Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
We’ve all said it many times, those of us of a certain age. There’s nowt on t’ telly.
It’s true that as we get older our memories become more selective. We remember the good times and tend to shove the bad times into some distant receptacle in the mind.
But it wasn’t all Morecambe and Wise and the Two Ronnies. There was the conveniently forgotten dross like Love Thy Neighbour and Alf Garnett’s racist ranting.
Maybe what colours the good memories is the family entertainment. The television we watched as a family. Those cosy Sunday nights at the London Palladium.
A link with TV’s glory days was broken last week with the death on her 97th birthday of Eric Morecambe’s widow Joan. Is it really 40 years ago that Eric died in May 1984. The couple met in 1952 while rehearsing for a variety bill in Edinburgh.
Eric and his comedy partner Ernie Wise attracted TV audiences of 20 million viewers in their heyday in the 1970s.
We now have infinite choice of viewing, yet the BBC would be glad of half that number for one of their Christmas offerings. In fact without repeats the telly schedules would look bare.
But hey, the Beeb has rediscovered a winning formula which could preface the return of other favourites.
Nearly 10 million watched the relaunch of Gladiators in January and it averaged over eight million prior to the final show of the series last Saturday. And what’s the secret of its success? Simple. Family entertainment. A show that mum, dad and the kids can watch and cheer for their favourite contestants.
Gladiators ready? The public certainly was. The BBC’s biggest entertainment relaunch in seven years hit a “creative sweetspot” with the nation’s telly viewers.
The costumes are a bit less sexy than the days of Jet and Wolf. Some worried Gladiators might be too woke in its new guise. But in the end the programmers got it right.
Viewers from the first series, the 25 to 50-year-olds, returned along with a new audience who spread the word on social media which for once was the friend not foe of TV.
So what’s next? Which programme will be the next to undergo a revival?
My money is on Blankety Blank and Blind Date, or maybe the Generation Game.
I’m from an era when we’d crouch round our 12 inch set to watch the Test Card, such was the novelty of the new arrival in the sitting room.
If you’d told us within our lifetime we would be streaming TV programmes and spending hours every day on our smartphones and laptops, they would have thought us quite mad.
But one thing the return of Gladiators has proved, however sophisticated new technology is, there’s still room on the humble TV set for good old family entertainment.
Cloughie would be pulling his hair out with this excuse
Footballers miss games for various reasons. Hamstring pulls, calf muscle tears, cuts and bruises, that sort of thing.
But absent having a hair transplant in Turkey? That’s a new one on me. I’m obliged to the incomparable Grass Routes blog for supplying the information from Tow Law Town — they’re in Penrith’s league.
The home side were missing one of their regulars. Away for a spot of trichology like a colleague who had recent similar treatment but was available on Saturday.
I wonder what the likes of Bill Shankly or Cloughie would have made of it. No, don’t answer that. It would have driven them hairless.
Titchmarsh’s jeans too dangerous for TV
By the sainted trousers of Alan Titchmarsh, we could soon be watching a whole hour’s hairdressing North Korean style.
The Koreans love watching old gardening shows presented by Titchmarsh, although these government-approved TV programmes mysteriously block out his scruffy jeans.
North Korea is in the process of setting up a global streaming service that will soon give British viewers a chance to watch Kim Jong Un’s favourites including a fascinating demonstration of haircuts considered culturally and morally suitable.
This beats Corrie and Emmerdale any day of the week. I for one can’t wait for advice from the great leader on how to cover my expanding bald spot.
Fake photos are nothing new
Photos, true or fake?
The idiotic nonsense over the family picture the Princess of Wales took is nothing new.
Many years ago I was involved in a story about a picture taken in Cumbria of a young girl which appeared to have an alien figure in the background.
It made the national media. I did not doubt the belief of the man who took the holiday snap, but I never felt it was other than an accidental double exposure.
Sherlock Holmes author and spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was famously fooled by a photo sent to him in 1920 — the Cottingley Fairies.
How such a fake, made with paper cut outs and hairpins, fooled the great detective writer is a mystery. It was one of the great hoaxes.
Compared with those examples, the princess’s innocent tinkering was not worth all the fuss.
