96. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine

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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?

While the BBC was pulling up the drawbridge on traditional sketch show talent, the crop of comedians at ITV weren’t  having a particularly happy time either. With Cannon and Ball already virtually out of the door, the axe also fell on Bobby Davro. He’d had a series on peaktime Saturday night ITV, albeit under various titles, since 1985, but the run of Davro in the spring of 1991 was the last. Like Les Dennis he’d tried to cultivate a younger appeal by essaying impressions of the Pet Shop Boys, Paul Gascoigne, Sinead O’Connor and Alexei Sayle, but these failed to convince. Oddly, though, Davro managed to continue his career by signing a new contract with the BBC. This was, however, as a game show host, a career already being followed by Les Dennis on Family Fortunes. Meanwhile Russ Abbott went on to enjoy some success as a dramatic actor in the Granada drama September Song. Cannon and Ball enjoyed much less success in the nineties – clearly as they could only be seen as part of a double-act and as such they weren’t offered much, if any, new television work.

Some comedians attempted to reinvent themselves. The axing of Blankety Blank, Opportunity Knocks and The Les Dawson Show – all within a few months of each other – had left Dawson without any TV work. Hence he was assigned a brand new BBC1 game show, beginning in March 1991, called Fast Friends. The format involved two contestants on stage and a small audience of fifty people. The contestants would run around the audience trying to find someone who could answer Les’ questions, along the way building up a team of five people. Les seemed unsure about the programme’s format – “It’s not going to be easy. I think it’ll take a couple of weeks to get into it. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine – we’ll only have a couple of days’ rehearsal before we start shooting.” Not quite the words of a man certain of a hit, though he did say that “It should be really good fun”. He was also keen to distinguish his new vehicle from his best known show, emphasising “This is a family show, not a jokey quiz – any humour is going to come from the contestants … it’s a refreshing change to be able to give away something decent like a holiday.”

In the event, Fast Friends failed to make it to a second series and within a few weeks had been rescheduled to Friday weeks. The show was the wrong vehicle for a veteran comedian like Dawson, who couldn’t help but seem out of place amidst the young, energetic contestants running around the studio. The title sequence summed it up – a bunch of twentysomethings dancing to the uptempo theme tune, interspersed with brief shots of Dawson, in electric blue jacket, attempting to join in and looking about a hundred years old. Dawson had succeeded on Blankety Blank as it had been a rickety, creaking vehicle perfect for Les to send up. Here the show was too slick and soulless and really needed a younger, more fluent figure in charge. Fortunately, Les had fatherhood and serious acting to keep him busy for the next couple of years, before his untimely death in June 1993.

Perhaps it would have made more sense if Dawson had swapped roles with the host of the BBC’s next attempt at a Saturday night quiz. Andrew O’Connor had been in the fringes of primetime for a couple of years. He’d most famously been a participant on Copy Cats, the series that launched Bobby Davro to stardom, and he’d also hosted a number of children’s programmes. Now he was to get his own vehicle with the game show One To Win. On its launch, most critics drew attention to the way it appeared to be a retread of Bob’s Full House, only without much of Monkhouse’s charm. There were obvious similarities between the two, as they both revolved around bingo, and the only concession to modernity was a phone-in question for viewers to enter. O’Connor was constricted by the format, and he may well have been more at home on the more youthful and energetic Fast Friends, while Dawson could have added a wry twist to One To Win. As it stood, though, One To Winalso failed to make it to a second series.

Next Monday: NTV brings you … empty rooms!