TV Cream

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Dropping a word in the nation’s ear

The Today programme is 50 years old on Sunday, and to celebrate their website has rightly gone to town. Of particular note amongst the variety of clippage is the time Jack de Manio was late for an interview because he got locked in the toilet, and John Humphrys skewering a hapless Norman Lamont the day after Black Wednesday.

Best of all, however, is something half-heartedly referred to on the site only as ‘The Today Song’ but which, on listening, appears to be a musical skit written and performed by none other…than Richard Stilgoe!

Meanwhile here’s Jack de Manio and John Timpson back when the Today studio was seemingly furnished with curtains, baize tables and sofas.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Mikey

    October 26, 2007 at 10:45 am

    And there was a good bit on the BBC4 documentary the other week, featuring a reporter on the first show, Reg Turnill, who later found fame writing endless letters to national newspapers complaining about how badly the BBC treated its pensioners, and also appeared as Newsround’s “space correspondent”, even though it didn’t seem to have a correspondent for anything else.

  2. James Foster

    October 30, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    There was actually a theme tune that was used in the early eighties for a very short time which I would love to hear again. It was written by John Dankworth and sounded similar to the theme tune to ‘Taxi’. I think they got rid of it soon after as old school listeners complained.
    Also, I think as Dankworth said, it was too upbeat to be played before the ‘hundreds perish in earthquake’ news headlines.

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