Reminiscing The Big Breakfast

P.S. Think this clip is from very early in 1997 as the living room looks like a very quick bodge job and lacks the gingham check style walls that later featured. A rare example too of one of the main presenters being off and it not being Sharron.


Also I think for all we talk about the failed revamps I don't think we ever give enough credit to the September 1997 revamp when Johnny joined, which ultimately set the template for years ahead. It wasn't all done at once but they introduced features like Vital Statistics and the Pun Down, revamped the house both inside and out, rejigged the schedule a bit (initially they had the competition at 8am, bumping the news to 8.10am) and a few weeks later bought in the new title sequence which ended up being as defining for the show as the original.

From clips of this period of the show i've seen they seem to be heavily reliant on 911 don't they? Every clip online from this period of the show features them in one way or another!

I'm pretty sure you can see upstairs in the reflection of the window behind them so perhaps they didn't fill in the hole in the ceiling at the same time as they did the den.

Yes I think you can. And going back to the side of the house they host from from the earlier cap of Johnny's guest presenting stint they had already moved to the front.

Some funny Johnny and Denise era competitions here, the like we will probably never see again at that time of day

Yanks for the Memory

More Tea Vicar

I seem to remember Denise playing another character other than Sister Philomena during More Tea Vicar or was that my imagination?

I think so - a tamborine playing hippie type character IIRC. Looking back some of their characters really wouldn't be allowed nowadays - that More Tea Vicar nun/vicar relationship is actually rather disturbing.

Of course More Tea Vicar is one of the few features that both Chris and Johnny did.


Technology has somewhat gone restricted the style of competition shows can do compared to the analogue days with the couple of seconds delay in digital transmission making a comp like More Tea Vicar or Stop the Mop tricky to do seemlessly.

Yikes, yeah I'm pretty sure Chris wouldn't get away with that impression these days.

More Tea Vicar would be fine to do now from a technical point of view because the game was played over the phone. Stop the Mop and the One Lump or Two style of games would be more tricky though.

A very naughty Marc Bannerman using language in More Tea Vicar which Johnny and Denise were asked to apologise for afterwards:

That a classic on so many levels, Johnny’s in character reaction and then the bit where producer Ed had to ask if it was ‘in the script’


An interesting bit in the middle of the music used in the mid 97 credits here

Obviously someone didn’t like it, because it didn’t last long. It might have been worth keeping it on the longest version of the closing credits, rather than just looping the theme round again

The house is up for sale again, which brilliantly means we all get to see inside!

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-74385858.html

Anyone want to go halves?

For nearly £6m though it is a shockingly badly laid out house. The open living area in the old kitchen is very nice but the bedroom and bathroom arrangement is terrible. That green room upstairs is garish even by Big Breakfast standards too.