The tables are turned: a collection of anagrams of Richard’s name.
See postPot pourri
“It’ll only go on for another six minutes!” – A tribute to Russell Harty
With BBC4 showing an episode of THE RUSSELL HARTY SHOW on Tuesday 20 March, and then ITV1 screening The Unforgettable… Russell Harty on Wednesday, we’re declaring next week A HARTY PARTY!
It’s been 24 years since Russ passed away, and until this Russ scheduling stampede, it had seemed as if everyone had forgotten about him, apart from that bit where Grace Jones smacked him about the head a bit. And that’s a real shame, because Russell Harty was a man who produced some of the most entertaining, amusing and, you would have to say, demented television ever made. He always seemed to give over the impression that he had no idea why he’d suddenly found himself on television but since he was here he may as well have a go at it, and his camp bemusement was a familiar sight on our screens throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
So let’s remember the TV icon that was Mister Rissole Hartley…
In the beginning
Russ was born in Blackburn, and one of his most famous encounters was with the Mayor of his home town, who informed him, “You may be big in London, but you’re bugger all in Blackburn!”. His first proper job was as English teacher at Giggleswick School in Yorkshire, where one of his pupils was a young Richard Whiteley. Twice Nightly later said that Russell was his hero while he was in school, because he seemed so cool and intelligent, taking Richard to see CAMBRIDGE CIRCUS and then inviting him for dinner with his mate Alan Bennett. Although Richard thought he was a great teacher, his ambitions always lay in the media, with his first ever telly appearance coming in an appearance on CRISS CROSS QUIZ in 1958.
However it took him a while to make it back on screen. Whiteley next met him in the mid-sixties when both ended up as neighbours in Notting Hill, with Richard working as a sub-editor at ITN and Russ producing shows for Radio Four, and Russ was apparently most disturbed to learn that Rich was earning far more money than he was. No wonder he decided to make the move to television, joining the new LWT to produce arts show AQUARIUS.
It wasn’t long before Russ was in front of, as well as behind, the camera, presenting as well as producing the show. His camp and arch manner helped him stand out, while already he was enjoying something of a reputation as a man as interested in so-called downmarket pop culture as he was in the high arts, notably bringing Gracie Fields and Sir William Walton together at last.
He then graduated to hosting his own chat show, initially called ELEVEN PLUS – possibly in a nod to his previous career – and then RUSSELL HARTY PLUS. The most memorable moment from this series was a demented interview with The Who, who clearly terrified Russ, especially when Keith Moon elected to strip off down to his pants. Nevertheless Russ was happy to interview absolutely anyone, to some success, and next time he met up with his protege Whiteley, he was thrilled to find that he was now earning at least four times as much as Richard. Russ was also all for uncovering new talent and giving them a big break. Our favourite, from 1974: “Tonight, in the nature of an experiment we’re going to give someone such a break…”
One of the most remarkable shows of Russell’s time was a Christmas special in 1975 to mark the final episode of UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS. After opening with an outrageously pompous monologue to camera (“There’s scant Christmas cheer here, good friends…”), Russ then proceeded to spend the first half of the programme exchanging stiff pleasantries with the “upstairs” characters sipping drinks in the morning room and cooing, “Pray, what future for Master Richard Bellamy?”. He then moved below stairs for part two to appear alternately flummoxed at being addressed repeatedly as “Rissole Hartley” and bemused by Gordon Jackson’s knowledge of etiquette. Nobody knew whether they were supposed to be in character or not, Russ repeatedly asking “And what about you… the real you?”, and the whole thing was topped off by the final few moments, when the action suddenly switched to a TV set, and the camera pulled back to find Russ sat in the studio watching it, turning to camera and announcing, “London Weekend will be repeating 26 specially selected episodes of Upstairs Downstairs in the New Year!”
At the end of the decade, however, Russ got a bit pissed off with life at LWT, not helped by his final job, hosting SATURDAY NIGHT PEOPLE. After spending most of the decade as the sole host of a show with his name in the title, Russ considered it a massive demotion to become a co-host alongside Janet Street-Porter and Clive James. Ostensibly a “gossip column of the air”, with our trio of hosts bitching about famous people, the best rumours all came about backstage, when it was revealed that all three – each hosting from behind their own individual hexagonal desk – demanded the camera to be in a certain position to get their best side, while Russ was pissed off with Clive never learning his lines and Janet was pissed off with Russ always interrupting her. This massive clash of egos rages for one series before Russ decided the time was right to move on, and defected to the Beeb.
The BBC years
Russell arrived at the BBC in 1980 and was immediately given a twice-weekly show on BBC2. Known, simply, as RUSSELL HARTY, the series ran on Tuesdays at 8.30pm from the Greenwood Theatre in London and on Thursdays at 8.30pm from the Palace of Glittering Delights in Manchester. This was the definitive Harty series and it’s from here we get most of his memorable moments.
The show was always billed in the Radio Times as “television’s most unpredictable half-hour”, and this was certainly the case as Russ interspersed the chat – including that encounter with Grace Jones – with all sorts of silly bits of business, whether this was watchingThe Great Blondini blow himself up outside the studio or being taught a raunchy dance routine by Hot Gossip.
Occasionally there would be a jaunt outside the studio, with entire shows being broadcast from Diana Dors’ swimming pool at home, or from Crufts, or from an oil rig where Russ had a nose around the catering facilities and then watched Bucks Fizz perform The Land Of Make Believe in a force 10 gale. These were the days when television programmes were happy to do outside broadcasts just because they could, regardless of whether there was actually any point to them, so one show came in its entirety from the Goodyear Blimp circling over Rome, where Russ looked out over the Vatican in the company of his special guest… er, Trevor Francis. (“You know who that gentleman in white is, don’t you, Trevor?” “Yes, it’s Michael Parkinson, isn’t it!”).
Another outing saw Russ journey across the Atlantic and co-present THE GOOD DAY SHOW in Boston (“with B.B.C Talk Show Star RUSSELL HARTY”), forecasting the weather for Massachusetts (“And up there it’s going to be forty degrees, dunno if that’s centigrade or farenheit…”). One show was devoted to an interview with Rod Stewart, with Russ introducing the show from the stage just before one of Rod’s concerts, and went to leg it off stage when the curtain came up only for Rod to get him in a headlock and keep him there. Imagine going to see Rod Stewart in concert and the first thing you see being Rod throttling Russell Harty.
In the safety of the studio, Russ didn’t seem to mind what his guests did as long as it was amusing, hence Kenny Everett arrived in a cassock and spent most of his interview inhaling helium, much to the distress of fellow guest Penelope Keith (“No more, Kenny, it’s bad for you!”), while Jan Leeming got the chance to croon a song.
Possibly the quintessential Harty clip is this (jump to 6 mins, 5 secs) with Russ consoling Noele Gordon on being kicked off Crossroads and her singing a terrible song.
Russ was always happy to muck in, watching on as eighties chat show staple Hercules The Bear ran amok around the audience and lying on a snooker table so Steve Davis could play a shot off his nose. Almost everyone who was anyone in the early eighties appeared, although Russ had a particular fondness for very old women – such as Catherine Bramwell-Booth – who he could fuss over and children who he could encourage to say silly things. He also seemed to have a fondness for very ill people, such as Barry Sheene appearing minutes after a cycle crash and Billy Fury after a million heart attacks.
Around this time Russ also joined the board of the newly launched Red Rose Radio in Preston and hosted a show every day at 9am… for the first week, anyway.
Into the evenings
After three years on BBC2, Russ was promoted to BBC1, and in September 1983 moved to the proto-WOGAN timeslot of Tuesdays and Wednesdays at seven o’clock. Along the way he lost his first name, with the show called simply HARTY, abandoned Manchester for London full-time and gained a self-drawing pastel title sequence and a lovely theme tune, which Frida out of ABBA certainly liked… (note also Russ fussing over another ancient old woman).
This kept much of the old format of wit and whimsy, but was even more frivolous, with Russ promising a show that “lifts you up after the disasters of the news and the depression of the weather forecast”. This meant such items as Dog Of The Week (“If it only has three legs, so much the better”) and regular jaunts to the homes of The Great British Public for a natter, with the punters getting a “I made tea for Russell Harty” teapot for putting him up. There was also a team of regulars including a proto- Mr Motivator called Mr A, cooking from John Tovey and Peter Cook as EL Wisty, although the latter only made a handful of appearances before being replaced by former MR AND MRS hostess Susan Cuff, with Cuff’s Stuff, whatever that was.
As before there was always the chance to get out and about if the chance arose, with Russ hosting a Glamorous Grandmothers contest, while on Valentine’s Day 1984, the gang went to a pub in Liverpool, for features including a yard-of-ale drinking competition. Who says romance is dead? Anyway, the series lasted six months but, given it was lumbered with the dreadful SIXTY MINUTES as a lead-in, it didn’t pull in massive audiences. A second series followed in the autumn of 1984, once a week on Mondays, but with WOGAN on the horizon, there was the worry of a mass whimsy pile-up, so Russ took his leave of teatimes and gave up the chat show after over a decade.
Harty goes… into new territory
Happily, that wasn’t the end for Russ, who launched HARTY GOES TO…, originally broadcast over an entire weekend on BBC2, with Russ visiting a city and exploring it on Friday, interviewing a celebrity who came from there on Saturday and presenting variety from a local venue on Sunday. Later instalments were just the one show, normally the former, and were all good fun – like the recent repeat on BBC4 where he played HOLD YOUR PLUMS in Liverpool with Billy Butler – because Russ was crazy about meeting normal people, and later this became his standard TV format, and he could almost always be found on telly having a nose around some town or other.
In 1987, Russ expanded his horizons and set off on a Grand Tour of Europe, but sadly he was never to complete this as he contracted hepatitis and, after a long illness and some horrible rumours in the papers, he died in July 1988. A sad loss to British telly, Russell was always very much down to earth, saying he knew his presentation style was something of an acquired taste and he was never going to be a big star, but he hoped some people enjoyed it. TVC certainly did, and for overseeing one of the silliest shows of the eighties, he deserves to be remembered for more than being Grace Jones’ punchbag. If she’d waited another six minutes, she’d have had another little bit!
See postDROKK BACK IN ANGER: 35 great things about 2000 AD
It’s 35 years since Tharg the Mighty, a gentleman alien from Betelgeuse with a penchant for eccentric phraseology that looks as though the cat’s got on the keyboard, first shared with us Earthlets his mighty, thrill-powered organ, 2000 AD! And so, to celebrate three-and-a-half decades of drokking good comic-strip stories, here are – in no particular order – 35 great things about 2000 AD…
1) “GAZE INTO THE FIST OF DREDD!” – (See above).
2) Fetishising King’s Reach Tower – Built in 1972, and pretty shabby to be honest, the 364ft-tall building was refashioned as ‘Tharg’s Nerve Centre’ upon the comics’ launch. And remained as such until 2000 AD retired to the less pulse-pounding locale of Oxford in the space year 2000.
3) “Note for readers on Mercury – your delivery shuttle delayed by solar storm.”
4) That logo.
5) The first TV advert…
6) “NO! PLEASE LET ME DROWN BEFORE THE GIANT SCORPIONS GET TO ME!” – (suggested by Joe McNally)
7) IPC sub editor Kevin Gosnell’s original pitch document for 2000 AD, circa 1976 – “It must make money while riding the crest [of the Star Wars sci-fi boom] and could be used for a merge when it becomes uneconomic”.
8) “WE – ER – BROUGHT YOU THESE FLOWERS AND CHOCS, BUT I GUESS YOU WON’T BE NEEDING ‘EM NOW” – The final page of 2000 AD prog 1 sees one of the Harlem Heroes left as but a brain in bell-jar following a hover-powered road-liner accident.
9) “20p Earth Money ($1.45 Malaysia; 0.5g Asteroid Belt; 100g Saturn)”
10) Rob Hubbard’s music for the Nemesis The Warlock computer game…
11) Ro-Jaws’ movie review of TRON – “A real treat for the old optic circuits” (suggested by SOTCAA)
12) “In Orbit Every Monday”
13) Papier-mâché-inations! – in the Nemesis The Warlock photo-strips.
14) “SOME KIND OF ELECTRO-MAGNETIC BEAM!” – Dan Dare is made-over as a superhero, complete with beam-ejaculating ‘cosmic claw’.
15) …And his subsequent rebuttal in Prog 500′s self-referential strip ‘Tharg’s Head Revisited’: “First you made me a complete freak, then a Biggles look-alike with a clunky space fort, and, finally, you gave me this… this cosmic claw and turned me into a – choke – super-hero™”
16) “KEEP CALM + + + THRILL FACTOR OVERLOAD + + + KEEP CALM”
17) Postage stamp dealer advertisements not much larger than a postage stamp
18) How many can you name? – That Prog 500 wraparound cover.
19) “I’M JUST NOT SCRATCHING” – (suggested by RedSharlach)
20) “COMMUNICATION TERMINATED” – The 1994 revamp merits a TV ad…
21) “NEXT PROG: SOMETHING SOMETHING ORANGES SOMETHING…” – (suggested by Calum Benson) NB. Additional points for Clive James cameo
22) “AIEEEE! BLAKEE PENTAX!”
23) Zenith – smart-arsed, self-centred superhero-cum-pop star from the SAW era, who’d more likely be hanging out with Big Fun than fighting big baddies. Managed by Richard-Wilson-in-TUTTI-FRUTTI-lookalike Eddie. Once battled Noel Edmonds.
25) Mutants In Mega-City One…
26) “Enter Our Bubblicious 2000 AD Competition! Win a super Sansui Hi-Fi System!”
27) “IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT… CREEP!” - Long overdue reinstatement of classic (but non-chrome) logo.
28) “NEXT PROG: HAVE A NICE DEATH!”
29) Warp spasm!
30) “Define the playing keys”…
31) The Tharg’s Future Shocks exclamation-mark.
32) Kevin O’Neill draws himself into an episode of Nemesis.
33) Destruction of the Cyril Lord block. – “BUT CHIEF JUDGE, CYRIL LORD’S A LISTED BLOCK!”/”CYRIL LORD’S A LUXURY WE CAN’T AFFORD!”
34) …And the coda to that - “ARGUING WITH THE CHIEF JUDGE – YOU’LL BE ON THE CARPET FOR THIS, WILTON!” – (Both suggested by Robert Seabury)
35) “Sole agents for Australia and New Zealand: Gordon & Gotch Ltd.”
- NB: Thanks to David Bishop for providing a lot of the above to us, way back when. His scrotnig book Thrill-Power Overload: Thirty Years of 2000 AD is still available to buy.
See post500 words on 500 episodes of The Simpsons
FIRST CAME JUST 13, clumsily conceived and woefully realised, exactly like this sentence. Then 22 more: wavy lines, iffy voices and wacky scrapes smeared with sap – You Are Lisa Simpson – comic books, blowfish and gorges. Next, 24 steps to greatness via the land of chocolate, Rancho Relaxo, abandoned wells and the Leftorium: outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. Then throw up your hands and raise your voice: 22 slices of majesty, bed goes down, streetcar, Gabbo, Jub-Jub, choo-choose me, MONORAIL!
These are the imperial years, of Bobo and the Be Sharps, the inanimate carbon rod, the Spruce Moose and the one-eyebrowed baby. Cursive writing does not mean what you think it does: on and up through a near-faultless Matlock Expressway of a season 6, cross-promotional one-off excepted. Up on the summit, the Simpsons’ universe now unfurls from chimpan-A to chimpanzee: a mother-cherishing, soul-bartering, neighbour-baiting, flying-hellfish, last-gleaming, solid gold house of a show. And again with season 8: we should thank our lucky stars that they’re still putting on a programme of this calibre after so many years.
But then: we make it five – the number of decent episodes in season 9 and sole reasons to cling to a series suddenly hurtling downhill. Fully into the gorge with season 10: look – Rupert Murdoch, Homer getting remarried while drunk, and Ned who is actually 60 years old. The world’s smelliest tumour, “Guess how many boobs I saw today, Marge”, Lisa tricking Bart and Homer into thinking they have leprosy. Downwards, ever downwards, Homer raped by a panda bear – just think about that for a second, raped – by – a – panda – bear.
Flashes of glory – I Am Furious Yellow – mere flash in pans: “The professor told us not to let him get a boner”. Sinking lower, still lower: breast implants for Marge, Skinner saying “wanking”, cameo from James L Brooks, Homer fearing he’s becoming a gay. “The Simpsons are going to (complete as appropriate)” and are also going to despoil the legacy of erstwhile legends like Homer’s mum. Now it’s season 16 – count ‘em – and Patty comes out of the closet 200 episodes after it would have meant something.
Let’s do a pox party AND a satire on creationism as we can’t decide if we want to be crude or clever. Gore Vidal, Eric Idle again, Jon Lovitz again, The White Stripes, Stephen Hawking again, Metallica, Stephen Sondheim, Tom Wolfe, Kiefer Sutherland twice. The “most ambitious season yet” turns out to mean getting Lurleen Lumpkin from season 3 back for a few lines. New title sequence, high definition: who knows what barrels can be scraped between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable?
A third decade – is Gervais available again, because if not there’s the bloke who did Ali G or, get this, Rupert Murdoch – AGAIN. Wait: there’s no money, actors threaten to quit, there’s an episode with Moe pretending to be gay – could it, might it be…? But no – here’s season 23 – please let it become unprofitable, please let it become…
See postThe TV Cream Strictly Come Dancing Brucie Gag Manual
A brand new series of Strictly Come Dancing means a brand new battery of celebrities for Sir Brucie to fashion brand new well-worn rib-tickling zingers out of.
Well, that’s what always used to happen.
Nowadays thanks to the increased contestant quota, unnecessary messing with the format and the fact ol’ twinkle-toes is becoming evermore ol’ more wrinkled-nose, the funnies aren’t always there.
Which is a shame, as they were always one of the best bits, along with that sequence at the start where the couples stood in a long line swaying and clapping.
So in the interests of national revival and selfless levity, here are TV Cream’s suggestions of gags for Bruce to slip into proceedings, preferably preceded by a shushing-gesture to the audience and followed by a glance of disgruntlement at the floor manager.
Jason Donovan
“Now we all know that stars can get a bit picky if they don’t think they’re being properly serviced, so just before tonight’s show I had a word with Jason about the catering.
I asked him if he was happy with the food served in the BBC canteen. Why? he asked. Because, I replied, I thought you’d be more used to a Ramsay’s treat!”
Russell Grant
“Now I’ve always been interested in astrology, so earlier today I asked Russell if he could tell me what the stars had to say about my future.
Well, he looked me up and down all over then replied: Not too good, dear. Your Mercury’s rising, I can’t tell Mars from your elbow, and the less said about Uranus the better!”
Nancy Dell’Olio
“You may not know this, but Nancy has launched her own brand of lingerie.
Yes, she has. It’s called ND.
I said to her: what does that stand for, Nice Drawers? She said in your case, Nothing Doing.”
Anita Dobson
“I was chatting with Anita just before the show.
Anita, I said, tell me: were you a messy child? She said: Brucie, why do you ask?
I said: I was just wondering if you had a tidy playroom or a dirty den…”
Robbie Savage
“Now I’m sure we’ve all been struck by Robbie’s hair. Literally, in Ola’s case!
Earlier on I said to Robbie, your hair can’t decide if it’s playing home or away!
He replied, well at least it’s not like yours: off-side!”
Holly Valance
“Just before the show, I said to Holly how much she must be looking forward to Christmas. Why? she asked. Because, I replied, it’s the time of year that everyone wants a piece of Holly! She took one look at me and said: To be honest, I’m more worried about the pricks. Well, I mean, really, the cheek!”
Lulu
“I was talking to Lulu just before the show. I wanted to find out a bit more about her fantastic showbusiness career.
I said: Lulu, what do you think was your greatest ever hit record? She said: Shout. So I said: LULU, WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS YOUR GREATEST EVER HIT RECORD?”
Harry Judd
“Earlier today I asked Harry about why his band were called McFly.
He said: Have you never seen the film Back to the Future? He explained it was about a boy who finds himself back in the 50s. Oh yes, I said, I remember the 50s, that was when I first made it big. He replied: Oh no, it’s not set in the 1850s.”
Edwina Currie
“Now we all remember that Edwina once ran into a bit of bother with some eggs. So when I caught up with her during rehearsals earlier, I was everso careful not to bring it up.
Edwina my dear, I said, how egg-stremely egg-cited I am to see you on the show. You should have seen her face. She was *shell*-shocked.”
Rory Bremner
“Earlier today I went to Rory’s dressing room to say hello and introduce myself and so on. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist. Do me, I said. Go on, do me! So – oh no, be quiet, listen – so he did, and I have to say, I was terribly disappointed. I said, Rory, I’m terribly disappointed. He said: Why? I said, because I thought that first impressions were always correct!”
Audley Harrison
“I was talking to Audley earlier today and he asked me: Bruce, is it true you were once known as the Mighty Atom?
I could tell he was impressed, so I said, yes, it was because of my amazing stamina as a child star. Oh, he said, I thought it was because your jokes were radioactive!”
Chelsee Healey
“Earlier on I asked Chelsee if, when she was at school for real, she ever had to face doing lines.
She said if anyone knew about lines and faces it was me.
The cheek!”
Alex Jones
“Earlier today, I was talking to Alex about how they chose the guests for The One Show. She said: Matt and I like to look at photos of star names and celebrities, and go: he’s One, she’s One, they’re One.
I said to her, am I One? She said: Oh yes, you’re a right One.”
Dan Lobb
“Now, as well as being a TV presenter, Dan is a former professional tennis player.
When I was talking to him earlier, I said how much I loved going to Wimbledon each year.
He replied: Oh really, I’d have thought a man of your age would prefer Flushing Meadows!”
…And an extra one for Brucie to deploy during the final, which is being shown in 3D:
“No, don’t worry dear, that’s just my chin!”
See post“Until the autumn, b’bye!”
“Black and brown faces were beginning to appear in the classrooms but foreign travel was still a luxury unknown to most of our viewers.”
Such was Biddy Baxter’s justification for exiling her presenters away from the clean friendly environment of the BP studio where we knew and loved them best, and out into the most unfamiliar and hostile of countries of the world with no preparation whatsoever other than the instruction to bring back at least four week’s worth content for the new series.
So began the annual Blue Peter expedition – never a holiday (“one sure way of infuriating presenters and production team alike,” says Biddy, “was to refer to the expeditions as holiday. They were anything but. Paid for out of the programme’s meagre budget and crammed into our so-called summer break, they were back-breaking assignments”) – and the tradition of signing off every June with a show proudly unveiling the location for this year’s soiree, usually with the help of an impressively oversized plastic globe and a couple of will-this-do? props.
The first one in 1965 was a shameless jolly fixed up by some Shepherd’s Bush spiv who offered to send Val and Chris Trace to that most obvious of destinations, the Arctic Circle.
They got better.
There isn’t one this year, unless you count a one-way ticket from Shepherd’s Bush to Salford. So by way of a tribute and to tide things over until the autumn in much the same way and manner as a few hastily compiled episodes of Blue Peter Flies The World, here is TV Cream’s pick of the best BP summer expeditions.
1966
WHERE? South East Asia, specifically the jungles of Borneo.
HOW? A notoriously expensive RAF-sponsored effort sets the formula for glossy expeditions as much about look-how-we-got-here as look-what-we’ve-found. Numerous passenger jets, freighter planes and military helicopters show up, all of suitably bone-rattling condition, and all seemingly off the back of a friend of a friend of Edward “Cravat” Barnes.
HELLO THERE! A sweaty Val and Chris star in the first of many visits to uncommunicative kids caught in the middle of a confusing civil war somewhere in the Developing World.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: The team visit a group of jungle-dwellers who have never seen a white woman before, are introduced as being “from the BBC in Britain,” and are, of course, instantly made welcome. They repay the debt by presenting the tribe with a plaque and a crate of light ale.
OFF DUTY: Val is terrorised by leeches. Chris wanders off one night with “a party of young officers and their wives.” Edward has trouble with too many bare-breasted women in shot.
BIDDY RECALLS: “The entire unit was kitted out in jungle green, not the sexiest outfit ever invented, although Valerie still managed to look stunning.”
1968
WHERE? Morocco
HOW? A rather melodramatic exit from the BP studio in a Land Rover, as if the team were fleeing the country that afternoon.
HELLO THERE! Val, John and Pete play the innocents abroad. Earnest attempts to make sense of exotic customs and rituals are offset by Val taking comedy umbrage at having to ride a camel, and John doing pratfalls when the Land Rover breaks down in the middle of the desert.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: The gang attempt a spot of Carry On Spying-style surveillance on a bunch of mysterious traders in Marrakech marketplace. “There they go!”
OFF DUTY: A terrified Val is menaced by a black scorpion in her room, and Edward Barnes has to summon the hotel manager to kill it with a walking stick and a broken beer bottle. Two of the production team get sunstroke.
BIDDY RECALLS: “Setting off for the Sahara Desert was a romantic notion we all found irresistible. The fact that the Sahara in August boasts temperatures of 135 degrees tempered our enthusiasm.”
1969
WHERE? Ceylon
HOW? The British Overseas Airways Corporation.
HELLO THERE! The team bravely do justice to an entire sub-tropical nation, trying to forget how their farewell show in Britain had been upstaged by a pissing pachyderm. When they get back, they find everyone’s still talking about the heffalump.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: Wearing nothing but strategically placed teatowels, John and Pete fail to find anything amusing to say about sitting atop thin wooden poles in the middle of the sea practising the art of stilt fishing.
OFF DUTY: Edward Barnes faffs about trying to get re-takes of an elephant being dressed in a large smock. The beast promptly flays him with a nearby branch.
BIDDY RECALLS: “The elephant that carries the eye tooth of the Lord Buddha was not going to be messed about by some white, bearded pipsqueak who kept on changing his mind.”
1970
WHERE? Mexico
HOW? More exposure for the BOAC, as recommended by Beatles band.
HELLO THERE! The gang debut a sightseeing/local history format, ticking off the tourist spots while trying to re-tell ancient myths and legends. Potential for irritating Noakes-led larking about is, accordingly, high. The expedition coincides with the World Cup, allowing scope for unashamed voiceover scapegoating in post-production: “We had an altitude problem, just like our football squad!”
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: While indulging in some bareback rodeo in Mexico City, John charms the locals by hilariously riding his horse right out of the stadium gates.
OFF DUTY: Val and Pete refuse to speak to each other for the entire trip.
BIDDY RECALLS: “It was pretty frightening – especially for Val. She’d been given a gunbelt and a six shooter to wear, and every time she bumped up and down in the saddle she was afraid she was going to shoot herself!”
1972
WHERE? Tonga
HOW? The team head back to the tropics and touch down at Tongatapu Airport to the sounds of “guitars and singing”. Royal tour-style bowing, scraping and garlanding of heads follows. John notes how “everyone was wearing skirts, both the men and the women.”
HELLO THERE! Pete visits a building site but fails to make a wall out of dried leaves. Lesley does some knitting. A can’t-be-arsed John settles for Tongan coconut-collecting: lying on the ground under the tree waiting for them to fall off.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: A massive feast laid on for the visitors begins with the compulsory imbibing of dubious shit-coloured powdered substances. An hour later Lesley is shimmying across the lawn in a grass skirt.
OFF DUTY: A suited and booted team pay a social call to the local palace, only to learn the King left for Britain the day before. Diplomatic embarrassment is averted when the Princess grants an audience instead, and turns out to be a fan of basketball.
BIDDY RECALLS: “We were delighted when we were presented with the cloth that Lesley helped to make. At this very moment it’s hanging over the entrance to the BBC canteen, so that everyone who works at the Television Centre can enjoy looking at it.”
1975
WHERE? Turkey
HOW? A short hop via British Airways to Istanbul. Very convenient.
HELLO THERE! Midway across the bridge spanning the Bosphorus river, the team ponder in which continent to begin. “Let’s start in Europe,” says John. “And what’s more, let’s have a cup of coffee before we do anything else,” adds Lesley. Much antiquity-based antics ensue. Pete and John revel in a Turkish bath. Lesley inspects the ruins of an ancient 60-seat lavatory. John shouts inside an open-air theatre.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: The team do the hokey cokey with a bunch of wrestlers covered in salad cream.
OFF DUTY: A visit to an abandoned underground city reveals the presence of a working discotheque, giving Pete the chance to catch up with the latest sounds he’s missing on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
BIDDY RECALLS: “Their ferocious moustaches turned out to be stuck on with glue.”
1980
WHERE? Malaysia
HOW? Sarah signing on the dotted line warrants a last minute hastily-booked extra seat on the overnight from Heathrow, in the process avoiding an expedition fronted by the Groom alone.
HELLO THERE! Low-key affair with much surveying of sedentary temples and local wildlife. Sarah tries on a sari. Simon fondles a baby turtle.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: Simon gets invited to join rehearsals for the Penang annual dragon boat race. After only ten minutes he claims his “back is breaking” and bails out of the chance to row in the race proper. Elsewhere, Sarah has an encounter with an over-excited cox.
OFF DUTY: Sarah has trouble adjusting to Malaysian night life outside her hotel window, being disturbed by frogs, cicadas and the Government Turtle Inspector: “It wasn’t too long before a shrill telephone bell broke into my sleep. ‘Missy Green?’ ‘Mmmm?’ ‘The turtles are coming. You must hurry!’”
BIDDY RECALLS: “It wasn’t quite like the three cheers for your opponents that marks the end of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, but Batu Feringgi is a far cry from the tow path at Mortlake.”
1981
WHERE? Japan
HOW? A grisly seventeen-hour flight. No break on arrival to allow for jet lag. Unusually high level of chicanery follows (see below).
HELLO THERE! Simon, Sarah and Pete sample life on the Pacific rim including, conveniently for Simon, a 50s rock and roll revival (“I spoke the two magic words ‘Elvis Presley’ and their faces broke into smiles”). Sarah tries on a kimono. Pete lies in some mud. Simon goes harvesting for eels.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: A weedy-looking Pete displaying textbook Blitz-spirited stoicism while receiving repeated slaps from a big fuck off sumo wrestler.
OFF DUTY: A sake-fuelled Simon steals a giant inflatable waiter from outside a restaurant and runs amok across an eight-lane highway, causing gridlock and immediate visitation from a battery of squad cars. Simon and director Renny Rye spend the night being interviewed at the local police station but escape charges. Simon also inadvertently gives an interview to Playboy, claiming he’d never heard of the magazine.
BIDDY RECALLS: “Watching Simon bopping in Harajuka Park with the rockers, no one would have guessed what he had gone through.”
1982
WHERE? Canada
HOW? A no-nonsense piss-easy flight from Heathrow reminds everyone they should make a point of visiting ex-colonies more frequently in the future.
HELLO THERE! During a lumberjack tournament Simon decides to show off his knowledge of pop culture by warbling some Monty Python. Sarah goes white water rafting. Pete gets short straw: watching a burning forest.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: Pete and Sarah visit an aerodium. “‘Pas d’interet a vous, je pense,’ our guide replied, ‘Eet ees just a place where peepul arr fly-ying’. ‘Flying?’ Pete said. ‘Stop the car!’” Slapstick scenes of the duo inside Clouseau-esque inflatable body suits ensue.
OFF DUTY: Bugger all, perhaps wisely after the previous year’s palaver. Simon plays word association games, “when you’re given a word and then you’ve got to say the next word that leaps into you mind.” Pete falls asleep in the back of a taxi.
BIDDY RECALLS: “Canada is not only a big country – it’s a country where they do things big.”
1987
WHERE? The USSR
HOW? Aeroflot, presumably. Permission to enter the evil empire is very much a last minute job, thanks in part to a few words in the right ear from then Foreign Secretary Geoffrey “I hope you can go, they should be good films” Howe. Caron, Yvette and the crew fly out in mid-July; Mark has to follow later due to “other commitments” (he’s playing the lead in Billy Liar in Harrogate – had nobody told him being a BP presenter is a full-time job?)
HELLO THERE! Inevitably, the gang only see what they’re allowed to see, but viewers get a number of “firsts”, as the voiceovers never fail to point out, including, erm, the inside of a pet market and a street artist doing one of those crappy line drawings of Yvette’s face. Caron does “death-defying” trapeze business. Much jumping about in Red Square for photo opportunities. Footage inside a candle-lit monastery brings “tears to Biddy’s eyes”.
ONE FOR THE REVIEW OF THE YEAR: Someone up in the Mir Space Station sends his regards.
OFF DUTY: A trip to a sanatorium in the Crimea makes headlines for the wrong reasons, principally thanks to unnecessary shots of Mark’s naked arse while climbing out of a mud bath. The Sun says: Very Blue Peter. Woman complains of seeing Mark’s “naughty hair”. A contrite Biddy has to go on Open Air.
BIDDY RECALLS: “One correspondent, who also sent a copy of her letter to the Controller, even objected to Yvette wearing a one-piece swim suit being covered in sand.” And, of course: “It was ironic that Blue Peter should be accused of lowering moral standards when we made such efforts to uphold them and were frequently criticised for that as well.” Hear hear!
See postThe 10 greatest closing minutes in pop
What’s the best way to sign off in song? Four key changes and a slow fade? A desolate, crashing downbeat? Or what about an on-the-nose, unashamed comedy sound effect?
Seeing as how you take your leave in music is just, if not more, important than how you make your entrance, here are 10 examples of what TV Cream considers to be the finest final 60 seconds in pop.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want THE ROLLING STONES
How to keep the same two chords sounding enduringly interesting when you’re well into the seventh minute of a song?
Slap on a church choir singing progressively higher chords, add a runaway honky-tonk piano and a titanic pair of maracas, then top it all off by suddenly shifting up a further gear by switching the drums into double time. Fade before matter fuses with anti-matter and Mick Jagger explodes.
Titanic Days KIRSTY MACCOLL
A stoically bittersweet ballad whips itself into a perfect storm of expertly-harmonised (as you’d expect) rage.
Proceedings then sink down into a cruel lullaby of tolling bells, lapping waves, cawing gulls and statuesque strings.
One by one the sounds disappear, until just an echo of melody remains. *Sniff*.
Slave to the Rhythm GRACE JONES
Yes all right, it’s basically one big shameless slice of sonic sexual congress, climaxing in, er, a climax. But what a denouement.
Great fuck-off slabs of synthesiser pop and parp all over the place while strings swoop, brass squeals, the bass burps, an audience bursts into applause, the drums declare World War Three, and suddenly: “here’s Grace”. Cue a post-coital coda of strangely poignant keyboard seepage.
Left to my Own Devices PET SHOP BOYS
Another masterpiece masterminded, like Slave to the Rhythm, from behind the regal recording console of Trevor Horn.
After musing on the practicalities of Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat, our hero Neil vows to “sit up all night and day, waiting for the minute I hear you say…” Cue ENORMOUS orchestral crescendo, a similarly seismic drum roll, and a final, triumphant charge through the chorus with flags and bunting a-flying. “Come on baby!”
The Message GRANDMASTER FLASH AND THE FURIOUS FIVE
After six minutes of jaundiced jive-talking and belligerent boogie, our crew cuts loose with a bit of harmless chit-chat. “So what’s up for tonight, y’all?” “D’ya know tha’ girl Betty?”
But just as the conversation is flowing, sirens are heard, the NYPD arrive and a spectacular miscarriage of justice unfolds. “We down with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five!” pleads one. It’s no good. “I doan wanna hear yer mouth!” growls a cop, and slaps on the cuffs. Message well and truly sent.
Some Girls are Bigger Than Others THE SMITHS
A case of triumph being snatched from four square Salford jaws of defeat. Morrissey forswears his hitherto pen portraiture of pan-generational breastage for the plaintive instruction: “Send me your pillow, the one that you dream on – and I’ll send you mine.”
Cue a cycle of lush, magical, Marr-coated refrains of ever-evolving guitar noodlery, which seem, and really ought, to go on forever.
Lovely Rita THE BEATLES
One of McCartney’s “deceptively simple” (© every Beatles scholar ever) and masterfully-crafted (ditto) classics, that you know he dashed off in five minutes between baking an acid pie and learning the French horn.
It ends with a demented but fantastic bit of nonsense comprising, among others, a bluesy piano, some hissing, groaning, heavy breathing, someone yelling as if being repeatedly prodded, a ghostly wail (not, for once, Yoko) and Lennon telling someone to “leave it” (ditto).
New Life DEPECHE MODE
The boys have already treated us to a textbook pop recipe of singalonga-harmonisable-toetapping tunesmithery, when they suddenly break into a Twist and Shout-esque sandwich of “ahhhhs” audaciously piled one on top of each other.
These build and build until joyously erupting into a shower of synthetic squeaks, sizzles and farts, as if a bomb has just gone off in an especially handsome electronics shop.
The Downtown Lights THE BLUE NILE
There’s a heartbreaking surge of sound.
Paul Buchanan looks around him, notes “the neons and cigarettes, rented rooms and rented cars… the crowded streets, the empty bars… chimney tops and trumpets… the golden lights, the loving prayers… the coloured shoes, the empty trains…”
He then concludes: “I’m tired of crying on the stairs.”
Nobody Does it Better CARLY SIMON
Perhaps the greatest ending of the lot.
The best Bond theme of all time signs off with a truly fabulous coda comprising an evermore alluring fugue of swaggering strings, angelic trumpets and an entire battery of Carly Simons all harmonising with each other. Yes, we’re going to say it: double-oh heaven.
See postThe Top 12 most inappropriate Bond film sweary moments
Watching Live and Let Die the other day, we were somewhat taken aback to hear the phrase “holy shit!” tumble from the mouth of one of the supporting characters.
And not just any supporting character: an old woman with oversized goggles, no less.
No doubt the censors deemed her advanced age and agreeable facial furniture persuasive enough to render such wild (by early-70s Bond standards) profanity sweetly comical rather than grossly offensive.
But these circumstances don’t, as far as we’re concerned, make it any less inappropriate.
For like public houses, actual sex and Daniel Craig, swearing doesn’t have a place in James Bond films. And that includes the occasional (and even more jarring) cuss word to slip from the mouth of 007.
Innuendos however – double, single or otherwise – do very much have a place in the canon and their absence (we’re looking at you, Craig) certainly make for a stiff disappointment.
As such, not being the types to pass up an opportunity to rummage through a body of work to see if anything big comes up, we’ve sifted the scripts of every Bond film to date in order to isolate, filter and decontaminate a dozen of the franchise’s most ill-advised expletives.
If you find occasional obscenity as disagreeable as listening to The Beatles without ear muffs, please DO read on.
12) “Let me out of this BLOODY machine!”
(Thunderball, 1965)
This ribald squeal of complaint comes from one Count Lippe, who Bond has just contrived to trap inside a sitting steam bath. Yes, we’re only four films into the series and already we’re dealing with cartoonish deaths and comical swearing.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lippe cries. “Now don’t you worry,” replies our hero, “I’ll tell the chef!”
11) “Yes you BLOODY well would!”
(The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974)
Another ill-advised “bloody”, but even more out-of-place by virtue of coming from, to paraphrase Roger, A WOMAN.
Bond’s dalliances with the fairer sex are irking his female colleague, ditzy Mary Goodnight, played by Britt Ekland playing herself. When 007 tries to explain away his assignation as “official business”, Britt snaps: “I saw the ‘official business’.” “Goodnight, would I do that to you?” sighs The Man With The Golden Pun. “Yes, you bloody well would!” comes the unnecessarily tart response.
10) “You’re BLOODY late!”
(The Living Daylights, 1987)
Just as disagreeable in a Bond film as a woman swearing is when a posh person follows suit.
Here, 007 is being given a dressing down by Saunders, head of Section ‘V’, Vienna. We know this, because his first line is: “Saunders. Head of Section ‘V’, Vienna. You’re BLOODY late. This is a mission, not a fancy dress ball.”
“We have time,” Timothy Dalton replies, boringly.
9) “BITCH!”
(Diamonds are Forever, 1971)
There is no earthly reason why, having refrained from profanity throughout his entire tenure as Bond, Sean Connery decides to call Jill St John a “bitch” while inserting a cassette tape down the back of her pants. Which is probably precisely why he does it. Plus it gives him the chance to continue with the superb line: “Your problems are all behind you now!”
Thankfully Connery returns to more plausible insults a few moments later, when he brands St John a “stupid little twit!”
8) “There’s a useful four-letter word, and you’re full of it.”
(The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974)
Were Roger Moore to actually call Scaramanga a shit, some sort of micro-atomic implosion, akin to that generated within the Large Hadron Collider, would probably occur bringing an end to life as we know it.
Instead he just alludes to the word, thereby revealing a passing interest in vulgarity that is really somewhat beneath him. This didn’t stop Timothy Dalton boringly reviving the very same line 13 years later in The Living Daylights, telling a bored Russian general: “We have an old saying too, Georgi. And you’re full of it.”
7) “PISS off!”
(Licence to Kill, 1989)
One of the things deployed by the Bond producers to leaven the boringness of Dalton on his second mission was to make him the Sweary Bond. Sadly this just made him even less convincing, as there’s only one thing worse than someone being boring, and that’s someone being obscenely boring.
Hence when 007 is captured by some Hong Kong narcotics agents who query his ownership of a gun that is clearly the property of Her Majesty’s Government, Dalton yawns at them to “piss off”.
Elsewhere in this profanity-percolated flop we are treated to Dalton, while dangling over a crushing machine, tediously instructing a woman to “switch the BLOODY machine off”; and morosely ordering those self-same narcotics agents to release him from their chains and “get me out of these BLOODY things!” More from this Sweary Bond later.
6) “There’s that SONOFABITCH! I got him!”
(Live and Let Die, 1973)
Utterly unlikable comedy redneck Sheriff JW Pepper spends this film spewing dozens of debatable profanities (“my ass” “your ass” “his ass” etc.) and an extremely suggestive cuss (“What the fuuuuuuu…?”) but there’s one that grates above all else.
The word “bitch” simply doesn’t belong in a Bond film. Heavens, Sean Connery tried it two years earlier and even he didn’t pull it off. The swearing, that is.
5) “Would you please kill those BASTARDS!”
(Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997)
We’re now heading into the stronger stuff. This instruction, delivered by chief baddie Elliot “Not Rupert Murdoch” Carver to his henchman Mr Stamper, is drained of all menace by the insertion of a completely out-of-keeping expletive.
Whatever happened to the likes of a diabolical mastermind telling his accomplice merely to take care of Bond and “see that some harm comes to him”?
4) “Watch the birdy, you BASTARD!”
(Licence to Kill, 1989)
Oh dear, it’s Sweary Bond again, this time spluttering nauseum in the direction of number one bad guy Mr Sanchez as he levels a gun at the man’s office window.
We think this is the most profane (and boring, lest we forget) 007 has ever been on screen.
Though it’s safe to say he’s far more liberal with his tongue in the original books.
3) “Holy SHIT!”
(Live and Let Die, 1973)
Here it is: the phrase that alerted us to the sheer incongruity of obscenity in a Bond film, slipping as it does from the gums of comedy pensioner Mrs Bell as the light aircraft in which she is sitting, with Roger Moore at the controls, heads towards an ever-narrowing pair of hangar doors.
It’s only slightly more abrasive than the bit where a Generic Black Man declares: “What does he think this is? I’ll blow his friggin’ head off!”
2) “I don’t give a SHIT about the set-up!”
(Licence to Kill, 1989)
Bond isn’t the only one to deploy a battery of profanity in this almost-the-worst-ever 007 film. His rival, the aforementioned “bastard”, is also responsible for a cluster of cusses, including this ill-inserted unconvincing tirade.
Along the way he’s joined in the sweary corner by those Hong Kong narcotics agents, who joyously declare Bond to be a “BASTARD!” and which prompts a small cheer from the viewer, one that would be more full-throated were they to brand him a “boring BASTARD!”
1) “I don’t give a SHIT about the CIA!”
(Quantum of Solace, 2008)
The most inappropriate swearing in a Bond film comes not from a villain, or from Bond himself, but from none other than Old Mrs Clutterbritches, the one and only M.
In easily the worst moment in any Bond film ever, in Quantum of Solace Judi Dench is heard to snap “I don’t give a SHIT about the CIA!” To make matters worse, elsewhere she unleashes both a “bloody” and a “bastard”. It’s horrible and out-of-place and just wrong.
What were the producers thinking? Chances are they weren’t. Judi Dench swearing is as unacceptable as Geoffrey Palmer drinking from a beer can. And that’s a fucking fact!
See postThe Collins Cream-ish Dictionary
“Alright! Phil ‘ere.
“Shush a minute. Where was I? Oh yeah, the fact I’ve announced me retirement – again.
“Seems it’s not enough for certain people to take my work at, hey hey, face value. Seems like certain people have to always put everything in lists and such like.
“Whatever. I know what I like… oh hang on, that was the bloke who I replaced. Sorry.
“But seriously, even if yer only like some of me stuff, that’s fine with me. I’m half-deaf and can’t play the flipping drums anymore, so who gives a toss.
“Anyway, in honour of me hanging’ up me drumsticks and tonsils for good (at least until the next retirement tour or unexpected tax bill), the boys here at TV Cream have come up with a list of me best ever songs. Well, a list of me least worst songs. Enjoy!
(“…Oh, and who’d have thought I write the same way I speak?”)
THE COLLINS CREAM-ISH DICTIONARY
Behind The Lines (Face Value, 1981)
About the only solo thing Phil ever did where the drums didn’t sound like they’d been recorded through a dozen whoopee cushions. And boy, what a difference. The parping of the Earth Wind & Fire horns is superb, someone fannies about joyfully on the bass, and Phil even sounds like he’s thinking about what he’s singing instead of mouthing some words while mentally planning where to have dinner. Irony of ironies, it’s a cover. Of a Genesis song.
I Cannot Believe It’s True (Hello, I Must Be Going!, 1982)
Oh dear, Phil’s having love pains again. But this time he’s having them to a funky rhythm and a tune that only involves five notes. Result = a breezily singalongable slice of plastic soul.
Like China (Hello, I Must Be Going!, 1982)
Did we mention that Phil is a practising thespian? Step forward the cocker-nee charmer of this kitchen sink number, who thinks his girl is “just like a picture book”, and yet can’t work out why her mum and dad don’t like him, despite him straightening his tie and combing his hair. Plus her brother thinks Phil is a “limp-wristed wimp”. All of which adds up to the titular simile about a Far Eastern Communist state. Possibly.
Mad Man Moon (A Trick of the Tail, 1976)
Far and away the best Genesis album Phil leant his pipes to was the first one after Pete had buggered off. This eerie opus, replete with invocation to “roll on a muddy pitch in Newcastle”, just edges it over the LP’s other highlight, the guitar-washed strumathon Entangled.
Something Happened On The Way To Heaven (…But Seriously, 1989)
Classy pop, of the kind spun regularly and enthusiastically by Nicholas Andrew Argyll Campbell. That “dum dum” bit at the end of each instrumental break is still one of PC’s finest musical moments.
Take Me Home (No Jacket Required, 1985)
Phil has problems with some local pyromaniacs, but their efforts keep him warm, so he really doesn’t mind. One of those tracks that builds and builds before tipping over into a bludgeongly infectious chorus. Is that Peter Gabriel on backing vocals? Yes, yes it is. Now what’s this song about, Phil? “I don’t remember”.
Turn It On Again (Duke, 1980)
Try tapping your foot to this, pop-pickers. The time signature is 13/4. Yet it somehow works, even though it’s shameless arena-tickling bombast. “All I need is a TV show – that, and the radio.” That’s TV Cream’s raison d’etre, right there.
Who Said I Would (No Jacket Required, 1985)
The acme of the world-jetting drum machine-wielding Phil of the mid-80s, more so even than Sussudio. It’s all layered on thickly here; there’s even a vocoder. Only to be taken in small doses.
You Know What I Mean (Face Value, 1981)
If you must have one Phil Collins Soppy Ballad, make it this one: a pretty decent attempt at nailing that soon-to-be-trademark mix of winsome sentiments with wispish piano. It’s not very long, it’s not very loud. And give the man a break, his wife had just run off with a paint pot.
This is the age of the train – the remix
We’ve a brand new entry in the TV Cream Songbook.
Harnessing the combined talents of the TVC Symphony Orchestra, various bits of metal, a steam locomotive, a Rick Wakeman-esque keyboard wobbly thing, a choirboy and Sir Jim’ll Savile himself, we proudly present an extended arrangement of the leaf mulch-defying, motorist-denying and era-defining British Rail promotional epic, ‘This is the age of the train’.
You can download the four-and-a-half-minute track, or you can listen to it right now by clicking below:
See postStilgoe Watch: slight return
It’s been a while, but he’s back. TV Cream’s Stilgoe Watch has been reactivated after more than two years of lying dormant. The reason? Rich is currently gracing the digiwaves of BBC7 in the shape of his late-80s series Stilgoe’s Around.
At the time of writing, two episodes are available to listen again.
In the first, the sainted Stilgoe and “his team” tackle “some of the myths about money-making” (still topical, then), which begins – brilliantly – with a spoof of Instant Sunshine. The “team”, including Charles Collingwood and Belinda Lang, essay such gags as “Why is she called Mrs Gerald Terribly?” “Because she misses Gerald terribly”, do Pythonesque interruptions about sketches in progress, and trill songs about yuppies. Perfect.
In the second, Richard is joined by an over-acting Emma Thompson for a revue from Guy’s Hospital in front of some tittering nurses. Cue gags about waiting times, skeleton staff and Bupa plus some textbook Stilgoe anagrams. Richard also wonders why everybody at Grace Brothers sits on the same side of the canteen table.
So if you have a spare half hour, they really are titan howlers. Or perhaps harlots twine. Or maybe lathers in two*.
*Thanks Richard. Such arch dark hints.
See postThe TV Cream Songbook: Build yourself a word
Click for cover artwork!
It’s time for another of TVC’s musical reimaginings.
Once again we’ve dipped into the bountiful back catalogue of Sir Derek Griffiths and come up with the unofficial BBC 12″ remix of everyone’s favourite toe-tapping ode to the rules of adding “ing” to verbs, as featured on Look and Read.
The original song, which is only about 60 seconds long, is here presented in a brand new four-and-a-half minute version replete with, naturally, Maestro Griffiths plus Charles Collingwood, the TV Cream Symphony Orchestra* and, erm, some scratching.
It all makes musical sense, honest, but why not hear for yourself.
You can download our arrangement of the sublime ‘Why don’t you build yourself a word?’, or listen to it right here:
*Funding for the TVCSO was cut by George Osborne this week, but as it’s a fictional orchestra not a penny will be saved, so tough luck George. Here’s a decidedly non-fictional two fingers in your general direction.
See post“And on my team this week…”
Seeing as how Daybreak is now officially A Flop, ITV bosses will soon be reaching around for other formats in which to park their channel’s most famous face.
For you can bet your life that one morning before the clocks go back we’ll hear the giveaway phrase “Adrian Chiles is away this week” tumble awkwardly from Christine Bleakley’s lips, followed by Christine herself taking a leave of absence, followed by Christine discovering she is to be indefinitely paired with Alan Titchmarsh or Lily Savage, and so on.
Adrian, then, faces a future quite probably as the frontman for some hastily revived format, which is triumphantly paraded in a peak primetime slot for precisely one week then flung out late at night or before teatime every Wednesday until Christmas.
One such format we can very well imagine providing a berth for Chiles is Give us a Clue – or Adrian Chiles’ Give us a Clue as it would be known.
Which then poses the more interesting question: who would be the guests, both regular and otherwise?
There aren’t many who’d be able to pull off Lionel Blair [pause for I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue-esque gales of laughter].
Michael Ball suggests himself, by virtue of being “theatrical” and of being an ITV face. As for his guests, assume the likes of Barrowman, Richard Bacon and someone off Emmerdale or The X Factor.
Filling the role of Una Stubbs/Liza Goddard, we fear the call would go out to Claire Sweeney, “forces’ sweetheart” and another ITV spare part. Her team would be entirely comprised of Loose Women.
In fact, the show could even become a regular slot on Loose Women, helpfully keeping it out of sight of that population of the UK that has taste.
Alternatively, Give us a Clue could be revived properly, with Aspel back behind the desk (not Parky – no way), someone like Noel Edmonds captaining “the boys” and Caroline Quentin “helming” the girls. But that would never happen, at least not on ITV, because it smacks of good sense.
See postI thought we said, It Couldn’t Happen Here
Now it almost seems incredible, but we’ve found that of late one of the most ubiquitous topics of conversation among what we’re laughably and erroneously calling the wider TV Cream community is the Pet Shop Boys’ 1988 big screen blockbuster It Couldn’t Happen Here.
This is the rather, well, impressionistic film Neil and Chris made at the height of their imperial phase, but whose release more or less coincided with the end of the self-same period, and henceforth has forever been – wrongly – classed the first of the pair’s Great Mistakes (the second being the Absolutely Fabulous single).
A couple of TVC’s very own have seen the film. One of them has yet to be able to reach the end without falling asleep, while the other once tried to use it as the basis for a essay at university but gave up when he realised that trying to over-analyse the film was simultaneously diminishing his enjoyment of the group, which would have been a disaster.
Anyway, TV Cream’s weekly Creamguide mailout – our recommendations of TV and radio stuff we think you’ll find worth catching – has received almost half a dozen pieces of correspondence on this one topic.
That’s almost half a dozen more than we’d have said we might have received were we to have been asked to make such a prediction a month or so ago.
In the interest of furthering, erm, interest, and because it’s great to have discovered such an unexpected motif among the lives of TV Cream readers, here’s what you’ve been saying about It Couldn’t Happen Here:
Iain Bell:
Has it ever had a UK TV screening? I don’t ever remember it being on terrestrial TV but did it ever appear on any of the Sky channels? I hope it gets released on DVD soon, with a nice commentary by Neil, Chris and the director Jack Bond, who also makes a cameo appearance in the Heart video.
David Pascoe:
I worked with a bloke who had a copy of It Couldn’t Happen Here and he was kind enough to lend it to me. I’m ashamed to confess, I only wanted to see it because it had my favourite Bond girl, Carmen du Sautoy, in it and I hadn’t seen her in anything other than The Man With the Golden Gun. In the event, I enjoyed it despite glazing over in the final ten minutes. It was fascinating to hear Chris Lowe speak and I thought Gareth Hunt was marvellous. He should have been remembered for more than the New Avengers or for wanking with some coffee beans.
 |
 |
 |
Smiley:
As far as I know, it’s never been shown on TV, but I remember going to see it at the Cannon cinema on the seafront in Brighton with a few mates – one of whom gave up halfway in and went to sleep underneath the seats. There was plenty of room in the cinema, as there were only about ten people in total. I quite liked it, even though it wasn’t actually very good, and ended up buying a video shop’s copy of the film as I thought it was unlikely to ever appear commercially – and paid an amount I would prefer not to remember for it… especially as I’ve only watched it once in the intervening 21 years.
Stuart Ian Burns:
I once had a VHS which I sold to Vinyl Exchange in Manchester for ten pounds. I only managed to watch the first 10 minutes though.
 |
 |
 |
Glenn Robertson:
I would like to proudly say that I had a copy. In fact it was on my Christmas list! I put it on my list after seeing the promotional poster for it in the window of the local Spar. It was a big one that did rentals 50p cheaper than Astrovision, the dedicated video shop round the corner. I put it on on Christmas morning and watched the first ten minutes only to see a ladies dress blow up and a garter belt. Lucky for me nobody else was taking any notice and so didn’t see the almost Channel 4 red triangle level of naughtiness displayed on screen. With that I silently announced that I would watch it “later”. When “later” arrived the film was a revelation. Beautify shot, more mild titillation (Gareth Hunt touching up Barbara Windsor), the sequence part from It’s A Sin played on its own (which is of course the best bit) and… a Fairlight CMI Series 3x in the last shot! How many films can say they had a Fairlight on screen? Eh? Eh? And no, it was an Emu Emulator ll in Ferris Bueller.
Simon Reuben:
You do know that it is on YouTube, don’t you? Part one is here, from there on it is easy to find the rest. I watched it all the way through on video when first released and recently on YouTube, and it is actually pretty OK. The Two Divided By Zero sequence is the best bit, I would say. Also you get to see Arlene Phillips in the credits and enjoy some exotic subtitles.
**********************************************
So there you go. If anyone else has memories of this iconic formative years-shaping film, or perhaps more precisely memories of trying to watch this iconic formative years-shaping film, please pass them along.
And if anyone knows anything about when – not if – it’s going to get a DVD release (it was issued on laserdisc, for heaven’s sake!), don’t hold back.
In the meantime [insert "what have I done to deserve this" gag] here’s even more about It Couldn’t Happen Here, in the shape of what we’re saying is nigh-on the definitive online tribute.
 |
 |
 |
The Sarah Kennedy Casebook, revisited
Radio 2′s resident Old Mrs Clutterbritches has finally been prised free from the slot to which she has clung like a petulant barnacle for 17 years.
A few years ago TV Cream compiled an inventory of Ms Kennedy’s idiosyncrasies, which for some make her one of the best broadcasters in the UK, but which for the other 99.999999999999999% of the population confirm her as one the most objectionable DJs ever to grace the airwaves.
So just before we all get to see the back of Bunty Bagshaw, which will at least be marginally more preferable than her front, here’s the updated Sarah Kennedy Casebook.
1) VAUXHALL CROSS
For many years Sarah has lived a three-minute walk away from her studio, but has chosen to drive into work because there is a road between her flat and Broadcasting House. Her journey has involved navigating a busy intersection of London called Vauxhall Cross, a junction that has no interest or relevance to a good nine-tenths of the population, but because she gets stuck in traffic jams that she preposterously claim last “up to four hours – it’s a total violation of my civil liberties”, she has been only too ready to drone on about it joylessly every single bloody morning without fail.
2) “THE MUCH BELOVED”
Aka Mr Sarah Kennedy. Though he has been talked about incessantly his real name has never, to our knowledge, been revealed. Thanks to Sarah’s frequent outbursts of indiscretion, however, it’s been possible to ascertain a) he seems to be about 30 years younger than his wife, b) he is obsessed with ultra-macho adventure sports and, worse of all, c) he wears Y-fronts with holes in which are over two decades old. There was also a rather grisly incident a few years ago when, suffering from some kind of eye infection that had left him – as far as you could tell from the garbled explanation – half blind, the suffering of “The Much Beloved” was prolonged for another two weeks when Sarah accidentally smashed the only bottle of eye drops they had in the house.
3) “BUNTY BAGSHAW”
Sarah’s nickname. Which she coined herself.
4) JINGLES
There never were any. Sarah never liked any of the standard Radio 2 jingles with her name on them, so she rather arrogantly made a point of not playing them, then talked about not playing them, all the while neglecting to say what the show was or the station to which you were tuned, making it even more likely – and dangerous – of finding yourself listening in to her programme and not realising it.
5) THE DAILY MAIL
It was of no real surprise to discover this was Sarah’s newspaper of choice, though her patronage of Associated’s TV Cream-baiting light-fingered nemesis can and did reach astronomical proportions. There was always room for something from the letters page, even if both the news and Wogan, Walker, Evans or whoever were waiting to begin. As for the paper “review” (traditionally at 6.50am), headlines and stories appeared to be selected only if they chimed in with Sarah’s pronounced opinions (see below), while everything else was dismissed as “daft” or “really, really, frightening.” She also had an irritating tendency to say “well, that story is being covered in the news bulletin so I won’t mention it”, thereby removing the entire point of a paper review in the first place. Suffice to say that said reviews, to all intents and purpose, always sounded like they’ve been prepared “in a bit of a rush”.
6) PEDANTRY
Sarah once played the sublime ‘Never Let Her Slip Away’, and every time the title was mentioned in the lyrics she interrupted the song to shout out “Split infinitive!” There has never been a more infuriating three minutes of radio broadcasting in the history of this country.
 |
 |
7) SOUND EFFECTS
Like a snotty nine-year-old who’s just discovered a button on their school music room Casio keyboard which when pressed makes a sound like a fart through a megaphone, Sarah’s fondness for her sound effects tape was unflinching. If a reader had written in about their pet cat, in a flash the airwaves would be filled, not with gentle purring of a kind to rouse you from your sleep, but a din of screeching that Sarah then pretended to “talk” to, like a simpleton. A crowing cockerel announced the arrival of the seven o’clock news, because obviously the sound of the pips was too confusing for listeners. The best chance to hear the full works, however, came during the…
8) TRAVEL NEWS
This was clearly Sarah’s favourite part of the entire show. How she loved obscuring important roadworks information with the deafening sound of a pneumatic drill – just the thing to wake you from a deep, peaceful slumber. Is that the sound of bagpipes? Why, there must be a traffic jam somewhere in Scotland. Meanwhile from 2000-2008 any hold-ups in Greater London were, of course, entirely the responsibility of “Mayor Ken – and he’ll get what’s coming to him.”
9) SARAH’S SOAPBOX
The amount of editorialising that went on during this show beggared belief. Other presenters, never mind producers, had been sacked for far less. Asylum seekers? “This island is full to bursting, there’s no more room.” Myra Hindley? “She’s where she belongs now – in hell.” The Countryside Alliance? “I’ve cleared all my spare bedrooms if anyone wants to stay over after the next march.” In truth what was most maddening was not so much the nature of the opinions she held (which she was perfectly entitled to) but the manner in which she expressed them: in public, relentlessly, and forever bordering on the slightly hysterical. The absolute limit was when she would carry on voicing her views while a decent record was playing. Shut up woman, there’s someone singing!
10) RACIALISM
Now we’re not saying Sarah Kennedy’s a racist, but she did once contend that black people made for good athletes because they were used to running away from lions, and on a different occasion asserted that black people were a problem because she couldn’t see them in the dark and had almost run over a black man in her car. “It’s lucky he opened his mouth to yawn or do something and I saw him.”
11) THE “LOVE HATE” SONG
Finally, the one slot in the show that used to be reasonably entertaining. This was back in the early noughties, where Sarah self-consciously played a novelty record nominated by listeners of the kind that you either, well, loved or hated. Stand-out offerings included ‘Shut That Door’ by Larry Grayson, ‘The Court Of King Caractacus’ by Rolf Harris and ‘Three Little Fishes’ by Frankie Howerd. Even here, though, Sarah could not help but ruin what was her one decent feature, which she did either by making bogus vomiting noises on-mike all the way through, or laughing like a drain all over it. And for a good fifteen minutes afterwards. And throughout the following morning’s show. Grrrr.
Pet Shop Boys, alphabetically
It’s 25 years since the Pets’ first official single, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money) was released on EMI.
It was bought by a few people in the Smash Hits office and Chris Lowe’s family in Blackpool, and reached the dizzying heights of number 116 in the charts.
All was not lost, however, as success came (moderately) quickly when the pair’s follow-up single West End Girls, aided by numerous appearances on Wogan and Top of the Pops, slowly but surely climbed to number one in the autumn of 1985.
The big hits might have dried up since, but Neil and Chris have never really gone away.
Enough has been written since then about their “irony” and “Englishness” and so on, but we can’t think of many artists who’ve made as many fantastic pop tunes over the last two and a half decades.
Not to mention loads of memorable videos, TV appearances, record sleeves, collaborations, quotes and more.
And so, in celebration of 25 years of perfect pop, TV Cream presents its alphabetical tribute to Neil and Chris…
A is for ANNUALLY, the best pop book in the entire history of the universe. Deceptively packaged as a typical Christmas annual, it chronicled Neil and Chris’s sartorial and musical obsessions of the time (cf KYLIE MINOGUE),
recounted the making of IT COULDN’T HAPPEN HERE (qv) and all their singles and videos from IT’S A SIN to HEART, and unearthed Neil and Chris’s secret pasts as Marvel Comics editor and Milton Keynes office staircase architect respectively. Published at the height of the duo’s IMPERIAL PHASE (qv), the entire thing was done in classic deadpan SMASH HITS (qv) fashion and a characteristically tasteful Helvetica font, and has become a scarce artefact, apparently. “These are a bit rare,” as Chris personally informed TV Cream several years ago. A is NOT for ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS, though, we hated that.
B is for BATES’ MATES, the Radio 1 show in which pop stars stood in for Simon Bates in the early 1990s, because he was so exhausted from doing his show live from Concorde every day that he needed a month off. The likes of Diana Ross and Phil Collins flung a few disinterested links down on tape, but the PSBs insisted on doing their stints live and took over the station entirely, making their own jingles, broadcasting house mixes at half past ten in the morning and playing The Prodigy on The Golden Hour. Indeed, when Bates “left” Radio 1 in 1993, Neil and Chris recorded a special version of So Long, Farewell from The Sound Of Music (“goodbye, good luck, from me and him to you”) as a tribute to “Simes”.
C is for CICERO, the duo’s Scottish “protégé” from the early 1990s, whose uplifting electropop anthems about teenage life were released on their vanity record label Spaghetti (so named because it was meant to, er, sound Italian). The brilliant LOVE IS EVERYWHERE had bagpipes on it and reached number 19. The later follow-up HEAVEN MUST HAVE SENT YOU BACK TO ME didn’t and reached number 70, although it did get used in a New Season On CBBC trailer, so that was all right. C is also for THE CLOTHES SHOW, which used IN THE NIGHT as its theme for squillions of years.
D is for DIMENSIONS IN TIME, the 3D Doctor Who special that appeared as part of the BBC’s Children In Need night in 1993, alongside Neil and Chris performing I WOULDN’T NORMALLY DO THIS KIND OF THING, also in three dimensions, although we can’t see the Pet Shop Boys exactly appealing to the average Dr Who superfan.
 |
 |
E is for ELAINE PAIGE TYPES, or the strategy Neil once outlined for continuing the group without them having to make any real effort. “The Pet Shop Boys will carry on, but we’ll stop being the front men. Instead we’ll change the line-up every year or so. Suddenly there’ll be four 16-year-old boys as the Pet Shop Boys and the next thing you know they’ll be replaced by two 35-year-old Elaine Paige types. We’ll be fed up with it all by then so we’ll just write the music. We’ll be able to spend our time doing the nice things like going to bed early.” E is also for ELAINE PAIGE, who a few years had the duo as guests on her Radio 2 show and promptly described one of the records Neil selected as “dreary”.
F is for FIFTH COOLEST PERSON IN POP, as Chris was declared by Select magazine in 1993 (“Chief among the arsenal of Lowe Cool is that he creates the impression that the other bloke does all the work while he watches the telly”), two places below KYLIE MINOGUE (qv). Neil was “disqualified for Trying Too Hard (going to opera, knowing about art, understanding media-pop interface etc)” F is also for FAT NORTHERN BASTARDS, the “Viz-type” single that Chris once proposed recording with Ant and Dec.
G is for GUINNESS BOOK OF HIT SINGLES TYPE OF PERSON, as Neil described himself in explaining his rationale for planning to release GO WEST in 1992, solely on the basis that the PSBs needed another hit to maintain their run of having a top ten single every year since 1985. The record company didn’t think it was the right time to put it out, however, and Neil was too embarrassed to admit the real reason he wanted to release it. It was finally released the following year, when Simon Bates (cf BATES’ MATES) played it three times in one hour on Radio 1.
H is for HIGHBURY, the football stadium seen in the (rubbish) video for DJ CULTURE (“like a football match, ten-NIL the score”) and the home of Arsenal, Chris’s favourite club and former team of Ian Wright, who recorded the single DO THE WRIGHT THING with Chris in 1993, which got to number 43 in the charts, and also rerecorded GO WEST as One-Nil To The Arsenal (cf PARIS ST GERMAIN) to be played at the ground before matches.
I is for IT COULDN’T HAPPEN HERE, Neil and Chris’s impenetrable “conceptual” film from 1988 that also starred Barbara Windsor and Gareth Hunt, and which TV Cream has yet to watch all the way through without falling asleep (“It’s quite complicated,” explained Neil). The scenes in the video for ALWAYS ON MY MIND (cf XMAS NUMBER ONE) are good, mind, especially the bits with Joss Ackland in the car. I is also for IMPERIAL PHASE, which, according to Neil, ended when DOMINO DANCING only entered the charts at number nine.
 |
 |
J is for JIMMY TARBUCK, who introduced Neil and Chris performing RENT (cf Margi Clarke) on Live From The Palladium in 1987, “wittily” remarking of Chris’s Issey Miyake puffa jacket, “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label.” Tarby later refused to let them use the footage on a compilation video. “He said we were miserable bastards, so we couldn’t have it,” explained Neil. “I was quite proud, really.” J is also for JOHNNY MARR and BERNARD SUMNER, with whom Neil formed “supergroup” Electronic in 1989, appearing on Top Of The Pops sitting on chrome stools to perform GETTING AWAY WITH IT, officially the most sixth-form common room record of all time.
K is for KYLIE MINOGUE, star of NEIGHBOURS (qv), long-time PSB collaborator and performer of I SHOULD BE SO LUCKY, one of Chris’s favourite moments of 1988 (“A ‘classy’ dance track – they’re all there, readers! I like the two videos for this – the BBC one where she’s looking out of the roof of a car is one of the best videos of the year”) according to ANNUALLY (qv).
L is for LEEDS UNITED STAR TREK LOOK WITH ROMAN CENTURION OVERTONES, as Select gloriously described the David Fielding-designed concept outfits for the GO WEST video, “with a hint of Star Wars Rebel Alliance chic and a smidgen of Dad’s Army in the salad-bowl helmets”. Chris said the visor on his helmet made him “look like Mr Le Forge off Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
M is for MARGI CLARKE, the irritating Scouse actress who portrayed ‘Pride’ in the video for IT’S A SIN, and Chris’s sister in the video for RENT, in which she attended a typically “decadent” 1980s dinner party. M is also for MADONNA, who is mentioned obliquely in the lyrics of DJ CULTURE (“she after Sean”) and to whom the PSBs originally planned to offer HEART (cf YUGOSLAVIA), and is also briefly seen in the video for WEST END GIRLS on a cinema poster for Desperately Seeking Susan.
N is for NEIGHBOURS, in which Chris made an inexplicable cameo appearance in 1995, driving a white Porsche into Ramsay Street to ask Helen Daniels and Marlene Kratz for directions to “a recording studio which is round here somewhere”, screeching off before Annelise could express her enthusiasm for the ‘Pet People’ in person (“I’ve got all their CDs! Owww!”). N is also for THE NOISE, the long-forgotten ITV Saturday morning pop programme presented by Andi Peters, for which the PSBs provided the theme music.
O is for OCTOPUSSY, the 1983 James Bond film from which the costumes worn by the showgirls in the video for WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS were originally designed. The PSBs also originally composed the theme song for 1987 Bond movie The Living Daylights but later pulled out of the project, and were replaced by A-ha.
 |
 |
P is for PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN, the French football club that was the first to adopt GO WEST as a terrace anthem, to Chris’s delight. “Who would have thought that an obscure Village People song covered by the Pet Shop Boys would become the song of football? It’s fantastic. I think it’s our greatest achievement.” P is also for PATSY KENSIT, the 1980s popstrel for whom Neil and Chris wrote I’M NOT SCARED, and seen a few years ago on Gameshow Marathon with Ant and Dec (cf FAT NORTHERN BASTARDS).
Q is for QUICKLY, the velocity with which LOVE COMES.
R is for RAW SEX, who did a brilliant PSB parody (“You’re good at standing still/I’m quite good at singing/They love it/It pays our rent”) on French and Saunders (don’t cf ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS). R is NOT for RICHARD EASTER, who did a terrible PSB parody on Steve Wright In The Afternoon.
S is for SMASH HITS, the greatest pop music magazine of all time, of which Neil “Nebbo” Tennant was deputy editor before the PSBs became successful, inventing much-loved catchphrases as “tragic”, “back! Back! BACK!”, “Sir William Idol” and “pur-lease” in the process, and memorably predicting a bright future for 1982 Eurovision flops Bardo (“it doesn’t look as though we’ve heard the last of Sally-Ann and Stephen”), although when he left, the magazine printed an obituary, predicting that “in a matter of weeks Neil’s pop duo will be down the dumper and he’ll come crawling back on bended knees, ha ha ha.” S is also for SCANDAL, the 1989 film of the Profumo affair, for which Neil and Chris wrote NOTHING HAS BEEN PROVED as performed by Dusty Springfield, a song that sounds a bit like the theme from That Was The Week That Was.
T is for TOM WATKINS, the big fat “svengali” who simultaneously “masterminded” both the PSBs and BROS throughout their IMPERIAL PHASES (qv), once heroically suggesting that the test card would act as a free advert for the INTROSPECTIVE album, as its sleeve consisted of coloured vertical stripes. He later managed a loads of other groups to diminishing returns, including EAST 17 (getting them to do a cover of WEST END GIRLS), FAITH HOPE AND CHARITY (ropey proto-All Saints including Dani Behr), DEUCE (ace proto-Steps who lost A Song For Europe) and 2WO THIRD3 (three gay blokes and a drawing). In 1989 he devised a plan to get a hit with a dance/classical track under the name THE BIZET BOYS by putting big question marks on the sleeve, thus intimating it was a secret PSB/Bros collaboration. It wasn’t. It flopped.
 |
 |
U is for U2, alternately PSB hate figures (Neil: “I don’t think U2 have anything interesting to say”) and the composers of WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME, as covered by the Pet Shop Boys in 1991 in a medley with Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (Neil: “When the single version came out, Bono said ‘what have we done to deserve this?’ And who can blame him?”).
V is for VERY, the 1993 Pet Shop Boys album packaged in a brilliant orange Lego jewel case, one in a succession of classic PSB sleeves, including the “yawning” cover for 1987′s ACTUALLY (Chris: “I can’t stand the way I look in it. I hate wearing a bloody dickie-bow”) nicked at the last minute from a SMASH HITS (qv) photo shoot, and the tasteful “frosted glass” and yellow look for 1996′s BILINGUAL.
W is for WASHING MACHINE, the domestic appliance recommended by Neil in SMASH HITS (qv). “Readers, get a washing machine. It will tr-ans-form your life!”
X is for XMAS NUMBER ONE, the seasonal musical honour that is mentioned in IT DOESN’T OFTEN SNOW AT CHRISTMAS, the fan club only festive single performed by Neil and Chris on the last ever TFI Friday in 2000, and which they had achieved in 1987 with ALWAYS ON MY MIND.
Y is for YUGOSLAVIA, the former Eastern European republic where the fantastic video for HEART was filmed, featuring Sir Ian McKellen as a randy singing vampire, Neil getting married to a woman whom SMASH HITS (qv) described as looking like Tiffany, and Chris as his chauffeur.
Z is for ZEBRA, the black-and-white striped mammal briefly seen in the video for ALWAYS ON MY MIND (cf XMAS NUMBER ONE).
See postTV Cream’s beta bands
How to salute the emergence of the present TV Cream website from a marathon 15-month sojourn in beta?
How to honour its fresh and forward-looking ethos?
Well, naturally we’ve given up trying to think of something new and instead have done a partial resurrection of what used to be the most popular section of the old site: the TV Themes page.
For a limited period (possibly), here for you to listen to are some of the most unlikely yet somehow winning musical offcuts that graced the pages of TV Cream a decade or so ago.
Note: Some of the following contain over-long and over-wrought extrapolations of ratings-friendly notions to the sound of a disco beat.
Take it away, Bruce!
THE GENERATION GAME
Superb full-length version of the titular theme, where in Brucie develops the “life is the name of the game” concept to somewhat sociological yet reassuringly toe-tapping proportions. With gutsy big band backing, our man cautions wisely that we “remember life’s a gamble; when choosing partners you should take a little care”.
NEIGHBOURS (SAD)
“Well, mustn’t keep the taxi waiting. I know I’ll never forget everyone. And though I’m gonna be on the other side of the world, there’ll always be a part of me that is Ramsay Street… and you will always be… my Neighbours.”
RECORD BREAKERS
A smashing extended ode to being the best, the worst and longest-immersed from a smooth-voiced Roy, backed by a groovy jazz-funk session band and boasting – at 1:04 – the highest note you’ve ever HEARD. “The whole sporting world would applaud it/The McWhirters, hmmm, they would record it!”
ALWAYS THERE
Marti Webb sailed up to number 14 in the charts with this textbook Simon May bolt-some-love-related-words-onto-the-tune slowed-down shanty, and that’s as high as it got (thanks Dale). Still, three points to Simes for having the nerve to slip in such a shameless key change at 1:04.
ARE YOU BEING SERVED, SIR?
Not the theme tune but instead a spin-off single constructed entirely on the tissue-thin premise of Mr Humphries being asked to recite (not sing) an inventory of his shopfloor habits wherein he sounds like he’s about to say words like arse and willy only for for lyrics to swerve, Pam Ayres-like, on to “comically” neutral ground. An array of dolly birds coo in the background while Captain Peacock makes a five-second cameo at the start. And we still don’t get the bit about it being “a funny day for drying – manners!”
I PLAY THE SPOONS
“I tap them here, I tap them there, with gay abandon everywhere.” Unquestionably one of the highlights of the old TV Cream themes section, here’s Clive Dunn, in character as An Old Man, offering a hymn of praise to kitchen drawer-based composition. “And then it came to me: I’ll play the cutlery!” Co-stars the same dolly birds as above.
EASTENDERS (EARLY 90s CLOSING THEME)
Doomed attempt to “freshen up” a much-loved signature tune, which was used on screen for all of six months. Pretty much everything goes wrong, from forgetting to include the tune and employing a wine bar saxophone to including a farting bass and even cocking up the iconic drum fill at the start.
DID YOU SEE?
Another stunning full-length version of an otherwise unexceptional 30-second theme, fleshed out with lots of catchy synth business and at least three brazen key changes. Who said TV criticism should be a staid and joyless pastime (other than Mark Lawson)?
THE INNES BOOK OF RECORDS
Pleasant plinky-plonky concoction from the bloke who was never in Monty Python, which raised the curtains on his 1979 BBC2 song-and-prance showcase. George Harrison seems to have popped in with a guitar lick at 1:39.
FREE GEORGE JACKSON
To end with, another chance to hear the mighty Phil Redmond-conceived, Steve Wright-penned (no, not that one) “charity single” released to promote Brookside’s 1984 miscarriage-of-justice storyline, with a chorus that’s the same as Take On Me. Reached number 126 in Record Mirror’s north-west England hit parade. Contains the line: “That diagram on the napkin has brought so much heartache.” Well, it worked for Nelson Mandela.
Bob Says Revolution In The Head
Messrs Monkhouse and MacDonald have put their respective posthumous heads together and hereby challenge readers to identify this mystery signature tune:
“A frightening use of synthesiser marks out this 1990 children’s comedy theme.
“It begins with a taut scale reaching its top note by 00:02 where it is greeted by an audible shimmer. And in some of the clubs I’ve played, you’d be lucky if you even get that from the crowd!
“A brief double-snare sting introduces a plodding melody oscillating between two semi tones. Of course my favourite Tone is my good pal the virile golfer Tony Jacklin. He showed me a few strokes for tackling an embarrassingly persistent semi, I can tell you!
“A call and response between the bass and the treble establish the pace and at 00:07 the tune proper begins, revolving around a cloying suspended note that dances out a Wurlitzer-like melody. And frankly, if there’s half a chance of cloying at some suspenders I’ll be dancing like a Wurlitzer too!
“The main theme is complimented by a vamping accompaniment, and that certainly takes me back to doing Forces Radio with Diana Dors!
“The big laugh comes at 00.30 with the middle-eight, and the tune modulating to a minor. Sadly, modulating minors is something we’ve been reading far too much about in our newspapers lately.
“At 00:46 an unusual washboard sound-effect bridges back into the main tune which then continues to the coda at 00:56, bringing the theme to a squeaky ‘told you so’ sign off that sounds like it was tossed off in a matter of seconds. Which brings me back to Tony Jacklin…”
But what’s the theme?
See postNothing to Bragg about
Never go back said Stephen Fry, but it seems Lord Melvyn of Borderland can’t wait to do precisely that. He’s been offered a bauble by the ITV mafia, and he’s grabbed it with both of his I’m-bonkbustering-Cumbria hands.
The South Bank Show, or the Southbank Show as it now appears to be called, is to be revisited in a show ingeniously titled The Southbank Show Revisited.
Just when we thought the schedules were free from endless sequences of crinkled celebrities shuffling down the streets where they chalked their first hopscotch 200 years ago, just when we thought our screens were free from establishment figures tittering at black-and-white clippage of their first television play (“It was all live, you know, all completely live – BWWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”), just when we thought our lives were free from ever having to see another exchange that begins with Sir Melv asking a twentysomething pop wannabe, “So, what is your next project?”…it turns out it wasn’t and they weren’t.
The list of those about to be pontificated at reads like your average Parky episode: Andrew Lloyd Webber (like he hasn’t already made enough money out of this franchise, and who incidentally has a new musical to plug), Judi Dench (who has a new Shakespeare play to plug), Ian McKellen (who has a new Beckett play to plug) and Billy Connolly (who has a new joke to plug).
It’s all very unnecessary and undiginified, especially as there was a decent burial for the proper South Bank Show the other month, where everyone including Prince Charles turned up to moan at ITV. But by being unnecessary and undignified, it is at least in keeping with the character of its forefather’s last decade on this earth.
Don’t do it, Melvyn. Don’t do a Double Goodbye. Your troth best lies with refereeing squabbling academics on Thursday mornings on Radio 4.
See postPhoto clippage special: Chris Tarrant – the wilderness years
EVERYBODY’S EQUAL (Thames, 1989)
We quite liked this, and it ran for a couple of series. Two hundred contestants – though annoyingly they often seemed to be braying City types – were ferried in en masse and announced as such by Chris. Multiple choice questions whittled them down to a winner, at least one contestant selecting the one “silly” option and being identified and humiliated by Chris. Produced by Celador, we think, with a couple of proto-’Naire touches: keypads for the audience, multiple choice questions with four answers, and the end round with ten contestants answering timed questions was surely the genesis of Fastest Finger First. Revived by C5 as Whittle with the great Tim Vine and yellow facemasks.
STARS IN THEIR EYES (Granada, 1989)
This didn’t even manage to get screened. Tarrant compered the unbroadcast pilot for the interminable Crowther/Kelly/M***** “tonight-I’m-going-to-be” karaokefest. The crucial difference between this try-out and the finished product was that the contestants had to frenetically assemble their own costume from frocks, hats and feather boas hanging on rails on stage, thereby rendering the effect less a glossy Las Vagas tribute show, more the final round of Crackerjack.
CLUEDO (Granada, 1991)
Poor old Chris hated doing this, and we don’t blame him. Hopeless whimsical “dramatised” quiz version of the Waddington’s in-the-library-with-the-lead-piping Christmas staple. Your suspects: Michael “Mustard” Jayston, Rula “Peacock” Lenska, David “Plum” McCallum, Koo “Scarlet” Stark, Mollie “White” Sugden and Richard “Green” Wilson. The major flaw was that there were six suspects, six programmes and every character was guilty once. So when you got to episode six…
THE MAIN EVENT (BBC1, 1991)
Perhaps the only television game show ever to be devised by an Australian footballer (Craig “The Anfield Rap” Johnston) – until Harry Kewell’s Lucky Lines gets commissioned, that is. Another one series only effort for Chris, which involved celebrities in the studio joining in games like, erm, charades with the competing families in their living rooms. Celebrities of the calibre of Gordon Honeycombe, mark you. Practically every round appeared to be nicked off other game shows.
LOSE A MILLION (Carlton, 1994)
Ah, the irony! Years before Chris struck gold with a quiz that gave away a million quid, he did this short-lived effort wherein the contestants started with a “notional” million quid and had to get rid of it as sharpish as possible. How they did this is far too complex to explain here. One series only, we reckon, the only other point of interest being that the flatmates in Shallow Grave were depicted watching it, for some bizarre reason, when they could have been out celebrating the death of Keith Allen instead.
MAN O MAN (Anglia, 1996)
How this kept getting recommissioned, we have no idea. It was made by Anglia, for god’s sake! Hideous Saturday night hen party “entertainment”, involving a baying crowd of 400 awful Lambrini girls “selecting” the “best” man out of a row of 10 sub-Blind Date cretins by subjecting them to various votes, tests and quizzes, and then pushing them in a swimming pool. Gah. Chris didn’t help by annoyingly walking around with his hand in his pocket at all times.
Creamguide's Pick of the Day
-
Electric Dreams – The Giorgio Moroder Story
Monday, 22.00, BBC Radio 2Second part of this, where our hero moves slightly more towards the mainstream and starts penning film soundtracks, including the likes of Flashdance and Top Gun, plus of course The Never Ending Story which means we get to enjoy Limahl nestling alongside the rest of the heavyweight contributors, plus another film where his soundtrack is probably about a hundred times more famous now than the actual film. It’s the title of this programme, for a start.
Points of View