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In-vision continuity by Kermit the Frog:

Rare presentation from The Parliamentary Channel

again with Barrett, whats the deal with it ?

They are basically television versions of his London radio commercials, which he sung on those too.

Sounds like one of those odd London cultural references that no-one from outside London gets back from the days when London had it's own media outlets. See also OTV ('Lea Bridge Road Hackney'), Currie Motors ('Nice people to do business with') and '9 double 8 double 8 double '..... Evening Standard Classified'


I don't remember the radio ads, what was Freddie Barratts? Presumably everyone knew as those ads at the time so they didn't need to say anything about what he actually sells or where he is

Off licences was his game.
There's an LBC archive fan site, with one of those commercials included in a montage.
Those were self sung, and of dubious idea/quality as well.

The early days of DTT with ITV Digital at the helm before its eventual collapse in 2002. A far cry from the current era of Freeview that resides nowadays.

When you really look back at the service, much of what it offered is either available on the cheap through NOW TV (Sky1, Gold, Discovery) or FTA on Freeview (E4, Dave, ITV3).

We all know the TVSProductions channel is uploading virtually everything TVS made, but now it's expanding with not only the TVS episodes of What's Up Doc, but also the STV episodes (and the period where it was made by the old TVS production team at Maidstone but under the auspices of STV). Anyway, the whole of series two is now up there, which means we get an episode from January 1994 I mentioned the other week, which I remember reading about in Look In at the time but not seeing...



As you can see, it's an episode filmed entirely in and around Maidstone Studios, in reception, the car park, the scenery dock, make-up and various corridors. The usual studio is apparently in use for Finders Keepers, where they start the show, and there's a running gag that Neil Buchanan has bribed Pat Sharp to let them use it for the weekend. I wonder what actually happened, though, whether it was a genuine double booking (which would seem unlikely) or a strike or something? Seems a very odd situation. Interesting to see, though.

As I mentioned last time, according to the Look In feature it was the coldest day of the year and everyone nearly got hypothermia. It was during Yvette Fielding's maternity leave, BTW.

Though technically What's Up Doc was always an STV production- even the "TVS" episodes from 1992 are copyrighted to Scottish Television. I guess it made things easier during the switchover.

STV had a nice office down in Maidstone until 1994? Which confused alot of people when driving down the M20 and there a sign saying Scottish Televsions... I dare say the only reason it was moved up to glasgow was most likley a cost saving mesure.

I think some of the stuff also went north to Glasgow for that final year.

Sandy ross had a alot of fingers in pies, and one of the best people ever to be at STV. He was on the ball and grab Nigel Pickard ( yes that one) to become STV new controller of entertainment and drama features but said he was able to work from maidstone. Thats how all the kids programmes went to STV control. Sandy did wonders with it.

I'm sure I read somewhere Nigel Pickard jumped off the TVS bandwagon after they lost their licence in 1991 and moved to STV because of it. On a related note, Art Attack survived after TVS because Neil Buchanan (and somebody else, I forget who) bought the rights to it from TVS because they'd lost their licence, formed their own company for it and took the programme to STV to follow Pickard.

It was Nic Ayling wasn't it? I think The Media Merchants was those two, though I think Art Attack was their only show done through STV, I know Zzzap was through Meridian and Terror Towers was Carlton. I think all their output was made in Maidstone though. Was that pre-1998 situation where programmes made by indies still had to be commissioned through an ITV franchisee, and had their endcap at the end.