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Look Who’s Talking

SONOROUSLY DULL chattery with DEREK “MR AND MRS” BATEY jawing with various D listers, including THE KRANKIES and VINCE HILL. The audience was made up totally of pensioners, and exhibited ten times more life than those they were watching on stage.

11 Comments

11 Comments

  1. gman

    April 17, 2010 at 11:48 pm

    It did have a wonderful theme tune, though. TV Ark has a closing credits clip, featuring an audience of about 20 old women applauding some bloke with a moustache who just sits there and grins smugly.

  2. Arthur Nibble

    April 18, 2010 at 9:53 pm

    A Border production. Loved watching it solely for the start and end credits! The bloke grinning smugly in the clip is David Lodge, who used to be on Spike Milligan’s ‘Q8’ blurting “I was in ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ “, a 1955 war film!

  3. televisualcabbage

    April 19, 2010 at 10:26 pm

    Still, it was miles better the Cash in the Attic…

    And that’s saying something!

  4. cynic

    February 13, 2013 at 6:55 pm

    I doubt many people today have the faintest idea which acts were ‘hot’ at the time they appeared on the show starting more than forty years ago. Actually the guests were not D list but often A list and exclusives. What Derek Batey achieved at Border with very limited resources was astounding.

  5. Steven Oliver

    February 20, 2013 at 7:03 pm

    Derek always made sure that on Look Who’s Talking the real star would be that week’s special guest and many of the guests who appeared on the show considered it an honour to do so. He was quite content to introduce the show and the guest, and then sit back and enjoy. It may have appeared as if the guest was just happening to be passing through Carlisle and was invited in for a chat, but that was part of its appeal.

    By the way, the first guest to appear on Look Who’s Talking in 1972 was Ken Dodd. Hardly D-list…!

  6. THX 1139

    June 14, 2016 at 8:42 am

    I remember watching Roy Hudd on this and he was making jokes about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, about the size of their engagement ring and so on. All went well, until the continuity announcer told us over the end credits that this programme had been recorded before the death of Richard Burton today. Heigh ho.

  7. Glenn Aylett

    March 3, 2018 at 3:03 pm

    It featured Little and Large just before they appeared in their first series and Joan Collins appeared once, which was a major coup for Border.
    Living in the Border region, it was amazing how the station kept going at times as they were always flirting with bankruptcy and a strike in 1982 nearly put them out of business. However, they did have a lot of viewer loyalty like most ITV regions then and their shows were well liked by the viewers in the Border region. OTOH a lot of their output was cheaply made and parochial, and hated by younger viewers, and Border always seemed to shut down at 11 on weekdays well into the eighties.

  8. Richardpd

    January 13, 2024 at 4:54 pm

    It’s interesting how some of the smaller ITV regions managed to keep ticking over.

  9. Glenn Aylett

    January 14, 2024 at 10:55 am

    @ Richardpd, Border managed to keep going due to not spending very much, not taking risks and not having any commercial competition until Channel 4 opened in 1982. I’d imagine the station would see a Bond premiere, a big Coronation St story and a new Benny Hill Show as a good way to keep the lights on as Border could jack up its advertising rates and keep the lights on for a few more months. Also a more adventurous management after 1982 saw Border establish itself in the field of children’s and youth programming, the station started to make a decent profit, and the ancient start up sequences and elderly presentation team were phased out after 1985.

  10. Richardpd

    January 14, 2024 at 12:52 pm

    I remember the odd children’s show by them in the 1980s, & Mr & Mrs being networked would have brought in some income.

    From what I’ve heard ITV had a bonanza season of films in the 1980s, when the rules on screening films after their cinema release were relaxed to 3 years, so a 2 year backlog of films were screened to much fanfare. I imagine the regions could charge high rates for advertising during these to bring in some much needed income.

  11. Glenn Aylett

    January 14, 2024 at 7:26 pm

    ITV knew a big film premiere could attract up to 29 million viewers and the smaller regions knew something like the premiere of Jaws( 23 million viewers in 1981) would mean they could jack up their advertising rates and show advertising that was more lucrative than a kitchen centre in Workington.

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