20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the final Dick & Dom In Da Bungalow features more creamy muck muck than ever, a variety of surprises from previous guests, Harry Batt openly touting for work, an unexpected Stanley Unwin tribute and the return of Make Dick Sick.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: an Arena special on video art opens with This Is A Television Receiver, a specially commissioned work by David Hall featuring a repeatedly filmed Richard Baker.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: after grabbing attention on other comedy chat shows BBC2 give Joan Rivers her own, Can We Talk? Her interview style, as in the first edition with Jim Henson and Kermit, could charitably be described as direct.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: "good job you weren't talking to Gary Wilmot!" Peter Cushing, cane in hand, is puckish once more with Wogan, who introduces him to Nicholas Rowe, following Cushing into the Sherlock Holmes role.
60 YEARS AGO TODAY: Attack Of The Alligators! - exclamation mark required - is regarded among the best episodes of Thunderbirds despite being unusual in its field, a diversion into horror-adjacent fantasy featuring actual baby crocodiles.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Katie Puckrick's pointedly kitsch late night ITV slumber do of showbiz Pyjama Party is not a world, even if co-inhabited by Puckrick's sidekick Claudia Winkelman, for people with the countenance of Sparks, but there they are regardless.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Willie Rough, a stage landmark of Scottish drama by Bill Bryden set in the Greenock shipyards during WWI and a new socialist arrival shaking up old hands like Fulton Mackay, becomes a Play For Today.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the second Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe discusses 24, Deal Or No Deal, breakfast telly, commissioning eating itself, television about television and Dr Ben Goldacre analysing science television. www.youtube.com/watc...
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: term is in at Waterloo Road, created by the pair previously responsible for Bad Girls and Footballers' Wives to a brief that the BBC wanted a drama for "ordinary people", so why they asked is anyone's guess.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: one of Muhammad Ali's less celebrated BBC interviews, talking with Denis Tuohy on Tonight about Joe Frazier, his own biopic and Tuohy's ageing.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: The Culture Show talks to a perpetually moving Alan Moore, presumably under sufferance given it's around the film version of V For Vendetta that he stopped working with DC Comics over. www.youtube.com/watc...
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Rowena Farre's beloved Seal Morning, the story of the author taking an abandoned seal as their own, is made for ITV's Sunday late afternoon children's drama slot. Holly Aird plays the young author. The seal plays itself.
In this week's archive newsletter: "the Belgians!", Daniel Craig on Drop The Dead Donkey, Kenny Everett plays with Quantel, Partridge vs Branagh, Magpie predicts the far future, John Noakes does more unsafe climbing and a framed photo of Bob Holness. whydontyoutube.substack.com/p/the-why-do...
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Hotel Babylon attempts to bring the spirit of The Word, Dani Behr inclusive, onto late night ITV with Matthew Modine, Emily Lloyd, Irish horses, wacky foreign telly and music from the Cardigans and a very out of place Cocteau Twins.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the second series of Father Ted begins with Hell, the ill-fated caravan holiday/Graham Norton/"these are small"/"have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again?" one.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: in a chat that turns from serious to uproarious on a dime Liza Minnelli joins Phil Collins and Wayne Sleep on the Aspel & Company sofa on her way to the Palladium.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: because Saturday Live is at the very vanguard of the new alternative comedy revolution, Jasper Carrott performs on it.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Gina G wins what's now called The Great British Song Contest, but the actual most interesting part is the feature on songwriting, with a highly appreciative audience reaction to Jarvis Cocker, but not for Julian Cope.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Rantzen's afternoon BBC2 talk show Esther showcases new inventions mostly by loveable old eccentrics whose work is obviously unnecessary, like James Dyson, Sir Clive Sinclair and Trevor Bayliss. Desmond Llewellyn shows up too.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: "Siouxsie Sioux and Budgie on Wide Awake Club" is a statement full of promise enough before you see the pair joining in with the marzipan cooking make, admiring an otter and backing the world hackysack champion with a bowed cage.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Victoria Wood's latest song for That's Life is on a personal communicative matter.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Danny Dyer's first lead prime-time role is as the armed half of a Bonnie & Clyde duo in armed robbery unit drama Thief Takers.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Paula Yates shrugs off John Taylor's flirting and goes to Hong Kong to interview George Harrison about Handmade Films' Shanghai Surprise for The Tube, rather unfortunately just in time to catch the appalling reviews.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: LWT's The 6 O'Clock Show seems concerned with who Madonna's minders are going to beat up next, putting Danny Baker forward. He survives to help Arthur Mullard judge a gurning contest, the winner having a London Dungeon face mould.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: before the Erinsborough takeover one of the shows in the BBC1 5.35pm slot was Fax!, a knowledge compendium co-fronted by Bill Oddie. The first series ends with queries on sirloin steak, the cup and ball trick and the Rank gong. www.youtube.com/watc...
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: bravely for a live show some of the Emu's Pink Windmill Show Kids deliver an Elton John song partially on roller skates. It's one Kid's birthday, her cake brought in by every girl's dream idol Paul Hardcastle.
Prefiguring future Addicts, Noel Edmonds meets a collector on Swap Shop today in 1981. We can only assume some long planned pre-filmed report fell through.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday Night At The Mill, like Pebble Mill At One but on Saturday nights, launches promising "relaxed conversation and informal entertainment". Donny MacLeod's first big guest is Michael Bentine and his gas cooker.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Kay Burley pays her Good Morning Britain reporting dues at the Uncle Joe's Mint Balls factory, Ann Leslie deflects Nick Owen's attempted lower division football banter and Anne Diamond exposes mobile communications privacy.
