Closing in on the half-century. Ready for another look at five formidable formats, regularly interrupted by ill-considered meanders down distraction avenue? Hopefully the answer is yes, else you’re in the wrong place.

60: Tomorrow’s World

(Shown 1511 times, 1965-2003)

As the trope has it, a series inextricably linked to a nation of pop kids who just want TOTP to start already, Tomorrow’s World spent almost forty years tottering on the tightrope between reporting on scientific breakthroughs and entertaining a primetime BBC1 audience.

As seems to have been the style at the time, this long-running series hardly had a long gestation period, but rather was hasily conceived by producer Glyn Jones after being tasked with finding a way to fill a half-hour hole in BBC-1’s summer schedule. How hastily? Enough for the programme’s now-household name to have been quickly dreamt up by Jones and his wife the night before submitting the programme’s mission statement to the Radio Times:

From such beginnings (slightly tempting to use the word ‘haphazard’, but let’s face it, BBC producers of that era knew how to quickly weave an entire programme format from thin air), it would quickly go on to be a programme of national renown. Indeed, on top of everything else it achieved, Tomorrow’s World would go on to be the genesis of at least two great comedy series. Yes, the second series of Look Around You, but also mostly-forgotten ITV Sunday 10pm sitcom Not With A Bang, the opening scene of which saw Judith Hann wipe out 99.999% of the world’s population by accidentally releasing a hazardous hormone into the wild (“Bugger!”).

Such an accident was likely a nod to a particularly memorable aspect of Tomorrow’s World. As the programme went out live, it wasn’t uncommon that live demonstrations of exciting new technology (many items of which were likely still at a pre-release just-past-concept stage) went wrong. Such as in 1981,where a live demonstration of ‘Sid the snooker-playing robot’ went about as smoothly as a punch-drunk Sam Beckett Quantum-Leaping into the body of Steve Davis during a World Matchplay Final. But it wasn’t all quirky future-meme fodder – far from it. The Wayback Machine’s capture of the programme’s website from 1998 includes an illustrative synopsis of episodes throughout that decade: Picking one episode from November 1994, we see stories on a new breakthough in contraception, improvements to the flea breeding process, the development of heroin-eating bacteria, a new kind of telescope, and early mass market gas-powered motor vehicles.

Even on a technological level, TW offered Britain an early glance of items that would soon become part of many households, from mobile phones (albeit ones coming with a suitcase-sized battery) to the ‘Web, from PVRs to VR.

You might expect that, what with exciting ScienceFutures perpetually just around the corner, the series was one that could conceivably run forever. Never gonna run out of tomorrows. However, the fundamental irony of a programme focused on the world of tomorrow feeling quite old-fashioned finally dawned on Beeb bigwigs, and the series proper came to a close on 19 June 2002, with a special episode looking at the tech behind that year’s Spider-Man movie.

Following on from that finale, there was still time for a few more excursions for the famous brand. 14 August 2002 brought a Commonwealth Games Special of the series, looking at how science is furthering athletic endeavour. 25 September 2002 saw the ‘Tomorrow’s World Awards 2002’, the last of the programme’s annual ceremonies celebrating the best of the previous twelve months of innovation. June and July 2003 saw a short run series of Tomorrow’s World Roadshows, a final hurrah that allowed presenters Katie Knapman and Gareth Jones a look at some VR tennis tech and an update on the Beagle 2 Mars mission.

Ultimately, any news from the world of tomorrow would have to be served by other outlets. But, to mark the long-standard programme, let’s do a little experiment of our own, and research the long-held received wisdom (i.e. it got mentioned on Spitting Image at least once) that Tomorrow’s World Was Always On When You Were Waiting For Top Of The Pops To Start. Was that really the case? LET’S EXPLORE SOME DATA.

Okay, taking every episode of TW running on a weekday and broadcast between 6pm and 9pm (1,408 broadcasts in total), and then marking which programmes followed each episode in the schedule, here are the Top Ten contenders. In reverse order, natch.

10. The Likely Lads (1967), Russ Abbot (1990-91), Changing Rooms (1998-2002), Celebrity Ready Steady Cook (2000-02) (17 times each)

What better way to begin our too-much-infoburst with a four-way clamour for fourth place? So, TW was followed by The Likely Lads on Wednesday evenings in 1967, by repeats of series’ four and five of the Chester jester’s sketch comedy on Thursday evenings in 1990 and 1991, by those Changing Rooms on Wednesday evenings in 1999 (plus one-off episodes in 2001 and 2002) and by celebrity chef-offs on Wednesdays between 2000 and 2002.

9. Birds of a Feather (18 times, 1990-1998)

The second series of Sharon and Tracey’s misadventures followed TW on Thursday nights in 1990, a May 1992 repeat of series three opener “Keeping Up Appearances” and a few repeats of series five episodes in April 1998.

8. David Nixon on The Nixon Line (20 times, 1967-1968)

Presenter, magician and Vice President of The Magic Circle David Nixon hosted this programme perhaps now best known for introducing the nation to vociferous vulpes vulpes Basil Brush on Wednesday evenings between 1967 and 1968.

7. Mastermind (21 times, 1988)

The 1988 series of the gestapo-inspired quizzer teamed up with TW to make for an hour-long brain eisteddfod each Thursday night between January and June.

6. The Newcomers (44 times, 1968-1969)

New-build estate soap opera The Newcomers followed epsiodes of TW each Wednesday night between September 1968 and September 1969.

5. A Question of Sport (45 times, 1985-1999)

Imperial-phase Coleman-Beaumont-Hughes QoS followed episodes of TW on Thursdays between December 1985 and December 1987. Their paths would cross again in 1997 (for TW special ‘Megalab 97’), 1998 (for ‘Megalab 98’) and 1999 (for Megal… oh, ‘2000 and Beyond’).

4. Only Fools and Horses (48 times, 1987-1999)

With OFAH repeats peppering the primetime schedules in the late 80s and 90s, it’s no surprise that they appeared together quite often, on Thursdays in 1987, Wednesdays in 1992, Fridays in 1994-96 and Wednesdays between 1996 and 1999. Which also proves how often Tomorrow’s World was shunting around the schedules at the time.

3. The Virginian (51 times, 1968-1971)

Nearly at the top spot and yet to see anything disrupting our TOTP hypothesis, with James Drury’s tales from the frontier of the Great American West appearing after TW on Friday evenings between 1970 and 1971 (plus twice on Wednesdays in 1968). Note how I’m too classy to refer to the series as “The Virgin Ian”.

2. EastEnders (52 times, 1989-2000)

With ‘Stenders rampant throughout the schedules since 1985, it was always likely to crop up here, the only slight surprise being it took until 1989 for it to be scheduled after TW in the listings. Cutting to the raw numbers, EE followed TW on Tuesdays in 1989 (37 times), on Mondays in 1996 (nine times) and on Wednesdays in 1998 (six times). Plus, a special Olympic edition of Tomorrow’s World preceded EastEnders in June 2000.

1. Top of the Pops (477 times, 1965-2000)

Thus, the theory is proven to be true, with TOTP following Tomorrow’s World on far, far more occasions that any other programme. The two came together too many times to comfortably summarise here (I appreciate the even people who’ve come this far have a boredom threshold), but it’s basically lots and lots of weeks between 1972 and 1985, and once in 2000 (following one-off “Tomorrow’s World – the Live Event Special”). Almost always on a Thursday, but once on a Friday (that special in 2000 again). But it’s also worth noting that Top of the Pops wasn’t the programme that followed the first episode of Tomorrow’s World in 1965. That was the magnificently-titled Miss Interflora-G.P.O. 1965, where finalists Mrs Sylvia Williams, Miss Mary Grimmond and Mrs Valerie Bignell came under the gaze of judges Ted Moult, Drusilla Beyfus and Turlough O’Brien. The chairman of the whole affair was Kenneth Horne, and the prizes were presented by then-Postmaster General, The Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood Benn M.P. I mean, no wonder beauty contests fell from favour. How could they ever hope to top all that?

59: The Money Programme

(Shown 1514 times, 1966-2011)

All together now…

There is nothing quite as wonderful as money.
There is nothing like a newly minted pound.
Everyone must hanker for the butchness of a banker
It’s accountancy that makes the world go round.

Eric Idle, The Money Song. But you already knew that.

I’m not going to lie, there have been a few times since I embarked on this endeavour where I wondered if it had really been a good idea. Oh, it was simple enough in principle – grab details of every television programme the BBC has ever broadcast on its main channels, all the way back to 1936, then pick out the programmes that appear most frequently from the 800,000+ records. Stupidly easy. Ahem. But then you get to the gritty bits. Entries on the list that had been OCR’d incorrectly (“Tom & Jeny”). Entries that were buried within But First This, Animal Zone or Daytime on Two strands. And when it comes to the next entry on the list, a programme that wasn’t billed under its own title for ten whole years.

Yep, since 2001 most episodes of The Money Programme were listed under the episode title, with ‘Money Programme’ mentioned in passing within the associated blurb. Quite why that was could be down to one of a few reasons. Having programmes stand out a bit more in the EPG, attracting the attention of people interested in the subject? Very likely. Trying to avoid association with the stuffy reputation The Money Programme had before then? Also likely. Whatever the reasoning, the end result was me going one-by-one through ten years of results for ‘Money Programme’ in the BBC Programme Index to make sure my list was accurate, because I just care too damn much.

That said, I can’t blame the producers for taking that approach. I doubt I would’ve even registered episodes of The Money Programme when scrolling through my PVR’s TV guide looking for something to watch, but billing them as The Money Game: Football’s Cash Crisis (19/11/2003), Dotcoms Bounce Back (23/02/2004), Microsoft’s Big Games Gamble (04/11/2005) or The Chewing Gum War (25/05/2007) was much more likely to prick my curiosity bubble.

This approach almost certainly helped The Money Programme survive for so long as a strand. Starting in April 1966, producer of The Money Programme Terry Hughes explained the show’s mission statement in the Radio Times.

Britain is like the son of a rich man who has inherited the family fortune and is spending the lot, said a Belgian banker who has extensive dealings in the City. With the recurrent tale of lost export orders, balance of payments trouble and pressure on the pound, people abroad now speak of ‘the English sickness’ which has dogged us since the war, rather than any spectacular business achievements. They must wonder what happened to the British flair for business.

This year is bound to see dramatic developments. With a debt of £899 million round our necks to be repaid in four years, and a current balance of payments deficit, we cannot escape the pressure to Improve our efficiency. Things have got to change. Industries have got to be reorganised. Traditional approaches to business problems have got to be questioned. The changes we can expect in this country will reach into the lives and prospects of many people.

The aircraft workers, for example, must see their working lives in a very different light now, and many in our more traditional industries are expecting change. Even without the pressure of our economic difficulties, the impact of automation, and the computer (felt increasingly in America) is bound to raise many painful issues for management, labour, and Government, in this country. We must prepare for a second industrial revolution.

The Money Programme will comment on the issues and broaden the whole field of discussion about our business and economic life.

The argument about how to handle the economy will grow louder with more and more suggestions on how to tackle our basic problems and with a greater readiness to look at the experience of other countries which have similar economic problems; Sweden and Holland on prices and incomes, Italy on industrial reconstruction.

Behind the argument about policy lies the complex business mechanism of the country. Many people want to know more about it. They want to know the background to some of the spectacular happenings they read of in the newspapers, why the pound comes under speculative pressure, how take-overs are mounted, how large companies are run, how fortunes are made, how pay claims are argued through.

The decisions taken in the board rooms of our large companies or In City offices are often as Important as political decisions. Some of our companies are enormously powerful. They have budgets larger than those of many of the countries in the United Nations. They have Planning Departments examining what the world will want in 1990 and complete Foreign Services for handling their diplomatic business.

Where the large corporation Invests its money, what kind of plant it builds, what kind of training it gives its employees, what products It designs and what influence it has on social amenities—these are important decisions.

The Money Programme will look at the way these companies are managed. It will also aim to broaden interest in business, in a year when it matters how well we manage our money.

Terry Hughes, The Money Programme, Radio Times (31 March 1966)

Hughes had been handed his mission in a memo from then-BBC Secretary Harman Grisewood, suggesting that it was “time we should do something about the economy for the people”. The suggestion didn’t go down too well with some executives at the Corporation, their reaction reportedly being that money was boring, and “the idea that there might be an audience for a regular TV programme on money struck producers as absurd.” But, as a time when the Pound was in freefall and national debt was ballooning, an attempt had to be made to explain the wider picture to the viewing public.

The initial reaction to the series was… less than enthusiastic, with around half-a-million viewers tuning in, and critics finding little positive to say about the series, save for the theme tune being quite nice (it having been borrowed from 1964 film ‘The Carpetbaggers‘). But, lack of popularity aside, it was certainly seen as An Important Programme, and as Britain’s economy continued to crash about the place like a drunk robot, interest in the series slowly began to grow.

By the 1980s, and the rise of Thatcherite economics, money finally became sexy. Heads of industry became nationally-known figures for (apparently) positive reasons, and every kid in the country excitedly filled in their Times Rich List Panini Sticker Book. Rightly or wrongly, interest in the business sector became much more commonplace, and by the early 1990s The Money Programme was joined in the BBC Two schedules by various other business-centred programmes (such as Troubleshooter and Doing It Right, and they’re just the ones fronted by Sir John Harvey-Jones, former Chairman of ICI).

By the noughties, the BBC had somehow even managed to make business-related TV cool enough for mainstream consumption, with both Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice making the transition from BBC Two to primetime BBC One. And so, perhaps as a result of business- and financial-based programming no longer needing to be ghettoised under the Money Programme umbrella, the strand was gradually phased out in the last few years of the 2000s.

So, in summary: if you want a programme about business, you’ve got both The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den. Just try to ignore that they’re basically talent contests for people in power suits.

58: Scooby-Doo

(Shown 1522 times, 1970-2012)

RICK: God, isn’t it all simply enchanting? It’s like one of those wonderful drawings by Roy Hill with lots of working-class people, thrashing about the place with pitchforks.

NEIL: Yeah! They look pretty angry, don’t they?

RICK: Just think. No nuclear power, no pollution, no electric cables ruining the landscape…

MIKE, NEIL, VYVYAN, RICK: [together] No telly!

NEIL: Oh, no! I’ll die if I miss Scooby Doo!

The Young Ones, “Time”, BBC2, 05/06/1984

Yeah, everyone already knows about Scooby-Doo, so here are a few things to note about the programme titles here: I’ve treated ‘Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!’ (CBS 1969–76), ‘The Scooby-Doo Show’, ‘Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo’ (ABC 1976–91), ‘What’s New, Scooby-Doo?’ (WB 2002-08) and ‘Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated’ (Cartoon Network/Boomerang, 2010-) as being the same entity to reach this total, as they’re all basically the same, even if the latter years are a lot more self-aware than the earlier ones, and some episodes in the middle have that annoying sidekick.

I think it’s probably true to proclaim Scooby-Doo as one of the most instantly recognisable animated series of all time. So recognisable that several other programmes have happily thrown in little nods to it.

The rise of Scoob can be traced back to 1968, and a time when (and try your best to look surprised here) an American parent-run pressure group were complaining about supposedly violent fare children were seeing on Saturday morning TV. And so, something had to be done. At the time, many of the contentious toons were produced by TV animation powerhouse Hanna-Barbera. As a result, a range of popular Saturday morning cartoons were swiftly cancelled. Bye-bye Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, so long Young Samson and Goliath, g’bye Space Ghost and Dino Boy, farewell Frankenstein Jr and the Impossibles. All canned as a result of pressure from Peggy Charren’s pressure group. Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon production line suddenly found itself with little to do.

And so, in their place came a range of new programmes, several of which would go on to be tremendously popular with kids of a certain generation on both sides of the Atlantic. For starters, there was a pair of Wacky Races spin-off vehicles: Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines (no, not ‘Catch the Pigeon’) and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Alongside those came a wholly new property, which saw a group of relatable teens and their loyal hound travel the land to investigate a variety of spooky happenings. And that programme was, of course, to be called… The Mysteries Five. And that five were: Geoff, Mike, Kelly, Linda and W.W., plus their bongo-playing dog, ‘Too Much‘.

Not a joke. The initial premise was that this new programme would be heavily inspired by then-popular animated series The Archie Show, which wasn’t only a hit on television, in-show band ‘The Archies’ were a recording phenomenon in their own right. Their most popular song – Sugar, Sugar – went on to become a number one hit in the US (for four weeks) and the UK (for eight weeks). Who wouldn’t want a piece of that cross-platform pie?

The twist for The Mysteries Five would be that when not performing sell-out gigs at the hippest joints, they’d spend their downtime investigating ghostly mysteries. During development of the series by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, a number of changes were made. At various points in the process, ‘Too Much’ was small and feisty, then a cowardly sheepdog before finally being changed into a Great Dane (Ruby and Spears having initially been wary that breed would be deemed too similar to comic-strip canine Marmaduke).

As development went on, inspiration for the series changed from The Archie Show to live-action proto-beatnik sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (CBS, 1959-1963), which featured a quartet of teens. The mystery element wasn’t present in that show, but the characterisations were – Fred Jones based on clean-cut lead Dobie, Daphne Blake on attractive but calculating Thalia, Velma Dinkley on keen and nerdy Zelda, and Shaggy Rogers on the brilliantly-named Maynard G Kerbs, a jazz-loving beatnik who’d run a mile from hard work and punctuates every statement with at least three ‘likes’.

This was a combination nailed on to be a surefire smash, it just needed a better name. And so, CBS exec Fred Silverman came up with a new title… ‘Who’s S-S-Scared?‘. Which was deemed s-s-shite by CBS president Frank Stanton, who duly passed on the series.

After frantic re-tooling,the horror element of the series was toned down, the comedy aspect was ramped up, and the focus of the series shifted to the shaggy dropout and his panicky mutt. All that was left to be tidied up was the same of the series. Also, ‘Too Much’ really didn’t work as a name for what was now a central character. Legend has it that Silverman found inspiration for the new name from Frank Sinatra’s famed scattery “doo-be-doo-be-doo”.

Scooby-Doo stuck at the next development meeting, and it’s a name that certainly sticks to the memory. With such a memorable character name in place, the show was retitled Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, and from that point an animated TV legend was born.

57: Westminster (aka Westminster Daily, Westminster On-Line)

(Shown 1567 times, 1970-2001)

Here’s one that seems unlikely to generate much excitement. But for much of it’s life, a programme that came with the unenviable challenge of not being able to show any footage of the thing they’re talking about.

Originally a weekly programme, when ‘Westminster’ launched in January 1970, it wasn’t just a programme designed to frustrate people trying to Google information about it fifty-two years later, it promised a review of the political week just gone. At that time, TV cameras were almost twenty years away from entering the House of Commons for the first time, and the prospect of dipping into a bespoke BBC Parliament channel would be the fever dream of a madman. So, here was a round-up where events of each day’s business could be discussed, audio could be played of discussions in the Commons chamber (along with a stock slide of the Parliament building and an inset box of the relevant MP), and later offering viewers a chance to quiz any MPs offering themselves up to public scrutiny.

Despite those limitations, it was a programme that would run and run. And yet seems to have left very little footprint on the internet. The original incarnation of Westminster ran until July 1979 (with BBC Political Editor David Holmes at the helm), but political programming under the same name would return to BBC2 in November 1989. Now going out most weekday mornings at 08:15, it still provided a summary of the previous day’s debates, but was now able to provide actual video footage of those debates, with cameras finally permitted in both chambers of Parliament. That’s not to be confused with the afternoon programme ‘Westminster Live’, which provided live coverage of the Commons.

It also doesn’t help that, at least as far the Radio Times were concerned, the programme didn’t even have a consistent title. From that 1989 relaunch all the way up to 12 November 1993, it went by the title of ‘Westminster’. The following week, it started being billed as ‘Westminster Daily’, right up to 4 November 1994. A few months later, it was back – in the same 08:15 slot, but now billed as ‘Westminster On-Line’ (ooh, modern).

On a couple occasions in 1992, the show was referred to under the curious-sounding moniker ‘Sam Westminster’.

What could that be? The name of the reporter giving the Parliamentary update, in a staggering display of nominative determinism? Maybe a politically-themed spin-off of Fireman Sam? Only one way to find out. To the newspaper archives!

Oh, okay. That makes more sense. Anyway, the ‘On-Line’ suffix lasted until July 1995, after which the programme title ‘Westminster’ was adopted for the afternoon slot, covering the current day’s events as they happened rather than those of the previous one. So, basically the same thing the previously-titled ‘Westminster Live’ (which I’m not counting in this entry) was doing, just to make this a bit more confusing.

By February 2000, it rebranded again – this time back to Westminster Live, but with the original name making the occasional cameo in Radio Times listings (presumably in error, rather than a title change reflected on-screen, but I’m including those in the total, so there). On 19 December 2002, the ‘Westminster [&whatever]’ title format was rolled out for the last time, Zeinab Badawi offering a final ten-minute report from Parliament before a repeat of Yes, Minister (Series 3 Episode 5: ‘The Bed of Nails’, if you’re wondering).

From that point on, ‘The Daily Politics’ seized BBC2’s political baton, and run with it. But more about that programme later. Possibly. (Okay, definitely.)

Trying to find any footage of the programme itself on YouTube – a real challenge given YouTube’s infuriating habit of returning a bunch of results you didn’t ask for, coupled with the vagueness of the programme title – results in little more than a second-long glimpse of Zeinab Badawi at the end of a continuity video posted onto YouTube Shorts.

For the record, I’ve combined results for these three programme titles as there’s a clear lineage between them. If you don’t like it, well, why not write to your MP?

56: Have I Got News for You

(Shown 1578 times, 1990-2021)

There’s a case to be made for claiming Have I Got News For You is Britain’s answer to The Simpsons. Both have been putting out new episodes for more than thirty years, both were a definite fresh breath of comedic air when they first arrived, both hit their imperial phase after a few years on-air, during that 1992-97 peak period phrases from each became part of the public lexicon (with ‘…allegedly!’ rivalling ‘…not!’ as the suffix of choice for people who aren’t as funny or clever as they think they are). And indeed, while each once felt cutting-edge and new, they’ve since become part of our TV wallpaper – not truly objectionably bad in their own right, but something that you might as well watch and enjoy seeing as it’s there.

Despite it now being an immovable part of our national TV furniture (yes, I know I just said it was wallpaper, but shush), it once seemed so young, so fresh, so cool. That Paul Merton from Whose Line Is It Anyway?, that Angus Deayton from KYTV, and that Ian Hislop from the writing credits on Carrott’s Lib, Three of a Kind and Comic Asides pilot ‘The Stone Age’.

Originally piloted as John Lloyd’s Newsround, it’s probably for the best that the storied producer stepped aside from hosting duties to make way for the almost dangerously wry Deayton. And so, in a set that now looks claustrophobically close, Have I Got News For You thundered onto our screens at 10pm on Friday 28 September 1990. The main competition in that slot at the time was The Golden Girls on C4, and the Florida quartet initially pummelled the upstart panel show in the ratings, 2.79m to 1.88m.

However, by the end of that first series in November, things were very different. And by ‘very’, I mean ‘not’, with HIGNFY slipping to 1.76m viewers to the Golden Girls’ rising 2.90m.

When it came to the second series of the nascent news quiz (billed in the ever on-the-ball Daily Mirror as “a new TV version of Radio Four’s News Quiz” despite it no longer being new, nor an actual remake of the radio property), the competition on the fourth channel was a little less severe: Friends-before-Friends (but with more swearing and nudity) HBO sitcom Dream On, which never really found an audience in the UK. As a result, an increased 2.23m tuned in to see Angus, Paul and Ian (plus guest panellists Sandi Toksvig and David Thomas) for that opening episode of the series, while Dream On managed to be the only C4 Friday night show to fall outside the channel’s Top 30 for the week.

By the end of that second run, audiences had ballooned to an impressive 4.29m viewers, meaning HIGNFY was now BBC2’s most popular comedy show.

From that point on, popularity of the series only increased, with viewing figures north of eight million on several occasions. Even today, when viewing figures are much more modest and you’d expect the programme (having recently wrapped series 63) to feel much less of a draw, HIGNFY still performs incredibly well – the closing episode of the sixty-third series in May 2022 drew 4.1m viewers (going by BARB data), behind only Silent Witness, a documentary about The Queen and The Great British Sewing Bee as far as BBC programmes go for that week.

But anyway, you all already know about HIGNFY since that point (quick recap: Tub of Lard, Sperm of the Devil, Savile, the spoof-taken-for-real Savile transcript, move to BBC1, Angus sacked, stunt guest hosts, helping to raise the profile of a human cartoon who somehow became PM, then failing to learn from that and start inviting Rees-Mogg onto the programme), so what other info can we wring out of it? How about a Guests With The Longest Periods of HIGNFY Relevance Top Ten? That is to say, people who’ve had the longest spell between their first and most recent appearances in the programme. Figures correct as of the last complete series in Spring 2022.

10. Ken Livingstone (12 appearances 02/11/1990-12/04/2013, 8197 days)

Then still a serving MP, once-cuddly Ken first appeared on Paul’s team opposite Ian and Rory McGrath in the programme’s sixth ever episode. He last appeared in series 45, under the umpireship of guest host Brian Blessed, this time on Ian’s team and opposite Paul and Bridget Christie. Probably won’t be back again any time soon, given he’s a bit too ‘divisive’ these days.

9. Bill Bailey (8 appearances 30/04/1999-29/10/2021, 8218 days)

First appearing in the show’s late-BBC2 era (and presumably then still donning his Bastard Bunny long-sleeve t-shirt) helping Paul to a 16-11 defeat against Ian and Trevor Phillips. Last seen in the show’s 62nd series, this time in the guest host chair, stewarding guest panellists Fin Taylor and Dawn Butler MP.

8. Maureen Lipman (5 appearances 17/12/1993-11/11/2016, 8365 days)

Beattie herself first appeared in series six, joining Ian as they took on Paul and Lesley Abdela (the early years of the programme having no qualms about having two female panellists). She would reappear most recently in series 52, under guest host Charlie Brooker and facing opponents/rhyming couplet Paul and Rich Hall.

7. Germaine Greer (10 appearances 16/11/1990-28/11/2014, 8778 days)

Germaine “Fuck You Shoes” Greer first appeared in the final episode of the first series, on Ian’s team versus Paul and late MP Tony Banks. Greer most recently participated in 2014’s 48th series, facing Ian and Josh Widdicombe under the watchful eye of regular guest host Xander Armstrong.

6. Janet Street-Porter (15 appearances 26/04/1996-29/05/2020, 8799 days)

80s impersonator go-to Street-Porter has been a regular participant over the years, first appearing in the Paul-hiatus 11th series alongside guest captain Eddie Izzard as they took on Ian and much-missed Dermot Morgan. More recently, she appeared in the lockdowntastic 59th series, Zooming into an episode along with Fin Taylor and host Martin Clunes. (And also in the first episode of the current series, but we’re not counting that here.)

5. Frank Skinner (12 appearances 06/11/1992-01/06/2018, 9338 days)

The Midlands mirth merchant probably made a bit of HIGNFY history in 1992’s fourth series, when he became the first guest to appear twice within one series, the first of which saw him appear opposite Jerry Hayes MP. More recently, Frank returned to the show in 2018, where he hosted the finale of series 55, with guests Lucy Prebble and Henning Wehn.

4. Martin Clunes (19 appearances 28/10/1994-17/12/2021, 9912 days)

No surprise to see the always-welcome Clunes here, who despite primarily being an actor has always swung effortlessly into the topical comedy panel jungle. First appearing in series eight, Clunes first appeared against stunt-guest James Pickles. Most recently Clunes appeared in the guest host hotseat, invigilating the antics of guests Jon Richardson and Kirsty Wark.

3. Jack Dee (17 appearances 13/05/1994-15/04/2022, 10,199 days)

Crumpled curmudgeon Dee first appeared in series seven of the show, facing off against Paul and Tony “Fridge Yes Skateboard No” Hawks. His most recent reappearance came as guest host in 2022’s sixty-third series, refereeing comic Nabil Abdulrashid and Professor Hannah Fry.

2. Jo Brand (31 appearances 04/12/1992-29/04/2022, 10,738 days)

A name you might well have expected to see in the top spot, Jo Brand first appeared in series four, helping Ian to victory over Paul and Neil Kinnock. Now one of the go-to guest hosts, Brand was seen most recently in April 2022, keeping a watchful eye on columnist Camilla Long and comedian Susie McCabe.

1. Joan Bakewell (6 appearances 01/05/1992-27/05/2022, 10,983 days)

Yeah, here’s a name you may not have expected to see here. Broadcaster, columnist, Governor & Chair of the BFI and future Baroness Bakewell first appeared in 1992, opposite stand-up Donna McPhail. While her appearances on the series would only be sporadic over the years, Bakewell most recently reappeared in the most recent episode under consideration here, the closing episode of series 63, along with host Jon Richardson and fellow guest Phil Wang.

Jeepers, that was a long one. Tune in next time to see if I can reach the halfway point of the hundred before the BBC’s Actual 100th Anniversary on 18 October.

Here’s the next bit. I appreciate it’s been a while. Back when the last update came out, we had a different Prime Minister, a different Monarch. and a different Chelsea manager. So, that’s enough pre-ambling, on with the list. And it only took one Friday night spent looking through 1920s radio listings to see which region had the first programme about farming.

65: Top Gear

(Shown 1396 times, 1978-2021)

Well, here’s a thing. Something that started out as a regional programme in the Midlands, which would go on to become the most-watched motoring programme [theatrical voice] In The World.

Indeed, one of the most profitable programmes in the BBC’s history started out as a monthly programme restricted to the BBC Midlands region. Producer Derek Smith suggested one of the region’s weekly opt-outs could be used for a look at subjects such as family cars, road safety and the like. It’s a format that Thames has been using for a while, with ‘Drive-In’ first roaring out of London’s ITV outpost in 1974, and it was a topic also likely of interest to BBC viewers. And so, from 22 April 1977, nine monthly episodes of Top Gear were transmitted, to the delight of any motoring enthusiasts not still stuck in traffic on the M6.

By 1978, national BBC bigwigs had been sniffing around the format, and a full ten-episode series of Top Gear was set to roar into life on BBC-2 from July. Main presenters Angela Rippon and Tom Coyne were retained from the BBC Midlands series, with Barrie Gill also added to the presenting team. Despite the petrol-tinged titillation you might expect from a motorsports commentator joining the line-up, topics were largely low-octane throughout the first series. Unless that is holiday driving, MOT tests, traffic jams, treatment of rust or tachographs are enough to send your particular pulse racing.

With the format proving a sizeable hit amongst drivers, the number of episodes per year accelerated from 1980, with two full series hitting the schedules per year (one in spring, one in autumn). The team of presenters was freshened up regularly, with imperial phase Noel Edmonds hosting a couple of series, along with William Woollard of Tomorrow’s World, while Chris Goffey and Sue Baker defected from Gears’ rival programme at Thames. That was before a pair of presenters who’d become more closely associated with the programme joined towards the end of the decade – former F1 driver Tiff Needell and motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson. By this point, the remit of the show was less Watchdog For Cars and more about how cool and awesome cars could be. And it was an approach that worked – Top Gear was regularly top of the BARB ratings for the channel, and comfortably so.

But, nothing lasts forever, and by the late 90s the audience figures were beginning to slip. The Beeb decided to wait before deciding whether to recommission the programme, and as a result, several members of the presenting team scarpered off to Channel Five’s new show Fifth Gear.

And that was it for Top Gear, or at least Top Gear V1. Because – as highlighted in the RT listing for the last episode of ‘old’ Top Gear (Mon 04/02/02), “Top Gear is scheduled to start a new series later this year.” And indeed it was, with Clarkson and Hammond and, erm, Dawe (later replaced by May), and in the new guise of Jackass With Cars it would go on to conquer the world.

All this has been written about much more comprehensively (and competently) over on the Creamguide email, so instead of going into the latter history of Top Gear, I’m going to present a Compleat List of BBC2 9pm Comedy Shows That Meant You Saw The Last Bit of Top Gear Even If You Didn’t Want To. All on Thursdays unless stated otherwise. Hey, not really relevant, but it least it’s an honest reflection of what Top Gear meant to me.

• Tuesdays 09/09/80 – 21/10/80: Butterflies
• Tuesdays 21/09/82 – 12/10/82: The Kenny Everett Television Show
• Wednesdays 03/11/82, 16/03/83: MASH
• Tuesdays 17/09/85 – 22/10/85: Lame Ducks
• 15/10/87 – 19/11/87: Alas Smith & Jones
• 13/10/88 – 17/11/88: Alexei Sayle’s Stuff
• 14/09/89 – 12/10/89: Police Squad!
• 19/10/89 – 23/11/89: Alexei Sayle’s Stuff
• 27/09/90 – 01/11/90: Rab C Nesbitt
• 08/11/90 – 29/11/90: Harry Enfield’s Television Programme
• 28/02/91 – 21/03/91: Red Dwarf
• 28/03/91 – 18/04/91: Up Pompeii!
• 03/10/91 – 07/11/91: Alexei Sayle’s Stuff
• 14/11/91 – 19/12/91 (Except 05/12/91): Murder Most Horrid
• 27/02/92 – 26/03/92: Red Dwarf
• 02/04/92 – 07/05/92: Harry Enfield’s Television Programme
• 01/10/92 – 29/10/92: Bottom
• 05/11/92: Blackadder Goes Forth
• 12/11/92 – 17/12/92: Absolutely Fabulous
• 18/02/93 – 01/04/93: French and Saunders
• 22/04/93 – 10/06/93: The Comic Strip Presents….
• 07/10/93 – 11/11/93: Red Dwarf
• 03/03/94 – 07/04/94: Murder Most Horrid
• 14/04/94: Reeves and Mortimer’s Shooting Stars
• 05/05/94 – 12/05/94: Joking Apart
• 17/09/94: Knowing Me, Knowing You… with Alan Partridge
• 23/02/95 – 06/04/95: The Glam Metal Detectives
• 20/04/95, 27/04/95: Steptoe and Son
• 04/05/95: The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
• 16/11/95 – 21/12/95: The Ghostbusters of East Finchley
• 11/04/96 and 02/01/97: Sykes
• 24/10/96 – 27/03/97: Third Rock from the Sun
• 08/05/97, 15/05/97: Absolutely Fabulous
• 04/09/97 – 18/12/97: Third Rock from the Sun
• 26/03/98, 02/04/98: Steptoe and Son
• 23/07/98 – 03/09/98: The Simpsons
• 20/08/98 & 17/09/98 – 17/12/98: Third Rock from the Sun
• 18/03/99 – 01/04/99: Red Dwarf
• 15/04/99: Goodness Gracious Me
• 09/09/99 – 14/10/99: Red Dwarf
• 02/03/00: Not the Nine O’Clock News
• 30/03/00: Dad’s Army
• 13/04/00: Harry Enfield and Chums
• 25/05/00: Steptoe and Son
• 12/10/00: Harry Enfield and Chums
• 28/06/01, 05/07/01: Dad’s Army
• 19/07/01: Morecambe and Wise
• 10/12/01, 17/12/01: The Kumars at No 42
• 04/02/02: Never Mind the Buzzcocks
• 02/01/05 – 30/01/05: Never Mind the Buzzcocks
• 30/12/07: Extras
• 17/07/08 & 31/07/08: Mock the Week
• Sunday 30/12/08: Shooting Stars: the Inside Story
• Sunday 27/12/09: Steve Coogan – Inside Story
• Monday 28/12/09: Not Again: the Not the Nine O’Clock News Story
• 13/07/10 – 03/08/10: That Mitchell and Webb Look
• Sunday 11/05/14: The Comedy Vaults: BBC2’s Hidden Treasures
• Sunday 25/05/14: Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos
• Wednesday 30/12/15: Charlie Brooker’s 2015 Wipe
• Sunday 16/06/19, 23/06/19: The Ranganation

Yes, that was a long list. No, I didn’t realise how many there would be until I generated the list. But at least I didn’t mention steak, chips or fisticuffs.

Here’s the broadcast history, which DOES NOT include:Top Gear Rally Report, Top Gear Motorsport and stuff like Top Gear of the Pops. Nor does it include the Midlands-only series of Top Gear. Just imagine if the Dave channel was included in these figures, eh?

=63: Antiques Road Trip

(Shown 1449 times, 2010-2021)

Despite a programme name that makes it sound like an Aldi version of Antiques Roadshow, Antiques Road Trip is a very different proposition. Well, not that different. It’s still about antiques. But anyway.

The programme pits a pair of antique experts against each other, each armed with a budget of £200. The money is used to purchase antiques and collectibles, which are subsequently sold at auction. After each auction, the amount in each expert’s kitty (after costs) becomes their budget for the next leg of the titular trip. The winner is the expert who makes the greater profit over five legs, with any remaining cash donated to Children in Need.

Each daily programme covers a single leg of a ‘match’, offering a compelling reason for viewers to return each day. And each week, the ‘trip’ aspect of the programme involves the experts zooming between auctions in a different classic car. And that’s the format.

As you may have gleaned from the write-up on other, similar programmes in the list, I’m not going to go all-in on this show. After all, I’ve a history of Farming programmes to get to. But I will say one thing: one thing that has always bugged me about the whole “brilliant antique experts pick up amazing bargains from antique shops” premise.

The owners of antique shops don’t just sit there with a shop full of gems they somehow fail to understand the true value of. Nor do they let any Tom, Dick or Tarquin wander in and start haggling. But they are canny enough to know that giving Johnny TV Expert a twenty quid discount on a Victorian teapot will result in their shop making it into the edit of a popular daytime programme on BBC1, thereby generating a spot of advertising much more valuable than a tatty teapot. Expert gets a bargain that’ll sell for a profit, shop owner gets increased trade, a forty-five minute slot is filled in the daytime schedule. Everyone wins.

Well, everyone except me. I’m just waiting for Pointless to start.

=63: The Natural World

(Shown 1449 times, 1983-2021)

While the BBC is rightly lauded for big-name natural history documentaries like Planet Earth, Blue Planet or Life in Cold Blood, long-running nature strand The Natural World (since 2003, just ‘Natural World’) has long been the less-glamorous midfield workhorse putting in the hard yards. Attracting far fewer column inches than those stablemates of global renown, it’s nonetheless been there almost forty years, bringing an entire global ecosystem to the homes of BBC2 viewers.

The roots of The Natural World actually belong to a different programme. The World About Us (3 December 1967 to 20 July 1986) was created by David Attenborough to make the most of the colour TV sets starting to trickle into British homes, offering sights from all around the world in full living colour. The series would go on to clock up 714 broadcasts on the second channel (and 121st place in the big list, if you’re wondering), and almost as many awards from television societies around the world.

That said, despite being commissioned by (then controller of Two) David Attenborough, the remit for World About Us needed to extend beyond just the world of wildlife, such was the paucity of colour wildlife film available for the new medium. As a result, the remit of the series was expanded to cover geography and anthropology as much as natural history. By 1983, there were enough film-makers capturing wildlife footage in full colour to warrant a tighter remit, and a rebrand to suit.

In contrast to World About Us, The Natural World seems to have initially enjoyed a relatively low status within the BBC. In trying to find out a little more about the genesis of the programme, I looked at BBC Yearbooks from 1983 onwards, and the first reference I can find to the programme comes in the BBC Yearbook for 1985. Even then it’s only a passing reference to George Fenton’s music for the series picking up a Bafta. Yeah, just a Bafta, barely worth writing about, eh?

The BBC’s coquettish attitude to the programme early on certainly didn’t hinder its budget, thankfully. It being a format that could easily be sold to other TV markets, along with it being part of co-production partnership with American broadcaster WNET afforded the series a generous budget, and a prime spot on PBS stations on the other side of the Atlantic.

It also didn’t hurt that a plethora of famous voice-owners lent their vocal chords to narration duties. While – as you’d expect – Sir David Attenborough lent his voice to a fair number or episodes, in those early years it was Barry Paine who took to the microphone most often. As years went on, narration duty took in the likes of (deep breath) Robert Powell, Laurie Emberson, Jane Goodall (in an episode looking at her work with chimpanzees), Andrew Sachs, Hywel Bennett, Siân Phillips, Libby Purves, Tom Conti, Judi Dench, Sally Magnusson, Brian Blessed, Anthony Hopkins, Tony Robinson, Rula Lenska, Tim Pigott-Smith, Robert Lindsay, Ian McShane, John Hurt, Geraldine James, Joss Ackland, Des Lynam, Ian Holm, Bernard Cribbins, Patricia Routledge, Nigel Hawthorne, Tom Baker, Stephen Fry, Eleanor Bron, Bill Oddie, Miranda Richardson, Meera Syal, Richard Briers, Charles Dance, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Charlotte Rampling, John Peel, Steven Berkoff, Lenny Henry, Olivia Colman and Adrian Edmondson.

With a reputation as the planet’s go-to broadcaster for high-quality natural history films, it’s little surprise so much talent could be coaxed into working on the series, but the narrator rarely took top billing in a series where wildlife always took centre stage.

62: Diagnosis Murder

(Shown 1472 times, 1993-2011)

Brought to you by the content warning message

Yes, I am very glad I’d extracted info from all the broadcast years before the Genome redesign and addition of ‘offensive content’ autofilter warnings. Anyway, on with American action-comedy-mystery-medical crime drama Diagnosis Murder, starring D*** Van D***. One day I’ll try and work out a list of most-censored programme listings on the BBC Programme Index.

Anyway, A Diagnosis of Murder, to use the title of the TVM-cum-pilot episode. A kind-of spin-off of US crime series Jake and the Fatman (for which season 4 episode 19 served as a backdoor pilot for Diag Murder), the show featured medical doctor Mark Sloan (played by D-word Van D-word) as he solved crimes in all the bountiful spare time medical doctors have. Aided by son and sidekick Detective Steve Sloan (played by real-life son Barry Van Dyke), the pair frequently team up to solve hospital-adjacent crimes.

Despite the initial series of Diag Murder arriving on CBS in October 1993, it took until 1999 for it to debut on the BBC. For most of the 90s, any viewers seeking some hot Van Dyke action were restricted to numerous airings of the three TV movie outings for Dr Mark Sloan. The first of these came in a prime post-Christmas slot, with original pilot Diagnosis of Murder going out (with a billing of “a quirky murder investigation from the producers of Perry Mason”) in an 8:30pm slot on BBC1, three days into 1993. This was positioned in that day’s schedule at a point where a quirky murder investigation would have been a welcome relief for anyone who’d just seen the preceding programme: a surprising repeat of the darkest ever episode of Last Of The Summer Wine*.

(*Said ‘episode’ was actually a now-infamous feature-length 1983 Christmas special of the series, called ‘Getting Sam Home’. The plot involved Foggy, Compo and Clegg visiting their pal Sam in hospital, and agreeing to his request that he wants to spend one last night with his fancy piece, “Lily-Bless-Her”. The unseen exertions at Lily’s are too much for Sid’s ticker, meaning it’s up to our intrepid trio to get Sam’s corpse (yep, corpse) back home so that his wife Sybil thinks he died in his own bed. Shown at 7pm! Even the original broadcast was mostly post-watershed. If you were previously unaware of that episode and think I’ve made all that up, I honestly didn’t. It was even released as a rental VHS tape, and I know that because I got my mum to rent it when I was nine years old, such was my love of Last of the Summer Wine. All shot on film, as was the style at the time, which added an extra layer of grimness to it. I really enjoyed it, too. Probably the closest I ever got to a video nasty. BONUS FACT: it was the first BBC sitcom to earn a 90-minute Christmas special episode. Anyway, we’re not here for that.)

So, back to Dr Mark Sloan. As I say, by the time the BBC started showing the series proper, it was well into its seventh season in the USA. That’s usually a sign something has been picked up on the cheap and is being used as schedule-grout until something better comes along, but it proved to be very popular with the daytime audience. A bit more comic than many of its contemporary crime shows, BBC1 schedules for the show’s original broadcasts put it in good company – nestled between the afternoon showing of Neighbours and repeats of To The Manor Born, it serving as a suitably meaty centre in a whimsical TV sandwich. Ten years later, it was still a fixture in a daytime BBC1 line-up, offering a double dose of medical mayhem (alongside Doctors) amongst the forest of Heir Hunters/Homes Under the Hammer/To Buy or Not to Buy/Trash to Cash/Cash in the Attic-style shows.

Clearly, with the BBC1 schedule gorging itself on property and antique programmes, there was no longer any room for a light-hearted hospital-based detective series. And so, from 12 October 2009, Diagnosis Murder moved to BBC2, where it was shown alongside [checks Genome] oh. Property series Open House and best-of repeats of Flog It. Bloody hell, bring back Open Air already. And (save for a brief return to BBC1 in 2010), the second channel was where Diagnosis Murder saw out its days at the Beeb. A flickering lighthouse against the tsunami of property and antique shows.

61: Farming

(Shown 1488 times, 1957-1988)

Even accounting for the early years of television roll-out concentrating on viewers in The South, it took a surprisingly long time for the medium to provide any programming for those living off the land. The assumption seems to have been radio programming provided all the information farmers might need (and indeed, not everything needs to translate to television – there’s a reason The Shipping Forecast has never transferred to the small screen). Radio had been serving the agricultural community since January 1924, with the first edition of Farmer’s Corner broadcast on 5NO Newcastle. That was followed by similar programmes serving farmers broadcast from Glasgow, Manchester and Cardiff.

From September 1937, wireless receivers all around the nation were able to receive the latest agricultural goings-on, with ‘Farming Today’ airing on the National Programme. No longer would farmers finding themselves in the wrong region miss out on advice from W. S. Mansfield, Manager of the Cambridge University Farm, on topics such as grassland improvement, High versus Low Farming, or alternate husbandry (saucy).

Meanwhile, any glances the nascent BBC Television Service were giving at farmers seemed to have an aim of extracting information from them, to provide knowledge and background for townsfolk with television receivers. 1 February 1939 saw the first episode of ‘This Month on the Farm’ (renamed ‘Down on the Farm’ thereafter), a monthly series where “A. G. Street visits Bulls Cross Farm and surveys with the farmer the work to be done”, which ran until August of that year. All very commendable, but not doing much to serve the rural community itself.

By contrast, any programming actually aimed at the farming community failed to happen until 31 March 1950, when an entire hour of programming for farmers – helpfully titled ‘For Farmers’ – was broadcast. Split into three twenty-minute modules on Fruit, Poultry and Pigs, it seemed things were changing when it came to television serving the needs of farmers.

But – as far as I can find – that was it for the ‘For Farmers’ strand. In the same slot the following week was a similar hour aimed at gardeners, and subsequent weeks saw the 3pm slot reserved for children’s programming. Any similar hopes and dreams were subsequently dashed in February 1951, when a fifteen-minute programme called ‘Farming Review’ aired, offering a look at farm life rather than anything serving the needs of farmers. And again, this was merely a one-off short film, rather than a full series.

It took until 4 October 1957 before anything substantial appeared to serve the farming community.

At last, “a new series of weekly agricultural magazines for those who live by the land”, introduced by farmer, agricultural journalist and broadcaster John Cherrington. The first edition included the current Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Derick Heathcoat Amory MP, who provided an outlook for British farming, and a Q&A session on the same with Sir James Turner and EG Gooch (CBE, MP). There was also the promise of a film from the International Potato Harvester Trials, and a visit to the Earl of Bradford at his Tong Norton Farm within his Staffordshire estate.

Heady stuff, and best of all it was followed in the schedule by the magnificently-named ‘The Weather Situation for Farmers and Growers’. Not a bad attempt at making up for lost time, especially given from that point on, Christmas week and special occasions aside, the weekly Farming round-up (not forgetting ‘The Weather Situation’) would be a Sunday lunchtime fixture for just over the next thirty years.

In July 1988, Les Cottington and Philip Wrixon presented the final edition of the programme (the RT listing for that finale suggests I’m missing some episodes from the total I’ve totted here, but on closer inspection it seems they went out under the title ‘Farm Forum‘ which I’ve decided DOES NOT COUNT). Of course, that wasn’t the end of early-afternoon countryside coverage – the final episode included a preview of the programme that would be picking up the Farming mantle, a little series called Country File. More on that… later?

Okay, that’ll do. Next update sooner than you might expect (because I’ve already written 60% of it, thanks to me adding a further 12,133 individual listings from Daytime on Two to the database like an idiot who doesn’t know when to stop making his own life more difficult). I refuse to ever learn.

Well, damn.

As you may well be aware, I recently embarked on a foolhardy quest to tot up the hundred programmes shown most often on BBCs One, Two and Television Service since it launched in 1936. Taking data from the BBC’s Genome Project (now known as the BBC Programme Index), I scoured through 855,361 individual programme listings to determine which ones have appeared most frequently on Britain’s television screens.

And then… it soon became clear that some programmes were missing from the list. While most programmes in the Programme Index are listed nice and neatly, like this:

Quite a lot are listed like this, with individual programmes appearing within what would normally be a programme description.

This clearly Would Not Do. Capturing all this missing info would be even trickier than the initial data-scrape. The syntax used for each listing-within-a-listing varies quite wildly, an inconsistent method is used to display time (sometimes a show is on at ‘9.05’, sometimes it’s ‘9.5’, sometimes due to OCR quirks it’s ‘g-o5’), often there’s no gap between the programme title and the episode description, it’s all a bit of a mess.

Anyway, I’ve gone and snuffled out an additional 27,002 programme listings (mostly from the 1980s and 1990s), removed a few duplicates that had crept in elsewhere, tidied up a few other bits, dug a bit deeper into listings of Laurel and Hardy films (adding a bunch from the 1940s to the 2010s not specifically billed as L&H), and filled in a number of days wholly missing from the Programme Index (with huge thanks to Steve at The Radio Times archive).

In short, the whole list now encompasses a total of 879,344 programmes, and the list thus far now looks like this:

• =99: Five to Eleven (Shown 883 times, 1986-1990)
• =99: The Flintstones (883 times, 1985-2010)
• 98: Saturday Kitchen (890 times, 2001-2021)
• 97: Final Score (897 times, 1971-2021)
• 96: Postman Pat (911 times, 1981-2012)
• 95: Z Cars (920 times, 1962-1998)
• 94: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (933 times, 2008-2021)
• 93: Sportsnight (934 times, 1968-1997)
• 92: Rugby Special (976 times, 1966-2005)
• 91: For the Children (983 times, 1937-1952)
• 90: Strictly – It Takes Two (1006 times, 2004-2021)
• =87: QI (1010 times, 2003-2021)
• =87: Nai Zindagi – Naya Jeevan (1010 times, 1968-1982)
• =87: The Simpsons (1010 times, 1996-2004)
• 86: ChuckleVision (1055 times, 1987-2012)
• =84: Dad’s Army (1065 times, 1968-2021)
• =84: Murder, She Wrote (1065 times, 2002-2011)
• 83: Laurel and Hardy (1066 times, 1948-2005)
• 82: The Magic Roundabout (1070 times, 1965-1985)
• 81: In the Night Garden (1106 times, 2007-2012)
• 80: The Phil Silvers Show (1107 times, 1957-2004)
• 79: Doctor Who (1138 times, 1963-2021)
• 78: Watchdog (1141 times, 1985-2019)
• 77: Wogan (1142 times, 1982-2010)
• 76: University Challenge (1182 times, 1994-2021)
• 75: Tom and Jerry (1186 times, 1967-2003)
• 74: The Sky at Night (1201 times, 1957-2013)
• 73: Call My Bluff (1208 times, 1965-2005)
• 72: Grange Hill (1243 times, 1978-2008)
• 71: Mastermind (1291 times, 1972-2021)

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed a few programmes there that weren’t there before: Chucklevision, Call My Bluff and Mastermind. That’s because the newly-added Children’s BBC listings sent a few programmes much higher up the list (and in one case, booted a show out of the list entirely. ‘Money For Nothing’, if you’re wondering). And best of all, meant the mighty Chucklevision makes the Top 100 after all.

I’ve now edited the previous parts of the listing on the site to account for these changes, adding entries for Chucklevision, Call My Bluff and Mastermind in the correct positions accordingly. But, to save you from having to go find them, here they are:

86: ChuckleVision

Shown 1055 times, 1987-2012

Here’s an entry that took quite a lot of digging to get some accurate numbers on. But, given the importance and gravitas of the programme in question, I’m sure you’ll agree it was worth the time poring through Genome to pick out individual episodes buried within faux-programme listings for ‘Saturday Starts Here’, ‘Children’s BBC’ and ‘CBBC’, then checking everything against an episode guide for CV to ensure I’d not missed anything. I’m not kidding, either. This one took ages. And I’m not kidding about the importance of the programme, either. A cultural touchstone for entire generations of children (and adults) across a quarter-century on our screens, and two of the absolute nicest people in showbusiness.

Not that the Chuckle Brothers first arrived on our screens fully-formed. Their first appearances on TV in the early 1980s came when Paul and Barry were joined by older brothers Jimmy and Brian Patton to make up a four-man Chuckle Brothers outfit, as can be seen in programmes such as 3-2-1 and The Good Old Days, a bepermed Barry referred to as ‘Legs’ throughout and still the target for most of the slaps from their slapstick act. Despite putting together a thoroughly enjoyable variety turn, the quartet soon span off into a pair of double-acts, Jimmy and Brian becoming The Patton Brothers, Paul and Barry retaining the Chuckle Brothers name. Not that this was an acrimonious parting of the ways – Jimmy and Brian would regularly feature in their younger siblings’ future programmes.

Not that Barry and Paul went straight to the personas we now know them for. Their first programme as a double-act on Children’s BBC seems almost surreal when viewed now (and I recall, pretty weird even at the time). Following a few appearances on 1983’s Roger The Dog Show, The Chucklehounds (“featuring The Chucklehound Brothers”) earned a standalone episode for their antics, The Chucklehounds Christmas airing on Christmas Eve morning BBC1 in 1984. That was followed by a full series, starting in February 1986, with the lead actors now billed as ‘The Chuckle Brothers’.

The programme – a full episode here, if you’re curious – was pretty much a low-budget attempt at a live-action cartoon, with the pair wobbling about in dog costumes and getting up to all manner of slapstick shenanigans. No dialogue, but soundtracked with the zaniest sounds a Yamaha PSS-170 could muster. Problem is, while actual cartoons airing on BBC1 at the time were carefully choreographed chaos from the likes of Chuck Jones, here you had an undoubtedly talented variety act donning great big dog heads that limit mobility and visibility, with a modest budget likely offering little time for retakes. If you’re feeling charitable, it was okay for what it was, and they certainly had few qualms about what they got up to (the episode I’ve linked to includes a Chucklehound on a motorbike. Inside the studio. No, it probably wouldn’t happen nowadays) But they were capable of so much more.

And so, from the morning of Saturday 26 September 1987, Chucklevision first hit our screens as a weekly precursor to Going Live. And watching it now, it still holds up very well. Not that this should be any surprise – they are actual brothers, after all – but the rapport that we’re so familiar with is immediately obvious, you have to wonder why the blazes they’d just spent eighteen months wobbling about in dog costumes and not speaking to each other. Right from the opening episode, Chucklevision is so packed with Tim Vine-grade jokes, you can’t help but grin throughout.

PAUL: Let’s take a look at the latest videos.

[A GRINNING BARRY HOLDS UP SEVERAL VHS TAPES]

PAUL: Very nice, aren’t they?

ChuckleVision, s01e01, BBC1, TX: 08:40 Saturday 26 Sept 1987

As you can see there, the first couple of series combined studio-based humour with outdoor footage – a departure from what most Chucklefans would be used to, but their dynamic works every bit as well in that setup. I think it works so well because despite it being such a traditional double act – the idiot who knows nothing and the idiot who knows everything – they shun the traditional trope of having the Oliver Hardy/Bud Abbott/Tommy Cannon/Stewart Lee one regularly express anger or frustration at the foolery of his counterpart, Paul being (for the most part) relentlessly cheery throughout makes all the difference. And it was a formula that worked tremendously well – as the show’s run of 21 series suggests. TWENTY-ONE SERIES, with new episodes being produced from 1987 to 2009.

It took until 2008’s twentieth series before episodes of Chucklevision debuted anywhere but BBC One, but premiering on the CBBC channel was clearly no demotion. The opening episode of that series (‘Mind Your Manors’) took in guest turns from Harry Hill and Seinfeld’s Guy Siner (oh, okay: Allo Allo’s Guy Siner. He was in Seinfeld once, though), and was later repeated on BBC One.

In short, the brothers Chuckle were and are a true phenomenon in children’s television. At the time of writing, a BBC Programme Index search for ‘Chucklevision’ (it really helps that it has such a unique title) returns details of 2,976 broadcasts of the programme (many of which were on the CBBC channel). But perhaps the greatest legacy they’ve left the world can be found by going into a room containing anyone between the ages of 20 and 45 and saying “To me…”.

73: Call My Bluff

Shown 1208 times, 1965-2005

University Challenge isn’t the only programme on the list to have had a slightly surprising origin story from the other side of the Atlantic. Despite feeling like the very epitome of dry early 1980s BBC-2 output (well, it does to me), the programme actually had a much more glamorous birthplace: Studio 6A at NBC Studios in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. That was where the original incarnation of the series was recorded in 1965, where host Bill Leyden challenged two teams (each comprising one celebrity and two contestants) to determine the true meaning of various obscure and archaic words. The winners would pocket a jackpot of $100 (rising to a potential $200 in the end-of-show bonus game).

Despite the glitz of a celebrity guest roster (which included Betty White, Lauren Bacall and Abe Burrows), the format wasn’t a success, lasting only a matter of months before being cancelled by NBC. Recordings of the programme were believed to have been destroyed, though the complete premiere episode does survive and is available to view at the show’s Lost Media Wiki page.

It took no time at all for the BBC to leap upon the format, pausing only to rip out the cash jackpot and replace the four contestants with additional wry celebrities, then shove it onto BBC-2 in October 1965. The quizmaster (or as the show had it, ‘Referee’) gig changed hands a few times at first – actor and musician Robin Ray took the reins for the first series, followed by actor Joe Melia for the next, then Peter Wheeler for a spell before finally landing on the referee most closely associated with the series: Robert “England’s Answer To Magnus Magnusson” Robinson. Cue countless impressions on the likes of Spitting Image, Now… Something Else, End Of Part One, A Bit of Fry and Laurie and many, many more.

The roles of team captain would also become inextricably linked to the series too, especially in the case of comedy writer-cum-raconteur Frank Muir. During a lengthy writing career alongside Denis Norden working for everyone from Jimmy Edwards to The Frost Report, followed by management stints in the LE departments of the BBC and LWT, Muir had built up quite a reputation as a wordsmith (indeed, with Norden he coined the immortal Carry-On phrase “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me”, originally used for radio comedy Take It From Here). Call My Bluff offered the loquacious Muir a prime opportunity to put his wordmongery to good use. [EDIT: As reader Paul Jackson points out, credit should also be showered on Muir’s long-term opponents, namely Patrick Campbell (1966-80) and Arthur Marshall (1980-88). You are quite correct, Paul.]

The original run of Bluff, from October 1965 to December 1988, plus a one-off special in 1994 to mark thirty years of BBC2, clocked up 25 series’ and 542 episodes. Quite the innings, but as the channel geared up for a new generation of panel shows (kickstarted by the success of Have I Got News For You), the decidedly old-school Bluff had run its course. But not, it would turn out, for too long.

In 1996, the series was retooled as a daytime BBC1 series, with a suitably brighter, more 90s-friendly set and a new referee, Bob Holness. Alan Coren and Sandi Toksvig took on team captain roles. While it might not be the first line-up you’d think of for Call My Bluff, it was certainly a success – lasting for a further twelve series and a total of 555 episodes before the final Bluff in 2004. By that time, the line-up had changed a bit – 2003 seeing Toksvig replaced by Rod Liddle, and Fiona Bruce had picked up the referee’s baton (yes, I know referees don’t have batons).

In May 2014, Call My Bluff received a further anniversary shout-out in satirical retrospective Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos. Rechristened ‘Speech Impediment’, an impersonated panel of Bluff mainstays were challenged to determine the meaning behind the word ‘paedophile’ (here I should add: in reference to the BBC of the 1970s failing to recognise the number of absolute dangers working there, rather than in any direct reference to specific Call My Bluff regulars).

EXTRA SUPER BONUS CONTENT UPDATE:

Ever wondered what one of the TRUE/BLUFF cards from Call My Bluff looks like in close-up? Well, with a weighty chunk of thanks to Paul R Jackson, here’s a look at one in more detail. It was sent to Paul in February 1979 by producer Johnny Downes and is signed by the Bluff regulars plus Nigel Havers.

71: Mastermind

Shown 1291 times, 1972-2021

“One’s a Trade Union leader, the other’s a member of the Cabinet.”

You know, there can’t be too many quiz programmes based on their creator’s experiences of being interrogated by the Gestapo. But that’s precisely the inspiration television producer Bill Wright has given for the intimidating environment for British television’s longest-running (and most parodied) quiz programme.

As we’ve seen a few times to far, it’s a format that really doesn’t need laying out here. Dark room, Magnus “Iceland’s Answer To Robert Robinson” Magnusson, black chair, specialist subject, I’ve Started So I’ll Finish. Originally airing in 1972, it didn’t became the nation’s favourite Serious Quiz Programme overnight. Initially going out at 10.45pm on Monday nights (with an afternoon repeat each Wednesday), it took the downfall of another series for Mastermind to get a wider audience.

1969 saw upstart London channel LWT broadcast a new series of TV comedy plays by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, which featured an impressive cast: Harry H Corbett, Stratford Johns, Bob Monkhouse, Pats Coombs and Hayes, plus Leslie Philips. The first episode of The Galton and Simpson Comedy – “The Suit” – saw Phillips play an adulterous scoundrel whose suit is stolen during a night at his mistress’s flat. As a result, he needs to find a way to make his way across London to his marital home sans underwear, dignity and excuses.

This premise would provide the basis for a new Galton and Simpson sitcom on BBC-1 four years later. Casanova ’73 saw Leslie Phillips play duplicitous PR exec Henry Newhouse, whose happy marriage to wife Carol doesn’t stop him seeking freelance relationships at any given opportunity. While the programme itself wasn’t remotely as smut-packed as the premise might suggest (the first episode focuses on Newhouse repeatedly trying to disrupt postal deliveries to prevent Carol from seeing a love letter addressed to Henry), such pre-watershed displays of infidelity attracted a lot of negative attention for the Corporation, and the series was swiftly shunted to a 9.25pm slot.

That left a gaping hole at 8pm each Thursday evening. What’s something so inoffensive, so sedate, so sober that nobody could complain? Not even Whitehouse? Step forward. Mastermind. By that point, it had been going out in a post-11pm slot each Monday night, and yet here it was – Magnus and his darkened interrogation chamber thrust unexpectedly into the spotlight. The irony.

From there it became a television institution, not only clocking up a huge number of episodes, but also a variety of spinoff series:

• Celebrity Mastermind (247 eps, 2002-now, initially as ‘Mastermind Celebrity Special’)
• Des Lynam’s Sport Mastermind (18 eps, 2008, initially billed as ‘Sport Mastermind’)
• Doctor Who Mastermind (1 ep, 2005)
• Junior Mastermind (24 eps, 2004-2007)
• Mastermind Champions (3 eps, 1982)
• Mastermind International (6 eps, 1979-1983)
• Mastermind Masters (4 eps, 1995)

A note also has to be made of how widely parodied Mastermind is as a format, with everyone from Morecambe & Wise to Hey Duggee featuring scenes centred on the famous chair. But, of course, by far the best-known nod to Mastermind has to be David Renwick’s “Answer the Question Before Last” sketch for the Two Ronnies in  1980. Anyone resident in Britain for more than seven minutes is well aware of this superb routine (it’s playing on a loop on a big screen at Heathrow arrivals, you know), but did you know there’s a longer version of the sketch?

In 1983, the Ronnies had a live residency at the London Palladium, performing many of their favourite routines to thousands of fans. And, as transcribed by the marvellous UK Gameshows website, that included an extended version of the famed Mastermind sketch, Renwick having written additional questions and answers to maximise the merriment. I’m not going to quote any of it here, it’s too lovely a thing to steal any clicks from the UKGS site, if you want to read it go here (and as an even more special super bonus, it also includes a transcript of the original version of the sketch from an episode of Radio 4 comedy show The Burkiss Way).

Phew. There’s an update that took you ten minutes to read and me a lot longer to put together. Tune in again soon for a the next few entries in the countdown, now the damn thing is a bit more stable. Hopefully my sanity can remain stable, at least until I need to error check the broadcast history of Blue Peter.

As Ringo Starr famously said, sorry for the lateness of my reply. This is what happens when you spot a suspiciously quiet spell in a broadcast history of a long-running series, look into it and discover it spent two years billed as “Weather, followed by [PROGRAMME NAME]”, meaning I have to recalculate a load of stuff and the show I’ve just written 1500 words on is unceremoniously yeeted up to a part of the league table we won’t get to for ages. Still, if it’s that or a half-arsed dataset, the delays are worthwhile.

Now we’re well into the territory of programmes broadcast more than a thousand times, it’s probably a bit much expecting everyone to read through entire potted histories of each programme, so instead I’m going to – at least in some cases – try and pick out some interesting detail from perhaps under-represented periods of a show’s history (or even pre-history). If only to keep things a bit more brief. So, settle down and look out for flying sausages as we get to…

75: Great British Menu

(Shown 1184 times, 2006-2021)

Long before Bake-Off became the default Google autocomplete option for ‘Great British’, another BBC2 cookery contest set a lofty bar for highfalutin haute cuisine. How high is the falutin we’re talking about here? Falutin high enough to require hosting duties from a former BBC Royal correspondent, that’s how high. Indeed, Jennie Bond was the inaugural host of Great British Menu, where a pair of chefs from a region of the UK would compete to create a menu fit for a monarch. And I mean that literally – the goal of 2006’s first series was to concoct a birthday meal for Queen Elizabeth II, along with 300 other guests at a summer banquet.

The first series was a hit, and winning chefs from that first run returned for the second series in 2007. This time the goal was to set a menu for an Ambassadors’ Dinner at the British Embassy in Paris. Yes, yes, spoiling us etc. For 2008’s third series, Jennie Bond was replaced as host by Heston Blumenthal, and the grand finale was a little less continental, with the winning menu served at London’s Gherkin building.

The series would continue to pit top regional chefs against each other for the carrot of providing menus to distinctly British scenarios, ranging from local community groups all the way up to HRH Sir Prince Charles (now, of course, HRH Sir King Prince Charles III). It’s a format that shows no signs of stopping, with the final of 2022’s seventeenth series – themed around the 100th anniversary of the BBC – containing what might possibly be the greatest judging panel in the long history of TV judging panels: Steve Pemberton, Floella Benjamin, Alison Steadman and Huw Edwards. The Beeb in a nutshell? Pretty much.

74: Tom and Jerry

(Shown 1188 times, 1967-2003)

Here’s one that comes with a caveat: it’s likely to be the case that episodes of T&J have also been broadcast under non-specific ‘cartoon time’ slots, especially prior to 1967. Here, I’m just counting instances where they’ve been billed as such in the Radio Times. The overall broadcast total is actually likely to be higher – I’ve memories from my childhood of seeing ‘bonus’ episodes of Tom and Jerry when the news had to be trimmed down due to industrial action, meaning an unbilled T&J would often be parachuted in to fill the gap. In at least one case, doing so after an abridged 9 O’Clock News. Post-watershed Tom & Jerry. It happened. The total also misses out any episodes of T&J shown wholly within other, longer shows such as Saturday Superstore or Going Live. The former being the first place I ever saw one of the Chuck Jones T&J cartoons, and no, I don’t have a clue why my brain bothered to register that memory.

Anyway, here we’re only looking at empirical, RT-sanctioned evidence of Tom & Jerry being screened on the BBC. The earliest billed example of a T&J outing on the BBC that seems to be on Genome is a BBC-1 broadcast of 1942’s ‘Dog Trouble’, where Tom and Jerry join forces in an attempt to stop Spike the Bulldog mauling both of them. Fun times!

From there, Thomas Jasper “Tom” Cat Sr and Gerald Jinx “Jerry” Mouse would be an early evening fixture on BBC-1, forming a formidable triple-act with Simon Dee on Tuesday and Thursday evenings throughout 1967. By September of that year, Tom, Jerry and Dee were even sharing a Saturday night schedule, joining forces with with Doctor Who (and, erm, The News) to make up an unlikely televisual supergroup. It surely wouldn’t have killed them to have Tom and Jerry hopping into Simon Dee’s convertible motor car in the title sequence of Dee Time, surely? Imagine that.

The Tom & Jerry & Dee alliance continued through much of the remainder of the 1960s, until Saturday 13 September 1969 came along and Dee hopped into his convertible for the last time, roaring off to upstart broadcaster LWT (and ultimately, obscurity*). T&J meanwhile went on to gobble up spaces in the BBC-1 schedule like chunks of cheese (or cat food). In 1972 alone, their cartoons aired on 122 different occasions. Most frequently as a buffer between Nationwide and the 7pm starter on an evening’s Light Entertainment menu, but also being deployed as tasty Bank Holiday snack, as post-Who Saturday night dessert, or even right in the middle of prime-time. T&J aired at 7.30pm on Tuesday 11th July 1972 (preceding an airing of a Margaret Rutherford Marple film) and at 7.40pm on Tue 8th Aug 1972 (before a screening of Bob Hope’s The Cat and the Canary). Sure, they were being deployed to avoid an awkward five-minute gap between the end of each film and the Nine O’Clock News, but it shows how much faith the BBC had in the cat-mouse duo in keeping entire families entertained.

(*Topical reference: Simon Dee later did a Victor Lewis-Smith produced final episode of Dee Time for Channel 4 in 2003, as a companion piece to the VLS documentary on Dee. As a result, Dee’s last ever chat show guest was current notoriety’s Jerry Sadowitz.)

From the mid-1980s, Tom and Jerry started to be less frequent visitors to our screens, Michael Grade’s revamped BBC1 seemingly having little room for sociopathic cat-mouse shenanigans. The cartoon found itself largely confined to filler slots on Sunday afternoons, or even (shock) used to fill in space on BBC2. It did still get a few airings where it likely attracted a decent audience – such as a double-bill on BBC1 bridging the gap between Esther Rantzen’s Children of Courage and the evening episode of Neighbours on Good Friday 1989. By 1991 though, Tozza and Jezza were BACK where they belonged, kicking off evening entertainment on Saturday evening BBC1, sharing a slot with ‘Allo ‘Allo, Bergerac and, ugh, let’s refer to it as ‘The Fix-It Programme’.

Alas, everything fades, and by the late 90s those appearances were again becoming as sparse as Good Mouse-Catching Ideas in Tom’s brain. After a final flourish in 2000 (preceding the EastEnders omnibuses each Sunday afternoon on BBC1), and one solitary appearance in 2001 (again, preceding the Sunday repeats of EastEnders, and billed in the RT with the underwhelming summary “Cartoon fun”). And so, Jerry assaulted Tom for the final (RT-listed) time on the Corporation’s flagship channel.

Not that it was a full-stop for the pair on the main BBC channels. The much less uberviolent ‘Tom and Jerry Kids’ was a part of the CBBC rota from 1998 to 2005, except that doesn’t count because it’s not proper Tom and Jerry. And even now, the CBBC channel regularly hosts the newer, longform, less good Tom and Jerry adventures.

[UPDATE 04/09/2022: Reader ‘Retro71‘ writes in to mention an episode of Tom and Jerry that received complaints about swearing, with the word ‘bloody’ being mild to American ears, less so to British ones. After a little digging, the scene in question is apparently one where a pirate yells “get off my bloody boat”, though the T&J filmography doesn’t include any classic episodes set on a pirate ship – more likely it’s 1952’s Cruise Cat, which sees Tom hired as mouser on a cruise ship. Rather than that particular episode being shown in full, the scene seems to have been aired during an episode of Tony Robinson’s superb toon history show Stay Tooned!, in an episode looking at censored toons. Unfortunately, while Genome has episode descriptions for most BBC One showings of Stay Tooned!, the banned episode isn’t one of them. Anyone know any more about this? Get in touch in the comments or on the Twitter.]

73: The Sky at Night

(Shown 1201 times, 1957-2013)

“Liiiiiive astronomy!”

Well, here’s another one that will require some frantic reformatting of the ‘BBC Broadcast History’ table. That’s what happens when you stumble across (or if you prefer, “don’t properly plan for”) a programme that has aired on the main BBC channels for 57 years, meaning you suddenly need to cram in a bunch more broadcast years.

Back when the programme first started, on 24 April 1957, few hobbyist astronomers could have predicted the programme would run for so long. Even fewer could predict that the same host, one Patrick Moore, would still be hosting the series in Space Year 2013 (albeit posthumously – Moore died in December 2012). If nothing else, surely such a programme wouldn’t be needed that far into the 21st Century? We’d all be up there ourselves, popping to Mars for to visit Uncle Alan before nipping into the moon branch of Ikea on the way home. Surely?

Okay, that particular dream didn’t make it to reality, but Sky at Night’s marathon tenure displays an amount of longevity that deserves to be held up against humanity’s expanding understanding of the universe. When that first episode went out, Yuri Gagarin was still four years from being the first man in space, Neil Armstrong was still a test pilot and NASA hadn’t yet been formed. The vast expanse of space was still very much something that could only be explored from Terra Firma, but with the starter’s pistol poised to start the great USA-USSR Space Race, interest in worlds beyond our own was growing.

Issue 1745 of the Radio Times used the following to welcome viewers to this new programme promising to explore all things astronomical:

Star Quest

Stars, in our particular workaday world, tend to be people with agents, and success stories, and temperaments, and talents, and a certain unpredictability that can make then either tiresome or fascinating. But when we talked to Patrick Moore the other day about this month’s stars, we found ourselves in a very different world. “People tend to think,” he told us, “that astronomy is a difficult, expensive, and unrewarding subject that has become the prerogative of old men with long white beards. It is in fact none of those things, and anyone can find interest and excitement in the night sky, if he knows what to look for.”

This is to be the theme of his new series which begins on Wednesday, and which will introduce each month the highlights of the current astronomical news.

Radio Times, issue 1745, 21-27 April 1957

As explained by the future GamesMaster there, the remit of the programme wasn’t specifically to monitor humankind’s efforts in reaching the stars, but rather helping the British population carry out their own exploration of space in the most British way possible: treating it as an endeavour best enjoyed at home whilst not spending too much money.

The programme would go on to be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in knowing more about what’s out there, and stuck pretty rigidly to that monthly schedule throughout, with same-week repeats often aired at times of day friendlier to younger astronomers. Of course, it didn’t always go to plan – as highlighted in Sean Lock’s trek through the TV archives ‘TV Believe It or Not’ for BBC Four in 2008 – with Moore embarking on a live episode where high-powered telescopes would roam the night sky and put the enthralling results up on screen, only for a bunch of clouds to get in the way and the whole thing to fizzle out like a damp banger.

Of course, if you were a dedicated viewer of the programme, you’d very likely need access to a similarly powerful radio telescope to spot the series’ ever-changing place in the schedules. The table at the bottom of this entry only accounts for the most commonly-used timeslots. If you want to know the full range of times when The Sky At Night was shown, here you go:

(big inhale….) 00:00, 00:05, 00:10, 00:15, 00:20, 00:25, 00:30, 00:35, 00:40, 00:45, 00:50, 00:55, 02:10, 02:30, 06:30, 06:35, 06:40, 06:55, 07:00, 07:05, 07:15, 08:35, 08:40, 09:20, 09:30, 09:40, 09:45, 09:50, 10:00, 10:20, 10:25, 10:30, 10:40, 10:45, 10:50, 10:55, 11:10, 11:25, 11:30, 11:35, 11:45, 11:50, 11:55, 12:00, 12:05, 12:10, 12:15, 12:20, 12:25, 12:30, 12:35, 12:40, 12:45, 12:50, 12:55, 13:00, 13:05, 13:10, 13:15, 13:25, 13:30, 13:35, 13:40, 13:45, 13:50, 13:55, 14:00, 14:05, 14:10, 14:15, 14:20, 14:30, 14:40, 14:45, 14:50, 14:55, 15:00, 15:05, 15:10, 15:15, 15:20, 15:25, 15:30, 15:35, 15:40, 15:45, 15:50, 15:55, 16:00, 16:05, 16:10, 16:15, 16:20, 16:25, 16:30, 16:35, 16:40, 16:45, 16:50, 16:55, 17:00, 17:05, 17:10, 17:15, 17:20, 17:25, 17:30, 17:35, 17:40, 17:45, 17:50, 18:05, 18:10, 18:15, 18:20, 18:25, 18:30, 18:35, 18:40, 18:45, 18:50, 18:55, 19:15, 19:20, 19:35, 19:40, 21:45, 22:00, 22:15, 22:20, 22:25, 22:30, 22:35, 22:40, 22:45, 22:50, 22:55, 23:00, 23:05, 23:10, 23:13, 23:15, 23:20, 23:22, 23:23, 23:25, 23:28, 23:30, 23:33, 23:35, 23:37, 23:38, 23:40, 23:42, 23:45, 23:47, 23:48, 23:50 and 23:55.

Got all those? Which was your favourite? Mine was ’23:13′. What? No, you’re trying to artificially inflate the word count. (Christ, huge apologies to anyone who might be using a screen reader to get through all that. I’ll put a joke in one of the alt-text boxes for one of the images to try and compensate.)

Perhaps that’s a factor in the programme instead drawing viewers in by adopting some brilliantly interest-piquing episode titles, many of which would make equally suitable titles for Doctor Who adventures. In fact, if anyone is running a quiz night and wants to throw in a round on ‘Doctor Who or The Sky At Night Episode Title?’, feel free to throw in some of the following:

• 12/01/1959: Life and Death of the Sun
• 11/04/1960: Visitor from Space
• 23/05/1962: The Space Fog
• 17/10/1962: The Demon Star
• 10/01/1964: The Ghosts of the Universe
• 18/09/1964: Explosion in Space
• 05/11/1965: The Unsteady Universe
• 09/12/1966: The End of the World
• 08/12/1967: Lumps from Outer Space
• 21/06/1968: The Unquiet Sun
• 04/11/1968: The Clocks of Space
• 12/01/1970: Wanderers in Space

No actual episode of anything could ever live up to the title ‘Lumps from Outer Space’, of course. Nothing that could pass compliance, anyway.

In 2013, The Sky at Night’s long association with BBC1 would finally come to an end, with only a handful of first-run episodes ever going out on BBC2 (most of that BBC2 broadcast figure being afternoon repeats). Any fears that the programme was to be cancelled outright were dispelled by the Beeb however – it would be moving over to BBC Four, and there it remains.

BONUS CONTENT UPDATE 17/08/2022: Over on Twitter, Chris Lintott has informed me that for many years, episodes of The Sky at Night were broadcast each new moon. The thinking there was that serious amateur astronomers in the 1950s would likely have been studying it, so scheduling the programme that way made a lot of sense. It switched to monthly in the 1990s, when (as Patrick Moore put it) “The BBC lost track of the moon”. Superb (and thanks, Chris!).

72: Call My Bluff

(Shown 1208 times, 1965-2005)

University Challenge isn’t the only programme on the list to have had a slightly surprising origin story from the other side of the Atlantic. Despite feeling like the very epitome of dry early 1980s BBC-2 output (well, it does to me), the programme actually had a much more glamorous birthplace: Studio 6A at NBC Studios in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. That was where the original incarnation of the series was recorded in 1965, where host Bill Leyden challenged two teams (each comprising one celebrity and two contestants) to determine the true meaning of various obscure and archaic words. The winners would pocket a jackpot of $100 (rising to a potential $200 in the end-of-show bonus game).

Despite the glitz of a celebrity guest roster (which included Betty White, Lauren Bacall and Abe Burrows), the format wasn’t a success, lasting only a matter of months before being cancelled by NBC. Recordings of the programme were believed to have been destroyed, though the complete premiere episode does survive and is available to view at the show’s Lost Media Wiki page.

It took no time at all for the BBC to leap upon the format, pausing only to rip out the cash jackpot and replace the four contestants with additional wry celebrities, then shove it onto BBC-2 in October 1965. The quizmaster (or as the show had it, ‘Referee’) gig changed hands a few times at first – actor and musician Robin Ray took the reins for the first series, followed by actor Joe Melia for the next, then Peter Wheeler for a spell before finally landing on the referee most closely associated with the series: Robert “England’s Answer To Magnus Magnusson” Robinson. Cue countless impressions on the likes of Spitting Image, Now… Something Else, End Of Part One, A Bit of Fry and Laurie and many, many more.

The roles of team captain would also become inextricably linked to the series too, especially in the case of comedy writer-cum-raconteur Frank Muir. During a lengthy writing career alongside Denis Norden working for everyone from Jimmy Edwards to The Frost Report, followed by management stints in the LE departments of the BBC and LWT, Muir had built up quite a reputation as a wordsmith (indeed, with Norden he coined the immortal Carry-On phrase “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me”, originally used for radio comedy Take It From Here). Call My Bluff offered the loquacious Muir a prime opportunity to put his wordmongery to good use. [EDIT: As reader Paul R Jackson points out, credit should also be showered on Muir’s long-term opponents, namely Patrick Campbell (1966-80) and Arthur Marshall (1980-88). You are quite correct, Paul.]

The original run of Bluff, from October 1965 to December 1988, plus a one-off special in 1994 to mark thirty years of BBC2, clocked up 25 series’ and 542 episodes. Quite the innings, but as the channel geared up for a new generation of panel shows (kickstarted by the success of Have I Got News For You), the decidedly old-school Bluff had run its course. But not, it would turn out, for too long.

In 1996, the series was retooled as a daytime BBC1 series, with a suitably brighter, more 90s-friendly set and a new referee, Bob Holness. Alan Coren and Sandi Toksvig took on team captain roles. While it might not be the first line-up you’d think of for Call My Bluff, it was certainly a success – lasting for a further twelve series and a total of 555 episodes before the final Bluff in 2004. By that time, the line-up had changed a bit – 2003 seeing Toksvig replaced by Rod Liddle, and Fiona Bruce had picked up the referee’s baton (yes, I know referees don’t have batons).

In May 2014, Call My Bluff received a further anniversary shout-out in satirical retrospective Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos. Rechristened ‘Speech Impediment’, an impersonated panel of Bluff mainstays were challenged to determine the meaning behind the word ‘paedophile’ (a nod to the BBC of the 1970’s nonchalance about the number of absolute dangers working there than anything to do with individual Bluff regulars, it would appear).

EXTRA SUPER BONUS CONTENT UPDATE:

Ever wondered what one of the TRUE/BLUFF cards from Call My Bluff looks like in close-up? Well, with a weighty chunk of thanks to Paul R Jackson, here’s a look at one in more detail. It was sent to Paul in February 1979 by producer Johnny Downes and is signed by the Bluff regulars plus Nigel Havers.

71: Grange Hill

(Shown 1244 times, 1978-2008)

“Don’t you realise the way you act is influencing millions of children to talk cockney and be insubordinate?”

“Come on sir, don’t be silly. We’re the only kids in Britain who don’t say…”

As previously mentioned in this rundown, Z Cars proved to be a revelation for an audience who’d grown weary of the idealised world of cosy TV coppers like DIxon of Dock Green. While the more uncompromising approach taken by the series attracted criticism from those preferring an idealised version of British life in their living rooms, it was a reflection of gritty reality that went on to become the norm, with Z Cars ultimately becoming the 94th most-shown BBC programme of all-time (as EXCLUSIVELY revealed here).

Welp, the same applied to dramatic portrayal of school life. The 1970s offered little in the way of television reflecting the everyday experiences of pupils, meaning that all a kid was likely to see was sepia-tinged Tom Brown’s Schooldays or the rambunctious ribaldry of Please, Sir. It all seemed to be aimed at keeping parents entertained (and indeed, comforted) rather than accurately reflecting what real-life schoolkids were living through.

Then, along came Phil Redmond.

Redmond first tried to sell the idea of a more realistic look at events in a modern-day school in 1975, and in 1976 he succeeded in convincing the BBC to give it a go. An initial run of nine episodes began on 8 February 1978. That first episode focused on characters such as Trisha Yates (Michelle Herbert), Benny Green (Terry Sue Patt) and misunderstood rogue Peter ‘Tucker’ Jenkins (Todd Carty) as they shared their first day at Grange Hill High School with the BBC1 audience.

Within a few years, the volume of angry tabloid copy about the series was rising as quickly as the viewing figures. This was a topic that needed a little more space than a spare fifty seconds at the end of Points of View. And so, on 4 March 1980, BBC-1 set aside some time in the schedule for a one-off discussion programme, where the future of the series – and presumably whether it should be allowed to have one – would be debated.

It’s little surprise that parents and teachers were taken aback by events at Grange Hill. Early storylines covered topics such as bullying, organised protests and child molestation, presumably much to the surprise of anyone tuning in early for The Magic Roundabout. Not that Redmond was willing to dampen down the programme’s rhetoric. By the mid-1980s, the focus had shifted to topics such as shoplifting, racism, knife crime, suicide, teenage pregnancy and heroin addiction. Much to the surprise of anyone tuning in early for Masterteam, I’ll wager.

Not that it was all doom and/or gloom. Weightier topics were often offset by japes, jokes and scrapes, and school-age viewers had the added fun of comparing their own teachers to those within Grange Hill. Was your PE teacher as much of an arch bastard as Roger Sloman’s Mr ‘Frosty’ Foster? Was your English teacher as good natured as Anna Quayle’s Mrs ‘Marilyn’ Monroe? And were any of your teachers anywhere near as bad as Mr Bronson, played by a Michael Sheard tellingly more used to playing the part of Adolf Hitler?

To say Grange Hill quickly became a huge success feels a bit of an understatement. But, looking through the British Newspaper Archive for stories about the series (see above), there can’t have been too many Children’s BBC dramas that warranted a double-page style spread in the ‘Mirror Woman’ section of the Daily Mirror (27 Feb 1980). The article claims ratings for the series were as high as ten million (which strongly suggests it wasn’t only the kids watching it).

One particularly handy aspect of running a school-based drama is, of course, the natural cast attrition that goes with it. No need to have an endless parade of characters suddenly deciding to move to Manchester – they hit Sixth Form, get to wear their civvies for a year or two, then they’re leaving the series to make their way into the real world (usually a role in EastEnders). As each group of cast members leave at the end of the academic year, a fresh intake of pupils arrive. A process which saw the programme run for a total of thirty years.

Sure, there were changes along the way (such as in 2003, when production of the series moved to Mersey TV’s studios in Liverpool, meaning a new intake of pupils who’d suddenly developed Granadaland accents), but for remaining so popular with generations of British children over three damn decades, Grange Hill deserves a place amongst the hardiest of television programmes in the BBC’s history.

Okay, that’s it for this helping. Expect the next instalment ‘soon’, or your money back. Until then, keep ’em peeled for any suspicious lumps from outer space.

The ill-advised journey through the papery soup of BBC scheduling history continues, your intrepid reporter wading on with increasingly papier-mâchéd legs to bring you the following five dispatches from television history. Quite a long one, given the sheer bloody amount of history for some of them.

80: The Phil Silvers Show

(Shown 1107 times, 1957-2004)

Here’s an entry with a truly impressive range of broadcast years. Especially so considering it’s an American sitcom, which (a few exceptions aside) generally enjoy a run on British screens not too dissimilar from their original US airdates, or which see broadcast rights batted between the Beeb, ITV and any other channel operators around at the time (cf The Flintstones). But, let’s be honest here, The Phil Silvers Show isn’t just any American sitcom. As far as comfort-viewing sitcoms that transcend age and time go, I’d argue it’s (at least to British eyes) a stateside cousin of Hancock’s Half Hour.

Perhaps like several of you reading this, the name of The Phil Silvers Show is one that always seemed to appear in the long grass of the post-post-bedtime schedules, and as such always held a curious allure along with the likes of Married… With Children or Sledge Hammer! in similar out-of-bounds slots on ITV. And while those latter two proved to be the more immediate draw for me when later bedtimes and earlier scheduling aligned (the bright NTSC colour bleed picture and brassy humour drawing me in like a child character in an unmade sequel to Poltergeist), that Silvers charm would later appeal on a different level. The levels of wit, craft and japery within each episode would easily turn out to be more nourishing in the long-term than gags about Peggy Bundy’s libido or Sledge’s near-erotic penchant for blasting perps.

Not that the antics of Bilko et al are the only classic US sitcom to make it big on the BBC, it’s just by far the longest-running on our screens. By comparison:

The Burns and Allen Show/George Burns and Gracie Allen, 109 showings (24/02/1957 to 09/09/1961 then 14/09/1979-11/01/1980, 291 episodes produced)

The Lucy Show, 146 showings (31/12/1962 to 28/12/1968 plus a one-off showing on 04/01/1980, 156 episodes produced, also shown on ITV)

The Jack Benny Program(me)/The Jack Benny Show, 58 showings (24/02/1957 to 15/02/1980, plus a one-off showing on 20/01/1990, 260 episodes produced)

Bewitched, 188 showings (13/10/1965 to 28/06/1976, 254 episodes produced, also repeated on ITV & C4)

The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 34 showings (13/02/1971 to 29/12/1972, 168 episodes produced, later shown on C4)

By comparison, there are just 144 episodes across four seasons of The Phil Silvers Show, yet episodes featuring Sgt Bilko and his platoon have been on BBC channels more than twice as often as all the above shows combined. Why? Silvers’ fast-talking wiseass character reminding audiences of Max Miller? The BBC having picked up the rights to the series for a bag of buttons? If anyone does know, I’d love to be informed, but whatever the backstory, it’s a safe bet that this is a programme that will always have an appreciative British audience.

79: Doctor Who

(Shown 1138 times, 1963-2021)

For many of these entries, if a sliver of data manages to sneak through my database without being picked up (a rogue repeat of QI masquerading under the title of ‘Oi’ due to fallibility of Genome’s OCR software, for example), it’s questionable anyone will notice. That’s what I’m banking on anyway. May I reiterate here, this is 855,306 rows of data I’m dealing with here, and that figure is growing as I fill in the occasional gap. When it comes to the next entry on the list, I suspect there will be people who’ll instantly notice whether I’ve missed a signed 4.10am repeat of an episode. So, in advance: trying my best here. I’ve corrected any listings marked ‘Dr Who’ and I’ve done my best to discount the Peter Cushing films.

I’ll admit, I’m not really much of a Whovian. The most impressive bit of Who trivia I know is that David Tennant’s stage surname is a reference-slash-tribute to Pet Shop Boy Neil, and when told this in an interview with Word magazine, Neil Tennant replied that he stopped watching Doctor Who during the William Hartnell years. Typical pop star, eh?

For the majority of its life, Doctor Who was all about Saturday evenings. Starting from that first ever episode, ‘An Unearthly Child’ beaming from the BBC Television Service to the homes of Britain on 23 November 1963, it swiftly became as much of a Saturday fixture as Grandstand or Dad’s pool coupon going in the bin just after the classified results. It took until Wednesday 27 December 1972 for the Tardis to escape the confines of the weekend schedule, by which time Jon P’Twee was playing the dandiest of all Doctors, the post-Christmas schedule enlivened by a feature-length opportunity to see the complete story ‘Dr Who and the Sea Devils’ in one sitting.

The same tactic was employed the next time The Doctor wriggled free of the Saturday evening slot, with 7pm on Monday 3 September 1973 reserved for another “complete adventure in one programme”, this time ‘The Day of the Daleks‘. It was a tactic BBC schedulers were definitely warming to, with a movie-length omnibus of previously screened stories airing on 27 December of the next few years (1973: ‘The Green Death‘, 1974: ‘Planet of the Spiders‘, 1975: ‘Genesis of the Daleks‘).

On Monday 5 July 1976, a run of individual repeat episodes made it onto weekday BBC-1 for the first time, with the story ‘Planet of Evil’ (a four-parter by Louis Marks) repeated on consecutive weekdays, each starting between 6.20 and 6.35pm. It being a four-parter meant that left Friday free. That left room for another “complete adventure in one programme”, with ‘The Sontaran Experiment‘ taking up a fifty-minute slot.

So, that nice little aside, um, aside, The Doctor returned to his regular stomping ground of Saturday evenings. That was until 4 August 1977, where a repeat of Robert Holmes’ four-part story ‘The Deadly Assassin‘ went out on Thursday evenings. That tactic was deployed again on 13 July 1978, with Bob Baker and Dave Martin story ‘The Invisible Enemy‘ going out on four successive Thursdays. That run was immediately followed by Robert Holmes’ ‘The Sun Makers’, brightening up a quartet of Thursdays from 10 August 1978. Not that these midweek departure times for the Tardis were a promotion, of course. If you’re wondering what was keeping The Doctor away from his regular weekend slot during that time, it was the inaugural run of the latest smash hit US import, “a new film series starring Lynda Carter”. For the record, the Sat night offering that shunted Who to midweek slots in August ’77 – the less glamorous offering of ‘some films’. In an era where purportedly ‘mainstream’ channels like Five or ITV2 can cram themselves full of films on any given day and nobody will bat an eyelid, it seems odd that a six-year-old film being shown would be a big deal, but that was the reality of life before video shops. Anyway.

In 1980, there was a return to the daily Doctor, with Terry Nation’s ‘Destiny of the Daleks‘ going out each weekday from Tuesday 5 August. The following Tuesday, the same treatment was almost afforded David Agnew’s ‘City of Death‘, which instead went out on Tuesday-Wednesday-Tuesday-Wednesday. If the goal behind all this was to make sure Who kids were buying the Radio Times to avoid missing an episode, it must surely have worked.

Come 1981, and the long reign of Doctor Who as a show primarily shown on Saturdays was over, meaning the lengthy process of my highlighting all the times it went out on other days is also over. Phew. From ‘Full Circle‘ onwards, weekday Who was very much the norm. November 1981 also saw something else new: a John Nathan-Turner curated season of classic Who stories, going out under the banner of The Five Faces of Doctor Who and designed to mark the debut of The Doctor’s fifth face, the one shared by Peter Davison. As well as offering younger fans a rare glimpse of previous Doctors, this marked the first time Who episodes had aired on BBC-2.

For the remainder of the 1980s, Doctor Who found itself clattering around the schedules like a particularly erratic Tardis. By 1989, even a guest appearance from Hale & Pace couldn’t arrest the inevitable ratings decline that came with being shoved in the opposite-Corrie death slot. And so, Michael Grade had Doctor Who fired from a cannon into the Sun. As a result, on 6 December 1989, with the last part of Rona Munro’s ironically-titled ‘Survival’ (“The Doctor and Ace move towards their final confrontation with the animal inside us all”) it seemed that Doctor Who was finally coming to an end.

But, the Doctor wasn’t going to take such a trifling thing as ‘death’ particularly lightly. August 1991 saw the first of what would become many repeats of classic Doctor Who on BBC2, starting with (appropriately enough) a repeat airing of ‘An Unearthly Child‘, the story that kicked off the whole affair. The following January, the first of a series of Friday evening classic episodes arrived, starting from the very earliest surviving episodes, as part of a weekly cult TV strand – the lead-in to these classic Who repeats was Thunderbirds.

So well-received were these repeats that November 1993 saw a brief run of classic episodes back on BBC1 to mark Who’s Thirtieth anniversary, and in primetime to boot. Admittedly in the Friday night 7.30pm opposite-Corrie slot, but at least it showed someone at TV Centre still cared about the series. And then, in 1996, New Who! The Paul McGann TV movie aired on Monday 27 May 1996, and… well, that was a one-off, as everyone knows.

A few flurries of repeats fell upon the ground (or more accurately, upon BBC2) across the late 1990s and in the first few months of the 21st century, but from that point (specifically the last part of Genesis of the Daleks going out on 29 February 2000) it would be five whole years before Who reappeared in the biggest possible way. And that… is a story you hopefully (really, hopefully, in the interests of keeping this entry to a manageable length) you already know.

^{NOTE: Entry updated on 7 August to better reflect that weekday episodes I’ve highlighted were repeats rather than first-run episodes. With thanks to Cinema Limbo. And an additional dollop of thanks due to Cinema Limbo for the following corrections:}

“There were five other weekday repeats prior to 1972. Spearhead from Space aired at 6.20pm on Fridays 9-30 July 1971, and The Daemons aired as an omnibus at 4.20pm on Tuesday 28 December the same year. You also referred to the 1991 screening of An Unearthly Child as a repeat. It was actually the world premiere of the pilot episode, shot from essentially the same script as the actual first episode was a month later, but which was felt to be too clumsy and weak a production. There were a bunch of other non-Saturday repeats during the 1970s, which I assume you simply decided not to mention [Correct, this entry was long enough as it was – MGJ], but notable was The Robots of Death airing as a two-parter on New Year’s Eve/Day 1977/8, the latter episode being the only time an episode was networked on a Sunday until 1994, and in primetime on a non-Christmas Day until 2009.”

78: Watchdog

(Shown 1141 times, 1985-2019)

All together now: “Potential death trap.”

It really does seem a bit weird that a programme that feels so current (even if it actually ended a few years ago) started off as a segment in Nationwide, but that’s how Watchdog started. In 1980, TV’s beigest current affairs programme introduced a new consumer affairs slot hosted by Hugh Scully, which very swiftly became a fixture. So much so in fact that it was one of the few aspects of the ‘Wide to migrate to Sixty Minutes in 1983 (and if you don’t remember it or are too young to have been around then, Sixty Minutes was the BBC News version of New Coke).

Once Sixty Minutes was Six Feet Under within a year of launch, and the current ‘National News then Regional News’ format was introduced in its wake, there wasn’t really room in the news hour for a consumer affairs programme. And so, in 1985, Watchdog carved itself a place in the programme listings for the very first time as a standalone programme. Initially floating around the 6pm slot on Sunday evenings, the Nick Ross-Lynn Faulds Wood phase of the series lasted for 13 episodes between July and October.

The following November, Watchdog found a new home: on weekday mornings operating as a palate cleanser between the sugary Breakfast Time and Robert Kilroy-Silk’s spicy Day to Day at 8.40am each morning, as part of Michael Grade’s assault on daytime television. Nick Ross departed hosting duties, so Lynn Faulds Wood was joined on screen by husband John Stapleton.

This second phase didn’t stick around for too long – by May 1987, it was time for something new in that slot (if you count ‘twenty extra minutes of Breakfast Time’ as new), but the ‘Dog had still tucked a further 106 episodes under its collar. Come November 1987, it was back to early Sunday evenings for Faulds Wood and Stapleton, with a Monday afternoon repeat broadcast.

That’s until January 1988 – after just a few weeks back in that Sunday evening slot, it was time for Watchdog to move to a location in the schedules that’ll be a lot more familiar to many, a weekday primetime slot. For the first episode in this new slot, a 7.35pm home nestled comfortably in between Wogan and The Kenny Everett Television Show. I’d wager it’s here where the programme really seeped into the national consciousness, where the likes of Rory Bremner could throw on a wig, adopt a Scottish accent and present a stern warning about, I don’t know, a shady bunch of people selling something that won’t ever be delivered (by which he means the government). Or, more famously and (to be fair) accurately, Hugh Dennis getting indecent about the threat of cancer-pumping pepper grinders in The Mary Whitehouse Experience.

From there, it would ultimately become a vehicle for Anne Robinson, who in 1993 migrated from being The Voice Of The Viewers berating the actions of Them Upstairs in Points of View, to a wider remit as lead representative of the people against shady business practices beyond the confines of TV Centre. After departing for global infamy as host of The Weakest Link, Nicky Campbell took the Watchdog lead for a few years before Robinson returned in 2009, which saw the show extended to an hour. With Watchdog running rampant through the schedules, it’s little wonder that it finds itself amongst the most-shown BBC programmes of all-time.

Of course, all things come to an end, and in 2019 Watchdog was let off the leash for the final time (which is fortunate, as these canine references are getting tiresome). But it wasn’t disappearing entirely – it would be making occasional appearances as a segment on The One Show – the shiny-floored successor to Nationwide, where Watchdog first gave those formative consumer yelps so long ago. Which is nice, isn’t it?

Alongside the ‘regular’ show, there have also been a lot of spin-off series. Like, a lot.

• Junior Watchdog (Weekday mornings, Feb 1987, BBC1) “All this week Lynn Faulds Wood and John Stapleton are bringing You Junior Watchdog – with a bit of help from you in the studio or out sleuthing in the open”
• Watchdog – Value for Money (Summers 1996-2000, 7pm, BBC1) “A series reporting on high street shops and helping shoppers make the best choices.”
• Watchdog Daily (Nov/Dec 2012, Mornings, BBC1) “Sophie Raworth takes on the big household-names and shows viewers how to fight for their consumer rights”
• Watchdog Entertainment Special (Jan 1997, 7pm, BBC1) “Two editions of the consumer programme, revealing the realities of the world of showbusiness.”
• Watchdog Healthcheck (1995-2002, BBC1, 7pm/7.30pm) “a new series delivering stories on the health issues that affect consumers in the 1990s”
• Watchdog Test House (2014-2015, BBC1 repeated BBC2, mornings) “Series in which Sophie Raworth reveals how household products are tested, putting the makers’ claims on trial and showing how to get the best value for money.”
• Watchdog: Face Value (1997 & 1999, 7pm/7,30pm, BBC1) “Alice Beer hosts a new consumer programme which, over the next six weeks, lifts the lid on the beauty and fashion industries.”
• Watchdog: On the House (April-May 1998, 7pm, BBC1) “The consumer affairs team turn their attention to bricks and mortar in a new six-part series, presented by Sankha Guha and Anne McKevitt.”
• Watchdog: the Big Dinner (1998, 7pm, BBC1) “The consumer affairs programme focuses on issues relating to food in a new five-part series presented by Johnathan Maitland”

And they’re only the ones using the Watchdog branding. But, as they’re really standalone programmes, they’re not getting counted in the total for Watchdog. If you don’t like it, well, tough. What are you going to do about it? Write to a consumer affairs programme?

77: Wogan

(Shown 1142 times, 1982-2010)

There can’t be too many people who need to be informed that Terry Wogan was a bit of a master with the old patter. However, it might be a bit of a surprise to learn that his first TV chat show was over on the other side, with ATV commissioning Lunchtime with Wogan in the early 1970s. That ran from 1972 to 1973 as part of ITV’s original daytime TV revolution.

As is so often the case, true beauty can only ever be fleeting, and so Terry left Lunchtime with Wogan to focus on what would become a long-running role at Radio 2, including leading the station’s listeners through Eurovision for much of the 1970s. Not that he’d be ditching television entirely – Tel helmed the BBC’s TV coverage of Eurovision in 1973 and 1978, before making it his own from 1980 (whilst also helming A Song for Europe from 1977 onwards). He also found time to present the original version of Come Dancing, as well as Blankety Blank from 1979 onwards, and Children in Need from 1980.

With so much of the BBC’s output containing Wogan at the time, it was surely inevitable he’d pop up with a chat show format at some point. So, as if to underline what I just said, in 1980 that’s precisely what happened. What’s On Wogan? aired on Saturday evenings in the 6pm hour between May and July, and if nothing else you have to see the memorable trailer for the series, with Terry standing on the corner of Portland Place enthusiastically telling everyone about the promised live spectacular whilst being drowned out by traffic. Hey, when your stated remit is to ‘to banjax your weekend’, that’s the sort of effort you need to make.

The original version of Tel’s actual titular show came along in May 1982, cramming a late-night Tuesday slot with a heady mix of celebrity, japery and light chat. The scene pictured just below (and on YouTube here) features an interview with Nigel Rees, there to promote his latest compendium book of found graffiti (hey, early 80s). As if to prove how different the year 1982 was, the audience aren’t far from rolling in the aisles at hearing the one about there being “only one Monopolies Commission”. Every old joke was new once. (I like one on the cover of the book: “Whither Atrophy?” – it’s certainly a cut above what I’ve seen scrawled on toilet walls. I’m clearly visiting the wrong public toilets.)

This midweek whimsy proved to be a hit with audiences, so for the second series of his weekly chat show, a promotion to Saturday night was given. On at 10pm each Saturday (in a prime slot between Dynasty and The Late Film) the new series promised a “unique combination of Terry in conversation with top stars from home and abroad, people in the headlines and the very best in entertainment”. When you’re taking Michael Parkinson’s old slot, that’s the kind of PR patter you need.

After a few years on Saturday nights, February 1985 saw Terry Wogan became one of two totems in Michael Grade’s relaunched BBC1 line-up. Wogan would air at 7pm each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while upstart soap EastEnders would go out at that time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Only one of them was an instant hit. And it wasn’t EastEnders.

Grade’s plan for the move was to “bring a much needed element of surprise and unpredictability to BBC Television”, and it certainly delivered plenty of moments like that, especially given the live, pre-watershed nature of the series. Even the big talk shows on the other side of the Atlantic had the security of being pre-recorded (admittedly as-live) and going out at 11pm. Wogan was talk TV without a safety net. And when there’s no safety net, things become that bit more compelling.

And as such, there are several moments that saw Wogan discussed in playgrounds, cafes and workplaces around the UK the morning after transmission. A worse-for-wear George Best politely asking if he’s allowed to say ‘shit’ before boasting of his fondness for ‘screwing’, a stage-frightened Anne Bancroft only offering monosyllabic replies to questions (luckily fellow guest Ben Elton helped keep things ticking along), Nic Cage pre-empting an internet full of Nic Cage memes, Chevy Chase being an arse, and most famously David Icke declaring himself Son of the Godhead. All moments where, if you’d missed them, you really had felt you’d missed out (I certainly did in the case of Icke’s utterances). Sky Sports have started using the ad slogan ‘It’s Only Live Once’. That was equally applicable to Wogan at its most interesting.

The hugeness of Wogan (the show) even outgrew the reputation of Wogan (the man). Taking the late-night talk-show approach of keeping everything running when the main host is away on holiday, guest-hosting slots on Wogan helped launch (or re-launch) several careers. The first to stand-in for an absent Tel was Selina Scott, originally a journalist-turned-newsreader by trade, Scott’s time hosting Breakfast Time made her a natural fit for Wogan’s shoes, and brought her to the attention of a wider audience. Later guest hosts would include David Frost, Kenneth Williams, Joanna Lumley and Sue Lawley, the latter even getting her own ‘only live once’ moment in the spotlight following Vivienne Westwood’s ill-advised medically-inspired catwalk show. Yep, the one that inspired a scene in ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’, a scene so shambolic the Coogan version just needed a re-enactment rather than direct parody.

During its imperial phase, Wogan was a truly immovable feast. It seems unfathomable now that the BBC simply wouldn’t bother showing the first half of World Cup finals matches because The One Show is just too damn important. But, during Mexico ’86, events in Shepherd’s Bush were deemed much more important than those taking place in Queretaro or Irapuato, some early matches only being permitted “Highlights of the first half, plus live second-half coverage”. Moving Wogan to a different slot, giving him the night off or asking him to slum it on BBC2 for an evening simply would not do, Havelange or no Havelange. We’re not talking minor matches, either – West Germany v Uruguay, Brazil v Algeria, and (going by the RT listing) “either Argentina v South Korea or USSR v Hungary” – I vaguely remember it being the latter, which meant viewers missed the first three goals in a 6-0 Soviet stampede.

Similarly, BBC1’s live coverage of the previous year’s ill-fated European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium had been preceded by a mini-but-still-live episode of Wogan, billed in the Radio Times with the Partridgesque “a piquant preamble from Terry live at the Terryvision Theatre on picturesque Shepherd’s Bush Green”. Any such mood swiftly dissipated on the night, as the Wogan studio threw to BBC reporters at Heysel.

Eventually, Wogan lost it’s lustre with the viewing public. By the end of 1991, viewers were down, BBC Scotland had shunted the Friday show into a much later slot to make way for its own programming, and Something Had To Be Done. And so, Terry was ultimately made to tread water for several months while replacement programming could be devised, cast and shot. And so, on Friday 3 July 1992, seven years and 1300 shows after roaring into that 7pm weekday slot, Wogan’s grand finale was upon us. But not to worry, the Radio Times assured viewers, “Terry Wogan will be back on screen later this year with a new weekly show”.

Sadly, Terry Wogan’s Friday Night wasn’t anywhere near as successful as its predecessor. Despite trying out some new ideas – including having Frank Skinner in the Hank Kingsley role – it just wasn’t to be, and 5 March 1993 was Wogan’s last Friday Night.

But what of the can’t-miss programme that replaced Wogan’s original thrice-weekly 7pm slot? Well, it was something history was much less kind to.

76: University Challenge

(Shown 1175 times, 1994-2021)

“Up Scumbag!”

Quite a surprising one here, given that it spent the first 25 years of its existence over on ITV. And it goes back even further than that, all the way back to World War II. Despite seeming so quintessentially British, University Challenge is actually a licenced adaptation of long-running American series College Bowl. After starting out at a wartime USO activity created by Canadian Don Reid, College Bowl was subsequently converted into a series for NBC Radio by Reid and John Moses, which debuted in 1953. It proved so popular a TV version was piloted in 1955, and by 1959 a full series was airing on CBS.

The UK adaptation came about after Cecil Bernstein, brother of Granada founder Sidney, spotted the programme on a trip to the USA and decided it was a prime candidate for British consumption. Simple and cost-effective, likely to impress critics of Britain’s commercial network, and an easy tie-in to Granada’s image as ‘the BBC of the North’. Plus, with the British version dispensing with the none-more-American tie-in with programme sponsor General Electric, instantly classier than the original. The ITV version actually went in the opposite direction from College Bowl’s commercial tie-in, UC airing without any ad breaks at all, a luxury only ever afforded to a select few ITV programmes (see also This Is Your Life). In short, Bamber Gascoigne wasn’t about to interrupt proceedings to hold up a box of Omo and tell everyone how great it is.

Sponsorship concerns aside, any differences between the two versions are largely restricted to the faux-sporting format of the US original. Instead of a ‘starter for ten’, open questions are referred to as a ‘toss-up’, each team has a nominated ‘coach’ (i.e. a professor from each college), and the scoreboard is much more similar to an American Football scoreboard, complete with clock.

Other than that though, the UK version takes the format of the US version pretty much as-is. Even down to the distinctive way the two teams are shown on screen during open questions.

So, on 21 September 1962, the UK version of College Bowl (afforded a less US-centric title) first arrived on British television. Asking the questions was, as would be the case for the entirety of the show’s tenure on ITV, Bamber Gascoigne. Teams from various universities around the UK would take part (aside from Oxford and Cambridge, from whom individual constituent colleges could provide teams), resulting in an overall annual winner. Starter for ten, no conferring, Bamber’s almost apologetic “I have to hurry you”, all that.

Having started in a plum 7pm weekday slot on ITV (at least in some regions), it bounced around the schedules quite a bit, perhaps influenced by the programme’s lack of commercial interruption, meaning programmes that did more to earn their upkeep were considered a better fit for that prime slot. And so, UC moved to post-News At Ten slots or Friday 5.15pm slots, before settling into a more suitable home on early Sunday afternoons by the late 1970s (again, at least in many regions).

And that’s where it stayed, for the most part. At least until New Year’s Eve 1987, when ITV would broadcast University Challenge for the last time. The final flourish for Bamber’s starters came with the culmination of a three-part ‘test’ between then-current UK UC champions Keble College, Oxford and New Zealand’s University of Otago.

But, as you’ll have guessed by me writing about it here, that wasn’t the end for University Challenge. In 1994, the programme re-emerged on BBC2 (albeit still produced by Granada), this time with arch snarkmeister Jeremy Paxman in the chair. A seat he’s continued to fill since (except: not for much longer). And with the show no longer beholden to the whims of a commercial broadcaster, it has regained and retained a plum, primetime position in the schedules since that point. Indeed, it has proved popular enough with the BBC2 audience to warrant runs of same-week repeats between 2013 and 2017, along with special ‘Christmas series’ mini-tournaments going out daily over the festive period in recent years.

For the last few years, University Challenge has effectively teamed up with Only Connect each Monday evening at 8pm to provide a weekly “feel pleased with yourself if you get more than two questions right” hour of programming. Let’s face it, University Challenge is basically going to outlive every single one of us.

Well. That grab-bag of programmes probably chalked off at least a couple you’d expect to be much higher in the list. And who would’ve thought Arthur would beat Doctor Who in the rundown? Believe me, if it weren’t for signed middle-of-the-night repeats, Doctor Who would’ve been beaten by Igglepiggle and Upsy Daisy. Such is the unpredictable nature of this list, and the reason you daren’t look away from it for a second. (Not literally.)

Tune in next time, for the next quintet of wonder. Two entries from which I’ve currently no bloody idea what I’m going to write about. Get used to that. I’ve seen the full list. I’m tempted to rope in someone from Fiverr to write at least 40% of it.

So, until next time. Ooh, the excitement.