TV Cream

CREAMGUIDE: 23rd-29th April 2011

From on top of a tall building like a weathercock

TV Cream requests the pleasure of you, our loyal subject, for this very special edition of Creamguide in one of the most exciting telly weeks for ages. OK, so you may not be very interested in the main business of the week – although you don’t need to proudly announce it on the internet like anyone cares, and if you’re that annoyed, go to work – but it’s certainly going to be a great big telly event with thousands of people involved and is impressive through sheer scale alone, the kind of week where you keep the Radio Times to pass on to future generations (though the Royal Family might question their appeal given What’s On TV and TV Choice seemingly consider the wedding less likely to shift magazines than nondescript episodes of EastEnders, judging by their covers).

As well as all that, of course, we’ve got Easter as well, which should guarantee us a week of spectacular telly, like a mini-Christmas. Well, that’s the idea, anyway. If you have any telegrams, or maybe Creamy memories of Royal Weddings past, do let us know at creamguide@tvcreamtest.co.uk.

SATURDAY 23rdAPRIL

BBC1

18.00 Doctor Who
The new series starts here, but we’re not in the mood to write anything stupid about it. Instead, RIP Sarah Jane.

BBC2

18.30 Dad’s Army
Last week, inspired by BBC4’s ongoing homes season, we invited you to share tales of domestic bliss from your past, and Jonathan Haw certainly didn’t disappoint. “For the first few years of my life we lived in rural Lincolnshire where we not only had an outside toilet, but also no mains electricity, instead relying on a clattery old generator which drowned out the telly. Not that we could see anything on the telly of course, as we had an ancient black and white model which took half an hour to warm up and had only 4 channel buttons on it – BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and, thrillingly, ITV2! Believe it or not, this was not the austere 1950s – but 1979! Thankfully, we then moved into the metropolis of Lincoln, where the six-year-old me apparently spent hours just flushing the toilet and switching lights on and off, fascinated by this futuristic technology!” That’s exactly what we wanted to hear, Jonathan, and if anyone has any other delightful anecdotes, do let us know. Maybe you missed an iconic telly moment because you had a slot television and had run out of money, or indelibly associate a domestic moment with something on TV, like how we always remember watching the film Animalympics while our dad, as we suggested last week, knocked down a wall to create our new upstairs bathroom in 1984. What a summer that was.

CBBC

18.45 My Sarah Jane
Nicely scheduled between Who and Confidential comes this tribute, which should be hugely emotional, and also pretty important, because Lis Sladen was of course not only a Who star of the past but also a massive kids TV star right now.

BBC Radio 2

13.00 Pick of the Pops
1966 and 1983 here. We know we banged on about Comedy Central loads earlier this year but just a postscript, almost immediately after they announced they’ll finally be making their SD channel widescreen, like every other channel in the world, 30 Rock has promptly and abruptly disappeared from their schedules, with the episode billed for tonight, the 21st, a choice in the Radio Times and everything, simply falling off the EPG completely! We don’t know if they’ve caught up with America too quickly or something, but if there’s a more hopeless, ill-mannered channel on television than Comedy Central, we haven’t seen it. It’s a shambles!

EASTER SUNDAY

BBC1

11.00 Urbi et Orbi
We always bill this, just because it’s there, really. In 1985 they famously didn’t show it for economy reasons, although quite how much cash you’d save we don’t know as surely it’s just a question of sticking a camera in the middle of the Vatican, especially as there’d presumably be some there to film it for the news anyway. Given the kerfuffle it caused then, don’t expect the idea of dropping it to resurface again during the current cuts discussion.

16.55 Points of View
In fact we’re utterly bored of people just counting the number of people doing this and that at the Beeb and deciding it sounds quite a lot, so it must be too many, reaching the nadir with someone we read suggesting they could save money by not having separate readers of the football results on radio and telly but have one man do both at the same time. By that logic, just get someone to read out all the team names and every number from one to ten at the start of the season and just rearrange them every week, you’d only have to pay them once then. Also winding us up is the term “reality TV” being used to describe absolutely everything, like with that Theo Paphitis programme here last week, and seemingly now considered to be a derogatory term with no qualifier required whatsoever. All we need now is someone spelling “biased” as “bias”, which every bellend on the internet now seems to do, and we’d have had the hat trick.

21.00 Britain’s Royal Weddings
Well, Sophie Raworth certainly got in quick with her series as the second and final part is here before everyone gets royally (ho ho) fed up with the umpteen identical programmes running through the week. We’ve got the big weddings here, anyway, from 1973, 1981 and 1986, and then presumably Edward’s getting the shortest shrift imaginable. Well, we didn’t get a day off, so who cared?

22.25 Bee Gees – In Our Own Time
23.25 TOTP2

Barry and Robin have contributed to the former, a new profile of the band, while the latter is a repeat of one of the two special shows they did a decade or so ago where they performed all their hits, although it’s the second and they did all the famous ones in the first. But don’t worry, because we think like ABBA the less famous ones are the more interesting.

BBC2

21.00 United
It’s perhaps surprising that there hasn’t been a drama about the Busby Babes before, especially as it’s a story everyone knows, it’s very dramatic and there’s an optimistic, albeit bittersweet, ending, but seemingly it’s considered a story that has to be done dead right. Pleasingly it looks like that’s certainly the case here, with Chris Chibnall on writing duties and David Tennant taking the lead – not as Matt Busby, but as Jimmy Murphy, the assistant manager who wasn’t on the plane but made a massive contribution to piecing the club back together after the event.

EASTER MONDAY

BBC1

09.00 When Royals Wed
And less than 24 hours on from a BBC1 series about royal weddings of the past, a new BBC1 series about royal weddings of the past. This one, however, is going to be rather fluffier, as you could probably expect from its transmission time, and running every day until Thursday we’ll assume there’ll be as much looking forwards as back. It might be worth checking out Wednesday’s show, though, as it’s going to look at the role of telly in royal weddings, which should hopefully mean plenty of Angela Rippon at the cosmetics counter.

BBC2

21.00 Arena – Produced by George Martin
23.15 A Hard Day’s Night

“Well, The Beatles certainly never took drugs in front of me…”. Always good to see Arena back on the telly, and this is likely to be a suitably weighty tribute, especially as it won’t just go on and on about The Wackers – although the bonny one and the shaggy one do contribute – but also his comedy work with Bernard Cribbins and Michael Palin paying tribute. Then a bit later on, a film you tend not to see on telly much these days. An absolute tour de force as far as we’re concerned.

BBC Radio 2

14.00 Bank Holiday Weekend Wogan
We’ve said it before but you can always count on Radio 2 to push the boat out on a Bank Holiday. The Sunday morning Wogan show seemed to get mixed reviews on its debut last year, mostly thanks to the studio audience making it all sound a bit self-indulgent, but they’ve revamped it now so it’s back to just one man and his microphone, which is what we all love about Wogan, and if you’re not about on Sunday mornings here’s a chance to hear what he’s up to now, included here as Doctor Who Peter Davidson is on it.

16.00 The UK’s Bestselling Movie Songs
And what better way to pass the time on a lazy Bank Holiday than joining Tony Blackburn for another pointless but intriguing countdown. They’ve been very specific in pointing out that songs qualify for this chart only if they’ve been expressly written for a film, rather than just whacked on as incidental music, and certainly some of the songs will be way more famous than the films they were intended for, as BBC4’s Pops repeats are currently proving because how many people have even seen Mahogany?

18.00 25 Years of The Paul Jones Show
The former Beat The Teacher host has been joined by various blue men playing the whites for a quarter of a century, and has probably done more than most to keep the genre alive. In fact one of our favourite bits of Chris Evans’ show recently was when he played a blues song he’d heard on Jones’ show the night before and thought it was brilliant. To celebrate it’s a double length edition with live performances from some artists who are younger than the show itself.

Radio One-Derland

Time now for the next instalment of our series reviewing and rating the occupants of the welly boot sticker imperial phase Radio 1. We must apologise for the wonky text that rendered last week’s final paragraph about Noel almost unreadable, and many thanks to those who wrote in concerned, especially those who suggested it may have been obscured for legal reasons. It hadn’t, it was just a quirk of the HTML, and we have no idea how that managed to happen. Still, if you want to see the whole thing in a readable form, check it out on the website. And to make up for messing you around, watch out three and a bit minutes in here for – yes! – another visit to Noel’s Gas Disco! And a brilliant TV Times ad. Thanks to TVC’s Chris Hughes for this, and a belated thanks for the first gas disco clip as well, as we nicked it off him on Twitter.

Michael Galvin, one of those who wrote in, also says, “As a foreigner around these parts, I have to admit to never hearing Radio 1 during my formative years, so most of the current Creamguide bit in the middle is lost on me. If they didn’t appear on TOTP in the 80s with their name appearing underneath, I wouldn’t be able to pick them out of lineup (*cough* Dave Cash *cough*). However, I’m sure I’m not alone in not having any idea what the headlines in each paragraph are referencing, “WHY AREN’T THERE ANY LITTLE GIRLS CALLED WENDY ANYMORE?”, “STANDING IN FOR PIP SCHOFIELD IN JOSEPH’S COAT”, etc etc. Any chance of a primer on what the gubbins you’re talking about?” Well, Michael, we recommend you start here and carry on for the other three parts.

And you’ll certainly know these two…

Kenny Everett

 

LOTS OF SCARS IN THE STY: At home in Liverpool, young Maurice Cole liked nothing better than to mess around with tapes and make up his own radio shows, and was eventually persuaded to send a copy of The Maurice Cole Quarter Of An Hour to the BBC, who invited him to be interviewed about it live on the Home Service. They offered him an audition as a presenter but feeling he wouldn’t quite fit, they recommended he tried the pirate stations, and he promptly got a job on Radio London, changing his name to Kenny Everett along the way. On London he presented with Dave Cash and was hugely popular, but got the sack for slagging off mental US religious show The World Tomorrow on air. He then spent a not very happy time on Radio Luxembourg before Radio 1 came into existence and Kenny was there on day one.

I LOVE TUESDAYS, DON’T YOU: Such was Kenny’s technical excellence that he was originally put to use in creating the various trailers for the new station, back when it was still going under the name of Radio 247. Unfortunately when it finally started, there were too many DJs and not enough slots, so Ken was stuck on Midday Spin for an hour a week. Later he graduated to a daily evening show but simply couldn’t cope with the non-stop tape fiddling that required, so was moved to Saturday mornings, before he, cough, went in 1970. But in 1973 he was back, with an hour-long show pre-recorded in his home studio which the Beeb (a name he invented) would hack to pieces to remove the naughty bits and stick out on Sunday afternoon.

I LOVE THE BEATLES, DON’T YOU: We all know that Kenny loved sound of all kind, with a particularly catholic musical taste. Invariably he loved fellow Scousers The Beatles, and was sent by Radio London to report from their American tour, which involved him sticking a tape recorder in the air at their gigs then playing it down the phone to the ship, the resultant show being completely inaudible and unintelligible but very exciting. Later he was a massive fan of the likes of Queen, being given a pre-release copy of Bohemian Rhapsody on the proviso he didn’t play it on air, which of course he promptly did, several times. And as well as the best in music, Kenny also played the worst in music with his highly memorable World’s Worst Record Show.

WHY AREN’T THERE ANY LITTLE GIRLS CALLED WENDY ANYMORE?: Kenny’s features were always relentlessly silly, and generally involved lots of tape fiddling. As TJ Worthington pointed out, he wasn’t paired with his old mucker Dave Cash on Radio 1 to avoid potential embarrassments – and a lot of good that did – but he could of course talk to himself many times, and his butler Crisp. Our favourite Ken story, though, is from his Capital days where he spent the whole show talking to his guest co-host Harry Nillson, who didn’t say a word, until the very last minute when he thanked Kenny for inviting him on.

EUROCRATS, BEAUROCRATS AND OTHER BONKERS-CRATS: Kenny was harmless, really, but for some reason seemed to land himself in trouble quite a lot. The legend is that he was sacked in 1970 for joking about the Transport Minister’s wife bribing a driving test examiner, but in fact that was just a convenient last straw for the Beeb who were sick of him slagging off the station in the papers, although Ken was just being nice to journalists who were asking him questions. Indeed the Beeb demanded he stopped talking about Radio 1 policy, so the next time someone asked, he said he was sorry but he was no longer allowed to talk about how awful Radio 1 was. When he came back in 1973 his pre-recorded shows could be safely vetted although seemingly the biggest problem there was that his wireless workshop at home was kitted out with lots of technology but did not include a working clock so the shows always massively under or overran.

WHY DON’T YOU SEND ME YOUR KNICKERS?: We know much about Kenny’s lifestyle now but during his Radio 1 DJs he was seemingly happily married to his wife Lee, and indeed his second spell on the Nation’s Favourite came while they were ensconced in the middle of the Welsh countryside. Everyone loved Cuddly Ken, though, so nobody batted an eyelid when he came out.

STANDING IN FOR PIP SCHOFIELD IN JOSEPH’S COAT: uring Ken’s first spell on Radio 1, his most regular telly exposure was on the fondly remembered miscellany Nice Time, although he almost didn’t get the job as when the producers approached his agent, they were told they didn’t want to hire him because he was unreliable, but eventually they got him, and Kenny got a new agent. In the interregnum between his spells on Radio 1, he appeared on loads of shows for LWT, most notably The Kenny Everett Explosion, but he didn’t much like them as nobody seemed to know what he could do on telly, eventually being reduced to bringing in a monkey and letting the cameras keep rolling in the hope that either Ken or the primate might do something funny. Of course, there was plenty more TV work after he left Radio 1.

A BIG HELLO TO ALL YOU TRUCKERS OUT THERE: Kenny’s rather abrupt departure first time around saw him fill time by contributing to various local BBC stations with rather half-arsed shows, but his departure the second time was almost as abrupt as he was signed up by the newly opened Capital Radio and so left Radio 1 after just six months, staying at Capital for the next decade or so, including a spell on the breakfast show with Dave Cash again. He was back within the bosom of the Beeb in the early eighties (“the BBC and I have settled our old differences, and they’ve allowed me back on as long as I don’t say pubes”), both on the telly and on Radio 2, but after a few more naughty bits he went back to Capital, and then Capital Gold when that started, broadcasting on there every day until 1994 when he sadly had to give it up as he was too ill.

TOPULARS OF THE POPULARS: Like all the original Radio 1 jocks, Ken made a brief appearance on a long-lost Pops in 1967, but didn’t appear again until his return to the station in 1973, and was a regular presenter for much of the year, including as one of the hosts on the five hundredth show. Unfortunately for us, only one of his episodes exists in the archives, and it’s unedited to boot, and we can only offer you a brief clip in this montage of oddities. What a shame.

Alan Freeman

 

LOTS OF SCARS IN THE STY: So why is he called Fluff, then? It was suggested it was because he was prone to gaffes, but apparently it’s because as a boy broadcaster he had a particular liking for woolly jumpers. His broadcasting career actually began in Australia, where he was born and lived until he was thirty, before an intended brief sabbatical in London led to him staying there for good and getting a job at the BBC, still in the days of the Light Programme. In the early sixties he took on the mantle of Pick of the Pops, back when it was part of a Saturday night strand called Trad Tavern, where his frantic approach was certainly a diversion from the norm, and he was the first person on British radio to present the charts in reverse order. When Radio 1 started, Fluff simply ported the show over to the new network.

I LOVE TUESDAYS, DON’T YOU: In fact Fluff was only a daily Radio 1 presenter for a year, as when Pick of the Pops ended in 1972, to make way for a new Top 20 show, Fluff moved to weekday afternoons, in which era he was also the first person to present the Radio 1 Roadshow. But in 1973 he gave up weekdays and moved to a Saturday afternoon rock slot, which he continued until leaving Radio 1 in 1979. He was back in 1988, though, presenting a new Pick of the Pops and the post-midnight series Night Rockin’, which moved earlier and earlier in the schedules, eventually ending up as the teatime Saturday Rock Show.

I LOVE THE BEATLES, DON’T YOU: Fluff actually wanted to be an opera singer when he was growing up, and indeed was very keen on the classics, but his spell on Radio 1 is most associated with his role of the voice of rock, playing the likes of ELP and Genesis on his Saturday show. When he returned, he played very much the same kind of thing, although in his later years he did move with the times a bit and played grunge alongside the more familiar rock and metal.

WHY AREN’T THERE ANY LITTLE GIRLS CALLED WENDY ANYMORE?: One of Fluff’s big interests was youth clubs, as he was President of the British Youth Club Association for a while, and in the mid-seventies presented a weekly Radio 1 show linking various youth clubs together. But for Fluff it was all about the music, and specifically how he presented it, with his various catchphrases and demented over-the-top jingles making for a fantastically entertaining audio experience, with many DJs being quick to cite him as one of the most inventive and original broadcasters there’s ever been.

EUROCRATS, BEAUROCRATS AND OTHER BONKERS-CRATS: Fluff never took himself seriously, and was highly modest about his own achievements, saying that the best he could hope for was to be half as interesting as the records he played, and saying that if he were to die, his shows would still carry on with the same records as anyone could do his job. Everyone who met him also said that Fluff was one of the nicest men you could hope to meet, with Jo Whiley saying he was the veteran DJ who made her most welcome when she joined the station.

WHY DON’T YOU SEND ME YOUR KNICKERS?: Fluff’s sexuality raised a few eyebrows at one point, as he revealed that he was celibate but had previously been bisexual. Indeed Simon Mayo recently revealed that when Fluff came on his show in 1988 to promote his return to the station, he was introduced to Mayo and kissed him full on the mouth.

STANDING IN FOR PIP SCHOFIELD IN JOSEPH’S COAT: Perhaps Fluff’s most famous extra-curricular activity during his Radio 1 DJs was his legendary adverts for Brentford Nylons, as parodied by Smashie and Nicey, of course. Lest we forget that, while he was clearly among those who had made up Dave Nice’s personality, he was clearly amused by the whole thing, so much so he turned up, as he did on The Young Ones.

A BIG HELLO TO ALL YOU TRUCKERS OUT THERE: irst time Fluff quit he went to Capital, before Johnny Beerling got him back after the ratings for Sunday lunchtimes had plummeted since Mike Read took over from Jimmy Savile. He stopped doing Pick of the Pops at the end of 1992, announcing he would never present it ever again, but stayed with the Rock Show until the Bannister revamp, no doubt aware he was hardly the hip young gunslinger the new regime required. He was still around, though, fronting a revamped version of his epic seventies series The Story of Pop and doing links for comedy show The Knowledge, but his day job was now on Capital again, where he presented – surprise! – Pick of the Pops again, and then in 1997 on Radio 2, where he presented – surprise! – Pick of the Pops yet again, as well as another series where he linked popular classics in his trademark frantic style. Sadly he retired in 2000 after he decided his health was so bad he physically couldn’t broadcast anymore, but he had his marbles intact and enjoyed a happy retirement until he died the other year.

TOPULARS OF THE POPULARS: Fluff was a Pops presenter from day, er, two, and did it more or less every month for the show’s first six years, though sadly the only one that still exists is Boxing Day 1967, as seen on BBC4 of course, and also here with an extra bonus bit of the recording of a trailer, where Fluff’s the only one trying to hold things together. He left the rota at Christmas 1969, but came back for the anniversaries, and here’s a fabulous clip with two of our greatest ever DJs together.

TUESDAY 25thAPRIL

BBC1

16.30 Blue Peter
One of the best things about this wedding is that it’s at a time when Blue Peter is on the air, as both Charles and Di and Andy and Fergie tied the knot when they were off on the expedition, so this is the first chance they’ve got to go nuts about it since Anne and Mark back in 1973. And going nuts about it they are, today including Helen meeting Elizabeth Emmanuel to talk about dresses and Barney baking a wedding cake. And that’s why this wedding is relevant.

BBC2

22.20 The Great British Wedding
Invariably the royal nuptials has seen every channel on telly dig out its wedding-related programming, of which this is probably the best, the montage of clips from various documentaries over the years, which includes some interesting stuff but, as we’ve said before, it helps if you really like Mark Benton, as it’s basically an illustrated monologue more than a clip show. Amiable enough, though.

WEDNESDAY 27th APRIL

BBC1

16.30 Blue Peter
The festivities are also far too important to be covered in only one episode, so even though it’s a Bank Holiday week we still get two. This one’s going to come from Westminster Abbey to boot. Highlight last week, by the way, was the return of our favourite kind of Blue Peter feature, the ones that revolve around the presenters’ failings, as the delightfully titled Barf With Barney is attempting to help him combat his repeated motion sickness. Also, Andy’s on Celebrity Total Wipeout on Easter Monday.

BBC4

21.00 If Walls Could Talk – The History of the Home
It’s the bedroom tonight, which of course you don’t actually have until you grow up and move into your own home, before that it’s just your room, plain and simple, and you do everything in it. Indeed the day we were able to expand our Radio Times collection beyond those four walls was quite a momentous moment for us.

THURSDAY 28thAPRIL

BBC1

21.00 Rock and Chips
We don’t how many of these there are going to be, but we’d prefer it if John Sullivan were to write a proper six-part series because then you could have light and shade and you wouldn’t have to shoehorn Baby Denzil, Baby Trigger, Baby Boycie and so on into every single instalment, which just slows the whole thing down. But another one-off is all we’re getting for now, even though it sounds more or less the same as the first two.

BBC2

21.00 Sir Bobby Charlton – Football Icon
We saw a portrayal of Bobby earlier in the week and now here he is in real life in this biography, which as well as featuring a chat with the man himself also features the likes of Franz Beckenbaur and Eusebio. Bobby was one of the all time great players, but we think there’s also going to be a look at how he seemed to prove the theory that great players don’t make good managers, as he famously flopped at Preston and, as we recall it once being said, was soon back banging on the doors at Old Trafford asking for a job, any job, except manager.

BBC4

19.30 Top of the Pops
So these are currently being edited to fit into easy-to-schedule half hour slots, but it’s been done fairly successfully and if you didn’t know, we doubt you’d notice. We know some people are saying that it ruins the whole thing and they may as well just shows compilations, but there’s still much to enjoy and we doubt any TOTP2 would have shown that, cough, powerful Pan’s People dance to Isaac Hayes, the hilarious so-called “video” for Save Your Kisses For Me (of which the highlight was Martin Lee’s ridiculous face at two minutes) and DLT earnestly calling Smokie “a consistently good-sounding group”. In fact we wonder when people stopped referring to record as “sounds”, as in that link, Travis also referred to both “a tremendous sound” and “the number seventeen sound”. A bit of history tonight as it’s Pan’s People’s last ever performance. If they show it, natch.

ROYAL WEDDING DAY

BBC1

08.00 The Royal Wedding
Sadly not clearing its throat with a Bugs Bunny cartoon, here’s Huw and the gang to guide us through proceedings, which we’re sure they’ll do in highly dignified style. It’s all very well the Daily Mail counting up how people the Beeb are using to cover it, but it’s surely exactly what the Beeb should be doing in their eyes, not that we expect logic from that paper. They’re on until half one, then after a break for the news it’s back on at two until four, and then there’s highlights tonight, and the big fun will of course be seeing all the big Beeb names popping up in minor roles, like Election night.

BBC2

23.00 The Review Show
This is nothing to do with the wedding but it’s a “special” nevertheless, as Kirsty Walk is joined by a panel of experts to wring hands about the current state of telly and how it’s all gone to the dogs, which might be a bit depressing but at least Mark Lawson’s not on it talking rubbish.

ITV

08.30 The Royal Wedding
Everyone’s predicting ITV will be thrashed today, which is in some ways a shame because if you think back to the golden age of ITV, you’d have thought it would be perfect for their audience, those people of a certain age, like Creamguide’s grandmother, who would sit and watch the channel all day. Unfortunately nobody watches ITV all day now because it’s so bad, but this used to be the kind of thing they’d excel at. Still, we’re thrilled to see Phil Schofield anchoring proceedings as we’ve always liked Phil and he’s certainly got the skills of live broadcasting to make an excellent job of it. The whole thing’s also on Sky News too but we don’t care about that, especially as the whole thing will probably feature a continuous obtrusive banner telling us to watch on HD because it’s better. Because it doesn’t feature continuous obtrusive banners telling us to watch on HD, mostly.

BBC4

21.00 Roy Orbison – The Big O In Britain
22.00 Roy Orbison Live in 1965
22.25 Roy Orbison and Friends – A Black and White Night

This has all been on before, though it’s getting an outing now as he would have been 75 today, and it’s worth a look as the nation did seem to take Roy to their collective hearts and, perhaps like Bilko and MASH, he remained consistently popular in the UK when he was somewhat forgotten in his home country, as the first show will illustrate. In fact he was popular all over Europe as the middle show is recorded in Holland. The latter show is also in monochrome, but for arty reasons as it was recorded in 1988.

BBC Radio 2

08.00 Chris Evans
10.30 Ken Bruce

There are reports on Radio 1, too, plus the suitably authoritative John Suchet covering it on Classic FM, but if you can’t get to a telly today we reckon the most fun will be had on Radio 2 as, first, Evans is going to host a street party and Chas out of Chas and Dave is going to lead the singing, and it sounds like the kind of harmless silliness Evans does so well. Then it’s Uncle Ken who’ll be linking up with the Abbey and playing suitably regal music, and after it’s all over it’ll be Tony Blackburn banging out the hits all afternoon. Ace.

BBC Radio 4

10.00 The Royal Wedding
But if you want the most refined and suitably dignified coverage, it’s got to be the Home Service, especially as Ed Stourton’s somehow wangled his way to be the only person allowed to broadcast from inside the Abbey itself. It’s also on Five Live too, but that might be a bit too informal for some people, some of the participants may even be wearing hats.

So that’s the wedding day, and as we’ve said, even if you don’t like what it stands for, it’ll still be exciting as a spectacle on its own terms, we reckon. Don’t forget to stay tuned to www.tvcreamtest.co.uk this week for more wedding-related gubbins. And the festivities don’t end there as we’ve got another Bank Holiday next week and the all the pomp and splendour of a referendum. The hits keep on coming, and if you want to know what’s happening first, subscribe here

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