Election 1987 - BBC Parliament

As an aside, the Scottish regions contribution to News After Noon was Jane Franchi, before Frances Coverdale took over permanently as the main co presenter, and eventually, main presenter.

Back to elections: Alastair Burnet was awful? Why was that? I was only six at the time, so really don't recall those very early years, TBH.

Now that you mention the names of Robin Day and Jeremy Paxman in the same sentence, I now vaguely recall the "rivalry" between the two which, at least in the hands of Fleet Street, played quite a big role in said election. Fleet Street buffed the whole thing up to ridiculous proportions, IIRC, claiming that Day almost refused to appear, unless Paxman's role was scaled back.

I wonder how many correspondents they had out in the field during the broadcast, for LIVE inputs?

[spits out coffee] Alastair Burnet... awful?!?! He's one of the Deities of News! Unless you mean he was just awful at covering elections, in which case you are forgiven

This Robin Day/Paxman 'feud'... would it be the reason why he appeared on ITN's election programme in 1992 rather than the BBC's?

Can I just point out that I am not old enough to see Burnet live in 1974 either, this is based on the BBC Parliament repeats. He comes across as a bit boring and pompous, I know they were grim elections but he seems a bit fed-up with the whole thing - when they put results of safe seats on screen he just goes "Nothing much to say about those" or "None of these particularly interesting", which isn't the kind of thing you should be saying for viewers who live in those constituencies - and in October he more or less has an argument with Bob McKenzie on air. He doesn't seem to bond very well with his colleagues and compared to Cliff Michelmore or even David Dimbleby he doesn't seem to been very enthused about it.

As for Paxman and Day, I dunno about that, I wouldn't have thought Paxman would have been playing a major part in that election anyway because he was still only on Breakfast Time - and indeed as well as filling in for Day during the morning he was also in his chair in Breakfast Time which was done from the election studio and you can see a bit of on YouTube. There are no other obvious roles he could have filled, in those days you only had an anchor, a graphics guy and an interviewer.

As for 1992, he left the Beeb staff in 1989 and was a freelance so seemingly just ITV asked him if he wanted to do it and he said yes. He was never going to be on the Beeb on the night, though he was on the Beeb during the campaign, he did interviews on Breakfast News, which he also did in 1997. Paxman wasn't in the studio in 1992 either, he was with Neil Kinnock, he didn't take up his current role until 1997. I think Paxo's first appearance on an election night was in 1983 when he was at Norman Tebbit's count.

I should have read DVB's opening post a bit more closely: 25 years???? 25 fecking years????

Geez. Where has time gone? I can almost remember Election '87 like yesterday.

And Steve: you're a wonderful font of knowledge. Keep it coming!

Well they appeared to cut out all the news programmes which was a shame. We could have had the One O'Clock with Martyn Lewis and an afternoon bulletin with Moira Stuart etc but no.

Still, it was brilliant to see after 25 years. The Skycopter is not a patch on the BBC's Airship.

Equally Jeremy Paxman is not a patch on Sir Robin Day... especially when he sarcastically tried to attack Dimbleby over not being "impartial" !

So do we reckon Margaret Thatcher will still be Prime Minister come the year 2000?

What struck me was how consistent and anti-aliased the graphics were - more than can be said for BBC coverage these days.

I also loved the slightly blocky animations of the constituency results that flashed across the bottom of the screen - they even had a Powerpoint-esque drop shadow. Still it looked pretty good, especially for 1987. The name captions were typically basic but that was pretty much how BBC News was then anyway,

That was never going to happen, though, because I doubt the Beeb bothered keeping them, I'm assuming there was continuity around them. Different with the bulletin at 10.30pm and indeed the bulletin leading into the 1979 coverage because they handed straight over to the election studio so they would have been counted as part of the programme and come though the election studio.

Images from Election 1987 now online at TV Live

It only took you 25 years.

I'd be impressed if he got them up in 1987 - he'd be having a few words with Tim Berners-Lee on who'd invented the World Wide Web

Thanks for posting that, Rob. Provokes immediate recollection of the year. I now distinctly remember Esther Rantzen being posted at Downing Street, and thinking it was an unusual decision to have her on.

Remember the Robin Day glasses on head shot, and the Peter Snow desert boots saga!

Does anyone recognize who is interviewing John Smith in the image half way down the page on the left hand side?

Cheers.

This image?

http://www.tv-live.org.uk/wp/media/elections/1987/97.jpg