YouTube Gold

Here's a whole edition of Nationwide from 1981 from the South East region. It includes an edition of Watchdog


Some things to note:

*The regional news is called 'South East Tonight' which I'd never heard of (thought it was just 'South East' or 'Scene South East') and is of course a very similar name to today.

*the value of the pound is apparently a regional news story.

*So are grunting tennis players... and that's higher up the running order than police corruption

*so many presenters, I think only one of them is named (and it's not Frank Boff)

*there's a long item with Fred Housego, who would soon become one of the reporters/presenters on LWTs rival 6 o Clock Show

Compared to what BBC London puts out today, the regional segment was tokenism with a padded out puff segment on Wimbledon grunters and the Housego VT. However was very London-centric and nothing from the huge area which covered an area from Banbury to Dover except for a story from North Hampshire.

Like BBC London today though there were a lot of stories about stabbings.

The rest was very dull, the SDP and some military guest. It's not the quirky stories from the regions Nationwide of legend

Who is that third presenter? Glyn Worsnip is the younger one

'wide regular Richard Kershaw.

Season 4 Mind your Language

So firstly, 'season'? That's a bugbear of mine.

Secondly, what's the story behind that, according to the comments and description it's a much sort after 'lost' episode?

Series four didn't air everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Your_Language

That pile of rubbish does not deserve the title Series 4. It's more like season 4 dire.. TSW was the first to air it...

Russ Abbott Show with a blockbusters pee take

Les Dennis as Bob Holness... how can you not love it?

I'm not sure whether or not the "What G is the capital of Guyana?" bit inspired the makers of the Robinsons ad at 0:31 in the video below - but it does remind me of this ad.

The original pilot of Harry Hill's TV Burp from 2001:

I found this far funnier than I thought it would be for a first episode. It was hilarious - anyone that's got 23 minutes to spare, give it a watch.

Amazing how little changed presentation-wise from this first episode. Theme tune and the 'TV Highlight of the Week' jingle for instance. Even the set and title sequence are mostly the same.

The format obviously evolved over the years - not sure he would have gotten away with the Bin Laden jokes before the watershed. The 'TV Highlight of Week' choice seemed a bit weak, but it's called back to in a sketch later on which is very funny. The "paper review" at the end really made me laugh.

Really weird to see a Carlton ident before TV Burp though… I associate the show with post-consolidation ITV. Incredible really how long this show was on the air before anyone really gave much notice to it.