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Your Wednesday Night In… April 1988


Wednesday, 27th April 1988

PICK OF THE DAY

7pm WOGAN, BBC1
Sadly viewers in Scotland were denied Terry’s 500th jamboree celebration episode (they got a programme about Glasgow’s Empire Exhibition instead).  But the question must be – by what measurement is this El Tel’s half-millennium?  Is the count accrued purely from the modern-era of Wogan, or does it include the early Saturday-only incarnation?  Noel Edmonds would never have stood for such ambiguity. Anyway, the line up on this Wednesday night is befitting the show, insomuch as it’s rather a mixed bag.  There’s Christopher Reeve, David Puttnam and Carmencita Henderman. That perennial Shepherd’s Bush audience member seat-shuffler would have been fairly audible in this episode, we wager.

ALSO SHOWING:

5.10pm RUNNING SCARED, BBC1
…or “Shitting Scared” as it was known in some households, principally due to the inclusion of Christopher Ellison and rough accents that very much alarmed viewers of a middle-class disposition. In this final episode, Tony Caunter wears pastel slacks and James Cosmo wields a massive walkie talkie.

7.35pm THE CLOTHES SHOW, BBC1
We make no apology for returning to The Clothes Show, even though we wanged on about it just a couple of weeks ago.  It’s included here due to the Coia clause.  Yes, everyone’s favourite blouson-wearing Paul fetches up in a Scottish-themed episode.  Our favourite moment in the career of Paul Coia? That episode of the largely-pre-recorded Sky One quiz, Spellbound, in which pre-recorded Paul looked to link to live Paul to conduct the viewer phone-in bit.  However, live Paul was off sick, so as pre-recorded Paul made a dash to enter the booth from which live Paul spoke to the nation, we cut to a live Debbie Greenwood jamming the booth shut to “keep Paul out”.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    April 25, 2018 at 10:40 am

    I could never tell if Paul Coia was delighted or wearied at hearing “floccinaucinihilipilification” on Catchword for the hundredth time.

  2. Richard16378

    April 25, 2018 at 1:22 pm

    Did Terry also have a late night version of Wogan on a weeknight before the Saturday Parky replacement.

    The count must also be confused by the amount of times he was replaced by Selina Scott, Sue Lawley, Kenneth Williams, Ben Elton etc.

    I remember Running Scared was quite iconic, with the Kate Bush theme, that music box roll, use of a frying pan & cooking oil as improvised weapons, gangsters that can’t drive an automatic & Charles Elkin’s search for his “bins”.

    • Glenn Aylett

      April 26, 2018 at 8:08 pm

      @ Richard 16378, he did and when Michael Grade took over BBC One, he offered Wogan a deal to leave Radio 2 to present an evening chat show. Also in 1980, Wogan had a Saturday evening chatshow, Weekend Wogan, which was like a television version of his radio show and featured Dallas a lot.
      Running Scared originally aired in the spring of 1986 and this would have been a repeat. All I seem to remember is some car racing about in the credits and Running Up That Hill being used as the theme tune.

  3. Glenn Aylett

    April 29, 2018 at 5:39 pm

    I used to think Running Up That Hill was a masterpiece of a song, and certainly got Dame Kate back in the limelight, but hearing it now, it’s bloated, hasn’t aged that well and lacks the charm of Kate Bush’s first phase of her career and songs like The Sensual World from later on. Still not a bad song for driving fast to, but nowhere near as good as Cloudbusting, the highlight of The Hounds of Love, or Wow.

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