WHEN TV frontmen are metaphorically bottled off the screen, it’s usually either for being patronising or being too clever by half. Only JAMES BURKE has ever been hounded away from Television Centre for being both simultaneously. A jobbing translator of encyclopaedias in Italy, Burke chanced upon a job ad for a TV report on the Mafia, went for it, fumbled his chance, but still managed to hook up with the Beeb’s nascent science programme TOMORROW’S WORLD, despite being, in the Burke parlance, a strictly humanities kinda guy.

Offsetting the patrician tones of TW kingpin Raymond Baxter with what one hack labeled his “aggressively street-speak screen style,” Burke got younger viewers hooked on the early evening carnival of white heat gadgetry, and when the Apollo moonshots came along, he was there front and centre. Sometimes broadcasting for thirty hours at a stretch, he became a propane tank-dissecting household name, “the one contradiction to the rule that over-exposure on TV can kill a personality”. To put the old tin lid on it, in 1969 the Birmingham Ophthalmic Information Council voted him “Britain’s Top Man in Spectacles”. Burke could do no wrong. Now all he needed was a show of his own.

The Burke Special (1972-6)
Burke’s first name-above-the-title gig took up the TW Thursday night slot, and was a sort of extended “Tomorrow’s World plus”: an illustrated lecture in front of a studio audience on a vexed topic of modern life, with a few guesses as to where it might be headed in the future. Or, as the publicity put it, “an oblique look at modern living.” “Oblique” meant something like “sideways, but without the jokes”, as Burke conjured up his own, mildly hysterical brand of futurology. ID cards, zero population growth and a plug-in super teacher for every child would be with us, he promised, by 1993, while demonstrations leapt all over the place, from magnetic bubbles to miniature cauliflowers, and God help the viewer whose brain was too slow to keep up.

Some loved it, plenty hated it. Specials on test tube babies and gun control caused big controversy. With the populist likes of QED still a decade off, science broadcasting remained an acquired taste. But whereas the likes of The Sky at Night were akin to a fine sherry, The Burke Special was neat bourbon in a pint mug. Cocksure, belligerent and bursting with enthusiasm in his trademark white safari suit, Burke ripped through an often nightmarish vision of the future as if he couldn’t wait for it to happen. High-backed armchairs in Leatherhead creaked with palpable unease.

Connections (1978)
Then they relaxed somewhat as Burke disappeared from the screen for two and a half years. The bad news was, he’d spent that time planning his meisterwerk. The cramped studio environment was bid adieu as Burke rattled through 150 location shoots in 20 different countries to piece together what the Beeb assured us was his Civilisation, his Ascent of Man. But when Burke announced that, instead of covering the Renaissance masters or the discovery of classical geometry, he would be concerning himself with such esoteric matters as “what has the recipe for Chicken Marengo got to do with air conditioning?”, the squeak of Home Counties armrests was deafening.

James Burke’s Connections: an Alternative History of Change, to give it its full title, was so unlike the standard flagship documentary series that Burke found himself using up most of the first edition explaining what it actually was going go be. Each programme was to carve its own merrily esoteric path through the history of technology, starting off, say, with marine compasses, before moving onto sulphur, cloud chambers and ending up at a relatively modern invention like the atom bomb, through a series of counter-intuitive leaps, or connections. And to keep the audience watching, Burke would lay subtle clues as to the identity of the final invention, “what this programme is really about”, along the way. “As much Raymond Chandler as BBC Science Features”, as the man himself put it. What was more, the programme was not intended to be the definitive work on the subject. After all, connections could, Burke insisted, be made between just about any two historical phenomena you might choose, if you looked hard enough. So these ten programmes were just a handful of the many thousands that could be made. As you might expect, this didn’t sit too well with the Bronowskians. How much was this costing again?

But as far as they were concerned, the main problem remained Burke himself. Brusque, confident, self-propelled, he tore off round the globe in pursuit of his own agenda, in a way the established BBC documentary audience wasn’t quite ready for. He didn’t quite conform to the “eccentric” pigeonholes TV had thus far created for presenters. He was neither unflappably authoritative like your Kenneth Clarkes, nor was he a comic turn in the sense that Patrick Moore or Magnus Pyke were – acknowledged masters in their esoteric fields who nevertheless showed every sign of being in dire need of air sea rescue were they to be left unchaperoned with such arcane devices as a launderette or a pay phone.

In short, Burke was an eccentric, but one that demanded to be taken seriously. And on British telly, you couldn’t have it both ways. Detractors cheerfully admitted they didn’t have a clue what he was on about, but that was his problem, not theirs. Forever questioning himself out loud, swapping locations (sometimes in mid sentence), or suddenly negating what he’d been saying for the last minute by purposefully walking off screen, then ducking back into shot with a casual “except, that last bit isn’t true at all”, he wound up the Bronowskians something chronic. “If even he’s not sure what he’s on about,” went the argument, “why the hell should we be paying to watch him wittier on?” They were missing the point somewhat – the randomness and complexity of civilisation was precisely Burke’s main argument – but Connections set the bizarro persona in stone. By the time Not the Nine O’Clock News captured the Burkeish self-inquisition with typical deftness (“Good evening. Or is it?”) he’d become a national treasure, albeit one a significant minority wouldn’t mind seeing pawned to help buy Robert Robinson a new blazer.

The Real Thing (1980)
No doubt aware of his growing band of armchair enemies, Burke responded to the naysayers in typically counter-intuitive fashion – by becoming more Burkeish than ever before. The Real Thing was all about the perception of reality, a field which proved a veritable playground for his sprightly imagination, and he duly cut loose with gusto. Or, in his own words:

“You probably think you need a series of programmes on reality like a hole in the head. I mean, you know what it is, I know what it is, and only a lunatic would question the matter. So why am I wasting your time? Well, on the subject of lunatics, let me suggest this: the only accurate thing that can be said about people who think they’re poached eggs is that they’re in a minority. And what I hope this series will show is that as far as everyday living is concerned, we’re all poached eggs, in a manner of speaking.”

Well, you couldn’t say the viewer didn’t know what to expect. True to his word, Burke lectured the camera while playing guitar, hanging upside down, interacting with dancers dressed as shop window dummies, wandering around life-size optical illusions and, in one memorably brain-frying edition, presenting the programme from a NASA-like control gallery, which turned out to be situated, Numbskulls-style, in the centre of Burke’s own head. Little Burke looked wryly on as Big Burke mooched around a swanky NW1 party, noting the bursts of frantic action occurring in mission control every time he made a lunge for the peanuts or failed to cop off. By that point, of course, only hardcore Burkeheads were still watching, but there were still just about enough of them to guarantee a recommission. The question was, where to go next?

The Day the Universe Changed (1985)
As the eighties sped on, there was less and less Burke on the Beeb. 1982 saw one-off brain exposition The Neuron Suite, in which Burke jumped with both feet into the realm of self-parody, explaining how the human cortex functioned by likening it to a five-star San Diego hotel – into which, naturally, he checked, bumming about in his luxury room with various bits of LED-festooned papier-mache, and even fiddling with a SIMON toy at one point – all in the course of viewer education, natch. Then radio silence descended once more, as he combined rent-paying outings for the Central Office of Information (oh, to be a town planner and get paid to sit and watch At Last… It’s the Traffic Management Show!) with yet another great big ideasfest.

Billed as the third in the “Connections trilogy”, TDTUC was actually more of a retread of the Connections format, this time with the emphasis on scientific discoveries influencing philosophy, “because if you don’t know why things have turned out the way they have, you haven’t a hope of understanding the crazy, fast-moving circus we live in”. So Burke did his by now standard jet-setting monologuery, telling of how Galileo’s observations screwed things up for the Catholic church, etc. Otherwise, things were all as normal aboard the Burkeship, even (whisper it) slightly more sober and conventional than in past excursions. Only slightly, mind. Viewers, feeling they’d seen it all before, were less enthusiastic this time out, and by the time he rounded the whole thing off by babbling on about some nonsense future where all the world’s computers would be connected together, providing a gigantic resource of free information, the scope of which the humble folk of 1985 could hardly conceive, a cost-conscious BBC management were quietly pulling the plug on our man. He’d crop up again, in books and journals, and punting out more series of Connections for the Canadians, but as far as British mainstream telly was concerned, Burke was a poached egg on toast.

To be fair, he was rendered obsolete largely by his own innovations. Burke always protested that his brand of Puckish enthusiasm would never be fashionable, but prime time was increasingly proving him wrong. Ever since Connections took off, “quirky” science had been increasingly seen as the thing to do. Horizon was the first to have a bash, roping in folk like Dudley Moore for quizzical, self-contradicting romps through the realms of time, dreams and so forth. Then came QED, which was at least 50% full of Burkeish whimsy. As the decade matured, with the likes of The Show Me Show and Bodymatters filling the studio with polystyrene cross sections and optical tomfoolery, practically everyone was documenting science the Burkeish way. Of course, this means he’s also indirectly responsible for Bang Goes the Theory and That Thing With the Pranny off of Top Gear, but some connections are perhaps best ignored.

Of all horror films made in the 1970s the most successful, certainly the most famous, are The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976). But while the former basks in the reflected glory of being the scariest picture ever made – with no proper explanation ever given or deemed necessary – the latter is largely dismissed as bubblegum pap, Hollywood schlock horror bearing no comparison to its respected predecessor. But look more closely at The Exorcist and it soon becomes apparent that the silver sheen is the cheap flash of EPNS, while that comforting glow emanating from The Omen is glorious 24 carat gold.

The fact is, The Omen is miles better than The Exorcist. The legend that’s grown up around William Friedkin’s child-possession fable is more myth than anything else. Richard Donner’s fantastic fable of apocalyptic prophesy deserves all the praise that can be shovelled upon it. While The Exorcist has had the benefit of being banned from release for a long period, building up people’s expectations of it and and therefore a totally understandable deduction that it therefore must be really, really scary, The Omen has plodded on entirely under its own steam.

Nostalgia plays its part too. Memories of teenage nights huddled around a hired telly with a tenth generation copy of The Exorcist playing through a top-loading Videostar and appearing on screen through more snow than is usually visible on a documentary about weather patterns in the Arctic adds massively to the appeal. Anyone who wanted to see The Omen only had to wait long enough for it to crop up on telly. When The Exorcist went back on general release and the snow lifted, it transpired it was never that good to begin with. Only lovers of American period furniture could ever be scared by the goings on in the bedroom of little Regan. And while there are some people who find the sight and sound of a teenage girl with bad skin and lank hair and a speaking voice tempered by forty Capstan Full Strength, most have seen worse hanging around city centre bus stops on a Saturday night.

But The Omen is quite, quite different. Permeated from start to finish with a marvellous air of dread, it draws the audience in by setting the most pertinent action in comfortably normal situations – hospitals, churches, parks, offices – but then distorts them just enough to keep them recognisably real, but horribly so. All of the most diabolical incidents in The Omen take place in the most ordinary of settings. Lee Remick is finally offed in her hospital room, her last sight (prior to the roof of the ambulance below) being, unfortunately, her dreadful nylon bed jacket. Billie Whitelaw is dispatched to hell from her kitchen. And when Gregory Peck finally cashes in his chips, it’s at the hands of a policeman acting in the name of the law rather than a slavering apostate of hell. Though the difference between the two rather depends on your opinion of the police.

The most famous exit for any of the leading characters is that of David Warner, Peck’s photographic sidekick during the investigation into little Damian’s real identity. What makes Warner’s eventual demise doubly shocking is that it doesn’t take place in the hugely creepy catacombs he and Peck visit immediately beforehand, in order to receive instruction from the similarly hugely creepy Leo McKern into how to teach Damian a lesson he’ll never forget. Donner’s too clever for that. He allows Peck, Warner and the audience to leave the claustrophobic atmosphere of the underground caverns and breathe a sigh of relief in the sunny afternoon, only for Warner to be decapitated by sheet of glass slid off the back of a runaway truck escaping from a building site presumably not in possession of the necessary Health and Safety certificates. The effect of what would already have been a shocking death is therefore massively increased and comes as far more of a jolt than Freidkin’s surly teenager could ever manage by ralphing up some pea and ham.

The demonic execution of the priest played by Patrick Troughton is a little different. Being skewered by his own church’s lightning rod may count as the most ironic end to a character in cinema history, but hardly the most shockingly realistic. But Troughton’s character, necessary for some brilliantly histrionic exposition, is probably the most hysterical and extreme in the whole film – his eye-rolling delivery of the famous, ‘When the Jews return to Zion…’ passage from the imaginary book of Hebron is one of the film’s highlights – and makes Billie Whitelaw’s Satanic nanny seem like a model demonstration of The Method. So a suitably demonstrative destruction was required and doesn’t jar.

The Exorcist is quite different. The level of mania surrounding the possession is no more than cartoonish in its realisation. Tellingly, the most successful moments of the film involve the all too real medical procedures carried out on Regan, possessed by a demon with the voice of Wolfman Jack and the skin tone of Derek Jameson, and the fantastically terrifying ethnic music listened to by Father Karras’ mother on a tiny radio. The rest is just pantomime.

Most of the performances in The Omen might also be described as one-note. Lee Remick isn’t really required to do much, an expectation she lives up to spectacularly well. Even supporting actor stalwarts Bruce Boa and Julian Glover don’t add much, though they scarcely get the opportunity. Accusations are forever being levelled at the portrayal of Robert Thorn, the US Ambassador and adoptive father of juvenile antichrist Damian, on the part of Gregory Peck. Too wooden, it’s said, too conservative. Ambassadors aren’t known, however, for their sense of gregarious élan, with probably only Shirley Temple Black standing as the only one in the history of the State Department who could have carried off a decent anecdote. So Peck’s decidedly wooden performance is as accurate as any would ever get, at least in a tale of demonic possession.

The Exorcist trades on the rather silly precept that it’s in some way based on an actual series of events, as described in the book by William Peter Blatty on which the film is based. But as the Coen Brothers showed by falsely claiming that their Fargo (1996) was based on a real life incident and watching the alarm that built up on the part of the audience, such a claim is incredibly easy to make and the attendant fuss is hardly ever justified. The only thing The Omen ever claimed to be was silly, fun and scary. A mission it accomplished with frightening ease.

There was a select group of individuals whose forward march through the red-tops continued pretty much unabated throughout the 1980s.

This same group, however, tends to fall out of any popular history of that decade, and they’re certainly not likely to merit any rehabilitation at the hands of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and their newly-appointed cultural tsar, Philip Glenister.

TV Cream’s brain has gone a bit scrambled thanks to the heatwave, so forgive us if some of the following doesn’t stand up to scrutiny in conditions below 20 degrees Celsius.

First there was, of course, the – MISDIRECTION ALERT! – princess of the decade, the nation’s favourite blushing bride, girl-next-door and blowsy-mum all at the same time.

That’s right, we’re talking about ANNE DIAMOND, and a tabloid saga that ran pretty much unchecked from 1983, through Dowdy Anne and Earthy Anne to Pregnant Anne and Pregnant-Outside-Marriage Anne to Strikebreaking Anne to Quitting Anne and back to Dowdy Anne Except Suddenly Much Older.

Longevity gave her a prominence that exceeded her immediate rival, SELINA SCOTT, whose tabloid appearances, if memory serves, were chiefly confined to observations on how tired she was looking. As Michael Grade himself admits, a entire programme was invented for Selina (The Clothes Show) after she quit Breakfast Time in order to stop the tabloids making anything of the fact she was being paid for doing nothing.

Then there was LADY DI herself (never Diana, or Lady Diana), Anne’s favourite topic of the 8.10am post-news slot (“Turning to page five, there’s a lovely picture of Di wearing what looks to me like a sort of designer tunic and plimsolls – she’s done it again!”).

For a time Di had regal competition in the guise of the present day Earl of Wessex, otherwise known in the 80s as BACHELOR BOY PRINCE EDWARD.

The seventh in line to the throne did not exactly make things easy for himself – although he did make things very easy for the tabloids – screwing up his A-levels, quitting (sorry, “flouncing out of”) the Royal Marines (Edward never walked anywhere, he always “flounced” or “sashayed” or “strutted”), uttering a hopelessly mild swearword at the press conference after The Grand Knockout Tournament, and turning up on his first day as best boy (tee-hee) for Andrew Lloyd-Webber carrying a box of teabags.

Lest we forget, all of this was infused with one massive and unspoken implication: that Edward was an idiot.

Does anyone know how long he actually stayed at the Really Useful Company? Apparently one of the things he did there, aside from making the tea, was commission that much-remembered and oft-acclaimed Webber/Rice musical, Cricket, for his mum’s 60th birthday. Cue gags about Edward trying – and failing – to bowl a maiden over.

Anyway, there was one other tabloid obsession that we can think of for the time being, and that was IAN BOTHAM. Whether emulating Sir Jim’ll in “walking on for hospice care”, admitting to smoking cannabis or falling out with the entire cricket establishment, Beefy fed as much on the tabloids as they did on him.

We especially like the occasion when he was so pissed off he declared he was quitting the country to start a new career in Hollywood. Or so we read in the papers.

There must have been more red-top reliables of the 80s.

Simon Bates seemed to be heavily involved, but this may be retrospective wishful thinking.

TO YOUR average politically disinterested 1970s child, only two social phenomena provided sources of real terror. Nuclear Armageddon, of course, was up there at number one. Joining it slightly lower down the night terror pecking order was an altogether more mundane spectre: “prices”. These two sources of consternation couldn’t have been less alike. While atomic holocaust was enormous and vivid, inflation was fiddly and hard to understand, but the escalating cost of a Curly Wurly was a clear and present danger. So what seemed like an insanely counter-intuitive idea – making a futuristic children’s drama out of the stuff of pie charts and percentages and humorous Richard Stilgoe numbers – was actually a sound move from Lewis Rudd’s low budget mavericks at Southern’s children’s department.

The dateline is our old favourite, an unspecified near future which studio accountants will be pleased to know looks exactly like today. The air is thick with unease. Fuzzy transistor radios buzz at the breakfast table with the latest OPEC worries, rubbish piles up in the streets, and the price of a tin of PAL is frankly unbelievable. Sternly moustachioed, self-made shoe shop manager Norman Mortimer, head of the solidly upper middle class Mortimer household and played with zeal by the reptilian DAVID NEAL in a militaristic register somewhere between Maurice Bronson and Keith off Nuts in May, has seen the writing on the wall. He hikes his brood off to a country manor house he’s bought, stuffed with carton upon carton of the finest cash-’n'-carry produce money can still just about buy, there to sit out the ensuing social calamity in Angel Delight-fuelled security. (It’s a sign of the times that the tins of Bartlett pear halves, rather than the Portland stone des. res., are seen as the major investment.)

The rest of the Mortimers (including children’s drama mainstay SIMON GIPPS-KENT as eldest son), who weren’t consulted on any of this, have a few misgivings. This can’t end well, surely? Ah, says Neal, but things are about to kick off, and “I shan’t have it!” Naturally, they both turn out to be right. Local undesirables start sniffing around. The streets fill with rubbish, Winter of Discontent-style. BRIAN CAPRON tours the suburbs with a megaphone urging social uprising. The army mill about menacingly in silhouette. Eventually assorted ne’er-do-wells converge on the house with something altogether darker than pools coupon collection in mind.

This wasn’t just an exercise in castigating Tory self-interest. Neal’s spoils were eyed up by cheeky, apple-scrumping dropout socialist ALUN LEWIS, who advocated redistribution to the needy while giving the eldest daughter the glad eye; and cockney black marketeer Vince Holloway, played by MIKE REID in beard and docker’s hat, sizing up potential profits down the local boozer with bent councillors and his cocky son, a tiny LEE ‘Zammo’ MACDONALD. All parties came violently to a three-way stand-off amongst the economy size Coffeemate. Not everything worked: the conscientiously dissenting kids often just sounded stuck up and arsey, and (as is so often the way in children’s drama) their bland poshness made them hard to root for over the more charismatically unprincipled villains. But the gritty images of riot police clashing with the great unfed lingered in the mind, giving rise to a palpable sense of dread whenever Shiver and Shake went up by a penny.

Municipal hole-digger Selwyn Froggitt, created by playwright Alan Plater and portrayed by Bill Maynard, is one of the great clown turns of sitcom. He’s almost childlike in his relentless, hyperactive enthusiasm (life’s one big double-thumbs-up), yet habitually accident prone, a one-man whirlwind of ebullient destruction.

Living with his train-obsessed brother Maurice and absent-minded, pensionable mum in the Yorkshire town of Scarsdale, Selwyn enjoys a simple life of digging holes, drinking beer and wrecking public property. Despite avidly reading The Times (‘It’s great! On Sundays you get three and a book!’) and bandying words like ‘aesthetic’ about with confidence, Maynard’s stuttering, red-faced hero remains several steps behind everyone else, notably his compadres at the working men’s club, including shifty, gimlet-eyed barman Ray (Ray Mort) and humourless club president Jack (Bill ‘Harry Cross’ Dean, who also penned the lyrics to the lilting male voice choir theme tune, which winningly changed each week to document that episode’s misadventures in between its immortal ‘never mind’ refrain).

Endless mucky holes, flyblown club interiors and pints of cookin’ conspired to make this the brownest sitcom in history. A holiday camp sequel in 1978, SELWYN, backfired, but Yorkshire Television gave Maynard a worthy 1980s successor in THE GAFFER, where his professional incompetence moved with the times into the private sector.

LYNDA BELLINGHAM’S other half from Second Thoughts and Robbie Coltrane’s other half from Cracker meet in the staff room of a Leeds comprehensive, discover a mutual interest in the eponymous parper, then spend an indecent number of episodes – and years – on the run from, among others, corrupt councillors, corrupt policemen, corrupt landowners, corrupt corrupters, corrupt publicans, corrupt clarinettists (always a threat) and a Russian with a red face. Tinker from LOVEJOY was in it (as a rogue, naturally), along with BERYL REID, TERENCE RIGBY and MAGGIE JONES. Affable if sometimes  incomprehensible business penned by ALAN PLATER, liberally sprinkled with the man’s brilliantly sarky dialogue. (“Mother’s been up half the night with her stroganoff!” “Well, what use is money if you haven’t got your health?”) Your Mum liked the scenery, your Dad liked the jazz, you liked the frisson of Bellingham saying the word ‘pillock’. Now that’s what we call Sunday night drama.

NUMERICALLY-INEXPLICABLE opportunity for everyone from Ozzy Osborne to Bobby Ball to pick out their twelve personal platters that mattered, interlinked by embarkation on personal voyages that we could well have done without. Slimmed down in late eighties to become the more sensible My Top Ten and rope in the likes of Jonathan Ross and Dawn French to do the pop-picking, but cancelled soon thereafter.

MUCH-MISSED master of tape-fiddling who started off messing around with bits of old adverts and Camberwick Green in a Weekend Breakfast slot, before graduating to lunchtimes where he perfected such demented features as the ‘Mr Whippy’s Van’ quiz, the exploits of faded sixties hipster Raymond Sinclair, and the epic-length surreal monologues of Eric The Gardener. Convoluted career path involved plans to move him to The Graveyard Shift when Mark & Lard took over Drivetime, derailed when Chris Evans left unexpectedly early and Greening doing a bit of Breakfast stand-in while the duo were readied for that slot, before ending up in ‘Driveltime’ himself. Kermode-supported irate pisstaking of slot-related inanity followed by a move to Breakfast alongside Zoe Ball, bringing back all the old characters plus some new ones (including xenophobic travel report maniac Major Holdups) but not really working and he was off within the year. Radio 1 seemingly couldn’t be bothered finding him a proper new slot again, and wasted one of their best ever talents on swing jock duties, to the audible dismay of Mark Goodier after he said goodbye to Greening on-air for the last time (“one of the best DJs this station’s ever had”). Radio has never been the same since.

WELL-REMEMBERED comedy edition of the usually straight and serious ITV PLAYHOUSE strand, co-written by JOHN “CLIFFY” RATZENBURGER. Retired professor ROBERT STEPHENS leads the Friends in Space Society, a harmlessly eccentric bunch of binocular-toting, long wave-trawling suburban UFO nuts (including Ratzenberger, ELEANOR BRON, TERENCE ‘SOFTLY, SOFTLY’ RIGBY and PAT HEYWOOD) who, inevitably, happen upon a genuine alien (resembling a translucent half-jellyfish, half-lampshade, half-man thing) which they rather brilliantly name The Nigel. The rest of the play works out as a sort of EXPLORERS in reverse, as they determine their ‘Nigel’ is just a kid, revert to suburban type, and try and get in touch with its parents to fetch him home, making for the most mundane alien encounter ever filmed.

“HIT it, bitch!”. Superb verge-of-megastardom knockabout from Stephen Fry with, predictably, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson in tow, doing silly things to no end of Radio 4 cliches and speaking in nonsense language ‘Strom’ while indulging in elaborate extended parodies of Fat Man On A Bicycle and costume dramas, deconstructing deconstructionist jokes about changing pages of the script, and trying and failing to emulate Jim’ll Fix It in Stephen Will Do His Level Best To Comply With Your Wishes. Also it was on Saturday nights.

A SUPERLATIVE anthology of hour-long suspenseful playlets about well-tailored middle class types methodically doing each other in, THRILLER was a textbook example of straightforward, unpretentious telly drama doing its job to perfection. Mastermind BRIAN CLEMENS conceived and wrote most of the six series: forty three stories of suspense and horror, sometimes with supernatural overtones, often with an American guest star on the books for export purposes, always with plenty of plot twists.

The pre-title sequences were reassuringly formulaic, setting the tone for each week’s dose of macabre happenings in, more often than not, a superficially cosy remote provincial setting.. A charming cottage was seen being cased by a sinister type in a Gabardine coat, or maybe a flashy TR7 would pull into the driveway of a well-appointed country house, arousing the suspicions of the gardener. Something was clearly afoot. Then came the credits, a blood-tinged fish-eye lens title sequence with jarring musical chords, signalling ‘suspense’ in no uncertain terms. Corny episode titles belied the finely-tooled drama they would herald. ‘The Eyes Have It’ was a case in point: a daft pun introducing a largely silent, almost unbearably suspenseful tale of blind medical students (including DENNIS WATERMAN and SINEAD CUSACK) thwarting PETER VAUGHAN’s gang of taciturn terrorists. Elsewhere, the likes of ‘Murder in Mind’ and ‘K is for Killing’ served up exactly what they promised, and needless to say, if Clemens could bodge up a title by working the word ‘scream’ into a well-known expression, he did.

Primark Hitchcock it might have been, but the suspense was well-made for all that. Essentially, the series toyed with clichés. Young married couple freshly moved into mysterious rural location, stranger turning up who may not be all he seems, unidentified killer on the loose etc. It was the masterly variations and wrong-footings wrought from these familiar scenarios that made the programmes riveting, even when acting and production values started to exhibit the tell-tale signs of mid-series sag. Quite often, however, there were great performances, both from name actors (witness DIANA DORS’s sinister country nurse, ‘taking care’ of a bed-ridden American diplomat’s daughter in ‘Nurse Will Make It Better’) and those yet to find fame, particularly one that stops everyone in their tracks, HELEN MIRREN as the potential victim (or – ahem – is she?) of serial wife-knobbler MICHAEL JAYSTON in ‘A Coffin for the Bride’. DINSDALE LANDEN’s turn as suave private eye Matthew Earp was so popular he became the series’ only recurring character, when he was brought back for a second episode. When everything came together, as with the endless double-crosses and revelations and a brilliant cast led by PETER BOWLES in ‘The Double Kill’, you couldn’t ask for a better way to pass an hour of prime time.

This was, as you might expect, a very early ’70s kind of intrigue. Try and play a postmodern drinking game, quaffing along with the hero, or taking a sip every time a detective is seen entering a living room refracted in a crystal decanter, or a white shag-pile carpet is stained crimson with blood, or an anonymous black-gloved hand picks up a telephone receiver and slowly dials a very long number, or a blonde American in a trouser suit merrily announces that she’s ‘new in town’ and you’ll be under the glass coffee table before the first victim. And, quite frankly, serves you right. The show signalled its era in other ways: ‘If It’s a Man, Hang Up’ had Clemens’ stock glamorous soubrette-in-peril (more often than not called ‘Suzy’, the significance of which remains a mystery) menaced by an unknown stalker leaving threatening messages on a big, clunky old telephone answering machine. One of the main things mitigating against any modern revival of the programme is the number of plots that revolve around young women not being able to get to a phone box in time, or killers cutting the phone lines to a remote country cottage. In that sense, as well as that of the many swish glass-’n'-chrome bachelor pads dreamt up by the set designers, this is period drama.

They weren’t wall-to-wall classics. Each of the six seasons served up a couple of makeweights and duffers. (As a rule, seasons three and four were the closest to perfection, while five and six became increasingly silly.) ‘File It Under Fear’ was a library-oriented serial kill-in which had JOHN LE MESURIER, JAN FRANCIS and MAUREEN LIPMAN to play with among others, but still fumbled its chance, while mystical entry ‘Someone at the Top of the Stairs’ was fantastic for forty minutes, then ran smack into one of those tediously long-winded explanatory denouements that plague so much bad telefantasy, even if the masterly DAVID DE KEYSER was delivering it (with his fingers placed on the tip of his chin just so). At the very bottom of the pile, ‘Murder Motel’s daffy PSYCHO homage, despite the appropriately-cast RALPH BATES, stank the place out.

Even in otherwise grand entries, Clemens’ unabashed disregard for research (particularly his habit of just sort of guessing what the police might decide to do) got the goat of the more pernickety viewer, along with the inevitable ‘yes, but what about..?’s and ‘hang on, why didn’t she just..?’s that always plague the best laid plots of Agathas and Roalds. Oh, and the dialogue, with the possible exception of one or two Matthew Earp bon mots, never rose, or even aimed above speakable. But even when it was unspeakable, even when the plots were riddled with inconsistencies, and even when the entire set-up seemed like a dead goose from the off (“there’s this professor of Pavlovian psychology, right, and he’s trained some murderous psychos as his servants, and he invites some young students to dinner…”) the twists, turns and sheer gusto of the whole thing kept your attention front and centre, niggling doubts only edging their way in as the end credits wound to a close. Which, Clemens would argue, was his job done.

One thing that initially puts off the modern viewer is Thriller’s directorial style, which, if it could be said to exist at all was very much the old school approach: four days in the studio, one day on location, bash it out, onto the next one. What would nowadays be considered glacial pacing (the long, deliberate tracking shot across an empty room accompanied by sinister oboe cadence was something of a motif, for instance) was integral to the atmosphere. Rather than cut rapidly from shot to shot, the direction took its time, almost taunting the viewer with its creeping progress. When all the other elements were working, a vivid sense of foreboding was the result. Lew Grade’s ITC hired a roster of big names and gave the scripts relatively lavish treatment, but, being mainly studio-bound, with a couple of sets (all of them meticulously dressed, with nary a wobbling column in sight) and a minimal amount of location filming, they look visually primitive these days. However, this simplicity had the virtue of putting the emphasis firmly on script and action, in lieu of fancy camera angles. In fact, the technical limitations had an atmosphere all of their own: the videotaped interiors were claustrophobic and tense, while the grainy, overcast countryside film inserts looked like they could be hiding untold menaces.

Various ITV series followed in kind – the supernatural ARMCHAIR THRILLER and HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR, and the twist-happy TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, which was the one that ran off with all the nostalgia value, more through being repeated a lot during ITV strikes than anything else – but for sheer no-nonsense cliffhanging effect, nothing beats the original.

Brian Clemens is the subject of a season of screenings at the British Film Institute on the South Bank in London, beginning on 2 July.

The man responsible for the story behind Highland II: The Quickening, the teleplay for Perry Mason: The Case of the Heartbroken Bride and a whole six episodes of Father Dowling Investigates is getting a month-sized doff of the hat in the shape of a line-up that – perhaps wisely – contains none of those offerings.

Instead if you’re in London or the south east (as Simon Groom used to say), there are episodes of The Avengers, The New Avengers, Danger Man, Adam Adamant Lives, The Professionals, The Invisible Man and Thriller to enjoy.

There are also screenings of Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter and numerous extremely rare offerings from the BFI’s vaults (which we like to think are Clemens-esque in their size and furnishings, including plush carpets and a steam-powered organ).

The man himself is scheduled to make two appearances, one to talk specifically about The Avengers (22 July) and then to roam back over his entire career (28 July).

You can find full details of all events, and how to book tickets, on the BFI website.

EVER-RELIABLE EARLY evening winter warmer which hoved into view every January, until perishing in a state much changed from its original, imperial incarnation. Began as demented Election results-esque affair with SIR CLIFF MICHELMORE helming proceedings in front of rows of telephonists and assistants “reporting” on up-to-the-second vacation palavers and package dealathons. Slowly mutated into more soft-focus, soft-centred soiree during the 70s, typified by – erk – breastage creeping into opening titles to the swinging guitar sounds of Gordon Giltrap. While Cliff idled in the studio, DAME ANNE GREGG and LORD JOHN CARTER packed their travelling chests and tote bags to fly the world armed only with a flimsy straw hat and a BOAC boarding pass. Much “first hand” experience of burgeoning bargain getaway bonanza and resort gold rush contrasted with “off the beaten track” forays into erstwhile colonies, always ending with a shot of our heroes enjoying a well-earned tipple on a hotel balcony in front of a glorious sunset. Show breezed into the 80s pretty much unchallenged, leaving the trash and the tacky to Judith Chalmers. Decade-defining jaunts courtesy of FRANK AND NESTA BOUGH on their annual motoring holiday in Pyrenees in a pea green Ford Fiesta. Programme became even more laid back when DES LYNAM took over and quota of celebrity charmers “sampling the delights” of exotic beaches reached dizzying levels. 1990s saw inevitable slide thanks to obsession with famous faces fannying about in ludicrously expensive places, culminating in bone-chilling sight of ROLAND RIVRON and family trying to sell virtues of the African outback.

SMALL SCREEN equivalent of the Galapagos Island tortoise. Only ever been the one host, but PATRICK MOORE still makes astronomy seem both unerringly dull and annoyingly scary at the same time, even after 50 glorious years. Numerous spin-offs and specials also aired, coinciding with virtually every single development in space exploration over the past half-century, including first Moon landings (later wiped by cack-handed Beeb techies), comet sightings, eclipses, probes, shuttles, satellites etc. Still showing every month, shoved at out somewhere round 1am, to the glockenspiel galumpher’s increasing tetchiness. Recent 50th birthday edition featured special guest star BRIAN MAY inexplicably dressed up as a 150-year-old Moore.

THE MAN as far as TV science is concerned, JOHNNY BALL masterminded the THINK series as a cross between Carl Sagan and Max Miller, hosting a solid decade’s worth of one-man maths and science programmes with a precisely judged mix of clear, concise explanation and affably boobish ‘mad uncle’ tomfoolery. First lady of Children’s BBC CYNTHIA FELGATE oversaw original series THINK OF A NUMBER (1977-84), which took the form of a ‘light-hearted lecture’ on a general theme (the body, light, gravity, computers etc.) in front of an audience of keen but unrowdy T-shirted kids.

A lectern stood front and centre, but this was a mere serving suggestion, a reference point from which Ball would break loose and caper about, opening one of several cupboards concealed behind an eye-popping orange and brown mural (as was the style at the time), either to drag out an illustrative prop, or to open the door onto a sward of bright blue felt, onto which would be superimposed a pre-recorded skit. For instance, Ball would announce: “and in the fifteenth century, there was one man who understood all about astronomy. His name… was Galileo” and fling open a set of cupboard doors, inside which he would be seen, dressed as same in the appropriate set, launching into a wisecracking routine complete with cod-Italian accent (“A-where’s-a me tay-lescope?”) and hyperactive mannerisms. The overall impression may have been of history’s great scientific and mathematical geniuses being a bunch of hyperactive national stereotypes, but their achievements were explained effectively nonetheless. Point put across and signed off with a pun, ‘real’ Johnny would cheekily close the doors on his historical alter ego. “What a handsome chap!”

Other staple elements included a moment of ‘quiet wonderment’ where the lights would go down, some Jean Michel Jarre-esque music would fade in, and an elaborate model of a satellite or quartz crystal would be lowered from the ceiling, over which Johnny would drop the music hall stylings and simply wax lyrical, with breathlessly earnest enthusiasm. And, of course, there was the obligatory mind-reading magic trick (“It’s a trick! If you’d like to know how it’s done, write to me, Johnny Ball, Think of a Number, and I’ll tell you!”), usually involving a front row audience member as willing stooge. (“Round of applause! Not for me, for them!”) It’s instructive to note that Johnny was, perhaps uniquely in the annals of children’s television presenting, capable of remaining both authoritative and immensely likable despite constantly laughing at his own incredibly weak gags.

Spin-offs appeared thick and fast. From 1981, …Number alternated with THINK AGAIN, which was pretty much the same format but with the studio audience dispensed with, more in the way of filmed reports and full-blown EUREKA!-style historical sketches, and a more sober hi-tech bachelor pad set (complete with Commodore PET displaying the show’s logo on a shelf) for Johnny to be zanily enthusiastic in, which many impressionable kids assumed was his actual house, despite him clearly leaving via the front door at the end of each half-hour. Each edition was accompanied by a free Ball-penned duplicated factsheet available via an SAE to Wood Lane. THINK! BACKWARDS (1981) was something of an overlooked gem, a numerically themed daily series in the summer holidays counting down from ten to one over a week. Much play was had with reverse introductions (“Ball Johnny is name my, Backwards Think to again once welcome and hello!”) and the suspense was kept with a ‘teaser’ puzzle at the end of each edition, with the answer cunningly withheld until the start of the next. THINK! THIS WAY (1983) did the same, working its way round the points of the compass.

After the main franchise was wound up, Johnny found a series of further vehicles which retained the old spark, even if …Number veterans felt the glory days were beginning to fade a bit. THINK IT, DO IT (1986-7) was a sober, vocationally-oriented series looking at a different sphere of the world of work each week. The terrible puns were needed more than ever during a whole 25 minutes about becoming a dentist. (Sadly ‘mystic’ was not one of the career options considered.) KNOWHOW (1988) fatally sought to dilute the Ball magic with the addition of superfluous youthful stooges MARK SALTER and ANN DE CAIRES (no, us neither). Ball saw sense and jumped ship to Central Television for JOHNNY BALL REVEALS ALL (1989-94), wherein good old CLIVE DOIG allowed him to run riot among a studio audience once more, though this time in an unremarkable white studio limbo, and with a break-dancing Plasticine globe in the title sequence. Still, it was the same old Johnny underneath. And when that packed in, he maintained the lecture tours of schools, colleges and function rooms for longer than you’d have thought humanly possible. Whatever he may have done in recent years (and we’ll highlight the time he appeared on NEWSNIGHT captioned as “Maths Enthuser” and ignore the rest, if we may) the Think canon remains a mammoth achievement in getting school-weary kids off the sofa and thinking about silicon chips of a Friday afternoon. CONNECTIONS in short trousers, if you will.

IT WAS the moment that changed British TV comedy forever: 10pm, February 24^th 1956, when Associated-Rediffusion, in all their independent majesty, let SPIKE MILLIGAN on the telly. THE IDIOT WEEKLY, PRICE 2D was the programme, with Spike and PETER SELLERS lording it as the editors of the eponymous screwball Edwardian periodical, the flimsiest of excuses for the pair and assorted co-stars to caper about in the most ramshackle fashion imaginable under the extremely loose direction of RICHARD LESTER.

It obviously struck a chord, or at least terrified few enough people, as the even more unhinged A SHOW CALLED FRED over where the Weekly left off in May. This time even the nebulous framing narrative was jettisoned, and the madness began as soon as the cameras went live. The programme typically began with Spike, dressed in rags, mooching around the Associated-Rediffusion studio corridors, accompanied by the Kenny Everett Video Show-style sparse but genuine crew laughter that punctuated the whole programme. This was followed by a bit of business with Sellers in trunks attempting to bash a Rank-style gong, and credits for “the well-known Thespian actors” KENNETH CONNOR, VALENTINE DYALL (usually clad in bow tie, dinner jacket and no shirt, or better yet long-johns and top hat) and GRAHAM STARK. Other contributors included JOHN ANTROBUS (dragged on screen just to point out he wrote the sketch currently under way), bearded sousaphone playing duo and all-round pre-Bonzos musical anarchists THE ALBERTS (always introduced as Peter and Hugh Jampton), PATTI LEWIS and the inevitable MAX GELDRAY. The suspiciously similar SON OF FRED carried on the tradition in September.

The whole thing, done entirely live with a few film inserts, was heroically shoddy, even by the primitive standards of the day. Backdrops wobbled and frayed at the edges, costumes were either half-complete or non-existent, and in the frequent pull-outs to take in backstage crew and lovely old EMI cameras, the floor was visibly covered in crap. Spike himself appeared surprisingly infrequently, mainly accompanying Sellers reading out viewers’ letters in front of a back projection of speeding cars and burning buildings, or sticking his head through random openings and making stupid noises. Which was, of course, all to the good.

The shows ended with an extended film parody, such as the exquisite COLDITZ spoof Escaper’s Club, with some brilliantly hammy acting (“Ssh! Listen!”) or a Count of Monte Cristo pastiche written by John Antrobus (“That’s me! Me!”) which featured an infiltration by BBC television cameras, pre-empted the Pythons’ coconut-halves-for-horses gag by nearly twenty years and ended up with the destruction of the already threadbare set, a rousing chorus of Riding Along On the Crest of a Wave, and Valentine Dyall doing the dishes in the studio’s self-service canteen. Ad hoc excellence, in short, and it’s nothing short of mind-blowing to think this stuff is over half a century old, as distant from us now as those Edwardian periodicals were from then.

CHRONOLOGICALLY INSANE granting of weekly hour-long slot for Jonathan King to expound his theories about how he is right about all music ever and once liked a record by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince too, central conceit of which was to build up a ‘hit record’ out of samples of the rickety Theresa Brewer ragtime theme song of the same name. It didn’t become one.

‘RELAXED’ (ie still frighteningly academic and formal) light entertainment counterpart to Brain Of Britain, with teams from – yes, you guessed it – Round Britain doing general knowledge battle to establish which region really does know where it is and how to spell its name. Relative ‘trendiness’ signposted by fans daringly referring to it as RBQ. Whatever will they think of next?!

SEDATELY BEARDED and unchallenged king of American FM-style “and to take us up to the 3am news, here’s a couple of classic album tracks from Bob Seger” type jocks, originally one of the early seventies hippy intake (fronting, as luck would have it, Sounds Of The Seventies) and the face of Whistle Test, was among that wave of presenters who washed up back at the station in the late eighties, taking you through the night with some vintage Van Morrison, but before that, here’s the new one from Sting…

Seemingly never-ending ‘improving’ sci-fi saga of dubious scientific veracity from the pen of Nicholas Fisk, concerning futuristic boarding-school children who go off exploring space on a whim. Phenomenally popular, especially with present-buying relatives who’d heard that you liked ‘space’, but in truth little more than a traditional children’s adventure yarn with a couple of ‘meteorites’ bolted on for good measure and of scant use to anyone who’d been suckered by the imaginative flair of The Tomorrow People.

A TRIUMPHANT return to prime time Friday nights for redoubtable amusical pentheraphobe LES DAWSON. The format was a ‘look at life’ sketch show, linked by the man himself and covering a different topic each week, in the manner of such familiar fare as Terry Scott’s Scott On. But Dawson, typically, went one better, packaging his skits in the format of an urgent investigative current affairs programme (complete with requisite groovy, doomy theme tune) concerning the nefarious machinations of “them” – a faceless race of aliens manipulating mankind into its perennial state of hapless discord for their own sinister ends. Such extra-terrestrial encroachment took the form, naturally, of British Rail sandwiches, Post Office queues and Bank Holiday traffic. The links were presented from ‘Dawson Control’, a futuristic bunker full of spinning tape reels, banks of flashing lights and that big projection TV screen they used to display song lyrics on Top of the Pops for a bit, wherein Les would be handed the latest worrying developments on bits of computer paper by a crew of headset-equipped dolly birds. (“Wear the boots tonight!”)

The sketches, co-written by Les with such venerable comedy workhorses as Andy Hamilton and Ian Davidson, were of a more traditional bent than all this techno-tomfoolery might suggest, but solid enough, helped by a supporting cast of the calibre of JOHN JUNKIN, DAVID BATTLEY, MICHAEL KNOWLES, SAM KELLY and, in a rare adult comedy role, JOHNNY BALL. Each show was rounded off with the obligatory Cissy and Ada dialogue betwixt Les and ROY BARRACLOUGH. Technological hi-jinks did occasionally get a look in, with Dawson commenting on sketches via surveillance monitors, and performing little monologues next to a Dr Strangelove-esque illuminated world map (in which the various dots were climactically joined up to spell out words like ‘cobblers’ etc.) For the most part, though, it was Les alone, hands behind back, spouting his finely-hewn baroque monologues unaided. Even the grand piano was kept in its crate (along, presumably, with the wife’s mother). Les would later revisit the theme of alien manipulation in his expectation-confounding (to say nothing of profoundly weird) 1985 science fiction novel A Time Before Genesis, in what must be the only working men’s club comedy/dystopian sci-fi crossover in British telly, unless you count Mike Reid’s unbroadcast Day of the Triffiks.

ADMIRABLE attempt at pre-watershed sitcommery from the satirical pens of STEVE PUNT, HUGH DENNIS and NICK HANCOCK, co-writers and co-starring as old schoolfriends brought back together. Hancock’s character (a PE and English teacher who supported Stoke City, natch) owned a flat which Dennis’s character (an arrogant, suspicious business tycoon-in-waiting) comes to stay in while Punt’s character (the brainiest of the three but preferring the drop-out life) keeps popping round after arguing with his parents. Some needless rehashing of old stand-up scripts (“when I got my kidney donor card I put Colin’s name on it”) aside, it was hardy stuff that did better than hobble along though as ITV sitcoms go, it was hardly anything that would threaten the crowns of Rupert Rigsby or Robin Tripp, and wasn’t recommissioned. The scrumptious ADIE ALLEN, in sober suit jackets and jeans, played the love interest Claire (“I loved the things you did to me – like taking me to the National Portrait Gallery…”) while DANNY BAKER, a big mate of Hancock’s, appeared as himself, flogging an ‘unbranded’ soap powder. Best bit was getting a gag about the demise of ELDORADO in, even though it had only happened that very week, suggesting a tight and topical filming and editing schedule. The dream sequence (“are you in my dream or am I in yours?”) in the last episode, in which Hancock smashed up a car with a baseball bat while Claire declared undying love for the other two, was one of the most complicated plotlines ever. Like most things Punt and Dennis have done, it will never be seen again but is somehow better off for it.

TV Cream counts down the official, unofficial and unmerchantable World Cup releases from two decades of A-side pitchside aural action.

1970: BACK HOME, ENGLAND WORLD CUP SQUAD
The original and tuxedoed best, as performed by the entire squad in evening dress giving all they’ve got the give, although we’re actually not sure if that grainy film footage they always wheel out is from TOTP or some sort of primitive promo. Dunno. Back Home was written by the dream team of Martin and Coulter, who were obviously dab hands at, ahem, rousing national singalongs, having already penned Puppet On A String and Congratulations for Eurovision. And curiously enough, cover versions of both turned up on the accompanying cash-in World Cup LP, The World Beaters Sing The World Beaters, only with the players going “Yee-ha! Rrrrriba, rrrriba!” all over the place, cos that’s what they do in Mexico, isn’t it? The sleeve notes are great, mind, with references to “Your actual ‘reggae’ music with Gordon Banks in true Caribbean form” and stuff. Ace. Anyway, here’s the, er, B-side to Back Home, Cinnamon Stick:

1974: EASY EASY, SCOTLAND WORLD CUP SQUAD
No England this time, so Martin and Coulter switched allegiances to Scotland, with magnificent, foot-stomping, tartan-waving Rollers-style results. In full, then… Yabba dabba doo, we support the boys in blue, and it’s easy, easy!/Yabba dabba doo, we are gonna follow you, and it’s easy, easy!/Yabba dabba day, we’ll be with you all the way, singing eeeeeeeasy!/Ringa dinga ding, there goes Willie on the wing and it’s easy, easy!/Ringa dinga ding, knock it over for the king, and it’s easy, easy!/Ringa dinga dong, now we know we can’t go wrong and it’s eeeeeeeasy!/(middle eight) Come on, now we’re really gonna roll, gotta get another goal, woah-woah-woah!/Come on, just another one to win, stick it in! Stick it in! Stick it iiiiiiiiiin!/Eenie meanie moe, get the ball and have a go, and it’s easy, easy!/Eenie meanie moe, we’ll let everybody know that it’ easy, easy!/Eenie meanie my, now we’re really flying high, and it’s eeeeeeeasy! (repeat first verse until first-round elimination)

1978: OLE OLA, ROD STEWART
They had Dalglish, Buchan and Macari. But as David Baddiel once pointed out, “Ole ole, ole ola, we’re going to bring that World Cup back from over tha’!” is not perhaps the finest lyric in the world. Especially as Rod says it about ten million times during the record. But given that he also tries to rhyme ‘nation of five million’ with ‘really turn the heat on,’ perhaps it wasn’t surprising. Magnificently frenetic effort, nonetheless, with loads of bongos and whistles and stuff, cos that’s what they do in Argentina, isn’t it? Brilliantly hostage-to-fortune third verse, in which Rod writes off the fortunes of every team except Scotland. “Holland without Cruyff just ain’t the same”, hmm?

The unofficial opposition came from the tediously tam-o’shantered Andy Cameron and the one anecdote he’s been wheeling out in all the clip shows. We did like Tony Blackburn’s introduction to his record on TOTP, however. “He’s going to tell us… all about Ally’s Tartan Army.”

1982: THIS TIME (WE’LL GET IT RIGHT)/ENGLAND WE’LL FLY THE FLAG, ENGLAND WORLD CUP SQUAD
Best remembered of the 80s releases, reaching number two on the back of those aforementioned Pops appearances with the lads all lined up in Admiral jumpers and surrounded by air hostesses, with balloons and stuff flying about. Secretly likeable stuff, actually, with bizarre mass kazoo solo and amiably rousing lyrics (“This time, more than any other time, this time/We’re gonna find a way, find a way to get away, this time/Getting it all together, to win them all!”), a tiny clip going on to become the typically oblique yet oddly moving coda to Saint Etienne’s 2002 album Finisterre.

The double A-side was the B-Cal riffing Fly The Flag (“We’ll take more care of them/and we’ll flyyyyyy the flaaaaaaag!”). And bonus points for being released on RAK.

Scotland had their biggest hit with the BA Robertson-penned, comedy-flavoured We Have A Dream, while Northern Ireland weighed in with the oft-overlooked, Dana-assisted Yer Man (“When Yer Man gets the ball, Northern Ireland has it all!”).

1986: WE’VE GOT THE WHOLE WORLD AT OUR FEET, ENGLAND WORLD CUP SQUAD
Now we’ve got a bone to pick with clip show compilers, cos they keep showing the slow, ballady B-side of this record (When We Are Far From Home) instead of the uptempo Jossy’s Giantsesque A-side (“We’ve got the whole world at our feet/There’s not a single team that we can’t beat/They’ll all be dancing in the street/Cos we’ve got the whole world at our feet!”).

Why they made a video for the B-side, we have no idea, but sort these things out, please. Mention also to Scotland for Big Trip To Mexico, but not for Northern Ireland as we can’t remember their record. But alas we didn’t forget Peter ‘Pete Beale’ Dean’s I Can’t Get A Ticket For The World Cup Final. Didn’t chart, amazingly.

1988 ALL THE WAY, ENGLAND FOOTBALL TEAM
Not a World Cup record, but this effort from Euro 88 just manages to sneak under the wire. Billed in actual fact to ‘The England Football Team Featuring The Sound Of Stock, Aitken, Waterman’, close listening reveals no discernable footballers on this record, and we reckon it was just Mike, Matt and Pete with their voices multiplied to make it sound like two dozen. Magnificent video, however, the highlight being Tony Adams piloting a speedboat, and a memorable performance on Wogan, with the team in nasty Umbro tracksuits on a load of fitness equipment -- Waddle on exercise bike etc. They could face any stormy weather, just as long as they could play together, be together.

1990 WORLD IN MOTION, ENGLANDNEWORDER
Yes, yes, Keith Bloody Allen might drone on about how it was originally ‘provocatively’ going to be called E For England, but only he gives a toss about shite ideas like that. The greatest ever football record by default, yes, and it did nick Stephen and Gillian’s theme to Making Out, but still ace, if only because of the effortless cool of the video (note Barnes in non-England Adidas top, which would never be allowed now) compared with Allen’s later Look Everybody We’re Being Ironic efforts, viz England’s Irie (“I live in a land of class hypocrisy, we’re going to win the National Lottery” -- oh purlease) and the gloriously off-the-case Fat Les, a sort of shite football version of the KLF aimed exclusively at Crispin and Jasper down the Groucho. Oddly, Ken Wolstenholme re-recorded *that* commentary for WiM, getting the words wrong, then moaned about it. See also the 12″ with the line ‘Call the carabinieri’ (do you see?) which we like best.

Scotland meanwhile pitched up with the godawful unreconstructed Say It With Pride (“We’re gonna walk tall in the sun!”) which sounded a charity record and had people like Fish and, eurgh, Runrig on it.

And Ireland did We’re On The March With Jackie’s Army, which had Jack Charlton barking his football philosophy all over it and Clannad going ‘Ole, ole, ole…’

THE WORLD CUP is finally upon us, so to celebrate, it’s back to the summer of 1982 for a glimpse of some old school ITV coverage.

Jeff Wayne’s synthtastic anthem Matador opens proceedings, before BRIAN MOORE introduces a look at ‘one or two of the lighter moments of the tournament’, including cameo appearances from ERIC MORECAMBE (“Just one Cornetto!”) and MIKE YARWOOD (shamelessly essaying a Lopez Ufarte “joke” in the guise of Brian Clough), an interview with Northern Ireland’s mascot ‘Yer Man’ by a tyro EAMONN HOLMES who, frankly, looks like he might be late for his paper round, and an undercover BBC raid on the ITV camp from messrs HILL and McMENEMY.

WOP! SURREAL, frenetic, semi-improvised short stories for kids told with almost psychopathic conviction by one-time comedian and latter-day soil-botherer TONY ROBINSON. No animation, no illustrations, no comfy chair, no big book on lap, just Robinson throwing shapes around a deserted house and garden while haranguing the camera with tales of short, corpulent Fat Tulip and neighbour Thin Tim. Other characters included stereotypical burglar Fred the Baddie, two long-suffering frogs called Ernie and Sylve, an heroic tortoise called Lewis Collins, three pernicious toads called Peter, Paul and Mary and a little white shell called Jim Morrison. Further down the obscure reference trail were Inspector Challenor and Gilbert Harding the sheep. Plots started from a simple premise – say, Fat Tulip baking a cake which swells up to engulf the house (“Get back, you horrible cakey thing!”) while a never-ending stream of washing machine salesmen with pink cheeks and bowler hats turn up at the front door – and went off from there, in all directions.

Sequel Fat Tulip Too broadened the locations to include a swimming pool, park, beach and cafe, but the rapidly busked bedtime story principle was the same. A preternaturally squelchy synthesised theme tune topped things off in perfect style. The unsung heroine was Robinson’s old school chum and co-writer Debbie Gates, who went on to pen more alfresco streams of lunatic consciousness including Revolting Animals and Jellyneck, this time with various folk including Morwenna Banks sharing the frenetic storytelling honours. Robinson went over to BBC to apply the anti-Jackanory method to, er, Jackanory, narrating Homer’s Odyssey and assorted Greek myths in the same winning style on authentic Mediterranean locations. Inspired.

How to salute the emergence of the present TV Cream website from a marathon 15-month sojourn in beta?

How to honour its fresh and forward-looking ethos?

Well, naturally we’ve given up trying to think of something new and instead have done a partial resurrection of what used to be the most popular section of the old site: the TV Themes page.

For a limited period (possibly), here for you to listen to are some of the most unlikely yet somehow winning musical offcuts that graced the pages of TV Cream a decade or so ago.

Note: Some of the following contain over-long and over-wrought extrapolations of ratings-friendly notions to the sound of a disco beat.

Take it away, Bruce!

THE GENERATION GAME
Superb full-length version of the titular theme, where in Brucie develops the “life is the name of the game” concept to somewhat sociological yet reassuringly toe-tapping proportions. With gutsy big band backing, our man cautions wisely that we “remember life’s a gamble; when choosing partners you should take a little care”.

NEIGHBOURS (SAD)
“Well, mustn’t keep the taxi waiting. I know I’ll never forget everyone. And though I’m gonna be on the other side of the world, there’ll always be a part of me that is Ramsay Street… and you will always be… my Neighbours.”

RECORD BREAKERS
A smashing extended ode to being the best, the worst and longest-immersed from a smooth-voiced Roy, backed by a groovy jazz-funk session band and boasting – at 1:04 – the highest note you’ve ever HEARD. “The whole sporting world would applaud it/The McWhirters, hmmm, they would record it!”

ALWAYS THERE
Marti Webb sailed up to number 14 in the charts with this textbook Simon May bolt-some-love-related-words-onto-the-tune slowed-down shanty, and that’s as high as it got (thanks Dale). Still, three points to Simes for having the nerve to slip in such a shameless key change at 1:04.

ARE YOU BEING SERVED, SIR?
Not the theme tune but instead a spin-off single constructed entirely on the tissue-thin premise of Mr Humphries being asked to recite (not sing) an inventory of his shopfloor habits wherein he sounds like he’s about to say words like arse and willy only for for lyrics to swerve, Pam Ayres-like, on to “comically” neutral ground. An array of dolly birds coo in the background while Captain Peacock makes a five-second cameo at the start. And we still don’t get the bit about it being “a funny day for drying – manners!”

I PLAY THE SPOONS
“I tap them here, I tap them there, with gay abandon everywhere.” Unquestionably one of the highlights of the old TV Cream themes section, here’s Clive Dunn, in character as An Old Man, offering a hymn of praise to kitchen drawer-based composition. “And then it came to me: I’ll play the cutlery!” Co-stars the same dolly birds as above.

EASTENDERS (EARLY 90s CLOSING THEME)
Doomed attempt to “freshen up” a much-loved signature tune, which was used on screen for all of six months. Pretty much everything goes wrong, from forgetting to include the tune and employing a wine bar saxophone to including a farting bass and even cocking up the iconic drum fill at the start.

DID YOU SEE?
Another stunning full-length version of an otherwise unexceptional 30-second theme, fleshed out with lots of catchy synth business and at least three brazen key changes. Who said TV criticism should be a staid and joyless pastime (other than Mark Lawson)?

THE INNES BOOK OF RECORDS
Pleasant plinky-plonky concoction from the bloke who was never in Monty Python, which raised the curtains on his 1979 BBC2 song-and-prance showcase. George Harrison seems to have popped in with a guitar lick at 1:39.

FREE GEORGE JACKSON
To end with, another chance to hear the mighty Phil Redmond-conceived, Steve Wright-penned (no, not that one) “charity single” released to promote Brookside’s 1984 miscarriage-of-justice storyline, with a chorus that’s the same as Take On Me. Reached number 126 in Record Mirror’s north-west England hit parade. Contains the line: “That diagram on the napkin has brought so much heartache.” Well, it worked for Nelson Mandela.

TOO OFTEN are the ITV stations tarred with the ‘eyes and teeth’ brush of tawdry showbiz. Here was one independent afternoon banker that was as unglamorous as the medium ever got. August 19th, 1969 saw Southern’s first colour transmissions hit the air with the orange and brown finery of the Houseparty kitchen-cum-lounge, a modernist, open-plan affair complete with Formica surfaces and Hessian wall-weave, lovingly recreated in Southampton’s studio 1. Punctuated by the occasional guest-introducing doorbell (“I wonder who that could be?”), the mumsy Ann Ladbury and the patrician former model Cherry Marshall (later joined by daughter Sylvia) led a genteel, open-ended stream of chat among half a dozen personable housewives over the Poole pottery chinaware, with the viewer as casual eavesdropper.

‘Eavesdropping’ was the key. The whole thing literally fell onto the air, with nary a title sequence or theme tune to its name, just the ladies appearing underneath the good old Southern compass ident, in mid-chat (sometimes mid-sentence) and trundled on, with the viewer neither acknowledged nor appealed to, until the close, where a few credits would flash on the screen, and the ladies would fade out, carrying on their business. It’s the sort of odd format that would generate reams of over-excited copy from media studies wonks if it surfaced today, but back then it was what it was – a quick dip in to a never-ending cavalcade of teatime banter, with absolutely nothing added.

Loose Women this was decidedly not. Half-formed rants about the news were a no-no (unless it was helpful stuff to do with “prices”), and the phrase “isn’t that right, girls?” was conspicuous by its absence. Instead, knitware, cookery and macramé were the order of the day, the raciest it ever got being when bras were tried on for size (over the twin-sets, of course). Lucy Morgan, the glamorous one, showed off the natty little numbers she’d picked out in the local jumble sale, and crafted handbags from Victorian tea cosies. Mary Morris was the redoubtable cook, often accompanied by the less able Daphne Lee or Karen Saxby in a ramshackle run-through of a recipe read off a crumpled piece of notepaper (“Is this a wartime recipe?”), which pre-dated Blue Peter‘s flour-spilling cackhandedness by a good few years.

Sadly, even this seemingly non-stop cosy camaraderie had to come to an end when Southern lost its franchise to the more socially ambitious TVS, and the final programme was appropriately emotional – no tears or anything of course, that wasn’t the Houseparty way, just a few rather touching goodbyes and one last round of tea. Well, they didn’t like to make a fuss.

MOSTLY TEDIOUS panel thing hosted by JIMMY MULVILLE, who would invite planted audience questions for four comic panellists to answer via their own stand-up acts or, in the odd isolated case, an actual natural wit. Almost all of the latter was provided by the magnificent TONY HAWKS, the resident performer in every episode who frequently showed up the rest of the panel for what they lacked and single-handedly salvaged whole episodes. Sometimes it was association with Hat-Trick rather than real observational talent that got guests on, with STEPHEN FROST in particular only able to raise a laugh when responding to the sound effects round (“Siamese twins having a wank?”). Proper comedians like FRANK SKINNER, NICK HANCOCK and JIMEOIN helped matters along though the second series was also hindered by the residency of an overly misandric JO BRAND, who seemed to include men, alcohol and cakes (“Don’t heckle me, I’ll sit on your face”) in just about everything she said. There were questions from celebrities in the audience (JILLY GOOLDEN, DAVID GOWER, NEIL KINNOCK, TONY BLACKBURN) which didn’t aid the process greatly (except when JOHN McCRIRICK made a verbal pass at Brand and she responded with real poison), and Mulville himself admitted afterwards the show didn’t work. Opening titles showed a head being cracked upon and a pinkish slime emerging to run down towards a grating in the gutter. Newsnight’s next.

THREADBARE SLAPSTICK puppet pageantry from former Gerry Anderson string pullers John Turner and Mary Read, who tired of Sir Gerald’s increasing obsession with realism and formed a splinter group dedicated to rough-hewn marionette mayhem in which the main characters’ feet maintained only the most fleeting of contact with the ground. RUPERT THE BEAR came first, then came, er, HERE COMES MUMFIE, with this medieval roustabout bringing up the rear. (We’ll take THE MUNCH BUNCH as read if you don’t mind.)

In some unspecified middle age, two races, the clubby, castle-dwelling Byegones and hairy, warlike Hasbeenes are constantly in battle over rights to an anachronistic ‘nodding donkey’ oil well, situated incongruously between the two castles. Tortuously punning character names like King Woebegone and Jest-A-Minit the court jester prevail. Machiavellian scientist Cue-Ee-Dee knocks up assorted ingenious gadgets from catapults to robot horses. And, of course, every day a three o’clock, they all sit down to tea.

All fine ITV lunchtime fare, though two points of order would arise. The oddball aesthetics of the thing, for one. While the duo’s puppet carving had never been noted for its pleasingly streamlined elegance (witness the nightmarish Raggety in RUPERT), here the ramshackle look reached perverse levels, with no two puppets seeming to belong in the same series. Color, size and proportion were all over the place, making the cast of PIPKINS look like Captain Scarlet and co by comparison.

Then there was the endless speculation over the supposed bitingly satirical nature of the series, as the nation’s further education seekers began in earnest to speculate whimsically on the hidden meaning of childish ephemera at the taxpayer’s expense. Ooh, it’s about the oil crisis! No, it’s about Northern Ireland! No, it’s about the imminent rise of the dreaded silicon chip! Or, just maybe, it might be about some silly knights lobbing polystyrene boulders at each other. All voices came courtesy of husband and wife team Charles ‘Brian Aldridge’ Collingwood and Judy ‘Shula Archer’ Bennett. As with the other two Turner-Read outings, the whole shebang was topped off with an uncommonly groovy theme song, in this instance written by Patrick Campbell-Lyons, of the original Nirvana.

LATE-NIGHT topical standup cult phenomenon for which the phrase ‘cutting edge humour’ might well have been invented. Concieved as a slightly less iffy replacement for uber-under-achieving Hey RRradio!!, the managerial masterstroke was putting together a regular team of relatively young and hip’n'happening comics – surly down-wiv-va-students (ie they’d heard of All About Eve) iconoclasts David Baddiel and Rob Newman, arch advert-hating satirists Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis, shouty hectoring Reading Festival type Mark Thomas, sarky Women’s Libber Jo Brand, and last but not least those blokes with acoustic guitars who lived to parody other blokes with acoustic guitars Skint Video – and asking them to come up with material relating to ‘issues’ affecting Radio 1′s target audience instead of just repeating their stage act only slightly less visually.

With Hithouse’s Jack To The Sound Of The Underground as its very Radio 4-unfriendly clarion call, that regular-as-clockwork format in full – Baddiel makes off-colour introductory quip; Punt & Dennis scoff at some happening in the pop or film world; Newman does pants impression of Shaw Taylor, Ronnie Corbett or Jonathan Ross and nobody else; multi-handed ‘Character Assassination’ of self-important public figure; Skint Video take the piss out of World Music fans; Jo Brand laughs at problem pages in a teenage girls’ magazine; extended thinkpiece on abstract subject (eg ‘The Pub Experience’) with both double-acts in a Nuts’n'Gum-style team-up; Mark Thomas shouts at audience for not having an opinion on something to do with South Africa; Skint Video parodying Suzanne Vega and her ilk; Baddiel and Thomas frowning exasperatedly at audience-submitted entries for ‘The Punchline Competition’; and finally Crackerjack-esque all-hands-on-deck sitcom sketch lunacy in ‘All Cosy At Home In The Family House’. Initially heard only by confused metalheads who had forgotten to turn off after Tommy Vance’s show, word soon spread and by the end of the first run it was required volume-down-low subterfugal listening to rank with John Peel.

Carried on to near-unstoppability throughout 1989 and 1990, causing no small amount of froth-mouthed calls from ‘squares’ who took offence to the content but making a much larger amount of listeners laugh to parent-waking extremes with gags about Ayatollah Khomeni, Twin Peaks, answering machines, Ken Dodd (“is innocent!”) and that logically-taxing motorbike-in-elevator Levi’s ad amongst many, many other turn-of-the-nineties cultural concerns. Rising profile of contributors led to a couple of line-up changes along the way, with Brand, Thomas and Skint Video replaced by Nick Hancock, Mark Hurst and The Tracy Brothers/Tim Firth respectively, but the core double-act setup remained, and with the arrival of Armando Iannucci as producer halfway through became even more Radio 4-scaringly unhinged, with the regular broadcast of behind-the-scenes tomfoolery and technical disasters (“it would take too long to explain, listeners…”), and audience-baiting – both in person and by telephone – positively encouraged. Clocked up a whopping forty five shows – not to mention Baddiel and Newman doing a spot of DJ-ing on Radio 1 – before TV came calling, resulting in the ultimate Sixth Form Favourite which, as anyone who was there will tell you, was never quite as good as it was on the radio. Not that it ever gets repeated to prove that, mind…

FATHER ABRAHAM-predating joust for international recognition, courtesy of one of those Once Upon A Time… Man-esque European animations that starts off as a quite fun mock-medieval romp based around non-’canon’ fellow Peyo creations Sir Johan and Peewit, off on a quest to recover a Magic Flute (of the sort that won’t be troubling old Wolfgang Amadeus’ lawyers) in some indefinable middle-ages middle-European kingdom full of scoff-related hilarity-occasioning banquets, standard-issue ‘oaf’ figures, and disconcertingly Moody Blues-like electro-folk sing-songery. Then those blue gits turn up and ruin it all.

In the brave new enterprising world of 1990s British telly, deregulation-happy ITV companies gallop dizzily down the gangplank into a Europe that’s freshly open for business, with thoughts of co-productions and syndicated pan-continental franchises dancing in their heads. At the head of the queue is, perhaps surprisingly, the formerly staid Paint Along with Nancy outlet HTV, jumping into bed with various French, Spanish and Italian channels (and, er, Yorkshire) to produce this series of half hour “magical romances” with a twist, a sort of Tales of the Unexpected plus silk sheets and saxophones.

Yep, we’re talking Eurovision drama, morsels of ‘sophisticated’ loving and losing conducted in glamorous hotel apartments, swanky Mediterranean villas and crumbling stately piles, Ferrero Rocher-style overdubbed château shenanigans that had been through so many hands by the time it reached the screen they appeared to emanate from no recogniseable country at all. And they came in two flavours: erotically charged for the Canal Plus set, and tastefully shorn of illicit trappings for the UK, handily plugging a mid-afternoon gap whenever Crosswits took a sabbatical. TREVOR EVE and ROBERT VAUGHN were involved, for their sins. CHARLEY BOORMAN was involved for the money.

Plots were of the standard afternoon matinée format, aside from a few that went decidedly off the rails, for instance ‘Tall, Dark and Handsome’, which combined the ‘lonely hearts’ format with the ‘psycho ventriloquist’ chestnut, as a deranged shortarse with a wisecracking dummy sidekick plagued handsome French women with the titular patently untrue self-description. Perhaps the most memorable thing about the whole sorry enterprise was the mad cod-operatic theme tune, in which two histrionic singers duetted the translated-by-committee lyrics: “Two eyes that flash in the night! You know the vibes are just right! Fireworks explode inside you! Your head is spinning! And your heart is violinning!” There’s a Eurovision entry that would see us romp to victory.

59 AND a half minutes too long, more like. The only saving grace of this lamentable replacement for NATIONWIDE were the opening titles, or rather the opening music, as the titles looked shit and involved a giant moving letter S that looked like a petulant snake. Everything else was a complete misfire, from po-faced DESMOND WILCOX as main presenter to badly-chosen boring features to Special Correspondents including SANDI TOKSVIG to the inevitable involvement of SARAH KENNEDY. Chased off air and slaughtered after nine months.

WE’RE NOT interested in any latterday lousy remake or stupid real-life roustabout; only the original, and superior, vintage is what matters, and so, to the sound of Ken Barrie’s vocal stylings, welcome to yet more stop-motion simperings from Olde England where one postman was responsible for sorting out an entire town’s mail plus any other disasters that happened to befall its inhabitants before breakfast. Greendale was your location, peopled by people of the likes of demented old sub-postmistress Mrs Goggins, avuncular handyman Ted “leave it with me” Glen, Nimmo-ish Reverend Timms, saucy lady doctor Sylvia Gilbertson, posh toff Major Forbes, mobile shopkeeper Sam Waldron, farmers George Lancaster and Alf Thompson, another posh toff Miss Hubbard, Granny Dryden and PC Selby. Pat was also married, with wife Sarah and son Julian. Ensuing nationwide popularity and mall-to-mall merchandising must be laid at the blarney-decked door of SIR TERENCE OF WOGAN, after he “spinned” the theme tune on his show one morning.

A fine comedy of class and ambition from the Mary Whitehouse-baiting David ‘Swizzlewick‘ Turner, set in the suburban ‘scampi belt’ of an anonymous Midlands town (in ‘Urbshire’). Well-to-do self-made owner of a chain of hairdressers’ (it says ‘coiffeur’ on his card) Arthur Bradshaw (Sydney ‘Blaustein in The Cellar and the Almond Tree‘ Tafler) dotes on his quiet, vaguely morose daughter Linda (Helen ‘Jumbo Spencer‘ Fraser) as she makes her faltering way through the highly competitive world of amateur ballroom dancing. After she finishes a novice class competition in third place (and receives a microscopic trophy for her trouble) Arthur decides to help her progress along by wooing Norman, male partner of the winning pair, into partnering her daughter in the ‘pre-champ’ section. Norman, a working class foundry worker living in council estate penury with his mother (June Brown) and sarky, technical college-bound younger brother Colin, is awestruck by the Jag-owning Arthur and his offers of much-needed financial assistance, and willingly agrees.

Arthur’s wife Betty (Brenda ‘A Touch of the Tiny Hacketts‘ Bruce) takes a while to be convinced, until Arthur reveals his grand plan of ballroom star Linda lending her name to a continental-style nightclub (“A the-danson in the early evening, followed by Steak Diane or Chicken Maryland while they’re watching the floor show [...] everything very continental and in the highest of taste.”) and she’s taken with the idea that “the Bradshaws will have the sort-of stranglehold on culture in these parts”. Linda’s reticence, however, gives rise to awkward scenes when she and Norman first meet, but an enrolment with ebullient dance tutor Vicky Rayburn (Stephanie ‘To See How Far it is‘ Bidmead) helps break the ice – too well, in fact, as when Norman confides his misgivings about the partnership to Vicky, and she gives her summation of the girl – “When they don’t have to battle for a living, all they can do is follow instructions, and wait [...] can’t you see it written on her face, ‘waiting for something’?” – the resultant ‘get to know’ session turns into a full-blown romance.

For Arthur, who’d planned on ditching Norman as soon as a more impressive partner came along, and who rather fancied Linda pairing off with the hideous but well-moneyed Piers, this is a step too far, and in breach of their working arrangement. More heinously, it is an affront to the class barrier he’s spent his career building up (“Bottom rung and top drawer won’t wash. Never have done and never will.”) Norman, meanwhile, is busy being alienated from the scheme by Colin (“Go to Ascot, why don’t you, or watch them arrive for a royal garden party. Stand behind the railings and bust yourself with laughing at ‘em [...] ‘cos it’s them what you’re imitating.”) In the final scene at the novice graduation comp, the pair heroically desert Arthur, shedding their ballroom finery and riding into the night in Norman’s motorcycle combination.

Birmingham schoolteacher David Turner comes up with a fine slice of observational, character-based comedy within what’s more or less a straightforward sitcom (or Comedy Playhouse) plot. Tafler’s Arthur is of course the standout creation – commanding a fine lower-middle-class vocabulary of fruity verbosity (“To economise on breath, mother, I think I shall wait till Linda has joined us before I divulge…”) which, though a hackneyed trope by today’s standards, was at the time a fresh and pertinent observation on the self-conscious artifice of the then still-emergent nouveau riche. (Although they are heading for trouble – Betty cuts swathes of tulle from Linda’s dress, griping “I said to Connie, a hundred yards of tulle might have been au fait two or three years ago when we never had it so good, but it’s Mr Wilson in charge now or haven’t they heard of him?”) It is the perceived gulf between the working and newly-aspirant lower middle class that gets Turner’s goat here, and while ballroom dancing per se is not mocked – Vicky Rayburn, though a nice comic turn, is smart and respectable throughout – the airs and graces that so often come along with the discipline are held up as the nefarious traits they are, personified in Arthur’s shameless social oiling, and the smarmy and eminently corruptible adjudicator he bribes, Antonio Laveline (Jeremy Hanley).

Talk of Steak Diane and boites de nuit conjures up thoughts of Abigail’s Party a good eleven years down the line, but Turner lays on a more sympathetic ear to the denizens of the aspirant classes, understanding the origins of their need to ‘get on’ while ably condemning their follies, and Arthur is never reduced to the impenetrable caricature Alison Steadman’s Beverley becomes. Turner’s work has much more in common with the plays Jack Rosenthal would turn in during the late ’70s  – finely-wrought natural dialogue combined with a compassionate grasp of character and community. Sadly his was a wayward talent, and alcoholism, a need to take piece work (writing for The Archers and various adapted serials) and an ill-advised trek into what he described as ‘Jonsonian’ comedy with the briefly notorious but not very good Swizzlewick meant very few of his original plays were seen on television after this. Carl Davis scored the music for this production.

By Robert Muller. Sandor Eles and Rosalie Crutchley play a Russian man and his mother, charged with carrying out the execution of Trotsky.

By Shena Mackay. Four-and-a-half-foot petty thief Ian Trigger faces social prejudice and an uneasy romance on the run with girlfriend Anneke Willis.

John Finch’s adaptation of Huxley’s post-nuclear story of an impoverished, devil-worshipping land.

Hugh Leonard’s dialogue-free sequel to Silent Song, with Gerry Sullivan as a wet-behind-the-ears country priest contending with the earthier side of Dublin folk.

By Hugo Charteris. Derek Francis is an unscrupulous housemaster in a public school teeming with abuse and covert homosexuality.

By Patrick White. Hazel Hughes’ excessively charitable lifestyle brings her few friends.

At a sumptuous New Year’s Eve costume ball, a torrid relationship blossoms between Patrick Allen and Katherine Blake (the play’s co-writer Ursula Gray under a stage name). Written with Brigid Brophy.

Comic study by Brian Wright of the beleaguered relationship between redundant machinist George Baker and mysterious young girl Eileen Atkins.

John Betjeman tackles the intrigue and double-crossing prevalent in the world of the ecclesiastical heritage lobby. With Henry McGee, first shown as part of BBC2′s Londoners series.

The first in a trilogy of wry courtroom satires from Jimmy O’Connor’s wife and former barrister Nemone Lethbridge, who’d represented the Kray brothers among other cases.

Jack Woolgar is the ramshackle, tragicomic custodian of a municipal car park. An experiment with semi-silent comedy techniques from Paul Ableman, that received unfavourable notices on transmission.

The fortunes of two Irish immigrant labourers in the tiny community centred around London’s Paddington station. Sean Caffrey and Ray Mort star, Patrick Galvin writes.

Lyrical study by James Hanley of the lives of elderly Nora Nicholson, vicar Marius Goring and other rural community members, including Kenneth Griffith.

By Hugh Whitemore. The governors of a public school find events taking a turn for the strange as they find themselves trapped for a night in the school’s memorial room. Among them are John Le Mesurier and Michael Bates.

By Ernie Gebler. Irish girl Fionnuala Flanagan arrives in London and shacks up with northern bohemian artist Alan Dobie.

A lower-middle-class terraced house in a northern town, elderly Mrs Everton (Susan ‘Angels Are So Few’ Richard) receives a routine visit from her daughter Beth (Alethea ‘The Bankrupt’ Charlton). But amongst the tea and pleasantries, something is amiss – Mrs E is looking shifty, worried, frightened. She won’t tell Beth what it is, though it must have something to do with Sammy, one of her two cats, having recently been run over. Suddenly, she says she must ‘go somewhere’, and Beth reluctantly minds the flat (and remaining cat) while she goes on her mysterious errand. Her destination turns out to be the police station, where Sergeant Carter (Stanley ‘Macready’s Gala’ Meadows) hears her tale of intimidation at the hands of two local youths – they threatened to kill her cats and have been taking a pound a week of her as ‘protection’ ever since. Carter visits the boy’s home, where mum Mrs Jones proves as difficult to talk to as the accused brothers Peter and Lawrence (Jack Wild and his real life brother Arthur). Peter, the youngest, is petrified, clinging to the taciturn, mouthy Lawrence for help. Mrs J threatens them with violence, they squabble amongst themselves, Lawrence claims he needed the money for a holiday for Peter, and Carter gets nowhere. After he leaves, a telling teatime standoff occurs between Mrs J and Lawrence – she is clearly afraid of her son, over whom she has no control. The best she can do is threaten him with their still-absent dad.

At Mrs Everton’s, the whole story comes out, and Beth and her husband (David ‘The Gorge’ Webb) try to talk through things calmly, but the prospect of a court case and local headlines lead Beth to round angrily on her mother, accusing her of ‘pushing away’ her and her siblings, then pathetically calling for help in her lonely dotage. At the Jones’, Mr J arrives home and a similar row ensues with his wife, he accusing her of spinelessness in the face of Lawrence’s posturing, she of fatherly neglect. Beth and Frank return home and, after sending their young son (on whom Beth, we learn, dotes to an extreme degree) off to sleep with nursery rhymes, they reflect on events more calmly. Beth agrees to make up with he mum the next day, though something she said – that the malevolent youths could well have included her children – sticks in her mind.

At the Jones’, Lawrence sends Peter to sleep with a story of his own devising, about the two brothers escaping to a foreign shore. Mrs Everton prays tearfully, alone, before turning in for the night. It’s not only the police involvement that gives this play a similarity to writer John Hopkins’ work on Z-Cars – the two domestic milieux – lower-middle and working class – could have come from Newtown itself. But 75 minutes allows more light and shade to be cast then in an episode of that series, and the subtleties of the dilemma and the characters’ takes on in are well sketched. Mrs Everton, in particular, starts off scared, becomes defiant, then instantly regrets her decision to tell the police, and finally all but breaks down after her daughter’s barrage of insults. The point that the two brothers are, or feel themselves to be, alone together in their unloving family is deftly made, as are the various sides of the debate on the limits and scope of juvenile punishment.

One device that moves the play away from police procedural styles into more typically Wednesday Play fare is the use of interstitial location footage of children of increasing ages playing increasingly less innocent games – they begin playing cowboys and Indians, watch a young girl parody a stripper, then lurk in the bushes to watch a couple snogging, and finally some teenagers set fire to an abandoned car. The point made here is obvious, and possibly slightly overdone, but the scenes, like the rest of the play, are well-staged by the reliable Christopher Morahan.

The uneasy relationship between elderly couple Thora Hird and Ron Moody and a cheerful stranger who moves in with them (Ronald Lacey). Written by Richard Harris (not the actor, but the future creator of Man in a Suitcase).

Frank O’Connor and Hugh Leonard’s dialogue-free study of the antics and hardships of two Trappist monks (Milo O’Shea and Jack MacGowran) in an Irish monastery. Leonard wrote the script for this piece with full dialogue, with instructions for the actors to merely mime the essence of what was being (un)said. A second dumb-show, The Retreat, concerning an innocent young priest newly arrived in Dublin, was written at the same time and screened later in the year.

An Edwardian teenager travels to Prussia to study German. Lodging at the house of Warren Mitchell, he becomes infatuated with his two daughters Isobel Black and Deborah Watling. Script by Vernon Bartlett and sometime TV critic Philip Purser.

Baroque goings-on at Graham Crowden’s exclusive organisation dedicated to the facilitation of illicit pleasures, exposed by ace reporter Jim Norton. Script by Brian Finch.

By series producer Peter Luke, with William Sansom. An uneasy love triangle develops between Norman Rodway, a pianist in a slightly shabby drinking club, Valerie Gearon, and Barrie Ingham, a rather wet and spineless individual who clings to Gearon for moral support.

Wednesday Play series producer James MacTaggart was succeeded by Peter Luke at this point in the series, leading the overall tone of the series to perhaps waver more to the theatrical from MacTaggart’s more contemporary, social-realist domain, though the former directed this well-received black comic study of police inspector Nigel Davenport having his judgment called into question when he reveals his experiences of psychic “visions”. Based in part on the real life case of corrupt Metropolitan Police Detective Sergeant Harold Challenor, which also inspired the character of inspector Truscott in Joe Orton’s stage farce Loot, produced theatrically in the same year. Writer Clive Exton’s baroque tyle demanded (as he insisted) a sober, simplistic direction, which was achieved here, though not before a few false starts involving some over-elaborate production design, which Exton and MacTaggart agreed to scrap during production. Sadly Exton’s sole Play for Today, The Rainbirds, fared rather less well. Support came from Michael Robbins and John Barron.

BARRY CRYER (with black hair!) fronted this spontaneous (in the same way that HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU is spontaneous) gagfest from the smudgy-coloured early seventies, devised by regular participant RAY CAMERON. The two teams of top comedians were captained initially by LES DAWSON and TED RAY, then “BIG-HEARTED” ARTHUR ASKEY and, erm, ROLF HARRIS. Simple format – a PLAY YOUR CARDS RIGHT-sized card would emerge somehow from Cryer’s desk. On said card would be a topic for a joke – holidays, mothers-in-law etc – on which the panellists would humorously hold forth, or just flannel until they remembered the joke they’d worked out beforehand. Average stuff, except for the fact it was the only place you’d ever see the worlds-in-collision line-up NORMAN COLLIER, JOHN CLEESE (not looking embarrassed at all) and Askey working together. A “women’s lib” boys-v-girls special was also on the, er, cards, with DIANA DORS captaining the ladies’ team. “Quick-witted chairman Barry Cryer deals the subjects off the top of the pack for a stop-me-if-you-have-heard-this-one joke-telling session between two teams of lively jokers under their resident captains, Ted Ray and Les Dawson. The rules – if you can call them that – are as follows: place seasoned wits in a studio with a smattering of funny stories, offer a card to the comedian and let him tell the joke. Then let the others interrupt and finish the joke for the who picked the card…”

FRENCH-DERIVED CARTOON about a bunch of greedy, untidy, irritable geese the Zwas who – hey! – exhibit the worst of our human foibles and in effect tell us a lot about ourselves. They do an activity each episode and inevitably fuck things up. Then it’s left to Wattoo Wattoo who’s been watching like some kind of smug social worker all this time to call down his friends from space, who clear it all up. Greenpeace morals, fuzzy animation and one notoriously uncensored sex education episode broadcast, in full gory detail (hot zwa action and all) at ten in the morning.

1970

BBC – Perhaps still the quintessential telly World Cup, the BBC’s coverage was spearheaded by presenter/commentator DAVID COLEMAN out in Mexico, and FRANK BOUGH and DAVID VINE back in London. Commentator KENNETH WOLSTENHOLME almost took out an injunction when the BBC threatened to demote him in favour of Coleman if England reached the final. Meanwhile Dave got a bit angry out in Mexico when rehearsals went awry and fantastically his ensuing rant was bootlegged for all eternity. “You’ve got a bloody zoom there, and a camera that’s racing all over the bloody studio! I mean, Jesus Christ almighty!” Fantastically demented set, with two tiers of pundits on Blofeld-style swivel chairs containing the likes of BRIAN CLOUGH, DON REVIE, BOB WILSON and IAN ST JOHN, who brilliantly lost a Sportsnight competition to commentate on the finals to Welshman IDWAL ROBLING. Jauntily Latin theme tune with maracas and stuff.

ITV – They’re still going on about how they “invented” the panel, but what the hell were Clough and co doing on the Beeb? For all that, still their finest moment, fronted by BRIAN MOORE and JIMMY HILL, and yes, The Bumper Boys Book Of Football Retro Humour instructs us to mention Jim’s cravat at this point. Not forgetting the pundits, then – PAT CRERAND, MALCOLM ALLISON, BOB McNAB and DEREK DOUGAN arguing furiously and jabbing their fingers over the merits of Jairzinho, and smoking cigars on camera. The quartet wore shirts (they had big collars and stuff – ha ha!) during one programme as later seen on Police Five. Doing the commentary business in Mexico were the majestic HUGH JOHNS, GERALD SINSTADT, GERRY HARRISON and best of all, ROGER “Wowee!” MALONE of HTV West fame. Join them on opening day. Jauntily Latin theme tune with maracas and stuff.

1974

BBC - The Chin had made the switch to Shepherd’s Bush by now, and helped compere the coverage from Germany with the man Bough. The swivel chairs were still there, this time containing the likes of JOE MERCER, LAWRIE “Barbican” McMENEMY and FRANK “Frank?” McLINTOCK. Out in the field were Coleman, BARRY DAVIES and a tyro JOHN MOTSON getting overexcited over Brazil vs Zaire. “Well, what did he do that for?” Weird signature tune, all thrumming basslines and guitarwork, which sounded like it could have been the theme to Ironside or something.

ITV – “Pack those beers into the fridge. Get that TV picture perfect. Draw the curtains.” Sound advice from Cloughie in the TV Times, as ITV’s coverage kicked off. Same formula as 1970 – Brian in the chair, JACK CHARLTON, Dougan, Crerand and co talk shite behind a big desk. “The early evening shows lend themselves to casual open-necked gear, the later show looks better if we wear suits,” averred Mooro in TVT. Innovations include a Phone-In to the panel – and Brian looking pissed off when anyone called in to slag off him and the team – and ITV’s obsession with Fun Spot™, basically clips of players doing funny stuff rolled backwards and forwards in time with comedy music. Oh, and ridiculously detailed schedules in TV Times (4.58 Captains toss up). Rowdy parpy signature tune, which sounded like it could be the theme to Bless This House or something.

1978

BBC - Bough and Hill still in charge in London, Coleman, Motson, Davies and Weeks out braving the tickertape of Argentina. Innovations include an early evening show “with younger viewers especially in mind”, where Wilson and TREVOR BROOKING sat on a settee in shirts and cords and did coaching tips and phone-in requests and stuff. ANDREW LLOYD-WEBBER did the ring-dingy theme tune, Argentine Melody, and dropped in for a chat with Frank at one point, handily to plug the newly-opened Evita, which of course provided the music for several thousand musical montages. Big blue set, with massive cardboard Subbuteo-style tournament scoreboard for Frank to stand in front of, with McMenemy, DENIS LAW and JOHN BOND doing the punditry.

ITV – Brian Moore remained in the hotseat for the build-up to and coverage of the big one, and was assisted in ITV’s beige and green studio by the likes of KEVIN KEEGAN and a proto-ANDY GRAY, years before Monday Night Football was but a gleam in Vic Wakeling’s eye. JOHAN CRUYFF dropped in when he could, prompting Clough to ask Mooro if he could sit next to him for the punditry. Everyone in massive, technicolor static-emitting suits. Hopeless theme tune compared to the Beeb’s – in what way does a brass band sum up the magnificent Latin passion of Argentina, ITV? And of course, multiple inquests into Scotland’s hilarious hyperbole and subsequent capitulation. “We, in the media didn’t help there,” sighed Mooro. You said it, Brian.

1982

BBC – Coleman comes into the studio from the commentary box to replace Bough, after his ‘breakdown’ at the Moscow Olympics, but the Chin is still there, thrusting away. And so is Lloyd Webber, this time promoting Cats thanks to the World Cup Grandstand theme as nicked from the feline musical, backing solarised images of footballers and flags in the titles. Massive scoreboard in the set again, along with McMenemy and Charlton B, and a tyro GARTH CROOKS, no doubt irritating the hell out of everyone and thus setting the tone for the next 20 years. Commentators include ALAN PARRY for his first and only BBC World Cup, and a fledgling DESMOND LYNAM, actually out in the field and commentating on first-round Cameroon group games. Oh, and Coleman got to announce the Argentinian surrender in the Falklands live during one of the programmes.

ITV – Yeah, Mooro again, sitting in a rather pleasing wicker set this time, though, with maps of Spain on the walls, and a replica World Cup in the studio. Pundits included MICK CHANNON, RON ATKINSON and the debut pairing of the ever-chortling SAINT and GREAVSIE. Hugh Johns had packed in the top job for the delights of crown green bowls and Welsh football, so senior commentator for the first and only time was MARTIN TYLER, who introduced to some of his colleagues in the TV Times thus: “Nick Owen will be looking for any Spanish paper which might carry the county cricket scores, while Jim Rosenthal and Elton Welsby, both stylish dressers, might find time to assess the latest trends in Spanish fashion.” Er, quite. And the theme music was Matador, courtesy of Jeff Wayne, of all people.

1986

BBC - Dawn of a new epoch at the Beeb, with Coleman shifting over to track and field and Bough doing breakfast, the man LYNAM takes charge. Mad demented theme tune, Aztec Lightning by Heads, whoever they were. Late night kick-offs ensure the return of that early evening roundup for the kids, this time with Bob Wilson and EMLYN HUGHES sat in massive white swivel chairs in a green set surrounded by pot plants. Minor controversy ensues when Emlyn slags off Bobby Robson, who slags off Emlyn back. “Comments there directed… at you Emlyn.” Team also includes the first sightings of the ever-intense MARTIN O’NEILL, hired after first-choice Norn Iron spokesperson George Best never turns up, and that bloke Gray again. All the pundits and commentators had to make pre-tournament predictions, with little pictures of their heads next to flags around a cardboard map of Mexico, which Bob would remove as their choices were eliminated. Tony Gubba USSR?

ITV – Best ever ITV World Cup theme tune by a country mile, the majestic Aztec Gold by Silsoe, whoever they were. Last outing for Mooro in the studio, although he flies out to commentate on the final, leaving bloody Saint in the presenter’s chair. Martin Tyler does the rest of the big games, including England v Argentina – “Goa… no!” The dope. S&G provide some the network’s least inspired ideas, like having JIM DAVIDSON and BOBBY DAVRO on as guests, although in retrospect they were marginally less worse than Lee Hurst’s appearances during Euro 96. And prior to that England quarter-final, ITV thought it would be a good idea for Jimmy to interrupt the credits of the preceding Winner Takes All and bellow “Hi, Greavsie here, watch the big match next on ITV!” It’s a miracle how he never went back on the drink. The other pundits include Clough again (“Even educated bees do it!”), Keggy and Channon. Wasn’t it amusing how he could never say Lineker? Set looked like a cross between the LWT directors gallery and the Eyecatchers office off of Me And My Girl, which in retrospect it possibly might have been.

1990

BBC – “You’ll be humming it tomorrow – by July 8th you’ll know the words.” Yeah, Italia 90, Nessun Dorma, opera house titles with dancers “representing” the World Cup, “Cue Luciano”, it was all here. Massive set with massive photographs of old players, a desk and a big sofa for Des, Bob, Jim, TERRY VENABLES, KENNY DALGLISH and RAY WILKINS to chat. The cult of statistician Our Man Albert starts here. Twenty years on, tournament now bathed in the light emitted by the golden era of Lynam, but everyone forgets how he flew out to present England v Cameroon live from the ground and opened the programme by forgetting his words and generally floundering like a goldfish on Tom and Jerry’s living room carpet. Redeemed himself with ‘trademark dry presentation’ of Goal Of The Tournament. “Phone 0898 11 11 90 and if a lady called Mandy answers… you’ve got the wrong number.” And congratulations to winner Mr J Green of Leicester, as randomly selected by Butch (Wilkins, not the dog off Tom and Jerry) and an unconvincing lottery style graphic.

ITV – Man alive, it’s difficult to know where to start. Mooro relegated to commentary booth, so ITV elect for the double-headed presentation hydra that was ELTON WELSBY in Italy in a variety of shiny jackets with rolled up sleeves, and NICK OWEN in London in a nasty ‘Colisseum’-style set with pillars and stuff. Rubbish theme tune, Tutti Al Mondo by Argent and Van Hooke, all drum machines and opera samples. Nicely-done-but-gimmicky CGI titles with balls flying through space and being headed by an animated Venus De Milo, that sort of thing. S&G still present, Jim clad in a variety of ‘humorous’ T-shirts bearing slogans so bad the Daily Star wouldn’t have given them house room (“Kaiser Franz has not got a Herr out of place”, “Unleash the Bull!”). Rest of punditry team no better – future Soccer Saturday overlord RODNEY MARSH shipped up a few times and drawled a few cliches, while Emlyn had defected from Question Of Sport to Sporting Triangles, so he was in. Hopeless Wembley-based Purves-led sponsorship campaign for National Power, who were powering the television set we were watching right than. Oh, and commentators included the inimitable JOHN HELM. (“Dearie, dearie me…”)

1994

BBC – It says everything about ITV’s coverage of USA 94 that the BBC managed to thrash them from start to finish, despite Des not really bothering due to Wimbledon, leaving Bob Bloody Wilson in charge most nights. (It also says everything about ITV’s coverage of USA 94 that they headhunted Bob Bloody Wilson straight after the tournament.) Theme music was of course America off of West Side Story, as premiered in BBC2′s Goal TV theme night trailers, with Des and Hill in cowboy hats. High spots include Motty going ape when one of the goals collapses during Mexico v Bulgaria (“That’s one of the BBC’s mini cameras holding the goal up!”) and regular appearances of BADDIEL and SKINNER, in full Alexi Lalas get-up at one point. (Baddiel on Germany’s exit: “Only the whole world’s going yabba-dabba-doo!”). They even got to join in with the proper punditry after Argentina v Bulgaria because it was half past two in the morning and nobody was watching. New breed of pundits include sainted duo of LINEKER and HANSEN in a variety of inadvisable linen collarless suits. Oh, and co-commentators included former England international JOHN FASHANU repeatedly referring to Nigeria as “we” and annoying eeeeeeeeverybody.

ITV – If you don’t want to know the result, look away now. In fact, just look away now. Perhaps the most inept presentation of a sporting event by a British television network ever. Compered by the tanned grinning poltroon MATTHEW LORENZO, in a bunker in Dallas and brought to us, in association with Panasonic and a bunch of annoying facepainted kids, in realistic NTSC-o-Vision. No S&G, but ITV’s charmless pundit line-up nevertheless includes DON HOWE and DENIS LAW (Mooro – “What will the Spanish coach be saying at half-time” Law – “I don’t know, I can’t speak Spanish”). Nasty AOR theme tune, Gloryland by Daryl Hall and Sounds Of Blackness. Oh, and not forgetting regular appearances from behatted karaoke rap goon DR GEEK, whose efforts inspired Howe to perform his own World Cup Rap on primetime television. Those who saw it, will never recover. And they never asked him back.

OH LOOK, Compo tries to catch a glimpse of Nora Batty’s night attire and then ends up in a bath on wheels careering down a hill. To the casual viewer, LOTSW seemed to take place half a mile down the road from the similarily libidinous fuelled antics of Arkwright in Open All Hours. Indeed both series began transmission in the same year and both sprang forth from the pen of ROY CLARKE. To most, it’s been one long, unchanging thirty seven year Sunday night monolith of placid Pennines, plaintive harmonicas, wrinkled stockings and gravity-driven porcelain. But familiarity has bred not only (in a few cases) contempt, but a gross simplification of the four very distinct ages of Summer Wine.

1) WAITING FOR FOGGO (1973-5)

Building on the moderately successful Comedy Playhouse pilot The Last of the Summer Wine, which did reasonable business despite being buried in the unforgiving wilderness of early January, the first two series paired Norman Clegg (PETER SALLIS) and Compo Simmonite (BILL OWEN) with MICHAEL BATES’ austere, authoritarian Blamire, for a series of bucolic, rambling ‘second childhood’ picaresques, in which the trio would hang about in and out of Holmfirth much as proper teenagers would have done if there’d been any, reminiscing, arguing, and generally mucking about. Even by Clarke’s slow burning standards, this was gentle comedy indeed, with few belly laughs to be had, or even outright gags: if your stomach makes involuntary spasms at the sound of the words “bittersweet character comedy”, look away now. But for all that, this early incarnation was pleasant enough, and it’s still worth catching when it scuds idly by on the cable channels, not least for the surprise “I don’t remember it being this political!” moments when staunch Tory Blamire locks ideological horns with a very bolshy socialist Compo in deserted churchyards, with Clegg, as ever, caught uneasily between the two.

2) A DRINK NOW TO MELLOW DAYS (1976-85)

Faltering health saw Bates out and BRIAN WILDE’s bluff ex-serviceman Foggy Dewhurst in, initially giving a softer edge to the three-way al fresco bickering under the aegis of comedy supremo Sydney Lotterby. The supporting cast of locals was built up, augmenting the already long-serving trio of cafe owner Sid (JOHN COMER), curtain-twitching Ivy (JANE FREEMAN) and the inevitable gargoyle on the front steps that was Nora Batty (KATHY STAFF). But still, it was mainly about your three rambling duffers, traversing hill and dale in an already set-in-stone format. Changes, however, were afoot. For the 1981 Christmas special, two things happened: the theme tune gained lyrics (which didn’t catch on), and a new producer in the form of populist Hitch-Hiker’s fan hate figure Alan JW Bell (who did). Bell upped the comedy clowning ante, eliding Owen’s already noted ability to fall off a dry stone wall in a hundred different positions with Foggy’s idle dreams of restaging the D-Day landings once a week. Increasingly outlandish Compo-carrying contraptions were manufactured from waste materials, among which, it must be said, tin baths did feature once or maybe twice. But viewers were still mainly there for the to-and-fro bickering, now got down to a fine art by Clarke, even if it was already getting a tad formulaic. (The ‘sounds like a gag but it isn’t’ repetitive whimsical construction, e.g. “I’m quite partial myself to an Eccles cake. It sets you up for the day, does an Eccles cake” was guaranteed to crop up around once every ten minutes.) The slapstick did one important thing – it got the kids watching, and thus the whole family. Perhaps most importantly, a move from midweek to Sunday nights helped cement that homely, mellow quality. (Or exacerbate that hatefully drab, purgatorial, it’s-either-this-or-draw-a-diagram-of-a-pigging-glacier-for-tomorrow irritation, depending on your age.) Compo and Nora turned up in character on every BBC show going, from Pebble Mill to Crackerjack to It’s a Knockout to that sure sign a sitcom has arrived, the 1984 Royal Variety Performance. A brand was slowly, quietly forged in the Holmfirth hills. It was all – literally – downhill from here.

3) THREE BLOKES IN A BATH (1986-90)

Wilde, by many accounts never the most joyous of actors to work with, ups sticks and leaves in a huff soon after his name slips down the running order in the Radio Times. The Holy Trinity is rent asunder. It seems all is lost. Then Bell has the bright idea of simply bunging in MICHAEL ALDRIDGE as Seymour Utterthwaite, basically a Foggy clone with inventing rather than military planning as his shtick, and everything carries on as usual. Then Wilde comes back, and everything carries on as if everything hadn’t previously been carrying on as usual. Owen gets too old to do stunts himself. The repertory cast is expanded with the addition of THORA HIRD’s respectable gossip Evie and perennially outed rural canoodlers Howard and Marina, the latter of whom seems to have once had a thing for Cleggy. (“Eee, Norman Clegg, tha’ was!”) First of the Summer Wine, featuring the youthful escapades of the gang, and thus surely missing the point of the original series in the first place, comes and goes to little interest, but the brand rolls on undaunted. It becomes clear to all that only a nuclear war will put an end to the franchise, and every other comedy starts to take the piss out of it as a matter of course.

4) IS THAT STILL ON? (1991-2010)

Time, inevitably, starts to catch up with the programme. Wilde checks out in 1997, to be replaced by FRANK THORNTON’s Truly Truelove. The casting of the locals heads down progressively more familiar paths, with the likes of STEPHEN LEWIS, ELI WOODS and JIM BOWEN drafted in. Come the new millennium, the unthinkable happens, and Owen finally snuffs it. Much talk wafts round the media of how the show can’t possibly go on. To nobody’s surprise at all, the show goes on, with a brief bit of continuity provided by Owen’s son Tom as Compo’s son, er, Tom. By now the series has reached the same shapeless years of perambulating dotage as its protagonists, drifting from Sunday to Sunday without care or purpose, picking up stray retired comic actors en route. Look, there’s BURT KWOUK! Here comes BRIAN MURPHY! Isn’t that NORMAN WISDOM? My God, it’s DORA BRYAN! CANNON AND BALL, as I live and breathe! And so indestructibly on, until the Beeb finally decide to pull the plug for, seemingly, no greater reason than that RUSS ABBOTT’s joined it, thus depriving us of seeing Ardal O’Hanlon, Lee Mack and Peter Serafinowicz in 2030 going downhill on a rusty old iPad or something. Feelings as to its ultimate passing can, we think, best be described as ‘mixed’.

SIMILING SITCOM beloved of Radio Times, and Only Good Thing in the career of Richard Curtis. For four series Blackadder (ROWAN ATKINSON) plus enduring cohorts Baldrick (TONY ROBINSON) and the other ones (usually played by a combination of TIM MCINNERY, STEPHEN FRY and HUGH LAURIE) brought “alternative” comedy to the mainstream. Words such as “wibble” and “Bob” were designated as funny and viewers were introduced to a legion of unseen but appositely named characters who happened to live in pertinently monikered houses, situated in relevantly titled streets based in aptly appelated towns (i.e. Thicky McThick of Thicky Manor Thickstreet, Thickton). The programme was just good enough to transcend the annoying fact that people who shouldn’t like it, did; but by its fourth series, BLACKADDER was looking a little tired with a recycling of plotlines and characters that made yet another sodding Dwayne Dibbly cameo in an episode of RED DWARF seem like a breath of fresh air by comparison. Famously the final episode concluded with everyone bar Stephen Fry getting blasted to smithereens while running across a BBC studio, but running very slowly to ensure they didn’t trip over a trailing camera cable.