Her again

It being the week for retreading the path of La Passionara of Privilege, and what with the 30th anniversary of her arrival in Downing Street not being broadcast by the BBC looming, here are a few short clips of when the irreconciliable worlds of Margaret Thatcher and popular culture collided.

1) Maggie does stand-up. Cecil and Ken seem to love it,  Tom King is in hysterics, but someone else appears to be choking into a handkerchief and the second tier of people on the platform are clapping because everyone else is. It’s a shame you don’t have party conferences like this anymore, with everyone in rows on a giant dais below a huge cardboard logo. Thatcher sounds like she’s reading the agenda at a meeting of a local parish church council. The sequence ends with the cameraman attempting, and failing, to find somebody in the audience who is laughing through comprehension, not apprehension.

2) Another conference, earlier in the decade. It’s 9.10am and waiting for Maggie outside the lift doors is John Stapleton with a huge stick microphone. He ushers her and her party (including Denis, who almost gets caught in the lift) over to a small frontispiece saying ‘TV-am Blackpool’ and a birthday cake. “We shall have to have just a small slice”.

…but wait, because there’s a Cilla-esque look-at-a-monitor-over-there surprise: a live link-up with Eggcup Towers, where Carol is sitting on the sofa. Maggie talks about a cosmetic case in which “you can put shoes”. They swap memories about a cake made to resemble a roundabout (how would this have worked?), before Thatcher launches into a classic ramble. ”Children don’t want fruit cakes for their birthday, they want sponge cakes, something quite light…” John tries to interrupt, but her eminence presses on. “They also like Twiglets…”

3) More TV-am, this time from the confines of the studio. Thatcher, who has a bad throat, croaks at her interviewer with the kind of well-spoken rage that went out of fashion c. 1994.  ”Do you think Mr Frost that I spend my days prowling round the pigeon holes of the Ministry of Defence? If you do, you must be bonkers…I’m sorry, what did you say?”

4) Britain is broken, and some kids want something done about it. This involves yelling during the 1980 Tory party conference. Maggie does her best headmistress – “Never mind, it’s wet outside, I expect they want to come in” - before giving the nod to a group of men to kick the hecklers in the teeth.

5) Finally, it’s lunchtime on 22nd November 1990, and just before some “mystery art lovers are revealed in Neighbours,” Philip Hayton has some important news. You could always tell when there was important news on the BBC in the Birt era, because rather than cut to the presenter after the titles, the camera went straight into a clip. Or rather, a freeze-framed clip that then jerked into life once the music had stopped. Phil sits at his desk in a really strange position and cues in William Waldegrave (“Are you still behind the prime minister Mr Waldegrave?” “Yes I am”) and some dreadfully-filmed footage of Heseltine being interviewed at an acorn-planting ceremony. 

Wendy Richard RIP

In happier times, as they always say, with Christopher Cazenove, Peter Jeffrey and Jakki Brambles.

Photo clippage #48

It’s the 1990s, which means Danny Baker is arriving at or is leaving or has just resigned from another radio station. But wait; who’s that bursting through the door in time for another “tsk, look at us?!” photo opportunity? It’s Chris Evans, on his way from, or to, a job at a different radio station, or possibly the same one, for his first or last programme until the next one. But wherever they are on your radio, you can be sure it ain’t no country show.

Missing Dr Who episodes finally found

Well, at last, at long last, the search is over.

Ian Levine can hang up his telephone, nay all his telephones, settle back in his giant customised Noel Clarke-shaped beanbag, and slowly puff out his bilious cheeks. Yup, the location of all the remaining missing episodes of Dr Who has been revealed. Robert Mugabe has them.

It seems one of the world’s most wicked men, a tyrant who is culpable in the wrecking of a once prosperous nation and the starving of millions of citizens, is also a fan of children’s science fiction.

Now chances are, in some people’s eyes, four words of that preceding sentence cancel out all the others. Indeed, ‘wicked’, ‘tyrant’, ‘wrecking’ and ’starving’ are undoubtedly tremulous charges.

But in other people’s eyes, people more used to prowling the floors of reference libraries humming tunes inspired by whichever particular archive edition of Radio Times they’ve just requested, or who have installed multiple telephone lines in their Panopticon-sized penthouse just in case two people try and get in touch about an off-air recording of episode four of The Web Planet (‘Crater Of Needles’) complete with BBC continuity at the same time, the thought of even some of those 108 “lost classics” nestling in Mugabe’s ottoman offsets such trivial matters as an inflation rate of 231,000,000%.

Maybe Levine hasn’t eased himself delicately into Noel’s thighs quite yet, and is instead at this moment demanding an open passage to Harare.

What, though, might be the evil fucker’s favourite episodes?

1) The Massacre Of St Bartholomew’s Eve (1966)
Body doubles, body counts and bodies of suspicious evidence, plus the main protagonist absent from the public eye for long periods of time “on holiday”. Home from home, really.

2) The Savages (1966)
A civilised elite maintain an advanced society by requisitioning and siphoning off the physical and psychological assets of a bunch of locals. Well, the siphoning off bit is true enough. And in both cases the locals are left destitute. As for the meddling old man who turns up from out of nowhere, he is, naturally, “the United Kingdom”. Everything that goes “wrong” in Zimbabwe is the fault of “the United Kingdom”.

3) The Chase (1965)
Because Robert likes a good runaround. Look, there’s William Shakespeare doing the Charleston on the top of the Empire State Building.

4) The Daleks’ Masterplan (1965-66)
Because Sara Kingdom sounds a bit like United Kingdom.

5) The Enemy Of The World (1967-68)
“Dinner tonight’s going to be a national disaster! First course interrupted by bomb explosion. Second course affected by earthquakes. Third course ruined by interference in the kitchen. I’m going out for a walk. It’ll probably rain.”

6) The Invasion (1968)
A particular favourite of Robert’s, thanks to its realistic depiction of corrupt western society (a young girl doing a fashion shoot in her own living room! More young girls hiding in packing crates! St Paul’s Cathedral!) plus the fact he can do a frame-by-frame comparison of the original episodes with the animated substitutions done for the DVD and laugh knowingly whenever Gary Russell pops up talking about “taping it all off the telly”.

Photo clippage: Lime Grove special

Apropos nothing, a few snapshots of the erstwhile home of Nationwide, Tonight, 24 Hours, Breakfast Time and The Dimbleby Talk-In.

1) It’s 11th January 1954, and the Beeb’s new weatherman George Cowling makes his first appearance from Lime Grove. “He has been introduced in an effort to brighten presentation of the weather news.”

2) Forward 15 years or so. It’s the 1960s, which must mean a PR stunt involving a Magic Bus ride from outside Lime Grove with passengers The Who, a baby elephant called Eli, and two girls called Nicola Austine and Toni Lee:

3) April 1958: David is joined on the set of Zoo Quest by a youthful jumped-up self-preening squawker with a propensity for mouthing off. And Cocky the parrot. And Prince Charles.

4) Continuity announcer Sylvia Peters steps from a Heinkel bubble car on a chilly day in February 1957, to be greeted by Old Man Truscott, the Lime Grove commissionaire:

5) Richard Dimbleby, David Butler and co rehearse for their 1955 General Election results programme, replete with Puzzle Trail-style map of the realm:

“How long has the album been got together, as it were?”

This being the week of the BPI Awards, here’s a helping from 1980 back when it was still the Radio 1 Daily Mirror Nationwide (precise order open to debate) Rock and Pop Awards.

Highlights include DLT’s many attempts at jocular adlibbery (“Oh Katy Katy, you look a bit shattered…No plugs for Walt Disney please”), Sue in a flattering outfit introducing Leo Sayer (“A gentleman for whom I personally have a very soft spot”), BA Robertson pissing about, the Numanoid looking comatose and the fact Cliff came third in the Best Male category. It’d be nice if the audience shut up now and then.

Meanwhile here’s 1989’s roustabout in full.

The First Division of Television Furniture

One of the many many highlights of BBC4’s recent Nationwide documentary was the sight of Michael Barratt blithely doing a bit to camera while a pot plant grew out of his desk.

This instantly confirmed the admission of Mike’s office suite (telephone, ashtray and customised wall of monitors included) to that uber-exclusive inventory: the First Division of Television Furniture.

But does it command enough upholstered clout to outrank any of the Division’s current top five?

1) The BBC Weathermen Daytime Desktop Conversation Area

Perma-feature of the mid-to-late 1980s, never without an in-season bouquet, that tantalisingly-unexplained ‘box of tricks’ at the forecaster’s fingers, and a view across London allowing details of the climate to be followed niftily by an avuncular ‘…as you can see behind me’.

2) The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop Presentation Pod

Vaguely space age-esque circular plaything covered in crap but boasting space for Edmonds to rakishly put his feet up. “People are always asking me, how do you get inside it?” fibbed Noel every week. He revealed the answer on the last edition. A nation shrugged.

3) The Dave Allen Anecdote High Chair And Retractable Side Table

Uncomfortable-looking contraption from which its occupant dispensed pointed blarney and acidic blather, usually involving as many equally terse arm gestures as possible. Accompanying left-hand add-on accessory served as holding pen for important visual aids and safety blankets.

4) The Channel 4 Daily Newsreader Bureau

Thunderously po-faced look-how-serious-we-are arrangement of dull and joyless colours and items organised for maximum potency to remind the viewing several of how fucking ghastly the world is first thing in the morning. Available in London, Washington and Tokyo varieties.

5) The Turnabout Swimming Pool

Never knowingly used, referred to, advertised, entered, drained, chlorinated, defumigated, sifted, salinated, polluted or covered out-of-season to avoid falling leaves. But it was still genius.

Fantasy Sunday night schedules: slight return

Thanks to those few people who took up TV Cream’s challenge and devised a Sunday night line-up for BBC1 that captured some of that Grade-endorsed ”smell” of bygone days.

It wasn’t a competition, but it turns out there was a winner. Step forward John Connolly, whose prize is to have his schedule rendered in this tasteful slide:

John also supplied billings for each of these shows.

Second prize goes to anybody who is willing to hazard a guess at what was on the original version of that enticingly-late-80s-looking continuity slide.

Insert snow pun here

Getting to see snow when it’s not Christmas is one thing; getting to see snow on TV when it’s not a Christmas special is quite another emphatically more ace thing.

Here are three instances when a bit of the white stuff creeps into a series for no other reason except by virtue of being there, but somehow ends up managing to make everything feel a whole lot more magical. And if not magical, it just makes everything feel a whole lot more.

1) Revelation of the Daleks, 1985 (episode 1)

Dr Blue. "Come on Peri, button up!"

Dr Who steps out of the TARDIS to discover a landscape that throws his tasteless garb into even more sharp, painful relief than the combined efforts of half a dozen mid-80s BBC studio lighting rigs.

The snow is the only good thing about Revelation of the Daleks. It makes the planet look properly alien, creates a tangible atmosphere – a first for the Colin Baker era – and forces Peri to cover up. Because, not to be prudish or anything, there’s only so much John Nathan-Turner titillation you can stand, and having Nicola Bryant contrive to totter about in tiny contrived costumes had, by this point, long ceased to feel charmingly contrived.

What, though, is Colin Baker purporting to wear in these scenes? Apparently nobody on the production team knew it was going to snow on location, and they all woke up on the first day of filming to find the place blanketed in white stuff. Which means Colin’s turquoise smock was, presumably, the nearest thing to hand when the call went out for Giant Cape With Exotic Trimmings As Close As Possible To The Curtains That Used To Hang Behind Parky In The 1970s Except Blue To Make It Even More Tasteless When Combined With The Doctor’s Totally Tasteless Dressing Gown.

Nicola and Colin comfort a Dr Who fan found on set

Episode one also includes a memorable encounter with a mysterious bubble-faced freak who is discovered, along with – by this point in Dr Who’s history – the show’s remaining dwindling credibility, in a heap in the dirt on the ground.

However because this character has traces of substance and depth, rather than mere superficial shock value and the vague appearance of meaning, he is left to die and the storyline hurries on towards an ending which involves Colin Baker being symbolically and appropriately crushed by a titanic statue of his own face.

The snow is never seen again.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 1979 (episode 1)

Sir Alec and Michael stop for a spot of Witchcraft

Professor Marcus and the Valeyard are on their way to meet Shelley who is going to tell them “a story – and it’s all about spies”. They suspect they might be being followed, and so decide to pull over into a lay-by to check all is well.

For no reason at all – and hence all the better for it – it is snowing, and the pair of them fall to nattering about moles, lamplighters and “our American cousins” in an icy near-darkness.

It’s one of the rawest scenes in the entire serial. You rarely ever get a sense of total, bone-chilling, all-pervasive cold in a television programme. But you do here. It bleeds from the screen. Our heroes are bedecked in layer upon layer of clothing, and barely move for fear, presumably, of having to joust with the British weather.

"There are three of them - and Alleline". "Yes".

Sir Alec looks especially pinched. He is swaddled in what appears to be an early prototype of Colin Baker’s cape, albeit in a more subtle shade of black. The Smiley persona (smouldering immobility, twinkle-eyed curiosity, a profound sadness) is already fully formed.

At one point Michael Jayston has to get out of the car to pretend to check under the bonnet, just in case anybody is spying on the spies. The action moves outside, and you get to see a blizzard in progress.

The snow, like everything in Britain in the late-70s, looks dirty and unbecoming.

The Simpsons: Bart Gets An ‘F’ (1990)

You seem star-shaped

In this case the snow isn’t quite so peripheral to the plot as the previous two examples, but it’s not falling because it’s Christmas, or to prove any point.

It arrives out of nowhere in the third part of the episode, supposedly because Bart prayed for it, to test the tyke’s devotion to his schoolwork while allowing everyone else in Springfield to have the time of their lives.

This sequence is one of the best in the show’s history, thanks to the way it manages to capture that feeling of unconfined exhiliration that a spot of unexpected snowfall prompts in all of us. Everyone rushes out into the streets, old and young, and starts pissing about. Even Mr Burns.

"As God is my witness, I can pass the fourth grade!"

The fact it’s from the second series, when some of the animation was still a bit dodgy and the characters’ voices not spot on, makes it even more hat-doffingly superb.

You’d never get something as fantastic as this turning up in The Simpsons nowadays.

For one thing the computer graphics, as opposed to cell animation, would make it look flat and joyless. The writers and producers would dismiss it as too trivial (where are the jokes, or the bits where Homer gets repeatedly injured, or the ubiquitous guest stars?) or too boring (it’s just people doing things of no consequence). Above all, the snow would have to have a reason, probably to send the family abroad (“The Simpsons are going to the Low Countries!”), rather than just being simply, beautifully, snow.

“Can you imagine it? A channel that shows nothing but films!”

It being precisely 20 years since Sky Television arrived in the UK, here’s a special photo clippage collection hailing from the station’s early what-would-the-neighbours-think era.

1) Down at Waterloo station, Frank Bough is on hand to greet commuters with a video wall that tries to make five channels look like fifty-five.

2) Back at HQ, Rupert perches on a draped box to join Andrew Neil in pushing the ‘Push This Button To Make TV Channel Start’ Button:

3) Rupert and Alan sign a 10-year lease for the Astra satellite (real size pictured):

4) Meet the team! Andrew, Peter, Alistair, Derek, Penny, Tony, Kay and Bob:

5) Forward a few years, and Sky is ready to be floated on the stock exchange. Sam Chisholm and Anna Walker threaten to be upstaged by what everyone’s really interested in…that’s right – the news that shares will be between 233p and 268p!

6) Jeremy Guscott and Roger Black receive their application forms for shares in British Sky Broadcasting Group plc. Well, that’s what it says here.

7) The Premier League arrives, in the shape of BSkyB cheerleader Liniette Bertelsen, in the capable hands of Messrs Salako, Le Saux, Mabbutt, Cundy and Merson:

Let’s play…fantasy Sunday night scheduling

Thinking more about Sunday Night Telly (TM), particularly in light of some of your comments, it’s clear that it was once, more so than any other, the night that had the most palpable associations with watching TV. More so than Saturday night, when the business of sitting in front of the box would forever be disturbed by social events and comings and goings. No, Sunday night was once the time when the black arts of scheduling were deployed to the full and you happily surrendered yourself to the crystal bucket until you decided/were told to go to bed.

Which leads to this: a TV Cream challenge. Imagine you are Controller of BBC1. How would you schedule Sunday night so as to restore some of that once-pervasive Grade-patented “smell”? What, in other words, is your fantasy Sunday night line-up?

A couple of rules. This isn’t a free-for-all: the BBC department chiefs are supplying you with a fixed roster of shows, with only one gap for a completely new commission. And the slot to fill is 6.30-11.30pm: five hours.

To play with, in alphabetical order, you have:

Contemporary drama series (50 minutes)
News and weather (15 minutes)
Period drama serial (50 minutes)
Personality-led documentary/investigation (40 minutes)
Quiz/panel game (30 minutes)
Sitcom (30 minutes)
Topical chat/talk show (45 minutes)
YOUR CHOICE (40 minutes)

The programme just before 6.30pm is Songs Of Praise, and at 11.30pm there is a Late Film. If possible, please give examples of the kind of sitcom/talk show etc. you want to put in each slot, with presenters where necessary.

Time to spin that schedule wheel…

A Sunday night-shaped hole

The weekend has only a few hours left to live. Monday is trying to make itself heard. You’re trying not to listen. It’s snowing outside. The choices: a pile of ironing, making tomorrow’s lunch, or giving up and buggering off bed.

It wasn’t always like this. Once there was a “smell” to a Sunday night, one that reached its zenith in the 80s when Michael Grade believed he’d bottled said essence and knew the precise ingredients to give it maximum potency.

Sunday night telly used to be…Sunday Night Telly. It used to feel like it could lift this most unlifted and listless of occasions into something that was actually worth looking forward to, something that had a bit of a character and its own personality.

It might be the night for costumed roustabouts. It might be the night for biblical bombast. It might be sweary puppets or chinking ice cubes or upper class twittery or working class shystering or whiskery Whickery or feature length Potter or pensionable heifers or Richard Briers organising a Neighbourhood Watch scheme…but it was always Something. Now it is Nothing. There is fuck all that makes Sunday night a Night Of Television.

And this is a crying shame. Because Sunday night is still Sunday night. It is still always the end of something (the weekend) or the prelude to something (the working week) but never anything in its own right. It still needs something that resonates in your nostrils. And yet Sunday Night Telly is no more. Nobody bothers to treat it like an occasion, even though it is the one occasion above all else in the week that needs just that: to be treated, to be garlanded, to be scrubbed and dressed and made to shine.

Sure, you can watch something on video or DVD to try and mollify proceedings, but you can do that any old night of the week. There needs to be something that is bolted to Sunday nights to give it back its whiff of the giant Grade cigar. To send you off to bed and into Monday with something other than a feeling of shuffling towards the gallows.

There’s a Sunday night-shaped hole in TV Cream’s heart that needs to be filled.