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. ↩︎

It’s Saturday. It’s 12:15pm. The Weatherman just told us how rubbish the weather this weekend will be, so it’s time for… um.

14: Escape to the Country

(Shown 4365 times, 2002-2021)

Richie: “Still, I did my bit for the country.”

Eddie: “What, you stayed in the town?”

Richie: “Absolutely.”

Now admittedly, and it might be my own personal circumstances at play here, but it does seem like the much of this chart falls into one of two categories. Category One is all the programmes that have been part of the TV landscape throughout what feels like our entire lives: your Panoramas, your Matches of the Day, your Songses of Praises. Category Two comprises programmes that seem to have amassed a huge episode count seemingly out of nowhere, mainly due to the camouflage of being on when most people are at work, college and/or school. That category includes The Daily Politics, Ready Steady Cook, Cash in the Attic and this next entry on the list.

For those who usually find themselves working/learning/sensibly doing something else when it’s normally on, Escape to the Country falls firmly into the Someone Buying A House And Maybe Living In It genre, and as these things go, it’s a pretty big deal. Generally, the action involves potential home buyers tiring of life in the Big City, and are surprised to learn that their two-bed London terraced home is worth a cajillion pounds, so they’re off to buy something massive near some fields.

The buyers will look at three or four suitably sprawling properties in their chosen location, including one ‘mystery house’ chosen by the production team. SPOILER: The mystery home isn’t haunted or anything fun like that, it’s basically just Another Very Nice House But The Kitchen Is Upstairs Or Something. Once all that’s done, the buyers are asked to guess the asking prices of each house, the real asking prices are revealed, and they’re asked to reveal which one they’d like to buy. And sometimes they do, which provides some material for a future episode.

As far as I’m personally concerned, it’s something to angry up my blood as I spend an unhealthy amount of time working and still need to consider selling an internal organ whenever it’s time for a big supermarket shop. However, for many it’s clearly a lovely little slice of afternoon escapism. Not everyone is cynical as me, and feels happy for some people who can sell the Balham semi they paid £3000 for in 1978 and can subsequently afford to buy a third of Leicestershire. And that’s only partly a lazy assumption, by the way. The Independent on Sunday picked out the first episode as a Pick of the Day back in October 2002, their write up casually mentioning “an extended family from Basildon, who have a budget of £600,000, are looking for a mansion in Derbyshire”. Ooh, let’s all root for the plucky ragtag family. Collective prayer that they get a mansion they like, everyone.

But anyway.

The programme began all the way back in October 2002, in a mid-afternoon BBC2 slot, arriving with the following billing in the Radio Times:
Hoping to “go green”, a young London couple want a country house. Catherine Gee gives them some options, in the first of a new series in which city-dwellers wanting to move to the country are found homes.

It would quickly go on to become a regular for the channel, proving popular enough to receive a short repeat run on weekday morning BBC1 in the run-up to a new series in October 2004. At the time, the premise of the programme focused on families looking to leave behind the urban rat race for a rural idyll, but much of the initial ‘action’ involved the potential buyers viewing potential homes on a laptop in their city house, picking a pair of dwellings to visit in person, along with a third ‘mystery’ house. Ooh, mystery house, that’s a bit spooky… oh, it’s just that one bedroom is behind a big curtain.

From the sixth series onwards, all four potential homes would be viewed in person by the buyers, along with a ‘taster’ day where the contributors are invited to sample delights of the local community, learn a little about the area and visit a few local attractions. A few series later, the number of homes was reduced to just three – retaining, obviously, The Mystery House (attic smells of tuna, third bedroom exists only in two dimensions, etc). And that’s where the format pretty much landed for the final time – it’s stayed that way ever since.

In September 2012, as Escape to… neared its testimonial anniversary, first-run episodes were promoted to plum afternoon slots on BBC One, though revised repeats of the series had been airing on BBC One in a similar slot since 2009. In fact, the programme has been the initial beneficiary of BBC One ending the channel’s long-running Children’s BBC strand, which had been in place since the early days of the Television Service, that first non-CBBC late afternoon schedule in December 2009 dominated by a young couple’s quest to find an East Sussex home with a suitably huge kitchen.

Such longevity would usually generate a spin-off or two, and that’s very much the case with Escape to the Country. January 2017 saw the first episode of catch-up series I Escaped to the Country, with  currently in its seventh series, and there was even a variant looking at those lucky enough to escape Normal Island in 2014’s Escape to the Continent. And, if rural living doesn’t butter your crumpet, 2019 saw the first episode of Escape to the Perfect Town, catering for those who get antsy if they wander too far from a Tesco Metro.

There’s even an Australian version of the series, Escape from the City airing on ABC from 2019. Indeed, the original UK version is popular enough in the antipodes to have warranted a pair of Region 4 DVDs from Aussie disc supremos Shock Entertainment – a pair of box sets totalling nineteen discs.

It’s even made a (modest) impact in the US, with the programme having appeared on US Netflix and Prime Video. Not a bad feat getting traction where huge houses are largely the default setting in all but the bigger cities, but it’s in the UK where Escape to the Country is truly an immovable feast.

13: Grandstand

(Shown 4500 times, 1958-2007)

By the 1950s, the BBC Television Service had a problem with sport. Basically, it kept bursting out everywhere – especially on Saturdays – and it HAD to be contained. 1954 had seen the introduction of midweek sporting roundup Sportsview, which arrived with a mission to enthral viewers with the latest news, views and personalities from the world of sport. All very good, but with a runtime between twenty and thirty minutes on any given week, there was only so much room for actual sporting action. Conversely, on Saturday afternoons there was lots of space to broadcast live sport, the resulting BBC-tv schedule akin to a bull let loose in a Sports Direct. Sport was ruddy well everywhere. Live sports coverage was exempt from the Postmaster General’s broadcasting hours restrictions, so Saturday afternoons were pretty much a Linekeresque tap-in for BBC schedulers.

Picking a Saturday at random to give an example, 8 September 1956 saw the following schedule in the Radio Times:

1.50pm: Twenty minutes of Motor Racing from the British Automobile Racing Club’s September Meeting at Goodwood, including The Madgwick Cup, a five-lap race for cars up to 1,100cc. But no time to focus on that, because at 2.10pm viewers were whisked away to the Derby Baths in Blackpool for the National Swimming and Diving Championships. But don’t get too attached to that, because at 2.25pm we’re back off to the Motor Racing for twenty minutes, then back to the Derby Baths at 2.45pm. Who will win the big prize there? You’d better hope it’s decided by 3pm, because then we’re off to Farnborough for an Air Display by the Society of British Aircraft Constructors.

Phew, eh? There really should be a little more order to this kind of thing.

Luckily, a set of steady hands were on the way to steady the Saturday sporting tiller. Programme editor Paul Fox, production assistant Bryan Cowgill and presenter-cum-head of Outside Broadcasts Peter Dimmock had all worked wonders within the BBC’s Outside Broadcast team, Fox having created and edited Sportsview (plus the annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year, originally known as Sports Review of the Year), while Dimmock had proved his broadcasting mettle by taking charge of the BBC-tv’s coverage of the Queen’s Coronation, as well as working as main presenter of Sportsview. But it was Cowgill who had an idea that would transform weekend television for decades to come: an umbrella approach to the Saturday sporting portfolio.

Peter Dimmock’s stock was certainly high at the time. In the run-up to ITV’s big launch in 1955, the new network had been prepared to offer hefty pay increases to coax the BBC’s top talent over to the Light Network. Then-DG Sir Ian Jacob, displaying the sense of stoicism and stinginess you’d expect from the BBC of the 50s, was largely reluctant to match any such offers, him being well aware that the BBC’s more limited budget would necessitate cuts elsewhere offset any pay jumps.

That wasn’t the case when Director of Television Sir George Barnes rang up to let him know about ITV’s approach to Peter Dimmock. The response from the DG was definitive: “Make any sort of personal relationships for him – as a personal case – that are necessary.”

That was a decision borne of much more than keeping that friendly sports presenter on screen. Dimmock had displayed a special skill in negotiating sports contracts, and in selling the BBC programmes those contracts generated to overseas broadcasters. He’d also built up a series of working relationships with various sporting authorities, which combined with his ease at presenting live sport coverage made for a pretty comprehensive package. On top of everything else, he headed the BBC’s Outside Broadcasts Department, and had served as Sports Adviser to the European Broadcasting Union. If he hopped channels, any replacement would need one hell of a CV.

Dimmock’s experience at working with the Outside Broadcasts Unit would be essential. He’d been a key component in TV coverage of the Queen’s coronation in 1953, serving as producer for coverage of the Coronation Service from Westminster Abbey, having worked closely with sceptical Abbey personnel to prove that the presence of TV cameras need not be a distraction from the main event. Before then, he’d worked on the 1948 Olympics, the first international relay from Calais in 1950 and the funeral of George VI in 1952.

Having been so instrumental in several of the biggest moments in BBC-tv’s life thus far, throwing to live racing from Haydock was hardly a herculean task. Having seen teleprompters in use during his time in the USA, he know how to get the best out of the nascent tech while live to air. In short, the only person who could hope to keep all the levers moving when it came to launching the BBC’s new, sprawling and enthralling Saturday spectacular: Grandstand.

Arriving on Britain’s screens for the first time on 11 October 1958, this was to no small undertaking. A shade under three hours of live television each Saturday, mostly, though not exclusively, devoted to sport – this was a programme from the BBC Television Outside Broadcasts department, after all. Paul Fox took to the Radio Times to explain just how it would all – hopefully – come together, promising that “all the items that used to appear here and there on Saturday afternoons will now come under the Grandstand umbrella”.

With Dimmock at the controls from a swanky new studio at Lime Grove, at least for those first few weeks before his co-anchor – a tyro David Coleman – took sole charge of presentation (allowing Dimmock to move behind the scenes), there were football newsflashes, racing updates (complete with the latest odds), and updates from reporters all around the UK. Fox promised that “sports news of the day will be given as it happens – and, whenever possible, where it happens”, thanks to that BBC Outside Broadcast unit. There was the promise of live horse racing each week, live swimming, motor racing, ice skating and table tennis in the coming weeks. Some of those admittedly easier to capture on camera than others.

There was even the tentative promise of (“if our hopes are realised”) live boxing. But, slightly surprisingly, the callout event on the big preview of Grandstand was… snooker. Not the most obvious draw for the black and white tellies of the time, but this was no ordinary event – Joe Davis, the “greatest snooker player of all time” had signed up for a series of special challenge matches at venues around Britain, taking on top players of the day, such as Walter Donaldson and John Pulman. And, to make it even more of an occasion, Joe’s first match would be against brother and fellow pro Fred Davis.

The action wasn’t just restricted to That England, either. The BBC’s Scottish Outside Broadcast Unit (a branding that conjures up a certain stereotypical image, unless it’s just me picturing an OB van bedecked in tartan) would be on hand to capture action from the World Amateur Team Golf Championship from St Andrews.

It’s fair to say that was a lot to be going on with. The only real hitch was a TV schedule that insisted subsequent children’s programming start airing at 4.45pm, a time which neatly clashes with all the sports results Grandstand would really quite like to tell viewers about. It took until April 1959 before those fifteen critical minutes were finally added to Grandstand’s runtime, allowing for a full Sports Result Service, and an easier route for participants in the football pools to learn they’d need to work for at least another week.

As mentioned, the whole affair being centred around the Outside Broadcast Unit rather than sport specifically gave the programme freedom to wander from its core remit if circumstances required, such as the Henley Regatta or sundry Car Shows. A prime example of this came on 22 February 1964, and an edition promising “the return of the Beatles to the UK, as well as horse racing and rugby union”.

Unsurprisingly given its position on this list, the programme was a success. So much so, the Grandstand branding swiftly swallowed up key events on the sporting calendar. Alongside regular Saturday afternoon Grandstand, the Radio Times would trumpet the presence of Derby Day Grandstand (from 1960), Cup Final Grandstand (from 1965), World Cup Grandstand (from 1966), Olympic Grandstand (from 1968), and Ryder Cup Grandstand (from 1993), many of which didn’t even air at the weekend. The slow creep of sporting endeavours into the Sabbath also led to occasional airings of Sunday Grandstand from 1967 onwards.

However, the most thrillingly-titled variant was set to arrive on the evening of Tuesday 21 April 1970, where a special edition (step aside, Sportsnight) featured the big Joe Bugner v Ray Patterson boxing match in London, followed by “Apollo 13 Splashdown”. Yep, the return to Earth of moon men James A. Lovell Jr, John L. Swigert Jr and Fred W. Haise Jr led to the programme being rechristened Splashdown Grandstand for a single edition. Just look at this planned programme schedule for the night:

8.0 International Professional Boxing: Joe Bugner v Ray Patterson
8.45 The Main News With Kenneth Kendall
9.0 Apollo 13 Splashdown
9.02 Re-entry due
9.11 Parachutes open
9.16 Splashdown
10.10 On Deck
10.15 International Match of the Day: England v Northern Ireland

Epic. Except, of course, a set of fuel cells 180,000 nautical miles from Earth had other ideas. The return flight of the Apollo 13 crew had to be frantically rearranged for the previous Friday, and one of the most exhilarating live broadcasts of the entire space race took place then instead.

All very well, but what of our Splashdown Grandstand? Those midweek sporting events instead went out as individual programmes, with the scheduled Splashdown programme replaced by The Dick Emery Show and a rescheduled 24 Hours. Ah, well.

Rewinding slightly, by 1965 Grandstand had a rival on the other side. ITV’s initial reticence to sport receding to make way for World of Sport, which was now very much in play. But while their rival had the winsome Dickie “Last Time I Saw Something Like That The Whole Herd Had To Be Put Down” Davies at the helm, the BBC still held the rights to all the key events, and with Frank Bough sharing hosting duties with David Coleman (the latter frequently off displaying his commentary chops), there was still only one destination for the serious sports fan. World of Sport had Canadian log rolling, Grandstand had Eddie Waring, Football Focus and the Vidiprinter. It was no contest. Especially as Grandstand would be the go to destination for getting those all-important results come 4.45pm. Even now, people of a certain age can only read the Classified Football Results with a particular intonation in their heads.

By the 1980s, a bejumpered Coleman was more at home behind a Question of Sport desk, and with Frank Bough occupied in a similarly wooly vocation on Breakfast Time, it was time for TV’s Mr Unflappability to shine. Step forward Des Lynam. Never had helming several hours of live television on a weekly basis – imagine an election night every seven days, basically – seemed so ruddy effortless. And so, by the late 1980s, Grandstand was cock of the walk. World of Sport had ceased to be, with ITV spending more energy on snaffling exclusivity on individual sporting events – think The Football League, Athletics and Horse Racing – but Grandstand’s greatest foe, and ultimate conqueror, was about to appear from the Sky.

The early days of satellite broadcasting had been no threat to the main broadcasters – nobody was breaking into a sweat over the Screensport Super Cup – but by the mid-1990s, Sky Sports had the budget and the broadcasting bandwidth to do everything Grandstand couldn’t. It could continue live coverage of golfing tournaments, rugby matches or tennis opens way into primetime, with no pressing need to halt coverage in favour of Steve Wright’s People Show or Big Break. And as the pot of available events began to empty, the BBC needed to make more of what it still had. Would people be tuning into Grandstand and hope they enjoyed what they found there, or would they be more enticed by a programme listing for a live Six Nations match?

In the digital EPG age of the noughties, viewers didn’t want to just see that a sprawling Grandstand strand was on, they’d want to know which sport to expect and when. A brand that was once spread across the BBC like sporting butter seemed to be little more than an anachronism kept around out of loyalty more than practicality, and in January 2007 it finally bowed out. By the time of the final Grandstand programme listing, pointing viewers toward the Red Button and BBC website for uninterrupted coverage of the Australian Open or European Figure Skating Championships was the norm, it was clear how the linear Grandstand strand wasn’t really needed any more. The fact that much of that final Saturday edition was shovelled onto BBC2 to make way for a live FA Cup Match of the Day between Luton Town and Blackburn only underlined how inessential the once hardy old brand had become.

Then, it was gone. Broken up for scrap. The following Saturday saw Football Focus officially span off as a standalone programme (which, as far at Electronic Programme Guides had been concerned, it had been for a while anyway), as was the BBC’s Six Nations Rugby coverage. Final Score had the same treatment, once an integral part of Grandstand, now a plucky stat-based orphan left to flourish on its own.

And do you know what? It was fine. When there wasn’t any big sporting event to show on a Saturday afternoon, the BBC no longer felt the need to fling on something sporty for the sake of it. This was an era where Sky Plus was king of the living room. People wanted to be able to record ‘Rugby League’, ‘Swimming’, or ‘Golf’, not use up a valuable chunk of their PVR’s 20GB capacity on several whole hours of sport because that’s how the programme guide had wanted it.

This was the future.

And yet, in a way, it was 1958 all over again.

^{NOTE: Updated figure and table on 16/7/23 to correct the episode counts for 1965 and 1966, plus totals, accordingly. Thanks to eagle-eyed reader @michael_sas for spotting the discrepancy.}

There we go, another one out of the way. Phew. Next time: we brush the quivering brim of the Top Ten. Ooh, eh?

“We interrupt this programme to bring you a football game.”

16: Match of the Day

(Shown 4055 times, 1964-2021)

Well, here’s one that was always going to appear, and one where I probably need to clarify the criteria for inclusion. In general with this list, where something had specific programme branding applied to it and it keeps to the core format of the programme, I’m counting it. So, Nationwide Election Special counts, Tweenies Songtime doesn’t. Postman Pat Special Delivery Service please step forward, This Morning With Anne and Nick’s Live Autopsy Hour not so fast.

That gets a little more complicated with Match of the Day. For one thing, the first eleven times the title ‘Match of the Day’ appeared in TV listings, it had absolutely nothing to do with football. While MOTD as we’d come to know it first aired on Saturday 22 August 1964, Match of the Day first appeared as a programme title a whole two months earlier. A total of eleven editions of ‘Match of the Day’ aired in relation to the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships in 1964 before the moniker was first applied to kickball.

The MOTD branding would go on to become closely aligned to both football and (during Wimbledon fortnight) tennis highlights, with the latter sometimes made clear in the programme title (as Match of the Day from Wimbledon or Wimbledon [YEAR] Match of the Day), but sometimes not.

The other complication comes in defining what makes up the ‘core’ MOTD experience. Saturday night football highlights are the main thing you’d associate the brand with, but it’s also been used for live football coverage (sometimes as Match of the Day Live, International Match of the Day or Match of the Day: The Road to Wembley, sometimes as just plain old Match of the Day). And what about Match of the Day 2? Does that count? How about Match of the Day Greats, or …Kickabout, or …Top 10? How about lockdown gap-filler Match of Their Day?

Right, to try and get some kind of vaguely accurate figure here, I’m going to go with the following rule: If it’s tagged as Match of the Day, and the bulk of the content is footage from a football match (or matches, either live or highlights) of a contemporary match, it counts. If it’s not one of those things (so, Kickabout et al), or doesn’t have the MOTD branding, it doesn’t count. Settled? Good.

The waters are, of course, further muddied by the MOTD branding not always being used in programme listings. Since 2014, much of the BBC’s live or highlight coverage of The FA Cup has been billed as ‘The FA Cup’, keeping it away from the (now) more Premier League-focused MOTD name. Which means that, in this age of iPlayer and rights issues, the two sets of highlights are now kept in separate containers. Even when they’re next to each other in the schedule.

The title World Cup Match of the Day was used when nightly highlights round-ups were broadcast in 1974 (live matches then going out as World Cup Grandstand). Then that title lay dormant for 15 years, with the programme title reused for highlights of Italia ’90 qualifiers in 1989, provided they were on a Saturday – midweek qualifier highlights went out as part of Sportsnight. That is until October 1989, when World Cup Match of the Day was used for a live (midweek) broadcast of the Poland v England qualifier. Then, the programme title hibernated until the 2006 World Cup in Germany, except for the highlights packages for Euro 2000 that used “MotD at Euro 2000” but not for the live matches… look, here’s a table of RT billing titles for every major international football tournament since 1950. Titles included in MotD’s episode count are in bold.

Anyway, let’s rewind a bit. Football on the BBC has gone out under a variety of guises – hey, here’s another largely pointless table, this time of non-MotD football match billings in the Radio Times:

So, it’s probably for the best that they settled on another programme title. The above isn’t even a comprehensive list – between 1971 and 1997, the Sportsnight Special branding was used for midweek football matches, mostly but not exclusively for those broadcast live (first: FA Cup Third Round Replay highlights, last: live coverage of AS Monaco v Newcastle United in the UEFA Cup).

The BBC’s first televised association with Association (Football) dates all the way back to September 1937. That inaugural coverage was, as you may well already be aware, a thrilling tussle between Arsenal and… Arsenal Reserves at Highbury. Yep, fifteen minutes of a training match. While this could easily have been some filmed footage flung out as part of Newsreel, the BBC didn’t take that easier option. The Beeb’s brand new mobile television unit travelled to Highbury to broadcast the footage live. The first ever billed football match (as shown below) was indeed “a demonstration by the members of the Arsenal team” on 16 September 1937, but live footage of football first went out a day earlier – two minutes of soundless but live footage of the Arsenal team went out at 3.45pm the previous day, as part of magazine series Picture Page.

Such was the cost of sending the mobile television unit (around £35, or the price of a pie at Wembley in 2023), a series of broadcasts from the ground were requested to make the whole affair a little more cost effective. As a result, a total of three transmissions were made from the ground, plus (following that brief initial broadcast on Picture Page) a test transmission of Arsenal Reserves versus Millwall Reserves was beamed back to a special viewing room at Ally Pally, so BBC bosses could gauge how suitable this football lark was for public consumption.

The second billed visit to The Arsenal occurred on 17 September that year, which led to another broadcasting first: George Male becoming the first footballer ever to be interviewed on live television. On being questioned about the diversity within the Highbury playing staff, Male proudly proclaimed “they are from Scotland, Yorkshire, Wales, all over the place… provided they are British subjects. We couldn’t put a foreigner in the team”. Plus ca change, eh? As a result (of the broadcast, not Male’s xenophobia), the BBC would go on to broadcast the FA Cup Final between Preston North End and Huddersfield in 1938, followed a year later with the Portsmouth versus Wolves final – the latter listed alongside the caveat “unless anything untoward happens” in the Radio Times (and a warning that “no rediffusion in places of public entertainment will be permitted”).

Following the war, the BBC were keen to show more live football for the demobbed masses, but there was a problem. The Football League – gatekeepers for the bulk of English professional matches – were dead against the idea, calculating that allowing the still-small television audience to watch coverage on tiny monochrome sets would be preferred to the full-3D, full-colour, full-Bovril matchday experience, and stop attending matches in person. Luckily for the BBC, the FA in general were more receptive to the broadcaster. Less luckily for the BBC, technology at the time limited them to covering events within a 20-mile radius of Alexander Palace.

As a result, the next televised football match, taking place on Saturday 19 October 1946, was from the lofty heights of the Athenian Football League, with Amateur Cup holders Barnet entertaining Wealdstone. Even then, the broadcast was far from simple – the permission of a local resident had to be sought so BBC engineers could borrow their phone line, and from another resident to plonk some scaffolding for cameras on their allotment. Thus the programme budget was duly increased to include compensation for damaged crops.

That wasn’t the end of the technical hitches. Despite the promise of “part of the first half and the whole of the second half” in the Radio Times, bad light ultimately curtailed the live broadcast fifteen minutes from the end of the match.

Despite those obstacles, the broadcast was deemed a success, and the BBC would go on to broadcast further (non-Football League) matches from the London area.

By 1954, the popularity of television had grown, along with the demand for televised sport. As a result, Head of Sport Peter Dimmock along with Paul Fox devised Sportsview, the BBC’s first midweek sporting magazine programme. This offered football match highlights alongside other sports, and soon became must-see viewing for sport fans lucky enough to own a television receiver. That popularity led to Sports Special, a Saturday night spin-off for the series packing a more football-focused remit, with Peter Dimmock taking to the Radio Times to provide exciting details on how “a helicopter, two aeroplanes, plus a fleet of motor-cycles and fast cars” would be employed to rush filmed reports from stadia to studio each week.

Sports Special would go on to run for ten years from 1955, accompanied in October 1958 by Saturday afternoon stablemate Grandstand. However, the very march of progress that made the programme possible in the first place (including, of course, the thrilling assistance of fast cars and helicopters and possibly at least one Milk Tray Man) would lead to its downfall. Match reports being shot on 16mm film meant that on arrival at the studio, footage first had to be processed, returned as wet negatives and frantically edited at Lime Grove by harried editors praying that they’d get the job done in time for transmission. The reliance on filmed reports (and the budget only allowing for a single camera at each match) also carried the risk of a crucial goal being slammed home while the camera operator was changing reels.

Videotape and multi-camera coverage were still only on the horizon, but Sports Special’s days were numbered. What was once a regular weekly treat became a more sporadic offering, and despite rebranding for most weeks as Football Special from late 1961, in April 1965 the programme would air as a Saturday night strand for the last time, by now on the rechristened BBC-1, with a broadcast of that day’s England v Scotland match from Wembley.

But! Hope for football fans was not lost. Over on upstart BBC-2, a new programme had arrived in 1964, opening with the classic Wolstenholme words “Welcome to Match of the Day, the first of a weekly series coming to you every Saturday on BBC-2. As you can hear, we’re in Beatleville for this Liverpool versus Arsenal match”, and ending with a score of 3-2 to the Mighty Reds.

It would go on to become quite popular.

The write-up for that first-ever episode in the Radio Times went as follows:

Today for the first time soccer fans can watch a feature-length version – as opposed to a potted ‘highlights’ version — of a regular League fixture. Which one? That, by agreement with the Football League, remains a secret until 4.0 this afternoon. But Bryan Cowgill, BBC-tv’s sports chief, promises that it will be a top match.

The agreement by which BBC-tv won permission for this came after careful negotiations between Bryan Cowgill and League Secretary Alan Hardaker. It allows for fifty-five minutes of coverage, enough to show the whole development of the game, and for its screening at a more popular hour.

Up to now we have only been able to show ten-minute edited films of any given match. which, effectively meant a machine-gun succession of goal-goal-goal,’ says Cowgill. ‘Now we can fall in line With BBC-2’s policy by offering “depth” treatment of our most popular sport’. To those who think this breakthrough is a further blow to turnstile takings, he offers his experienced opinion that ‘television never kept anyone away from the best in sport.’

In charge of the new venture as producer is Alan Chivers, BBC-tv’s most experienced soccer specialist. He intends to make full use of the technical advantages of 625 lines, and says: ‘We’re no longer restricted mainly to the close-up, With 625’s greater definition we can use wider shots without losing clarity, and so show much more of the overall pattern of a game.’

^{Radio Times Issue 2128, 20-26 August 1964}

Following the 1966 World Cup, famously won by A British Team Wearing Red (haven’t checked, I presume it was Wales), MOTD made the move from BBC-2 to BBC-1 for the 1966/67 season. Although the programme would move back to BBC-2 for a week in November 1968 so that the first colour edition of the series could be shown. Any football fanatics without a 625-line set that week at least got to watch Hitchcock’s Anatomy of a Murder on BBC1 that night. It wouldn’t be until 15 November 1969 that colour MOTD first arrived on BBC-1 – on the channel’s first official day of colour TV.

Transition to colour TV aside, the core remit of the series – football highlights on a Saturday night – remained unchanged for a long time. Even when events called for a special episode of MOTD, it was usually affixed to standard match highlights, as had been the case on 10 Jan 1970 and the excitingly-billed “Match of the Day Special: 1970 World Cup Draw“. This contained the exciting curveball of having David Coleman reporting from Mexico City’s Maria Isabella Hotel, where the 16 qualifying nations discovered who they’d be playing that summer (“Presented by Telesistema Mexicano”, no less). Even then, as befitting the programme, the bulk of the content that week was still of match highlights from a suitably sodden football ground.

A year before that Mexican jamboree, MOTD had added the first ever slow-motion replays to their coverage, an innovation that would make a huge difference to the way football was covered. And those innovations were increasingly important. At a time when the USA and USSR were in a PR war to get the first boots on the moon, BBC and ITV’s respective football flagships were locked in a similar, if slightly less cosmic, battle.

The nature of ITV meant there was no network-wide football highlights programme – the whole story of football on ITV could fill an entry on its own – but the big hitter was undoubtedly LWT’s The Big Match, which tried to add a little Light Entertainment pizazz to the whole affair (oh, okay. Brian Moore and a desk with a phone on it). The battle ultimately became so intense that Michael Grade led a coup to snaffle up exclusive rights to the Football League in 1978, the move was famously reported in the papes as ‘Snatch of the Day‘. Which would have been quite witty had the pun not already been public knowledge since a 1974 anti-pickpocket public information film. Luckily, the Office of Fair Trading put a stop to that nonsense, and Match of the Day was safe. For a while.

The battle of the broadcasters intensified throughout the next few years, though there was a truce of sorts after the channels agreed to alternate ownership of the prime Saturday night highlights slot, meaning MOTD aired on Sunday afternoons throughout the 1980/81 and 1982/83 seasons. However, for 1983/84 there was a new, long-awaited change for both channels: live coverage of Football League matches. It’s almost strange to imagine such a thing at a time when almost every single match in the top five tiers of English football can (legally) be watched live, but that represented the first time live league football would be shown on TV since 1960. Highlights briefly faded into the background. Especially during the start of the 1985/86 season, when disputes over money meant TV was a football-free zone for several months. At least that led to Saint & Greavsie parading West Ham’s leading goalscorer Frank McAvennie around London to see if anyone would recognise him, which is quite fun.

1988 saw a dramatic change to coverage for the Beeb, with ITV paying a (then-)whopping fee for exclusivity. It certainly seems quaint now, but paying £44m for 21 live matches per season was big news at the time, not least as it restricted MOTD to coverage of the FA Cup (and for the most part, a rebranding to Match of the Day: The Road to Wembley).

As football’s post-1990 popularity soared Skywards (insert a Waddle penalty gag here if you must) even bigger changes were afoot. But then you probably already know all about that. At least that meant top division highlights returned to the BBC.

And – if we all pretend those few years of Andy Townsend’s Tactics Truck et al were just a national hallucination – that’s where they’ve stayed ever since. And indeed, the lockdown-era Project Restart even led to the return of Live Top Tier Football to BBC1 after a gap of 32 years.

The mission statement of the programme has certainly changed a lot since Kenneth Wolstenholme’s original trip to Beatleville. The very thing original producer Bryan Cowgill was so happy to be leaving behind – “ten-minute edited films of any given match” – is now the core product of the programme. But, in a world where watching live football on TV is largely restricted to those with a disposable incomes or an illicit IPTV hookup, it’s still appointment television for many, and for everyone else it’s just nice to know it’s still there.

After all, we’ve now seen a vision of the future without Match of the Day. It wasn’t pretty.

NOTE: If you’d like to read a lot more about the history of football on British TV, be sure to take in Steve Williams’ superb Goalmouths over on OffTheTelly.

15: Doctors

(Shown 4081 times, 2000-2021)

For a genre of television that has seemed utterly omnipresent since the days of Stooky Bill, it’s actually a little surprising to learn that medical drama series were few and far between in the early days of British television. In the early days of the BBC Television Service, the closest you were likely to get was seeing a concert by someone who’d left the medical profession for the world of music, such as pianist Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (5 Dec 1936, Starlight) or Norman Hackforth (4 Feb 1937, The Composer at the Piano).

As was the style at the time, there would occasionally be serious factual programming based on medical matters, especially in the post-war years, such as 1947’s I Want to be a Doctor, but dramatic fiction from within doctorly settings were a feature that television simply didn’t seem to fancy. It’s tempting to suggest that the medical profession was deemed sacrosanct when it to TV’s myopic gaze, but that’s swiftly disproved by there being a smattering of comedy plays about the profession. May 1947 saw Annette Mills’ comedy feature Rotten Row, where a dilapidated row of horse boxes is converted into a fracture unit next to an evacuated hospital in post-war London (I repeat: a comedy), while August that year saw the screening of The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse, a comedy thriller by Barre Lyndon.

By the late 1940s Britain finally had a National Health Service, so it’s perhaps understandable that television preferred to spend airtime demystifying what went on behind hospital doors. As a result, factual programmes often made an appearance in the Radio Times, such as 1948’s Mass Radiography, (“The Medical Officer in charge of a Mobile X-Ray Unit belonging to the North-West London Regional Hospital Board demonstrates a new technique of diagnosing chest diseases in their-early stages”), or 1949’s medical documentary series Matters of Life and Death (“Episode 7: Dr. F. Avery Jones and Mr. Norman Tanner, a physician and surgeon who have made a special study of gastric and duodenal ulcers, discuss their prevalence and show how they are diagnosed and treated”). All very worthwhile, but hardly using matters medical to offer a sense of escapism for the TV audience.

That changed in 1951, with a six-part television adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s 1855 book The Warden. The first of the Chronicles of Barsetshire series, the book followed the fortunes of Mr Septimus Harding, an elderly warden from Barsetshire-based Hiram’s Hospital. That offering aside, it took the launch of ITV in 1955 to successfully transplant the notion of a medical TV drama into Britain’s cathode-ray tubes. Emergency Ward 10 (ATV, 1957-67) became one of the nascent network’s breakout hits, albeit one that came about due to a misunderstanding. It had been suggested to programme creator Tessa Diamond that a show about daily hospital life might be a hit. It was only after Ward 10 was created that her agent revealed the original suggestion was actually for a documentary series.

Once that happy accident was out of the way, the programme quickly became a success. So much so, in ten years on the air it clocked up a total of 1,016 episodes – including in 1964 one that featured an early example of an inter-racial kiss between two actors.

Aside: For a spell, it seems to have been considered television’s first-ever such embrace (coming a full four years before the Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren”). However, it was actually preceded by both Granada’s 1962 Play of the Week In Your Small Corner, and 1959 ABC Armchair Theatre play Hot Summer Night – both plays featuring Jamaican actor Lloyd Reckord.

Anyway, with Ward 10 proving a success, other medical soap operas would later appear in an attempt to rebottle that magic, such as General Hospital (ATV, 1972-79), Angels (BBC, 1975-83) and Children’s Ward (Children’s ITV, 1989-2000). On top of that, daytime TV found plenty of room for antipodean imports The Young Doctors (Nine Network 1976–1983, airing on ITV from 1982 and Sky Channel from 1989), A Country Practice (Seven, 1981–1994, shown on ITV from 1982 and Sky Channel – in primetime! – from 1984) and Shortland Street (TVNZ 2, 1992–, shown on ITV from 1993).

As the millennium (and to a lesser extent, the Willennium) neared, the previously-listed Holby City (BBC, 1999-2022) started a residency on BBC1. And, with that proving popular enough for BBC bosses to attempt a daytime version, this was followed a year later by the first episode of… Doctors. Yes, we’ve got to it at last. Phew.

Set in the fictional Midlands town of Letherbridge, the Chris Murray-devised programme follows events within the local doctor’s surgery and the nearby university campus surgery, along with those of the stakeholders within.

Commissioning a brand-new scripted drama to go out in the pre-news slot 12.30pm each weekday – a place you’d usually expect to contain an episode of Changing Rooms, Celebrity Ready Steady Cook or Bargain Hunt – was certainly a brave move by BBC head of daytime programming Jane Lush. To remain receptive to occasional viewers, the programme was to use self-contained stories featuring the key cast rather than having long-running plot strands (a la imperial phase The Bill). In addition, casting cosy drama series stalwart Christopher Timothy as key character Mac McGuire certainly wasn’t going to hurt.

To introduce viewers to the series, the opening episode aired in a primetime-adjacent slot of 6:35pm on Sunday 26 March 2000, with the first regular daytime episode airing the following lunchtime. Under the auspices of showrunner Mal Young, whose vintage included Holby City, Casualty and would later cross the Atlantic to exec produce The Young and the Restless, Doctors proved successful enough to be tried out in a 7pm weekday slot in the summer of 2000. However, it quickly became obvious that a rival soap wasn’t much of a threat to the Emmerdale behemoth, and it returned to the cosier confines of 12.30pm.

And that happy little niche was where it would stay for just over a year and a half, before shifting to a 2.10pm slot in November 2001 in a soapy double-bill with Neighbours. And that was where it stays for several years, Letherbridge being happily twinned with Erinsborough five days per week, making it a Doctors appointment you weren’t likely to miss (oh shut up).

However, in 2007 calamity struck. With the FremantleMedia demanding a whopping £300m from the BBC in return for the rights to Neighbours for the next eight years, the flagship show was instead set to move to Channel Five. The result: a major soap-shaped hole in BBC1’s daytime schedule. What was the BBC to do? Splurge a chunk of programme budget on nabbing the rights to Shortland Street? Fling on repeats of The Sullivans? Nope, by that point Doctors was doing well enough for it to be promoted into that key post-news slot, with the remaining episodes of Neighbours switching to its post-2pm slot.

Doctors continued to perform admirably for the lunchtime audience, but finding a companion for it proved a little more tricky. US drama show Monk was tried out in that slot during December 2007, before long the Neighbours burn-off episodes were restored to the slot while packing its bags and preparing for life on Five. Diagnosis Murder was given a run in that slot a few months later, but April 2008 saw the launch of the BBC’s new secret weapon: Out of the Blue. It was cool. It was sexy. It could air five days per week. And most importantly, it was Australian.

Set in the fashionable Sydney beach suburb of Manly, the action started with a group of thirty-year-old friends returning home for a high school reunion, only for the reunion to end in murder and an investigation into which of them done it. It couldn’t fail. And crucially, it had actually been commissioned by the BBC, so could be tailored to meet the needs and wants of a British audience.

Obviously, it failed. Big time. Ratings were so unspectacular, it was nudged over to BBC2 after just fourteen episodes on BBC1, and lasted less than a year before being cancelled entirely. Not to worry though, Five picked up the repeat rights to the series, and put them out on digital offshoot Fiver. I’m assuming for a much lesser outlay than they’d paid for Neighbours. Diagnosis Murder picked up the post-Doctors reins, and proved a much more popular companion. After all, it is the 62nd most-broadcast programme on the BBC of all time.

Speaking of Doctors (which is what we’re supposed to be doing here, of course), it was the bedrock of the BBC daytime schedule. By 2010, it was picking up a comfortable two million viewers per episode, regularly winning the daytime ratings war. Indeed, some episodes even rated as high as 3.5 million viewers, numbers that EastEnders producers would probably throttle Wellard for nowadays.

And as time went on, those viewing figures only continued to grow. By 2017, they were sitting at a comfortable 2.5 million per episode, at one point reaching a peak of four million (according to a Telegraph link I’m not going to pay to read, so we’ll take Google’s word for it).

Now, as will be abundantly clear from this update, I’ve barely ever watched an episode of Doctors. However, what has become clear to me is that the creative team behind it aren’t afraid not to try something thrillingly different from time to time. The most obvious example of this would be superbly titled episode “The Joe Pasquale Problem“, which involved a patient seeing everyone as Joe Pasquale (special guest for that episode: Joe Pasq… oh, you’ve guessed).

Better still, an episode airing on the telltale date of 31 October 2014 saw character Al “forced to confront his scepticism of the supernatural when he finds a whistle with mysterious powers”. Or, if you prefer, an episode of a daytime soap opera was used as an excuse to put on a production of M R James’ 1904 ghost story Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad. You don’t get that with Emmerdale, do you?

That’s the only episode of Doctors I’ve ever watched, and not going to lie – it was great. The modest budget of a soap episode really helped it capture at least a soupçon of the 1970s aesthetic of the original A Ghost Story for Christmas, which is handy as Jonathan Miller’s 1968 version of the same was a decidedly different beast from the annual anthologies it begat. That Doctors episode is on DailyMotion if you fancy seeing it. And so are plenty more, if you like the sound of the series and would like to catch up.

(By the time you finish that, I might have the next entry on the list written.)

That’s another one in the bag, which isn’t a literal bag. More ‘soon’, if I get out the habit of spending an hour researching something for the sake of a single sentence about something not really connected to the programme I’m meant to be talking about.

So close we can taste that top twenty.

22: Eggheads

(Shown 3049 times, 2003-2021)

Hang on, what’s a Channel 5 programme doing on here?

Admittedly, I really don’t know much about the series. Never watched it, and one time some work colleagues were thinking of taking part, and one suggested to me that they’d like me to become an Egghead with them. Given the person who’d asked me was bald, I was unable to immediately dispel the suspicion I was about to have my head shaved.

Anyway, let’s crack out ChatGPT and see if I can work out where it’s wrong using my own feeble human brain? Over to you, Chatty. If nothing else, it’ll distract it from destroying society for a few minutes.

“Eggheads” is a British television quiz show that first aired on BBC Two in 2003. The show is produced by 12 Yard Productions and is hosted by Jeremy Vine. The format of the show features a team of five contestants, known as the “challengers,” competing against a team of quiz experts known as the “Eggheads.”

Oh dear. Not off to a great start. Eggheads actually started airing on BBC One in November 2003. Look, here’s the Genome entry and everything. Not a bigtime slot or anything, tucked away in lunchtime between a new episode of Cash In the Attic and the 1pm News bulletin. But still, BBC One. Not Two.

It actually first aired on BBC Two in Monday 10 May 2004, going out at 2.55pm between an airing of 1955 Barbara Stanwyck vehicle Escape to Burma and a Flog It!, if you’re wondering.

My feeble human brain: 1, AI: 0

The original Eggheads team consisted of five members: Chris Hughes, Kevin Ashman, Judith Keppel, Daphne Fowler, and CJ de Mooi. Each member of the Eggheads team is a former quiz show champion, with several holding titles such as Mastermind and University Challenge champions.

Yep, I’ll give you that.

My feeble human brain: 1, AI: 1

The show quickly became popular and was moved to a prime-time slot on BBC One in 2008. The format of the show has remained largely the same over the years, with each episode featuring a series of rounds of general knowledge questions.

Well, it had mainly been a BBC One programme at first anyway. Of the first 70 broadcasts for Eggheads, 63 of them had been on BBC One. I’ll call for a steward’s enquiry over it quickly becoming popular, though. It took until 23 May 2005 for the ‘Heads to first arrive in the slot it’d be most closely associated with – weekdays at 6pm on BBC2, at which point it made a fleeting appearance in the weekly Barb Top Thirty for the channel – sneaking into the arse-end of the chart for the first couple of weeks in the teatime slot (between 24th and 29th place on the weekly lists for weeks ending 29 May 2005 and 5 June 2005, if you must know), but after that it disappeared from the Beeb ratings for BBC2 until August of that year, when a week of airings at 17:15 – a lead-in for a fresh batch of Weakest Links – saw it reach the BBC Two top ten for the first time. It wouldn’t return to that BBC2 top ten until the following May, and even then only for a single episode.

My feeble human brain: 2, AI: 1

Oh, and it never aired in a prime-time slot on BBC One, either. Don’t know where you picked that up from.

My feeble human brain: 3, AI: 1

The challengers are given the opportunity to select a category for each round, and the Eggheads team must answer questions on that topic. If the challengers answer more questions correctly, they win the round. If the Eggheads answer more questions correctly, they win the round.

I mean, yes that’s technically correct. But you’re not getting a point for saying how a quiz works.

My feeble human brain: 3, AI: 1 (Goal disallowed)

Over the years, the Eggheads team has grown, with several members joining and leaving the team. Some notable former Eggheads include Barry Simmons, Pat Gibson, and Lisa Thiel. The current lineup of Eggheads includes Kevin Ashman, Judith Keppel, Barry Simmons, Chris Hughes, Steve Cooke, and Lisa Thiel.

While the number of eggheads has indeed grown over the years, putting together a list of just three notable ‘former Eggheads’ that includes two people you then say are current Eggheads is poor form. For shame. Also: the current line-up of Eggheads doesn’t include Judith Keppel. She left in October 2022. Pfft.

My feeble human brain: 4, AI: 1

The show has been a success for the BBC, with over 2,000 episodes produced as of 2021. In addition to the main show, several spin-offs have been created, including “Celebrity Eggheads,” “Revenge of the Egghead,” and “Eggheads Jumbo Quiz.”

Not going to knock the claim of ‘over 2,000 episodes’, as that’s the reason it’s here, so well done there. But, (and feel free to correct me in the comments, fellow squashy human brain beings) there’s never been a thing called “Eggheads Jumbo Quiz”. Poor show, ChatGPT.

FINAL SCORE: My feeble human brain: 5, AI: 2

CURRENT AI THREAT TO HUMANITY LEVEL:

Yeah, right. Hey, Supposed AI Menace That Will Doom Us All, do a picture of you being outwitted by me, a genius.

Bah.

21: Pebble Mill

(Shown 3137 times, 1972-2004)

In this age of ENDLESS TELLY, it’s a bit weird to consider that back when Britain just had a tiny handful of channels to keep us entertained, they didn’t even bother broadcasting throughout the daylight hours, let alone overnight. If you’d scored a day off school with some horrible 70s Scarfolk disease (probably mumps), you might settle down on your brown and orange sofa, pull up your warming if scratchy blanket (also brown and/or orange) to watch whatever might be on telly. Except: the daytime TV menu seldom contained anything other than “For Schools comma Colleges”, which was hardly fun. Maybe there’ll be something else on after that… oh it’s an hour of the test card. Or, if you’re lucky, ‘Interval’.

I always felt a bit cheated that I was born too late to see what the difference was between ‘Closedown’ and ‘Interval’. Presumably one of them had different music to the other. Anyway, it was all the fault of that ruddy Postmaster General, limiting the aggregate totals of hours in which TV can broadcast in a given week, meaning Britain’s TV companies sensibly opted to do so during hours where more people would be watching. If you were a daytime viewer, the occasional public service remit broadcast of Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan (see list passim) or Dechrau Canu Dechrau Canmol (see a small part of a future list-part) might be all you get.

However, October 1972 brought a bit of good news for Sickday Britons – the GPO bigwigs loosened their grip on the broadcasting reins, affording the nation Proper Daytime Telly for the first time. Nothing new before noon during termtime, mind – those hours were still reserved for broadcasting programmes for schools and colleges, but at least the hours between the lunchtime news and the start of children’s programming around 3pm could be filled with something other than Test Card F. And so, from Monday 2 October 1972, BBC-1 viewers got to experience Pebble Mill At One for the first time.

Welcomed to the airwaves by the Daily Telegraph’s Richard Last as “one of the first genuinely new programmes to emerge from unrestricted daytime hours”, Pebble Mill At One offered up at least a couple of new things.

THING ONE: a daily jaunt to plucky upstart regional outpost, um, Birmingham. Hey, it was a novelty at the time.

THING TWO: The whole affair coming from the foyer of the titular (and for the period, pretty darned modern) Pebble Mill studios. For a nation used to the hard-hitting likes of Tonight, 24 Hours and Panorama, this was a much gentler affair under the auspices of editor Terry Dobson. No custard creams were in danger of being dropped into cuppas.

If nothing else, it was probably a relief to the BBC that the building was doing something to help earn its upkeep. Constructed at the cost of £6m and initially decried as a white elephant, by the time Pebble Mill at One came along, the studios themselves – all 6500 square feet of them – were often filled to capacity (which might explain the need to fill At One in the foyer), but it took a while to reach that stage, such was the concentration of TV talent in London during those early years.

…At One came about thanks to former manager of BBC Radio Leeds, Phil Sidey. By 1972, he’d found himself in the role of Head of Network Production Centre, Birmingham, and having previously worked on 24 Hours and Nationwide, he certainly knew his way around a daily live production. Using his contemporary Midlands location, he was able to offer viewers what was considered a “non-Metropolitan view” of British life, which certainly helped sell the concept to BBC1 controller Paul Fox. With their moneyed rivals over at ITV busily preparing their own daytime TV schedule, a thrifty Beeb was never going to have the budget to take on an ITV line-up containing the likes of Emmerdale Farm, Lunchtime with Wogan or Crown Court on their own terms. But it did have that innate BBC talent at putting together reliable live programming on a daily basis.

To front the programme, former newsreader Bob Langley was chosen, having been deemed suitably avuncular for the new programme. Throw in a theme tune and title sequence that made the whole thing look like a precursor to Dynasty, and Cup-a-Soup Britain would never be the same again.

As mentioned, it was certainly didn’t hurt that BBC Pebble Mill was finally being used frequently. Theoretically, given its status as a single entity, the BBC should have been freed from the multifranchise bunfight between the big ITV regions trying to get their own shows to a national audience. In reality, the BBC regions were having an equally tough time getting their content shown nationally, with niche shows turned breakout hits like Pot Black or Gardener’s World the kinds of exceptions that found regular audiences.

The hope was that this would change. Pebble Mill became home to an English Regions Drama department, headed by David Rose, original producer of Z Cars, with fare from the department including a series of Thirty-Minute Theatre plays, alongside provincial offerings for the Play For Today strand. Luckily, things soon worked out for the Pebble Mill Studios, with it going on to become home to (at least briefly) Top Gear, Doctors, Telly Addicts, Howards’ Way, Juliet Bravo amongst others.

Back to 1972 and the studio’s daytime mainstay, and the Times didn’t seem particularly enamoured with the new programme, with TV reviewer Stanley Reynolds referring to it as “aggressively lower brow” and (it’s still 1972 there, this wasn’t as much of a cliche then) something that “makes Blue Peter look like Panorama”. He’d waited until December to write that, too.

Despite that stinging broadsheet rebuke, Pebble Mill at One went on to because a resolute rock within BBC-1’s daytime schedule, gradually picking up a fiercely loyal audience. Plus, it didn’t exactly hurt that it saw plenty of Golden Age of Light Entertainment stars popping in for a lunchtime chat.

And, this being something I have to mention as it always pleases me, if circumstances led to it going out at a time other than 1pm sharp, the programme title was occasionally amended accordingly:

By 1974, the programme was popular enough to warrant its very own Christmas specials. Still in the daytime schedule (on 23 and 24 December, mind), but they’re using the word ‘spectacular’ in the listing, so something big must have been going on. Not big enough to let them borrow an actual studio, but still.

In 1976, Pebble Mill at One was considered such a safe pair of weekday hands, the decision was made to make a Saturday night spin-off of the programme. As such, Saturday Night at the Mill roared into life at 11.30pm on 6 March 1976, pretty much as post-watershed as it was possible to get. So, what debauchery could an audience who’ve just tumbled in from the Dog and Trumpet with a belly full of Watneys expect? Well, the Daily Mirror’s preview of the programme promised a programme every bit as “bland, folksy and fairly predictable” as the daytime counterpart. Indeed, the safe pairs of hands Bob Langley and Donn MacLeod were on hosting duties, with the premiere episode featuring guests Michael Bentine, Elaine Delmar and Buddy Greco. There was also time for “a nostalgic look at British films and television of twenty years ago”.

Not going to lie, that’s probably preferable to The Jonathan Ross Show on ITV.

While it hardly set the TV schedules ablaze at the time, Saturday Night at the Mill certainly proved a sturdy weekend outpost for BBC1, running until July 1981. The final episode saw hosts Bob Langley and Jenny Hanley joined by Honor Blackman, Griff Rhys Jones and Edward Woodward. Not a bad way to bow out. And at least they’d finally settled on a co-host for Langley by that point. Previous co-hosts had included Hayley Mills, Liza Goddard and writer Anrianna Stassinopoulos, none of whom apparently proved a success. The latter reportedly failed as a result of her Greek accent proving impenetrable to the parochial ears of the viewing public – Stassinopoulos lasted just five episodes.

Additionally, if nothing else, Saturday Night… led to one of the great Not Quite The Right Names Of The Programme listings in 1977:

Back at the day job, O.G. Pebble Mill at One would continue all the way through to 1986 (despite having their special ‘Pebble Mill at Ten‘ celebration in 1982 kicking off with the Black and sodding White sodding Minstrels), but by then it was time for BBC1’s shiny new daytime schedule to take over. Out went the old guard (mainly Programmes For Schools and Colleges, which shuffled over to BBC2), and in came the new Daytime UK line-up. At the hand of then-BBC1 Controller Michael Grade, Pebble Mill at One made way for a new One O’Clock News bulletin, and in October 1987 the Pebble Mill at One chat-and-chicken-soup remit was to be fulfilled by brand new early afternoon chat show ‘Daytime Live’. Which came live each lunchtime from… Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham.

By 1990, the fairly bland title of Daytime Live was abandoned for the equally unmemorable ‘Scene Today’, which really sounds more like a regional news bulletin. And so, with no small sense of inevitability, 1991 saw Pebble Mill returned to Britain’s screens, this time shorn of the ‘at One’ suffix. The regular set within the lobby of Pebble Mill Studios was retained, but by now the likes of Bob Langley had been replaced with Alan Titchmarsh, but the regular recipe of light chat and light music was retained.

Then, in 1996, this happened.

Clearly, things had got badly out of control. In March of that year, the final regular edition of Pebble Mill aired on BBC1.

And that was it. Save for a single retrospective programme on Pebble Mill, made to mark the closure of the storied studios in 2004.

Phew, we got there. Sorry this was a bit of low-energy effort this time. A proper piece of Heavyweight BBC Programming in the next update, however. See you next time, armchair Britain.