Twitter (and other social media) Gold Thread

By the turn of the century Barrymore's often cringey shtick was old hat and with Ant & Dec on the rise I think he would have fallen out of fashion regardless of what happened. ITV were pretty lucky Ant & Dec successfully transcended kids telly just at the time they did.

Wow. That is quite a thing. Complete with a random homage to the Dead Parrot sketch at the end.

That Family Ness cover makes no sense at all, why, even as a B-side? Seems 'Doin the Crab' was the theme tune to an early BBC series of his

He did have a short lived programme on Children's BBC around that time though:



Oh and that Choir are great, but they have a name like one of Alan Partridges House bands - Remission. A word you only normally hear when talking about Cancer.

(Googling, there is a choir of that name in Ghana, no idea if they're the same)

He also had another CBBC series in 1990 - Mick and Mac, which hasn't even made it onto YouTube, but some details and screenshots here: http://www.curiousbritishtelly.co.uk/2013/09/mick-and-mac.html

Yes! Michael Barrymore's Saturday Night Out!
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=%22michael+barrymore%27s+saturday+night+out%22#search

This really was the last knockings of the seaside variety show that used to be a staple of summer Saturday nights on both channels via the likes of Seaside Special and Summertime Special. As you can see the first series came from Jersey and I vividly remember him performing Doing The Crab on the beach at the start of the show, but the second series came from the Dominion Theatre and that was it for seaside variety on both the Beeb and ITV.

It was interesting because while we saw Barrymore on Strike It Lucky, in the late eighties he seemed a bit of a jobbing comedian and he would appear on both channels, and still did kids shows as mentioned. But then suddenly he was the most famous person on television and signed a golden handcuffs deal with ITV. The only time he did anything for the Beeb after that was when he introduced the obituary to Larry Grayson, because he'd been the warm-up for Larry's Gen Game and Barrymore always said Larry was very kind and helpful to him and he considered him a mentor.

Mention of The Family Ness theme tune reminds me that one episode we always used to look out for was a very curious one which was entirely based around an extended version of the theme tune, which always struck me as very odd, I don't know if it was the pilot or produced as a video to promote the theme tune or what. All very strange.

The golden age of paper shuffling

Prepare yourself for what might possibly be the most aggressive paper shuffling ever seen in a BBC newsroom pic.twitter.com/cRGFL9X22K

— Neil Miles (@neilsmiles) October 2, 2020

An interesting one here, a programme made in black and white, with half of the following junction apparently going out in b/w too

This continuity out of a 1986 repeat of Hancock is a bit odd. Appreciating it could just be a quirk of the video (though the colour was fine going into the episode), but.. was BBC1 transmitting in b&w for some reason? And then someone forgot to change it? @mumoss? pic.twitter.com/uiWAeN9a7v

— What's On The Tapes? (@whatsonthetapes) November 10, 2020

Could that just be an artefact of the video recording or did it really go out like that?

According to some of the replies to the tweet, it was the practice to turn off the colour burst while playing out a b/w programme, but this is though to have stopped around 1982 after protests from manufacturers that VHS machines didn't handle the switch well.

There's an explanation in this article:

https://cleanfeed.thetvroom.com/3528/features/the-history-of-the-bbc-trade-test-transmission/

But given the subject matter on that page is VERY niche, the pertinent paragraph is:

"Until the late-1980s, during monochrome programmes, the colour burst was switched off. A colour television would detect that, and disable its colour decoder circuit, so eliminating any colour noise, which would otherwise be very apparent over a black and white picture. However, in later years, Tektronix produced the TSG271 test signal generator which always had a burst on its output, and the phase of the subcarrier on the pulse and bar signal was as specified for that in the ITS signals (120B0 – nearly, but not exactly, magenta)."

That the colour burst used to be switched off isn't disputed, but on the Digital Spy thread linked to in the reply to that thread there's a very reliable poster who is an ex BBC engineer saying that they stopped doing it in 1982 because the switch upset VHS recorders.

I remember that run of Hancock in 1986, it was shown as part of, or following on from, the TV50 celebrations that year. It was my introduction to Tony Hancock and I've been a fan of his work ever since. I liked it so much that we recorded a load of them on VHS for posterity.

I'm pretty sure the tapes got thrown out when I went through our old VHS collection a few years back, otherwise I might be able to collaborate the black and white thing

The statement in the Clean Feed article also came from a very reliable ex-BBC engineer.

I recalled this sample clip from YouTube from late-1983, where the colour signal was visibly switched off heading into an RKO film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIHHjAA-iiw

I probably wouldn't have to look too hard to find other examples from well beyond 1982.

Yes, I've seen the DS thread too. I'm sure I recall seeing the Beeb still switching off the burst in the mid 80s and beyond