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Late Late Breakfast Show, The

A television first - not. They did neon logos on Sorry.BOMBASTIC TEATIME behemoth which sprawled across half a decade before the BBC decided to “cancel this and all future editions of the programme. Tonight, instead of The Late Late Breakfast Show and Every Second Counts, we’re now showing the feature film One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing”. Noel would helm proceedings from a variety of none-more-80s pastel sofas, introducing, variously: MIKE SMITH on location at the sight of some “amazing stunt, never before attempted on British television”, usually involving stock-car racing, fighting the world’s tallest fire, or stock-car racing in the middle of the world’s tallest fire; The Hit Squad, secret camera stuntery wherein a man’s office gets rearranged while his back is turned; The Golden Egg Awards, basically a round-up of all the week’s “bloopers” including, one week, the time Phillip Schofield took the whole of the network off the air (Phil, gamely, showed up to collect the award in, of course, jacket and jeans); big guests like The Bee Gees, Duran Duran (who pretended to be commissionaires, so that all the audience members had their tickets signed by the band, only then had to give them in) and Phil Collins; viewers’ letters of the standard of “what’s that brown cakey slab that seems to float in the sky on Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ video, is it a piece of toast?”; the never-ending search for Mr Puniverse; and of course Give It A Whirl, wherein one poor sod on the other end of a phone would be encouraged to try some zany physical stunt selected by the Whirly Wheel. Usually involving something “never before attempted on British television” – or again, after Michael Lush. JOHN PEEL was involved during the early days, before falling out with Noel after – yup – a stock-car racing stunt went wrong. Show boasted textbook Edmonds titles: Noel is woken from his slumbers by a Noel-shaped alarm clock, “flies” across breakfast table covered in Noel-faced objects, then arrives in studio via convoluted journey in Noel-branded ultra-fast ultra-shiny transportation including helicopter, sports car, speedboat and assorted “television firsts”.

16 Comments

16 Comments

  1. David Pascoe

    December 18, 2009 at 10:21 am

    It was two stock car racing stunts that nearly did for Peel. The one where the car nearly landed on him and the second one which he watched from a safe distance but after observing the car flip over, he cut back to the studio with a horrified “Bloody hell!”

  2. Chris Jones

    December 20, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    This was ace though wasn’t it? A genuine ‘Monday morning at school’ talking point. The thing was surprised me was the ‘brand new show’ that was launched a year or so later…’The Saturday roadshow’. No-one batted an eyelid.

  3. johnnyboy

    December 21, 2009 at 1:19 am

    This was, indeed, ace. Fantastic early evening TV telly. It was his ‘click’ with the fingers that made me look around, just to see if there were any film crews. foly artists, vfx technicians,asist directors and a big pink, f*** off blobby character.
    Thankfully, all of that did happen.*

    *ok, not.

  4. Richard Davies

    December 20, 2010 at 10:30 pm

    One Abba’s last ever TV performances was on the LLBS.

    One stunt featured was someone jumping over many double decker buses on the world’s smallest motorbike.

    Only at the last minute it was revealed that the buses were Matchbox toys.

    Years later I got to meet the Dad of the bloke who did the stunt, who collects & restores old cars.

    The bike was built as an apprentice project for the family’s light engineering company.

    They had kept the ramps & buses from the stunt.

  5. Great Bustard

    April 15, 2011 at 6:50 pm

    There’s an episode from 1986 on YouTube at the moment with guests Victor Kiam, Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis, all doing shtick.

    I was surprised at the amount of very rude innuendo that Noel got away with, and also that the telephone number was the same as Swap Shop’s. The Whirly Wheel stunt has a man nearly drowning in a fast flowing river. It was an accident waiting to happen, this show, but we trusted Noel at the time.

  6. Richard16378

    April 16, 2011 at 12:40 am

    Reading about some other risky stunts that went wrong on the LLBR, I’m little surprised that things weren’t given greater scrutiny before it was too late…

    It’s maybe telling that Noel avoided anything as potentially dangerous in any other of his Saturday night shows.

  7. Martin M

    April 16, 2011 at 5:49 pm

    More dangerous than AIDS according to the schoolyard joke of the time…but I can definately recall people rushing home on a Saturday teatime to watch this.

    Culture Club appearing on it was a huge ‘Monday morning at school’ talking point too…

  8. Palitoy

    April 17, 2011 at 2:36 am

    Victor Lewis Smith (in a move both paradoxically phil-and-misanthropic) kept the Michael Lush incident alive in his press and TV fulmications and – according to Keith Allen ( :() – in the early twenty-first century attempted a documentary focusing upon the surviving Lush family and their recollections of how THAT event was handled. Coincided with ‘Deal Or No Deal’ becoming a ratings sensation and the commission was cancelled.

  9. Richard16378

    April 17, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    For most of the LLBS’s run it was must see TV for me & my brother.

    The Curse Of Noel Edmonds did go a bit into what happened, but it’s been ages since I saw it & can’t remember the full details.

  10. rebecca brown

    December 4, 2012 at 12:36 pm

    my dad was mr cotton bud on the late late breakfast show , mr puniverse he came 3rd, and my dad died 10 yrs ago i have been searching for the footage of this show for yrs could anyone help me at all with this as i have grown up girls who would ;love to see thier grandad in this show PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP IM BEGGING

  11. Gavin

    December 5, 2012 at 10:20 am

    Was it Cotton Bud Wrestling? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cM5ClRa8tU

  12. THX 1139

    July 7, 2014 at 8:19 pm

    Another episode, edited a bit, is on YouTube which might be the most 1980s thing ever that didn’t include Five Star. It’s an attempt to break the fastest journey from London to Paris, so of course they recruited Leo Sayer and Glenn Gregory to have a go, with Suzanne Dando as “Squadron Leader”, plus Leo’s flight was piloted by Nikki Lauda and Sandra Dickinson is the reporter in Paris (Mike not available?). Interesting use of music. Naturally the record for jumping in an out of a pair of Y-fronts is featured in a cross-Channel contest with a Gallic he-man representing France.

  13. THX 1139

    June 6, 2016 at 8:11 pm

    Yet another two episodes now on YT, I watched the ’85 one, first in the new series according to Noel. So much that makes you cringe with the benefit of hindsight, especially the way they emphasise the danger of the Whirly Wheel stunts (a “death slide” off the top of the GLC), but also the extensive use of Eddie Kidd who Noel describes as Britain’s safest motorcyclist. He did win a lawnmower race by cutting every corner on the course, however. Bonnie Tyler was the musical guest, bet you can’t guess what she sang, rather appropriate as it was the theme tune to another TV show ended by a deadly accident.

  14. Richard16378

    June 6, 2016 at 11:41 pm

    Oddly enough I was looking at some LLBS clips on You Tube last week, mostly the car stunts that nearly took out John Peel & had another car land badly that should have had some alarm bells ringing at TV Centre.

    Sandra Dickinson co-presented that segment.

    Shark Polo was one stunt on Give Us a Whirl, which Noel tried to wind the wheel back once so it would land on it.

    Another feature was the see how many people you can get in a shower cubical, with clubs taking part, including the King Kevin Club, the membership of which were all called Kevin.

  15. THX 1139

    June 7, 2016 at 10:46 am

    I’d just like to see a clip of the search for Mister Poseur again…

  16. Tom Ronson

    March 30, 2022 at 1:49 am

    Nolly’s had a fascinating career, all told. You had the ‘sexy’ Radio One DJ (according to Oh Boy! magazine, at least) phase, followed by his kids’ telly supremacy (my preferred incarnation). Then he made a seamless shift to grown up telly, before the Michael Lush incident derailed his career for a bit. Then he came back with Telly Addicts, which begat Noel’s Addicts, which begat Noel’s House Party, which begat Mr fucking Blobby… and apparently overnight, Edmonds became a widely-disliked national irritant whose misguided attempt at broadening the Blobby franchise to incorporate theme parks suggested massive loss of plot. Hoofed off the BBC after ratings slipped, crawled back into the nation’s affections via Radio Two (where he was really quite good), rewarded with Deal or No Deal… and was promptly quietly filed away again after going sufficiently bonkers (cosmic ordering and a pet counselling service being two of his less advisable gaffes). It would make a cracking film, or even a mini-series…

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