TV Home Forum

A Saturday Morning Thread

Hopefully with lots of interesting clippage (October 2015)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
BA
bilky asko
I do not believe that story, mainly down to the fact he doesn't say the supposed word, and the music isn't suddenly cut off at all.
JA
james-2001
He said it 3 times before he was stopped though!
JA
james-2001
I do not believe that story, mainly down to the fact he doesn't say the supposed word, and the music isn't suddenly cut off at all.


It doies sound like he said the f word the first time, and a bit like it the third time, but admittedly a lot less so on the second.
:-(
A former member
I only heard it twice.

51 days later

GE
thegeek Founding member

14 days later

SW
Steve Williams
None of it's on YouTube, alas, the below clip says it is, but it's actually from the show two years later on the ferry to the Isle of Wight, which will still ace, and technically brilliant, but not as impressive as the French one...

Actually the whole of that episode used to be on YouTube but it's been taken down, alas.


Sorry to dredge this up again, but after I said the entire episode of Going Live on the Isle of Wight was no longer on YouTube, it's now back...



As I say, it's absolutely fascinating. It starts off at Lymington before they all get on the ship and set sail, arriving at Yarmouth at about 9.50. Saz then does the rest of the show from Yarmouth Castle, where things proceed pretty much as usual with guests and phone-ins, while Pip and Emma Forbes get on another boat and head to the Needles Lighthouse where they have a look around and do the cookery feature, eventually returning to the Castle about five minutes before the end.

Technically it's brilliant, there are no cock-ups at all in the entire three hours. It's all really, really slick. I don't know if it was all done as an OB or through a gallery at TV Centre, all the graphics and stuff work like a normal show. The biggest problem comes when they play the phone-in game Feed The Dog - while the boat is actually moving! - and not for any technical reason but because the first caller appears somewhat distressed, which they don't dwell on.

Richard Marson was AFM on this show and on Twitter the other day he was telling me it was very expensive, but great fun, and they actually did a complete dry run on the Friday - and indeed a couple of times Pip makes reference to having already been there the day before. Of the traditional features, you've got Pip's letters spot at about ten past nine which used to be my favourite bit of Going Live, I loved how intimate it all was and Pip got loads of funny running jokes out of it. I like how all the letters are in a cardboard folder like you had at school. There's also Dr Aric Sigman doing his regular bit about well-being, and I do know that after Going Live he appeared in the papers a couple of times suggesting children should never watch television, which he didn't say at the time.

Nick and James, the one series Trevor and Simon replacements, aren't there live with them, but they do some pre-recorded sketches, which aren't especially funny I'm afraid. The show also features one of the last episodes of Double Dare. I used to love Pip and Emma's cookery spot and the one here is great fun, they have a brilliant relationship and Pip is always amusing, doing the thing he always did of refusing to stop doing something until he got it exactly right ("No, I will NOT give up!", that was his catchphrase).

There are some fascinating bits watching it now as well. Patrick Moore is the big guest and he talks about the moon landings, and this episode is now longer ago than the moon landings were when they made it. Brrr. Moore also talks about the upcoming eclipse in August 1999. Meanwhile while Pip's on the lighthouse (with a cameraman who'd stayed over since Thursday), the lighthouse keeper, who seems quite at ease in front of the camera and has some good chat going with Pip, says he's the last one there'll ever be and by 1998 there won't be any lighthouse keepers because it'll all be automated. In fact Wikipedia says it was automated in 1994.

Anyway, all absolutely fascinating, a great example of Saturday morning telly and fascinating from a technical perspective as well. All the episodes of Going Live online are fairly atypical, though, with that one up there being while Saz was in hospital. Be great to see a complete episode of it where they're both in the studio.
JB
JasonB
There's a few full episodes of What's Up Doc on Youtube.

Watching these episodes it feels like i'm watching MOM in 1994.

Such things as the performance at the end of the show and the end joke with the wolves after the credits are what MOM inherited later in 2005.

There's even one episode of What's Up Doc where they just do the entire show from the Maidstone Studio's corridors!
Last edited by JasonB on 12 January 2016 11:36pm
JA
james-2001
I guess the similarities aren't hugely suprising seeing as it was the same crew behind both shows!
JB
JasonB
I guess the similarities aren't hugely suprising seeing as it was the same crew behind both shows!



Even the Wolves sound identical like to Hyena's voice wise (Yes I know it's the same puppeteers!) I knew of What's Up Doc as a youngster entering primary school but never watched it on a regular basis.
:-(
A former member
I did watch it on regular basis, it was good it also managed to beat L&K first series, the third series is were it all went down hill, the Show moved to Glasgow, then some staff left because of the warnings from the ITC, then puppets and writers left and that was it. last few show dire and it was never to return.
PT
Put The Telly On
Be great to see a complete episode of it where they're both in the studio.


Watch this space.

11 days later

JA
james-2001
Thinking about things, does it seem right to sort of see Maidstone as being the spiritual home of ITV's Saturday Morning kids shows? When you think they had Number 73, Motormouth, What's Up Doc, Telegantic Megavision, Wow and MoM/Saturday Showdown, surely much more of ITV's Saturday kids content came from there than anywhere else. Though there was that long 7 year gap between the end of Wow and the start of MoM.

Newer posts