Happy Birthday BBC TWO

The BBC have recently put out a good clip of the aborted launch night, in this cult page. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/tv/bbc2/openingnight.shtml

"Unlike channel one there's nobody there!"

Also I sent off an email asking for a bigger section on the aborted night, and I recieved a promising reply! Should be very interesting!

There's a selection of facts from 40 years of BBC2 on Ceefax today... Page 126.

Nice special '2' picture on the BBC 2 website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/images/main_promo/bbc2_40_bday.jpg

Longer version of the opening night news at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3585041.stm

Note that the sound did not work for the first two or so minutes.

By the way: is there any chance that this Gerald Priestland inspired later work by John Cleese? There's an odd similarity in demeanour here.

There's a nice selection of stills of BBC TWO idents on BBCi at the moment. BBC TWO idents

The BBCi home page currently displays this pic:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/home/images/main_promo/picture_promo/bbc2_40_bday_eee7ab.jpg

BBC Radio 2's Steve Wright in the Afternoon have just played a compilation of ident jingles and comedy sounds from the last 40 years!

It gave me goosebumps.

By the way: is there any chance that this Gerald Priestland inspired later work by John Cleese?

Highly unlikely that Priestland was a direct inspiration. He was simply a typical example of the kind of RP/Home Counties/Oxbridge BBC announcer that Cleese later parodied so effectively - Cleese himself, of course, being a product of the same kind of background.

Anyone know what ident they're using for the tribute programme? Will it be the birthday one are are they going to do an LWT and use an old one?

the birthday one... would have been nice if they had used the stripy 2 or something

Was he on TV apart from at the BBC2 launch?

If not it's also very unlikely that Cleese would have seen Gerald on the TV

There's an awful lot of snooker in it. Then again, there's an awful lot of snooker on BBC Two...