BillyH's posts, page 12

APFS: Afternoon Programmes Follow Shortly Discussion

APFS meant a huge amount to me as a 12 year old new to the internet, it was the first website where anything I'd designed had been uploaded online. I was massively inspired by Brad Jones's Java TV galleries back in 2000 (brilliantly made even today), and my first gallery - a 'pre-history' of Thames from 1955 to 1968 - was designed in an afternoon on Windows 98's Microsoft Paint the following year. I simply chose that concept as it was much easier to make black and white idents on something as primitive as Paint - and when Thames unveiled their new logo later that year, a similarity to mine was even mentioned on this forum at the time!

I did another black and white gallery later that year, and then on finding an old demo version of Paint Shop Pro, did the first version of my "ATV post-1982" gallery later in 2001, which is so much of a mess it genuinely looks like a troll/joke series of images at points and was basically just me throwing every crazy filter on the screen on each image - but to be fair I was still yet to turn 13 and at least the imagination is there! What made it even worse was that the trial version ran out when I was halfway through so I had to hurriedly finish it in Paint, which really didn't look broadcast quality for images supposedly from the 1980s and 90s!

I was genuinely happy for the community support the APFS forum would give - they knew I was young and so were nicely positive about my "work" without being too over the top about it, which encouraged me to continue. Even when someone on the Guestbook (remember those?) rather honestly called one of my galleries something like "childish doodles" someone immediately commented saying that it was an unfair criticism, reminding them that I was still a child myself and experience gets better with age, which I really appreciated at the time.

It caused me to get a proper version of Paint Shop Pro and slowly "remaster" my galleries into a higher quality format, originally just taking the jagged MS Paint designs and using various blurs and light effects to make them look a little more realistic. I was pretty proud of my results at the time, by now I'd turned 14 and was posting on this forum and TV Ark a lot so was beginning to understand a little more about how old presentation worked. Two of these are seen in the 2004 copy of the site as posted earlier (Thames and ITA Captions), but the ATV one is still the awful original - in early 2005 I completely redid it from scratch and it became my favourite gallery and still the one I'm most proud of, despite still being 16 when I finished it. Sadly it's not online anymore! It appeared on the later days of the APFS site and a few years ago I did some minor remastering and reuploaded it on that "new" Java TV website (which became very odd very quickly, as some strange people started removing images and replacing them with their own bad Paint recreations for reasons unknown) - but sadly looking at it today all the images have disappeared.

The owner of APFS's designs were excellent and clearly professionally made, with genuine announcers from ITV and extremely realistic aging effects done on real VHS players. The "Presents" pages of reader contributions varied a little more in quality (mine very much included) but there were some excellent creators on there, my favourites being Andy O'Brien who had some fantastic genuine-looking images, and Nigel Stapley with a great sense of humour on the captions. Number 1 though was Mark Boulton's ATV gallery which was an astonishing piece of work for the early 2000s and I hope that he works in graphic design today - or perhaps did then!

Some galleries are so vividly remembered by me I have to remind myself they never actually appeared on screen! It was a great run of years of so called "mock designs" (or "What Ifs" as they were first called in the early Brad Jones era) and maybe I should dig out whatever last copy of PSP I have and see what the 31 year old me could come up with...

Did the BBC 2 Test Card ever have the 1986 "TWO" ident?

Surprisingly yes, here’s an example from 1990:


A few rather dubious uploads include a closedown from 1997 which appears to cut to the same version of the card (but the VHS tracking is different, indicating it’s a different recording) and one odd one where someone’s inserted what looks like themselves over the picture of Carole and Bubbles, neither seeming genuine.

Tommy Cooper's jokes in his last perfomance

Challenger blowing up “live on air” on Newsround is another one falsely remembered, as is the second plane hitting the World Trade Center on BBC1 - both had happened shortly before and were shown when the programme started.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

My proudest home quiz achievement is guessing three Pointless answers in the final round, it was naming anyone who’d starred in an ITV “An Audience With” episode. My guesses were Ricky Martin, Joe Pasquale and Alf Garnett.

YouTube Gold

That must have been one of the regular clips that existed in the tape trading circuits back in the 1990s, as I remember a few websites featuring it - nice to get the exact date though.

I’ve always wondered if there was a way to trace back through the generations and find either the original recording or as close to it as possible with some of these - would be great to see them in higher resolution!

Little Britain removed from streaming platforms

Seem to recall someone once stated they remembered a line fluff/outtake in an early broadcast of a Dinnerladies episode (followed by a new take and the line being said correctly) that was later edited out of future showings.

Grange Hill in the 1990s

Both themes are simultaneously in my memory at the same time, thanks to the mid-90’s repeats.

The original did sound dated by the time it was replaced, and the 90’s theme (and titles) sounded equally as dated by the early 2000s.

YouTube Gold

It almost seems unfair that the entire event is usually just summarised with a comedy clip of Michael Fish correctly saying that there isn’t going to be a hurricane on the way, given the damage and issues it caused. The news footage that stands out to me was an angry Michael Buerk bellowing “A fat lot of good YOU were last night” at a clearly exhausted Ian McCaskill on the next evening’s news, which seemed a bit astonishing in its severity - particularly for the time.

I was (just) yet to be born then and can’t think of an event in my memory like it - I was too young to remember the Burns Day storm a few years later, and the closest comparisons for me are a North London tornado in 2006 that was extremely intense in my area, a storm in early 2007 that knocked our TV aerial off the roof, and that massive fuss in 2013 for a storm that caused some damage but nowhere near as much as in ‘87 to the extent that the following day’s news coverage almost had a sense of disappointment.

BBC Breakfast - 16th July onwards

I had planned a massive trip around Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan throughout much of March, booking most of the month off from work as holiday. I work in a major London venue and my last shift was on the 11th March, and it was noticeable that while we were officially at full capacity many seats were instead empty due to many cancelling or simply not turning up. Even then I admittedly dismissed it as a bit of an overreaction, nothing would close and we’ll have forgotten it all by April. I remember finishing the shift and saying I’d see everyone in a few weeks.

I ended up stuck in Budapest for a week as my flight to Kazakhstan got cancelled while I was in transit there, followed in the next day or two by every single country I’d planned to visit all closing their borders - I was lucky to even be able to enter Hungary, particularly given a recent visit to Lebanon I was questioned about! On the 17th, as I’m sitting by the Danube, my phone starts buzzing from work colleagues that the place has closed until further notice, which was the moment I realised this wasn’t going away any time soon and should probably find a way back home as soon as possible - by now Hungary was officially closed to everyone but I could still leave the country on one of the ever-diminishing list of flights still operating, and the hotels were slowly shutting down by the day.

Finally found a flight back to Edinburgh (about 15 passengers full) and, after a very long train journey, returned to London on the night lockdown was announced. Work hasn’t been open since (maybe reopening in a limited form at the end of this year) but luckily it looks like my position is safe there unlike some venues.

YouTube Gold

I’d say Channel Television is the least-represented region online to the point where no one’s exactly sure what idents/logos were used when, unless I’ve missed some recent finds.

I remember at one point in the early-mid 2000s I contributed my one VHS clip of Grampian continuity to a few different websites as there was barely any of it online - it only exists as it was recorded by a relative in Aberdeen as I was watching Comic Relief night on BBC1 and didn’t want to miss that night’s Who Wants to be a Millionaire, so they recorded it for me (in stereo, which was still a bit of a revelation at the time) and posted the tape. The things we did before YouTube and on-demand!

Unique simulcast on TV channels tonight

It’s not quite the first time all five channels have simultaneously broadcast the same thing - Band Aid 20 comes to mind and probably others - but it still sounds rather unique.

Harry Hills World of TV

Watching a live TV Burp in January 2009 was pretty fascinating to see how the show is made, as mentioned above lots more material is filmed than actually shown. Several jokes were redone later in the show to make them funnier, celebrity appearances were filmed earlier that afternoon while the audience were queuing outside (leading to the surreal moment when David Van Day emerged from the studios and said hi to us all as we queued) and the audience were a little more rehearsed than appears on screen - one moment had to be refilmed because we all naturally cheered after a certain line (“(show) IS BACK!!”) when we weren’t meant to. The guy who played Nick Cotton was also in the audience and got the full VIP treatment from the usher seating him.

Interaction with audience was mostly handled by the now sadly late Bobby Bragg as the warmup artist - Hill would pose for photos with fans after, and give us some of his standup just before a take so the laughter would fit between edits. Funniest bit of the recording was him filming various attempts at trailers to go out across the week (starting one with “Don’t worry, I’m on next!” and quipping after recording “You should be worried if you’re watching ITV on a Friday night”) and mentioning the then-ongoing Best Of clip shows “where I look different in every shot”.

Also rather unexpectedly saw him live in 2015 when he made an unbilled surprise appearance in a local comedy club in London, testing out some new material. Main one related to the then ongoing 30th anniversary of EastEnders, summing up the show by blowing a plastic bag around the stage with a leaf blower for some time.