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?
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1984 was a year of change in front of the camera. Simon Cadell was replaced in BBC1’s Saturday evening nostalgic sitcom Hi-de-Hi! by David Griffin, while Les Dennis and Dustin Gee made the transition from supporting roles in Russ Abbot’s Madhouse to their very own series for the BBC. The Laughter Show began at 6.30pm on Saturday 7 April, with viewers invited to “join those two brilliant comedy impressionists Les Dennis and Dustin Gee along with comedian Roy Jay, that ‘Slither Hither, Spook Spook Man’ for television’s fastest and snappiest laughter and music show.”
The duo was also joined in their first series by resident guests Hale and Pace (then perhaps best known for their very loose affiliation with the rising crop of alternative comedians), and the show developed a blend of impressions and slapstick that wasn’t far removed from the kind of comedy their colleagues at the Madhouse were continuing to churn out. It was a hit (just one year later it would reach over 15 million viewers), although never a critical one. In fact, in years to come, the show would become, for many, the ultimate representation of all that was outdated and irrelevant about mainstream British comedy. However, the its trademark ending (in which Gee and Dennis, via the magic of Quantel attempt to say goodnight to “each and everyone” of us) lives on in the memory.
Most notably though, 1984 would be the year when Terry Wogan would write his last cheque for Blankety Blank. “From the start I loved it,” he recalls. “At last, I was not trapped in a tuxedo, or behind a desk. The ridiculous microphone gave me something to do, with at least one hand. I could walk and talk where I liked, without looking for marks on the floor … Blankety Blank was the first time I felt as easy in front of a TV camera as I always had before a radio mike.”
Although hitting its peak back in 1979 (with one episode being viewed by 23.3 million viewers), Blankety Blank had done well during the early part of the 1980s (during which time it had been moved to a Saturday night slot). So there were 11 million viewers at stake when Wogan (due to other commitments) decide to leave. Les Dawson’s arrival in the autumn of 1984 seemed a strange move. The urbane, easy banter of Terry Wogan was a pole apart from the down-to-earth, hangdog demeanour of Dawson. “It’s not an easy show to do,” remarked the comedian at the time. “And Terry is a hard man to follow. He had his own style and it would be a waste of time trying to be a clone and copy him. You have to put your own stamp on whatever you do and find your own style”.
Born in 1933, Dawson had started out as a writer (going so far as moving to Paris for inspiration), before turning to playing the piano to earn a living. He drifted into comedy by chance, developing his act to contain more and more one liners and asides. His breakthrough came in 1967 when he won an edition of Opportunity Knocks. This early television exposure was followed by an appearance in a 1968 episode of the BBC’s Comedy Playhouse strand (“State of the Union”), and then his own long running series for Yorkshire Television, Sez Les (1969 – 1976). Dawson remained loyal to Yorkshire until 1978 when he switched allegiances to the BBC for The Les Dawson Show (1978 – 1989), The Dawson Watch (1979-1980) and of course Blankety Blank.
Dawson’s stint on Blankety Blank coincided with perhaps the best episodes of the series’ long run. However, the initial reaction was tepid. “It took a month to win the critics over,” he recalled in December 1984, “and it was very satisfying when it happened”. Even Dawson’s wife, Meg, had choked at the idea of her husband taking over a television vehicle so strongly associated with one person. Her trepidation rubbed off. “I was a little doubtful when it was first suggested and that is why I insisted on doing two pilots that never went out before making a final decision,” he explained. “I wanted to make sureit was going to be disastrous”.
“I believe you have got to take chances in this business if you want to progress,” he added. “It is true that I have been very successful as a stand-up comic but I feel that you need to change what you are doing now and again. Blankety Blank seemed a great opportunity to do something different although there were obvious pitfalls. The main one was that however good I was I would be compared unfavourably with Terry. But I decided to go ahead and do it my way. There would have been no point in setting out to be a clone. And I stuck by that even when things weren’t going well. It was the old thing of being true unto yourself. I always try to ignore the critics and leave the public to make their own minds up.”
In fact, the self-mockery introduced by Wogan suited Dawson’s self-deprecatory style. In addition, Dawson’s gentle ridiculing of contestants and celebrities seemed a logical extension of Bruce Forsyth’s presentational style of The Generation Game, and a precursor to Michael Barrymore’s famously rude attitude towards members of the public. All in all, Blankety Blank was a perfect platform for Dawson to perpetuate running gags, slip in bits and pieces of his highly polished routine and demonstrate his absolute mastery of the medium.
None of Dawson’s episodes would be broadcast in the programme’s by now traditional Saturday night slot, however the show fared well on Friday evenings drawing in 14 million viewers at its peak and running successfully until 1989. Some years after the BBC called time on Blankety Blank, they began to consider producing a new series. Terry Wogan was approached once again (as Dawson had died in 1993), but wisely realised that – not only would this be a retrograde step for his career – but he would now run the risk of being compared unfavourably with his predecessor. Consequently, it would be another four years before Blankety Blank would return to our screens. Rather like The Generation Game, this often maligned game show is destined for continual re-discovery.
Next Monday: Oh dear – Auntie’s playing bingo!
Blankety Blank, David Griffin, Dustin Gee, Frontpage!, Hale and Pace, Hi-de-Hi!, It's Saturday Night, Les Dawson, Les Dennis, Terry Wogan, The Laughter Show