httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX1CuOHIRAQ
IT’S BOXING DAY, the batteries on your Mini Munchman are exhausted and you’ve read the Shiver and Shake annual from cover to cover. There’s nothing for it but to stake a place on the settee, commandeer the Meltis Newberry Fruits and watch the box. So what’s on tonight…?
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ORIGINALLY HOSTED by television’s most ill-at-ease presenter (EAMONN ANDREWS), THIS IS YOUR LIFE was a behemoth of a television programme, an institution that spanned decades, crossed channels, yet still was never able to surmount that “I’ll just flick over at the beginning to see if it’s anyone interesting” lack of engagement by the watching populace. Each edition would invariably start with that wonderful fanfare, disingenuously called “Gala Performance” (but quite obviously written so that the viewer could accompany that four note opening salvo with a musical rendition of the show’s title). After that, the camera would pan across to Andrews awkwardly hanging around outside a stage door, or just off set, preparing to present his menacing frame in front of one of light entertainment’s leading figures. From thereon Eamonn (and later MICHAEL ASPEL) would recount a highly tweaked version of said celebrities life to date, usually featuring some old school years battleaxe-with-a-heart-of-gold, plus a pre-recorded message from the celeb’s local boozer, in which friends and family not sufficiently interesting to be allowed through the studio door would indulge in a choreographed mass “cheers!” Each episode could also be relied upon to feature a genuinely interesting celebrity guest who we never got to hear from thanks to the fact they were already positioned on the opposing sofa when that week’s subject was corralled onto the stage. Never much more than a super-charged THROUGH THE KEYHOLE, crossed with a dash of SURPRISE, SURPRISE, THIS IS YOUR LIFE nonetheless provided ageing celebs with a platform for the type of hoary old anecdotage previously confined to the AGM of the Grand Order of Water Rats, and for that we should be grateful.
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SALUTARY LESSON IN how to piss away the goodwill of an entire nation of kids. First came sedate desks ‘n’ buzzers 60s incarnation with a few muted sketches and the Crackerjack Pencils as prizes (you couldn’t just write in and ask for one, y’know, you had to EARN it!). The sainted EAMONN ANDREWS, PIP HINTON and LESLIE CROWTHER kept things ticking over with the right modicum of underwhelmed enthusiasm. Then came, however, invasion of music hall slapstick courtesy of troupe comprising PETER GLAZE, DON MACLEAN, JAN HUNT, LEIGH MILES, GILLIAN COMBER, BERNIE CLIFTON and hosts MICHAEL ASPEL and/or ED ‘STEWPOT’ STEWART. Stretched credibility – and viewers’ ear drums – to limit whenever gang decided, “spontaneously”, to break out of some sketch or other to reprise contemporary popular song of dizzying unsuitedness, such as Bowie’s ‘Golden Years’ or ‘Something for the Girl with Everything’, originally by Sparks, now by MacLean as he assaulted Glaze with an old boot. Programme as a whole still tolerable, though, until the 80s hoved into view and format was tweaked again to bring us – oh dear God – camp commandant STU FRANCIS. Cue gunge, shouting, irritating meaningless catchphrases (“Ooh, I could crush a grape/rip a tissue/pummel a peach”), The Fucking Krankies, The Great Soprendo (admittedly the one decent bit in it: “See this glass of milk? You see it? Right, you see it? Now it has gone, yes!”), Chas’n'Dave theme (“Lumberjack? No! Steeplejack? No! Uncle Jack? No!”) and dolly bird “assistants” who fed shit jokes to Stu for shit one-liners no kid could possibly understand/find funny (gags about Charles Aznavour for fuck’s sake). They even dropped Double Or Drop. Whole wretched noisy mess mercifully axed by Michael Grade.
Read MoreBIG DEAL at the time. EAMONN ANDREWS fronts a whizzy satellite-based quizzer, pitting contestants from Britain, and on big screens, from Australia (contestant always sat in front of a big picture of Goonhilly Downs) and America.
Read MoreTHE TYPE of prissy early TV parlour game in which the host was referred to as “Chairman”. This remorseless conveyor belt of a series consisted of the most simple premise: a panel of celebrities (or grumpy bastards) would be challenged to guess the occupation of a never ending stream of members of the public. Why the programme wasn’t called “What’s My Job?” is, frankly, baffling. Even “In What Line Of Work Am I Currently Employed?” would have sufficed, albeit it’s probably a bit of a mouthful. The early years of the series made an unwilling star out of sexually confused angry old man GILBERT HARDING, but wife of BERNARD BRADEN, BARBARA KELLY also struck a TV first by accomplishing the astonishing feat of becoming famous enough to appear on the panel, simply by appearing on the panel (the principle underpinning this extraordinary act of self-perpetuating feedback would later form the theoretical basis underpinning the title sequence to DOCTOR WHO, as well as provide a basis for the career of future PUNCHLINES “celebrity” guest ROSE-MARIE). WHAT’S MY LINE? proved to be extraordinary popular during its early years, and after its demise in 1963 it was only a matter of time before it made some form of return. That it did, first under the mantle of DAVID JACOBS, then in the shape of six long series for Thames Television in the late 80s. Unbelievably after original host EAMONN ANDREWS popped his clogs in 1987, Thames found an even more cantankerous presenter in the shape of first PENELOPE KEITH, then ANGELA RIPPON to take over. Since then, a Meridian helmed mid-Nineties comeback with EMMA FORBES in the role of “Chairman” has provided a muted postscript to one of television’s grumpiest game shows.
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ITV’S ANSWER to GRANDSTAND, of course. First in the presenter’s chair was EAMONN ANDREWS, introducing a line-up that ran something like this -
PETER LORENZO of the “Sun”analyses the latest football news and sums up the day’s outstanding games.
JOHN RICKMAN gives informed selections of the day’s televised races.
IAN WOOLDRIDGE of the “Daily Mail” reports from South Africa on the M.M.C. tour.
FREDDIE TRUEMAN voices a down-to-earth opinion on controversial issues in sport.
JIMMY HILL takes a fresh look at soccer’s problems.
POOLS SERVICE: an exclusive feature on the Treble Chance and the immediate news of the day’s probable dividends.
RESULTS ROUND-UP: the full classified scores, Rugby League and late racing results, League tables and sports headlines
Then in ’66, one “Richard Davies” took over – better known as moustachioed silver-streak DICKIE DAVIES, and billed as such from about ’72 onwards. FRED DINENAGE was a co-anchor for a while. In its late ’70s pomp, the running order went:
12.35 On the Ball
13.00 International Sports Special: some crap novelty thing from the US, such as cliff diving or truck racing; once they actually had the World Bus-Jump Classic: someone jumping a bus over 100 motorbikes. Didn’t work.
13.20 (after the news) The ITV Six (later Seven) – a seven horse-race accumulator beloved of Ladbrokes-frequenting uncles in front rooms up and down the land.
15.10 Another ISS
15.50 Half-time round-up
16.00 Wrestling – proper old-school Daddy/Haystacks/Mad Mick McManus/Cyanide Sid Cooper wrestling, mind.
16.50 Results service (always got the football results in late).
Some of our favourite WOS commentators – Brian “Retired” Moore and Gerald “crackly voice” Sinstadt (football), Kent Walton (wrestling, of course) and Reg Gutteridge (boxing).
You might also want to see... ANDREWS, Eamonn.
FUNNY HOW EAMONN WAS A FAMILIAR FACE on British television for some 30 years or so, yet he didn’t seem to leave much of a legacy – most people seem to have more or less forgotten he even existed. But he started off on Irish radio in the 1940s, when he wrote to them at the age of 19 to ask them if he could be a boxing commentator. They said yes and he became a star in Ireland before moving over to the Beeb in the 1950s. There he was given WHAT’S MY LINE and then THIS IS YOUR LIFE to front – famously being the subject of the first ever ‘Life. Both were massive at the time (once Bob Monkhouse appeared on What’s My Line with an eyepatch, and the papers went nuts, for some reason). He also did CRACKERJACK, of course, and always seemed pissed off with the kids – and all this while running RTE. Both of his peak-time shows were axed in the early 60s, and a pissed-off Eamonn went to ITV, where they invented WORLD OF SPORT for him, as well as a late night chat show which, by all accounts, he was crap at; Eamonn started his interview with Muhammad Ali by talking about why he’d changed his name from Cassius Clay, and then referred to him as “Cassius” all the way through.
In 1969 ITV revived This is Your Life. Roy Bottomley seriously wanted to call the new series This Is Your Colourful Life to emphasise the new version’s big difference, but thankfully good sense prevailed. When What’s My Line came back in the early 1980s, Eamonn was then doing more or less exactly the same stuff he’d been doing thirty years beforehand. Indeed, the new What’s My Line was broadcast live, seemingly just because that’s how they used to do it in the ’50s. Well, yeah, but by that logic they may as well have filmed it in black and white as well. Both series seemed to be on every week forever, with Eamonn bantering non-stop with George Gale, Barbara Kelly, Jilly Cooper and Ernie Wise. All the bloody time. Eamonn died suddenly in 1987, with both the shows continuing under new presenters (obviously, as a Thames production, Penelope Keith took over What’s My Line). Since then he seems to have been more or less forgotten. In a way, Eamonn was the Carol Smillie of his day – always there, but not really registering.
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Wrestling’s Golden Age – Grapples, Grunts and GranniesMick McManus died this week, alas, and remember him this way with another outing for this absolutely brilliant documentary from just before Christmas about British wrestling at its earthiest. There are some hilarious bits in it, like Johnny Kincaid being told he had to pretend he was from Barbados even though he’d never been there, Klondike Kate reminiscing about the fishwives throwing foot-and-mouth-disease injections at her, an interviewee saying “excuse my language” after he’d said the obscene word “bum” and the fantastically good value Max “brother of Shirley” Crabtree, the big kahuna in the “sport” in its imperial phase, explaining how they came up with the concept of Big Daddy after Shirley complained to him that “me whole career’s gone to cock!”. Great stuff.
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