Andy Crane, Children’s BBC and Me…

 
Today's blog comes from Heather Lewis a writer so amazing that, even as you read this blog, her words are being etched into stone for TV archaeologists to discover in the future!

Welcome Curious British Telly fans to my first blog post here and I’m going to start with a confession to you…I am a fan of Andy Crane! Half of you reading this now think I’ve totally lost the plot and the other half may need a little prompting, his name sounds familiar, right? If not, then please let me help you out a little bit…

Archive Tape Digging: Selected Ad Breaks Vol.1

In this latest delve into dusty, old forgotten VHS tape recordings I've recovered, I'm going to be presenting a series of ad breaks which may titillate those who yearn for retro chocolate bars, a young Ralph Ineson and James Nesbitt going all Star Trek and, uh, the wonders of Coloroll.

1. ITV Thames Adverts 01/04/1986

Archive Tape Digging: Drugs in Prison

A few weeks backs I reported on the exhilarating and exciting collection of 50 old, used VHS tapes which were surely packed full of rare gems of British TV. Truth was, there was barely anything worth getting excited about, but in amongst all the dross and endless South Park episodes there was something interesting.

Tagged on to the end of a tape containing nothing but the Elvis film Blue Hawaii was an episode of the political series This Week. Fronted by a magnificently coiffured and suited Jonathan Dimbleby, it was an episode from 1987 entitled 'Drugs in Prison' and was imbued with that sense of gritty brutality the 80s excelled in.

Believe Nothing

 
There's something quite engaging about genius; the ability to think and perform in a way that mere mortals can only dream of is incredibly entertaining. And Rik Mayall was an absolute genius of comedy, so it's no surprise that he swaggered across our screens for 30+ years.

What happens, though, when you get Rik Mayall cast in the role of a fictional genius? Will these two clashing concepts of intellectual weight cancel each other out? There's only one way to find out and that's by taking a ganders at Believe Nothing.

5 Lesser Known British Sitcoms Starring Sitcom Greats

Through a combination of natural talent and mental fortitude, a number of British sitcom actors manage to carve out the most wondrous careers. Some actors, meanwhile, have an additional spark, that mercurial comic talent which sees them defined as sitcom greats.

And this magisterial touch combines with equally stratospheric scripts and supporting characters to produce shows with legacies which joyfully traverse the decades. These are the shows from which we remember these sitcom greats.

I think, though, that it's a bit reductive to purely concentrate on the big hitters of a sitcom actor's CV. Sure, there should always be time taken to celebrate the marvels of comic genius they conjured up on screen, but what's necessary in a retrospective is a more holistic view of their career.

That's why I've decided to investigate 5 lesser known gems and downright curios of some of Britain's sitcom greats.

An Adventure into the World of Used VHS

For quite a while, I've spent time perusing Ebay for used VHS tapes. Now, when I say used VHS, I mean ones which were bought blank originally and then used to record stuff off the telly. After all, it's a great way to discover hidden treasures which aren't available either commercially, on YouTube or through the black market of rare TV.

Sure, I can always head down to the BFI Archive, but that costs time and money. Two commodities that, ideally, I'd like to preserve to help hold onto my sanity.

The problem with Ebay, though, is that I'm never 100% tempted by anything I see; the seller's descriptions are always vague e.g. "GOT FILM, SPORTS, FILM" and when I ask them how old the tapes are, I just get "DON'T KNOW BUT THEY'RE OLD - YOU INTERESTED, MATE?"

On the Trail of Fat Tulip’s Garden

You may have noticed, on these pages, that I've got a certain fondness obsession with revisiting the TV shows which coloured my most early years. Now, it's all very well and good to research and write about these shows, but what would happen if I literally revisited one?

Well, today, I did! And the show in question was Tales from Fat Tulip's Garden!

Breakfast Serials

Waking up in the morning is a frightful affair, but this is tempered somewhat by that delicious breakfast which is seductively lurking just a short stumble from your still warm bed. Breakfast has got a reputation for being the most important meal of the day and it's hard to argue with a meal which transforms you from lumbering zombie into the requisite approximation of appearing compos mentis.

Sure, we may be dressing the humble meal of breakfast up with a bit too much hyperbole, but it's importance should never be underestimated. Although, for many people, breakfast amounts to nothing more than a bowl of mundane wheaty mush, ultimately, it helps to break down the sense of ease and dischord which clouds our foggy morning minds.

Helping to squeeze out a few more drops of escapism to the inevitable onslaught of another long day is breakfast television. As the hot, sweaty hand of work snakes ever closer to your jugular, you can lose yourself in the banality of those tellywaves for just a few moments and forget that you'll soon be creaking under the strain of the 9 - 5. And if anything's going to offer you a brief victory in evading that crushing realisation that it's time to put on your tie, it's Breakfast Serials.

Time Riders

Do we love the idea of time travel? Of course we bleeding well do! In fact, since 1986 - when we first encountered Doctor Who - we've constantly fantasised about travelling through time. And, curiously enough, we're rather obsessed with going back to 1986.

Just imagine how amazing it would be! We could go and check out some retro trainers, revisit shops that we had only fleeting memories of and digest an absolute gutload of retro TV - absolutely everything on the box would be retro, sounds like heaven!

However, once we discovered that it was nigh on impossible to get hold of any absinthe in the UK we'd more than likely suffer a prolapse. So, yeah, time travel it's a dangerous old game and one that should be approached with due care and attention. Because not only can you be deprived of anise-flavoured spirits, you can get yourself into a right lot of bother just like in that Time Riders.