Reminiscing The Big Breakfast

At that point Vanessa was on ITV in the afternoons, I think twice a week, it was extended over the next few years and in 1998 was on every morning. You could argue that Vanessa was sort of alternative in the Big Breakfast tradition, when Vanessa started she did a book called What Are Those Strawberries Doing On My Nipples, I Need Them For A Fruit Salad and did the rounds of the chat shows as a suitably outrageous individual.

As you mention, her slot, and especially the expanded role in the 1996 revamp, didn't feel very suitable for The Big Breakfast. As I mentioned earlier, Ross Burdon was on the show in this era, and was then poached by GMTV to do the exact same thing. If someone can take a slot lock, stock and barrel from The Big Breakfast to GMTV, The Big Breakfast was clearly not distinctive enough. That was the big failing with the show in this era, everything that had made them distinctive had been stripped away and they were now doing the same thing as every other show.

Presumably the idea was that all the kids had now buggered off to Power Rangers and CBBC and so on and so they were intending to skew it a bit older, which I suppose makes sense, but there was probably a better way to do that then just becoming a clone of GMTV only not as good. As Ruth Wrigley says in Morning Glory, one of the big mistakes in the 1996 revamp was making the house look like a normal studio instead of a house, because you instantly lose the one thing about the show that's unique.

There used to be a clip online from the opening of Zoe's first day where she arrives fashionably late and stumbles through the back window (it's obviously staged and not real). I suspect the idea originally was to have someone who would be a bit rebellious like Chris was, but also they were hoping she'd also switch between that and the more mumsy aspects of Gabby's role.

Thing is, Chris got away with that because - even though he'd hardly show for work, he still delivered when he did show up and was one of the reasons the show really hit it big at first. So he could be a diva and get away with it. That and the impression I get from Morning Glory and other history is they were always constantly concerned about BB being off the rails in the worst way. They maybe expected her to be all "screw you I'm doing it this way" like Chris (and later Johnny) were - and then she actually followed production team/execs telling her to ease off instead.

The 1996 reboot was basically an attempt to try and keep the wacky, but have it less...potentially destructive. The result is bland.

I remember watching RI:SE's first day and feeling rather underwhelmed, I know it got marginally better when the main guy was allowed to deadpan joke more. Didn't it start with a similar idea to Daybreak 1.0 where they had a news roundup every 30 minutes or something?

Durden-Smith makes a dig at the Big Breakfast in the first few seconds claiming there will be no “whooping crew members, dancing girls or puppets” like he’s thinking RI:SE is on a rival channel.

Wasn't Zoe meant to crash through the doors dramatically but instead she tripped over the step and ended up crawling through just the bottom part of the prop doors?

You can see the moment 25 secs in to this montage. It’s followed by the rare sight of Evans and Little sharing the screen together.

And of course within a matter of months they had a whooping crew and they were all self-consciously dancing alongside guest bands.



Some fascinating stuff in there. Those two Rick Adams falls look like they bloody hurt. I do love the two Evans falls off his chair, the one where he jumps on it and crashes head-first onto the coffee table made me wet myself at the time. The other interesting thing about that is that the call he's referring to when he falls is the one about the dad telling his kids that the ice cream van ringing its bells means it's run out of ice cream, which is the first time I ever heard it and has become a right urban myth, repeated everywhere.

I love it in the full version of that clip where he carries on for a bit, then just stops and goes "That was a major stumble!".

Genuinely uncomfortable as well as Evans is hit with the snowball and has something of a sense of humour failure

TBF that sounds like the way Evans always has been in some way, Wasn't there loads of stories about him being a grumpy diva on set? I think Gabby takes more direct hits before the one that gets him anyway and she's much more relaxed about it.

To be fair we've all been in that situation where a bit of fun just goes too far.

Was the side towards the canal ever been shown apart from the box room? I know the original phone room was shown occasionally but were the other rooms ever shown pre-1996?

He was known for being difficult in those early days of his fame. A lot of that was being a perfectionist, but also the inexperience of having the sudden fame and success and of course in later years he owned the companies he worked for

His ego didn't get any better of course until he went off into his wilderness years and returned.



I think it was him in the early days taken to one side and explained to that everyone they worked with was only there for one thing, and that was to make them look good on TV. Things did improve after that, and it's a valuable lesson to work

Wasn't production largely in that side of the house originally until they were housed out of the back in a new building, with the space being opened up from 1996?

Not sure if any plans are around of the house in it's original BB incarnation but I think the bathroom and competition area on the landing were on the right above the kitchen originally, then the boudoir in the middle. Not sure where the box room used for The Crunch was but unlike later years the boudour didn't take up the entire middle of the house.