Back again, finally. Following a programme where it was quite honestly a struggle finding a lot to write about (Bargain Hunt, in case you’ve forgotten) to one where I could’ve spent about sixty years writing about it. And did actually spend very nearly that long digging out a complete broadcast history, such is the way Radio Times covered Children’s BBC listings for much of the 80s and 90s. So, non-specific brand of sticky tape to hand, try not to burn your house down with your tinsel, wire hanger and lit candle advent crown, and settle down for…

6: Blue Peter

(Shown 5951 times, 1958-2021)

Okay, let’s get it all out of the way: here’s one I made earlier, sticky-back plastic, get down Shep, Richard Bacon’s nostrils, Joey Deacon, marvellous knockers, tedious edgelord stand-ups on clip shows pretending they laughed when the garden got vandalised, and an elephant doing a big ol’ poo on the studio floor. Me foot!

While it might not exactly have been Tiswas (indeed, on an episode of Room 101, Nick Hancock dismissed it as “Oh no! More school!”), there can be little argument that it’s a quintessentially British piece of kids’ TV that ultimately meant a lot to generations of children. Even if for many, the main thing that it meant was “What’s on Children’s ITV?”.

Everything was so different when Blue Peter was originally piped aboard the HMS Television in October 1958. Sandwiched between a mid-afternoon closedown (preceded by Quick and Easy Dressmaking: 1. Jacket with Hood) and “exciting film series about the Fifth US Cavalry” Boots and Saddles, S1E1 of Blue Peter arrived with the modest descriptor “Toys, model railways, games, stories, cartoons: A new weekly programme for Younger Viewers, with Christopher Trace and Leila Williams”. That seemed to be a lot to pack into the modest fifteen minute slot it was afforded.

A relatively common assumption seems to be that erstwhile BP editor Biddy Baxter created the series (Baxter herself begins her written history of the show dismissing that very notion), but at that time she was still busying herself producing sound effects for radio drama. The original producer of the programme was actually John Hunter Blair, who was given a mission by Head of Children’s Programmes Owen Reed to come up with a format designed to appeal to five- to eight-year-olds. That particular subset of inbetweenies were deemed too old to still be watching With Mother, but too young to find any appeal in proto-yoof magazine programme Studio E.

On paper, Hunter Blair seemed unsuited to coming up with such a format. Single and childless, the eccentric Hunter Blair preferred loftier pursuits such as composing operas and learning to speak various languages. However, he was armed with a wide range of knowledge on hobbies and interests that had entertained himself during childhood, and as an adult was keen to share his infectious enthusiasm with children. He had a particular affinity for model trains, to the extent that his office at the BBC hosted an intricate layout for his 00-gauge models, which he’d routinely play with while coming up with programme ideas.

Hunter Blair’s fondness for all things Hornby certainly helped when it came to finding half of the original hosting duo. Actor Christopher Trace shared that enthusiasm, and spent the entire interview for the forthcoming hosting role playing model trains with his interviewer. The other hosting role was filled by Leila Williams, former Miss Great Britain, former host of Six-Five Special and who’d once taken advice from Frankie Vaughan to work on disguising her Staffordshire accent if she wanted to break into the world of showbiz. And who, going by the tabloids of 1959, once dumped Robin Day to start going out with Fred Mudd of the Muddlarks instead. Who she’d go on to marry, so fair enough.

For a title that would go on to (arguably) become more famous than any other in the history of British kids’ TV, the process of picking out the title ‘Blue Peter’ was similarly relaxed. As Biddy Baxter recounts the events in her book on the series (Blue Peter: The Inside Story), an early meeting between Leila, Chris and John included the editor musing that “Blue Peter would be a good name for the programme”. When asked by Leila what that title meant, John mused that “blue is a child’s favourite colour, isn’t it?”. What about ‘Peter’, asked Chris. “Peter is the name of a child’s friend, of course”, came the reply. Pub? Pub. It didn’t hurt that it happened to share the name of a flag raised by a ship before leaving port, tying in nicely with the programme’s quest to set sail on the sea of adventure.

Of course, all things in moderation. There was only a fifteen minute slot to fill, after all. And as such, the most action-packed part of early editions was the footage of a three-masted schooner running the titular flag up a pole in the title sequence. Once that starter was out of the way, a more sedate studio-based approach comprised the main course, often involving Leila playing with dolls and a besuited Chris mucking about with trains. Not the worst job in the world, of course, but not quite matching the vicarious glamour of Trace’s one-time role as stand-in for Charlton Heston in Ben Hur. Which isn’t a bad thing to have on your CV when you’re acting as surrogate Cool Older Brother to the nation’s children, of course.

Time would change that. Within a few years, the runtime extended from fifteen to twenty minutes, then twenty-five minutes (or occasionally longer if there was a sizeable gap in the schedule). The dolls and model trains were put back on the shelf, and livelier segments were brought in. On such occasion saw a lion cub brought into the studio, which turned out to be far less sedate than planned – the cub’s boisterousness causing lacerations on the arm of its handler while an unflappable Trace kept the interview under control.

While in Chris Trace and Leila Williams, the programme featured a pair of spritely young things, were in front of the camera, that wasn’t quite as true behind it. Showrunner John Hunter Blair suffered from a heart condition, and a couple of years into the show’s run that suffering increased, until one day he was no longer able to make it to his office-slash-playroom. While recuperating away from the BBC, a series of temporary producers stepped in, many armed with fresh ideas for the fledgling series. These weren’t always good ideas – the notion of having the programme alternate between “boy’s week” and “girl’s week” on a weekly basis – just ensured half the audience switched off each week.

Another grand folly led to the departure of original host Leila Williams, due to producer Clive Parkhurst basically failing to come up with anything for her to do. It wasn’t didn’t seem to be down to any lack of adaptability on Williams’ part – she’d proved perfectly adept at the role, and aside from BP was taking on small film roles and had recently featured in early ITV talent show Bid For Fame. And yet, Williams found herself dropped from several editions of the programme, before leaving on a permanent basis in November 1961. Not that this hampered Williams’ career entirely – she would go on to feature in several other programmes across ITV and BBC, such as hosting the BBC’s primetime vaudeville revival special Kindly Leave The Stage, and a judging role in excellently-named ice dancing competition Hot Ice and Cool Music, alongside a series of minor film roles.

By now, Blue Peter was suffering. Remaining host Chris was left to front the programme alone, and a queue of interim producers wasn’t going to improve the situation any time soon. With it eventually becoming clear Hunter Blair was unable to return to save the ailing programme, the call went out for a new permanent programme editor. And, to the surprise of many, the role was given to an aspiring young producer who a few years previously had been producing – yes! – sound effects for radio drama.

Biddy Baxter was tasked with transforming Blue Peter, but before that could begin she had to see out the remaining three months of her contract with BBC Radio, so experienced drama producer Leonard Chase was recruited to steady the ship for a spell. Immediately seeing the potential for improvement, Chase leant heavily on the factual aspect of the series, straying far from the original remit of “toys, model railways, games, stories, cartoons” and focused on a more wide-ranging view of what might interest the young audience. But there was still the problem of relying on Chris Trace to largely manage the on-camera action on his own.

The search for a new co-presenter was on. An audition was set up where each of four candidates would accompany Christopher Trace in reading a story, completing a Blue Peter make and interviewing a guest. The winning candidate turned out to be Anita West, actress, wife of Goon Show band leader Ray Ellington and mother to two young children. Her first appearance on the programme was alongside regular guest (and infrequent BP guest-presenter) Tony Hart, who would help settle her anxiety when carrying out her initial on-camera makes, until her confidence grew. It seemed sure that she would be a hit with the audience.

Sadly though, problems with her marriage led to a crisis of confidence – in an age where newspapers were fast becoming scandal sheets, any drops of blood in the water would surely have Fleet Street hacks sniffing around her private life. Despite that, West managed to keep her problems well away from her Blue Peter role, performing so well on screen she would soon be offered a full-time contract (a contrast from Leila Williams, who’d only ever been offered month-to-month contracts), along with the offer of working as an announcer at BBC-tv. The production team found themselves taken aback when the offer instead led to West offering her resignation, her tenure on the programme lasting just four months. A replacement co-presenter was needed, and quickly.

The problem was solved with the introduction of a dark-haired, serious and decidedly striking young new host. Valerie Singleton, had been another of the auditionees a few months earlier, losing out on the role to Anita West, but she immediately proved a more than capable presenter. Indeed, her straight-laced manner proved to be a key ingredient the programme had been missing. Her unflappable, authoritative and direct manner proved a suitable counterweight to Trace. Singleton was the cool teacher to complement Trace’s cool big brother mannerisms.

However, from October 1964 the programme began going out on Thursdays as well as Mondays, doubling the workload of the two-hander presenting team. As a result, with Trace pointing out that he as “bloody knackered” (presumably off-screen), a third member of the presenting line-up was added in 1966. Step forward John Noakes.

Trace was still very much the main man, however. The programme’s first two summer assignments – Norway in 1965, Singapore and Borneo in 1966 – focused on the former actor. However, with Trace suffering from vertigo, new boy Noakes soon became the designated action man for the series. Christopher Trace left the programme in 1967 (much to the dismay of Huw Wheldon, who reportedly – if incorrectly – exclaimed “there will be no Blue Peter without Christopher Trace”) to move behind the scenes at feature film production company Spectator. That move failed to work out, but Trace would subsequently make the move to reporting and presenting Nationwide amongst other gigs, plus he’d often take the time to phone the Blue Peter production office whenever he came up with a potential programme idea.

Trace’s departure led to more prominence for John Noakes. His role on the programme had come about almost by chance. Biddy Baxter was flicking through the local newspaper while visiting her parents in Leicester, and happened across a theatre review raving about local rep player Noakes, which mentioned his history working as an engineer on DC7s at BOAC. At ease in front of an audience? A day job that involved mucking about with very real aeroplanes? Someone certainly worth meeting in person, with the need for an addition to the BP hosting roster.

Not that there had just been a handful of candidates. On his arrival at TV Centre, Noakes was fiftieth in the queue to audition for the role. He was more than a little nervous, having only appeared on stage in character before, never having had to appear as himself, nor on national TV. On top of that, he was starting to feel disillusioned with the whole performing lark anyway. Despite all that, the nervous energy displayed by the then-31-year-old won over Baxter, and he was handed a three-month contract to join the series from late December 1965.

While history seems to have pegged him as the avuncular figure hosting Go With Noakes alongside canine companion Shep (as well as for breaking down when interviewed about Shep’s passing on BBC1’s teatime infoblast Fax! in the 1980s), his tenure was as action-packed as any in his thirteen years on the programme. Clambering up the mast of the HMS Ganges, setting a record for highest civilian free-fall parachute jump, clattering his way down the Cresta Run and (as pictured above) going full Fred Dibnah while climbing Nelson’s Column. He truly was the programme’s first true Man Of Action.

Noakes would be joined a few years later by Peter Purves, a one-time Doctor Who companion (Steven) who was subsequently too typecast to land any decent acting role after stepping out of the Tardis for the last time. His luck changed on being interviewed for the Blue Peter role, and it didn’t take long to decide he was the man for the job. Before he could get into the lift at Television Centre following his audition, Biddy Baxter and Rosemary Gill collared him and offered him the gig on the spot. He initially planned to stay for six months until more offers of acting roles reached his inbox. He ended up staying for almost thirteen years.

With the three saints of Peter on board from 16 November 1967, the programme’s first true imperial phase could begin. Little wonder that, in his marvellous book covering his personal history of the programme, future programme editor Richard Marson referred to the trio as “unquestionably the most famous presenting team in the show’s history”.

14 September 1970 saw another landmark in the history of the programme – the first ever colour edition of Blue Peter. That change could have come about even earlier – Monica Sims, then Head of Children’s Programmes, contacted BBC-1 Controller Paul Fox about getting some extra funds for the series so that the programme’s summer jaunt could be to somewhere a little more exotic than Cornwall, in keeping with the adventurous excursions from previous years, especially now there was the prospect of the film being broadcast in colour. Fox relented to be main request, but denied the request for the expense of shooting in colour. That decision led to disgruntlement from Fox in 1971, when repeated footage of 1969’s trip to Ceylon could only be broadcast in monochrome on the now multicoloured BBC1. The programme had more success with shooting in colour in May 1970, with director John Adcock being permitted to try out colour film for a trip aboard the QEII. That was just a test – the film itself was broadcast in black and white, but it proved that it could work, and that the programme could make the move into full colour.

However, the upgrade came with conditions attached. Only the larger studios within TVC were equipped to cope with broadcasting in colour, and those weren’t always available to the programme. Whenever circumstances dictated Blue Peter move into a smaller studio, it was accompanied by a move back into monochrome. This meant it took until June 1974 before the blues of ‘Peter could be enjoyed on colour receivers on a permanent basis. As a result, those with expensive tellies certainly got to enjoy a much more immersive experience with BP’s summer sojourns, starting with July 1970’s trip to a Mexico still buzzing with excitement from the previous month’s World Cup.

Another new introduction to the programme came about in March 1974, with the official unveiling of the Blue Peter Garden. Up until that point, the programme had been keen to utilise every spare bit of space in Television Centre, the big studio doors often being flung open to permit everything from vehicles to marching bands, but other programmes and occasions often called for use of that space, leaving Blue Peter locked indoors. BP often made use of the TVC car park, or the infamous TVC Doughnut, but those areas couldn’t be guaranteed to be available to a live programme. Far better to have a little bit of space that was very much the programme’s own safe space – specifically a secluded patch of land in front of the BBC restaurant block.

It had previously been pressed into use for programme segments in the past, but only really on an ad-hoc basis. Now, ‘inspired’ by their ITV rivals Magpie having their own smallholding at Teddington Lock, the patch of land was to become to sole preserve of Blue Peter. Now, tower block kids around the UK could be afforded their own surrogate set of flower beds, fish pond and – a little later – an Italian-style sunken garden.

As the programme prepared for the 1980s (aided by a new version of the theme tune composed by Mike Oldfield, above), a new presenting line-up evolved. As the new decade arrived, the team of Simon Groom, Tina Heath and Christopher Wenner didn’t quite enjoy the popularity of the familiar line-up of the previous decade (Lesley Judd having replaced Valerie Singleton in 1972 following the traditional presenter overlap), and the latter two-thirds of the team didn’t hang around for too long. Luckily, a much hardier troupe of presenters was about to provide a sense of solidity to the curved couch. Sarah Greene arrived in May 1980, while Peter Duncan joined the team that September. Each had previously appeared on screen in acting roles – Duncan in the likes of Space:1999 and Play for Today, Greene in ITV’s compelling housing association soap Together – but both slotted into their new presenter roles with ease.

It certainly helped that the series seemed keen to cover technological advancements of the 1980s, which was certainly a boon to any children-of-the-80s who’d pore over the electronic gizmo pages of their mum’s Kay’s Catalogue. Astonishing space-age achievements covered by the series included the first ever transmission of a fax message on British TV (sending a picture over the telephone line? Witchcraft, surely. If memory serves, it was a scribbled drawing of a brolly and some raindrops), plus a departing Tina Heath introducing viewers to the concept of ultrasound technology with a live broadcast of her baby scan.

1988 saw the end of an era for the series, with long-time programme editor Biddy Baxter leaving the series after more than 25 years at the tiller. Baxter wrote about the experience of finally letting go in the introduction to her own Blue Peter: The Inside Story book:

In the gallery, my stomach lurches — just as it had lurched every Monday and Thursday for twenty-six years. That special frisson peculiar to all live broadcasting when it’s the point of no return — no second chances or second thoughts. Will the presenters achieve that peak of perfection we’ve been striving for all day? Will the studio director make a particularly tricky effects sequence work? Will Rodney on Camera One be okay with that difficult tracking shot? He’s a genius, so if anyone can make it work, he will. BUT…

Considering that at least thirty people have the chance to make or break each live Blue Peter transmission, it’s amazing that the disasters are so few. Come the crunch, when it’s live there is that extra adrenalin flowing and an extra camaraderie that, nine times out of ten, creates pretty nearly what you’ve hoped to achieve. When the disasters happen they’re usually mega ones, like a telecine machine playing in an eight minute film breaking down at the beginning of the reel — on a day when there’s no back-up on video. Or a cheerful chap in a brown coat walking into the studio during transmission clutching a large black plastic sack and yelling: “Let’s be having you then, where’s your rubbish?” Or the anonymous engineer deep in the bowels of Television Centre pulling a vital plug that disconnects the large, motorised camera taking the most important shots in the whole programme.

But today the lurch was worse. It was my very last Blue Peter. ‘There was a large chunk of the programme completely unknown to me. I hadn’t written the script, I hadn’t even been allowed to see it. Lewis Bronze, Blue Peter’s talented assistant editor for the past five years, had been quite firm. “It’s your last programme and you’re going to be in it. Don’t worry, leave it all to me, just sit back and enjoy it!”

Biddy Baxter, Blue Peter: The Inside Story (Ringpress Books, 1989)

Ultimately, Bronze’s gambit certainly helped to quell any sadness on the part of Baxter as she prepared to leave the show. Any despair was swiftly reduced by the fear of appearing in front of Blue Peter cameras for the first time. By the end of the programme, she’d been coaxed down from the gallery, welcomed on-set, shown with a montage of programme highlights, given a large album of photos from her BBC career and presented with a prized a Gold Blue Peter Badge. The latter award was the very highest honour the programme would go on to bestow, putting Baxter in the same league as Paul McCartney, Steven Spielberg, Madonna, Sir David Attenborough and The actual Queen.

The late 80s and early 90s saw the programme start to make more of an effort to cover environmental issues – quite a change from those early years when anything emitting exciting plumes of diesel would have been deemed a suitably thrilling candidate for coverage. This period even saw the introduction of a green Blue Peter badge for environmentally-adjacent achievements.

From 1995, a third weekly edition of the programme was introduced, albeit a more fun~based edition of the programme airing in Fridays (usually between autumn and early spring months), concentrating more on things like celebrities than sea scouts. Whether the increased demands of an extra show were a factor or not (though by this point some episodes were pre-recorded), the turnover of team members increased during the 1990s. Though despite that, Konnie Huq (having joined in December 1997) would go on to become the third-longest serving BP presenter of all-time, clocking up just over ten years on the series. And, in fairness, it’s not as if presenters from the 1980s had a habit of hanging around for too long, as the following did-it-purely-because-I-could table of data shows:

Despite a revolving door of presenters during this spell, it wasn’t all grim during this spell for the series. It became one of the first BBC shows to land its own section of the bbc.co.uk website, and the programme warranted a pair of summer prom concerts. However, each spell of sunshine is followed by a little rain. Or, erm, snow. Yes, I do mean Richard Bacon getting the boot for being caught in the midst of nose candy. Don’t think that was mentioned in that year’s Blue Peter book.

One of my favourite follies is the concept of the time capsule, and Blue Peter had been very much a part of this. The 1970s incarnation of the series had buried one back in the day, and with the arrival of space year 2000, it was time to dig it up. It must gave seemed such a distant future at the time, but in the event the BP Dream Team of Singleton, Noakes and Purves were still around to help dig it up. The fact the contents were in a worse condition than if they’d just bought each item off eBay only detracted from the achievement slightly. Honest. And it was fitting that the old team made a reappearance at the time, as with Konnie Huq, Simon Thomas and Matt Baker now on the sofa, the current generation of viewers has their very own stable team of presenters to call their own.

With Friday editions now commonplace, there was still a summer-sized gap in the programme’s broadcast calendar. That changed in 2001, when the addition of twice-weekly episodes during July and August saw the programming running throughout the year for the first time since 1965. The brand was extended further still following the arrival of Richard Marson as programme editor in 2003. With the something needed to fill the digital bits that made up the new CBBC channel, same week repeats of the regular Blue Peter show were joined in the schedule by spin-off series Blue Peter Unleashed from February 2002, that first episode promising “football with Steven Gerrard, speed boats, stuntmen, billiards and rock climbing”. That was joined later that year by Blue Peter Flies The World, which collected together trans-global reports from the programme.

As viewers gradually migrated to the new CBBC channel, viewing figures for the series on BBC One began to slide. By this point, a reduction in the programme’s budget had already seen it relocate to a smaller studio, and now it was being shimmied into a slightly less glamorous slot in the schedule – bumped back to 4:35pm from February 2008 to free up the post-Newsround slot for The Weakest Link.

A few years later, as 2012 drew to a close and with the UK’s digital switchover having completed in October of that year, it was decided that children’s programming no longer needed to be broadcast on BBC One. After all, any TV set now had access to the CBBC and CBeebies channels, meaning more room for programmes about buying houses and antiques on the Beeb’s flagship channel. And so, on Friday 30 November 2012, a regular episode of Blue Peter aired on BBC One for the last time. By this point, first run episodes of the programme were already going out on CBBC, so it’s hardly a surprise the berth on One was being given to something else. But at least that last regular appearance on the channel was something typically Blue Peter: as part of Children’s Commissioner’s Takeover Day, a quartet of competition winners were afforded the chance to produce the episode.

That wasn’t truly the end of the programme on ‘regular’ BBC channels, however. 20 October 2018 saw a BBC Two airing of Blue Peter’s Big Sixtieth Birthday, an hour-long special where former presenters returned to the studio to help the current team celebrate TV’s most storied children’s programme. Following that, occasional episodes of the series would get repeat broadcasts on BBC Two on Saturday mornings, though one suspects that was down more to needing something to fling into the schedule than anything else.

While the programme has – as one might expect – changed beyond all recognition during six-and-a-half decades on screen, so much so that it’s only been generating one episode per week since 2012, it’s comforting to know it’s still there. Even if at one stage, BBC Children’s Controller Richard Deverell decided that the programme should become “more like Top Gear”. Ew.

However, with the future of the CBBC channel in doubt – at the time of writing it’s due to be given the chop as a standalone channel (alongside BBC Four) in 2025, with all content becoming iPlayer-only from that point on. Will Blue Peter survive the cull? One can only hope, but even if it doesn’t, that’s one hell of an innings.

Phew, that was a long wait. Especially as I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the sixty-five years it’s been running for. Still, I’m sure the next entry on the list will be much easier to write about… oh. Sigh. See you soon!

Nearly at the last half-dozen!

7: Bargain Hunt

(Shown 5843 times, 2000-2021)

Some game shows try everything they can to ramp up the excitement. ITV seemed to go big on this concept in the 1980s, the network clearly at the zenith of the Licence To Print Money Years. This saw shows such as Ultra Quiz, which would see a group of contestants around the world for a series of themed trivia questions, Run The Gauntlet, which saw teams from each of the home nations battle for supremacy in races using jet skis, quad bikes and the like, or Interceptor, a thrilling concept from the team behind Treasure Hunt that was basically a county-wide game of laser tag. All programmes I loved as a kid, and yet they each had very short shelf lives. After a few years, the Ultra Quiz budget was dropped to the extent David Frost was swapped for Stu Francis and New York swapped for Bournemouth. Interceptor lasted for a single series and despite being deemed popular enough for a spin-off videogame in 1989, Run the Gauntlet nowadays doesn’t even warrant an entry on Wikipedia.

If you want longevity for your game show format, dampen down the excitement quotient a bit. So much so, it’s arguable whether it even warrants a place in the game show genre. Such as the next programme on our list. Recently clocking up its 66th series (vidiprinter: sixty-six) Bargain Hunt tasks a pair of teams (“Red” and “Blue”) with spending a set sum of money on trinkets at an antiques fair, with each having an expert on hand to offer advice. Once the trinkets have been bought, they’re put up for auction, and the team who make the most profit on their original outlay (or the smallest loss) are declared the winners. And… that’s it. No lasers, no helicopters, and any explosions can purely be considered coincidental.

Originally, each team budget was set at £200, and teams could buy as many or as few items as they desired. This was subsequently limited to just three items, presumably to avoid instances of participants buying dozens of items and boring everyone solid at the auction stage. Later on, the budget was upped to £300, and an option of swapping one of their items for an alternative trinket was introduced. This was tweaked further in series 14, allowing for a ‘bonus buy’ to take place with any surplus budget. And that’s pretty much it.

The series came about in 1999, with David Dickinson at the helm. By this point, Dickinson’s TV career had only been a few years old, but his new career trajectory had been much steeper than most. It was something the antiques expert had fallen into following a barbecue at his daughter’s house, where he got chatting to her next door neighbour. That neighbour happened to be Alistair Much, co-owner of a TV production company, who was taken by Dickinson’s resemblance to Ian McShane’s fictional antique roustabout Lovejoy. By happy coincidence, Much was working on pitching a new series on antiques to broadcasters, and thought his brand new pal might just be a perfect participant for it.

In the end, the networks failed to express any interest in that particular series, but Dickinson would go on to feature in an episode of BBC2 documentary strand Modern Times, produced by Much, and looking at – of course – some of the characters within the world of antiques. Dickinson would be the standout figure of the episode – his Lovejoyesque appearance also remarked upon by The Independent’s TV listings – and his personality certainly seemed to resonate with those in the TV industry. Dickinson was plucked to present a Buyer’s Guide segment in BBC Two series The Antiques Show (1997-98), which swiftly led to a pilot of his first solo vehicle (Under Your Nose: a show looking at items “worth a bob or two” lurking in the homes of unsuspecting members of the public, which Dickinson’s autobiog says was broadcast, but which Genome says wasn’t).

[EDIT: Thanks to Daniel Webb for letting me know The Duke did in fact record a different pilot around this time. Swap Until You Drop saw Dickinson team up with A Certain Disgraced Former It’s A Knockout Host and John Fashanu for a competitive swapping roadshow, refereed by Mary Nightingale. This aired once, on Friday 2 April 1999. On top of that, it seems the pilot he was talking about was chopped into bits and used in consumer show pilot Money For Old Rope (BBC One, 7pm 6 Jan 1999), which included a segment where “antiques expert David Dickinson uncovers a few treasures in the homes of three neighbours“.]

His next gig was a little more glamorous, becoming a regular reporter for Holiday in 1998, whisking him off to destinations from Milan to Devon on early evening BBC One. Dickinson’s star was certainly in the ascendancy at that point, with a starring primetime role in C5’s The Antique Hunter. While it made for some memorable segments in early episodes of TV Burp (“I am the Hunter!”), Five honcho Dawn Airey decided a second series wouldn’t be forthcoming. However, a call from the BBC’s Mark Hill soon saw a return to the screen for Dickinson: a new daytime show called Bargain Hunt, airing from March 2000. And it was probably the personality of a man Terry Wogan once introduced as “Peter Stringfellow crossed with a mahogany hatstand” that did more than anything to attract an audience to the programme, with his chipper attitude and occasional asides to camera proving popular.

Before long, that growing attention saw Bargain Hunt moving on up to the big time, and a peak 8pm slot on BBC One in August 2002. While it’s tempting to suggest this was down to a lack of inspiration on the part of the BBC, the ratings don’t lie. The first peaktime episode of Bargain Hunt drew an audience of 6.89m, and the end of that initial primetime run was followed by four episodes of spin-off Celebrity Bargain Hunt Live for that November’s Children in Need week. Stars such as Tony Blackburn, Dermot Murnaghan and Sarah Cawood took part, with any profits going to the charity, and viewing figures rose even further, peaking at 7.88m. That’s two million viewers more than watched Liverpool’s Champions League exit at the hands of FC Basel over on ITV. Take that, UEFA.

However, a daytime show thrust into the big leagues doesn’t often have the stamina to stick to the national consciousness for long, and that was the case for imperial phase Bargain Hunt. The programme slipped out of the BARB Top 30s for BBC One in late 2003, following a move to an Emmerdale-adjacent 7pm slot. A year later, the programme left the primetime schedules, with Dickinson duly leaving for pastures new (mainly reality series Dealing With Dickinson, which lasted for a single series before Dickinson decamped to ITV and his Real Deal). Luckily for Bargain Hunt ultras, the daytime version had remained a going concern throughout the show’s spell in the peak-hour spotlight, with presenter Tim Wonnacott at the controls, and that’s where he would continue.

Himself no slouch when it comes to antiques – before picking up the Bargain Hunt baton, his CV boasted a spell as director of Sotherby’s – the bowtied buff kept the programme on a steady tiller. Well, apart from one episode in 2010 where a musical bed of Mylo’s Drop the Pressure was used, with nobody on the production team noticing the lyric “Motherfuckers gonna drop the pressure” surviving the edit. Whoops. And that coming just a year after a track called “Horny Baby” by Dust Devil stopped being used as the programme’s theme music, too. Pure. Audio. Filth. (Okay, the latter was a light pop-jazz number. But still.)

That mishap aside, little of interest happened in the programme (as far as I’m quite selfishly concerned) until 2015, when an alleged altercation with producers saw Wonnacott initially suspended from the series, and subsequently stepping down. He would continue to serve as narrator for Antiques Road Trip and Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, so it wasn’t the end of the world for him.

From 2016 onwards, the programme would go on to be hosted by a rotating cast of antique experts, including Danny Sebastian from CBeebies’ Junk Rescue, Antiques Roadshow ceramics guru Eric Knowles and Flog It! alumni Caroline Hawley. Despite the addition of new faces front and centre of the programme, Bargain Hunt remained largely affixed to the formula that had served it so well since the dawn of the third millennium, with innovations like a ‘Big Spend Challenge’ and the ‘Presenter’s Challenge’ adding a mere sprinkle of change to the format.

2016 also saw the programme singled out by the press as an example to underline part of Culture Secretary John Whittingdale’s white paper on the future of the BBC, but it’s unlikely many members of the production team were high-fiving each other with excitement. The programme was being dragged out as an example of the BBC sorely lacking “greater levels of creative ambition”.

Of course, it wasn’t remotely cancelled. In fact, Bargain Hunt will probably outlive us all. Hey, each passing year means another year’s worth of stuff becomes antique.

And occasionally, it still has the power to surprise us. Such as an episode in 2018 recruiting hip young indie gunslingers Jarvis Cocker (aged 54 at the time) and Bez (also aged 54), along with respective bandmates Rowetta Idah and Candida Doyle to take part in a pop-themed celebrity episode. What excitement could a quartet of fiftysomething NME darlings really bring to the programme, though?

There’s life in the old dog yet, eh?

BONUS FACT! Bargain Hunt has been mentioned three times in the House of Commons, according to Hansard. And yet none of them was worth mentioning in detail here. How’s that for failing to clear a low bar?

There we go. That’s the final daytime property or antiques show on the list ticked off. All gold from hereon in. Or your money back.

And so, from Snooker, a sport that has had a relatively rich and varied history since the very birth of broadcasting, onto a programme that basically hasn’t changed since it began twenty years ago. Heeeeere’s

8: Homes under the Hammer

(Shown 5166 times, 2003-2021)

One thing that was always going to make an appearance in this list: property shows. Rivalled only by quizzes for the trophy of Genre Representing The Most Gapingly Open Goal In Daytime Programming, it’s a slight surprise we haven’t seen more of them on the BBC.

We’ve had Escape to the Country and To Buy or Not to Buy in the top hundred so far, while Changing Rooms is (slightly surprisingly) well outside the hundred (if anyone was anxiously waiting for it, you may now exhale). Such programmes are much more at home on Channel Four, which is something to ponder every time the channel boasts about how it strives to cater for underserved minorities, suggesting it only seems keen to serve minorities looking to improve their property portfolio by a restoring a château on the cheap.

Despite Four’s stranglehold on the genre, the Daddy of Property Programmes is very much a BBC enterprise. Originally hosted by Lucy Alexander and Martin Roberts, Homes Under the Hammer follows a number of properties bought up on the cheap via auction, and then follows the fortunes of the people who buy them, do them up, and then sell them on for big profits. It’s a staggeringly popular daytime programme. Which is why only seven programmes have been broadcast more often throughout the BBC’s entire history.

Despite that… very little seems to have been written about the programme. The first time it appeared on our screens in November 2003, no newspapers pulled it aside for a preview paragraph or two. Nobody seems to have written an article about it when it arrived. Even the Radio Times, given the programme’s 10am slot, only had room on that day’s listings to offer up “the weekday run starts by following three Devon properties that are up for auction.”

The Wikipedia entry for the programme isn’t even sure when some of the series started or ended, or how many episodes have been made.

It’s a bit strange, to be honest. Sure, nobody’s starting a change.org petition to have a 4K BluRay remaster of the entire series, but it keeps going. Someone must do more than simply tolerate it? Surely?

I can’t help but suspect there’s a reason nobody seems especially keen to chronicle the history of the programme. And that reason is… in every single home under a hammer, in every single room, the cameras are having to keep the elephant out of shot. But we all know it’s there.

The point of the programme is to show homes being sold in a rush at knockdown prices. Often homes in need of repair, of modernisation, of rapid repairs to the damp course, cracked tiles or a leaky roof. For the purposes of the programme, that’s a good thing. An un-valuable home can be turned into a profitable house. The programme hardly shies away from this – the production company’s website sells the show as “the exciting auction series where potential bargains can bring big return on investment and a carefully planned house makeover can make all the difference”. How could anyone spending a morning off picking Coco Pops out of their beard miss out on something involving a big return on investment?

And yet: there’s generally a reason houses at auction are having to be sold so quickly, and so cheaply. And – SPOILERS – it ain’t due to a spate of benevolent property magnates who’ve just won the lottery and can’t be bothered waiting to dispose of their stock.

Given Britain is a place where an entire national identity has been built on Maximising The Value Of Your Property, someone quickly selling a home at auction probably isn’t doing it for the happiest of reasons. It might be that the previous occupant had died, and the grieving family want to sort the estate out quickly, granted. But when it comes to houses in poor states of repair, it’s more likely that someone – yes, very likely a family with children – had been struggling for ages to keep their lives together and finally had to admit they could no longer able to afford the place. It could even be that the decision to sell had little to do with them, and more to do with landlords or mortgage providers. All that’s clear is, in many of the households explored by the HutH experts, people’s lives had been taking place in most of the properties. And now they aren’t.

(Reader’s Voice: “Maybe they moved out because of the elephant you mentioned? I wouldn’t want to live in a house where there’s an elephant!”)

Sigh.

Anyway, moral concerns aside, there’s something else I can’t help but notice about Homes Under the Hammer: it’s programme that offers a very handy grab-bag reference to (a) someone hoovering up cheap property for quick and easy profit, or (b) as far as its audience goes, it’s the epitome of indolent tele-viewing.

How do I know that? Because I’ve been looking to see how often it gets mentioned in works of fiction, that’s how. And so, here comes a rundown of:

THE TOP THIRTY TIMES ‘HOMES UNDER THE HAMMER’ HAS BEEN REFERENCED IN WORKS OF FICTION (AND OCCASIONALLY NON-FICTION)

Oh, we are very much doing this. Here goes. I could easily have made this a top fifty or more, easily. There are a lot out there. And this is just from those I found on the archive.org lending library. And remember, while several of the quotes below might be a bit on the punching-down side, at least they didn’t directly profit from a family’s eviction. Even the fact one of the quotes is from Mrs Brown’s Family Handbook doesn’t change that.

30: Finders Keepers, Belinda Bauer (2012)

“Steven’s mother, Lettie, took pills too. She sat on the sofa next to Nan, crying at Homes under the Hammer, with an old Spiderman pyjama top crumpled in her hands.”

29: Born Gangster, Jimmy Tippett, Nicola Stow (2014)

“There was nothing to do apart from watch crap on television, and I was sick of it. My days were revolving around Loose Women , This Morning, Homes Under the Hammer, Cash in the Attic, Deal or no Deal and The Price is Right.”

28: The Ex Factor, Eva Woods (2016)

“A raincheck meant, Never in a million years, sucker. A raincheck meant, I’ve met someone new but I am too chicken to tell you. Or worse, I just can’t be bothered to leave my sofa and Homes Under the Hammer is more appealing than another night in your company. Ani knew that better than anyone.”

27: Alan Stoob: Nazi Hunter, Saul Wordsworth (2014)

“With no idea what to do I turn on the telly and flick between The Wright Stuff, Homes Under The Hammer, Location Location Location, Antiques Roadshow and a 3-2~1 starring Dusty Bin. Footage of me running naked, tiny penis embedded in my scrotum, plays on ITV2. I switch off and shuffle into the kitchen. There’s a note from Tom.”

26: Our World, Little Mix (2017)

“I’ve got a cinema room with an L-shaped leather sofa and I love being in there, in jogging bottoms and a hoody, thick cosy socks, relaxing with a glass of wine. On TV I love Catchphrase – shouting the answers at the telly! – TOWIE, George Shore, And and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. I’ll watch anything to do with property. Grand Designs, A Place in the Sun, Homes Under the Hammer.”

25: Survive in the Office With a Sense of Humour, Andy B and Jamien Bailey (2014)

“You filled out a really long application form that asked you like, loads of questions and stuff and made you look up the meaning of the word diligent. You dragged yourself away from ‘Homes Under the Hammer’ twice, for both a first and second interview.”

24: Consequences… I’m With the Band, Laurie Depp (2008)

“”Are you OK, Mum?” I asked, without expecting much of a response. She looked up at me slowly, as if trying to recognise who it was that had invaded her silence and the flickering of Homes under the Hammer on the TV screen.”

23: Mrs Brown’s Family Handbook, Brendan O’Carroll (2013)

“If they know you’ve been sitting with your feet up all day watching Homes Under the Hammer and doing the word snake in the back of the paper, they’ll be filling your day with their bollocks and then you’ve no time for telly-shopping.”

22: More Morello Letters, Duncan McNair (2011)

“Hoping you can re-house the old trout for us. She loves bingo and wrestling and a certain amount of horseplay. She also needs to be near a telly that’s showing either Terminator or Die Hard. Or Homes under the Hammer.”

21: Bonkers: My Life in Laughs, Jennifer Saunders (2013)

“Oh, please don’t let me be ill. . . I haven’t got time to be ill! I have no time to sit in hospitals! I have work and children and I want to do stuff and be in control of my own life, even uf that just means watching Homes Under the Hammer.”

20: Single Men, Dave Hill (2005)

“She saw that Lynda had obtained an A-level prospectus from the local sixth-form college and left it meaningfully on the coffee-table. Marie considered reading it but the booklet failed miserably to leap unaided into her hands so she watched Homes under the Hammer instead. She was just drifting, dribbling, gently off to sleep when her mobile rang.”

19: Quick Pint After Work? (and Other Everyday Lies), Luke Lewis (2014)

“Homes Under The Hammer: Daytime TV show that is only ever watched through a veil of tears, by those who are either unemployed, sick or depressed.”

18: How to be a Grown-Up, Daisy Buchanan (2017)

“During dark wallows, I have compared myself negatively to a woman in the middle of a paternity suit on Jeremy Kyle (“Two men are fighting over her! I have no one!’), to someone who’d just bought a house with chronic dry rot and a problem garden on Homes under the Hammer (‘I will never be a homeowner! Not for me the joy and pain of Japanese bindweed!’) and everyone on Loose Women (‘Urggh, I hate myself, they all have better hair than mel’).”

17: The Wish: 99 Things We Think We Want, Bill Griffin (2017)

“It’s so fraught it’s a wonder anyone bothers dating at all, when they could be home alone watching Homes under the Hammer and eating dim sum in their pyjamas, which is obviously preferable to sitting opposite a stranger in Pizza Express and asking them how many siblings they have.”

16: Between a Mother and Her Child, Elizabeth Noble (2012)

“Her life had become a dull routine, punctuated by television programmes. She watched far too much boring television, but their showing times and their theme tunes were the clock of her day. Homes Under the Hammer, Escape to the Country, Come Dine With Me and then Coronation Street.”

15: Hurrah For Gin: The Daily Struggles of Archie Adams (Aged 2¼), Katie Kirby (2017)

“Suits us all fine if I’m honest, as now we can just sit about in our PJs on Monday mornings – Mummy can watch Homes under the Hammer on the TV, I can watch Fireman Sam dubbed in German on her phone and Chase can just lie on her play mat sicking milk up and trying to work out how to roll.”

14: Watching War Films With My Dad, Al Murray (2012)

“Critics will say look at Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series (which I’ve never seen), that was what used to be on BBC1. Now look at, say – and I have to be careful here, I might know someone who works on this and get punched on the nose – Homes Under The Hammer.”

13: The Unmumsy Mum, Sarah Turner (2016)

“That hour of tea and sympathy outside the house was priceless and gave me the much-needed motivation to get dressed and not stay indoors watching Homes Under the Hammer for the fifth consecutive day.”

12: Her, Harriet Lane (2014)

“I look down at Cecily, whose dark eyelashes are fanned out on her round cheeks, her fists curled on either side of her head. Her chest rises and falls in her moon-patterned sleeping bag: in, out, in. I visualise Peggy on the treadmill in pink velour joggers and a light sweat glaze, eyes locked onto Cash in the Attic or Homes Under the Hammer.”

11: Thinking About it Only Makes it Worse And Other Lessons from Modern Life, David Mitchell (2014)

“There’s my personal favourite, Homes Under the Hammer, where the production company has just set up a video camera at a property auction and sent presenters to stalk the successful buyers.”

10: Recipes for Life, Bernadine O’Connell (2011)

“She wears less lycra than I would dare on the beach. Hope she isn’t coming near me – keep my eyes focused on the monstrously large TV screen above and pretend to be engrossed in ‘Homes Under the Hammer’.”

9: The Pictures Are Better on the Radio, Adam Carroll-Smith (2016)

“At this point, I’m not ruling out the possibility that when Bob gets home, he is actually just watching a different game — Everton vs. Swansea or something — or maybe just episodes of Homes Under The Hammer, and wondering why West Ham aren’t involved and they haven’t shown a single replay of Seiko/Sakho’s goal.”

8: Christmas Kisses, Alison May (2016)

“Liam sat on the sofa. Homes under the Hammer had finished hours ago. He’d sat through the actual news at one o’clock because the remote control was at the other side of the room and moving was beyond his mental effort.”

7: Pea’s Book of Best Friends, Susie Day (2012)

“It was a disappointment, finding out that adulthood didn’t fix that sort of worry all by itself. But then Mum and Dr Paget started talking about films they’d wanted to see but forgotten to, and books everyone else seemed to have read, and the terrifyingly addictive lure of Homes under the Hammer, and Pea knew it would be all right.”

6: The One Memory of Flora Banks, Emily Barr (2017)

“There is a TV on. A man and a woman are on the screen, talking directly to me, saying, “The kitchen renovation.” It suddenly stops and the words Homes Under the Hammer appear on the screen. I don’t know why homes would be under a hammer.”

5: Television Hell by Luke Whiteman – HMP Leicester, Inside Poetry Volume One (2009)

“I’ve never watched so much TV,
Since that judge imprisoned me.
They put me in a prison cell,
With a man from TV hell.
A true original soap queen,
With eyes alive like a TV screen.
9.15 in the morning on BBC 1
He starts with Don’t get Done, get Dom
Next is Homes under the Hammer
This guy’s a human TV planner.”

4: The Mirror World of Melody Black, Gavin Extence (2015)

“Except I found Homes Under the Hammer anything but innocuous, and I was willing to bet I was not the only one. Homes Under the Hammer was a programme in which smug, middle-aged idiots bought and sold property, usually generating a huge profit while simultaneously pricing the rest of the population out of the market. These people all owned homes already. Many of them owned multiple homes, which was why they were able to borrow such vast sums of money from the bank.”

3: Reality Television and Class, Heather Nunn (2011)

“In Homes under the Hammer (BBC1, 2003-), the hard-headed business side of buying for investment was emphasised as viewers were invited into frequently shabby, half-renovated or derelict properties that have been put under auction. Here, the underside of the property market was present as cameras entered repossessed homes. But the emphasis on property as financial investment prevailed as the viewer watched punters bidding at the auction house and their subsequent transformation of a cheaply purchased property into a viable rentable or resale property.”

2: Staying Alive: How to Get the Best from the NHS, Dr Phil Hammond (2014)

“‘Homes Under the Hammer’ will ruin your day because it will ruin the day of the people in your care. Unless someone has specifically requested to watch daytime TV, do everything you can to prevent them from languishing in front of that loathsome dross.”

1: Doctor Who: In The Blood, Jenny T Colgan (2017)

“Many people looked unhappy, but then, they were watching Homes Under the Hammer.”

Well, you think of a way to write about Homes Under the Hammer. At least I avoided the one I could’ve used by Jeremy Clarkson. You’re welcome. Back next time with a much more exciting programme!

Or, the follies of trying to cram a huge data analysis project into your vanishingly sparse amount of free time.

Okay. This isn’t the first time this has happened, but it should be the last.

Back when I started this ill-considered endeavour, right in the initial post, I mentioned that there will almost definitely be mistakes within the figures mentioned. All the data is taken from the (magnificent) BBC Genome project, most of which is taken from OCR-scanned issues of the Radio Times, and is therefore hostage to the limitations of both OCR software and the formatting quirks of the RT during any given period. That’s all fine when listings are picked up correctly by the BBC’s Genome Robot Army:

It’s a bit less fine during spells where the Radio Times uses a different layout to express daytime listings:

But: not to fret! I could just ignore these inconvenient listings, because almost-correct is better than nothing, right? Initially, that’s how I felt. Nobody has ever seemed to try doing something like this before, after all. There’s almost a million individual programme listings to calculate, nobody could reasonably expect it to be 100% correct.

Except, y’know, it would bug the merry bloody hell out of me knowing there’s a 1988-sized gap in a programme’s data due to the way things were formatted at the time. The data is all thereabouts, ripe for the plucking. The only issue is: how to avoid the thorny bits (i.e. the thousands of instances where programme titles are only mentioned within programme descriptions)? How could I get around this, and get it all as accurate as possible? Individual episodes might squeeze through my big ol’ data net, but at least I can try to avoid any great big gaping holes. Somehow.

So: what I went and did (warning: anyone who doesn’t give a flying fart about Excel can skip to the Natalie Portman meme below) was add in a column which contains a combined YEAR plus WEEKNUM in each cell, throw the whole dataset for each programme into a pivot table, and show =YEAR&”w”&WEEKNUM down the pivot’s vertical axis, then WEEKDAY along the horizontal axis. Any conspicuous gaps would be highlighted, then I can go digging for missing listings. Once I know which date ranges are missing, pull out Genome data for those weeks, and (using a really bloody bitty process involving Notepad++ and Excel filters) extract individual programme details within programme strands, all for the express purpose of seeing how often Jimbo and the Jet Set really got shown on BBCs One and Two (not as often as you might think, just 238 times, putting Jimbo into joint-489th place alongside Diddy Dick and Dom).

It was a right royal pain in the arse, but OH THE IMPROVED ACCURACY OF IT ALL. I could finally sleep at night. Okay, I still couldn’t, but that’s because I’d been up until 2am staring at Excel on an overly bright monitor messing with all the data.

It wasn’t going to be perfect, but before publishing the entries for each programme, I’d do a more thorough check of each broadcast total. What’s the worst that could happen? Just before I click ‘publish’ on the entry for Grandstand, I might notice a gap, examine the missing dates and uncover another 27 episodes erroneously mis-scanned as ‘Grandsland’? It’ll only ever push it up the list a bit, I might need to write about the next programme instead, and have to publish the entry for Grandstand a bit later, but that’s fine.

Hey, it’s not like an entry is suddenly going to have far fewer entries than I’d anticipated, is it?

Hi, people who don’t care about Excel – welcome back. Here’s what you’ve missed: I’ve gone and been a bit too clever for my own good and bollocksed up. A bit.

Basically, in noticing a large gap for One Particular Programme, I used trickery to fill in the gaps (and seriously, the alternative would’ve been filling in several hundred missing programmes manually, which I’ve already had to do too many times in this list), and things accidentally got duplicated. In short: I pulled a load of missing data through twice, and my checks to detect duplicates were thwarted by one set of data erroneously being listed as on BBC1 (gah, morning weekdays kids shows had moved to BBC2 at the time, as Daytime UK had started on BBC1 by then).

In short: an entry was suddenly going to have far fewer entries than I’d anticipated. Which is a bit of a nuisance, as the Programme In Question was about to appear at Number 10 on the list. And now, on checking through the data, correcting the episode count and recompiling the list: it was actually in just 16th place on the list.

Well, damn. That kind of undercuts my sense of satisfaction at finally reaching number ten on the rundown.

I could’ve tried to save face and just gone with my initial, incorrect, episode count, just pretending everything was fine. But: nah, not going to do that. SO: the programmes that I’d initially placed as such:

16: Match of the Day (Shown 4055 times, 1964-2021)
15: Doctors (Shown 4081 times, 2000-2021)
14: Escape to the Country (Shown 4365 times, 2002-2021)
13: Grandstand (Shown 4500 times, 1958-2007)
12: Flog It! (Shown 4530 times, 2002-2021)
11: Jackanory (Shown 4701 times, 1965-2009)

Are actually in the following positions:

15: Match of the Day (Shown 4055 times, 1964-2021)
14: Doctors (Shown 4081 times, 2000-2021)
13: Escape to the Country (Shown 4365 times, 2002-2021)
12: Grandstand (Shown 4500 times, 1958-2007)
11: Flog It! (Shown 4530 times, 2002-2021)
10: Jackanory (Shown 4701 times, 1965-2009)

Dampens the impact of starting to announce the Top Ten, but fitting given the unique blend of intricate detail and rank amateurism you’d expect from my blog. If nothing else, I’m committed to meeting your expectations of this place. I’d have done it properly if I was being paid for this, honest.

So, what’s in sixteenth place? Well, you may have already guessed given the illustrative images I used near the start of this entry. It’s…

16: Playdays (née Playbus)

(Shown 3908 times, 1988-2002)

As time marches on, it’s increasingly easy to stumble across things that make you feel old. It can be cultural references that wholly pre-date the births of work colleagues (“sorry, what’s Ceefax?”), it can be seeing someone you went to school with on Facebook (“Nah, that must be someone middle-aged with a similar name who just looks a bit like them. Oh. Damn.”), but for me it was being raised on a diet of Humpty, Little Ted and The Round Window and subsequently seeing people banging on about The Why Bird. I felt alienated, a little afraid and out of touch with popular culture. Which is a bit of a wake up call when you’ve not yet reached puberty.

At the time, Play School had been a preschool colossus. On the air since morning one of BBC2, it was the favourite of many a child. Me included.

The big announcement that Play School was going through the exit window came on 5 October 1988. The programme that (due to circumstances) launched BBC-2 would be no more, and in its place would be something a little more up-to-date for the modern audience.

However, before getting a chance to win over the key audience of two- to five-year-olds, it would first have to win the support of Britain’s parents, many of whom would have been grown up under the benevolent glow of the Play School house. A sense of continuity was to be instilled by way of former Play School producer Cynthia Felgate, who’d be sitting at the controls of the new tyke-friendly offering.

The keys to Playbus were modernisation, new characters and a fresh sense of energy. No more Big Ted, no more cuckoo, and no more peering through windows. In came a programme designed to feel less middle-class, less cosy, and more urban.

It was a gutsy move by the Children’s Department of the BBC, given the lack of threat to their loyal audience at the time. Channel 4 had all but given up on TV for younger children – the likes of Chips Comic had long fallen out of favour, and Pob’s Programme was in the middle of the five-year gap between its two series. Unless your younglings were weird enough to enjoy Murun Buchstansangur, the fourth network had little to offer them. ITV was still bothering with pre-school programming at lunchtime, but word in the press was that groups within the broadcaster would rather be using the slot for something more commercial.

It’s quite likely the BBC was concerned about a different threat being beamed down from the skies. Satellite service BSB was readying itself for a launch, and despite having abandoned plans for a standalone kids channel at that point, were planning on handing a generous amount of airtime to children’s programming into their Galaxy entertainment channel. Ultimately, their modest subscriber base would pose little threat to Auntie Beeb, and it would be eaten up by a rival satellite service content to serve up imported cartoons (and DJ Kat) instead, but that future wasn’t on display in the Beeb’s crystal ball. As it turned out, Play School was still the biggest draw in the playground at the time, and it would likely have thrived had it been left alone. But hey, never hurts to have a bit of a refresh.

So, Play School was to be knocked down to provide a clear road ahead for Playbus. And so, from 6 October 1988, the final few repeat episodes of Play School (the last of the new episodes having aired in March that year) were to be followed by five minute taster episodes of its successor, listed as ‘Playbus is Coming‘. Set to start on Monday 17 October 1988, this was the bright new future. Albeit one followed in the schedules by repeats of Arthur Negus Enjoys.

The initial reaction was (and if any of this is a surprise to you: welcome to Britain) a general sense of despair at the very concept of change. Predictably enough, the Daily Mail were one of the first in line to spit the dummy over the change, with a full report and review from a group of disappointed critics. “Their bored little faces say it all,” it trilled. “Especially the mouth parts of their faces”, it should have continued, except they probably hadn’t heard of Jack Handey.

Despite a sceptical press, Playbus steadily built up a following. Children’s BBC was arguably at its peak around that time, with the corporation pumping £20m per year into the Children’s Programmes department, which resulted in approximately 900 hours of kid-focused programming per annum. That included prestige drama serials such as Tom’s Midnight Garden or The Chronicles of Narnia, the latter attracting audiences north of 10 million, but the less heralded programmes were no less impressive. From the winsome whimsy of Chucklevision, to educational fare like The Really Wild Show, to serious documentary strand The Lowdown, there was generally something for every taste. With some at ITV still grouching about the cost-ineffectiveness of producing Children’s ITV – especially with a costly franchise round looming in 1992 – the BBC was the best place for young viewers could to get that level of diversity.

As it was, Playdays would follow the Play School template in many ways. Going out in a familiar slot each weekday, carrying an understanding that the audience would be travelling with them each day. And at least this time, the weekly ride would provide a bit more variety each day than Play School had offered.

Mondays would be the Why Bird Stop, with the titular fowl dispensing various pellets of knowledge to the viewer. Tuesdays would provide a visit to the Playground Stop, where relatable footage of real children could be seen. Wednesdays would feature the Dot Stop, where the titular Dot (Rebecca Higgins) would offer sun with music and numbers. Thursdays would result in a visit to the Patch Stop, where nature and the environment would be on show. Fridays would seek to instil a sense of wonder and imagination in the viewers, with a trip to the Tent Stop.

Each stop would have its own presenter and characters, and often attempt to tie in to seasonal or topical events (sadly not in the sense of Histor’s Eye, more along the lines of “let’s make some Easter stuff”). This concerted effort may have suggested a lack of faith in any one strand, and I can’t help but suspect the audiences attention may have flagged during the less popular stops. But, it did at least offer some scope for the individual ‘stops’ to evolve, so in 1992 the Dot Stop became the Roundabout Stop, offering puzzles, games and a dash of magic. Similarly, the Tent Stop would be replaced with the Poppy Stop, where a visit was made to Poppy the Cat’s house, allowing for cameo appearances from other characters from the series.

Strangely, considering it was part of the televisual upbringing for children for fourteen years, Playdays (as it was for most of its run, the title changing from Playbus from Christmas Day 1989 following a complaint from the National Playbus Association) doesn’t seem to be imprinted anywhere near as prominently on Britain’s cultural wallpaper as Play School, or successor show Teletubbies. Maybe the stripped approach to those daily editions prevented it sticking to the national psyche in the way those other shows did? Maybe, for all the talk of appealing to a more modern audience, adopting a completely different approach (as Teletubbies would provide) might have been a better idea? Or maybe it was just one of TV’s great palate cleansers, a fourteen-year fade between the way Things Used To Be, and The Way Things Would Be?

Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely doing something right – it clocked up almost 4000 showings on the main BBC channels during that tenure, but it seems relatively little of it remains in our collective consciousness. Maybe it just aired to a generation that would grow up less desperate to revisit the cultural ephemera of their youth? Admittedly, I’m just outside of the generation likely to have their names trip off the tongue, but to my mind the roster of Playdays presenters – the most notable of which were Zoe Ball and Dave Benson Phillips – doesn’t seem as memorable as that of Play School. I mean, yes, Zoe Ball is hosting one of Britain’s most popular radio programmes these days, but Floella Benjamin is a bloody Baroness, so checkmate.

Not that Playdays didn’t make a bit of dough for BBC Enterprises. At the time there were lots of opportunities to bask in Playdays-related paraphernalia, with straight-to-retail VHS tapes aplenty, hardcover annuals, a long-running magazine, most of which being spin-off opportunities Play School left the stage too early for. Plus, there was a spin-off educational videogame that got on the cover of Your Sinclair.

Playdays also displayed an impressive staying power. Despite no new episodes being made after 1997, the programme would continue to air on BBC channels, even after Teletubbies became a phenomenon both national and international, with the latter airing in the mornings on BBC2 (often twice per morning, such was it’s popularity), while repeat episodes of Playdays kicked off each afternoon’s CBBC strand on BBC1. By 2000, it was the repeats of Playdays that were deemed popular (or cheap) enough to be screened twice per weekday, in an early morning slot and at lunchtime. However, by 2002 BBC2 had the fresh-faced Tweenies to enrapture an audience of potty-enthusiasts, and Playdays was shuffled over to the digital-only CBeebies channel for a couple of years.

After that, it was gone from our screens forever. At least for those without the foresight to stock up on Playdays VHS releases beforehand. For those who did… it was just a matter of waiting until 2023, and PAYDIRT. For everyone else: bye, Why Bird.

FACTS AMAZING: the day of the first ever episode (Monday 17 October 1988) also saw the debut of forgotten Brian Wilde vehicle Wyatt’s Watchdogs. That was that generation’s Barbie versus Oppenheimer.

(With thanks to Paul R Jackson for detail on the last few months of Play School being repeat episodes, and the detail of the final ‘new’ episodes having aired in March 1988.)

There, another one down, albeit in completely inconvenient circumstances. Next time: we go inside number nine.

Back with a pair of shows that come as close as you can imagine to the final Top Ten.

12: Flog It!

(Shown 4530 times, 2002-2021)

Waiting. There’s something that should be obsolete in this day and age. If you order something off the internet, you want it to arrive the next day. If you want to watch a film, you want to be able to stream it right away, even if you’re just looking at your phone while queuing at the deli counter in Sainsburys. And, I think I speak for us all, if you’re just had your grand-grandmother’s favourite urn valued on Antiques Roadshow and you want to cash in, you want the cash THERE and THEN. Not taking it home, sitting up all night with a baseball bat in case burglars have overheard the valuation, and carefully taking it to an antique dealer hoping to get the full promised amount. I mean, who’s got time for that? Gimme gimme gimme. Now.

Well, if you’re anything like as impatient as I am, Flog It! is the show for you. The formula is much the same as that of Antiques Roadshow – members of the Great British Public bring their heirlooms along to a picturesque location somewhere in the UK, where they might be examined and valued by a resident expert, all under the watchful gaze of host Paul Martin. The main difference is that the owners of antiques are then given the option to sell their items at auction, giving a sense of closure to the viewer and (hopefully) a pocketful of cash for the owners.

Occasionally, it takes more than mere pockets to contain the full value of items discovered by the programme. A 2013 episode filmed at Lincolnshire’s Normanby Hall saw Cleethorpes resident Ann Bromley bring in a collection of African tribal art, with resident expert Michael Baggott estimating the lot to be worth between £200-£400. That’s not too shabby, if nothing else it comfortably covers the petrol money for getting thete. Off to auction it went, only for everyone to learn this wasn’t of African origin at all. The collection, long left in a Cleethorpes wardrobe, turned out to contain a rare Australian Aboriginal shield, and was subsequently sold at auction for £30,000, having been bought by the Sydney Museum of Primitive Art.

Unlike similar programmes of that ilk (Antique Roadshow, Antiques Road Trip), what had seemed an unstoppable juggernaut finally juddered to a halt in 2020, when the programme had been cancelled to make way for more contemporary fare. However, something that huge doesn’t just come to a halt – that’s just plain physics. Indeed, we still haven’t reached the end of Flog It!’s stopping distance, at the time of typing a variety of episodes from the last few series are going out each evening on BBC Two, seven days per week. Basically, the ineffective cancellation since the latest political berk banging on about being cancelled from the comfort of their £100k/annum gig on TalkTV.

Of course, it’s not a proper long-running daytime strand unless it’s flanked by spin-off programmes, and Flog It! was no slouch there. Alongside highlight compilation show Flog It! Ten of the Best (broadcast 53 times, 2007-2009), there was Flog It! Travels Around Britain (broadcast 20 times, 2010-2016), which saw Paul Martin leave antiques behind to explore the influence of nature in art. The most successful spinoff arrived in 2013, with Flog It: Trade Secrets (broadcast 380 times, 2013-2020). This saw Paul Martin and his merry band of experts revisit the history of the parent programme, while dispensing advice on getting the best out of car boot sales and charity shops.

Nothing like playing a charity shop for a chump, eh? Oh, Paul.

11: Jackanory

(Shown 4701 times, 1965-2009)

Some television programmes manage to generate a lot of publicity by attracting famous names to take part. Sometimes, it’s Morecambe and Wise employing the likes of Shirley Bassey, Sir Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing and Vanessa Redgrave for high-level japery. Sometimes, it’s Shooting Stars employing the likes of Larry Hagman, Robbie Williams and Curtis Steigers for top-tier titters. And sometimes it’s Ricky Gervais getting Johnny Depp, Robert de Niro and David Bowie to be in his programmes. But there’s also a much less heralded programme that, in its pomp, attracted a guest list including (amongst hundreds of others) Judi Dench, Denholm Elliott, David Suchet, Joyce Grenfell and Ian McKellen. Oh, plus some chap now known as King Charles III.

Despite the star-studded future it would enjoy, Jackanory began under far more modest circumstances. With the BBC needing to output hours of children’s television each week, there was always a pressing need to produce content that could be worthy and captivating for the kids, but not everything could have the budget of a Blue Peter or Vision On. And so, Jackanory was born.

Since 1950, radio series Listen With Mother had proved that a premise as simple as somebody reading out children’s stories over the airwaves would provide a welcome respite for harried parents, and in the 1960s former Listen With Mother producer Joy Whitby – by now having moved to TV – wondered if such a premise could also work on screen. It was fair to say Whitby had built up a decent track record, having devised BBC2’s pre-school smash Play School, which featured a daily section where a short story was read to the audience.

Guest readers and simple illustrations helped capture the attention of Britain’s TV tots, and so Whitby was asked to develop that idea into a standalone teatime show for older children, with a target age of 8-to-11, over on BBC1. Given a six-week trial run, Whitby added Play School producers Anna Home and Molly Cox to the ranks, with the first story (traditional fairy tale Cap of Rushes, read by actor Lee Montague) going out on Monday 13 December 1965 in the pre-Blue Peter 4.45pm slot.

The scheduling helped the new programme gather an audience, Whitby’s idea being that the timeslot would attract passing attention of adults as they returned home from work, and the involvement of mainstream actors would help keep their attention fixed firmly on the screen, sharing in the stories being read to the kids. That first six-week run also featured actors Wendy Hiller (a year before her third Oscar nomination for A Man for All Seasons) and Hattie Jacques, along with author Enid Lorimer.

The programme proved to be a instant success. As the programme neared the end of that initial six-week run, a commission came for the series to continue running throughout the year. The fact it was a relatively inexpensive premise – a welcoming narrator reads a story (or series of short stories) over the course of a week, all from the same sparse set, meant little production lead time was needed, meaning it could continue without the need to retool. But while it didn’t need the longest credit roll at the end of each episode, it also meant the programme wasn’t initially deemed worthy of a place in the BBC archive, with many editions from 1960s and 1970s being wiped shortly after transmission

Within a year of the first edition of Jackanory, the programme was deemed to be so firmly affixed to the zeitgeist, a selection of celebrity narrators were invited onto Late Night Line-Up to discuss the show. Margaret Rutherford, at that point dozens of films into her acting career, proclaimed the experience to be a fairly terrifying vocational detour, while James Robertson Justice expressed how he’d needed to rely on the more than capable guidance of producer Molly Cox to get through his initial Jackanory week.

It didn’t take long before being asked to narrate a week of Jackanory was deemed a badge of honour for actors. Luckily, being able to call on the talents of top actors proved to be a boon for the production team, with the programme’s modest budget allowing little time for outtakes, so the more adept at delivering lines a narrator was, the better. It also certainly didn’t shy from attracting faces the target audience might not be too familiar with, such as Spike Milligan, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett (the latter, of course, seen more as a white hot satirical firebrand than the literary teddy bear he’s now regarded as [SUB: PLEASE CHECK]). It’s almost tempting to add “much to the bafflement of watching children” here, except the same was far from true a few decades later when Rik Mayall narrated George’s Marvellous Medicine. My school was certainly abuzz with excitement about it in advance, so feel free to ignore that thought.

Part of the programme’s strength was in the range of stories being relayed to its young audience. Joy Whitby saw it as her mission to introduce viewers to stories they might not ordinarily encounter. So along with classics like The Railway Children, The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse or The House at Pooh Corner, you could expect to hear retellings of folk tales from Africa, Scandanavia, India or Russia.

Contemporary stories from more modern authors were also regularly featured, and in October 1968 the doors were opened to the next generation of young authors, with a week of stories written by the winners of a ‘Write a story of Jackanory’ competition. Possibly anticipating a modest number of entries, the Jackanory team found themselves sifting through more than 6,000 entries from hopeful young scribes. From that bumper mailbag, the most popular genre of story was magic, followed by adventure and science fiction – the eventual winners being as young as four-and-a-half year old David Osrin (his story reportedly dictated to his frantically scribbling mother), and entries arrived in formats ranging from bound booklets to scribbles across their parents’ newspaper. By the end of that week, ten young storytellers found themselves in possession of a three-guinea book token and at least a term’s worth of playground bragging rights, ensuring the Jackanory Children’s Week would remain a feature for years to come.

One key part of Jackanory was that illustrations were used throughout each story. Invaluable in helping the audience feel a connection to each story (at least they were if you had an attention span like mine), and in helping differentiate the programme from radio mentor Listen With Mother, the artwork was initially created by a small team of in-house BBC graphic designers. With the programme running five days per week throughout the year, to paraphrase The Simpsons, this put a tremendous strain on the illustrator’s wrists. This meant that illustrators had to take a production line approach to working, while juggling their desire to get their best work onto the screen. Deadlines were regularly straddled as the episodes were prepared, with the team of illustrators keenly flicking through each incoming story with a mixture of excitement and despair on spotting the most thrilling-but-busy scenes within each tale. (“Ooh, a sword fight! Gah, at a lavish banquet!”)

Occasionally, the artistic licence taken with Jackanory illustrations required the involvement of the showrunner. In the splendid BBC Four documentary The Story of Jackanory, illustrator Graham McCallum tells of the time Joy Whitby had to request an illustrator nip down to the studio immediately, as a horse being featured in a pivotal scene had been drawn with a little too much, erm, front tail on show.

In the 62nd volume of literary journal Something About The Author, illustrator Gareth Floyd (above) refers to the demands that came with his twelve years on Jackanory. The production team had seen Floyd’s illustrations in children’s books and offered him a freelance gig working for the programme, having quite sensibly realised the in-house team were being stretched that bit too far. Having worked on a couple of Jackanory commissions per year, including standout stories Stig of the Dump and The Railway Children, Floyd would be expected to provide sixty pictures for a week’s worth of episodes, a process made tricker by his usual style proving unsuitable for broadcast TV (not ‘unsuitable’ in that sense, you filthy lot):”My usual style had been to draw in pen, then in colour in a sort of two-wash drawing. That technique presented a problem on television where you tend to get a strobing of lines, the effect of lines crossing, [so] a more painterly style is often more suitable for television illustrations.”

The relentless demand for fresh artwork being piped through to the studio proved too much for some, as Floyd recalled: “It’s not easy to finish sixty pictures on a tight schedule, and you can’t be late with material for television. Once the drawings were done I had to go to the studios and spend about three days altering details. I had heard many stories of illustrators who couldn’t take the strain. The producer would have to finish the drawings because the artist was too traumatised to go on.”

Not all Jackanory illustrators would feel that much strain, however. It’s probably safe to say the most well-known of the freelance illu strators to work on the programme was Quentin Blake, who took a quite different view. Speaking in The Story of Jackanory, Blake recalls how he used to think “they’re only going to see this for several seconds! Whoopee!”

Not that his near-minimalist style was unsuited to the show, of course. The energy, character and sheer joy contained within each Blake scribble brightened any episode to feature them. Little surprise that he’d work on more than 150 episodes of the series. Slightly more surprising that Blake would go on to present several episodes of the series in the 1970s, drawing illustrations for the Adventures of Lester stories as he went. The need to be constantly facing his canvas meant that, unlike most of the presenters on the programme, Blake would need to remember his stories word-by-word rather than read them from autocue. So it’s probably fortunate that Blake had written all the original Lester stories himself.

Back with the traditional setup, there were two sets of steady hands that kept the ‘Nory stable more often than any other: Bernard Cribbins – who’d go on to host the charming CBeebies pseduo-‘Nory Old Jack’s Boat until 2015 – and Kenneth Williams. With the latter, Williams’ distinctive performance as half of Round the Horne’s Julian and Sandy brought him to the attention of director Jeremy Swan, who approached Anna Home about getting him to take a turn as presenter. On receiving the offer, Williams expressed concern over the role, almost turning it down, having been informed he’d need to wear a huge hat bearing the illuminated legend ‘Jackanory’ throughout each recording – a particularly cheeky fib relayed to him by a mischievous Hattie Jacques. Fortunately for a generation of kids, Williams’ fears were allayed, and his marvellous vocal mannerisms would go on to feature in a total of 69 ‘Nory episodes.

Such was the popularity of the programme, the brand was extended to cover full-on dramatic stagings of stories in spinoff Jackanory Playhouse – twenty-five minute programmes with full casts – running between 1972 and 1980. This helped whet the BBC’s appetite for producing more proper drama programmes within the Children’s Television hours (rather than standalone family dramas placed elsewhere in the schedule), some of which would be adapted from stories previously read in (standard) episodes of Jackanory, such as Jonny Briggs (Jackanory 1977-1984, standalone programme 1985-1987) or The Borrowers (Jackanory 1967 and 1983, standalone series 1992). Sadly though, it would be the growing popularity of standalone drama series that spelled the beginning of the end of Jackanory.

By the mid-1980s, with Children’s BBC putting out a range of pre-recorded drama ranging from The Box of Delights to Grange Hill, the promise of a bejumpered Martin Jarvis reading tales from a sitting room seemed a little less essential, and having started taking summers off in the late 1970s, from 1985 Jackanory was a treat served only during the first few months of each year.

That didn’t mean the programme was going without a fight, however. The introduction of more contemporary storytellers such as Rik Mayall (George’s Marvellous Medicine in 1986 and The Fwog Pwince – the Twuth! in 1993, Jack and the Beanstalk on Christmas Eve 1995) or a pre-Marion Tony Robinson (Theseus the Hero in 1985 – adapted by Richard Curtis and Robinson, Odysseus in 1986, Terry Jones’ Nicobobinus in 1988, and Skulduggery in 1993). Robinson’s stories took to location filming, often involving members of the public, which definitely provided a fresh energy to the series.

Series producer Angela Beeching remarked in The Story of Jackanory that Mayall’s episode had been the popular week of Jackanory in the programme’s history, and (predictably) one of the most complained about¹. Oh, 1980s parents. Little wonder that Rik’s inaugural week of Jackanory would be repeated on Children’s BBC in 1988, again in 1994. Plus, once the original audience was somewhat older, again on BBC Four in 2006.

In 1990, the programme’s 25th anniversary was marked by a series of greatest hits, with some of the most popular Jackanory narrators (Patricia Routledge, Bernard Cribbins, Tony Robinson) reading stories by some of the nation’s favourite Jackanory story authors (Joan Aiken, Helen Cresswell and, ah, Tony Robinson). However, the victory lap did little to disguise falling viewing figures. From a 1970s peak of five million viewers, the early 1990s saw audiences averaging around two million (yes, that’s a lot nowadays, but shush). The number of episodes airing in the weekday CBBC strand fell from 64 to 48 episodes per year between 1992 and 1993.

A new producer, Nel Romano, joined the series in 1993, and attempted to bring the storied programme a little more up to date without losing that key identity. In a world with many more distractions to compete with, something new was needed to distract kids from switching to their SNES on AV2. In came another injection of energy, with narrators more normally seen after the watershed like Adrian Edmondson (Diana Hendry’s Harvey Angell, 1993), Kathy Burke (Roald Dahl’s The Twits, 1995) and Paul Merton (Morris Gleitzman’s Misery Guts, 1993). The intent was clearly to make clear how cosy old Jackanory was now anything but. Sadly, the move did little to increase viewing figures and on Friday 31 March 1995, Jackanory aired for the last time in a weekday CBBC slot, returning that October in a Sunday morning slot on BBC2, where stories would be delivered in a single, longer programme.

That new home for the programme started with a determined effort to make the most of things, the first episode of the series marking thirty years on air by bringing back Bernard Cribbins for a tribute to fellow ‘Nory favourite Roald Dahl. Subsequent episodes would see contemporary figures like Pauline Quirke, Mike McShane and Diane-Louise Jordan take to the storybook. Despite those efforts, the early start needed to catch Jackanory meant that viewing figures continued to decline, and in 1996 the original Jackanory was given the chop.

To close things off on Sunday 24 March that year, in came a classic pairing: Alan Bennett and Winnie the Pooh, a duet originally performed in a 1968 episode of the programme.

That wasn’t quite the end for the series, however.

The Sunday morning BBC2 slot was handed over to a run of Jackanory Gold from October 1996, starting with Arthur Lowe reading Peter Hughes’ The Emperor’s Oblong Pancake from 1976. That run would last until December 1997, but Jackanory’s legacy continue for years to come.

Cue the new BBC channels, with Choice and Knowledge being hungry binary beasts desperate for content. It was BBC Knowledge that took up repeat runs of classic Jackanory from 2001, and better yet, in 2006 a fresh batch of Jackanories arrived on the new standalone CBBC channel, with taster episodes also going out on BBC One. The new episodes were perhaps now more at home on a channel with more modest expectations for viewing figures, but it was only ever a short-term concern.

More success was made of another spinoff, with Jackanory Junior airing on CBeebies (and the CBeebies morning strand on BBC2). Stars such as Lenny Henry, Martin Clunes and Art Malik delivered a combination of stories old and new, keeping the Jackanory brand on the main BBC channels until 2009.

From there, the Jackanory name faded into the background, with early morning Jackanory eventually morphing into the early evening CBeebies Bedtime Stories, with one-off five minute tales delivered by a variety of famous faces right before the channel bids sleepy-bye to the digital multiplexes for the night. And, given the fragmentation of viewers across the digital landscape, it’s a format that remains resolutely popular. The stories are still interesting enough to command attention, and with famous names ranging from Tom Hardy to Dave Grohl on hand to read them, it’s every bit as big with parents as the little ones.

It might not quite match the full-on energy of George’s Marvellous Medicine, but it all brings in nicely back to the simpler original age of Listen With Mother on The Light Programme.

That was quite a long one, wasn’t it? And so, we’re at the end of the 100-11 part of the list. Yikes. Come back soon for the start of the ULTIMATE TOP TEN.

1. Not that this was the only instance of innocent old Jackanory receiving complaints. The retelling of Ted Hughes’ The Iron Woman in 1994 draw complaints for the accompanying model footage, while a much earlier episode referring to Walter Raleigh being sent to ‘The Bloody Tower’ (i.e. Tower of London) compelled at least a few angry parents to call the BBC Duty Office at the shocking use of swearing on kids’ TV. ↩︎