This programme was first aired on GOLD a week or two ago but is still currently on repeat.
It shows Paul O' Grady profile his latter professional life including his 'An Audience With...', his National Lottery stint and hosting the BBC gameshow 'Wipeout' and looking through his infamous joke books and his ill health.
The highlight for me was the part about the infamous Lottery Machine breakdown incident in 1996. It shows the very frantic gallery feedback whilst Bob calmly broadcast that they're going to Casualty. And also a few clips of behind the scenes clips of Bob and warm up man Bobby Bragg cracking jokes to the audience for nearly an hour until they came back on the air.
If you need reminding about the incident then this Youtube clip should help.
Really worth a watch if you can catch it. It's on on demand too if you have access to this.
Actually it's the third part of three episodes. The first episode was on Monkhouse's early years and the second focused on the game shows he hosted.
I haven't seen the third part yet but I'm pleased to see from your post it features the Lottery Machine incident. It shows Monkhouse being able to think on his feet in a situation that nobody expected. Very similar to when things went up the swanny on The Golden Shot. A great entertainer, sadly missed.
If you get chance, dig out The Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse; it has clips from the Monkhouse archive, most of the same contributors and has more details on the archive he amassed. Very interesting documentary, even though it makes no reference to the time he presented the Lottery programme.
I've got to say that I've liked this series, I think because I literally spend my life on Challenge so I've seen so many things with Bob in them. And I'm only 14
I feel it is good as it explores imo the best comedian ever on this planet and for me lets me learn more about an icon for my parents and grandparents, aunties, uncles, etc.
The series was brilliant and definitely worth a watch, regardless if you're a fan or not. And as Neil Jones says, The Secret Like of Bob Monkhouse is excellent (one of my favourite documentaries in fact)...
It was a great documentary, if you're worried about it being on Gold it was of a similar high quality to the BBC Four doc, but a lighter tone as you would expect for the channel it was on - and less focus on the archive and more a focus on the man himself as you would also expect. Some of the talking heads were questionable but didn't detract from the programme overall.
A lot of the clips and interviews were a retread of the BBC programme, which is unavoidable, but there was enough new content and great unseen clips behind-the-scenes to make up for it (as well as the aforementioned gallery feedback). It's just a shame the programme makers decided to crop all 4:3 clips to 16:9, which was of course the format that virtually all clips used were in. One noticeable omission, I thought, was the Parkinson interview shortly before he died where Peter Kay was present.
Paul O'Grady mentioned how much of an honour it was to be asked to host the prestigious 'An Audience With…' in decades gone by. In the last decade however, the only editions hosted by a comedian have been Al Murray, and that was his second outing, and posthumous editions for Jeremy Beadle and Les Dawson. Is there really nobody of Bob's calibre around today?
Paul O'Grady mentioned how much of an honour it was to be asked to host the prestigious 'An Audience Withâ¦' in decades gone by. In the last decade however, the only editions hosted by a comedian have been Al Murray, and that was his second outing, and posthumous editions for Jeremy Beadle and Les Dawson. Is there really nobody of Bob's calibre around today?
To be honest, there haven't been many episodes of An Audience With full stop in recent years, so it's less they're running out of comedians but more than they've more or less stopped doing the show. If Brian Conley and Joe Pasquale can get episodes, surely the likes of Sarah Millican and John Bishop are just as famous and popular and would happily do them if they were asked. I reckon Sarah Millican is probably as famous as Victoria Wood was when she did it.
It was a bit interesting how O'Grady referred to An Audience With as a big thing because he technically didn't do An Audience With Lily Savage, he did An Evening With Lily Savage, which was the exact same format, in the exact same studio, but made by Carlton instead.
Agreed, a really nice three parter with lots of clips and some generally relevant talking heads. Obviously benefitted from Bob's massive archive of material - no dodgy YouTube clips here. Nice to see it being presented by someone who was clearly a massive fan and had a lot of respect for too.
Very interesting to hear the gallery on the lottery clip along with a couple of other behind the scenes bits.
Reminds me of this tweet from Greg Scott (no idea) who talks about needing performers. They're seemingly few and far between these days.
The slot from next week looks quite interesting too - archive interviews with classic comedians, a bit like Talking Pictures on BBC Two I guess.
I was meaning to ask, there are clips used in "The Secret Life..." and Gold's documentary from an interview with Bob, and he's sat in front of a black background, seems like a solemn one-to-one chat. Does anybody know where that was from?
I was meaning to ask, there are clips used in "The Secret Life..." and Gold's documentary from an interview with Bob, and he's sat in front of a black background, seems like a solemn one-to-one chat. Does anybody know where that was from?
Having poked around in the IMDB listings and general Googling, I think its from an ITV programme called "Bob Monkhouse on Bob Monkhouse", originally made in 2002.
:-(
A former member
Is part one and Two going to get repeated, I never know this was on!