Sir Bruce Forsyth RIP

I was going to ask about that, but you've confirmed the reason. I had wondered why a game show host would need a stand in, as if the host was ill, they'd just cancel the recording, and do it later, as it was probably many months before transmission. I hadn't realised it was done within the same week.

The later Jim Davidsom titles reminds me in some way to the latter Johnny Vaughan titles for The Big Breakfast, although it worked for Johnny, where the host and their features became bigger than the show itself.

Indeed. Sounds very similar to the House Party theme, though not surprising when the same person wrote both.



Well, indeed. I'm assuming that by the end of the Davidson run they were pre-recording them much further in advance than the same week recordings Brucie had, not least because there were huge gaps during the run.



I seem to remember them doing the conveyor belt on it, yes, but as I say, it was a very bad bit of design as it dominated the entire set and got in the way of stuff. Of course one of the big ideas in the first series was the contestants being driven in through the doors.



Yeah, and then it could have a load of running jokes too - like Brucie's famous "here kitty kitty" routine about the lost cat. There were a couple of episodes in the original run where Anthea was missing, a couple for illness and most of a series on maternity leave, and Jenny Lee-Wright stood in. But it was the seventies, people were iller in those days because everyone smoked and it was freezing.

I don't know why they felt they needed to record them so close to TX, presumably as a flagship show they thought it was important to do so. Of course the whole thing was done as-live with the Gen Game roadies taking stuff on and off set.

There were a lot of format changes in Jim's first series from the Bruce years (most of which were reverted from series 2) - the contestants all came on in a car through the doors in the aforementioned tower thingy, and I seem to recall they sped up the chats with them too. The most radical one was getting the audience to vote on each game to generate the scores, which I actually quite liked. The conveyor belt was different too although of course remained so until the end of the run (something like get to 15 out of 20 items and you get the rest plus the star prize, and I don't remember anyone not managing it).

I recall Jim had another catchphrase when the conveyor belt doors opened - "mind the gap" - which I only understood once I moved to London ten years later...

Re: recording rates - I think Jim's years were a few weeks behind as in 1997/8 he used to do an "it's all yours Noel!" style throw at the end of each show, which meant that at the start of 1998 the announcer had to say "actually it's the Best of Noel's House Party next" and the week after "in fact it's Noel's Greatest Gotchas in a moment". A few weeks later that throw stopped never to return, clearly been told to can it in case Edmonds pulled out completely...

Interestingly on one of those credits you've got Ernie Dunstall as Music Director (House Party original theme) and Stephen Green as Theme Tune writer (House Party 1996 theme). So there were two years of Saturday nights when Mr Green had two of his compositions back to back on Saturday nights. Although nothing compared to how David Lowe has dominated early evenings for the past decade...

I noticed on YouTube clips that for the Jim Davidson version contestants got gunged during the conveyor belt bit. All seemed to have gone a bit Noel's House Party by that stage.

Will be interesting to see how the Mel & Sue revival works.

And that happened frequently at the beginning of the show too - one of the from each of the two sets of contestant introductions was normally involved in a sketch or practical joke which ended up with them getting covered in some substance. Must have taken ages to record and some of it didn't look like pre-recorded earlier

Much better I hope. It's no surprise it got axed by the end - you'd have thought they'd have learned from Noels House Party that gunge can't save a dying show.

The BBC really could do with the revival being a success though and then giving it as lengthy a run as they used to so it can dominate the schedule in the first quarter in the way Strictly does in the last.

Actually House Party used gungings in the later series.

Is Jim the only host to have 3 assistants with Sally Mean, Melanie Stace and Leah Christiansen?

Ernie is also credited with Gina G's Ooh Ahh Just a Little Bit (for Eurovision) in 1996!

Yeah think it was me who originally made the 'daytime' analogy for Jim's original opening titles. I kind of presumed they were done by the same dept who did Anne and Nick's!

The 2nd revamped theme, according to a comment by him on that video, was apparently remixed by Alan Rogers and Kent composer Paul Townsend on bass who continued to do incidental music for the show until it ended.

Jim's never been one to settle down...

I never realised that Brucie had a role in Magnum PI or that he had a US Gameshow.