It’s time to prise apart the covers of TV Cream’s aural anthology of retouched and reimagined signature tunes.

Like before, we’ve got one completely new offering and one old favourite (favourite in the loosest sense of the word, i.e. as loose as Norris McWhirter’s grasp of the difference between the name of first woman to smoke a cigarette in public and the fastest undersea mammal).

First, a version of the Dr Who theme that we could pretend was Murray Gold’s demo for the new series, but this would fail to convince even for one milisecond by virtue of it being understated and not having a 100-strong choir wailing carnally throughout.

You can download it here.

Second, a version of the BBC’s Olympics 2008 theme tune that we did in response the lousy effort by that bloke from Gorillaz, and which restores those elements the official one sadly lacked, namely bits where the Beeb could fade in clips of competitors, crowd noises, someone speaking Chinese, and vaguely Oriental-sounding noises that sound like someone playing the black notes on a keyboard.

Once again you can download it here.

Enjoy!

The nation’s once-favourite listings magazine has become so disinterested of late in actually telling you what’s on (witness the issue a couple of weeks ago featuring Justin Webb analysing US health care reform) that it’s increasingly easy to forget it was once a publication that cared just as much for programmes as people, if not more so.

By way of a corrective, here are seven quotes from the magazine’s imperial era.

They have, however, become conveniently separated from any clue as to the identity of the speaker.

Reader, can you name the people who, strange as it may seem nowadays, are appearing in Radio Times not to talk about politics or their desperately poor upbringing or what kind of wild animals they have roaming round their estate, but your actual television and radio shows?

Five Simon Mayo Golden Hour points, plus three Larry David pity points, to whoever gets the full set.

1) “I thought we’d skimmed the cream but our third trawl has brought to the surface more prize goodies than we had in the first two series”
(March 1989)

2) “I’ve always had belief. Straight away I felt confident I knew what I was about and what I could do. But my confidence was a little bit knocked when suddenly people started saying: ‘D’you think you’d better get another partner?’ A bit patronising. ‘Have you found your partner yet?’ Like I’d lost my keys or something.”
(May 1988)

3) “We have the biggest and best team ever; and, for the first time, Radio 2 will share our communications facilities for a joint operation.”
(May 1986)

4) “The managers at these Mecca halls have worked very hard setting up the programmes. They’ve put all the efficient organisation behind them into raising the money.”
(October 1985)

5) “I left at 11 o’clock that night after the recording and there he was, sitting in his car, about to start up and go home. I sloped up and while I was chatting I put one of those road cones on his car. We said goodnight and he drove away; he didn’t notice a thing.”
(September 1983)

6) “The shame of it is that we haven’t time in a 40-minute programme to show the hysteria, the tension or the phone calls to say that supplies haven’t made it.”
(September 1989)

7) “He looked at me in the way a vegetarian surveys a slice of rare beef, and said mildly that it wouldn’t be quite the same. Being a weak woman, I suppose, I gave in. Although I did think that maybe I might wear a little label on it saying ‘I don’t approve of this either’.”
(June 1978)

TVC’s rumour grill is back.

Yes, this is where the latest morsels of gossip and speculation about the next series of Dr Who are subject to a spot of heat convection and/or electric filaments in an effort to provide a tasty post-prandial or pre-supper fork treat. And then we check to see whether the latest Who rumours are true or a load of shite.

1) The first words of Dr Who Matt Smith in his first proper episode as Dr Who are: “This never happened to the other fellow”.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: These were to have been the first words Matt Smith uttered in his debut episode, until the production team discovered a clause in Russell T Davies’s contract that gave him the right to pen the inaugural dialogue that was to launch the show in a bright, bold new direction. As such Matt Smith’s first line is to be: “No! Not the mind probe!”

2) A competition is being held for viewers of Blue Peter to come up with a sentence to be used by the BBC1 continuity announcer to introduce the first episode of the next series.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: A competition is being held, but it is for listeners of Terry Wogan’s new radio show, Terry Wogan’s Sunday Brunch, and will be launched live on Radio 2 on 21st February when Matt Smith “materialises” unexpectedly during some crosstalk about Children in Need and venison.

3) The episode of the next series of Dr Who that falls in the week of the general election will feature a special insert showing the Doctor stepping out of a polling booth and whispering to his companion, “I voted for the one with two hearts”.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: Not true. There is nobody standing in the general election with two hearts. Nor one, for that matter (SATIRE).

4) The next series of Dr Who will feature a sequence involving Gerald Flood popping into an Indian restaurant for a meal with the Doctor, only to confess “I can never decide what to have – I’m a bit of a korma Kamelion”.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT SAYS: Again, not true. The Doctor will go into an Indian restaurant with Julia Sawalha, only for the latter to confess: “I should never have come, but you press ganged me into it”.

5) In the final episode of the next series, an effigy of Russell T Davies can clearly be seen in the back of one shot, being pissed on by a drunken Scotsman.

TV CREAM DR WHO CONSUMER UNIT: This is a rumour being put about by a barrowman* of former Dr Who Magazine writers. In the final episode of the next series, Matt Smith regenerates into Meera Syal. 

*The collective noun for a group of sci-fi magazine employees

Excitingly, the Beeb has just published its draft guidelines for covering the 2010 general election. Disappointingly, they don’t contain any information about election night itself.

So what do we already know about how the two main networks are reporting this year’s results – and what, more importantly, can we idly speculate in lieu of actual facts?

BBC1
Anchor: DAVID DIMBLEBY
He already “can’t wait” for the leader debates, and this will be his eighth general election manning the bunker: surely a record that will never be matched. But it’s probably his last, unless we get a hung parliament and there has to be another poll in the autumn because, in the words of David Butler, there are only two weeks worth of coal left in the country.
Humble Spear-Carrier: JEREMY PAXMAN
He’s done the support act in 1997 (“Are you ready to drink hemlock Mr Portillo?”), 2001 (“Look! The pound’s still here!”) and 2005 (“Don’t try and threaten me Mr Galloway, PLEASE”). He won’t be relinquishing his interrogation pod just yet.
Box Of Tricks: JEREMY VINE
It won’t be pleasant, but the Mr Magorium of psephology will be back. The fact he’d toned it down somewhat for last year’s local elections (he was wearing a jacket) is a little reassuring.
A Woman: FIONA BRUCE
She’ll be reading the news. And doing NOTHING ELSE.
Taking A Sideways Look: DARA O’BRIAIN
He’ll be bringing you “the most amusing Tweets of the night”.
Doing An Inaudible OB From A Pub Supposedly Full Of A Cross-Section Of Voters: EMILY MAITLIS
She’ll be joined by three people monitoring “the blogosphere” and will appeal for, but fail to read out, viewers’ emails and text messages.
PLUS
The cast of Outnumbered doing a live improvisation reacting to the results as they come in.

ITV
Anchor: ALASTAIR STEWART
The grumpiest newscaster on British television will be reprising the job he did for the US presidential election in 2008, thereby ending Jonathan Dimbleby’s tenure that began in 1997. At least Old Ma Dimbleby won’t have to worry which son to tune in for.
Humble Spear-Carrier: TBA
Not sure who this would be, frankly. Who does the big interviews for commercial television these days? Mark Austin? Tom Thumb, the political editor? Sandy Gall?
Box Of Tricks: Alastair did these last time round, and a right rubbish job he made of it too. This year somebody like Ben Shepherd will probably get the gig.
A Woman: JULIE ETCHINGHAM
She’ll be reading the news. And doing NOTHING ELSE.
Taking A Sideways Look: HARRY HILL
He’ll be repeatedly interrupting amusing clips from the campaign to pretend he’s having a poorly-aeriated unfunny conversation with the footage, like Adrian Juste crossed with Arthur Askey.
Doing An Inaudible OB From A Pub Supposedly Full Of A Cross-Section Of Voters: PIERS MORGAN
He’ll be cutting into other people’s comments to air his own obsessions and refer endlessly to his own wretched programmes, before telling a member of the public who deigns to answer back that “if they like Russia so much, why don’t you go and live there.”
PLUS
Some of the Loose Women will be in the studio, cooing, cackling and cawing in their calico-knickered voices at the events of the night, paying particular attention to the fashion sense of Sarah Brown and Samantha Cameron. “Listen, love, I’m sorry, but those tights are SO 1997″.

The almighty kerfuffle that’s been going on across the water over who should be on NBC at 11.30pm each weeknight might have passed you by.

That’s fine, and perhaps that’s how it should be; at one (hell of a) remove it’s akin to the small screen version of bald men fighting over a comb.

Nonetheless it’s the sort of thing that obsesses TV Cream, as it awakens our slumbering ire at the fact there still hasn’t been a successful equivalent to Johnny Carson and/or the Tonight Show on UK screens – both of which, preferably together, some of us can’t get enough of.

Many have tried. No, wait a minute – many haven’t tried, and that’s been the problem.

Johnny Vaughan Tonight took too much for granted: the format, the studio audience, the viewers at home. The Last Resort was funny but not topical. The Late Edition on BBC4 was topical but not funny. The 11 O’Clock Show was neither. The RDA had something of the right spirit, but was on at the wrong time and had the wrong calibre of guests. Graham Norton’s nightly Channel 4 effort had the right calibre of guests but was too niche and undignified.

And so on. There’s always been something missing, something the producers and presenters can’t quite nail or simply don’t bother striving for.

So who could do it? Who could be Britain’s version of Carson, or Letterman, or even newly-redundant multi-millionaire Conan O’Brien?

It would have to be somebody (in no particular order):
a) funny
b) intelligent
c) dignified
d) who exudes warmth
e) who looks at ease behind a desk

And they would have to get a show that was:
a) in the same slot every weeknight
b) had a decent budget
c) blessed with excellent guests
d) had a proper, i.e. not a comedy, house band

Shall we quit now? It seems a near-impossibly tall order. It might not have been so implausible, say, 20 years ago. Aspel would’ve been perfect at it; Clive James possibly, though he wouldn’t have had the warmth; Wogan might have looked discomfited behind a desk.

But today? Well, Jack Dee ticks a lot of boxes – funny, intelligent, dignified – but hasn’t exactly made a career out of being warm and affable. At least he has the same sort of background as Carson and Letterman: an entertainer. Plus he’s a mainstream figure: remember we’re after someone who’s already well-known and who’s not going to surprise anybody.

Stephen Fry has become too much of a caricature of himself to do the job, though he would’ve been great 10 years ago. Danny Baker? Probably still too prickly. Tim Vine?

The fact it’s a struggle to come up with someone reflects the absence of engaging, all-round entertainers between the ages of 40 and 60 from British television. They’ve been driven out of the business, or rather, not allowed to get in.

But then, when you think of the esteem in which Johnny Carson was held – someone an entire nation would stay up for, someone a population looked to amuse, distract and console them no matter what the day had brought – and then think of the esteem which Britain metes out to talented, intelligent, dignified telly folk, perhaps we just don’t deserve his like on our screens.

Rap music’s greatest gift to popular culture was undoubtedly its potential as a comedy song. Previously you had to be funny while singing a tune. Now you just had to speak the jokes.

As the 1980s arrived, the floodgates opened. For a proper comedy rap song, you had to call your track The [insert word] Rap, or better still, just [insert word] Rap. They ideally had to involve a bit of comedy crosstalk, some outrageous samples, lyrical content utterly at odds with US East Coast gang warfare, and best of all a celebrity, either as themselves or in character.

When it came to street culture, TV Cream always knew on which side of the road it preferred to walk. The pavement that went past Rumbelows. Here’s our pick of eight genre-defining comedy rap hits.

1. Holiday Rap
MC MIKER G AND DJ SVEN
Brightly-coloured baggy cardigans and pencil moustaches ahoy! Here’s a pointed tale of busting out of class and hitting the likes of New York Ci-teh, but more importantly it’s a masterclass in 80s novelty rapping. All the essentials are present: some primitive vocal beatboxing, lots of explanation about what their respective names mean, some Shadows-esque footwork, an exhortation to put your hands in the air, and a meaningless line for viewers to chant at each other in the school the following morning (“We’re gonna ring-ranga-don for a holiday”). “It’s going to be a big hit here as well,” quoth Gary Davies.

2. Romford Rap
CHAS’N'DAVE AND THE MATCHROOM MOB
“Come on everybody, all pin back your lugs”. Now while the verses of this effort tick all the boogaloo boxes, the chorus just sounds like any other Chas and Dave oompah track, hence somewhat undercutting the song’s rap credentials. It does, however, boast a plea for world tolerance (“whether you’re a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink or black”) which would undoubtedly have pleased Fab Five Freddy. This YouTube version doesn’t do the song justice, thanks to it having been stupidly sped up.

3. Snot Rap
KENNY EVERETT
This is more like it. A really ace, bubbly funky arrangement, co-starring Cupid Stunt (or, as the BBC always said, “Cupid”), co-written by Barry Cryer and Ray Cameron, and featuring that “all in good taste” bit which pretty quickly turned up as the closing signature tune for the telly show. The highlights have to be the cross-talking: “How do you think this record is going?” “Well, it’s going round, isn’t it?” “Do you think we’ll get on Top of the Pops?” “Why not? You’ve been on top of everything else!” The version on YouTube has once again been sped up, so here’s the Snot Rap part 2, which includes the revelation that John Travolta “wears his trousers out from the inside”, a guest appearance from Marcel “your favourite frog”, and an ending with all the characters talking over each other and having an argument.

4. To Be Or Not To Be (The Hitler Rap)
MEL BROOKS
“And so I said to Martin Boorman, I said ‘Hey Marty/Why don’t we throw a little Nazi party?’” A wonderful slice of typically tuneful tastelessness from Mr Brooks. Against a textbook 1980s pop video set -- giant chessboard and columns floating in a black nothinginess -- a distinctly non-Aryan line-up of dancing girls bids you “Sieg heil!” while some blokes goosestep around half naked and Mel gives you a potted history of the rise and fall of the Third Reich, breaking off for a bit of floorspinning and pre-cognitive U2 namechecking (“I said achtung baby, I got me a plan!”). Note how Mel clearly couldn’t be bothered memorising the lines, reading the verses of idiot boards to the far right (appropriately) of the camera.

5. Stutter Rap (No Sleep ‘Til Bedtime)
MORRIS MINOR AND THE MAJORS
“Neigh-bours!” On the old TV Cream mailing list, someone once tried to argue that this song was responsible for the rise of fascist political parties in mainland Europe during the late 80s and early 90s. Erm, surely it’s just a (rather good) pisstake of The Beastie Boys? The best bit of what is a generally fantastic promotional video is surely the bunch of “real people” standing in the background during the scenes set in the rainy market place, including one old bloke nonchalantly strumming a ukelele. Note also the Chaka Khan/”chuck a can” gag, which briefly became another novelty rap motif.

6. Anfield Rap (Red Machine in Full Effect)
LIVERPOOL FC
Not being the most football-savyy of TV Cream staffers, this writer finds said song a bit bemusing. Is doing You’ll Never Walk Alone in a Vic Reeves nightclub singer style really honouring the memory of Anfield’s finest? Ah well; John Barn-es does a shout out to Arse-en-hell, someone makes a few brave stabs at robotics, Bruce Grobbelaar wears some giant Everett-sized hands presumably to take all those massive bungs (SATIRE), and there’s a shedload of harmless back projection. Oh, and the riff from Twist and Shout comes in at the end, and that enduring Chaka Khan gag (see above) here becomes “Macca can”. But who’s doing the commentator bit? Is that Ooh Barry Davies?

7. Rat Rapping
ROLAND RAT SUPERSTAR
You know you’re on to a good thing when the comedy crosstalk starts barely seconds into the song. Another musically superior offering, the lyrics mostly involve Roland Rat Superstar attempting to tutor Kevin the Gerbil about the right way to scratch a flea. There’s a brief diversion into why rats are “marvellous” and live a life full of “lots of talk and lots of action”. We’re also cautioned not to forget those “pretty young guinea pigs, playing it cool”. When this was released, Roland was one of the most famous faces in the British Isles.

8. Geordie Boys (Gazza Rap)
PAUL GASCOIGNE
One minute and 54 seconds of footage that won’t have been included on the Gazza obituary packages. The best you can say is that at least they don’t try to hide the fact it was done on the cheap. Paul seems to spend the majority of the video singing to himself in the back of a taxi. Elsewhere we see glum shots of the titular males walking glumly through glum shopping centres, before some posing that is more suited for a gay chatline TV ad. “I’ll tell you something” says the TOTP host at the end, tantalisingly.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be filling our time capsule with stuff that the noughties deserves to be remembered for.

Shows that risk being washed away by the tide of history that says the decade was all about Peter Kay’s Max and Paddy’s Road To Nowhere by Peter Kay, Russell T Davies’s Dr Who, and Simon Cowell’s ITV.

Who, after all, can forget that they’ve remembered to forget programmes like ‘Orrible, Hear’say It’s Saturday, Stars Reunited or Celebdaq? How about This Is Dom Joly, or The Chair, or The Lookalike Awards?

We’ll hopefully be chucking a few big hitters inside as well: Fame Academy (“Oi!”), Election 64 (“Too busy thinking about the Beatles”), The Premiership (“He has to drive it!”) and so on.

We asked for your suggestions – and there’s time for you to send in some more.

But don’t worry if your fear for TV Cream’s sensibilities. We still know where our uncritical heart beats; we’re not about to be turned by a flash of Julia Bradbury’s ankle or George Lamb interviewing the proprietors of Sorbet and Seasons. In a month or so’s time, the capsule will be closed, carefully sealed, and buried safely out of sight – as a link somewhere in TV Cream’s unintuitive site navigation.

Here’s what has been placed inside so far…

A few days late perhaps, but given most of 2009’s award ceremonies don’t take place till February 2010, we’re still ahead of the pack. Here’s our tribute to a few TV Cream heroes who passed away during the last 12 months.

You’ve perused the Christmas Radio Times for the 29th desperate time. You’ve cast aside your one genuine “surprise” present – a celebrity biography – as a cloud of seasonal ennui descends. You’ve even resorted to nibbling the bruised satsuma that was at the bottom of your stocking.

In short, you are at a complete loss.

But fear not! TV Cream’s bumper family-sized selection box-styled quiz is here!

Below you’ll find no fewer than 50 questions* to tax your grey cells on all those familiar Creamy concerns: telly, radio, films, comics, computers and music.

No prizes are on offer, save grotesque self-satisfaction and 76 Simon Mayo Golden Hour points (one for every time he played ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ by Deep Blue Something in 1996).

But if you want to email your answers, we’ll namecheck whoever does best at the same time as printing the solutions, in the next decade. Enjoy!

*A lie. On reflection there seem to be 52. One for each week of the year, then.

LET’S GET THE NETWORK TOGETHER, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!

1. “BUM” can mean lots of things, but in the history of Saturday night television it is an acronym. So what does it stand for?

2. According to Paul Smith, before giving the gig to Denis Norden, who did Michael Grade suggest should present IT’LL BE ALRIGHT ON THE NIGHT?

3. Which small-time Saturday night entertainer has said in more than one press interview down the years “I’ve had more pilots than British Airways”?

COMIC CON(FLAB)

4. The 1970s Victor comic-strip “Johnny Gets The Runs” was about what activity?

5. In 1973, Bill Oddie changed his preferred reading from The Beano comic to Cor!! What prompted his defection?

6. What was the connection between Hurricane comics’ Hurry of the Hammers and Tiger’s Roy of the Rovers?

AT VICARAGE ROAD, TONY GUBBA

7. When Brian Moore joined LWT in 1969, he was one of two people considered for the top commentary position. Which former BBC radio colleague was the other?

8. At which ground did the penalty spot need repainting during a 1977 MATCH OF THE DAY game against Derby?

9. Which big name from another sport was screen-tested for FOOTBALL FOCUS when Gary Lineker moved up to MATCH OF THE DAY after Des Lynam jumped ship?

SHAPES AND SIZES, GLITTERING PRIZES

10. Which popular family assortment contained such delights as Lemon Barrell, Chartreuse Bullion and Honeycomb Ingot?

11. Today it’s a hazelnut, but Quality Street favourite “the purple one” once contained which nut?

12. Cadbury’s Roses launched in which year?

THE DECADE CALLED THE 1980s (THAT’S 1980-1989)

13. What was Side 1, Track 1 on the very first Now That’s What I Call Music! album, released in 1983?

14. From which Lancashire town did Blancmange hail?

15. What was the name of Madonna’s last #1 of the 1980s?

THE MR BRONSON MEMORIAL CHANSON D’AMOUR LANGUAGE ROUND

Three snippets from Eurohits with foreign lyrics, ineptly translated using Google’s language tools. Songs and artists, s’il vous plait.

16. “From where came was probably everyone owes well-known. He was a man of the Mrs. Women loved its punk”.

17. “Its yellow sax knows all the streets by heart, all small bars, all black corners”.

18. “Crying it will be, when remembering a love that one day it did not know to take care of”.

LET’S GO…

19. Of which year did the NATIONWIDE team seek to rally the nation’s spirits with the cry “Was It Really That Bad?”?

20. Which man-of-a-thousand-voices Scot turned up as a judge in the first Nationwide Cook of the Realm competition in 1971?

21. What was the name of the ‘Wide’s special advice shop manned by Valerie Singleton and Richard Stilgoe?

SOUNDS PECULIAR!

22. The first series of which long-running radio current affairs spoof investigated why a town twenty miles north of Birmingham was demolished to make way for London’s third airport?

23. What was the name of the shop-bothering Mobile Phone Stuntman on THE CHRIS MORRIS MUSIC SHOW?

24. Which series was introduced by the washed-up “McKay off of ABC TV’s STAR ARK and inventor of the Interstellar Laser Ray Gun toy”, and who played him?

TERRY NATION’S DR WHO

25. What links Grange Hill’s Fay Lucas with the 2005 series of DR WHO?

26. Who was the first actor to notch up an appearance in both the new and original series of DR WHO?

27. Who was the first TV personality to make an appearance as themselves in the original run of DR WHO?

WEAR A SMILE

28. Name the two comedians who replaced Trevor and Simon for one series of GOING LIVE.

29. What’s next in this sequence – THE SATURDAY PICTURE SHOW, IT’S WICKED, ON THE WATERFRONT, UP2U?

30. What’s the connection between Isla St. Clair and Fearne Cotton?

WHETHER THE WEATHERFIELD BE FINE

31. What is the connection between Debra Stephenson, off of BAD GIRLS and BOB SAYS OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, and British character actor Sam Kydd?

32. How many actresses have played the role of Deirdre’s truculent tapes-obsessed offspring Tracy?

33. Derek Wilton died of a heart attack following a road rage incident, but what was distinct about the vehicle he was driving at the time?

SUPERGERRYANDERSONATION

34. We all know Captain Scarlet’s real name was Paul Metcalfe, but who was Conrad Turner?

35. Put words to the following acronyms: WASP, IR, BISHOP, SHADO.

36. Who connects James Bond, Colonel White and Johnny Cyclops?

BACK! BACK! BACK!

37. Chris Evans’s impending return to breakfast radio may have divided opinion, but it surely won’t plumb the depths of his golf-related Channel 4 series. What was the show called?

38. Which 1980s chat show returned in 2006 with a new series subtitled “Now And Then”?

39. Which long running series did Noel “NOEL’S HQ” Edmonds co-present with Angela Rippon in its earlier days?

FROM SMALL SCREEN TO BIG LAUGHS

40. What was the name of the greyhound Harold bought from Frankie Barrow, the Godfather of Shepherd’s Bush, instead of a new horse to replace Hercules in STEPTOE AND SON RIDE AGAIN?

41. In the film version of PORRIDGE, what did Mr Mackay lose in the curry carefully prepared by Godber and Lotterby?

42. In the film version of THE LIKELY LADS, Bob says to Terry: “In the chocolate box of life, the top layer is already gone. And someone’s nicked the [BLANK] from the bottom”. Fill in the blank or blanks.

43. Who replaced the only recently deceased Richard Beckinsale for the big screen version of RISING DAMP?

44. In Tony Hancock’s protracted Half Hour THE REBEL, what was the name of the painting he claimed to have hanging in the Tate Gallery, and which he described on the luxury yacht prior to his escaping back to England?

R Tape Loading Error: three questions end up crammed into one with 16 whole k’s worth of questions on computery things of yore

45. In the film WAR GAMES, what does WOPR stand for; what was the name of the rubbish American reporter who used to turn up from time to time on CITV’s BAD INFLUENCE; and which computer did the 1986 Domesday Project run on?

SCREEN TEST

46. In which London tube station should bowler-hatted civil servants and wooden American leading men alike be particularly wary of hearing the phrase “Mind The Doors”?

47. To which venerable institution do Susan George, Gary Kemp and Matthew “Stuff” Wright owe an early break in their respective careers?

48. Run by two New Yorkers – a brash lawyer and a bookish, antisocial producer – which British film company went from peddling rock’n'roll showcases, via Hitchcock rip-offs, to making a series of classic horror films by sticking lots of stories together and doing little holes round the edges, and ended up sending a certain blonde Californian actor to fight off a variety of monsters underground?

49. Terry-Thomas is bled dry. Penelope Wilton’s cousin is devoured by locusts. Honor Blackman’s hubby is speared by a brass unicorn. Who is to blame?

50. What was Audrey Hepburn’s one and only line in LAUGHTER IN PARADISE, her delivery of which so impressed producers she was offered a seven year contract on the spot?

TV Cream’s fourth podcast – and it’s the biggest yet clocking in at a smidge over an hour. Sorry about that.

Join the TV Cream crew as they board Tommy Boyd and Bonnie Langford’s Saturday Starship for a galactic quest to the planet Arg! Along the way, there’s an even more heightened mix than normal of appalling acting from your hosts, and cosmos-class features. Including…

The universal premiere of the Blake’s 7 theme plus lyrics, and an assessment of what actually makes a successful TV sci-fi theme song.

Jon P’twee is defrosted to file a video game review, space buskers are given short shrift, and the space Monopoly board game is brought out for a thorough working over.

There’s also the Davidson Dossier – new and exciting information about the Fifth Doctor; a look-back at Captain Zep: Space Detective; plus an exclusive peep ahead to this year’s Dr Who Christmas special… and a fleeting visit to Steven Moffat’s bedroom.

Finally, there’s a guide to winning The Adventure Game, which culminates in a senses-shattering showdown on Arg!

TV Cream is now on iTunes, so you can download the thing from there, download directly from us here (84MB!) or simply listen to it on good ol’ tvcream.co uk.

 

If that doesn’t sate your appetite for all things sky-fi, we can also recommend the latest production from our good friends at Tachyon TV. Find out more about that here.

It’s December 1984 and, in the pages of Radio Times, Noel Edmonds is depicted standing before one of London’s most familiar landmarks, grinning into a breezeblock-proportioned mobile phone.

The reason? Nothing less than “one of the greatest communications projects ever put forward,” as Noel modestly described proceedings on the big day itself.

This was the first ever edition of THE LIVE LIVE CHRISTMAS BREAKFAST SHOW, or, as everybody else called it, Noel Up The Post Office Tower On Christmas Morning.

For a glorious period during the 1980s, Noel held Yuletide dominion across the kingdom from atop his celestial citadel in the clouds. This is the story of those good, great times.

***********************************************

Noel was no stranger to the marathon talk-in, of course, having spent six years in the cockpit of the MULTI-COLOURED SWAP SHOP. But instead of chatting on a trimphone with some kid in Kettering about Captain Beaky, or riffing with Cheggers as he bartered Stop Boris on a damp rugby field in Swansea, now he had the entire planet at his fingertips.

Fleets of BBC outside broadcast trucks, miles and miles of fibre-optic links and a multitude of state-of-the-art satellites were deployed, all in the name of bringing us live footage of RULA LENSKA and DENNIS WATERMAN drinking a can of lager in Australia. Leslie Crowther in a paper hat hanging around a hospital ward no longer quite cut it.

For a nation of kids, Noel Up The Tower satisfyingly bridged that barren Christmas morning wasteland between opening all your presents and TOP OF THE POPS, which invariably had been filled previously by some rubbish black-and-white film or – shudder – a circus. Mum could take a break from the Buxted and Bisto to pop in and watch for 10 minutes, while dad could use it to test out that gleaming new Matsui video recorder.

That first extravaganza in 1984 lasted a mere 90 minutes, and reunited Noel with his LATE LATE sparring partner MIKE SMITH, freed from his normal Saturday night duties of standing in the cold outside the National Motorcycle Museum at Beaulieu while some bloke attempted to pilot a Honda Melody through a burning hula-hoop. Now, Smitty got to soar high above the capital in “the BBC-TV hollycopter”, threatening to “drop in on viewers’ homes and celebrations,” but none of this deterred 11 million people from tuning in.

Further attractions including KIM WILDE and HOWARD JONES hassling the patients at Charing Cross Hospital with Like To Get To Know You Well, dedications from Our Boys in the Falklands, and “pictures from Australia, Russia and Italy to see how they celebrate Christmas”, which sounds like the sort of thing Richard Dimbleby might have done in 1956.

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In 1985, the broadcast was extended to two hours, and nudged a little later in the schedule (to accommodate ROLAND RAT’S YULETIDE BINGE, fact fans). “Noel will be up at six to travel to London,” revealed a breathless Radio Times. “I’m really looking forward to it,” vouchsafed Edmonds. “If it’s anything like last year, there’ll be a great atmosphere at the top of the tower.”

The pressure was on to top the inaugural festivities, but fortunately Noel had enlisted the formidable combination of GARY DAVIES and THE KRANKIES to mount a live jamboree for children aboard a Virgin Airways jet circling over Gatwick. “For the first time ever,” declared Noel, “we are going to be bringing you live pictures from a commercial airliner, it’s never been done before.” This, of course, being the occasion when FEARGAL SHARKEY made an arse of himself by neglecting to mime along to ‘You Little Thief’.

The programme also featured a live report from a refugee camp in Sudan in order to launch COMIC RELIEF, some blokes cleaning the windows of the Post Office Tower, and manifold Television Firsts for Noel to boast about (“And now an absolute first from the show that loves to bring you firsts”, “We’ll be doing the first ever computer draw”, “We have another first for BBC Television on this special day”).

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By 1986, the shebang had been retitled CHRISTMAS MORNING WITH NOEL, for obvious reasons, and Smitty had been relegated to a few filmed inserts “searching for Santa in Lapland”. Even MARGARET THATCHER insisted on gate-crashing the celebrations, contributing a regal Christmas address to a doubtless grateful nation: “We’re very happy to take part in The Noel Edmonds Show.” That’s not its name!

For the first time, the programme was produced in association with Network Ten down under, Another Television First for Noel (“This programme is now being seen simultaneously not just in the United Kingdom but also in Australia, it’s the first time family entertainment has been seen in this way”) enabling him to reunite families and deliver Two-Way Family Favourites greetings around the stratosphere.

Noel also recruited a regional “team of BBC buffoons” across the land, including CLIFF WHITE in Bristol and ANDY SNELGROVE on top of a deserted multi-storey car park in Newcastle, imploring viewers to “come down and join in the fun” from underneath their BBC umbrellas. And, impressively, CLIFF RICHARD in London and ELTON JOHN in Australia – is it just us, or did Reg spend the entire 1980s down under? – performed a live duet. And they said it couldn’t be done on Live Aid!

But the bit from 1986 that everyone remembers was the live charity running race up the Post Office Tower steps, resulting in one MARK KLENATHOUS (“He’s on for £1,500 from Ski yoghurt”) collapsing and needing oxygen at the climax of his attempt.

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No doubt Noel had to get up even earlier in 1987, as that year’s broadcast began at nine o’clock, so it could be simulcast in prime time in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and, er, Gibraltar. Indeed, the programme had to be split into two parts, a bit like when SWAP SHOP had to accommodate THE POPE’S VISIT TO IRELAND, so BBC1 could bugger off at 10.30 for CHRISTMAS READINGS (essentially a posh FIVE TO ELEVEN with Laurence Olivier) and the morning service, before returning to the Post Office Tower for part two at 11.45.

This time round, the regional cast of thousands included JOHN LESLIE in Glasgow and the great HARRY GRATION in Leeds, who should be on telly on Christmas Day every year. There were more fireside epistles from the great and good, including ELTON JOHN, DANNY LA RUE and the leader of the Liberal Party (“Mum, DAVID STEEL’s just wished us all a happy and healthy 1988!”) and the Spot It You’ve Got It Quiz, but nobody at TV Cream really remembers that, because we were playing OutRun on our Spectrum or something.

GORDEN KAYE and JOHN INMAN acted as ringmasters at a Christmas circus in Battersea, but the 1987 edition shall forever be remembered for our first sighting of that bizarre (but Chris Lowe-endorsed) BBC video for ‘I Should Be So Lucky’, with KYLIE MINOGUE looking out of the roof of a car being driven around Melbourne.

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The 1988 edition lasted a mere 65 minutes, presumably to enable Noel to race back for lunch in Devon in his customised Winnebago as fast as possible, and frankly it was thin gruel all round, with SHANE RICHIE and SOPHIE ALDRED as the team captains on some quiz, VINCE HILL with some carol singers at 11 Downing Street, and out-takes from Last Of The Summer Wine, presumably of the bathtub on wheels going over a cliff or something.

Mind you, at least we got Noel “swapping” his jumper in the grand Multi-Coloured tradition, a link with the Russian space station, and Christmas messages from RONALD REAGAN and PADDY ASHDOWN.

So, the golden age of Noel Up The Post Office Tower On Christmas Morning had reached its end. For the next 10 years or so, the great man’s Yuletide contribution would consist of NOEL’S CHRISTMAS PRESENTS, an hour of celebrity tin-rattling and tear-filled reunions. But it could never quite replace Noel in a jumper, 625 feet above London, tittering amid the tinsel as a satellite link failed, handing to WAYNE BODKIN in Plymouth, and announcing Another Television First.

Like the man said, “I hope you have an immaculate Christmas Day!”

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DOWNLOAD FESTIVE TV CREAM NOEL EDMONDS TELECOM TOWER WALLPAPER!

Yes, in a TV Cream first, we’ve prepared two customised seasonal wallpapers for you to download and save to your computer. Both feature the spirit of 1980s Christmas, Noel Edmonds, in the control room at the top of the Telecom Tower, pointing, gurning and grinning. What better visual representation of Christmas past?

Simply pick the one that matches your computer screen resolution, right-click and download!

Wallpaper 1:
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Widescreen

Wallpaper 2:
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Widescreen

Christmas telly, eh? THE GREAT ESCAPE! VAL DOONICAN! Your drunken dad standing up for THE QUEEN’S SPEECH! NOEL EDMONDS UP THE POST OFFICE TOWER!

Of course, unless you’re living in a sitcom or an issue of The Daily Mail, none of those things will be on television at Christmas, nor have they been for several years.

Yet there are still some familiar sightings in the festive TV schedules, albeit rather less celebrated.

Surely the first sign of Christmas these days are the hopeless made-up tabloid TV guides at the end of November, which try and suggest THE AVIATOR or DEAD AGAIN will be shown on prime time Christmas night. Yet despite at least half of the listings being devoted to “To Be Announced”, it’s actually fairly easy to predict the sort of things that are going to be on Christmas telly before you even open the Radio Times. For example, you’ll always see…

1) ANCIENT FILMS AT 6AM

A BBC2 staple, this, as whenever the Open University used to go on holiday, the extra hours would invariably be filled with a couple of RKO Radio Pictures like THE GAY FALCON, or umpteen LAUREL AND HARDY films back-to-back. In addition, whichever film star was having a season of their movies being shown on BBC2 over the festive period – normally either James Stewart or John Wayne – would invariably find their least distinguished pictures rolled out over breakfast so they can spend primetime showing the big guns while still announcing that the season was “definitive”. Of course, the thinking behind this was presumably to counter the cartoons being screened on every other channel until mid-morning, so for a generation the likes of THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT PART II served the same sort of role as ZIGGY’S GIFT and A MERRY MIRTHWORM CHRISTMAS.

2) BRITISH COMEDY FILMS AT 1AM

It’s late on Christmas Day. Everyone else has gone to bed and you’re searching under the sofa to try and find that missing plate for the last dishwasher load. You idly switch on the telly for some distraction and find STEPTOE AND SON RIDE AGAIN. Or PORRIDGE or THE LIKELY LADS or, hell, even FATHER DEAR FATHER. For some reason BBC1 always took the Christmas holidays as the cue to fling on sitcom spin-offs around midnight, presumably as these are really the sort of films that can only really be watched after strong liqour – especially when they were really at the bottom of the barrel and had got on to HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH or PERCY’S PROGRESS. Indeed, DON’T JUST LIE THERE SAY SOMETHING has probably been on Christmas telly more times than THE SNOWMAN.

 3) THE USUAL SITCOM REPEATS

“Why is the Ooh Aah bird so called?” Congratulations to useless Lib Dem broadcasting spokesman Don Foster who, while the world tries to claw its way out of recession and millions are facing unemployment, has once again decided the most important issue affecting the medium is too many repeats of DAD’S ARMY. Nobody cares, though, because what better way to while away a dull afternoon over the holidays than reciting the script to THE GOOD LIFE along with Richard Briers. Indeed, such is the enduring appeal of some of these shows that in 1984, a repeat of PORRIDGE on December 27th was not just the most popular programme on BBC1 that night, but also the entire festive season with a whopping 19.4 million viewers. That’s more than RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK!

 4) DOCUMENTARY SERIES STRIPPED EVERY MORNING

“Hello? Yes, yes BBC, I know.” So BBC2 have got two weeks worth of daytimes to fill without schools programmes and Westminster. Call for Michael Palin, who can happily go AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS for the hundredth time every morning at 10am, or Alan Whicker, who can remark, “There’s something about a speedboat that makes you want to laugh” yet again. That said, as they’re on every single day of the holidays, we’re not sure who leaves their New Year’s Eve parties early so they can find out whether Mike’s going to be let into Saudi Arabia the next morning.

 5) A HASTILY-COMMISSIONED CHRISTMAS SPECIAL OF A FLOP SERIES

TV scheduling is often more luck than judgement. Take 1980, for example, when BBC1 commissioned NICE WORK, a factory-set sitcom starring Edward Woodward. It all seemed very promising so, at the same time, they greenlit a Christmas special, assuming that by December the public would be chomping at the bit to see how the by-then-much-loved staff of Hoffman Pressburger would celebrate the festive season. However by the time Mr Woowar joined the likes of Terry Scott and Robert Lindsay in the Christmas Radio Times to suggest how his character would celebrate Christmas, the series had been broadcast, and promptly flopped, meaning the special was its last ever outing. In later years, the likes of BABES IN THE WOOD and JACK DEE’S SATURDAY NIGHT enjoyed some ill-advised festive outings, while so desperate were the Beeb to replicate that Only Fools magic, THE GREEN GREEN GRASS went out at 8pm on Christmas Day 2005.

 6) A CHRISTMAS SPECIAL IN AN EMBARRASSINGLY UNPRESTIGIOUS SLOT

There are only so many hours in Christmas Day, so not every series can get their festive special in the favoured slot. Yet there’s something a bit embarrassing about a show trying to get us in the festive mood when, thanks to several more enticing shows taking priority, they’re doing so on December 19th when everyone’s still in work. For a time, the position of a show in the Christmas line-up could tell you exactly at what point an entertainer’s career was at. The best example is THE PAUL DANIELS MAGIC CHRISTMAS SHOW, which, when our man was still a rookie magician, started its life in 1979 on December 22nd. In the early 80s he was at his peak and regularly turning up on Christmas Day, but by the end of the decade, when the novelty started wearing off somewhat, he flitted around Christmas Eve or Boxing Day. Finally, in the 90s, Paul was reduced to manning the Bunco Booth on the 29th or 30th when everyone’s bored of Christmas, and nobody was surprised when the show soon came to an end. Meanwhile, 1988 was a blue Christmas in the Forsyth and Corbett households when Marcus Mortimer, producer of their seasonal special BRUCE AND RONNIE, walked into the rehearsal rooms in tears and blubbed, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’ve just looked at the schedules and we’re on Boxing Day at eleven o’clock”.

 7) LEFTOVER EPISODES OF FLOPS GETTING FLUNG OUT DURING THE DAY

Every year the shelves at the Beeb and ITV are groaning with hundreds of episodes of series that have never seen the light of day thanks to series getting canned mid-run, so the broadcasters have regularly flung the previously unseen shows out during Christmas daytimes, justifying the expense of making them while hoping nobody notices. And if the makers complain, at least they have the prestige of going out at Christmas. The likes of dodgy Davina-helmed hidden camera show OBLIVIOUS and silent comedy THE BALDY MAN have been shoved out in this manner in recent years. Occasionally you’d also get leftover episodes of game shows that had been postponed during their runs, with the surprisingly unfestive edition of EVERY SECOND COUNTS screened at lunchtime on Christmas Day 1986 being the episode that had made way for One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing after The Late Late Breakfast Show had been cancelled and the Saturday schedules abruptly rearranged.

 8) SOMETHING ON BBC2 OR CHANNEL 4 GETTING NO VIEWERS

For 51 weeks of the year, Channel 4 is the channel of Big Brother, Come Dine With Me and Property Ladder, often being more populist than ITV. However come Christmas, with BBC1 shoving out all the big guns, C4 seems to revert to its early days with schedules filled with the sort of “alternative” – ie, utterly tedious – programming that it’s too scared to show at times when anyone’s watching. Hence you get opera, ballet and extended religious documentaries, and at least one of these will be scheduled on Christmas Day opposite EastEnders or Doctor Who and get a rating so low it’s officially rounded down to zero. In 1993, for example, C4 screened SWAN SONG, a low-budget, one act play starring John Gielgud and directed by Kenneth Branagh, no doubt delighting the handful who bothered to tune in. BBC2 couldn’t crow too much, though, as the same night they played Alan Plater’s dramatisation of Glyn Thomas’s (who?) autobiography, SELECTED EXITS, and nobody watched that either.

 9) A SPRIG OF HOLLY ON THE TELEPRINTER

In every paper over the Christmas period you’ll find some columnists wringing their hands over the number of matches footballers are forced to play over the festive season, but the three or four full fixture lists over the festive season are always great fun, especially because the players are usually a bit knackered towards the end and there’s all sorts of bizarre results. However such were the restrictions on televising football in the past you’d only get MATCH OF THE DAY on Boxing Day if it fell on a Saturday – if that. Indeed it wasn’t until 1999 that you’d always get a highlights show on the 26th. To make up for it they were normally allowed to show a couple of goals on FINAL SCORE, where Harry Gration, Ralph Dellor or David Icke would sit in front of a Christmas tree to have a look at the teleprinter, with a sprig of holly replacing the usual score draw ticker as the pools didn’t operate on Boxing Day, before running through the results and tables as briefly as possible and buggering off. Still, it was more interesting than Setanta Sports News.

 10) SOMETHING SHITTY ON NEW YEAR’S EVE

Television on New Year’s Eve is the equivalent of Tesco at 5pm on Christmas Eve – all the good stuff’s been and gone and if you can’t find anything it’s your own fault. Seemingly the broadcasters have decided en masse that everyone goes out on December 31st and there’s no point in showing anything half decent, so out comes all the rubbish they can’t get away with screening when people are watching. For ITV, this is normally a crappy drama that’s been on the shelf for ages, like 1996’s in-jokey media satire CUTS or 2007’s DOUBLE TAKE, while on the Beeb it’s endless repeats, like PARTY AT THE PALACE all over again in 2002. Surely the biggest pisstake was on the last day of 1994 when BBC1 presented the incredible double bill of STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT and BARBRA STREISAND IN CONCERT, but anyone on their own in 2004 will doubtless still recall the heightened despair caused by the screening of A QUESTION OF SPORT OUT-TAKES SPECIAL at 11pm.

Once upon a time, nowhere was the notion of the “family of BBC faces” more played up at Christmas time than on that wholly non-visual medium of Radio 1.

Every year all the station’s premier personnel (premier not necessarily, as has often been the case, equalling popular) made it their business to lend their pipes to the airwaves on 25th December. To almost universal indifference.

Still, the Christmas Day line-up would always be a telling snapshot of who was up, who was down, and who owed Simon Bates a favour.

In 1981, for instance, Tony Blackburn was still being palmed off with the early morning show for kids from Great Ormond Street hospital, while DLT held court at lunch wielding the knife, or more accurately a knife sound effect, at the DJ Christmas Dinner.

But by 1983 Tone was gone. Change was in the air, with talk of a fresh new station led by a bold, exciting, forward-looking phalanx of DJs…such as “me, Mark Page”. Mike Read took over from DLT at the top of the dinner table, and Steve Wright began turning up while you were washing the pots.

1984, though, marked the beginning of a true Christmas institution. Not Noel up the Telecom tower, but something just as ubiquitous. Simon Bates’s All Gold featured back to back “discs which have gone gold” continually interrupted by lots of gossip and tittle-tattle, plus messages to and from servicemen around the world like it was Two-Way Family Favourites. And, presumably, special appearances from the likes of the BBC Director-General and Denise La Salle.

Things got a little out of hand in 1985, with the likes of Paul Jordan and Adrian John comforting those alone on 25th December, along with a recital by the choirboy of the year and Around The World In 80 Plays (anecdote-rich number-crunching from Gambo, John Walters and Mike Read).

This was easily surpassed in titular triviality by 1986’s P And V’s Christmas Party, starring the Ranking Miss P and Robbie Vincent, although this was ditched the following year for the pedantically-titled Friday Rock Show. It’s not Friday, it’s Christmas Day, dammit!

It was always likely that Bates would one day end up spending Christmas Day broadcasting “live” from the Gulf. Why this happened in 1988, however, when nothing whatsoever was happening in that part of the world, is a fine tribute to the man’s ability to marshal BBC resources as if he were running NATO.

Back home it was Liz’n’Mark’s turn on the early shift, followed later by Read And Wright’s Christmas Dinner (do you see?).

This inevitable scatological conceit was promptly scrapped in 1989 for the much more diplomatic Christmas Dinner With The DJs, although Wright, naturally, insisted on his own look-in at 4pm, followed later by Richard Skinner rummaging in his CD Christmas Box.

Chris Morris handing over to Jenny Costello on the nation’s favourite on Christmas Day? It happened, though seeing as nobody was listening nobody noticed – sentiments which could equally be applied to 1990’s DJs Christmas Dinner, rent asunder by a TOTP simulcast during the lemon sorbet.

Perhaps in an attempt to pep up the format, 1991’s beanfeast went on the road. To the studio next door, that is, where DLT carved up a few old birds – “and some turkeys too!” – at the Grey Gables restaurant in Ambridge.

12 months later, however, and this time the feasting was being done live from Great Ormond Street where – naturally – Bates was in residence, having taken over the entire premises to dispense presents and counselling in equal measure no doubt involving both the BBC Chairman and Charles and Eddie.

1992 was Simes’s last great stand, with his medical malpractice preceded by four hours of Bates Solid Gold. Fast forward one year and he was reduced to fulfilling a typically selfless redundancy package by helming a show called Simon Bates’s Whitney Houston Gospel Special.

1993 also found Simon Mayo in charge of the Christmas Lunch, Lynn Parsons doing the breakfast show, a John Walters review of the year and the Take That Christmas Take Away.

Change was once again in the air, with talk of a fresh new station led by a bold, exciting, forward-looking phalanx of DJs…such as Clive Warren, piloting the breakfast show in 1994, followed by Steve Wright And The Posse Stars With Presents.

At least there was Simon Mayo’s Christmas Years to enjoy before a grisly line-up of Brookes, Kershaw and Lisa I’Anson.

And so to 1995, with the revolution complete. Chris Evans sat atop the day, handing over to Mayo before Danny Baker’s Reeling In The Years: a highbrow concept that flopped immediately, like everything else on Radio 1 in this year. Talking of which, the Radio Tip Top Christmas Cracker ensured nobody was still around to hear the Evening Session Rewind and then Mark Tonderai telling everyone to go to bed.

Meanwhile in a dusty postroom somewhere on the other side of the world a pile of servicemen’s letters was sitting, unopened, unread…

It’s another chance to hear TV Cream’s 2008 Christmas podcast – TV CREAM’S NATIVITY SCENE!

Like a repeat of Drop the Dead Donkey, however, the chaps have got together to record a brand new, ahem, scene-setting intro that puts the thing in the context it deserves.

So why not treat yourself to an aural glass of Christmas spirit courtesy of, among others, Val Doonican, Bros, Terry Wogan, Macca, Condorman, Michael Caine, the Chalk Farm Salvation Army band, and – naturally – Richard Stilgoe?

In an exciting new innovation – for us at least – the podcast can be downloaded from iTunes (just search for TV Cream). Or you can get it via this link, or simply listen to it on good ol’ www.tvcream.co.uk

 

At last, the true story behind a much celebrated chapter in British Television can now be told.

Exclusive to TV Cream (and anyone else who’s ever had a drink with Jill Phythian) this is the story of how come, in 1987, Phillip Schofield sang the theme song to ULYSSES 31.

Jill takes up the story… Jill?

“Yes, the whole singing-along-to-Ulysses-31 thing was in fact started by me.

“Me and my friend Joanne wrote in to the Broom Cupboard, saying we’d started a Ulysses 31 fan club (we hadn’t really, but we did talk about it a lot when we were sitting next to each other in Biology, which sort of counts). We sent Phillip S a badge and membership card, and said in the covering letter that it was a membership requirement to sing along with the theme tune every week.

“Phil read the letter out on air, wore the badge (which was crappy and cardboard and had No-No drawn on it), and I was ecstatic, of course. THEN when U31 actually started, he just sang the theme tune over the top of it, without fanfare, for the first time. My cup of teenage happiness was full. The singing-along then became a Thing (TM), but I was and remain proud of having prodded it into existence.

“Needless to say, this moment has NOT surfaced on YouTube but I vaguely hope that some day it might.

“BTW, the fan club was called U.T.E.N.S.I.L.S., which stood for Ulysses Thirty-one, (Especially No-No) Slightly Insane Lunatics Society. Please bear in mind that I was 14 or something. Anyway, Phil really liked that and for several subsequent weeks he kept mentioning it (‘And coming up later is Ulysses 31 for all you U.T.E.N.S.I.L.S. out there…’) which I was deliriously thrilled about.”

So there you have it. And before we leave you with the fruits of Jill’s efforts, some talking points:

1) Have you ever affected the content of a TV show? Tell us how below.
2) Does someone out there have a video recording of Phil reading out Jill’s letter?
3) And, Jill, what chance of us getting a U.T.E.N.S.I.L.S membership, plus badge… or at least a recreation of one we can proudly display beside TVC’s logo?

Here is the news: It’s Christmas… next month.

Every year, TV Cream has celebrated by unveiling yet another slew (or – ho ho – Santa’s sleigh) of suitably festively-augmented TVC banners. We’re keen to do the same again this year, but much as we did a couple of weeks back, we’d like you to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to the actual creation of said banners.

So here’s the brief. Please design for us a nice graphic for the head of the site, which reflects either this time of the year, or one of the classic staples of festive telly. To get you started, we’ve placed a PSD file containing an unmolested TVC logo here. Download that, tinsel-it up, then shove it down our chimney at logo@tvcream.co.uk.

Let’s make it the best Christmas (logo) ever!

With the close of the year fast approaching, a tremulous anniversary looms.

That’s right, it’ll soon be precisely 10 years since the end of the 1990s: a vibrant, frisky, franchise-consolidating, Five’s Company of a decade, commemorated on the previous (and still, semantically, official) version of the TV Cream website in the shape of a Time Capsule.

This repository of billings was recently dug up from the place where it had been laid down on New Year’s Eve 1999 (just over there) pending relocation (to just over here) and absorption within the body of the new site.

All of which leaves an empty casket, a hole in the ground, three navvies leaning on their shovels looking shifty, Bernard Cribbins, some non-waterproof linings and a man from the council wanting to know when that mound of earth by the pelican crossing on the Arkwright road is going to disappear.

The solution, naturally, is a 2000s Time Capsule. Well, natural enough to the man from the council, who’s just mentioned that he’s actually a bit of a fan of TV Cream and loves the new look of the site, although his favourite features are “the early, funny ones” and as such he can’t wait to see what we’re going to be doing to Rules of Drama.

But is there merit in a 2000s Time Capsule? And if so…

Reader, you’re ahead of us as usual. Yup, we’ve fallen to wondering what might qualify for inclusion in said vessel – but more presciently we’ve positively plummeting to wondering what you might think should qualifying for inclusion in said vessel.

What would you class as shows worth burying deep underground for future generations of, erm, people to learn some visceral truths about the years 2000-2009?

Bob Martin? Operation Good Guys? The Premiership? The Murder Game? Election 64? Live With Chris Moyles?

The list, literally, it not endless. All suggestions, however, are welcome!

That ever-changing TV Cream logo banner! Isn’t that a lot of fun?

Look! There’s Anne Aston! F5-it, and now it’s Derek Griffiths, dooby-doing across the TVC logo! F5 again, and – run! – Evil Edna! F5! F5!! F5!!! Where’s that one with Steve Berry in it gone?

Anyway, you’re probably wondering if making these colourful Creamy clarion-callers is as much fun as it looks. Well, why not find out for yourself? TV Cream is keen to put readers’ own modified TVC logos into the mix, and so we’ve made the image file available for anyone to download… and then tweak with.

Find it here, in Photoshop PSD format.

When you’ve finished decorating it, save it in .JPG format and send it to us at logo@tvcream.co.uk. One house-keeping note, please ensure that the fact this version of TVC is still in beta is clearly stated on the finished image.

If we like what you send us, we’ll pop it up on the site, and – perhaps with the implementation of a few F5s – you’ll see it adorning our latest batch of easy, uncritical nostalgia.

We’ll also credit all artists we use…  erm, somewhere.

NB: We are sorry, we may not be able to return all or any pictures you send in.

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE!

TV Cream reader ‘Glam Racket’ has already sent in his contribution, and it’s great! We’ll be inaugurating it into The Big Logo Hall of Logos very soon, but in the meantime, click the image below to see where the bar is currently set.

Welcome to the TV Cream Songbook: a sonic soufflé we’ll be helping ourselves to now and again during the next few months, and whose contents have been sourced, cured and garnished by some of the biggest names in the telly signature tune world.

TV Cream has gone back to some of its favourite TV themes, given them a fine musical polish and created a catalogue of – hopefully – entertaining arrangements, mixing the essence of the old with a dash of the new.

A couple of picks to begin with.

First up, a tune given the treatment it so long deserved: the theme to Dark Towers, off the schools’ drama series Look and Read, rendered in a suitably epic fashion courtesy of the massed ranks of Derek Griffiths, Charles Collingwood, Gary Russell, a girl, and the entire TV Cream Symphony Orchestra. It’s a six-minute odyssey, and is the BBC Records 12″ remix that never was.

You can download it here.

Second, something TV Cream first made available a year and a half ago, to absolutely no response whatsoever: an alternative version of Simon May’s Howards’ Way replete with O’Mara, Masters and megaphones. It rhymes “boats” with “throats” and features the sound of a storyline being surprisingly, and expensively, twisted.

Once again you can download it for yourself.

Enjoy!

The entries are all in, the judges have deliberated, the recounts have been demanded, the barrel’s been scraped, and the results of TV Cream’s Closet Reading competition have been decided. (What’s Closet Reading, you say? Over here, chum!) So, who’s won a copy of the newest Cream Lit volume (plus random ‘friend’)? Who précised their favourite toilet books with sufficient pithiness and aplomb? That’ll be this lot, then: Entrants were nothing if not considerate of the vast panoply of toilet literature out there. Dominic Small, for instance, won’t be tied down to one particular title, but gives a good account of an entire cottage industry, nay genre in its own right. “It’s not easy to choose a favourite,” he confesses, “though given a free pick I’d say Private Eye’s range of goofs and bloopers titles sting the flag, from the Book of Boobs back in the day to Colemanballs and the more recent Dumb Britain and Mediaballs, proving that laughing at others’ faults isn’t always a bad idea! Sure, some of their calls can be a bit pedantic (witness Colemanballs‘ literally recent Lynne Trussian literal obsession with the literally overused word ‘literally’) but any tome which can reprint a telegram to the Beatles which somehow conspired to include the words ‘Sod Manila’ is worth a few minutes of my time.” So, it’s a copy of Closet Reading winging its way off to Mr Small, and accompanying it in its singularly crowded Jiffy… ah. The random wheel of whimsy has stopped bang over Moreover, Too…, a selection of the Times columns of Miles Kington in his sideways-looking mid-1908s pomp. Expect lots of gags about pound coins, airport luggage trolleys and coypus in the Norfolk countryside. Not sure if this is the ideal book for a fan of PE or complete anathema. Anyway, there it is, sent. Next! From adult toilet literature to pure childhood nostalgia, as Dan McMahon brings the inevitable bulk of Gyles Brandreth’s oeuvre into view. “My folks have always been in the habit of leaving an esoteric selection of books on child-accessible shelves, so my early reading included books about Letraset, Tommy Cooper, organic chemistry, Spike Milligan’s war memoirs and a Not the Nine O’Clock News diary which was pretty much my introduction to satire. But the all-time bathroom reading winner, for me, is Gyles Brandreth’s 1,000 Secrets: The Greatest Book of Spycraft Ever Known. I was going through a phase of wanting to be a secret agent when I grew up, and found this book at a school fair for 10p. I think in terms of play-value for money, it actually surpassed Optimus Prime. 1,000 Secrets was rammed with tips on how to shadow your mark unseen, how to disguise yourself in case you were seen, loads and loads of codes and ciphers and even – yes! – interrogation tips for the thoughtful child (“If you want to get information from a captured agent then get a member of your spy ring to act as a priest or member of the clergy, to whom the agent can talk in ‘confidence’.”) My parents didn’t actually have books in the loo, but there was a bookcase on the landing so the intent was pretty clear to me. It was with some pride I shelved 1,000 Secrets out there, instead of in my room.” Such pride! And for valiant services to Brandreth, Dan gets a copy of Closet Reading plus… spin spin spin… hooray! It’s Kill the Chocolate Biscuit, Esther Rantzen and hubby Desmond Wilcox’s joint lid-lifting venture into the hilarious backstage antics of consumer programming! That’s er, sure to be good. Jason Carter, in a disarming bout of honesty, admitted to living in Sweden before the entries were all in, thus potentially jeopardising his chances in the event of tightness and corruption amongst the TVC judging panel. Happily, we had to give him a prize, for this timeless evocation of that often experienced embarrassment, being caught by your mum with a ‘rudie’ toilet book, in this case Bachelor Boys: The Young Ones Book. “Clutching my hard earned book token (earned of course by way of celebrating my 9th birthday) I cycled furiously into WH Smiths in town and bought my very own copy of this anarchic delight.  The toilet was the ideal home for this tome, and it was leaving it in the toilet that was my downfall:  there, my mother found the book, thumbed through it and frogmarched both me and book to a dustbin on the Other Side Of The Main Road (and as such very much out of bounds, so there would be no hope of me retrieving it) and made me throw it away.  There was no room for this filth under her roof, apparently, and in any case I was too young….” Ah, we can sympathise with that predicament, believe us. Bits of Closet Reading do, admittedly, get a trifle blue (usually towards the beginning, oddly enough), so be careful in there. If it gets a little too bawdy, Jason can always take the edge off it with.. yes, The Day Job, Terry Wogan’s second volume of massed codswallop from his breakfast radio show (1981 edition, so it’s TWITS rather than TOGS). Changing the mood, Michael Galvin goes all topical on our collective arse. “Since we’re in the middle of a recession,” he begins, in grand ’sideways look’ columnar tradition, “I’ve trained myself to only go number 2 at work to save on toilet paper, so I haven’t got much time for reading in the smallest room in the house. But every now and then, if I’m on holiday or if the work cubicle happened to be in use every time I went in, I get caught short. Because I’m normally in a rush to find something readable, I’m limited to whatever’s on the bookcase just inside my bedroom door. To my eternal shame, the one book I seem to consistently pick up is Victoria Wood’s Barmy which I liberated from my mother’s collection some years ago. It works great as it’s just sketches from the show, each only 2 or 3 pages long and all of which I’ve seen numerous times so have no trouble visualising the chubby lesbian-coiffured funster doing her thing. I read it primarily for the Acorn Antiques scripts contained therein, but for some reason after about 10 minutes of reading little nuggets like “What was it, muesli? What, was it muesli?”, I always end up putting it aside and singing that one and only verse of “Let’s Do It” that everybody knows. And that’s how a lot of my water closet visitations end these days with me doing a peculiar impression of Ms Woods doing a rousing rendition of a sad tale of unrequited lust; “not bleakly, not meekly, beat me on the bottom with a Woman’s Weekly.” My wife thinks I should see a professional. Or get a different book.” Well Michael, now you’ve got two! The other one being… Sassenach’s Scotland, a corker of a tour guide cash-in written and illustrated by Willie Rushton, and sponsored by 100 Pipers (‘the deluxe scotch whisky). Yep, we’re that cheap – this is a book entirely sponsored by a drinks company. It’s not even got an ISBN number! ‘Copyright the House of Seagram’, indeed! Still – Willie Rushton! Finally, Adrian Fry admits to that rarely confessed occurrence, getting a toilet book that’s a tad beyond your ken, in this case Willie Donaldson’s obtuse style list compendium The Complete Naff Guide.  “It isn’t as funny as the Kenny Everett Television Show Annual 1980 or as irresistibly quotable as Stephen Pile’s Book of Heroic Failures,” says Adrian, “but it sat by the lavatory in my friends house and puzzled my young teenage self with its arcane lists.  I can still recall that elephants foot hatstands and Michael Parkinson were deemed naff, but all the countless examples in the book left me no closer to comprehending this social classification.  Here, I thought, was something grown up, infused, like Robert Robinson’s Stop the Week, with a humour I couldn’t get.  I wanted to ‘get’ it, never did, still don’t.  But it provided as perplexing a glimpse into what I took to be the world of adult taste and humour as New Yorker cartoons or the Punch columns of Basil Boothroyd.” And from jokes you’re too unsophisticated to get, we go to – oh. Sorry about this Adrian, but our random wheel of whimsy has alighted, in no uncertain terms, smack over Isaac Asimov’s Lecherous Limericks. Yes, you read that right, and you’ll be wishing you weren’t reading the rest, when you get it. The premise: the father of science fiction pens 100 limericks, some – cover your ears, Marjorie – very blue indeed. Then, on the facing page, he methodically, scholastically and – we feel the word is for once not misused – joylessly deconstructs every last stanza and half-rhyme out of each one. It’s dirty poetry with copious footnotes. So there we have it. If you won, well done, and, er, those books will be with you as soon as industrial relations allow. If you lost, commiserations, but (you knew it was coming) you can still get hold of The Complete Christmas Gift by CLICKING HERE. You know you want to.