…are your terms?

[PATRICK PACES AROUND THE ENTIRE ROOM, HANDS BEHIND HIS BACK, CHIN SUNK INTO HIS STOMACH, BEFORE SUDDENLY STOPPING AND POINTING AT PETER]

PATRICK: The whole operation. Every last printing press and stencil. Yours to do what you like with.

BARBARA: But…

PATRICK: No! Hear me out! My mind is made up.

BARBARA: Surely you…

PETER: Control yourself my dear. You heard the man!

BARBARA: I just don’t think…

PATRICK: No. No, no, no. I’ve decided. There’s just too much to lose, what with the Congo, American Tobacco, that ghastly foul-up in Laos…

BARBARA: But yesterday you…

PATRICK: Heavens woman, yesterday was 24 hours ago!

PETER: I congratulate you on your grasp of metaphysics, if not your sense of realpolitik.

BARBARA [FALLING TO HER KNEES, SOBBING] I beg of you…please…think of…

PATRICK: Think of what? Think of Oxford after the war? Think of the Isis in the moonlight, lying in each other’s arms while discussing the putative decline and fall of neo-fascist totalitarianism?

PETER: You have to admit, my lady, he does make a powerful case.

PATRICK: Please believe me. I have no choice. It’s just…it’s just…a matter of expediency…

[THE DOOR FLIES OPEN]

MICHAEL JAYSTON: Stop! Don’t sign! You mustn’t! I’ve…

[A SHOT RINGS OUT]

PETER: Expediency, you say?

[MICHAEL COLLAPSES ON THE FLOOR]

PETER: Hurry now. Name your price.

[PATRICK WALKS BEHIND HIS DESK, OPENS A DRAWER AND PULLS OUT A PIECE OF PAPER. HE SCRIBBLES SOMETHING ON IT, THEN WALKS OVER TO PETER AND HANDS HIM THE DOCUMENT]

PATRICK: My final offer. And believe me, I’ve sacrificed far more for far less.

PETER: I…I…

BARBARA: [HYSTERICAL] What’s the matter? Lost for words, you filthy man?

PETER: One English pound sterling?

PATRICK: Hand it over!

PETER: You will not regret this, comrade.

[HE HANDS OVER ONE POUND NOTE, THEN, CASTING ONE LAST GLANCE AT BARBARA, HURRIES OUT OF THE DOOR]

[INSTANTLY, ANOTHER MAN RACES IN]

PETER BARKWORTH: [PANTING] Was that who I think it was?

PATRICK: Alas, yes. That was the new owner of…the London Evening Standard.

CLIFFORD EVANS [STEPPING OUT FROM BEHIND A PILLAR, WHERE HAS BEEN SECRETLY WATCHING THE ENTIRE SCENE]: And may God have mercy on our capitalist souls.

[CUT TO BLACK]

Tony Hart RIP

No more, please. Too many chunks of childhood have already been lost this year to warrant such a rate of expiry persisting any longer.

It’s not fair. January is a barren enough month as it is. To have four masters of the crystal bucket vanish in a mere seven days…it’s just not on. This virtual black armband is starting to lose resonance. How can you celebrate the way things were if you’re stuck only ever having to commemorate it instead?

Of the latest casualty, despite no longer here in any physical sense, the very least you can say is that Tony Hart’s spirit lives on. It lives on in anyone who ever used a wooden stick to carve a giant face on a sandy beach; anyone who ever added a pair of eyes, hands and feet to that superfluous blob of plasticine in the school artroom; anyone who ever borrowed the family Pritt Stick, Copydex or Gloy Gum to doodle the outline of something on a bit of paper, shower the paper with glitter, then tip the paper on its side to reveal…a glittery doodle; anyone who ever filled a used washing-up bottle with paint, suspended it upside down by string, pricked a tiny hole in the lid then let it swing back and forth all over the back of an old bit of wallpaper; anyone who ever covered a sheet of paper with a rainbow of Crayola, then covered that with a layer of black crayon, then used a toothpick to scrape through the black residue and create magical multi-coloured houses, clouds and animals; and anyone who saw other people, people like them, getting their drawings shown on national television and felt moved to try and do the same.

Everyone, basically. His spirit lives on in every single one of us.

John Mortimer RIP

Not been the best of weeks.

Euston Road, March 1978:

Poll axed

It’s high time to see how TV Cream’s predictions for 2009 turned out. Who’d have thought that, as Big Ben chimed midnight back on New Year’s Eve, time would race so stoically yet falteringly onwards to 12.01am. Yet it did, and if ever there was a moment for looking back in a context not involving a BBC4 theme night rooted in a grim 60-minute Mark Lawson-piloted interview, now might well be it.

What, then, in our poll of likely events for 2009, proved to be on the money?

FORECAST: After spending much of 2008 trying to end Jonathan Ross’s career, journalists at the Media Guardian will spend much of 2009 trying to avoid losing theirs by generating copy based on numerous stories about Jonathan Ross.

TV CREAM 2009 MATRIX DATABANK SAYS: Ding!

FORECAST: The Dr Who fan community will accuse the programme’s makers of “breaking” the franchise by choosing a new Dr Who who isn’t a) older than them like David Tennant b) a Shakespearean actor like David Tennant c) in possession of bug eyes like David Tennant d) David Tenannt

TV CREAM 2009 MATRIX DATABANK SAYS: Ding!

FORECAST: Radio Times will run a billing on its ‘Today’s Choices’ page which ends by saying, with brazen laziness, ‘DVDs were unavailable but expect x, y and z’.

TV CREAM 2009 MATRIX DATABANK SAYS: Ding!
The City Uncovered with Evan Davis, Wednesday 14 January, 9pm BBC2
‘…DVDs were unavailable but expect hand-waving, twinkling smiles and lucid analysis.’

FORECAST: Patrick McGoohan will die, and someone will try and claim he invented the TV series Lost.

TV CREAM 2009 MATRIX DATABANK SAYS: Ding!

FORECAST: The Daily Mail goes fucking mental.

TV CREAM 2009 MATRIX DATABANK SAYS: Ding!

FORECAST: TV Cream Towers will compose a blog post on the premise that the year is over when it’s only half-way through January.

TV CREAM 2009 MATRIX DATABANK SAYS: Zero points. ‘Compose’ implies some thought goes into this thing.

Patrick McGoohan RIP

Be seeing you.

David Vine RIP

Farewell to the guv’nor.

Superstars, July 1983: the man grills Brian Hooper while Stuart Matthews, David Wilkie, Lynn Davies and Conrad Bartelski look on.

Also starring Stephen Merchant as Norman Tebbit

Taking a cue from Five-Centres’s speculation on the likelihood of a docudrama about the Marchioness, it’s time for another bout of fantasy casting – specifically, the identity of those gracing this year’s slew of anniversary programming.

Where There Is Discord…
A 90-minute drama marking the 30th anniversary of the election of Britain’s first female prime minister.
When Jim Callaghan’s Labour government loses a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, the country goes to the polls. The choice: Uncle Jim’s battle-worn administration, recently buffeted by headlines accusing them of leaving the entire nation’s dead unburied on street corners; or a woman from Grantham willing to be photographed holding a baby cow.
Starring Alun Armstrong (Jim Callaghan), Richard Briers (Michael Foot), Penelope Wilton (Margaret Thatcher), Peter Egan (Denis Healey), Caroline Quentin (Shirley Williams), David Mitchell (Roy Hattersley), Richard Wilson (Willie Whitelaw) and David Tennant (David Steel). With guest appearances by Ralf Little (striking binman), Ruth Jones (steel worker’s wife) and Les Dennis (man who designs Labour Isn’t Working poster); and Tony Blackburn, Rik Mayall and David Dimbleby as themselves.
(BBC4)

Marchioness! The Day Thatcher’s Children Died
30-minute dramatisation of the sinking of the pleasure boat Marchioness by the dredger Bowbelle in August 1989.
A star-encrusted cast recreate a night of tragedy. Starring Jessie Wallace, Christopher Ellison, Kate Copstick, Tony Slattery, Melinda Messenger, Leslie Grantham and Colin Baker. Featuring a guest appearance by Norman St John Stevas.
(Five)*

It’s Good To Squawk: Busby, BT and The Great British Sell-Off
Raucous 60-minute comedy drama revisiting the background to the privatisation of British Telecom 25 years ago: an emblematic moment in Thatcher’s Britain and the first of many denationalisations of publicly-owned utilities.
It’s 1980: British Telecom is born, and two hassled advertising executives (Mark Gatiss and Paul Shane) struggle to come up with a gimmick to promote the new brand. Little do they know that four years later their client will be forced to sell itself back to the country and our heroes will be landed with a wave of come-and-get-it national campaigns. Also starring Stephen Merchant as Norman Tebbit, Rob Brydon as Neil Kinnock, Catherine Tate as Margaret Thatcher and Simon Bates as himself.
(Channel 4)

*Actually, according to Wikipedia a dramatisation has already been made and was scheduled for transmission in 2007, but ITV pulled it.

My clothes are black but my bread is brown

Forget your Specials, Police, Blur, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine and whoever is reforming (again) in the next 12 months. Now that The Beautiful South is no more, it must be only a Humber-spanning period of time before the second best band of the 80s, the third best ever songwriting partnership in Britain and the fourth best band from Hull get back together.

They’re all still on good terms. There wasn’t any bad blood at the time, even when they swapped drummers between albums. Indeed such was their nonimosity they used this changing of the skins (usually that most bitter of musical machinations) into a conceit for the following, irrefutably* one of the finest singles of the decade:

*The evidence being the fact the final score is, still, London 0, Hull 4.

You might remember 2009 from such anniversaries as…

What’s to look forward to this year on a notable numerological bent?

For starters there’s a slew of TV stations-cum-channels who are chalking up significant birthdays. Sky is 20 years old on the 5th February, the date when it launched its original four channel package in the UK on the Astra 1A satellite: Sky Movies, Sky News, Eurosport and the flagship Sky Channel with glittering new fare such as Joanie Loves Chachi, the Nescafe UK Network Top 50 and – still going strong today – The Hour Of Power. Will there be a lavish retrospective brimming with finely-chosen archivery topped off with clips personally selected by Rupert Murdoch himself? No.

More promising, perhaps, are the 50th birthdays of, respectively, Tyne Tees (15th January – that’s next week!) Anglia (27th October) and Ulster (31st October). There’s got to be some potential for nostalgia programming here, not least with Ulster, who usually seize any opportunity to poke the rest of ITV in the eye with a independent-sized finger. But is there anything scheduled for transmission next Thursday, when TTTV notches up five decades of broadcasting? An evening of fun, laughter and surprises live from a boat on the Tyne with Mike Neville? At the moment, no.

How about a few individual programmes being honoured with a coming-of-age season/remake/talking headathon on BBC4? It’s 50 years since the first Juke Box Jury, since Quatermass and The Pit, and – above all – the first proper TV general election coverage. That last one clearly merits plenty of hat-doffing, preferably in the shape of a complete repeat run of all election night programmes on BBC Parliament, including every single by-election, local election and European election to boot. Well, they’ve got three months’ airtime to fill in the summer, for heaven’s sake!

Other anniversaries include Monty Python (40 years: what’ll we get this time? A DVD entitled ‘The 40 Most Repeated Yet Undeniably Amusing In A Faintly Uncomfortable British Kind Of Way Great Big Monty Python Sketches’? Or, what we really want, a DVD of the fucking series with a load of decent fucking extras for once?), To The Manor Born, Shelley and Not The Nine O’Clock News (30 years) and Seinfeld (20 years).

Plus there are all the pop cultural milestones, like it being 25 years since York Minster was struck by lightning, the Liverpool Garden Festival and British Telecom being privatised; and 20 years since the Exxon Valdez burped all over the coast of Alaska and the Berlin Wall fell down.

Any sign of any of these being given a theme night on BBC2? A Radio 4 documentary? No. Granted, it is only 5th January. But those all-important contextualising clips of Busby, Michael Heseltine planting a tree in Toxteth and Arthur Scargill wagging a finger won’t clear themselves.

Mike Smith named as new Dr Who

The BBC has revealed the name of the person to take over from David Tennant as owner of the most famous trans-dimensional time-travelling police call box-shaped spaceship on children’s television.

It is Mike Smith, former Radio 1 DJ, erstwhile comedy foil to Noel Edmonds, and latterly known for his role as full-time husband of Sarah Greene.

Mike is the youngest person to play Dr Who since the last one. An insider at the BBC revealed that Smith intends to bring to the part “something of all the previous Doctors” and that his characterisation will be “similar yet different” to the dozen or so other actors who have depicted the wacky wizard on television, film and stage.

Children, parents and heterosexuals have been speaking of their delight at the news. The entire Dr Who fan community, meanwhile, has gone into an instant sulk at the realisation that for the first time the Doctor is being played by somebody younger than them.

Noel Edmonds, who initially told the press he had nothing to say on the matter, later appeared at the garden gate of his giant mansion and freely chatted to reporters about how he wished “the sad bastard the best of British luck” and hoped he “had more joy flying the TARDIS than that bloody helicopter”.

Mike’s wife Sarah, who appeared in an episode of Dr Who during the 1980s, is rumoured to be making a cameo in the new series. When questioned, Sarah is alleged to have remarked: “the last time anyone saw me on television was locked in a cellar being ravished by a poltergeist; I’m damned if that’s going to be the last line on my CV”.

New year, new feature

Gazing into the TV Cream crystal ball, bought from the boot of James Burke’s car one foggy afternoon in 1996, what does 2009 hold in store? One word: revivals.

With it being the age of make do and mend – itself a hand-me-down maxim from former times – the next 12 months are likely to be peppered with them. Comebacks. Resurgences. ‘Welcome returns’ (a phrase nobody ever uses in everyday speech ever: “What’s on telly tonight?” “Well, there’s a welcome return for The Krypton Factor, dear!”)

Here are 20 things that could possibly reappear at some point in 2009. And look: you can vote for the ones you think (not hope) will actually happen!

A few notes. Mr and Mrs would be hosted by Alan Carr, and would be a proper ‘ordinary people’ affair. The Yeti is next in line for a wacky encounter with wacky Dr Who David Tennant. Michael Grade is surely tempted to bring back rubbed-faced funnymen and women in primetime. ‘Five pounds in notes’ was once, and could be again, the amount you’d be able to take out of the country when going on holiday. Prefab Sprout, one of the greatest bands ever, are tipped to release a new album.

ACAS is in there because there’ll be strikes (cue talk of ‘a spring/summer/autumn/winter of discontent’). Strike It Lucky would be hosted by Joe Swash and would be a flop. Gallifrey has already been mooted wisely by Stuart over on Feeling Listless. Clive James might need the money. Danny Baker seems destined to become a full-on BBC ‘face’ once more. There’ll be a general election in the autumn and nobody will win a majority. Shooting Stars would be a series. Phoenix Nights would be a one-off, called Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights For One Night Only. And December will be the 25th anniversary of Do They Know It’s Christmas. A remake will come out on SyCo records.