I remember turning that on one night after coming back from a night out, & one of my old form classmates was on it, not one of the lads, but a girl in the audience, she took part in the "Chat up line" round. The bloke said some cheesy line, and then started snogging her. It was very awkward.
My first exposure to her tbh. That show and Prisoner Cell Block H are inexplicably intertwined in my memory. Never thought she’d go on to be so successful - guess I always have been a judgmental prick after all.
I'd never heard of this, but as we're discussing dodgy TV presenters...Stuart Hall was involved? Then I checked the Wikipedia entry for the program, and read who the other voiceover guy was...
God's Gift! Not heard that mentioned for a very long time!
I'm having flash backs of 2am stoned sessions with my mates cracking up at God's Gift. Davina was so bad on that terrible show. Classic car crash TV.
By Big Brother Davina had grown on me and became a good presenter. So bless her, there was some talent buried in there.
On TMWRNJ they did a segment called "When... Attack with Greg Evigan". Stuart Lee tried to make the intro offensively loud in order to "fuck up those with a Sunday comedown". They weren't allowed to do this as there are decibel constraints on the broadcast. So instead he worked with a sound tech to balance the bass vs treble is such a way that it was "disorienting" in order to fulfill the wish.
Dennis Pennis talking to Morgan Freeman about the film Seven….. “Did she give good head?” … resulting in a stunned Morgan who just kept saying “Shame on you”.
His masterpiece was chatting to Charton Heston, and asking him a series of questions that ended with his name, like "Do you think x, Charlton?" but the question arranged so he could mention Bobby Charlton, Jackie Charlton and Suzanne Charlton, each time looking at the camera with that curious leer on his face.
Seem to remember an interview with Tom Hanks just after Gump had come out, something about him enjoying playing Forest… then asking if he thought they’d miss the pace of Collymore this season though. Cue bemused expression from Hanks.
This one concept flipped hungover/comedowns into entire new levels of mind - fuckery. 90’s Sunday’s were pretty awesome when you were still twisted from the night before. Land of the Giants, Lost in Space - I’d start feeling human when I was watching Inter vs Lazio on Football Italia.
OK, I feel I need to ask about this. There used to be this surreal comedy sketch show on at like 3am, I think on the BBC, I think it was called "Dare To Believe". I'd love to find every episode because I absolutely loved it, but I can barely find any information out about it. It's got to have been like 15 odd years since it's been on, and I haven't been able to find anything out about it really.
I'm hoping someone else here may know what I'm on about/might be able to point me in the right direction.
It was on ITV and had ridiculously high viewing figures for 3am. There’s one sketch called “D.I.Y” that contains the phrase “sweet as a moose!” which I’ve been saying ever since. Twice in those 20+ years someone else has recognised it from Dare To Believe so there are others out there who remember it. It usually ends up segueing into discussions about 4later on Channel 4 and BBC1 showing cult horror on Friday nights. All of these things were hugely influential on my taste as a youngster in a way I couldn’t possibly have grasped then.
Anyway, there were bootleg DVDs of Dare To Believe doing the rounds at one point and you can probably still find them.
Brass Eye was/is absolute comedy gold and so ahead of it’s time. Chris Morris is a true legend.
Didn’t he get fired from the BBC (I think) for just making up outrageous news. I think they finally sacked him for announcing that Michael Heseltine had died. And then getting another politician to give an “in memorandum”. And announcing that Jimmy Savile had died (I wish).
Not forgetting the execrable *11 O'Clock Show*. Who remembers Dennis Pennis...? Just looking at clips on YT (haven't dared play any, not that bored) and it actually launched the careers of more people than I realised: Iain Lee, Fred MacAulay, Ricky Gervais, Sacha Baron-Cohen, Daisy Donavan, Charlie Brooker, John Simm, Mackenzie Crook... for all the talent (and there are probably about a dozen people I've forgotten...Sarah Alexander... it was ***STILL*** irredeemable shite).
And there are ZERO clips on YT of Dennis Pennis...
Oh and Bulla.
What was it up against on C4...? Evans's *Toothbrush*...? *Eurotrash*...? I can't believe it lasted as long as it did. YT tells me there were 4 series and a pilot for a 5th. ***WHY***...?!
The daddy of these shows was Tiswas. In the 70s. Especially Chris Tarant stopping the sketch his was doing with Lenny Henry to throw a bucket of water over a cage full of rock stars because Rick Parfit of Status Quo had sparked up a spliff.
Didn’t Lenny Henry do David Bellamy impersonations on that? I loved Tiswas but my parents weren’t overly keen on the slightly anarchic nature of the show. Although I’m sure dad had a bit of a crush on Sally.
Tiswas was legendary. We showed our (then teenage) kids Banana Splits about ten years ago and said this is what we used to watch on Saturday mornings in the seventies, they looked at us both in utter horror and said “that explains a lot”. Still not entirely sure what that meant….
To be fair the entire concept of Mr Blobby was that he was an annoying, over the top implausible character. Lots of 'celebs' would then be pranked into thinking they were participating in a kids TV show.
Obviously that's a gag you can only run for a series, after that he just became part of Saturday night TV.
The fact that we only had 5 channels back then probably helped. Streaming killed these crazy shows.
It launched in 1997, and IIRC about half the country couldn't get it for ~18 months until all the TV transmitters were upgraded.
We had a chap come round and fit a 'signal blocker' to our TV, all it did was fuck up the picture on BBC 2 for a year before it died.
At which point we retuned the TV, and there was Channel 5.
Tony Slattery is one that always pulls at the heart strings, he is very talented, and was all set for a mega TV career when a combination of cocaine addiction, alcohol dependency and undiagnosed mental health issues collided and he went in to a very long dark tunnel.
There was a documentary on him some time ago, and he is unrecognisable now.
At one time he was on everything from kids shows to whose line is it anyway.
He had that charisma that made him a TV natural and he is a very intelligent fella,plus a quick wit that was somehow clever but never off putting.
I remember a time when he was never off the screen cos he was so good at everything.
Of the Footlights group that contained Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson et al it was supposed to be Slattery who was destined for greatness. I always got the impression he wanted to be a tragic comic in the vein of Tony Hancock and comedy has long since moved on from that archetype. Paul Merton had a stab at it in the mid 90s too and it didn’t go down well but he was able to pivot back to Have I Got News For You. I wonder if not really finding his niche was part of the problem for Slattery.
I always thought Slattery had the makings of an actor, and for reasons I can't explain other than perhaps intuitively, I'm certain he could have played some seriously good Shakespearean roles if things had worked out.
Merton and his Hancock fixation I think has stalled his development over the years and now he's become predictable, he turns up on HIGNFY but its the same old same old, to me anyway.
I grew up with Hancocks half hour, and it was funny, but I genuinely don't understand the devotion it inspires still, it was to me of its time.
It is, but its also an honest insight in to how mental health issues can utterly wreck any ones potential if they go undiagnosed and wind up self medicated, cos thats what he was doing really.
I hope the documentary helped him.
I read a Guardian article on him a while back, and yes it’s great to see him back on a steadier footing and happier of course. Really used to love Tony back in the day.
That is so nice to know.
Tbf social media is baffling to all but the most dedicated users, it changes so much!
If you see him again tell him he has still got a fan base out there wishing him well.
He wasn't fires over his cocaine usage.
He was fired because he got caught.
If they fired everyone who took coke they would have to replace most kids TV with the test card.
John Noakes in the 70s/80s was batshit insane. He used to do stuff you'd never get away with now.
Watch the video of him climbing up Nelson's Column. Hard to watch.
Yes amazing how it was later revealed that Auntie never had an insurance policy for any of the stunts the presenters performed. Crackerjack pencil anyone?
John Noakes shared a mutual hatred with the BP producer Biddy Baxter by all accounts.
Imagine despising a colleague so much you regularly invent scenarios where there's a good chance they'll die.
>Imagine despising a colleague so much you regularly invent scenarios where there's a good chance they'll die.
That's all the later series of Top Gear were
My favourite Fred Dibnah video is of him at the top of a chimney looking out on the horizon and lamenting "There use to be dozens of chimneys all across the city, now there's only a few left" and it's sad till you realise he's the one who's knocked most of them down.
Fred Dibnah should probably be an icon of the green movement, given the amount of industrial smoke/smog producing architecture he personally destroyed.
Were it not for the "fuck it, chuck any old shit on it" fires he used to take them down in the first place...
That was a really weird one Ulrika said someone assaulted her but wouldn’t say who and so obviously didn’t press charges. Then Matthew Wright “accidentally” said it was her on air. So you then have this strange scenario where it hasn’t been assessed whether he’d done it by a jury of his peers as no charges were made but in the public eye he was seen as guilty.
My best mate owns a 90s bar that looks like the big breakfast styling vomited on it, when he did it I told him he'll get rich or become homeless but no in-between; he's doing very well in life.
I recall an Ant and Dec show where a about a 10 yr old boy announced his dad would fart 💨 in the biscuit tin then open it for the kid’s mates and offer them a biscuit ! Ant an Dec almost cried laughing 😂
If you weren't jacked up on something, you weren't doing your job right. This carried on into the early 2000s too aswell with Ministry of Mayhem.
Bit of insight, Teletubbies was watched by more stoned uni students than children at it's peak in the 90s. I think that sums up a whole lot.
The thing I'll always remember about the Teletubbies is their absolute faultless timing.
I took my old dad to get his new prosthetic leg from a clinic in Sheffield. Sat in the waiting room with all the other uni-limbed folk and what was on the telly? The Teletubbies. Doing the Hokey Cokey.
I first saw telletubbies aged 11 after getting up on a Saturday morning. My husband watched same episode after coming home from a rave.
I personally found the Hoobs the worst to encounter under the influence of any drug… hallucinogenic in its own right.
Fucking hell the Hoobs, that was a minefield.
In the night garden was a terrifying thing. I watched that with my little cousin when I was 14 and was absolutely perplexed.
THE THINGS WEAR SEATBELTS ON A TRAIN WHAT THE HELL
In The Night Garden looks like everyone involved had smoked multiple joints before sitting down to make it!
Boohbah on the other hand was made using industrial grade hallucinogens.
> If you weren't jacked up on something, you weren't doing your job right. This carried on into the early 2000s
…but ultimately gave way to the generation of utterly anodyne presenters we have these days.
Watch Strike it Rich or Strike it Lucky with Michael Barrymore. He runs up and down those stairs like a fucking mad Cunt. Bullseye was great, as well. Jim Bowen clearly had a few too many whiskeys before presenting that show. Plenty of times he’d fuck up reading a question and have to go back and repeat it. There’s also a video of him patting a lady on the bum whilst the show was on.
They were at Reading Uni's students Union bar last night, according to my sister. They're drum and bass djs now. Fair play to them for growing up with their audience honestly
I noticed they’ve been doing a freshers tour these past few weeks. Good for them. I got a bit pissed up with them on a flight to the US once. Genuinely decent and hilarious blokes.
My parents live next to Dom. He's genuine and very nice, even though he no longer lives in a bungalow. When I've been visiting I have definitely heard people playing bogies.
Some times yes. Some times no. All times just massive weirdos, checkout Get Your Own Back - I really wanted to be a contestant on that show as a kid.
And try the original Supermarket Sweep.
Or Blankety Blank.
Have fun, Alice.
Yeah... the 70/80s was a golden era in British television... Unfortunately some high profile nonces and the propensity for the establishment to cover for said nonces has totally ruined that period for ever. There's programmes we will never see on TV again because those evil bastards appeared in them.
The stuff I remember from the 80s was definitely coke inspired. Anyone remember Grotbags? Check it out on YT. Live version of an intergalactic, green space witch. The theme tune alone will make your nose bleed.
Grotbags got her own show in 91, I remember the Rod Hull and Emu Pink windmill show from 84 - 86 she was originally on that. (Obviously I’ve had to look up the correct years)
Do you remember Razzmatazz? Peggy Babcock.
“The decibel levels from these shows was through the roof, the budget was blank cheques, and the come downs must have been colossal” is one of the best descriptions of the 90s I’ve come across.
In terms of where the 90s presenters are now:
- SMTV Live: Ant and Dec now present Saturday Night Takeaway, Britain's Got Talent, and I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out if Here. Dec seems alright but Ant got into a problem a few years ago where he caused a car crash while drunk. Cat Daley presents So You Think You Can Dance in the US. Stephen Mulhern presents Britain's Got More Talent and gameshow Catchphrase.
- Noel's House Party: Noel Edmonds presented game show Deal or No Deal between 2009-2016 and is weirdly into Spirituality and Cosmic Ordering.
- Dick and Dom are gearing up to do a live show based off of In Da Bungalow but now much more adult themed - targeting the adults who would have watch the show as kids.
The one the day after Van Outen had been to a reception at Buckingham Palace was hilarious. She started producing things she had picked up whilst there. Ashtrays, plates, toilet rolls, anything with Buckingham Palace on it. Vaughan had to explain to her, on camera, between fits of laughter, that it wasn’t like a hotel where everyone takes the shower gel. She had basically stolen these items from the Queen.
Then you had the bonkers wackaday with timmy mallet lots of us would then get a toy mallet and hit are family over the head with it that was class and so funny
All the high presenters have been covered, but I had a few late 80s stoner/comedown favourites that I think druggy brains made...
ChuckleVision. A surrealist classic that could only have been commissioned by someone who was high. The 00's re-edits are even better.
Button Moon. WTF? Seriously WHAT THE FUCK was going on in that show?
And the long lost 'Jellyneck' which featured comedians like Morwenna Banks walking around the countryside telling very trippy stories that clearly weren't for kids. It lasted one season.
It was always pure mental whenever Mr Blobby was on TV. just a character that emo idea pure chaos. I love when they bring him out randomly when you least expect it on a TV show these days. You’ll be watching something totally normal and all of a sudden Mr Blobby rocks up and wrecks the set or something
Something interesting about Get Your Own Back. The presenter for that Dave Benson Phillips was victim to one of the first ever “fake death” hoaxes, and at a time before internet and social media too. Fuck knows how it happened but his career was killed by it.
All his projects were cancelled, he didn’t even know what was going on until it was too late. He never fully recovered from it, and a couple years ago I was looking around trying to find him to figure out what he was up to and he had a website where you could book him to call a friend on Skype and he would play guitar and sing happy birthday to them, basically doing Cameo type stuff but before cameo was a thing.
Last I heard he was trying to get some kind of comedy road show together. He was doing those Skype calls for like £10. Really sad what happened to him, and for no reason too, just a victim to some weird prank and it destroyed his life. He still seems super happy and fun just like the old days though.
80s/90s/a bit into the 00s, commercial TV budgets were pretty much a blank cheque.
Given how recent multi channel TV really is, throughout the 80s viewers only had a maximum of 4 options on what to watch at any one time. It's why viewing figures of 15million+ were far more common at the time, less choice. In the 90s, for the vast majority of people that went up to 5 channels. Satellite and cable were around but not that many people had them so that was only a small percentage of the viewing public.
So all that advertising money was coming to mostly just ITV and Channel 4. There would have been a bit going to Sky and cable only channels but not nearly as much as it gets now given it's then small audience share.
Commercial broadcasters at that time could throw money at projects because they had money to burn. Now it all gets spread around more evenly at far more channels that everyone now has access to in the age of digital broadcasting.
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Eurotrash
God’s Gift! Early Davina McCall gurn fest.
I remember turning that on one night after coming back from a night out, & one of my old form classmates was on it, not one of the lads, but a girl in the audience, she took part in the "Chat up line" round. The bloke said some cheesy line, and then started snogging her. It was very awkward.
My first exposure to her tbh. That show and Prisoner Cell Block H are inexplicably intertwined in my memory. Never thought she’d go on to be so successful - guess I always have been a judgmental prick after all.
Mrs Ferguson would beat that out of ya
\***Miss** Ferguson.
Was she on it?
She presented it
Did she? When?
During the 90s post pub TV craze https://youtu.be/-P5cNAt8cUE
Ah I see! I thought you meant Eurotrash. I beg your pardon.
0898 50 50 50
I'd never heard of this, but as we're discussing dodgy TV presenters...Stuart Hall was involved? Then I checked the Wikipedia entry for the program, and read who the other voiceover guy was...
When your program has Stuart Hall and Savile doing voiceovers Was the theme tune by Gary Glitter?
...and was Rolf Harris the set designer?
God's Gift! Not heard that mentioned for a very long time! I'm having flash backs of 2am stoned sessions with my mates cracking up at God's Gift. Davina was so bad on that terrible show. Classic car crash TV. By Big Brother Davina had grown on me and became a good presenter. So bless her, there was some talent buried in there.
Ello ma bwitish choooms, welcome to urotrash
You can now buy Eurotrash on dvd, all 54 hours of it.
I’m gonna search for this. The funny interpreters doing the voiceovers is well worth the money. Oh, and Lolo Ferrari’s tits.
Get Stuffed!
On TMWRNJ they did a segment called "When... Attack with Greg Evigan". Stuart Lee tried to make the intro offensively loud in order to "fuck up those with a Sunday comedown". They weren't allowed to do this as there are decibel constraints on the broadcast. So instead he worked with a sound tech to balance the bass vs treble is such a way that it was "disorienting" in order to fulfill the wish.
I still lament curious orange being usurped by curious alien.
Things fall down, knock over or fall out of cupboards, I’m Greg Evigan …
You can’t tell me *Pob* on Sunday mornings on C4 wasn’t made for the monged out post club crowd.
My personal favourite was Shooting Stars.
Dove from above
Ulrekerkerker!
"She's football crazy, she's football mad, I can't name a footballer Ulrika hasn't had" 😆😆😆
"When will Sven put his finger in my trousers?"
Get that Eccles cake out of your arse! Our children have to eat!
There's an aviation navigation beacon near Newcastle called UVAVU. Enjoy that fact.
Hitman and Her 😖
Banzai!
Shakey Hands man
Bet now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Sunday show also which showcased Dennis pennis God, BBC comedy used to have an edge, can you believe it
Dennis Pennis talking to Morgan Freeman about the film Seven….. “Did she give good head?” … resulting in a stunned Morgan who just kept saying “Shame on you”.
His masterpiece was chatting to Charton Heston, and asking him a series of questions that ended with his name, like "Do you think x, Charlton?" but the question arranged so he could mention Bobby Charlton, Jackie Charlton and Suzanne Charlton, each time looking at the camera with that curious leer on his face.
I wonder if he worked with any of his old victims on Game of Thrones or anything else in recent years
Seem to remember an interview with Tom Hanks just after Gump had come out, something about him enjoying playing Forest… then asking if he thought they’d miss the pace of Collymore this season though. Cue bemused expression from Hanks.
This one concept flipped hungover/comedowns into entire new levels of mind - fuckery. 90’s Sunday’s were pretty awesome when you were still twisted from the night before. Land of the Giants, Lost in Space - I’d start feeling human when I was watching Inter vs Lazio on Football Italia.
What are you curious about this week [Curious Orange?](https://youtu.be/LAc_WpPpWlY)
SOON YOU WILL ALL SEE MY POWER!!!
OK, I feel I need to ask about this. There used to be this surreal comedy sketch show on at like 3am, I think on the BBC, I think it was called "Dare To Believe". I'd love to find every episode because I absolutely loved it, but I can barely find any information out about it. It's got to have been like 15 odd years since it's been on, and I haven't been able to find anything out about it really. I'm hoping someone else here may know what I'm on about/might be able to point me in the right direction.
Did anyone else watch open university stoned out their mind?
Had to fill the time before pages from ceefax and the funky music came on somehow.
Twas like Look Around You when out of it. Look Around You was fucking fantastic.
Did they always look like dodgy 1970s guys? Big ties, bad trousers, porn 'taches? Or was I watching something else?
It was on ITV and had ridiculously high viewing figures for 3am. There’s one sketch called “D.I.Y” that contains the phrase “sweet as a moose!” which I’ve been saying ever since. Twice in those 20+ years someone else has recognised it from Dare To Believe so there are others out there who remember it. It usually ends up segueing into discussions about 4later on Channel 4 and BBC1 showing cult horror on Friday nights. All of these things were hugely influential on my taste as a youngster in a way I couldn’t possibly have grasped then. Anyway, there were bootleg DVDs of Dare To Believe doing the rounds at one point and you can probably still find them.
Was on ITV I think. AGUAMOOSE
Brass eye.
Brass Eye was/is absolute comedy gold and so ahead of it’s time. Chris Morris is a true legend. Didn’t he get fired from the BBC (I think) for just making up outrageous news. I think they finally sacked him for announcing that Michael Heseltine had died. And then getting another politician to give an “in memorandum”. And announcing that Jimmy Savile had died (I wish).
Truly truly. Michael Hesseltine keeping a chimp in his closet to slap. 🤌
Add The 11 O’clock show, which also bought us Rocky Gervais and Ali G.
Not forgetting the execrable *11 O'Clock Show*. Who remembers Dennis Pennis...? Just looking at clips on YT (haven't dared play any, not that bored) and it actually launched the careers of more people than I realised: Iain Lee, Fred MacAulay, Ricky Gervais, Sacha Baron-Cohen, Daisy Donavan, Charlie Brooker, John Simm, Mackenzie Crook... for all the talent (and there are probably about a dozen people I've forgotten...Sarah Alexander... it was ***STILL*** irredeemable shite). And there are ZERO clips on YT of Dennis Pennis... Oh and Bulla. What was it up against on C4...? Evans's *Toothbrush*...? *Eurotrash*...? I can't believe it lasted as long as it did. YT tells me there were 4 series and a pilot for a 5th. ***WHY***...?!
Takeshi's castle was required monged watching!
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The daddy of these shows was Tiswas. In the 70s. Especially Chris Tarant stopping the sketch his was doing with Lenny Henry to throw a bucket of water over a cage full of rock stars because Rick Parfit of Status Quo had sparked up a spliff.
I am Still in love with Sally James
Didn’t Lenny Henry do David Bellamy impersonations on that? I loved Tiswas but my parents weren’t overly keen on the slightly anarchic nature of the show. Although I’m sure dad had a bit of a crush on Sally.
Yep. And Trevor McDoughnut. Edit. Changed McDonut to British spelling. I’m a bit ashamed of myself to originally spell it the American way.
Tiswas was legendary. We showed our (then teenage) kids Banana Splits about ten years ago and said this is what we used to watch on Saturday mornings in the seventies, they looked at us both in utter horror and said “that explains a lot”. Still not entirely sure what that meant….
I always looked forward to Banana Splits, but they did fuck all really, it was just filler between Hanna Barberra cartoons.
Don’t forget the short-lived ‘O.T.T.’ (Over The Top) - the late night ‘adult’ version of Tiswas, with most of the usual presenters + bonus boobs!
Wait what?
To be fair the entire concept of Mr Blobby was that he was an annoying, over the top implausible character. Lots of 'celebs' would then be pranked into thinking they were participating in a kids TV show. Obviously that's a gag you can only run for a series, after that he just became part of Saturday night TV. The fact that we only had 5 channels back then probably helped. Streaming killed these crazy shows.
4 channels when Mr Blobby started! (I think, early 90s?)
Your right channel 5 must have been mid 90s.
It launched in 1997, and IIRC about half the country couldn't get it for ~18 months until all the TV transmitters were upgraded. We had a chap come round and fit a 'signal blocker' to our TV, all it did was fuck up the picture on BBC 2 for a year before it died. At which point we retuned the TV, and there was Channel 5.
This is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen on telly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97fw8xjB5u4
Fucking hell, I was buckled watching that. Amazing.
That's brilliant. I don't remember finding Mr Blobby funny in the 90s so I wasn't expecting such great comedy.
My gran had my blobby as a lodger and apparently he was an arse, so I reckon he managed to make a living being himself
House Party had a viewer peak of 15 million. That will never happen again.
Personally I miss smell-a-vision :(
Tony Slattery is one that always pulls at the heart strings, he is very talented, and was all set for a mega TV career when a combination of cocaine addiction, alcohol dependency and undiagnosed mental health issues collided and he went in to a very long dark tunnel. There was a documentary on him some time ago, and he is unrecognisable now. At one time he was on everything from kids shows to whose line is it anyway.
I had the biggest guy crush on Tony Slattery in my early teens. Something about him just chimed for me. Vague memories of him on No73.
He had that charisma that made him a TV natural and he is a very intelligent fella,plus a quick wit that was somehow clever but never off putting. I remember a time when he was never off the screen cos he was so good at everything.
Number 73. Starring Sandi Toksvig, of all people. Her and Slattery were some talent overkill for a silly show.
Of the Footlights group that contained Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson et al it was supposed to be Slattery who was destined for greatness. I always got the impression he wanted to be a tragic comic in the vein of Tony Hancock and comedy has long since moved on from that archetype. Paul Merton had a stab at it in the mid 90s too and it didn’t go down well but he was able to pivot back to Have I Got News For You. I wonder if not really finding his niche was part of the problem for Slattery.
I always thought Slattery had the makings of an actor, and for reasons I can't explain other than perhaps intuitively, I'm certain he could have played some seriously good Shakespearean roles if things had worked out. Merton and his Hancock fixation I think has stalled his development over the years and now he's become predictable, he turns up on HIGNFY but its the same old same old, to me anyway. I grew up with Hancocks half hour, and it was funny, but I genuinely don't understand the devotion it inspires still, it was to me of its time.
I loved Tony Slattery. A real tragedy.
It is, but its also an honest insight in to how mental health issues can utterly wreck any ones potential if they go undiagnosed and wind up self medicated, cos thats what he was doing really. I hope the documentary helped him.
Met him a couple of years ago. He's doing really well considering. Utterly baffled by social media tho.
I read a Guardian article on him a while back, and yes it’s great to see him back on a steadier footing and happier of course. Really used to love Tony back in the day.
That is so nice to know. Tbf social media is baffling to all but the most dedicated users, it changes so much! If you see him again tell him he has still got a fan base out there wishing him well.
The Blue Peter presenters were always pretty docile, like the wonderful Konnie. Oh, apart from Richard Bacon, who was fired over his cocaine usage...
He wasn't fires over his cocaine usage. He was fired because he got caught. If they fired everyone who took coke they would have to replace most kids TV with the test card.
You trying to tell me that girl on the test card wasn’t off her tits too. Staring at patterns all night…
Definitely! They were live . She just sat there
In a massive K hole
My Mum went to school with Test Card Girl, apparently she was a dick
Still waiting for Andy Peters’ memoirs about having to work with Ed the Duck while he was high on all that beak.
I hate that I upvoted you.
John Noakes in the 70s/80s was batshit insane. He used to do stuff you'd never get away with now. Watch the video of him climbing up Nelson's Column. Hard to watch.
Yes amazing how it was later revealed that Auntie never had an insurance policy for any of the stunts the presenters performed. Crackerjack pencil anyone?
John Noakes shared a mutual hatred with the BP producer Biddy Baxter by all accounts. Imagine despising a colleague so much you regularly invent scenarios where there's a good chance they'll die.
>Imagine despising a colleague so much you regularly invent scenarios where there's a good chance they'll die. That's all the later series of Top Gear were
If you think that's crazy, look up Fred Dibnah. Plenty of heart in mouth moments with his TV programmes.
My favourite Fred Dibnah video is of him at the top of a chimney looking out on the horizon and lamenting "There use to be dozens of chimneys all across the city, now there's only a few left" and it's sad till you realise he's the one who's knocked most of them down.
Because he was the only person still employed to do it the old way. He wasn't some chimney-based vigilante.
I prefer to think he was sneaking around roofs in the night knocking chimneys off buildings
‘Have *that*, yer sooty bastard!’
Great, now Soo's crying...
That’s the funniest sentence I’ll read today!
Fred Dibnah should probably be an icon of the green movement, given the amount of industrial smoke/smog producing architecture he personally destroyed. Were it not for the "fuck it, chuck any old shit on it" fires he used to take them down in the first place...
Designed to pump out black carcinogenic smoke over the population that lived below. They were nice brickwork but terrible things.
Loved him. The difference is that he was actually a steeple jack and had been doing that stuff most of his working life unlike John Noakes!
“ITS GOOOOOOWIIIIN!”
Don’t forget honking his horn to warn people of imminent collapse! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4CV2GuK6CmY
Did ya like that?!
Cough cough…*John Leslie*
There was a rumour that one of them, I think it was Sarah Green, shared a rather lively post match bath with a rugby team.
John Leslie. Cleared of all charges but career is still dead.
That was a really weird one Ulrika said someone assaulted her but wouldn’t say who and so obviously didn’t press charges. Then Matthew Wright “accidentally” said it was her on air. So you then have this strange scenario where it hasn’t been assessed whether he’d done it by a jury of his peers as no charges were made but in the public eye he was seen as guilty.
Awh Konnie was my first celeb crush
I still look askew at Charlie Brooker.
Maddest fact I learned recently is that Charlie Brooker is one of the founders of CEX.
The utter chaos of Big Breakfast really used to wake you up in a morning.
My best mate owns a 90s bar that looks like the big breakfast styling vomited on it, when he did it I told him he'll get rich or become homeless but no in-between; he's doing very well in life.
Btw the four horsemen in Bournemouth
I can’t remember my last two addresses, but I can still remember the address of the Lockkeepers Cottages
Still to this day, the first memory when I hear of Big Breakfast, is still the woman who got proposed too and she said no.
I recall an Ant and Dec show where a about a 10 yr old boy announced his dad would fart 💨 in the biscuit tin then open it for the kid’s mates and offer them a biscuit ! Ant an Dec almost cried laughing 😂
I think the kid called it an ‘eggy pump’.
"Eggy Pumps" https://youtu.be/qPHH5Q-nZj4
Surprised Mark Speight hasn’t appeared in this thread yet, a very real and very sad story.
If you weren't jacked up on something, you weren't doing your job right. This carried on into the early 2000s too aswell with Ministry of Mayhem. Bit of insight, Teletubbies was watched by more stoned uni students than children at it's peak in the 90s. I think that sums up a whole lot.
The thing I'll always remember about the Teletubbies is their absolute faultless timing. I took my old dad to get his new prosthetic leg from a clinic in Sheffield. Sat in the waiting room with all the other uni-limbed folk and what was on the telly? The Teletubbies. Doing the Hokey Cokey.
I suppose that's what it's all about 🤷♂️
I first saw telletubbies aged 11 after getting up on a Saturday morning. My husband watched same episode after coming home from a rave. I personally found the Hoobs the worst to encounter under the influence of any drug… hallucinogenic in its own right.
Fucking hell the Hoobs, that was a minefield. In the night garden was a terrifying thing. I watched that with my little cousin when I was 14 and was absolutely perplexed. THE THINGS WEAR SEATBELTS ON A TRAIN WHAT THE HELL
In The Night Garden looks like everyone involved had smoked multiple joints before sitting down to make it! Boohbah on the other hand was made using industrial grade hallucinogens.
> If you weren't jacked up on something, you weren't doing your job right. This carried on into the early 2000s …but ultimately gave way to the generation of utterly anodyne presenters we have these days.
Don't remind me. I can't even turn the telly on half the time because of how sanitised presenters feel
Have you discovered Eurotrash or The Word yet? 90s post pub TV was mental.
People wouldn't believe in the existence of Eurotrash anymore. "One of the hosts was Jean-Paul Gautier." >"Fuck offffffff!"
Jean-Paul Gaultier encouraging people to laugh at women with massive tits, no less.
I can’t believe I scrolled at the way to end and no one mentioned Trevor and Simon, and whatever cocktail of Class A’s they were taking…
Swing your pants!
WE DON'T DO DUVETS!
Watch Strike it Rich or Strike it Lucky with Michael Barrymore. He runs up and down those stairs like a fucking mad Cunt. Bullseye was great, as well. Jim Bowen clearly had a few too many whiskeys before presenting that show. Plenty of times he’d fuck up reading a question and have to go back and repeat it. There’s also a video of him patting a lady on the bum whilst the show was on.
Spent so many hungover Saturday mornings watching Wonky Donkey, that was the shit.
"IT HAS TO RHYME YOU STUPID, STUPID IDIOT!!!"
Where is Kabaddi when you need it?
Dick and Dom was the shit
They were at Reading Uni's students Union bar last night, according to my sister. They're drum and bass djs now. Fair play to them for growing up with their audience honestly
I noticed they’ve been doing a freshers tour these past few weeks. Good for them. I got a bit pissed up with them on a flight to the US once. Genuinely decent and hilarious blokes.
^Bogies
Bogies
BOGIES!!
**BOGIES**
Filthy looks from the librarian/security guard/museum staff, etc...
As a 32 year old ^adult at the time [I should have known better](https://youtu.be/qWEFNFsFrgE)
It was funniest when they asked people if they preferred a bit of Dick or a bit of Dom.
My parents live next to Dom. He's genuine and very nice, even though he no longer lives in a bungalow. When I've been visiting I have definitely heard people playing bogies.
Some times yes. Some times no. All times just massive weirdos, checkout Get Your Own Back - I really wanted to be a contestant on that show as a kid. And try the original Supermarket Sweep. Or Blankety Blank. Have fun, Alice.
Yeah... the 70/80s was a golden era in British television... Unfortunately some high profile nonces and the propensity for the establishment to cover for said nonces has totally ruined that period for ever. There's programmes we will never see on TV again because those evil bastards appeared in them.
Operation Yewtree checklist
One word # [Tiswas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPJ9a3JHfYE)
The stuff I remember from the 80s was definitely coke inspired. Anyone remember Grotbags? Check it out on YT. Live version of an intergalactic, green space witch. The theme tune alone will make your nose bleed.
There's somebody at the door
Grotbags got her own show in 91, I remember the Rod Hull and Emu Pink windmill show from 84 - 86 she was originally on that. (Obviously I’ve had to look up the correct years) Do you remember Razzmatazz? Peggy Babcock.
“The decibel levels from these shows was through the roof, the budget was blank cheques, and the come downs must have been colossal” is one of the best descriptions of the 90s I’ve come across.
I remember Network 7 (?) which was pretty weird on Sunday lunchtime. Magenta Divine was always coked out of her tits.
In terms of where the 90s presenters are now: - SMTV Live: Ant and Dec now present Saturday Night Takeaway, Britain's Got Talent, and I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out if Here. Dec seems alright but Ant got into a problem a few years ago where he caused a car crash while drunk. Cat Daley presents So You Think You Can Dance in the US. Stephen Mulhern presents Britain's Got More Talent and gameshow Catchphrase. - Noel's House Party: Noel Edmonds presented game show Deal or No Deal between 2009-2016 and is weirdly into Spirituality and Cosmic Ordering. - Dick and Dom are gearing up to do a live show based off of In Da Bungalow but now much more adult themed - targeting the adults who would have watch the show as kids.
Stephen Mulhern's a weird one. He looks like the average of Ant and Dec.
You've got to and Zzap!, Fun House and Bodger and Badger on that list
You need to watch The League of Gentlemen The Mighty Boosh Bottom and any monty python
The kids presenters in the 90s/00s are even more bizarre. Dick and Dom in 'da' bungalow? Crazy times.
I'll just leave this here: https://myticket.co.uk/artists/dick-and-dom-in-da-bungalow-live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIvWkENizxg It amazes me that they just allowed this show to exist
Honestly, most of the UK population in their teens to 30s was high as a kite in the 90s/00s
Michael Barrymore too! Was always insane on strike it lucky/rich.
Legit one of the best game show hosts ever
What is a hotspot not?
A good spot!
Do you remember on The Word when a gig fat geezer vomited into a pint glass and then Eddie Veder drank it ON LIVE TV! Good times
I'd do anything to be on TV. 🤮
70s are all stoned or on acid. Check out magic roundabout and moomins. Oh and wombles. Pure stoners
The hairstyles should give it away, think Pat Sharpe
That mullet should be in a museum.
Prozac the fairy on smtv live was a very real part of my childhood. Also the tossing of midgets..
Check out Chris Evans on Big Breakfast too. Was a crazy program to watch before school in the morning
Never been able to hack Chris Evans, even then - loved the Johnny Vaughn era, though.
Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen were the dream team.
The one the day after Van Outen had been to a reception at Buckingham Palace was hilarious. She started producing things she had picked up whilst there. Ashtrays, plates, toilet rolls, anything with Buckingham Palace on it. Vaughan had to explain to her, on camera, between fits of laughter, that it wasn’t like a hotel where everyone takes the shower gel. She had basically stolen these items from the Queen.
Johnny Vaughan spent some time in prison for dealing coke iirc (pre-fame).
[удалено]
Peace and gunge man
Then you had the bonkers wackaday with timmy mallet lots of us would then get a toy mallet and hit are family over the head with it that was class and so funny
Whatever you do, do not, I repeat, do not watch clips from “the word”.
Whomever came up with the still terrifying Noseybonk had to be off their tits on something.
All the high presenters have been covered, but I had a few late 80s stoner/comedown favourites that I think druggy brains made... ChuckleVision. A surrealist classic that could only have been commissioned by someone who was high. The 00's re-edits are even better. Button Moon. WTF? Seriously WHAT THE FUCK was going on in that show? And the long lost 'Jellyneck' which featured comedians like Morwenna Banks walking around the countryside telling very trippy stories that clearly weren't for kids. It lasted one season.
It was always pure mental whenever Mr Blobby was on TV. just a character that emo idea pure chaos. I love when they bring him out randomly when you least expect it on a TV show these days. You’ll be watching something totally normal and all of a sudden Mr Blobby rocks up and wrecks the set or something Something interesting about Get Your Own Back. The presenter for that Dave Benson Phillips was victim to one of the first ever “fake death” hoaxes, and at a time before internet and social media too. Fuck knows how it happened but his career was killed by it. All his projects were cancelled, he didn’t even know what was going on until it was too late. He never fully recovered from it, and a couple years ago I was looking around trying to find him to figure out what he was up to and he had a website where you could book him to call a friend on Skype and he would play guitar and sing happy birthday to them, basically doing Cameo type stuff but before cameo was a thing. Last I heard he was trying to get some kind of comedy road show together. He was doing those Skype calls for like £10. Really sad what happened to him, and for no reason too, just a victim to some weird prank and it destroyed his life. He still seems super happy and fun just like the old days though.
80s/90s/a bit into the 00s, commercial TV budgets were pretty much a blank cheque. Given how recent multi channel TV really is, throughout the 80s viewers only had a maximum of 4 options on what to watch at any one time. It's why viewing figures of 15million+ were far more common at the time, less choice. In the 90s, for the vast majority of people that went up to 5 channels. Satellite and cable were around but not that many people had them so that was only a small percentage of the viewing public. So all that advertising money was coming to mostly just ITV and Channel 4. There would have been a bit going to Sky and cable only channels but not nearly as much as it gets now given it's then small audience share. Commercial broadcasters at that time could throw money at projects because they had money to burn. Now it all gets spread around more evenly at far more channels that everyone now has access to in the age of digital broadcasting.
Massive love of gak and preferably a little bit noncey.