How We Used To List: 28th SEPTEMBER – 4th OCTOBER, 2002

What we were watching this week 20 years ago, as recorded in the back-issues of TV Cream’s weekly ‘e-mag’, Creamguide…

(We still send out Creamguides every week via email. If you’d like to receive it – it’s free, there are no ads, we don’t sell on your address, you can unsubscribe whenever; we’re basically soppy like that – then fill in your details below.)

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TV CREAM TIMES
28th September – 4th October 2002
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The Winning Team – Chris Diamond, Phil Norman
The Cooking Canon – Graham Kibble-White
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Saturday 28th September

BBC1

08.05 Looney Tunes
We caught a bit of this the other week and we’re delighted to report that they are actually proper golden age 1950s Warner Brothers cartoons – on the Beeb at last! There’s not even any linkage, it’s just a Cartoon Triple Bill. Surely this was the ideal opportunity to revive Rolf Harris Cartoon Time?.

17.35 Only Fools and Horses
We’re still on 1985, but we note they’ve missed out the episode where Mickey Pearce goes on Top of the Pops which is, as you’d expect, our favourite.

23.25 Duel
It’s Jaws on the highway, although since this was made first wouldn’t that make Jaws ‘Duel in the water’? That’s the sort of penetrating insight which we have been left to conjure up this week here at Creamguide (films) since the powers-that-are have decided to provide what must be the slimmest week for movie-viewing on the telly for decades (and, yes, we realise we always say that). Despite having offered a perfectly feasible alternative to all this in the form of our dear departed Come on Channel 5! campaign schedulers and programme buyers have merely done a Superted on it and thrown it away like a piece of rubbish. Meanwhile they expect to attract and hold viewers by showing the likes of Scene of the Crime, Bay Cove, Jersey Girl and Face Value – which we wouldn’t even stoop to listing. Hey-ho. In the meantime we can only hope that in future at this time of year the great Autumn Schedule Movies adverts hoo-ha will be returned to us with special fifteen minute long adverts for it actually listed in the TV Times and Radio Times which will themselves be special editions with glossy montages of the films to be shown on the cover with those little holes up the side of film frames running up the edges of the page. So we shall pass a little time making up our Autumn Movies Special Edition cover with this week’s meagre offerings starting with a huge Dennis Weaver-baiting truck bursting through the middle of the page.

BBC2

16.55 Hi-De-Hi!
If this is what else the Beeb have to offer, bring back Quincy.

20.00 Porridge
First of two episodes this week of the BBC’s most repeated programme, and that’s official.

ITV

20.05 More Kids From Alright On The Night
We’re looking forward to this new episode if only because it means that, after about fifty screenings, they may stop showing the original Kids programme. In that, Denis “Fucking” Norden introduced clips involving kids, and then a Child’s Play-style interlude with children reminiscing about their favourites from the set they’d been shown immediately before filming, and it’s probably the same sort of thing again this time – although a Before They Were Famous-style section also appears to be in the pipeline.

CHANNEL 4

03.20 Before I Hang
Boris ‘Pratt’ Karloff stars in this sorta Jekyll and Hyde kinda film about a doctor who experiments on himself with the blood of a criminal. Also staring nobody interesting. Since nobody’s heard of this, of course, the picture for our cover here would have to be of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster, probably towering over the side of the truck at the back, like when they used to show a picture of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones with a caption that explained it was actually for American Grafitti or Frantic.

CHANNEL 5

08.00 James The Cat
There must be something more to this than the Grampian logo, but we’re buggered if we can remember what that might be.

02.25 Which Way To The Front
Jerry Lewis – not Jerry Lee Lewis,sadly – stars in this comedy about a rich American who is dubbed as unfit to go to the action in WWII so goes anyway. Probably huge in France. George Takei is in there somewhere, too. On our cover: Jerry Lewis, top-right, mouth agape, perhaps falling down.

05.10 Sons and Daughters
And Friday as well.

Sunday 29th September

BBC1

16.15 Points of View
Well, we’ve seen a little more of the setting now, and it’s some sort of stately home in Birmingham which Tel traipses around during the programme. That’s OK, but we’d prefer him to do the show next to the complete collection of Radio Times back issues on the third floor of Birmingham Central Library. We must have spent about 20% of our time at university there, y’know.

BBC2

17.45 Steptoe and Son
18.15 Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em
As the TV Cream themes page now ponders, how come Some Mothers always starts with ‘BBC Television presents’? It’s not bloody Grandstand!

ITV

14.15 Bond Girls Are Forever
When in doubt, fling on a Fleming. And before that, here’s a bought-in documentary from somewhere or other with Maryam D’Abo (she was in The Living Daylights, that’s why you don’t recognise her) discussing her role, along with Blackman and Andress.

15.10 Dr No
It’s come to something when probably the best film of the week is a Bond film. Anyway, here’s the official line, “The first, great, and, from the Three Blind Mice opening onwards, bugger all like the rest, adventure. Andress does the ‘iconic’ bikini-and-knifeknife thing, Jack ‘Book ’em’ Lord does the Felix Leiter thing better than anyone since.” It also provides us with a touch of glamour for our front page since we can use that picture they’ve got in the Radio Times; Bond, bottom left, crouching slightly with a gun.

CHANNEL 4

14.30 Where The River Bends
James Stewart is the man with a past he is trying keep to himself in this Western (you may have noticed that even in a time of stringency, they still manage to sneak in a war film and a Western) giving a terrific performance in a great film and allowing us to have a desert scene at the bottom of the page with Stewart looking strained, bottom right.

CHANNEL 5

20.00 Kylie: Spinning Around
We’ve watched the Beeb’s look at La Minogue’s career, but haven’t seen this before – the two appear to be interchangable anyway. Sir Peter Waterman makes comments of the “So Matt said, she should be so lucky, and I went aaaah!” variety, and Jason Donovan’s also involved. Incidentally, since when did they start admitting they used to go out together? They used to strenuously deny it in 1988, and we believed them.

21.00 Michael Jackson’s Face
“This is the *real* Michael Jackson”. That classic Mirror front page repulsed a nation about a decade ago, and now Five plucks up the courage to have a really good look at him and tries to work out what he could have looked like.

Monday 30th September

BBC1

14.35 Murder She Wrote
Creamguide’s been out of the office this week and had to take its chances with daytime telly. Our very favourite programme now is Teletubbies Everywhere, at 9am every morning on BBC2, which seems to consist of the gang superimposed over plain backgrounds, dancing a bit. While we try and work out exactly why Boot Sale Challenge is on at exactly the same time as Bargain Hunt, which just makes it look even crappier and more charmless than it would otherwise be, this is on every day at this time.

17.00 Blue Peter
And, of course, we’ve made sure we can catch this, and they’ve just launched a fantastic new competition to design an outfit for Liz to wear in the Christmas panto, which meant they had to spend Monday’s show discussing the plot and who everyone was playing. And the prize is a day’s shopping with Liz! This is what we want.

22.35 One On One
One minute you’re talking to the Sultan of Brunei, the next you’re in a Nescafe advert. Yes, it’s the Alan Whicker episode, postponed from last week. We never quite worked out how Whicker’s World could be running concurrently on both the BBC and ITV at the same time, but we do recall that Whicker’s World On The Orient Express was the programme that Yorkshire and Tyne Tees had to screen in 1997 when Bruce Gyngell decided that Hollywood Lovers would warp his viewers’ minds.

BBC2

08.10 Round The Twist
The original, and best, series gets a rerun every day this week, although the episode with the urinating competition isn’t scheduled just at the moment.

16.00 Have I Got The Nineties For You
The 1990 series ended on Tuesday with the gang sniggering over Nigel Lawson’s daughter’s name and loads of jokes about how John Major had no chance of winning the imminent Tory leadership election. Now we’re on 1991, a series which started with David Thomas from Punch managing to predict almost all of Angus’ scripted jokes, much to his embarrassment, and continues today with Robert Harris and John Wells.

21.00 Never Mind The Buzzcocks
A cod-reggae special this week, by the looks of things, as Abs is joined by Ali and Robin Campbell and, er, Marilyn, presumably booked by producers hoping for a repeat of the Pete Burns episode.

23.20 I’m Alan Partridge
“From Go West…” “Fannies!”

ITV

13.00 Today with Des and Mel
“Barbra Steisand’s in town tonight!” We used to love Des O’Connor Tonight and the fact that it’s no longer on regularly is a crying shame. Here’s the next best thing, then – Des O’Connor Today. We’re not sure exactly what Melanie Sykes, the Mel of the title, is actually going to do on this programme, presumably the same sort of thing she did on The Big Breakfast for five minutes, but we don’t care because after Loose Women – a programme so desperate that Alison off Big Brother presents it – anything’ll be fantastic. Every day at this time.

03.30 ITV Sport Classics
Half an hour normally means a 1500m or a couple of boxing matches.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Happy Days
“More fun with the Fonz” says the Radio Times every day at this time, so presumably they have no idea what episodes are being screened. So obviously we don’t either.

22.35 That Peter Kay Thing
Hooray! Presumably with the blessing of Keith Laird, it’s the Apollo bingo hall, with “‘e bums dogs!” in full effect, we hope.

23.05 Porky’s
Who’d’ve thought, 21 years ago, that this much-derided Canadian smutfest and early video rental staple would eventually come to represent the gold standard for all comedy films for five years and counting? Oh, and once again, we feel honour bound to point out *that* scene with a pre-sophistication Kim ‘everything you’re wantin’s at Pontins’ Cattrall.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 Magnum PI
Grr, Five have dropped Dappledown Farm, and left this on every day at this time. Incidentally, a Creamguide awayday at the weekend was enlivened by a video of Orm and Cheep, which we had to watch all the way through because the Creamup editor was desperate to see an episode which ended with a serving of strawberry cake, only to find that none of them included this scene. Come on, Channel Five, screen some episodes so we can work out if that ever actually happened.

15.40 Emergency!
Films called Emergency!, that’s our specialist subject. From ’50s Butchers rare-blood hunt with Jack ‘Dixon’ Warner, Sid James, Thora Hird, Dandy Nichols, Graham Stark and Campbell “always cast as a policeman or general in bit-parts” Singer as a policeman, to its ’60s remake with Glyn Houston in the Warner role, it’s a rich seam of Creamesque material. Well, it’s two very similar old films we happen to’ve seen recently on ITV at 3am, anyway. This, however, is a ’70s pilot for a paramedic-based TV show that never made it over here to our knowledge, and all we can tell you is that it stars the great Julie ‘Cry Me A River’ London, though presumably not appearing mysteriously whenever the lead actor gets drunk, like in the criminally under-repeated The Girl Can’t Help It.

19.00 Live With Chris Moyles
“It worked perfectly in the pilots!” That’s the catchphrase.

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Well, we’re having a bit of fun this week in the Creamguide offices. Rather than just flinging on RT Review as usual (partly because we’re banned from moaning about Ricky Gervais anymore), after much grumbling the Radio Creamguide Editor has allowed us to tug off the dustsheets and get out the Schedule Wheel. Anyway, what we’ve done is we’ve pinned the names of previous Creamguide features to the wheel – and we’re going to give it a spin! Watch them go by, where will it stop? There goes “Creamcestors”, “I Know, For I Am Mark Lawson”, “The Telly Addicts Viewers’ Companion”… oh there’s that Fern Britton arbitration. Here comes “RT Review” and then there’s “What’s That You’re Saying?” our never-launched Macca-hosted right-to-reply feature. And as the wheel suddenly crashes to a halt here’s “TV Cream Heroes Weekly”!

Well, if the schedule wheel deems it so, it looks like we’re going to have to drop our usual service this week for…

TV CREAM HEROES WEEKLY
Back with nary a stutter or a stammer, although the editor might have to correct some of our grammar

#16 MARK CURRY as seen on GARDEN ANGELS, Friday 22.30, UK Style

TREASURE HOUSES, BUGSY MALONE, BLUE PETER, THE SATURDAY PICTURE SHOW, CHANGE THAT… it’s obvious why the talented Mark Curry has been selected for inclusion into our re-opened Caravan of Courage. So let’s cut to tonight’s appeals;

Now, we’re certain we’ve once seen Mark Curry’s gentleman’s area – and we’ve gone on about this before but as yet no one else has come forward to corroborate our story. The way we remember it is, BLUE PETER was doing a feature on Victorian bathrooms, and naturally the presenters were in bathing costumes. Mark, talking about a shower, made a gag about stepping under it for a wash and made as if to pull his pants down. It was at this point that in doing so he revealed his pubic hair. Can you add anything to this account? Were you also watching BP the night Mark Curry’s bush came out? If you can add any information about Mark Curry’s bush – no matter how verdant – then we want to know about it.

Our second unfinished business with Mark Curry centres around his time presenting SCREEN TEST. We’re almost sure newspaper evidence exists about a child cheating on the programme during the individual round. He passed a piece of paper to his team-mate and the whole game had to be cancelled. But can you confirm this event actually happened? Do you know someone who would have been at secondary school around 1983 and could have potentially cheated on SCREEN TEST? We’re sure this person would have felt compelled to confide in someone about it. Was it you? Please send in any information you may have – no matter how inaccurate – to the usual Creamguide address. And do make sure your comments are properly formatted and grammatically correct as the Creamguide Ed gets very ticked off correcting submissions (if last week’s FALLING DOWN-style outburst at Warrington’s Bank Quay train station is anything to go by, anyway).

That aside, welcome Mark, to TVCHW’s hall of fame. Please check your big glasses in at the front desk, then board the little steam traction engine which will whisk you to your room.

And whilst Mark um-chukka-um-chukka-um-checks out our carvery menu it falls upon all of us here at The Between Monday And Tuesday Section of Creamguide to say “tea-ta-ta” to all of you for this week. Tea-ta-ta!

PROFESSIONAL PRAT (IN THE NICEST SENSE):
http://www.animus-web.demon.co.uk/bpeter/annuals/bk23.html

HI AND WELCOME TO THE LOOKALIKES PAGE:
http://www.tenchworld.fsnet.co.uk/alike.htm

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Tuesday 1st October

BBC2

16.00 Have I Got The Nineties For You
Oh, and they’re bleeping out the ‘shit’s and ‘bastard’s now, so maybe these are the Saturday repeats they’re screening, when they used to go out at about 7pm. Richard Ingrams guests today, and www.hignfy.net reckons he’s one of the worst guests they’ve ever had on this programme, alongside Terry Christian. Let’s find out why.

18.20 TOTP2
Not a clue what might be on the programme this week, although we hear that in honour of John Otway’s imminent Top Forty hit, they’ll be screening his fantastic performance with Wild Willy Barrett of Really Free from December 1977. That’s our favourite Pops performance ever, because the audience are literally open-mouthed throughout, and you can see the band on the adjacent stage standing there laughing. And at one point Wild Willy has to push John towards the microphone to remind him to sing. It’s ace, so presumably they won’t be showing it ever again.

22.00 Porridge
And even if they do Wright’ll just call John a “muppet” or something.

ITV

21.50 The Frank Skinner Show
A return to form last week, then, with a cracking clip of Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice on some arts show or other in the 1970s, where the presenter cued in a clip of Jesus Christ Superstar, and the three just sat there listening to it for five minutes. More of this sort of thing, please.

REGIONALIA!
00.40 Capricorn One (Scotland only)
Last billed round these parts on July 16th, and presumably dug out again as semi-topical filler in light of the lastest “moon hoax” run of silly season docs. Elliott Gould’s on the trail of a phoney NASA Mars mission in this straight-up-and-down conspiracy potboiler with Karen Black, Telly Savalas, James B ‘Doogie Howser’s dad’ Sikking and Alan ‘Man From Atlantis’ Fudge.

CHANNEL 4

21.00 The Showbiz Set
“I said, what happened to the tobacconists, and he said ‘postponed’!” A great opener to this series last week, full of fascinating clips and cracking anecdotes from Forsyth, Monkhouse and Cryer – plus Denis Norden swearing! It also has the best title sequence of any documentary we’ve ever seen. There’s a danger that, as we get into the sixties, we may well start getting some over-familiar fare, but with the story of Simon Dee promised, we don’t mind that much. “Anyone got a question for Robert Morley? Come on! Just one!”

Wednesday 2nd October

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
Looks like today’s show is entirely based in Morocco, although we prefer the studio shows, especially when, as last week, they involve Matt in a full suit of armour doing thousands of puns. You won’t get that anywhere else.
19.00 This Is Your Life
It’s Claire Sweeney so, er, don’t bother.

BBC2

16.00 Have I Got The Nineties For You
Last of the week, and Rory Bremner and Alan Coren are the scheduled guests which must mean it’s the 1992 Election Night Special. Which, despite the dreary-sounding guests, is quite good fun.

18.20 TOTP2
No idea who might be on today either – could be Otway, perhaps – and we’ve not got much to say about last week’s episodes either, apart from the fact that Andrew Gold from Wax had a horrendous beard and his mate Graham Gouldman looked scarily like Gary Davies. That’s it, really.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout

CHANNEL 5

15.40 The Golden Gate Murders
Routine detective thriller with David ‘Fugitive’ Janssen, Susannah York and the late, lamented Kim Hunter (when do we get A Matter of Life and Death on in tribute, incidentally?) which got us in trouble when we were watching it with our parents in the early ’80s after we laughed slightly too loudly at the exchange “Hey, a guy jumps off a bridge, that’s hardly headline news!” “That man just happens to be Father John Thomas!” Well, it was a long time ago.

Thursday 3rd October

BBC1

16.30 Call The Shots
Fearne Cotton is currently on television about seven hours a week, presenting three hour shows on both Saturday and Sunday mornings, then on Monday she’s on Children’s ITV then Children’s BBC ten minutes later. Not that we’re bothered, of course. And she also presents this new Take Two-style show, which today claims to look at the career of Eddie Murphy. 48 Hours probably won’t be featured.

BBC2

12.30 Taxi
The best thing on during daylight hours today, except for that C4 schools programme on maths with Chris Jarvis doing character comedy.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout

Friday 4th October

BBC1

14.05 Doctors
We’re still not sure what days the cast list refers to, but at some point this week you’ll see Tom O’Connor and Harry Towb on this programme, alongside an actress called Sigourney Forest Crampton, which is the most actress-y name in the world.

16.15 The Basil Brush Show
We’ve not had the pleasure of watching this series yet, so it’ll stay here for a few more weeks – though we’re not holding out much hope.

17.00 Bring It On
Come on CBBC, get BP back on Fridays soon. In the meantime we’ve got Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood learning how to be commentators, and the chance of seeing John Motson in a light entertainment setting should never be passed up on.

19.00 Wendy Richard – A Life On The Box
Not sure when this documentary dates from, though it can’t be any more outdated than the Funny Women shows that BBC2 have been screening.

BBC2

12.30 Taxi
Of course, being off work’s no fun when the schools programmes aren’t on all day.

19.30 Th* G**d L*f*
Ahem.

22.00 Room 101
John Peel again! This has been scheduled three times in the past two months! And the original screening was less than a year ago as well! Still, if they actually show it, this is one of the more successful episodes of the increasingly tedious programme.

23.35 Jools Holland’s Piano
Julian’s look at the history of the instrument concludes with Ray Charles, Little Richard and Liberace, which may lead you to wonder exactly who appeared in the first part. And that keyboard wizard himself, Macca, and a Creamguide mystery prize goes to the first reader who can name the B-side of We All Stand Together. Are we right in thinking it was a sort of rearrangement of the A-side, a la Feed The World on the B-side of Do They Know It’s Christmas?

CHANNEL 5

15.40 Quincy: Go Fight City Hall To The Death
Continuing the grand tradition of film spin-offs of TV series being shown on the wrong channel. This was screened on peak-time Saturday night ITV as recently as 1991.

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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE

* As Top of the Pops continues its spiral into smug irrelevance, it’s perhaps worth recalling the time when your Friday night music fix came in the form of The Chart Show, in its original Channel Four, split-in-two-parts-around-Revid incarnation. Unfortunately Video Reveal, End To End, Rough Cut and the rest have been off our screens for four years, but now Sky Digital channel 458 brings us – yes! – Chart Show TV. The indie chart, rock chart and dance chart are still there, joined by the nu-metal chart (!), the country chart (!!) and the jazz chart (!!!!!). and the graphics are sort of what the show might be doing were it still going now. There’s also a Video Vault every half-hour. However, based on the few minutes we’ve seen, there’s no HUD, no point-and-click facts, and no ‘FFWD’ and ‘REW’ captions, so we’re not really that bothered. Still, www.chartshow.tv has more info.

* Is SAS – Embassy Siege the sort of programme we’re going to be seeing on BBC3? It’s on BBC Choice this Sunday at 22.00 in any case. At the same time on Paramount, we’re assuming that it’s the same Anyone For Pennis that has been in that slot for the last five weeks. That can’t be right, surely? Also on Sunday. although still five hours later than it should be, Bullseye (Sunday, 22.30, Granada Plus).

* Also at our Creamguide summit, when we could get the Orm and Cheep tape off, we watched the original pilot of A Bit Of Fry and Laurie from Boxing Day 1986 (though it’s copyright 1987, oddly) which was quite odd – all filmed on two sets, with fades-to-black between the sketches. You won’t see that on Paramount, probably, who are still screening the same few episodes over again, although now just once a week – on Sunday at 00.20. There is stuff on other days of the week, though, like Kenny Everett, on Saturdays at 22.30 and 04.30 on G+.

* And, blimey, Murray Walker on Letterman (Tuesday, 23.30, ITV2).

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THE ORIGINAL AND BEST
Unlike some other mailing lists, Creamguide arrives in your inbox regular as clockwork every week of the year, and has a long and distinguished history, receiving critical acclaim for almost three years now. On an unrelated topic, that young upstart The TV Cream Update doesn’t need any more subscribers, but you can do so if you want, via http://tv.cream.org – where, by clicking on ‘Long Shots’, you can also visit Ask The Family, the TV Cream message board.
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In their flowing robes and satins – Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Simon Tyers
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STOP PRESS! – The B-side was ‘We All Stand Together (Humming Version)’ by Paul McCartney and The Finchley Froggettes.






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