FUNNY HOW EAMONN WAS A FAMILIAR FACE on British television for some 30 years or so, yet he didn’t seem to leave much of a legacy – most people seem to have more or less forgotten he even existed. But he started off on Irish radio in the 1940s, when he wrote to them at the age of 19 to ask them if he could be a boxing commentator. They said yes and he became a star in Ireland before moving over to the Beeb in the 1950s. There he was given WHAT’S MY LINE and then THIS IS YOUR LIFE to front – famously being the subject of the first ever ‘Life. Both were massive at the time (once Bob Monkhouse appeared on What’s My Line with an eyepatch, and the papers went nuts, for some reason). He also did CRACKERJACK, of course, and always seemed pissed off with the kids – and all this while running RTE. Both of his peak-time shows were axed in the early 60s, and a pissed-off Eamonn went to ITV, where they invented WORLD OF SPORT for him, as well as a late night chat show which, by all accounts, he was crap at; Eamonn started his interview with Muhammad Ali by talking about why he’d changed his name from Cassius Clay, and then referred to him as “Cassius” all the way through.
In 1969 ITV revived This is Your Life. Roy Bottomley seriously wanted to call the new series This Is Your Colourful Life to emphasise the new version’s big difference, but thankfully good sense prevailed. When What’s My Line came back in the early 1980s, Eamonn was then doing more or less exactly the same stuff he’d been doing thirty years beforehand. Indeed, the new What’s My Line was broadcast live, seemingly just because that’s how they used to do it in the ’50s. Well, yeah, but by that logic they may as well have filmed it in black and white as well. Both series seemed to be on every week forever, with Eamonn bantering non-stop with George Gale, Barbara Kelly, Jilly Cooper and Ernie Wise. All the bloody time. Eamonn died suddenly in 1987, with both the shows continuing under new presenters (obviously, as a Thames production, Penelope Keith took over What’s My Line). Since then he seems to have been more or less forgotten. In a way, Eamonn was the Carol Smillie of his day – always there, but not really registering.
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FIONA ARMSTRONG JOINED ITN JUST AFTER PAMELA ARMSTRONG LEFT, presumably being hired so they didn’t have to change the captions much. She read the news during the late ’80s and early ’90s, as well as doing a bit of moonlighting for Border Television, making the odd rural documentary. In 1993 she left Gray’s Inn Road to be the launch presenter of GMTV. In the early days, she appeared in front of the real log fire with the moustachioed Mike Wilson on Mondays-Thursdays (Eamonn Holmes and Anne Davies did Fridays to give it “that weekend feel”). However, like Rippon and Ford before her, Fiona wasn’t able to make the transition from newsreader to all-purpose presenter, and there was much discussion over whether she had the “F-factor” for breakfast viewing. When Greg Dyke took over, Fiona was the first casualty, and her last appearance on breakfast telly came when Mark Lamarr went round to her house to try and get her to appear on THE BIG BREAKFAST. Later in the year she appeared alongside Chris Evans on HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU, with the regulars egging her on to say “fuck”. Since then, she was last spotted back on Border fronting LOOKAROUND.
ANOTHER ITN REFUGEE, leaving the newsroom in 1986 to go off to the BBC. The programme she fronted when she got there was what Bob Langley had referred to when he assured everyone “there will be programmes from Pebble Mill in the future, I really must emphasise that” on the last ever PEBBLE MILL AT ONE. Said show was the imaginatively-titled PAMELA ARMSTRONG, a chat show thingy on BBC2 most afternoons at 4pm, of which the typical billing would be “Today, Pamela Armstrong’s guests are all female, discussing whether you need to be a powerhouse to make it in the 1980s”. Axed after a year, Pamela then launched lunchtime space-filler DAYTIME LIVE in 1987, introducing that comedy song from Rosser and Davies on the first show that even today we still can’t get out of our head. During the summer breaks she helped out presenting BREAKFAST TIME with an ill-cast Jeremy Paxman. However after being Mrs BBC for a few years, she just seemed to vanish, and was last seen by TV Cream reading the news on THE BIG BREAKFAST.
WHEN PEOPLE REFER TO THE GREAT TV PRESENTERS, few mention Mike Aspel, which is a shame as he’s done absolutely shitloads of stuff, and all with wit and charm. He started off as an actor just after the war, but then drifted into announcing. Doing between-shows links for the Beeb, he once got a bollocking after editorialising while announcing a price increase for the Radio Times (“Mind you, it’s worth a tanner!”). When in-vision announcers were discontinued, Mike read the news, being the first person ever to read the regional news on BBC Wales. He left the newsroom in the late ’60s, and then in a career move we doubt Michael Buerk will repeat, he took over on CRACKERJACK, cultivating a game but slightly pissed-off air and wincing when the kids screamed “Crackerjack!!!” at him. Much more his scene were MISS WORLD(“None of the girls could speak English and there were hundreds of technical problems, but all anyone would say was ‘Cor, he’s the luckiest bloke alive!’”) and ASK ASPEL. And there was THE GOODIES, of course. Went off to ITV later to front GIVE US A CLUE- where he was better than Parky, because he remembered to ping the bell, for a start – and then become Mr LWT, introducing influential capital-only Friday night fest THE SIX O’CLOCK SHOW. We won’t mention CHILD’S PLAY, for obvious reasons.
THE BAKERTOLLAH’S FIRST STEPS INTO BROADCASTING came in the early 1980s when he joined the team of LWT’s SIX O’CLOCK SHOW, a role that seemed to involve sitting on the sofa with that week’s guest and doing some reports on Spandau Ballet. Then he was hired to do, well, more or less the same thing on TVam, appearing alongside Henry Kelly for a few Saturday mornings (“I was TV Turn-On in Oh Boy magazine!”) Alas, he wasn’t kept at Eggcup Towers on a regular basis, and he spent much of the decade at LWT fronting documentaries, a la 20TH CENTURY BOX and Sunday football series THE GAME (“I have sent off number nine, Sykes, as he called me a c*nt and he called my linesman a c*nt three times”), as well as shouting at a BR guard and falling off a wall. His next network exposure came in 1988 when he fronted awful Thames consumer series THE BOTTOM LINE, which he later admitted was a waste of time as he really didn’t give a toss about any of the subjects.
TV CREAM SAW JOHNNY DO HIS THINK OF A NUMBER show live at their local theatre in 1985, and it was sort of like seeing The Beatles at Shea Stadium, such was the excitement of witnessing an icon at the peak of his powers. And indeed when Johnny was working the clubs back in the 1960s as a comedian, he often amused the crowds at the Cavern. After a stint as a Redcoat, Johnny got into telly via, of course, PLAY SCHOOL and then moved onto PLAYAWAY. At the same time, he started to write sketches for programmes like STAR TURN and CABBAGES AND KINGS, and these scripts were collated into the book “Plays For Laughs” in the early 1980s, which TV Cream still owns, and when we were seven, it was our favourite book ever.
LOUGHBOROUGH’S FINEST SON (apart from TV Cream blog editor, of course), Mike was the face of a nation’s teatimes for a decade, “co-ordinating” (never presenting) NATIONWIDE, and never was there a man more able to segue seemlessly from an interview with the Home Secretary to an item about a man who could jump on (or to be more precise, faintly stroke with his toe) eggs without breaking them. When the programme began in 1969, it was his responsibility for filling in when the tincans and string holding the show together collapsed. Sure, there were other presenters – especially when it expanded from three to five nights a week in 1972 – but Mike was always the main presenter; so, as Frank Bough pointed out, this meant he said “Hello” at the start of the programme, and “Goodbye” at the end. In 1977 he left the show and, as has gone down in folklore, his last week was marked with a stately traipse around towns of “particular significance” to Mike via a specially kitted-out train, which caused many a letter to the Radio Times about the huge expense and self-indulgence of the whole thing. After marrying ‘wide co-host Dilys Morgan, he was then one of the new editions to a radically revamped SONGS OF PRAISE, along with, to quote the producer, “a signature tune with an extremely prominent drum kick”. However he did not, as you may have thought, go on to be Shakin’ Stevens – that was, in fact, another Michael Barratt. Ooh, you live and learn, don’t you?
IT MAY SOUND STUPID, but it’s true – when we were young we thought Flo was the most glamorous person we’d ever seen. Growing up in the suburbs, we tended not to see many people who looked like she did, especially at a time when most chilldren’s TV presenters seemed to take fashion tips from our school teachers. Flo brought her own special brand of “black joy” to PLAY SCHOOL in the early 1980s, and proved to be a dab hand at dealing with Humpty and Jemima, and singing songs about wibbly wobbly worms. As we’re seeing, for a time every Play School presenter had to then front their own series, and in Flo’s case this was kids sketch show FAST FORWARD (“And now… Jo-kahs!”), alongside Andrew “Five Alive” Secombe, Joanna “gorgeous brunette” Munro, the great Nick “George Costanza” Wilton and later, Robert “Satellite Show” Harley. A recent viewing of an episode of this series proves that it wasn’t actually that bad, although it did have about a thousand writers and the end credits went on for hours. Later too Flo presented LAY ON FIVE, which we can’t remember much about other than the fact Stanley Unwin always seemed to be on it, and that theme tune. Adult TV followed – well, a couple of months on DAYTIME LIVE, at least – before defecting from the Beeb, opening up the TREEHOUSE on Channel Four and penning the ‘Go With Flo!’ column in the TV Times for a while. She’s now chairperson of the BAFTA jury, bizarrely, so she’s responsible for giving THE OFFICE a million undeserved awards each year. Grr. Most memorably, of course, she used to get her son Aston on whatever show she was doing, and we kind of feel we’ve grown up with him. Oh, and she wrote a book, “Floella’s Fabulous Bright Ideas”, which we’ve got a copy of (“For Aston”).
MARTI’S REAL NAME WAS LYNNE SHEPHERD but she’d changed it by the time she appeared on NEW FACES back in 1975, with an act involving jokes about being a housewife and a number of ballads. She won the series, and her first proper telly gig was on THE SUMMER SHOW, a Saturday teatime sketch series with other performers who had faced the wrath of Tony Hatch and the gang, including Lenny Henry, Victoria Wood and, best of all, Aiden J Harvey. A year later, in the same teatime slot, she got her first starring role in the grandly-titled NOBODY DOES IT LIKE MARTI. But most of her best work came after a nose job, a rather dramatic change of image (from northern housewife to Judy Garland-in-waiting) and a move to BBC2 where she presented umpteen editions of THE MARTI CAINE SHOW, with your usual opposite-PANORAMA mix of monologues, guest comedians and power ballads. However for the purpose of this A-Z we’re most interested in a move back to ITV and the host’s job on New Faces of 86/87/88, from the Birmingham Hippodrome and with Nina Myskow slagging off all the hapless contestants. Sadly New Faces was rather overshadowed by the BBC’s revival of OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, which included the exciting twist of phone voting while New Faces stuck doggedly with old-fashioned TV Times coupons. But there were some good bits – the orchestra playing the Central jingle live, for a start, and the glorious closing routine with Marti shouting “Press your buttons now!” and the audience results being recorded on the ludicrously complex scoreboard – called Spaghetti Junction, cos they were in the Midlands, see? Unfortunately Marti’s later years saw her suffer from ill-health, and she had the bad luck to end her career with two of the worst entertainment programmes in the history of the BBC. 1992′s JOKER IN THE PACK saw members of the public doing mother-in-law jokes, which would have been unappealing even if ITV weren’t doing the almost exact same thing on Bradley Walsh’s ONLY JOKING. 1993′s YOUR BEST SHOT was even worse, though, a low-budget, low on ideas Friday night variety show which was very much like NOEL’S HOUSE PARTY would have been were it on Moldovan television. And TV Cream had to sit through it every week because it was on before POINTS OF VIEW.
TV’S MR VERSATILE had an incredibly lengthy entertainment career, where after an apprenticeship playing the trumpet and cracking gags in nightclubs, he made his TV debut in 1950s sketch show NEW LOOK. This was meant to break new talent, and it certainly did that, with co-star Bruce Forsyth being poached even before it began to appear on SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM, and Roy getting added to the bill of the Royal Variety Performance. A decade of acting in more or less every British film produced included an appearance alongside Peter Cushing in one of the children’s films based on children’s programme DOCTOR WHO. He also appeared as Stan Laurel in a one-off comedy alongside Ronnie Barker as Oliver Hardy. But of course we’re most interested in 1972, as that’s the year RECORD BREAKERS began. Roy didn’t just present the show, he also wrote and performed both theme tunes – be-boppin’ and scattin’ in the opening theme (“The McWhirters, mmmm, they will record it!”) and freeforming in the closing music that was later murdered by 911 – as well as breaking a number of records; in the first show he played the most musical instruments ever in sixty seconds, and famously we had a number of tap-dancing records, both the largest number of dancers and the longest time spent dancing (attempted in the Trocadero, we recall).
TV CREAM WOULD LIKE TO GUARANTEE that in the next paragraphs we will make no mention of this man’s penis. Instead we’ll mention his career which began in the early 1970s as a child actor, appearing in the piss-poor Scouse comedy series THE WACKERS and the pilot of a slightly better comedy series, OPEN ALL HOURS (“Can I have a frozen Zoom, please!”), as well as the CFF classic ROBIN HOOD JUNIOR which was repeated on Children’s BBC as recently as 1989. Then in 1976 he wrote to Rosemary Gill and offered his services to the children’s department of the BBC, and manged to bullshit his way onto MULTI-COLOURED SWAP SHOP. Little were we to know that he would then spend the next eleven years losing the contents of his pockets in various windswept recreation grounds. Such was his enthusiasm he then got his own show, skipping onto the set of 
COLEMAN WAS THE FACE AND VOICE OF SPORT on the Beeb for nearly 50 years, and had perhaps the pithiest catchphrase of all time – “Errrr”. He began in telly back in the early days of GRANDSTAND, fronting the show for many years from the late 1950s. Those were the days when a Grandstand presenter really earnt their money, having to introduce not just the sport, but also anything else that might be happening that afternoon (“Let’s now see some pictures, and hear the theme music, of our film High Noon!”). In the sixties he cut down his hours a bit, making way for Frank Bough most weeks, but keeping the “very best ones” for himself, which he did for the next two decades or so. He then concentrated on football commentary, introducing MATCH OF THE DAY for a bit, and for a generation his voice down a crackly phone line has a wonderful nostalgic feeling. He even usurped Kenneth Wolstenholme as the Beeb’s number one, much to Ken’s chagrin. However it all went a bit wrong in the late 1970s when he reckoned he was getting pushed out a bit, and took legal action against the corporation, keeping him off air for about 18 months. When he returned they gave him QUESTION OF SPORT to shut him up, a job he kept until 1997. In the 1980s he stopped doing football commentary, mostly because Bough’s departure to BREAKFAST TIME meant he was back on Grandstand duty most weeks. In the mid ’80s he became full-time athletics commentator, as well as the only man who could make sense of an opening ceremony (“He looks around, curiously”). His last Olympic Games were in 2000, although by that point, sadly, he wasn’t quite as sharp as he was, and the Beeb decided that it was about time for him to retire. Obviously, the world of knitwear went into mourning.
TEESIDE FUNSTER PAUL was actually christened Newton Daniels, but funnily enough he decided to change it to something snappier before hitting the big time. This he did through the usual channels (OP KNOCKS, WHEELTAPPERS) in the 1970s before getting his first starring show thanks to Granada, the LE-fest PAUL DANIELS’ BLACKPOOL BONANZA. At this point he wasn’t accompanied by The Lovely, but instead another assistant named Nikki Heard who, you won’t be surprised to learn, was also his girlfriend at the time. However she later left the partnership in both senses, perhaps after reading some of his fan mail, which Newton claimed “make Mayfair and Penthouse read like Enid Blyton”. Ahem. He became a national institution when he legged it over to the Beeb in 1979, and THE PAUL DANIELS MAGIC SHOW became a part of Saturday nights for some 15 years. Looking back, it reminds us of a golden age of light entertainment you just don’t get anymore, although at the time, we all hated it, because it seemed to be on all the time, and was always exactly the same. And all we can really remember was Mississippi Riverboat Magic. Which was just a magic trick. On a Mississippi Riverboat. Oh, and regular appearances from his “modern face of magic” son, Martin P.
THE ERSTWHILE RICHARD started his broadcasting career in the early days of ITV at Southern Television, before moving on to the network and in 1968 he replaced Eamonn Andrews as the anchor of WORLD OF SPORT. With his streaked hair and cravat, Dickie (as Jimmy Hill renamed him) made for a slick, go-getting alternative to Frank Bough droning away on BBC1. For nearly two decades, Dick’d be there every Saturday afternoon, leaning forwards, folding his arms and smiling at you from under his moustache, while introducing The ITV Seven, The Target Clown Diving Championships, or Monster Trucks (“Really driving those trucks!”). His finest hour came on Christmas Eve 1977 when he co-presented the show with Eric Morecambe, including a great bit where Eric read Dickie’s autocue along with him, which is the funniest thing ever broadcast (“And first up is… Franz Klammer!”) Dickie was also one of ITV’s Super Seven commentators during the 1972 Olympics, where the TV Times boasted that husbands wouldn’t have to argue with their wives over whether they watched Mark Spitz or Max Bygraves, as they could watch both. Basically because there was only about an hour of Olympics coverage all day.
ROBIN IS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE who appeared on television for several decades, yet never really gave over the impression that he knew anything about it. He started off as a radio producer at the Beeb, but legged it to ITN when it started up in 1955, reading the news and fronting some embryonic current affairs shows. He left in 1959 to stand as Liberal candidate for Hereford, but failed to win the seat. Instead he went back to the Beeb and stayed there for the next 30 years. His biggest exposure came, of course, on Election Night, when he’d sit in a paddock smoking a huge cigar and bark at anyone who showed up, or as he put it, “I shall be performing my usual humble function”. Memorable moments included the time in 1979 when he was due to appear on the Election QUESTION TIME panel (“If you have a question, send a postcard to David Dimbleby, BBC Television”) but turned up late because he was on the phone. He was also about on the coverage of the Party Conferences, barking at the politicians on NATIONWIDE – there were more than just John Nott, although nobody can remember who they were. In 1979 he fronted Question Time, partly because he was whinging about not being on telly enough, and partly because they’d already booked the Greenwood Thatre to do PARKY five nights a week before that plan was vetoed by the governers, so needed to make up a programme to fill it. Robin sat around the round table for a decade, but was eventually told to stop telling the viewers to “Sleep well” at the end of the show because there were other programmes on after it. He retired in 1989 and then took his bow tie to anyone who wanted him – he was on ITV on the night of the 1992 election, and the same year also appeared on BREAKFAST NEWS during the campaign, bantering with people like Lord Jenkins and Lord Tebbit. Robin died in 2000, and it was a sad loss. May we call him brother?
ANNE STARTED HER BROADCASTING CAREER back in the days of ATV, where she was a roving reporter on ATV TODAY along with her soon-to-be screen husband Nick Owen. After a couple of years reporting on banger racing in Cannock or flower shows in Shrewsbury, she became one of the senior faces and in 1982, when ATV begat Central with it’s revolutionary dual arrangements, she was due to be the presenter of the new East Midlands news programme from Nottingham, alongside Mr Owen again. However union problems meant that it couldn’t start for absolutely ages, and by the time it did both the original hosts had left the Midlands and looked further afield. Nick went off to TV-AM and was there on the first day reading the sports news, while Anne moved over to the Beeb and got a job on NATIONWIDE. However she didn’t like it much, because she was stuck on reporting duties rather than presenting, and eventually they let her co-present NEWS AFTER NOON for a month, during a deranged period when Richard Whitmore had a different sidekick (Viv Creegor, Fern Britton, Judi Lines et al) every few weeks.
DESPITE EVERYONE’S RATHER TEDIOUS STUDIED DISDAIN for the man these days, we are happy to admit that a while back he was our favourite person on telly, and we’re pretty sure that in the early days of HOUSE PARTY, those who disregard his entire output as “crap” were glued to their sets every Saturday night. Of course Mr Tidybeard was a radio man at the start, but such was his ambition it was but a short while before he made the leap to television, fronting TOP OF THE POPS on a regular basis. He was so desperate for the exposure that he also compered COME DANCING at the same time, and is proud that he was the only person ever to do both. He was also plucked to front children’s show Z SHED, an embryonic phone-in show, and it was this experience on live telly that got him the job of front man on the six-week experiment that was the MULTI-COLOURED SWAP SHOP. Such was his impact that we’re pretty sure he’s the only person to appear on the cover of Radio Times two weeks running (in 1977, plugging the tenth anniversary of Radio One then the new run of Swap Shop). Then for a time he did virtually every programme going – he appeared on CALL MY BLUFF, presented a documentary about stress (with songs from Instant Sunshine) and donned a dinner jacket for the TV translation of Captain Beaky. Meanwhile his first outing on Saturday night came in 1979 with ‘Shop spin-off LUCKY NUMBERS.
HE’S A COMEDIAN BY TRADE, yes, but Ben Elton’s done his fair share of presenting in the past. Indeed before the Sellafield suit years he fronted LWT miscellaney SOUTH OF WATFORD for a bit, which was absolutely hideous. Thankfully he decided to focus on the writing and performing for a bit after that, and was hired for SATURDAY LIVE in 1986 originally as a writer. The first series saw revolving hosts each week, including Michael Barrymore of all people, and Elton took his turn fronting one episode as well as performing most weeks. In the second series he fronted every show and it’s this, and FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE the following year, that established him as a top-drawer comedian and writer. Hence in 1989 he did a stint filling in on WOGAN, which seemed to go well enough for him to be invited back on a couple of occasions. After that he continued fronting bits of COMIC RELIEF, but unfortunately seemed to develop a hugely patronising style somewhere along the line, where everything was “fantastic” or “brilliant”. His last starring series on the Beeb, in 1998, was a bit hit-and-miss, normally because he had to keep stopping every five minutes during the routines to introduce inserts from Ronnie Corbett and Roy and HG, and there were bands in each episode which he’d link into in a hugley embarrassing dad-style fashion as well. And he sang in the first episode too. His last presenting gig was at the PARTY IN THE PALACE last summer, where he did the worst stand-up routine TV Cream had ever seen and died on his arse. You’d swear Devil Woman had never been written!
IT’S SURPRISINGLY DIFFICULT TO FIND PRESENTERS WHOSE NAME BEGIN WITH ‘E’, Y’KNOW, but any excuse to mention Cuddly Ken is alright by us. We all know that Ken was fantastic on the radio, and it wasn’t long before TV companies tried to get a piece of him. He first came to the public’s attention of Granada’s John Birt-produced clip show NICE TIME, and also contributed to the very BBC2 late night satirical review UP SUNDAY. But his biggest exposure in these early days came in 1970 when LWT booked him for three shows running consecutively in exactly the same slot – THE KENNY EVERETT EXPLOSION saw him arsing around with chimps and the like, a show Ken later reckoned was a bit rubbish, followed by MAKING WHOOPEE, where he introduced performances from Bob Kerr’s Whoopee Band, and Ev, where Ken linked pop videos. After this, though, it was back to the wireless, and it wasn’t until 1978 when he made a proper return to television with THE KENNY EVERETT TELEVISION SHOW on Thames. Channel 4 screened an episode of this in 1995 and it was fantastic – “Now it’s time to turn the cameras off, and kiss the crew goodnight/We’ve had a laugh, a song and dance, we’ve even had a fight/But now the show is over and we’d like you all to send/Your cheques and all your credit cards to Thames TV, The End!” Best bit, of course, was the interview with Rod Stewart conducted on swivel chairs nicked from an office, with Ken wearing a freebie Thames T-shirt and Rod drinking a cup of coffee – which ends up in Ken’s face. And there were the regular trips round the back of the set, to reveal dirty tea-towels and plastic cups (“Hollywoodsville!”).
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