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Your Wednesday Night In...

Your Wednesday Night In… December 1988


Wednesday, 7th December 1988

PICK OF THE DAY

7.35pm DOCTOR WHO, BBC1
“We have none of this jazz whereof you speak, Doctor, but I think you will like this.” Last ep of the show’s 25th anniversary story, ‘Silver Nemesis’, sees Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy at the peak of his powers when it comes to pushing buttons unconvincingly on sci-fi apparatus. And, much as Vince in Grange Hill suddenly went nutty for all things American after a family holiday over there, the Time Lord is now crazy about jazz. Straight blowing jazz! Hammocked between Wogan and Rockliffe’s Folly, later in the evening would see Desmond ‘Desmond’s weepies’ Wilcox reuniting with ‘The Boy David’, making it a heroic line-up on BBC1. “It surely is, honey. It surely is!” Sad, though, that that birthday cake wasn’t written into the plot. “H’Ace! Omega and Rassilon hid the arrow inside a layer of time-dilating marzipan!”/ “Ace!”

ALSO SHOWING:

10.15pm CLUB CULTURE, Channel 4
C4 append the word ‘culture’ to something, thereby turning it into a subject suitable for Proper Arts Coverage. Here, that portends to the new thing that’s known ‘House Music’ or ‘Hip Hop’. Yazz, S’Express and Cold Cut pop by to help explain.

5.00pm THE PERFECT PICKLE PROGRAMME, BBC2
Have at thee, those who would characterise BBC2 in the late Eighties as a middle class enclave! Here comes the ‘David’ imbued double-act of Davilia David and David Mabey to tell you that pickling isn’t just for onions, you know! Tonight they’re off to the Far East, to investigate its pickling tradition which means – boke! – pickled grasshopper and pickled salted crab! Also there’s food-writer Colin Spencer – ‘a passionate pickler’ (a phrase which means you can somehow just imagine his favoured type of knitwear) – who’s here to show you how to combine some of those exotic flavours with the produce of a traditional English garden.

 

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    December 5, 2018 at 9:50 pm

    As Daphne and Celeste asked this year, “Whatever happened to Yazz?”

    Surely it was exposure to Stubby Kaye that turned the Doctor onto jazz? Or had that not happened yet?

    • Glenn Aylett

      December 15, 2019 at 7:11 pm

      Whatever happened to Bomb The Bass, D Mob and the like who seemed to be briefly popular at the end of the eighties and never heard of again?
      On a different note, Sly Mc Coy’s second series as the Doctor was a big improvement on his first and for the loyal few that were still watching, it was highly enjoyable. Never knew Sophie Aldred was 26 when she took on the role of Ace, I imagined she was about 20.

      • richardpd

        December 15, 2019 at 11:39 pm

        Popular music really seemed have a high turnover of popular acts in that period,

        I agree that Doctor Who had managed to find it’s feet again in it’s 25th series after the shaky run the year before.

        Don’t forget Sophie Aldred was presenting Corners at the same time.

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