How We Used To List: 17th-23rd AUGUST 2002

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What we were watching this week 20 years ago, as recorded in the back-issues of TV Cream’s weekly ‘e-mag’, Creamguide…

(We still send out Creamguides every week via email. If you’d like to receive it – it’s free, there are no ads, we don’t sell on your address, you can unsubscribe whenever; we’re basically soppy like that – then fill in your details below.)

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TV CREAM TIMES
17th – 23rd August 2002
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Who’s your favourite? –
Chris Diamond, Phil Norman, Graham Kibble-White
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Saturday 17th August

BBC1

18.15 Sizzling Bloomers
If there aren’t any clips of Matt Baker corpsing we’re not interested in this programme, to be honest, and they never bother with Creamy clips anyway because they choose what’s shown depending on who’s in it. And it’s a repeat anyway, so why are we even bothering to give it this much of a billing?

BBC2

12.55 Columbo
14.25 Quincy
15.15 Perry Mason
What? Where’s the matinee? In fact all three of these programmes are billed as ‘Watching The Detectives’, as if this will disguise the fact that they’ve been on several million times in the last few months alone. This had better not be a regular thing, BBC2, if only cos we can never think of anything to write about them.

18.00 Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em
And the rest of today’s BBC2 schedule is full of programmes nicked off News 24 and the umpteenth repeat of Pole To Pole! Are the film librarians on holiday, then?

21.45 Porridge
This is the best repeat of the day, so obviously it’ll be dropped if tonight’s opera overruns.

22.15 Return from the River Kwai
No sequel to Bridge Over The River Wye, worse luck, this is the story of the prisoners’ move from the Japanese POW camp to yer actual Japan. Can they escape before they reach Japan? Can we escape Chris ‘Nice Guy’ Penn’s acting? With Edward ‘Edward’ Fox.

ITV

21.30 TV’s Naughtiest Blunders 5
Yeah, Steve Penk, but as we’ve always said, we quite like this series because it’s just non-stop cock-ups, and they often raid Christmas tapes and the like to get them so you find all manner of shows featured. So far we’ve had loads of Bullseye out-takes (“Are you ready, Bobby?”) and unseen Hardwicke House, although there’s always the danger that after five shows in two years they’ll have reached the bottom of the barrel and just turned into TV Nightmares. Still, it should pass the time.

CHANNEL 4

12.00 Little House On The Prairie
Back! Back! Back! For a week, anyway.

16.55 Tora! Tora! Tora!
Hird! Hird! Hird! Another WWII epic this week to follow on from last week’s Bismarck shenanigans, and it’s more quality stuff with that swine Tojo getting one over on that nice Mr Roosevelt. Much to look out for including the scenes of the planes being destroyed on the landing field when the props were overloaded with explosives and the people diving in and amongst them really are clearing off to save their lives. With many, many names including Martin ‘gesundheit’ Balsam, Jason ‘Monk’ Robards (who was actually there, fact fans) and Soh ‘Gung Ho’ Yamamura as Admiral Yamamoto. Don’t watch Pearl Harbour, folks; watch this! And we mean that most sincerely.

03.20 The Verdict
Paul Newman plays a Lionel Hutz-alike washed-up lawyer, kick-started back into life by Jack ‘Crazy like a Fox’ Warden. As featured on Before They Were Famous, due to Bruce Willis in the background of a courtroom scene, and also starring Charlotte Rampling, James Mason and Milo O’Shea.

CHANNEL 5

08.00 James The Cat
Wish this was on at 8pm.

17.50 Monkeys, Go Home!
The Radio Times again comes to our aid in identifying faddish critical terms that, having been run into the ground so much of late that even their film reviewers have started to use them, must surely now be abandoned by everyone else. This week, Monkeys, Go Home! is given that ubiquitous catch-all tag “joyless”, the blame for which we lay squarely at the door of Mr Charlton Brooker, although at least he had the excuse of overemploying it as part of an RT-parodying comedic schtick. Now that it’s travelled full circle something has clearly been proved, though we don’t quite know what, exactly. Anyway, this is another of those Disney live action monkey-based pictures with the long-suffering Dean ‘Love Bug’ Jones, this time with a French twist and guest stars Maurice Chevalier and Yvette ‘Black Hole’ Mimieux. Non-vintage, we’re saying, though we do like that fussy, old-timery comma in the title.

22.50 Supervixens
Once again, we’re assuming a difference of opinion between the RT film reviewers and their editor, who rightly dismissed the vast majority of Russ Meyer’s “oeuvre” as “hairy-palmed crap” on the late, lamented C&M’s Movie Club, while this gets a belief-beggaring four stars this week. It’s the usual plotless mammarthon, with regular Meyer stooges Charles Napier and Henry ‘Martin Bormann’ Rowland (the Henry McGee and Jackie ‘slaphead’ Wright to Meyer’s Benny Hill, more or less) and various busty women filmed from below. Laddish cinema bores from Jonathan Ross onwards have tried to elevate this badly made drive-in fodder to some sort of iconic status, but the fact remains, if this was filmed in Elstree and had Marianne Stone and Tony Booth in, no-one would bother with it.

05.10 Sons and Daughters
Wish this was on at… oh, actually it is. On Friday too.

Sunday 18th August

BBC1

18.35 Britain’s Strongest Man 2002
Further proof we need Michael Grade back at the Beeb this instant, with the first of a ridiculous five episodes this week – the others are on Tuesday-Friday at 19.00. Still presented by John Inverdale, wasting time which could be better spent filming that new series of Superstars, and filmed “in and around North Wales”, which seems a little vague.

BBC2

20.00 Reggae: The Story Of Jamaican Music
This final show in the series brings the story of reggae up to date by looking at the last twenty years – we’re guessing Snow won’t feature, mind.

ITV

20.05 Dallas After They Were Famous
How many of these are there? Once more ITV devotes what used to be its best slot of the week to a load of clips from a programme they had nothing to do with at the time, apart from Bryan Cowgill’s exploits with Thames in the mid-80s. Larry Hagman et al have appeared on a thousand nostalgia shows this year, so here’s another to add to the pile.

00.55 The Dance Years
There’s no Smash! this week, so there’s nowhere for us to complain about them playing out their Human League episode with Together In Electric Dreams, which is just completely wrong. You wouldn’t play Live and Let Die or Imagine during a Beatles retrospective, would you? Grr. Anyway, 1994 this week.

CHANNEL 4

13.35 The Wind and the Lion
Sean Connery as James Bond the secret agent? Indubitably. As Malone the Chicago cop? Certainly. As Marko Ramius the submarine captain? Fair enough. As Roald Amundsen the explorer? Hmmm, maybe. But as Mulay Achmed Mohammed el-Raisuli the Magnificent? Erm… It’s a biiiiiig film alright , this story of Berber arab uprising in North Africa, but you may find yourself asking what it’s all about before too long. However, Candice Bergen, Brian ‘and McCormick’ Keith and John ‘Breckenridge’ Huston are on hand to make it all worthwhile.

02.55 Ruby
Lesser psycho-supernatural seventies flick, referencing many better efforts such as The Exorcist and The Omen, with Piper ‘Carrie’ Laurie, who, in somewhat of a departure from the horror norm, sings the film’s love theme.

CHANNEL 5

14.30 Rachel Cade
Angie ‘Wild Palms’ Dickinson spends WWII healing the sick in the Belgian Congo, is lusted after by Peter Finch, falls for unconvincing Yank soldier Roger Moore. Scatman Crothers is there, somewhere.

22.00 Sweeney 2
“They’re back, tougher than ever!” Considering the palaver Regan caused at the end of the first Sweeney film it’s actually quite surprising that he and Carter aren’t doing the English equivalent of checking parking meters in Martinique. But anyway, who cares? Lots of drink, shouting, Granadas, hair, Denholm ‘Coleman’ Elliot, Nigel ‘Knowledge’ Hawthorne, Patrick ‘Chisholm’ Malahide, Roddy ‘View From…’ McMillan… excuse me, I have something in my eye. If you watch one television to film police series transfer this week, make it this one. And written by Troy ‘Darkness’ Kennedy Martin, no less. With a bit of luck we’ll soon get Van Der Valk: One Herring’s Not Enough soon as well.

Monday 19th August

BBC1

14.10 Cagney and Lacey
Presumably this is now earlier because it’s unsuitable for sticking just before Cbeebies. Yet is Nigel Lythgoe any more appropriate?

17.00 Blue Peter On The Road
We didn’t like the way Nicki Chapman referred to the team as “us” on Wednesday, for all sorts of reasons. They’re in Plymouth today, and may we recommend that you download the BP Calendar from http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc because it’s ace.

01.20 Mother, Jugs and Speed
“They don’t call them that for nothing!” In LA the first ambulance at the scene of an incident gets the contract to transport them to hospital, so the competition for the business is brisk and Mother (Bill Cosby) and Speed (Harvey Keitel) work the jobs that Jugs (Bo Derek; so called because of her ears, we’re told) hand out to them with oolarious results. Top notch stuff with Larry ‘Liver’ Hagman and yer actual Toni Basil as a junkie. No foolin’!

BBC2

12.15 Love Boat – The Next Wave
This can’t be every day at this time for much longer, can it?

13.10 House of Bamboo
The two wartime Roberts, ‘Longest Day’ Ryan and ‘Airplane’ Stack, get mixed up in Japanese ammo running in this location-heavy period piece, with a young DeForest Kelly appearing in the background.

22.00 Knowing Me Knowing You… with Alan Partridge
We hope that, for the final moments, they change it so that the subliminal shot of the caption is in the current BBC2 style, just to make it that little bit more realistic. If they can stick a URL at the end it wouldn’t be too hard, would it?

00.00 The Phil SIlvers Show
Remember we said that there wasn’t much Bilko around this summer? Well…

ITV

13.30 Inspector Clouseau
Oh, hello! With timing that must deserve some kind of Nobel prize for sheer bloody-minded scheduling, ITV follow on from Four’s recent lacklustre Pink Panther season by showing all the entries Four couldn’t be bothered with, save for the good one, A Shot in the Dark. This is undoubtedly the one to watch if you’re going to bother with them at all, being the curious Edwards-less, Sellers-less third instalment with Alan ’22’ Arkin bravely stepping into the hat and coat, and not doing all that bad a job of it, really. The supporting cast’s probably better than any of the ‘proper’ Panthers, too, at least for our purposes – Anthony ‘Master’ Ainley, Geoffrey ‘Catweazle’ Bayldon, Patrick ‘Wives’ Cargill, Barry ‘Valk’ Foster, Beryl ‘Mr Milford-Haven’ Reid, Frank Finlay and Michael Ripper.

02.45 It’s a Great Day
Butchers’ film adaptation of pioneering ’50s BBC soap The Grove Family, headed, as on telly, by Ruth ‘Children of the Stones’ Dunning and Edward ‘Tales from the Crypt’ Evans, detailing their quite frankly rather tame lower-middle class adventures, as scripted by Jon Pertwee’s father and brother. Sid James also pops by.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout

04.10 Kentucky Woman
Another of those rotten TV movies that make up Cheryl Ladd’s entire post-Angels career. Not that the original girls have reached particularly auspicious heights in the meantime – Kate Jackson’s done nothing of note since Scarecrow and Mrs King, Farrah’s had an, erm, “interesting” recent few years, and Jaclyn Smith has given up fighting the curse altogether and signed up to be in the next Drew Barrymore Angels film. Meanwhile, John ‘Charlie’ Forsythe keeps himself busy *and* retains his dignity. There’s a lesson there.

05.50 Clangers

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm
Al “The Score” Convy’s on RI:SE now, so best stick with this to be on the safe side. Every day at this time.

06.55 James The Cat
Every day at this time, for a change. Well, they’ve got such a jam-packed and variable schedule at this time of day, haven’t they?

11.00 Magnum PI
Inevitably, this is on all week as well.

14.30 Runaway!
Hmm. There’ve been a lot of “runaway train” films of late, but this mountain-set adventure with the two wild west Bens, ‘Wild Bunch’ Johnson and ‘Kid Curry’ Murphy, looks set to disappoint, especially as it’s not billed under its great, original European release title, The Frozen Passage.

15.55 Dallas: War of the Ewings
“This one for fans of the series only” say the Radio Times; that’ll be us, then (although we’re unsure as to why someone who didn’t like the series would watch it). Anyway, JR is running Weststar Oil, see, but wants Ewing Oil as well but Bobby’s running that with the help of, bizarrely, Sue Ellen – presumably the bottom has dropped out of lingerie, arf. So there’s the plot right there. We’re setting our videos.

19.00 Swapheads
Not sure about Johnny Ball’s rant on Radio 2 this week that the new BBC pre-school show reviving the Play School windows was going to be “marketing-driven crap”, when it appears to be a straight revival of Play School from what we’ve read. And Playaway was only possible because of the money Play School was making from merchandise, which sort of ruins his argument a bit, we reckon. Not sure we’re that crazy about recommending this now he sounds a bit miserable, but we’ll stick it in for now. It’s on Wednesday and Friday at the same time too.

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RT REVIEW: The Radio Times fanzine. “It delivers, week in, week out!!” – Radio Creamguide Editor* (*Quote compiled and then paraphrased by baiting the Radio Creamguide Editor into specifically commenting on this section)

>>THE COVER
Hmmm, it’s nothing we can get too excited about, but it’s OK. Naturally it features the stars of Holby City. Pretty standard “looking into camera with a moody look” work, this, although her second on the left is kind of spoiling it. Nice wonky corridor behind the group shot, though. That’s quite good.

>>THE EDITOR’S LETTER
Well, we’re delighted to see Gill Hudson’s back with the “Galling” after we highlighted it the week before last. Please don’t use “gorgeousness” again though. Aside from that, Gill’s going on a flight of fancy making gags about “industrial strength haemorrhoid cream”. We bet that when Gill riffed that one in the RT canteen it made Alison Graham laugh so much she blew chunks of cow pie all over the place. In addition to that, we have to ask: would Nicholas Brett or Nigel Horne have used the phrase “pop their clogs”? No. Hey, you know what it is, and we know what it is: it’s “Galling!” That’s what it is.

>>OUR LETTER OF THE WEEK
Here in the Creamguide offices we thoroughly enjoy punctuation when it’s used with sardonic effect and that’s why we alight upon Peter Osorio, Yoxall, Staffordshire as our letter-writer of the week. See the stinging way he uses quotation-marks to rubbish BBC1’s The House That Jack Built. Yes, Peter bitingly refers to it as a “comedy”. Well done Peter, “great” work!

>>WE’LL GIVE THIS TWO MONTHS
We apologise for the recent inaccuracies in this section of your RT Review. Last week we smugly predicted “Vital ingredients” – a pie chart that lists the vital ingredients that make up a personality – would last two months. Imagine the look on our faces when it was scrapped after one week. That showed us. Celeb Scrabble’s on week 3 though, so we’re more confident about that.

>>THIS WEEK WE’RE SPECIFICALLY COMMENTING ABOUT THIS:
Page 28. Here’s the best page in this week’s RT, because it reproduces two covers from 1965 (its fascination, though, is that of so many cultural products of the 1960s – the way the old and new, the joyously futuristic and already archaic, are pushed next to each other) and 1970. And to be honest we’d be happy if they just did that throughout the paper. As for the inclusion of Danny Kelly, who also debuts on this page – well we’ve never really seen the point to him to be honest. And that “hey!” posture he’s doing just isn’t very appealing. Does he think he’s the Fonz? Maybe they could just put more pictures of old RTs here next week?

>>AC
Being a bit grumpy this week. Will receive less reserved support from this section of Creamguide if Andrew Collins Behind the Camera is on the theme “Films that Channel 5 Must Show” and ends with http://tv.cream.org/images/alfcamp.png in next week’s edition.

>>GOLDEN GRAHAMS
An occasional sparring partner of Creamguide (in that he’s written in to us more than once) Mark Ackerman felt moved to drop us a line after last week’s column. “I’ve been really pleased with your recent critique of Alison Graham, undoubtedly the most annoying and useless writer about television ever”, he says. “For my sins (and a little bit of dosh) I used to work on a BBC crime series which she had the temerity to criticise in general by having a go at one of my shows in particular. During this ‘review’ [and get those quotation-marks! Good work there, Mark!] she made the mistake of assuming that ‘police bail’ means that some one was actually innocent of a crime but the police just let them off, sort of. When I wrote a two-page letter explaining the legal niceties of the subject, she kindly declined to respond. Ever since then I’ve kept an eye on her and all her works.” If anyone else has had their programme rubbished by RT staff, we urge you to write in and tell us about it. To be honest, we find it all quite humorous.

>>THIS WEEK WE’RE ALSO SPECIFICALLY COMMENTING ABOUT THIS:
Jesus Christ! They’ve got rid of “My Kind of Day”. Quick, anyone know of any other resource where we can find out what type of pasta Leslie Ash prefers and what time she picks up the kids?

>>OUR FAVOURITE BILLING:
Thursday, 3.55am, Channel 5: “DC United play San Jose Earthquakes.” The only football team we can think of that has a name as hard as either of those two is the Glipton Giants.

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Tuesday 20th August

BBC2

18.20 TOTP2
Congratulations to last week’s Reggae Special for digging out Police Officer by Smiley Culture, which we haven’t heard for about fifteen years. Not that we neccessarily want to her it again, but y’know. This week’s episodes are the first ‘normal’ shows for ages, and this one includes Madness, Thin Lizzy and – at last! – Spagna.

22.00 Room 101
Another outing for the John Peel episode where he doesn’t do many of the anecdotes we were looking out for, but is still great anyway. And the Anfield Rap at the end!

23.50 The Phil Silvers Show
Looks like we spoke too soon.

ITV

13.30 Trail of the Pink Panther
The first of the posthumous sequels, with Blake Edwards cobbling together all the outtakes from the previous films he can muster, employing Joanna Lumley as a “French” reporter for a clumsy linking device, getting Rich ‘Blue Aardvark’ Little to dub a visibly ailing David Niven, making Richard ‘Soap’ Mulligan do a feeble turn as Sellers’ dad, and generally pissing all over the already soggy Panther legacy. And it doesn’t stop there! Ronald ‘don’t talk to me about unemployent, young man’ Fraser, Harvey ‘Daddy love froggy’ Korman, Graham ‘then we can have Eric Morcambe fixing some slates on a roof, just for the hell of it’ Stark, Leonard ‘suffused with herbs and spices from four continents’ Rossiter, Liz Smith, Dudley Sutton and William ‘Porkins’ Hootkins appear, mostly in old footage.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout

21.00 When Steptoe Met Son
Looks like Tuesday nights are now the home for Cream-related documentaries on Four, though they’ve all seemed fairly tawdry. This one concentrates on the relationship between Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett, and we’d like to know if there was a sitcom cast at all in the sixties and seventies who didn’t hate each other.

CHANNEL 5

14.30 McMillan and Wife
Again. Tomorrow is a feature-length episode of JJ Starbuck, but to be honest, we’ve never heard of that.

15.55 My Favourite Brunette
It’s got Bob Hope and it’s got Dorothy Lamour, but no Bing Crosby otherwise it would probably have been The Road to Brunettes (actually he is in it, but just for a moment). Hope is a photographer mistaken for a private eye who gets into all sort of hilarious situations trying to help Lamour. With Peter ‘gardenias’ Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr.

Wednesday 21st August

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter On The Road
Last of the roadshows, and hopefully the last of Nicki Chapman’s appearances. Reminds us of Ally Ross saying that while she trotted out anecdotes about working with Take That, her role in their rise to fame generally involved taking Howard Donald to the toilet. Oh, and Newquay.

BBC2

13.20 The Phil Silvers Show
As you can clearly see.

18.20 TOTP2
This is the sort of line-up we want – Kelly Marie, Bananarama and The Undertones. Plus Gary Numan in the “Then and Now” slot, whatever that is – presumably playing an old record and then playing his new record at the end, which is hardly a “slot” in our books.

20.00 The Way We Cooked
Good to see Fanny’s Big Time appearance in full last week, especially the bit where she reacted to the hapless hopeful’s cooking with the “I’m-going-to-puke” face so beloved of schoolchildren the world over. This week, boring old Delia, although we may get some Swap Shop clips, and Keith Floyd, star of the only networked programme we can think of from BBC South West, fact fans.

23.50 The Old Grey Whistle Test at 30
So we are getting the whole series, then. It would be nice if they filled the awkward ten-minute gap after it with the Bake’s TV Heroes on Whispering Bob, instead of 48 Preludes and Fugues. “Camera! Cam-e-ra! Lights! Mic-ro-phone!!!”

ITV

13.30 Curse of the Pink Panther
Gawd. Now there are no more clips to raid, Edwards finds he as to think fast (the simpler option of just not bothering anymore seems beyond him). So, in comes Ted Wass – former Danny off of Soap, future Blossom’s dad off of Blossom – to do a bit of sub-Sellers schtick in lieu of the original lieu enforcer. It’s grim stuff, particularly the ponderous poolside inflatable duck routine with a not-getting-any-better David Niven. Lumley, Korman, Crosby, Stark, Smith and Porkins all return, bolstered by Robert Wagner, Leslie Ash, Michael Elphick, Hugh Fraser, and Roger Moore as a post-plastic surgery Clouseau. The Godawful ’90s Roberto Benigni-starring Son of… is on tomorrow afternoon, if you haven’t been driven screaming onto the streets by then.

01.15 Forever
Andy Darling wishes it could be 1988 forever, and amen to that!

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout
Wouldn’t it have been easier just to say ‘every day at this time’?

Thursday 22nd August

BBC2

13.10 The Phil Silvers Show

13.35 Indiscreet
With Ingrid Bergman and Cary ‘English Country Garden’ Grant. Tell your mum.

23.50 The Old Grey Whistle Test at 30
Unfortunately this series doesn’t include any of the knocked-together videos using bits of scary old cartoons, which is frankly what we were all waiting for.

01.20 What Have The Seventies Ever Done For Us?
The erratic scheduling of this show may have more to do with Creamguide constantly forgetting to include it rather than anything to do with BBC2.

ITV

03.10 ITV Sport Classics
We caught the start of one of these the other week and The Hapless Matthew Lorenzo was referring to “the next few shows” being devoted to boxing. Surely even on their original transmission he’d have known that “the next few shows” could well have been transmitted about six months apart, so who’d notice?

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout

22.00 Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights
“I’m gonna chuck in a pig’s dick for the dog” was without a doubt the funniest line ever uttered in a sitcom ever, and there’s another five shows where that came from. And with regards to last week’s question, Mr M is in tonight, but we’re not going to give spoilers over what he’s going to do. Look, just bloody watch it. That’s all we ask.

05.55 Clangers

CHANNEL 5

14.30 McMillan and Wife
Are there any of these which aren’t feature-length?

15.55 Vengeance Valley
With Burt ‘obscure reference’ Lancaster as the nice guy and Robert Walker as the nasty one in this great big western from 1951. Somebody at some point will be described as ‘a heel’.

Friday 23rd August

BBC2

13.20 Spellbound
Hitchcock drafts in top moustachioed wanker Salavador Dali to paper over the massive cracks in his featherlight Bergman-Peck psychiatry thriller with some painted eyeballs and giant scissors, and then scraps most of that. None of which is as silly as the giant murderer’s-point-of-view fake hand and pistol.

00.50 The St Valentine’s Day Massacre
It’s Jason Robards week as he stars as Al Capone in this story of the, well, you know. Directed by Roger Corman this isn’t your average gangster film and it’s a bit different – we mean to say, Robards as Capone? But it’s fascinating stuff and features Ralph Meeker as Bugs Moran and Clint Richie as Machine Gun Jack McGurn. They don’t make up nicknames like that anymore.

CHANNEL 4

00.00 Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights
Pete was also great on Patrick Kielty’s show last week, but then Patrick Kielty’s so unfunny he made fellow guest Amanda Holden sound like Groucho Marx. The thing we hate most about Patrick Kielty is the way he starts all his jokes with “Yes, it’s…” – which normally means he’s just about to repeat verbatim the clip/headline/quote he’s just referred to.

CHANNEL 5

00.40 The Ultimate Warrior
It’s post-apocalyptic New York. Again. Two rival gangs fight for control of the streets, one led by Max von Sydow – Antonius Block in The Seventh Seal – the other by William Smith – Lord Zombie off of Zombiegeddon. Who will win? Luckily Max ropes in Yul Brynner, in the title role, to do the roughing up for him. Which he does. Fans of this sort of thing may be interested to know there are also two Charles Bronson films showing tonight, but you’re going to have to look them up yourselves.

02.25 Saint Jack
Ben ‘Jackie Treehorn’ Gazzara plays a ‘Nam-era pimp in Singapore in this early (ie any good) period Bogdanovich film, with plenty of verite location work, Denholm Elliott, Joss Ackland, Rodney Bewes and George ‘Big Fry’ Lazenby as a gay senator.

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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE
A brief-as-is-politely-possible run through next week’s dreary schedules

* A good example of the best and worst of BBC4 this week, with Face To Face on Monday at 19.00 – including Tony Hancock – but then on Tuesday there’s both Will Durst, the man who first wrote the “President Shrub” “joke” regurgitated on Believe Nothing the other week, live in concert (21.00, 00.00) *and* a repeat of the opening night’s Surrealissimo (22.00), which is the most pretentious television programme ever made.

* G+ bugger around with Bullseye again, now with two episodes back-to-back on Saturdays at 19.00, and then the same shows repeated at 00.00. But where’s the tension in the gambling with that? It also replaces Cuddly Ken on Sundays at 22.30, alas. The most bonkers thing about this week’s scheduling, though, is Spitting Image at 09.45 on Saturday morning. Hmmm.

* Paramount screen the same two episodes of Fry and Laurie they’ve been showing for the last six months again (well, that’s what it seems like to us) on Sunday at 23.45 and Friday at 00.10, and Frank Skinner’s on Monday-Thursday at 23.00. We’ve been re-reading his autobiography this week, and our favourite bit in it is when Frank talks about his local newspaper which went under the fantastic name of, er, The Smethwick Telephone.

*Boring old UK Horizons celebrate the 1973rd showing of I Love 1973 on Friday at 21.00, as well as screening the Young Guns Go For It profile on Culture Club (Sunday, 01.30) about a week before ITV’s Smash! is about to do the same thing.

* E4 are showing Banzai (Wednesday, 22.45, 02.25). BBC Choice are showing Dr Terrible’s House Of Horrible (Thursday, 23.00). We wouldn’t hold out for that government approval if we were you…

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WHO IS RUSSELL BRAND?
If you can tell us, please do so on Ask The Family, the TV Cream Message Board, at your disposal by clicking Long Shots when you get to http://tv.cream.org Also there you can subscribe to Wrexham’s own Emma Jones’ fave, The TV Cream Update, which’ll hit your inbox, er, at some point.
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The Lady With The Tray Is Heading Their Way – Mark ‘Andy’ Ackerman, Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, SImon Tyers