Also:
- It's Saturday Night
- 2. An autograph before you go
- 3. A new kind of game show
- 4. A rising exasperation with the quantity of dirt
- 5. The whole thing suddenly fell apart
- 6. Synthetic propensity
- 7. It was destined to be an anti-climax
- 8. This is your show now
- 9. The awesome scale of our wastefulness
- 10. Hands up those who couldn't care less
- 11. Together We’ll Be Ok
- 12. Decide the shape of ITV in the 1980s
- 13. Alan is too commercial
- 14. It worked like a dream
- 15. Older men, doing school boy tricks
- 16. Killing the Golden Goose
- 17. People love us to be sexy
- 18. The manure is worth more than the cattle
- 19. They were big in the States and we noted that
- 20. I’m still aggressive and I’m still handing out the insults
- 21. A new style of lunatic humour
- 22. The Habitat-bean-bag-hessian-wallpaper brigade
- 23. Thoroughly sinful
- 24. All carrots should be scraped, sliced and cooked
- 25. Back then it was radical stuff
- 26. Whatever they do, we can do it better
- 27. You'll have to take us as you find us
- 28. Entertainment that keeps on the move
- 29. It's the public that has to pay
- 30. The last we saw of either of them was their sad faces
- 31. Just shoot the bastard
- 32. Britain could clearly be facing its darkest hour
- 33. Any enthusiasm we may have had for continuing discussions is waning
- 34. It was considered by LWT and then put in a bottom drawer
- 35. Watch the redoubtable Terry take off
- 36. I thought it might be terrible and I wouldn’t enjoy it at all
- 37. Kamikaze Mastermind
- 38. We haven’t moved into luxury
- 39. We are investing in people
- 40. Delivered impeccably
- 41. He has to allow you to do your bit
- 42. All the anticipation of the great emotive point
- 43. If you want Russ Abbot to do it, then you have to accept me and my ideas
- 44. Let’s get straight into this
- 45. Unedifying Greed
- 46. We’ve got the fucking lot!
- 47. Scope for humour and danger
- 48. Pure Megablast
- 49. There’s lots of killing, but not much else
- 50. I wanted to make sure it was going to be disastrous
- 51. Oh dear – Auntie’s playing bingo!
- 52. A Shrivelled Little Thing
- 53. I shouldn’t have accepted it
- 54. We would be the spoilsports
- 55. The Most Sexless Person In Television
- 56. They’d have strung me up if I hadn’t chosen him
- 57. Is there some way to play with the internal constituent parts?
- 58. The most important entertainment programme of my time
- 59. The plumply pretty female duo
- 60. The audience just sort of started to freeze on him
- 61. More pilots than British Airways
- 62. There's going to come a time when you'll have to go to the BBC
- 63. A slightly pretentious manifesto
- 64. Things Look Very Precarious
- 65. It’s no good doing all the same old people all the time
- 66. That’s just not funny Bobby, it's corny - just don’t do that
- 67. Well bottom’s not funny
- 68. We Are The Funnymen
- 69. The powers that be listened to Denis
- 70. Stretchers never go up stairs
- 71. I was in obscurity until this series
- 72. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me
- 73. There’s such a passion for nostalgia right now
- 74. I Heard A Seat In The Stalls Go ‘Gerdonk!'
- 75. This is your show, folks, and I do mean you
- 76. There’s good news for perplexed fans of 3-2-1!
- 77. Taking on Blind Date would be a real challenge
- 78. You wanna bet on it?
- 79. The yarns worked their tried and tested magic
- 80. The Charge-And-Shout Brigade
- 81. I sat for a moment in silence, then turned in my chair and left the stage
- 82. We just weren't allowed into UK terrestrial television
- 83. Beadle’s A Prick
- 84. The interviewer always has to know when it's best to keep his or her mouth shut
- 85. Can you come up with a good solution for the Murder Weekend mystery?
- 86. He's not a goody- goody hero
- 87. The Sexism, The Dolly Birds, The Catchphrases
- 88. The feel of Saturday night
- 89. 1990 Who would employ an ex-alky with lowered self-esteem
- 90. It were a right smack in the face
- 91. Look Straight Into My Eyes And Everything Will Be Alright, That's A Promise
- 92. That's the last thing I was expecting, Jim
- 93. The characters and situations are real
- 94. Oh Man, There Go All My Women Fans
- 95. A Double Order of Talent
- 96. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine
- 97. NTV brings you ... empty rooms!
- 98. You’re BBC, you shouldn’t be here
- 99. If this doesn’t work out, we’re both snookered!
- 100. The humour of Beadle comes through humiliating people!
- 101. To allow such bilge on TV is an insult to the audience
- 102. Like a cup of cold sick
- 103. A litre of gin, ecstasy and crack cocaine
- 104. A reliable tent pole for Saturday evenings
- 105. It is in the cutlery drawer
- 106. Welcome to the new Saturday night
- 107. Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game
- 108. The programme has done extremely badly and will be dropped after this series
- 109. Building the excitement and tension to a crescendo
- 110. He gives us our spirit of unity; we’d all like to strangle him
- 111. The worst programme currently on terrestrial television
- 112. I award the city state of Milton Keynes 100 credits!
- 113. There’s nothing that makes people scream, ‘Did you see that?’
- 114. It was of a standard frankly well below what the public would want
- 115. Waxing An Ape Is My Ambition
- 116. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even
- 117. The penalty shoot-out is the greatest ever endgame
- 118. 200 black boxes are strapped to the back of a cross-section of the nation
- 119. Better For You, Better For All Of Us
- 120. I mean who on earth thought that was a good idea?
- 121. I’m sure the tune was in there somewhere
- 122. This Time, You Decide
- 123. King of trash, that’s me
- 124. It’s about rejection now
- 125. They lost what Popstars was all about
- 126. Win the ads
- 127. A name in search of a series
- 128. Getting grief from the papers
- 129. I’m so pleased to be back on television
- 130. Saturday nights haven't been this interesting for 10 years
- 131. It’s the Usual Nonsense
- 132. The trip of a lifetime
- Epilogue: Why Haven't You Written a Series of Articles on Tuesday Night Telly?
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While OTT and Sin On Saturday had little in common, there were some similarities between the two programmes beyond sharing the same day of the week. Not only were they scheduled at the end of the night, they were both broadcast live and represented attempts at new programming formats. Most significantly though, both used upcoming comedians from the alternative scene in minor roles to detrimental effect. The appropriation of alternative comedy by mainstream television in the early 1980s felt similar to the absorption of northern comedians that had taken place just a few years earlier. However, while Cannon and Ball and Little and Large translated well into the heartlands of Saturday nights, the iconoclastic nature of comedians such as Sayle and Coltrane required more than just the removal of expletives. On 11 April 1981, BBC1 had already made a tentative attempt to introduce alternative comedy to Saturday nights, via a special repeat screening of an episode of Not The Nine O’Clock News (in honour of the series winning a BAFTA).
The arrival of Jasper Carrott at the BBC proved a happy evolution for both parties. Carrott had come out of the 1970s’ wave of folk comedians, which included Billy Connolly and Mike Harding. Loved by students, Carrott’s material had consisted mainly of “shaggy dog stories” and the occasional song. Recognising the popularity of comedy with a sharper, more politicised edge, Carrott used his arrival at the BBC in 1982 as an opportunity to partially re-invent himself as an affiliate of this new wave. He enlisted topical comedy writers Ian Hislop and Duncan Campbell and their work resulted in Labour politician Michael Meacher suing the BBC for slander. This new, edgier material was complimented by the inclusion of performers such as Chris Barrie (later to find success on Spitting Image and Saturday Live and fame with the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf) and Emma Thompson (who would, one year later, appear on Granada Television’s Alfresco, alongside many of alternative comedy’s most significant players).
Carrott’s Lib was first broadcast on 9 October 1982, satiating BBC1’s desire to introduce progressive comedy into Saturday nights, albeit via a much-loved and popular comedian. “In seven hours of television, only two minutes have been cut out,” commented Carrott of his previous work. “After all, if a part of the audience is offended, they will no longer be on your side. And a comedian needs all the support he can get”. The BBC referred to its latest acquisition as “unique and challenging” – words designed to mark Carrott out from the rest of the corporation’s Saturday night fare. Audience reaction was predictably mixed, but in the main, positive. “All carrots should be scraped, sliced and cooked, and when this is not being done they should be kept buried in the soil,” remarked Radio Times reader J Keay. “Why must a talented comedian sink to such obscenity in his perversion of Blankety Blank?” asked SW Sackett in reference to a skit broadcast on 30 October. However, Diana Harvey-Williams’ assertion that “Jasper Carrott was absolutely hilarious … My husband and I haven’t laughed so hard for so long for ages,” was more representative of the reaction the programme received. The biggest indicator of the show’s success was perhaps Carrott’s ability to attract the ire of The Sun newspaper. A protracted spat between the two parties served only to bolster the credibility of both Carrott and the BBC.
Coupled with the less contentious, but similarly progressive (in that it openly encouraged new writers) Three Of A Kind, the BBC was coming to terms with the fact that if alternative comedy was ever to have a significant impact upon Saturday night entertainment it could not be shoehorned into mainstream formats or included as an extra element to otherwise traditional entertainment programmes. It had to be considered in its own right. If the corporation could get this right, then a whole new seam of talent would open up. Given the failures in late-night programming on both the BBC and ITV in 1982, this was a tantalising opportunity.
Glenn Aylett
January 29, 2018 at 8:53 pm
This might not have been the BBC’s most golden era, as ratings were falling and ITV was at its most bullish, but fair play to the BBC for noticing that not everyone wanted comedians like Little and Large and Cannon and Ball on Saturday nights. Carrott was the right man for the time, mildly alternative and risque, but not as alienating to a mainstream audience as someone like Ben Elton, and his career at the BBC proved to be very successful, lasting well into the nineties and spawning two successful spin off shows. Also in 1985 Kenny Everett was moved to Saturdays with considerable success, and proved a contrast to ITV’s stale comedy acts like Kate and Ted Robbins and Cannon and Ball( well past their best then).